Upon a Mystic Tide (8 page)

“That’s as love should be, anyway. When both people are truly committed.”

A little ache rippled through Bess. “I can’t imagine a love like that.” Realizing she’d spoken aloud, heat surged up her neck and she let out a nervous giggle. “Don’t we all wish we could?”

“Someday you will.”

“Maybe.” Not for a second did she believe it. But Miss Hattie clearly did, and Bess didn’t want to be the one to shatter the woman’s illusions.

Lucy gathered their dishes.

Miss Hattie’s fork slipped off her plate, hit the table, then clanged. She passed it to Lucy. “Bess, may I ask you a question, dear?”

She really didn’t want to answer personal questions, but Miss Hattie smiled so sweetly, and she looked so charming, with her bun a little worse for the wear from the wind on the walk over from the inn to the village. “Sure.”

“I understood you to say you and John have been separated for a long time.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you still wear his ring?”

Lucy paused her gum-snapping and rag-wiping of the next table, avidly listening and trying hard to pretend she wasn’t. Bess shifted on the wooden chair, then moved the silver-knobbed salt shaker next to the pepper at the end of the table, nestled to the wall. A ketchup bottle there was half-full.

“I didn’t mean to intrude, or to make you uncomfortable.” Miss Hattie gave Bess’s hand a pat atop the table. “If you’d rather not answer, dear, then, please, don’t.”

“No.” Bess had wondered the same thing herself. It was time she knew the answer, and she half-considered thanking Miss Hattie for nudging her into searching for it. She looked up from the metal napkin holder stuffed with white paper napkins and shrugged. “I guess at first I kept wearing it because it felt comfortable. I was used to it, you know? And,” this proved harder to admit, “I think I never really believed it was over for John and me. By the time I realized it was, I—I don’t know. I just didn’t want to take it off.”

The tiny gold band winked at her, and she vividly recalled their wedding ceremony and John putting the ring onto her finger. “I suppose it sounds kind of foolish now, but I promised him on our wedding day that I’d never take it off.” She let out a nervous, little laugh. “So I haven’t.”

“Doesn’t sound at all foolish,” Miss Hattie said. “Promises are made to be kept.”

Yes. Yes, promises are made to be kept. Yet, John had made promises too and he’d broken them. He’d vowed to always love her, but he hadn’t. He certainly hadn’t loved her anything like Collin had loved his Cecelia. In fact, John couldn’t have loved Bess at all. A lump of sadness swelled in her chest and she cursed herself as forty kinds of fool because that truth still had the power to hurt her so much. It shouldn’t hurt even a little. Not anymore. “After the divorce is final, then I’ll take it off.”

“A few more weeks, hmmm?”

Bess nodded. A flurry of motion caught her eye. Lucy rushed over to Fred, then whispered something into his ear that had him smiling and letting out a muffled “Hot damn!”

Lucy popped him on the thigh with her red rag. Fred flushed purple and grunted out a hasty apology for cursing—not that it did him any good. Lucy’s glare warned that he had not yet been forgiven and reminded Bess of the killer looks Maggie leveled on T. J. Fred looked about as worried as T. J. usually did, too: not at all. Bess cocked her head. Maybe she should have laid a glare or two on John. At times, she’d wanted to, but her rigid upbringing had kicked in, and she just hadn’t been able to lose her composure and feel comfortable about it. Now what was Fred scribbling on that bulletin board?

The phone rang.

Lucy answered it, then yelled out: “Bess, it’s for you.”

“Me?” She frowned at Miss Hattie. “Here?”

“I forwarded the calls from the inn, dear. Tuesday is my errand day and Lucy takes calls for me.”

“Ah.” Bess slid back her chair, walked over to the end of the bar, then took the receiver from Lucy’s outstretched hand. The sheriff, Bess noted, was actually backing out of the cafe with tiny Beaulah Favish right on the toes of his boots, still bending his ear and demanding respect.

“Hello,” Bess said into the receiver.

“Bess, come home. I miss you.”

Miguel. Bess internally groaned. This week’s redhead evidently had dumped him. “You miss Silk.” If he’d choose his women on something more than hair color
 . . .

“Her, too.” He confessed. “Is she liking Maine?”

“Loving it. So am I, in case you’re wondering.” He often used Silk as a go-between, for some reason feeling more at ease asking about her reactions to things than Bess’s. “Coming here was the best idea I’ve had in a long time.”

“Wonderful, even if it does cramp my nefarious plans to seduce you.”

Bess laughed aloud. Miguel seducing her was about as likely as her seducing John Mystic. “And I thought you loved challenges.”

“Only in regattas, Angel. I prefer eager women.”

“Ah, the redhead escapes. What happened this time?”

“A true friend wouldn’t ask such indelicate questions, Angel.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, what must I do to make this woman
 . . .
eager?”

“I’m standing in the middle of a crowded cafe at the moment.” And receiving far too many interested looks for her liking. “Could I put on my shrink hat and see what’s gotten your synapses misfiring later?”

He laughed. “You’re supposed to console me. I’m nursing a broken heart.”

“Sorry. Condolences, of course.” With a broken heart once a week, sympathy waned.

“A true friend would stop this unnecessary exodus, come home, and sail the world with me on
Daybreak
until I’d recovered.”

She twisted the phone cord. “Friends don’t sail around the world together when one of those friends has a job to get back to in a few weeks—namely me.” Provided Sal fast-talked Millicent into not dropping the ax. “And if I left here now, I’m wagering that before I could get home, you’d have a new redhead in tow.”

He laughed, then turned serious. “It’d make me feel better if you’d be reasonable and let me buy the station. Then you’d be free to do exactly as you pleased.”

“No.” Bess wiped at a nag of an ache in her forehead. This, she did not need. “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate your offer, it’s that—”

“You don’t want the support of a friend,” he finished for her.

“I don’t want your money.” How many times had they been through this?

“But—”

“Don’t push on this, okay, Miguel? Please.” She paused to bury the tremor in her voice. “I’m a little shaky right now.”

“I don’t wish to make you shakier but, when I tell you the news, you might change your mind.”

That the news wasn’t good came as no surprise. Was good news possible anymore?

“I saw Millicent Fairgate at a charity ball at the Clarion last night. She’d only just heard about you divorcing your John. Need I say she was less than pleased?”

“No.” Bess’s stomach coiled into a nest of knots. “I can imagine well enough, I think.” Raging, most likely.

“Hmmm, I suggest you double your worst expectations. Then you’ll be close.”

Bess grimaced. At least the wait for the ax to rise before it fell on her head was over. Millicent would fire her; it wasn’t a question of
if
but of
when.
“I’m expecting her to can me. She can’t do any worse.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that”

“What do you mean?” What else could she do to Bess? Nothing came to mind.

“You’re forgetting the woman is a powerful influence in New Orleans. Nearly as strong as Elise Dupree. She can close a lot of doors that until now have been open to you.”

Elise Dupree. The older woman who had hired John to investigate the kidnaping/elopement of her only daughter, Dixie. The case that had obsessed John. The other woman—the one who had come first with him. “Not much I can do about it.”

“You can let me buy the station.”

“No.” That, Bess couldn’t do. She’d look like a laughingstock. Worse, she’d feel like one—and she’d feel bought and paid for by Miguel Santos.

Miss Hattie touched Bess’s arm. “Just a minute, Miguel.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, dear, but I have to get to Millie’s Antique Shoppe. She’s gotten in a curio she’s anxious for me to see.”

Bess smiled. “Thanks for joining me for lunch. I enjoyed your company.”

“Me, too.” Miss Hattie squeezed Bess’s forearm, then snapped closed her rain slicker. “I’ll see you at home later on.”

Bess nodded and Miss Hattie moved on down the bar to speak briefly with Vic and Horace Johnson, who immediately removed his cap as a show of respect to Miss Hattie. A light rain still tapped at the cafe windows, speckling the glass and running down the pane in rivulets. Soon, it would stop. “I’m back,” Bess said to Miguel.

“As your friend, I’m asking you to reconsider. I’ve spoken with Sal and he would stay on. It’s not a solely altruistic thing I’d be doing. I’d make a great deal of money.”

“No. Please, no.” Even she would view Miguel buying the station as him having to buy it to keep her employed. Everyone in town already thought they were lovers.

A buzz sounded in the background. “I’ve got another call,” he said. “Maybe my redhead apologizing, eh? Hug that rag of a dog and think kindly of me.”

“Silk is hardly a rag, Miguel, and she takes serious exception to being called one. As does her owner.”

“Ah, I’ve gone too far, haven’t I?”

“Indeed.” He hadn’t. “We’ll expect a box of treats delivered by two P.M. tomorrow.”

He laughed. “Very well. A box of biscuits—”

“We call them cookies.”

“Cookies, then, for your Silk, and a surprise for you.”

“Only the cookies, if you please. I’m not ready to be bribed.”

“Okay, Angel.”

Bess hung up the phone. Back at her table, she again started shaking. Three days at Seascape Inn, and she’d been calm and content. But one phone call from New Orleans and here she sat again rattling worse than the old Chevy she had driven—and John had sworn was held together with spit, rubber bands, and baling wire—on their first date.

Understandable, but pitiful. She and Miguel were just friends. What difference did it make if he thought she couldn’t carry herself without him buying the station and taking care of her? A friend
should
show more support and faith in a friend’s abilities, true, but that notion likely hadn’t occurred to Miguel. Anyway, she’d refused his bailout offer. And Millicent learning of the divorce had been inevitable—and a worry hanging over Bess’s head. At least now it was done and Bess knew to expect the you’re-fired call anytime.

She sipped from her glass of lemon-tart tea. There was a silver lining here, though she had to stretch to find it. Positively, absolutely nothing else in her world could go wrong.

“Hello, Bess.” A man’s voice sounded from right behind her.

Recognizing it as John Mystic’s proved her mistaken.

Rain dripping off his tan trench coat,
John watched Bess’s slim shoulders go starch stiff. She didn’t turn to look back at him. She’d recognized his voice, all right, and she was
not
happy.