Huckleberry Lake

by Catherine Anderson

  Straightening her shoulders, Julie grasped the doorknob and pushed inside to the raucous jingle of an overhead bell. Most pawnshops were musty and dark, but Blackie’s place was just the opposite. Shimmering glass display cabinets formed an inverted U shape with walking lanes behind the top end and along both sides where the proprietor could move freely to assist customers. He had installed excellent lighting. His merchandise was showcased against spotless black or dark green velvet. Like many pawnshops, this one featured heaps of jewelry and timepieces, but behind the front barrier of glass, more locked cases displayed handguns, rifles in wall racks, and miscellaneous items on tidy, polished shelves. He kept things so clean that it resembled a retail shop.

  Standing with his back to the cash register, he turned at the sound of the bell and abandoned whatever he’d been doing. When he saw her, his eyes, incredibly blue and lined with sooty lashes, began to twinkle, and he smiled as if he’d been hoping all day to see her walk in. He had a way of making everyone feel special, she reminded herself. He would act just as pleased if his least-favorite person in town had just appeared.

  “Julie,” he said, drawing out the syllables in her name as if it were a word in a song. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  Suddenly wishing that she’d fussed a bit more over her appearance, she pushed at her windblown hair and smoothed the front of her burgundy knit top, which wasn’t one of her nicest and had been mostly hidden all day behind an apron that sported “Morning Grind” across the bib in large block letters. “I managed to escape early today, so I’m treating myself to a little window-shopping.” That wasn’t precisely true, but she needed to be a bit sneaky about seeing if her grandma’s ring was still part of his inventory. Blackie had a kind heart, and he would feel awful if he’d already sold something she wished she could redeem. “Do you mind if I browse?”

  “Heck, no. Look all you like.”

  Every time Julie saw this man, she marveled at how handsome he was for a man his age. Stocky of build, he was of medium height, yet he seemed to be much taller until she stood right beside him. He’d kept his muscular body trim with regular exercise and what she presumed were good eating habits. During his walks, he made it a habit to stop in at eateries, one of which was hers, and he always had coffee and some sort of treat, but his weight didn’t seem to fluctuate as a result.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  She descended on the display of necklaces first and pretended intense interest in gaudy designs that she wouldn’t ever wear. Then she moved to the earrings. When she finally got to the rings, she looked at each one twice and then struggled to hide her disappointment. Her grandmother’s diamond was nowhere in sight. Julie had been in desperate straits when she’d hocked it in order to finish the renovations of her shop. At the time, she’d believed she would soon be making good money and would be able to redeem the heirloom. Only that hadn’t happened. It had taken a while for business at the Morning Grind to pick up, and she’d barely broken even that first year.

  Blackie, who’d been watching her, asked, “Are you sure you’re not looking for something in particular?”

  She forced a smile. “Oh, no. I’m just dreaming.”

  He searched her gaze. They had become friends over time, because he often came to her shop in the afternoon after her lunch-hour rush, making it possible for her to visit with him, but she still hated it when he looked into her eyes. She felt as if he looked deeper and saw more than she would like. Since her divorce and all the gossip that followed, she’d become a person who valued her privacy.

  His full mouth tipped into a slight smile. “I still remember that ring you sold me a couple of years ago. I knew then that it was special to you, so if you ever want to redeem it, I have it on hold in the back room.”

  Julie could scarcely believe her ears. “What? Why on earth didn’t you sell it?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sometimes I can tell when people are forced to hock something that’s precious to them. When that happens, I do my best to keep the item.” He grinned in a self-deprecating way. “I’m no saint. Don’t get me wrong. If I got hard up for cash, I’d sell a lock of my mother’s hair. But I’ve done well here. I own my shop and upstairs apartment. No mortgage payment hanging over my head, and I live simply. The shop supports me in fine style.”

  He stepped into the back room and returned a moment later with a small, white box. When he stepped to the counter and lifted the lid to let Julie see inside, she felt tears gathering in her eyes. The diamond-and-emerald setting was just as beautiful as she remembered.

  “Oh, my stars! I can’t believe you kept it for so long.” Her joy dimmed slightly as reality sank in. Blackie purchased items to make a profit, and it still remained to be seen if she could afford to buy the piece of jewelry back. “How much?”

  “I never charge a redemption fee. I just ask to be reimbursed for what I paid for an item.” He shrugged again. “Well, for something large, I might charge a nominal storage fee, but this ring took up very little space.”

  “Is that a common practice?”

  “Oh, heck, no. Most pawnbrokers charge some kind of redemption fee, sort of like interest fees on a loan. And some bleed people when they want to redeem an item. We’re not in business for the joy of it. I just happen to be a little more sentimental than most, and I don’t feel right about robbing people when they’re forced to hock something really special.”

  “How do you know when it’s something really special?”

  He narrowed an eye at her. “Your hands trembled when you brought this in to me. And your voice shook just a little. I’m not heartless. I pick up on stuff like that. Like I said, I would have put it up for sale if I got in a pinch, but I didn’t.”

  He lifted out the ring holder, and Julie saw that he’d written the purchase price on the floor of the box. “Looks like it’ll cost you a thousand. I can sell it back to you on a payment plan if you’re tight on cash. The only catch is that you can’t take the ring until you’ve paid it off.”

  Julie wasn’t tight on cash. She wasn’t rich, by any means. Unlike him, she did have a monthly payment on her house. But she’d managed to keep all her other expenses down, rarely hired help in her shop, and banked all the profits she possibly could.

  “Can I just write you a check?” She laughingly added, “You know where to find me if it bounces.”

  “You’re a straight shooter, Julie. Of course I’ll accept a check.”

  She reached for her purse, which she’d set on the glass countertop. As she wrote the check, she said, “You’ll never know how much this means to me. When I hocked the ring, I knew my grandmother would understand. My whole future in Mystic Creek depended upon me making it with my business, so I really needed that thousand. But it still half killed me to sell it.”

  “I understand.” He rested his bent arms on the glass surface, which brought his suntanned face closer and made his shoulders look even wider. “I got a raw deal with a pawnbroker once. He didn’t wait the customary thirty days to put my hocked possession up for sale, and when I walked in and found it in the display case, I was pretty steamed. I had my receipt, of course, but the bastard had written the wrong date on the original bill of sale to cover his ass. To add insult to injury, he charged me a small fortune to buy the damned thing back. It was my grandfather’s pocket watch, a priceless family treasure.”

  Julie slid the check over to him, and he straightened to put it in his register. “So when you became a pawnbroker, you promised yourself that you’d deal fairly with people?”

  He flashed her a grin, displaying nearly perfect white teeth. “Something like that. I was going through a rough time, and I sure didn’t need to be kicked when I was already down.”

  As Julie slipped the ring box into her purse, she met his gaze. “Thank you so much for holding on to her ring for me. My ex-husband hated it and bought me a showy diamond
, so I never got to wear this one during my marriage. You’ll never know how much it means to get it back.”

  “Ah, but I do know. From personal experience.”

  “I won’t offend you by trying to repay the favor,” she said, “but I would love to have you over for dinner at my house some evening by way of a thank-you.”

  Blackie looked deeply into her eyes again. “Please don’t think I’m a presumptuous old man by asking this, Julie, but exactly where do you think the two of us are going with this?”

  Startled by the question as much as she was by his directness, she couldn’t think what to say and stammered without managing a coherent reply.

  His expression softened. “I’m too old to play games. We can continue to dance around the issue, but that seems kind of silly to me. We’re both adults and know there’s an attraction building between us. That happens. Only I’m a good deal older than you are. Twenty years, I think. Not to say I’m pushing for anything serious, but in case that happens, how is the age difference going to work?”

  Julie had barely wrapped her mind around the fact that she liked him. Well, okay, she thought he was really hot, and as Erin had so succinctly pointed out, Julie was crushing on him. But she hadn’t considered the nuts and bolts of a relationship.

  “I’d like to have a mature male friend,” she blurted out. “But I’m not ready for a romantic relationship yet. I have some trust issues since my divorce.”

  He chuckled. She loved the sound of his laughter, so deep that it seemed to curl around her like warm smoke. “The first step toward healing after a divorce is admitting you have trust issues.”

  “Yes, well, my admission doesn’t make the trust issues go away. Don’t I wish?”

  “I’d like to hear about that. What went wrong in your marriage, I mean.”

  She laughed. “It would be much easier to tell you what didn’t go wrong.”

  He nodded as if that was everyone’s standard answer, which made her feel a sense of camaraderie with him. He’d mentioned once that he was divorced, but he’d never hinted at how bad the marriage was. “I can close up a few minutes early. We can go upstairs and crack open a couple of beers while we share war stories.”

  Julie wanted to say yes, but her trust issues were real.

  As if he read her mind, he winked at her. “Come on, Julie. When I stop by your shop, we’re usually alone. If I wanted to make an inappropriate move on you, I would have already done it. That’s not my style.”

  “Okay, but just so you know, I hold a black belt in karate.”

  He laughed again. “God save me. The only black belt I hold is for bending my elbow to eat your cinnamon rolls.”

  She found herself following him up the narrow staircase that led to his private quarters. In the downtown area of Mystic Creek, most of the shops had upstairs living areas or vast storage spaces. Being in the Menagerie, the Morning Grind had no second story. But over time Julie had seen many of the Main Street stairwells. Having been designed well over a century ago by smaller people, they tended to be dark, steep, and treacherous, but Blackie had dispensed with that feeling. He’d installed good overhead lighting, added sturdy handrails along both sides, and painted the walls and ceilings a pale banana yellow, which seemed to bring in sunlight.

  As he opened and held ajar the door at the landing, she stepped over the threshold into his apartment with more a sense of curiosity than apprehension. She expected to see—well, she wasn’t sure what she anticipated. A bachelor pad, she supposed. Most men didn’t bother with color schemes and seemed to think a mismatch of outdated furniture looked fine. But Blackie had carried the illusion of buttery sunlight into his living area, and he had appointed the rooms that she could see with a sturdy, brown leather sofa and well-cushioned chairs, offset by a collection of honey-and-black Amish accessories, a theme that flowed flawlessly from the sitting area to embrace the dining room and kitchen.

  “Oh, wow.”

  Stepping inside behind her, Blackie asked, “You like?”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Fishing for compliments?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t all amateur decorators fish for them? Of course, I did more than just decorate. I gutted the entire apartment and started over from scratch.”

  To Julie’s discerning eye, he’d done a fabulous job. The great room concept worked beautifully, each area flowing nicely into the next. Being a woman who loved to cook, she felt beckoned by his kitchen. She glimpsed a Sub-Zero side-by-side, chrome-and-black double ovens, a built-in microwave, a utilitarian work island that begged for a rolling pin and pie dough, and a wealth of cleverly designed storage.

  “I think you performed a small miracle.” The apartment wasn’t that large, but he’d somehow made it seem spacious. “The kitchen is amazing.”

  “Grab a seat. I’ll grab us each a brew. I keep a selection: IPA, ales, and darks. What’s your pleasure? Don’t be afraid to name a certain brewery. I may have it on hand.”

  Julie felt the last traces of tension ebb from her body. She’d liked Fred Black the first time she met him, they’d chatted at her shop almost daily over coffee for months, and this was really no different. He wouldn’t suddenly transform into a lecherous jerk simply because he’d lured her into his private quarters. “I’m not an expert on beer,” she confessed. “I always forget the names. But I love a dark with a hint of smoke and sweetness.”

  As he rifled through his fridge, Julie chose to sit on one of two recliners that angled toward each other near a gigantic flat-screen television. The sofa looked equally inviting, but the position of the chairs provided a perfect place for people to chitchat. It also lent itself well to viewing football games. Blackie was a self-proclaimed enthusiast who unabashedly admitted that he had purchased two external hard drives to save sporting events so he could watch them at his leisure all year long. She plopped her overfilled purse on the barnwood floor in front of an end table. As she sat down, the leather chair seemed to melt around her body. She resisted putting up the footrest. This was her first visit, and she didn’t want to appear too relaxed, even though she suddenly was.

  He walked back into the living area with an easy, fluid stride. Today he wore a rich brown plaid shirt and form-hugging black jeans that made him seem like another accessory to the room’s color scheme. And in this setting, which reflected his simple tastes and down-to-earth personality, he seemed to emanate masculinity and strength. Here in his element, he seemed even sexier than he did at her shop, which was saying something. He’d poured their beers into tall, chilled tumblers.

  As he bent forward to hand Julie her drink, he said, “Special, just for you, and I know you’ve never tasted it. You can’t buy it here.”

  Julie accepted the beer and glanced into its dark depths. “What kind is it?”

  He grinned, flashing his straight, white teeth. “A Scotch ale reputed to be a favorite with most ladies.”

  Subtle overhead lighting glistened on his black hair, bringing out the blue undertones and highlighting its curliness. He kept it short, and it waved over his crown like a rumpled cap, inviting her to run her fingers through it. The thought jarred her, and she pushed it away. She took a tentative sip of the ale, and it was so good that her eyes nearly closed.

  “Oh, it’s delicious.”

  He sat in the matching recliner, which she noticed now had been wallowed out by use to the shape of his sturdy frame. “You don’t get off that easy. What flavors do you taste?”

  She took another sip and rolled it over her tongue, savoring the faint sweetness. “I definitely taste a hint of smoke.” Meeting his gaze, she added, “And I’d swear I taste chocolate and coffee, two of my favorite things ever.”

  “Very good! You nailed it. That’s Cold Smoke, an award-winning brew made and sold in Montana. I have a pawnbroker friend who hits estate sales up there. Whenever he goes, he picks me up a few cases.”
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br />   “So you like a ladies’ beer?”

  He winked at her. “I like everything about ladies, so why not? As for the flavors, who doesn’t love a hunk of chocolate and a cup of hot coffee? Men like those things, too. Honestly, though, I’m all over the place with beer, which is why I keep a variety in my fridge. I allow myself only two a day, so I like to change it up and experience different blends.”

  She settled back, thinking that the recliner was like the man who sat near her, all-enveloping in a solid but gentle way. “I love it,” she said after taking another swallow. “And now you’ve gone and done it! I’m turned on by a beer I can’t get anywhere in the state!”

  He laughed. “My buddy can get you more if you really like it.”

  “I really do!”

  He smiled at her over the rim of his foggy tumbler. “Well, then, I’m your man.”

  Julie wanted to ask how expensive the beer was, but another thought dashed her enthusiasm. “In college, I loved going to pubs to sample different beers. It became something of a hobby, actually. I wasn’t into getting looped, mind you. I just found all the different flavors fascinating and toyed with the idea of starting my own microbrewery.”

  “Really?” He chuckled. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “About a microbrewery?”

  “Yep. I also like wine, but the different types are pretty much established. With microbrews, it’s open to the imagination.”

  “Exactly!” she replied with more enthusiasm than she had intended, which brought warmth to her cheeks. “Sorry. It’s a passion I buried a long time ago, and tasting this Scotch ale has resurrected it.”

  His smile faded. “A passion for something should never be buried. What happened?”