by Tamara Leigh
He lowers his head, and for a moment appears to be praying (his family were dedicated churchgoers), but then he springs onto the block, and he’s holding a notepad. As he slowly turns, he shifts his jaw. Is he working a toothpick?
He jots something, walks the length of the block, and jots again, obviously trying to incorporate the original granite block into the new sculpture. He carries on for another minute before bounding down as easily as he bounded up. I retreat a step, expecting him to return to his studio, but he strides opposite.
The Grill ’n’ Swill is his destination. And mine. Heart racing at the launch of Operation Get Spit, I run to the door, wrench it open, and jump back when the winter chill raises goose bumps across my limbs. Since Reece isn’t going anywhere soon, as Duke takes his sweet time serving up his worth-the-wait burgers and wings, I retrieve my coat and exit the auction house.
Thirty seconds later, hailed by Pastor Stanky from Church on the Square and then by Uncle Obe’s aged attorney, Artemis Bleeker, I’m back in the lobby. If I’m going to get that DNA, I need to be like smoke—not fire, for which my red hair and height are to blame. One I can’t do anything about other than slouch, but the other…
“Oh no, this here’s my favorite baseball cap.” Mrs. Templeton claps a hand over it. “And how do I know you don’t have lice?”
Ew! “I give you my word I don’t. And I’ll bring it back after lunch.”
Her nose twitches. “All right.” She pulls off the cap, revealing a helmet of smooshed gray hair. “But next time you leave home, dress warmly. I got my hands full enough with my granddaughter without havin’ to worry about you.” She thrusts the cap at me. “Kids these days!”
“I’ll try to be more responsible in the future.”
“Best do more than try.”
“Yes ma’am.” There’s something not right about that, I realize as I head outside with my hair piled beneath the cap. I’m Mrs. Templeton’s employer, and yet I’m calling her “ma’am.” Of course, she is forty years older—definitely my elder—and the loan of her baseball cap isn’t in her job description.
Peacoat buttoned to my throat, shoulders rounded, cap tugged low, I cut across the park to the iron bench nestled among the trees. As I lower onto it, I congratulate myself on the vantage point. Whereas the surrounding trees and shrubs offer cover, my view into the Grill ’n’ Swill’s dining room is nearly unobstructed, thanks to the recent installation of plate-glass windows to update the establishment’s look.
Zeroing in on Reece where he sits at a table just back from the left window, I murmur, “Hello there.”
Shortly, a waiter appears and Reece sets his menu aside.
“Order a soft drink,” I whisper, breath fogging the air. “Anything that comes with a straw. Go on, indulge that oral fixation of yours—chomp, chomp.”
The waiter says something, retrieves the menu, and saunters away.
Bare fingers beginning to ache with the cold, I push my hands into the opposite sleeves of my coat. Unfortunately, unless Reece ordered something easy, this could be a very uncomfortable wait. In fact, my toes are going numb.
Reece’s drink arrives—with a straw! Is that root beer? It’s what he always ordered when we dated. Not that it matters. What matters is that straw.
As I watch from beneath the bill of the baseball cap, he pulls a toothpick from his mouth and sets it aside. Providing he doesn’t recycle them, it’s possible I’ll have two samples to choose from. This might not be so hard after all.
He lifts the glass, and I hold my breath as he puts his lips around the straw. That’s it. Drink it down. And chew, baby, chew!
After a single pull on the straw, he sets down the glass. This could take a while, but I’m not going anywhere, even if I have to use a blow-dryer to get my toes apart. Sticking my chin into the collar of my coat and panting hot breath down my front, I watch Reece, who’s still ignoring his straw, but as I scowl at him, he turns his head in my direction.
I retreat behind the bill of Mrs. Templeton’s cap. Did he sense being watched? Does he know it’s me? No. Though I can be seen through the leafless branches, I’m fairly nondescript—providing I don’t stand to my full height.
I count to thirty, and when I peek at the Grill ’n’ Swill, Reece’s head is bent toward his notebook. Safe. But cold, my ears as frozen as my toes. I really miss my hair. Crossing one leg over the other, I bounce them to keep the blood flowing. “Come on, bring the man his food. You’re not that busy.” In fact, the place is barely a quarter full, and that includes Pastor Stanky, whose Bible is open on the table where he sits to the right of Reece.
Sadly, for all my muttering and bouncing, it’s fifteen minutes until Reece’s lunch arrives. If he doesn’t start shoveling, drinking, and working over that straw, my frozen corpse might be all that remains of me come nightfall—and my specimen baggie. Forbid!
Reece makes quick work of his steaming bowl of whatever and chases it down with the drink. And then—call me a potato and plant me eyes up!—he picks the straw from the glass, clamps it between his teeth, and returns to his notebook.
Lord, I’m not saying You had anything to do with this, ’cause though this seems the best way to eliminate Reece as Devyn’s father, I’m probably going about it wrong. But if You are helping me out, thank You!
After five more minutes of watching him shift the straw side to side while moving a pencil over the notebook, I see the waiter deliver the check. Reece doesn’t look up.
Move it, artist man, I’m freezing here! I try to wiggle my toes in their pointed confines, but they don’t respond. I declare, if I have to undergo amputation—
Reece lowers his pencil. It’s time.
Or not. Staring at his handiwork, he shifts the straw to the opposite side of his mouth. After a long moment, he retrieves the check and pushes back his chair.
I hold my breath as I stare at the straw that remains fixed in his mouth. Surely, he isn’t going to take it with him. It’s one thing to walk around chewing a toothpick, but a straw?
He reaches for his notebook, only to pull back when Pastor Stanky appears. And then—wahoo!—he removes the straw to respond to something the other man says. Then it’s in the glass and Reece is shaking hands with the pastor.
Thank you, Stanky. A hundred times thank you. And now for the next step in Operation Get Spit. I jump up and wobble as my frozen feet protest. Ha! Protest away. I’m getting that straw and toothpick, and no suddenly efficient busboy is going to stop me. Still, one can’t be too stealthy. As Reece and Pastor Stanky move away from the table to square up their checks, I pick my way from tree to tree and am perfectly camouflaged when the two men exit.
Déjà vu hits me hard, but I know the source—Fate and Connie’s Metalworks, when I lurked around the corner from Reece and Devyn. And I’m doing it again, further proof I’m going about this wrong. However, asking Reece to submit to a paternity test is unthinkable. The humiliation would be too great to bear. But soon this will be over, and my conscience eased at knowing I didn’t lie to Devyn.
I look between Reece’s abandoned table and the two men as they cross the street to the sidewalk in front of the church. I strain to hear their conversation, but I only catch a word here and there. Oh, please don’t let Pastor Stanky be inviting him to my church. Well, Your church, Lord, and I know it’s Stanky’s calling to fill the pews, but there are other churches around.
Finally, the way is clear, and I hurry forward and practically throw myself through the doors of the Grill ’n’ Swill.
“Hey, Maggie!” Duke lumbers forward, gut straining against his white apron.
Why couldn’t he have been busy with another customer? I might actually have to sit down to lunch.
“I almost didn’t recognize you with that baseball cap,” he says as our combined forward motion draws us nearer. “You tryin’ to make a statement?”
Sidestepping, I touch the bill. “It keeps my head warm.”
Duke also sidesteps, and I’m forced to halt. P
ropping his meaty fists on his hips, he frowns me up one side and down the other. “I ain’t no fashion expert, but one of them Frenchie head socks you sometimes wear would go better with high heels.”
A beret. Unfortunately, vanity got in the way of practicality this morning, as the thought of smooshing my coiffed locks and dealing with the inevitable static made me forego my woolly little friend. And, no, it had nothing to do with the possibility of running into Reece at the auction house.
“By yourself?” Duke asks.
I glance past him and am relieved the busboy is no more timely than usual. “Yes. I, uh, feel like a window table today—that one.” I jut my chin and, when he turns his bulk to look, squeeze past him.
“But it’s not cleared.”
“No problem. I’m in no hurry.” Other than to get my hands on that straw. I’m halfway across the dining room when I realize my mad dash is drawing the attention of the other patrons. Slowing, I unbutton my coat as if in preparation for settling down to a nice hot meal. However, when I reach the table and glance around, I’m still an object of interest. So no snatching the straw and hightailing it.
Since the baseball cap is no longer needed, I pull it off and my hair tumbles down around my face. Reece’s chair is still warm, but though there is something uncomfortably intimate about that and I could switch to the chair on the other side of the table, I stay put. After all, there’s no need to call more attention to myself. And this chair is closer to the straw by a good…inch or so. And after my stint on the park bench, I could use a little heat. In fact, Bridget would be all over me if I let Reece’s warmth go to waste, would harp on about the importance of energy conservation.
I set the cap in my lap and lean to the side to retrieve the baggie from the right pocket of my slacks. That’s when I catch sight of the toothpick on a beverage napkin. Nicely chewed. Of course, what if it’s too dried out to yield viable DNA? Well, I’ll just send it with the straw, and between the two, I should have conclusive proof Reece is not my daughter’s father.
I pinch the baggie at the bottom of my pocket. Home free. Mission accomplished. Touchdown!
“Well, if it isn’t Pickwick’s favorite auctioneer.”
The voice makes me startle so violently that my knees knock the underside of the table. This is bad—Make that deleterious, as in harmful, toxic, quite possibly lethal.
Easing my hand from my pocket, I look around. “Reece.” Goodness, he looks good. No—badness! B-A-D-ness! I don’t like three-day stubble, especially when it’s that dark and rough looking. Hmm. Kind of makes him look like Nicolas Cage. Well, Nicolas Cage at his cutest…and with a much stronger jaw. Ah!
I clear my throat. “What are you doing here?”
His lids narrow so slightly that if I weren’t looking for suspicion, I might not see it. Then his mouth tilts. “Returning to the scene of the crime.”
He knows I came for his straw and toothpick? But is that really a crime? I mean, he abandoned them. And I had yet to touch—
Calm down. All he knows is you’re sitting at his table in his toasty chair. He can’t know you know this was his table. I give a little laugh. “Don’t you sound dramatic.”
“Dramatic is the chili they serve here.” He pats his flat abdomen. “I have a feeling it’s going to come back to haunt me.”
That’s what he meant by “scene of the crime”? It would seem so, and yet I suspect a double meaning. Deciding to let his reference to having recently lunched here pass rather than fall deeper into deception by feigning surprise, I raise my eyebrows.
“Actually…,” he drawls, though not in any Southern way, and then leans down, causing my olfactory sense to issue a “red alert” as it’s assailed by the mingling of his soapy scent with the fibrous scent of his oilcloth jacket. “I came back for this.”
This? I catch my breath as his face nears and his fringed, dark green eyes come within inches of mine, and then his mouth is there. He can’t be serious. After all these years and the divide between us, surely he’s not going to kiss me.
He pulls back, a notebook in hand.
Where did that come from? Ah. Not a kiss. He was retrieving what I was too intent on the straw to notice.
“I left it behind when the pastor of Church on the Square stopped by to introduce himself.”
“Oh.” The sound comes out breathy, and it’s a struggle to remain upright with my bones threatening to melt. What’s wrong with me? Is it his elongated O’s? Maybe I’m coming down with the flu. Yeah, that must be it. Nothing to do with O’s or attraction.
A clank and rattle draws my gaze past Reece. On the other side of the dining room, the busboy is loading a deep bin. Unfortunately, there’s only one other table that needs clearing between that one and this.
Time for me to secure my samples. I tilt my face toward Reece. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Are you stalking me?” He says it almost teasingly.
I nearly choke. “Stalking you?”
He leans in again, and once more his scent circles me like Indians circling a wagon train. “While I was having lunch, I had this feeling of being watched, and there was someone sitting on a bench in the park—on a very cold day. Wearing a baseball cap.” He glances at the one in my lap. “And a coat like yours.” He reaches with a hand that doesn’t look the way one imagines an artist’s hand looks. It’s large, fingers blunt and graceless, and they brush my collarbone as they slide down the lapel.
Oh no. Let that be fear skittering through me, not something carnal. I don’t do that anymore. I’m fixed.
He releases my lapel and straightens. “Now, not five minutes later, I return to find you at my table when there are plenty of clean ones to be had.”
It doesn’t look good. And neither does the busboy who is carrying his bin to the next table. “Yeah, um…”
“Sorry, Maggie, but until my concept for the new statue is ready to be shared, it stays in here.” He raises the notebook, then taps his head. “And in here.”
Like Mrs. Templeton, he attributes my suspicious behavior to snooping on his work, meaning he thinks I was after his notebook. I can live with that.
I glance at the busboy. Thankfully, he’s taking his time loading the bin. Summoning disappointment, I return my attention to Reece. “Not even a peek?”
He tucks the notebook in his jacket’s inside pocket. “No. Which reminds me, I don’t know if Mrs. Templeton mentioned that I changed the locks on my studio.”
“I heard about that.” I start to say he should have conferred with me, but the busboy is hefting the bin. I tense, but in the next instant, he widens his stance to offset the weight, a sure sign he’ll have to return to the kitchen—
Wrong. He’s coming this way.
“I’ll have them changed back when I leave,” Reece says.
“Great. Well, I’m sure you have work to do, so I’ll let you go.” I glance at the toothpick and struggle against the impulse to snatch it. Maybe I could put a hand over it, casual-like…drum my fingers a little, boredomlike.
“Sorry about that.” Reece retrieves the toothpick. “Disgusting habit of mine.”
“No!” My voice breaks like a youth in puberty.
His hand falters, the toothpick between his fingers taunting me.
“Uh…” I shrug. “I wouldn’t exactly call it disgusting. I mean, at least you don’t chew pencils anymore, right?”
“I try not to.” He drops the toothpick in his shirt pocket.
So much for that. But I have the straw, and the toothpick probably wouldn’t have been of use anyway.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” The busboy appears beside Reece, his wiry frame bowed by the bin’s weight. “I’ll clear your table so’s you can enjoy your meal.”
“No hurry.” I wave him away. “Just get me the next time around.”
“Nah, I’d best do it now or Duke’ll hang me by my thumbs.” He lowers the bin to the corner of the table. “He done told me to clear your table first, and I wo
ulda, but seeing as you and the mister were talkin’, I didn’t wanna interrupt.”
The straw is so close and yet so far as the young man loads dishes. I have to get rid of Reece. With effort, I turn a dazzling smile on him. “Good luck with the statue.” I wave. “Bye.”
He just stands there. And peripherally, I see the busboy remove the bread plate, after which he reaches for the glass. I long to snatch it from him, to run to the restroom, lock myself in, and slip the straw into the baggie; however, the only explanation for that behavior, outside of the truth, could mean a trip to the loony bin.
And so I watch helplessly as the busboy shoves the glass into the bin, causing it to tip forward and the straw to disappear beneath the other dishes. Then he lurches away.
If not for Reece, I might cry.
“You look like someone stole your ice-cream cone,” he says.
That’s one way of putting it. “It’s just one of those days.”
He frowns. “What are you up to?”
Considering my behavior, his question is legitimate, and yet I long to tell him I’m not that girl anymore—that what I’m “up to” isn’t anything that will hurt anyone. “Oh, you know me.” I’m surprised at how bitter my smile feels. “Always up to no good.”
After a breathless moment, he says, “Have a nice day, Maggie.”
I watch him exit the Grill ’n’ Swill, watch him cross the street and cut through the park, watch him step into the narrow alley that leads to the back of the theater.
“So now what?” I sweep my gaze around the buildings on the town square and over an increasing number of pedestrians, many of whom are answering the call of lunch. Lucky for them, I’m not hungry. Lucky for me, Duke’s back is to me when I head for the door.
As I cut through the park, a familiar truck pulls into the town square, then brakes in front of the Pickwick Arms. My cousin Bridget jumps out of the cab, then slams the door. Blond dreadlocks drape the shoulders of a denim jacket that would be too light for me in this weather, and disproportionately long legs are encased in ratty jeans. She grabs a bag out of the back and hurries into the hotel—doubtless to tend the live plants as her nursery does for various businesses. And, of course, she’ll be pushed to the point of rudeness with the day manager, whose crush on her is as unwelcome as ticks on a dog. Poor guy. If she’d give him the time of day, he’d probably do anything for her.
