The Angel Tasted Temptation (21 page)

"That smog out there would kill a cockroach." Once the door had shut behind her, Martha lowered the mask. "Here, I brought you one, too." She dug in her St. John's Bay tote bag and handed Meredith a second one. "Don't you walk around this cancer trap of a city without one. I swear, there's no fresh air here. Not like at home."

"Actually, Indiana has one of the highest smog rates in the country."

Her mother waved a hand of dismissal. "I don't believe that. Why this whole place is gray. Every building is gray. It's like they've got cancer."

"Uh, that's concrete, Momma."

"Just another word for permanent cancer. I know about dirty air. I saw that special on Three Mile Island on the Discovery Channel." She hoisted her mask back into place, muffling her words. "One breath of that and you might as well suck in a carton of Marlboros."

Meredith let out a sigh and laid the surgical mask on the counter without bothering to correct her mother's geography or her facts. Despite her mother's warnings of an impending long and painful death, she wasn't going to go outside looking like Dr. Kevorkian. Clearly, a change of subject was in order. "I can't believe you drove all this way. And with Caleb, too."

Changing subjects to Caleb probably wasn't the best of choices. If he was here, it was for one of two things: a dead body or her.

Since she didn't see any of the former lying around, she was willing to bet the next five winning Megabucks tickets that he was here to get her back.

At the mention of his name, Caleb, starched and stiff in a dark suit, came striding into the store. In one arm, he held a white Styrofoam vase with a spray of crimson roses.

Meredith recognized the type of container, the artful fanned arrangement of the red blooms.

Leftovers.
Eww
.

"We've come to take you back, Meredith," Caleb said.

"You can't play forever, honey," Momma chimed in. "It's time to face the music and be Miss Holstein, like you promised."

Maria stood against the counter, one eyebrow arched like a question mark. "Miss Holstein?" she mouthed.

Meredith gave her a look that said she'd explain later, then turned to face her ex-fiancé and her expectant mother. "I'm not going back. Rebecca needs me."

"I see a helper here," Momma said, gesturing to Maria. "I'm sure they can get by without you. Besides, your cousin didn't say you
had
to come. She told me you volunteered."

Oh, damn. Momma had gotten to Rebecca. She didn't blame Rebecca for caving. Her cousin was, after all, eight months pregnant and at an emotional disadvantage. "I did volunteer," Meredith said. "But I'm not ditching her now."

"You have an obligation, dear. J.C. needs you."

"And so do I," Caleb said. He raised the flowers in a hopeful gesture.

"And we need to get back to Momma's cooking." Vernon nodded. Ray Jr. elbowed him and told him to shush.

"I'm not leaving." Meredith crossed her arms over her chest. She knew if she gave in now, she'd never have another opportunity like this. It would be too easy to get sucked back into the world she'd left. Before she knew it, she'd end up married to Caleb with two kids and a casket for a coffee table. And no life outside of a three-bedroom ranch and baking pies for the spring church picnic.

Momma took a step forward, her eyes seeming as big as pie plates above the white oval of the mask. "But if you don't go home, who's going to ride Big Green?"

"I really don't care."

Silence descended over the shop, heavy and thick as beef stew. Vernon and Ray Jr. shrunk back against the front door, as if they were afraid Momma might lash out at them for substandard kidnapping. Caleb's roses drooped, lowering along with his jaw.

But Momma ...

Momma just stood there, not making a sound or a move for several long seconds. Meredith wished she could pluck the words out of the air and stuff them back down her throat, but knew if she did she'd end up right back in the same place she'd been before she'd left Heavendale.

"Well, you're not the daughter I thought you were," Momma said finally. Then she turned on her espadrilles and walked out of the shop. Like tin soldiers, the men followed behind, piling into the hearse.

After the long black car had pulled away from the curb, Maria draped an arm over Meredith's shoulders and drew her toward the kitchen. "Do you want to talk about it? Or see what we have in the fridge to ease the pain?"

Meredith laughed. "I think I just want to get back to work."

Maria tsk-tsked her. "Girlfriend, there are only three ways to deal with problems. You shop, eat or have sex until you forget what was bothering you."

Meredith pulled a tray of miniature cakes they'd made that morning out of the refrigerator, then grabbed a bag of chocolate buttercream icing. She busied herself with piping frosting onto each little chocolate circle. Her star tip stumbled and she created more of a mess than a delicate treat. "I can't do any of those things. My Visa is maxed out, my appetite is shot and sex is the one thing I can't seem to get no matter how hard I try."

"Whoa. Did you just say what I thought you said? What about Travis?"

"He won't do it."

"Is he
dead?
"

Meredith laughed and the frosting shivered on the end of the metal tip. "No. He's very much alive. But all of a sudden he has these morals and feels like we should wait."

"Wait? For what? The end of the world?"

"He wants my first time to be ... special. With someone I love." Meredith piped another cake, the dark chocolate icing creating a perfect celestial shape on the top.

Maria hesitated in putting the next sheet of cakes in front of Meredith. "Did you say 'first time'?"

"Yeah." She cringed. God, why did saying that sound like the equivalent of announcing she had a bad case of leprosy?

"What about Caleb? I thought he used to be your fiancé. Didn't you two ever ... ?"

"He wanted to, but in the hearse." Meredith shuddered.
That
had been the last straw.

"In the hearse?" Maria shuddered. "With or without an audience?"

"I never asked. I've known Caleb all my life and I thought I loved him, but when it came down to it, I just... couldn't. In a hearse or not, it didn't matter."

"He didn't ring your bells, huh?"

Meredith snorted. "He didn't even know where they were."

Maria laughed, a hearty, deep sound that came from far within her. "What about Travis?"

"Oh, he knows where the bells are," Meredith said with a sigh. She laid the piping bag down on the counter. "If I could only get him naked and onto a flat surface, I'd be all set."

Maria pushed the second tray over to Meredith. "What if. . .just for chuckles, you tried it his way?"

"What do you mean?"

"Fall in love." Maria wagged her left hand, showing Meredith the diamond engagement ring from Dante.

"I'm only here for a few weeks." A knot twisted itself around and around in her stomach.

"Sometimes it doesn't take long." A small, secret smile stole over Maria's face, as if she knew something special only to her.

As the shimmer of emotions washed over Maria's features, a stab of envy rushed through Meredith and for a fleeting second, she wondered if maybe she was wrong. Had Maria and Dante found that elusive feeling Meredith had read about in books but never believed
really
existed?

The same kind of love she had told herself she didn't need—or want. Because to Meredith, having it meant ending up in the exact prison she'd just escaped. The one that came with a ranch house and someone else's expectations, always waiting for her.

"Falling in love isn't as bad as it looks," Maria said, as if she'd read Meredith's mind.

Meredith turned away, reaching for the piping bag and busying herself with creating perfect stars instead of thinking about how happy Maria looked and how she'd never had that feeling herself, not in the three years she'd dated Caleb or any of the years before or the months since. Looking for it with Travis was ridiculous anyway. He'd made it abundantly clear he was a man who had zero interest in a long-term commitment.

Which was exactly why she wanted him.

“I’m not here to fall in love," she repeated.

"Then what
are
you here for?" Maria asked gently.

"Change. I want my life to be different than what it was all planned out to be from the minute I was born. I want... more."

"Nothing makes everything change more than love. And it's a good kind of change, Meredith. It only adds, it doesn't take away."

Meredith went on piping, ignoring Maria's words. Falling in love wasn't in her plans. If anything, it would ruin everything and send her right back to where she'd been before—engaged, tied down and headed for a life of ant-ridden town picnics and bean-dish-recipe exchanges on the church steps, and everyone telling her how to act, dress and behave.

If Travis wasn't going to keep his promise, then she'd find another man who would.

With that thought, the star beneath her tip crumbled into a sad mess of blotchy chocolate frosting.

Momma's Home-Is-Only-a-Moo-Away Tuna Melt

2 6-ounce cans tuna, drained

2 tablespoons onion, chopped

2 tablespoons celery, chopped

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Salt and pepper

4 slices American cheese

8 slices good-old white bread, toasted

2 tablespoons butter

All you need is one of Momma's tuna melts and before you know it, you'll be back where you belong. Mix up the tuna, mayo, onion, celery and a little salt and pepper in a bowl. Spread on one slice of bread, top with the cheese and finish your sandwich with the other slice.

You can put these in a fancy toaster oven to brown them up if you want, but Momma does it the home-cooked way, with a little butter in a pan.

A tuna melt has everything you need in one place, same as home does. No need to go halfway around the country looking for anything more. Remember that, and you'll be just fine.

On Monday morning, Momma was back, a determined set to her face—what Meredith could see of it—and no hint of their earlier argument in her eyes.

That meant trouble. When Momma ignored an argument instead of offering her hundred-dollar lecture, that meant she'd decided to utilize guerrilla tactics and would try to outflank her daughter with a surprise maneuver.

Momma gave Meredith's floral A-line skirt and red flutter-sleeve top a passing—but clearly disapproving—glance, then reached in her purse for a small metal object. There was a metal
vrrp
sound and suddenly Meredith found herself surrounded by numbers. "What—Hey! No! Stop measuring me!"

"I just want to make sure it's going to fit."

Oh no. Momma had gone to real extremes now. It explained Caleb's presence, and the hearse.

Meredith was being measured for a casket.

Momma wrapped the tape around Meredith's hips, then bit her lip. "Hmmm. I think we'll need to take in the udders a little."

Oh no. Momma wasn't measuring her for a casket. Her intentions were much worse.

"I am
not
going home to be Miss Holstein. Not right now."

"I knew you'd resist," her mother said. "You always were my defiant child. Must have been all those jalapeno poppers I ate when I was pregnant with you. Got my insides all in a twist and twisted up your brain cells, too."

Momma's idea of practicing medicine meant blending folklore with suspicions and astrological predictions. Her theories rarely made sense to anyone but herself. Nevertheless, Momma was convinced that too much rain made people bloated and walking backwards under a ladder brought instant death.

"Eating spicy food during your pregnancy didn't make me stubborn."

"Oh yeah? Then why are Vernon and Ray Jr. so sweet? Because I craved M&Ms with them." Momma nodded, as if that settled the issue. She ran the length of white and black tape around her daughter's head, managing to resist Meredith's attempts to bat it off. "At least the top will fit."

"I told you, I can't go home. Rebecca needs me."

"That's why I had J.C. overnight it to Aunt Gloria's." The bell over the door jingled again and Caleb entered, holding a long black-and-white spotted plastic bag. "You read my mind, dear. Thank you."

"I thought Meredith might come around."

"Come around to what?" But the dread in Meredith's stomach gave her the answer she needed.

Caleb unzipped the bag. It fell to the floor, leaving him holding a hanger—and the empty shell of a cow. "To being Miss Holstein." He gave her half a grin, since Caleb never had managed to work himself up to a full smile. "Here in Boston."

Meredith backed up several steps, hands up, warding off the udders, the hooves and the long white snout. "No. No.
No way
."

"Honey, you competed and you won. You're my little cow girl," Momma said, her voice bursting with pride. "I talked to J.C. and he said if you couldn't be there to ride on Big Green, well, we were to get a picture of you and he'd blow it up to one of those life-size cutouts and affix it right on Big Green's radiator." Momma moved closer, making her case with a bright, Chapstick-adorned smile. "The Lincoln County Dairy Farmers Association got together and thought a little East Coast publicity wouldn't be such a bad thing." She waved out the door, indicating the city behind them. "These people don't drink enough milk. It's why they have such sour personalities."

Meredith shook her head. "What on earth does a lack of milk have to do with that?"

"Too little lactose," Momma said, laying a hand on her arm. "Doc Michaels thinks it can drive people mad. He says it isn't an apple a day you need, it's a quart a day. So the Lincoln County Dairy Farmers thought you could do them a favor and give the milk business a little boost while you're here."

"And just how am I supposed to do that?"

Her mother pressed the cow costume into her arms. "Why, dress up as Miss Holstein and get behind the counter here. People will stop on by, just to see the cow baking cookies and cakes."