“Sorta seems like a personal attack to me,” Carter offered easily. “Maybe she’s jealous of you.”
“Yeah,” Khela glowered, cutting her eyes in Mangela’s direction. “That ol’ bald-headed thing is jealous that I was born with ovaries and a va—”
“What can I get for you today, cutie pie?” interrupted the overly cheery woman behind the bakery counter. She leaned forward, resting her ample bosom atop her crossed forearms.
With her white apron and flour dusting her nose and cheeks, Khela thought the woman looked like she had been sculpted from hefty pillows of biscuit dough.
Khela ordered one loaf of Tuscan bread, one large French baguette and two loaves of monkey bread. By eating an entire loaf of it for breakfast, Carter had demonstrated a particular fondness for the sticky ring made of cinnamon-and butter-soaked lumps of sweet bread.
“Cutie pie,” Carter mimicked with a snicker when the counterperson retreated to fill the order. “No one has called me ‘cutie pie’ since I was in kindergarten.”
“She’s a baker,” Khela said. “It makes sense that she would give you a nickname with ‘pie’ in it.”
“So I guess she might call you Sugar Buns?” Carter asked with a laugh.
“The really funny thing is her name,” Khela said.
“Is it funnier than Mangela?”
Khela shushed him, afraid that he’d spoken too loudly. “Don’t invoke her name. He’s got a sixth sense when it comes to stuff like that.”
“Well, what’s the counter lady’s name?”
“Honey Baker,” Khela grinned.
“No way,” Carter responded. “Are you kiddin’ me?”
“Nope,” Khela giggled. “I just love that.”
“It fits, that’s for sure. That’s like finding a mechanic named Otto Carr.”
“There’s a reality show about plastic surgeons, and one of the physicians on it is named Dr. Alter,” Khela said.
“That’s a good one,” Carter said, nodding appreciatively. “Dr. Cutter would be good, too.”
Khela shook her head. “Naah, too obvious.”
“How about a dentist named Dr. Payne?” Carter suggested.
“Or a policeman named Booker?”
“A shrimp boat captain named Fisher,” Carter countered.
“A seamstress named Taylor.”
“A scuba diver named Schwimmer.”
“That’s really reaching,” Khela giggled.
“Okay, an actor named Hamm.”
“That’s really good.”
Carter lowered his voice and aimed his words at Khela’s left ear. “A porn star named Wood.”
“A prostitute named Hooker,” Khela whispered.
“We have to stop this,” Carter chuckled. “I think I’m getting a little slaphappy hanging around with you.”
“I need slaphappy,” Khela said, gathering her waxed bags full of bread. She thanked Honey Baker and set her selections atop her other groceries. “First Daphne, now Mangela.”
“Did something happen to Daphne?” Carter asked, rolling the cart toward Mangela’s checkout.
Khela swallowed hard when she saw Mangela do a double take. The cashier leveled a sinister smile at Khela before handing change to her current customer.
“I’ll wait for you outside,” Khela said.
“No, you don’t.” Carter grabbed her hand tightly, preventing her escape. “I can’t believe you’re scared of a cashier.”
“She’s not an ordinary cashier!” Khela argued. “He’s vicious, and she hates me! Normally, criticism rolls off my back. I don’t expect everyone to love my work, but I don’t expect someone to crap all over it to my face as if what I wrote was a personal affront to them. Or him. She just makes me very uncomfortable because I can’t look her in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”
“Yes, you can,” Carter told her.
“And the very next day, I’ll read about it in the Herald-Star’s Psst! gossip column,” Khela replied. “I wouldn’t put it past her to call up the information line and tell Meg LaParosa what a big bitch I was to him.”
“Will you please stop that he-she stuff? You’re confusing me.” Carter pushed the shopping cart to the conveyor belt, pulling Khela along behind him. “Hey,” he said, greeting the cashier, who stood with arms sullenly crossed, wearing a nametag reading Hi, I’m Angela.
“Haven’t seen you in a while, scribbler,” Angela said, ignoring Carter’s greeting. “Been hiding out in your fancy apartment writing more of your silly little tales?”
Carter was prepared to defend Khela, but he was disarmed by the sound of Angela’s voice. It reminded him of Lou Rawls with laryngitis. He slowed in the process of loading the groceries onto the conveyor belt to study Angela a bit closer.
Her flawless chocolate complexion was her best feature. Her hair was shorn close to the scalp, giving her head a mere shadow of dark coloration. Even though it was June, she wore a natty pink ascot that complemented the mint green of her Calareso’s smock. Carter wondered, but really didn’t want to know, what the accessory might be concealing.
Angela palmed a honeydew melon with ease, and the sheer size of her hands and broad span of her fingers surprised Carter. After punching the melon’s price code into the register, she dropped Khela’s carefully chosen fruit into a brown paper bag standing open at her side.
“Could you be a little more careful there?” Carter asked.
Khela flinched, fully expecting Angela to retrieve the melon and break it over Carter’s head.
Angela’s brown eyes, wide, deep-set and lashless beneath her sloping forehead and prominent brow ridge, seemed to flash with anger.
“Sure thing, boss,” she finally said.
She next rang up Khela’s Tuscan bread, making a point of stabbing it with her thumb as she placed it with exaggerated gentleness into the bag with the melon.
“I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m about ready to call your manager over here and tell him about a little lady with a very big attitude problem.”
“Aren’t you the big hero come to the rescue,” Angela said, her voice softening a little. “Why haven’t I seen you around here before?”
“I’m more of a Stop & Shop kinda guy,” Carter said. “I can’t see my way to paying five dollars for a loaf of bread.”
“I hear you,” Angela said. “I work here and I can’t afford to shop here.” She laughed, and the sound boomed throughout the front of the store. “Your little writer friend there shops here all the time. Some people sure like to be good to themselves.”
“If you got it, spend it, ’cause you sure can’t take it with you,” Carter said.
Behind him, Khela rolled her eyes, sickened by the heavy dose of Southern charm Carter was wasting on the meanest cashier in the world.
“Miss Thing hiding in your back pocket sure has got it,” Angela said, her voice low, conspiratorial. “She was in here last week buying beef tenderloin at twenty-two dollars a pound. Of course, if she was buying it for you, then I’ll bet it was worth it.”
“Isn’t there some sort of customer-cashier confidentiality code you’re supposed to adhere to?” Khela demanded, stepping out of the safety of Carter’s shadow. “Who are you to judge what I buy and how much I pay for it, and why the hell do you have to talk about me while I’m standing right here?”
Angela innocently batted her eyelids. “I didn’t see you there, Ms. Halliday.”
“Folks in Boston have the reputation for being rude,” Carter began graciously, “but you might want to rethink the way you treat Miss Halliday. One of these days, she might decide to put her writing skills to work on a letter of complaint to your manager.” He set the three bags of groceries in the cart. With a wink at Angela, he said, “Just something to think about, darlin’.”
Angela appeared to do exactly that—think about whether she wanted Khela to compose a letter of complaint to her manager. “That’ll be one hundred and eleven dollars and sixty-two cents,” Angela
said politely. “Would you like that to go on your account?”
“Please,” Khela said.
Angela, her broad mouth widening in a smile, swiveled a mounted keypad to face Khela, who punched in her personal account number and hit enter. A moment later, Angela ripped the receipt from the register and held it out to her.
“Thank you very much,” Khela said pleasantly.
“Have a very wonderful day,” was Angela’s saccharine response before turning to her next customer.
“She wasn’t that bad, once I showed her who’s boss,” Carter said, gathering the bags into his arms before they left the store.
Khela returned the cart to the cart lot near the entrance. “You called him a lady. That’s when she stopped hassling me and started trying to charm you.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I am.” Khela got the door by stepping in front of its electronic eye. “When you try so hard to look like a lady, and a handsome man comes along and calls you one, I imagine it goes a long way. Of course, your sweet way of threatening to get her fired probably did show her who was boss.”
“You?” Carter asked.
“No,” Khela chuckled. “You.”
“You know, if Miss Angela upsets you so much, you don’t have to shop here,” he suggested. “I think you like scrappin’ with that gal. Everybody else tells you how much they love your books, but that one doesn’t cotton to ’em.”
Khela hid a guilty smile. “I appreciate her candor, to be sure. And she’s interesting, too. She’s a real character, unlike so many of the other characters I spend my time with.”
Chapter 9
“A lover doesn’t have to be your friend, but the best lovers start out as best friends.”
—from Mr. Wrong by Khela Halliday
Balancing three paper bags of groceries in his arms, Carter used his chin to shift the greens on the beets in the center bag to keep them from obscuring his view as he stepped off the curb and into the street. He stopped, waiting for a break in traffic. But Khela, walking beside him, was staring at her feet and continued forward. Blaring its horn, an oncoming Yellow Cab showed no sign of stopping. Dropping the bags, Carter lunged forward and yanked Khela from the path of the speeding taxi.
“Cockass!” he yelled after the taxi before turning his full attention back to a shaken Khela. “Wanna tell me what’s got your eyes turned so far inward that you’ve forgotten how to cross a street?” Carter’s heart throbbed painfully as he walked her a short way to a bench at a bus shelter.
She seemed to have trouble catching her breath, but had little to say once she had. “Someone’s going to steal our groceries.”
“Let ’em.” Carter squatted before her. “You’ve been odd and moody all day. What’s on your mind? Is it still Mangela?”
She shook her head, fixing her gaze on something beyond Carter’s shoulder.
He cupped her face, gently urging her to look at him. She obliged, and his concern shattered her emotionless façade.
“Hey, now,” he said tenderly. He used the pads of his thumb to strike away the tears seeping from her eyes. “Is it really as bad as all that?”
“It’s not bad at all,” she croaked. “It’s good. Daphne is getting married.”
Carter’s face broke into a wide smile. “That’s a good one,” he chuckled. “You almost had me there.”
“I’m not kidding,” Khela wept. “She told me yesterday afternoon. She’s running off with that auctioneer. She’s leaving in a few weeks. They’re getting married, and then he’ll be taking her to the other side of the Atlantic.”
“Seems kinda quick to me,” Carter said.
“Duh!” Khela agreed, giving voice to her inner adolescent. “And he’s a lot older than she is.”
“How old is he? Fifty?”
“He’s thirty-seven, but he looks fifty, doesn’t he?”
“No,” Carter grinned. “I was just being a smart ass.”
A big navel orange rolled into the street, and Khela recognized it as hers since it had a hole in it about the same width as Angela’s thumb. She got up and retrieved one of the bags lying on its side at the curb.
Carter collected the other two bags, shoving a cello-wrapped package of celery hearts and a box of whole-wheat spaghetti back into a bag. They continued to Khela’s building in silence until they reached the front door.
“You and Daphne have been together a long time, haven’t you?” Carter asked, standing aside as Khela unlocked the massive door.
“Since freshman year in college,” Khela answered. “We were assigned to the same dorm room. We’re total opposites, but we hit it off right away.” Clutching the heavy bag of groceries to her chest, Khela used her foot to hold the door open for Carter. “Apparently, she’s secretly hated me ever since.”
“I doubt that.” Carter walked ahead of Khela and pressed the up button for the elevator. “You two are thicker than thieves. Daphne’s crazy about you.”
“You got the crazy part right,” Khela scoffed, entering the elevator. “She accused me of being completely self-centered. She says that I turn everything she tells me about her life into something about me.”
“Do you?” Carter used the toe of his sneaker to press the button for the top floor.
“I can’t believe you think that—”
Khela’s complaint was cut off when Carter set down his bags, cupped Khela’s face and brought his lips to hers. Khela’s bag tumbled out of her arms, once again spilling its contents. Her arms went around Carter’s neck, his hands went to her waist, and Khela found herself pressed against the back of the car.
Carter’s hands moved over her backside on their way to her thighs, where he clutched her, to help her boost herself onto the brass rail along the back of the elevator.
Carter’s lips sought her throat, then traveled farther south, to the opening of her crisp white sleeveless shirt. “We can’t do this here,” she breathed hard in his ear. “Someone will walk in on us.”
Smiling, Carter shot out a hand and activated the emergency stop button. The elevator whined to a halt, bouncing slightly as it hung by its unseen cables. Carter returned to Khela and began unfastening the prim white buttons on her shirt.
“The day you moved in, I fantasized about what I could do to you in this brass box,” he told her.
“Sex in an elevator is such a cliché,” Khela moaned as his tongue dipped into her ear.
“You call it a cliché, I call it a dream come true,” Carter murmured. “Every time I ride this elevator, I think about what it would be like to take you for a ride in it.”
His confession gave Khela an extra thrill, but she masked her enjoyment by smiling at the roof as Carter exposed the white lace cups of her bra. She surrendered to him, her body and mind devoted to the pleasures he offered so generously.
This was the third of the fourteen days she’d given him, and Khela found herself hoping that day four would never come, only because it meant they would be one day closer to parting ways. In satisfying one of his fantasies, Carter brought to life one of Khela’s, which was to experience the kind of spontaneous couplings she wrote about. Carter was gentle, unhurried and completely devoted to satisfying her. His touch sure and knowing, he exhausted her with his loving.
“It’s like something from one of my books,” she sighed, fastening the buttons of her shirt as he embraced her from behind. “Real men never give women the kind of attention you just gave me.”
“Is that so?” Carter asked innocently. “Are you speaking for all women, or just your own experience?”
“I’m speaking for myself and all of the women who write telling me that their husbands and lovers don’t listen.” Khela zipped up her khaki shorts and then shoved her foot into the Keds sneaker that had flown off in the middle of their romp. “In my books, when my heroine tells the hero what she wants, he does it. He doesn’t make faces or act stupid, and he’s certainly not selfish.” She pressed her body to Carter’s, h
ooking her arms under his to hug him. “You could give lessons in how to make a woman feel like the only woman in the world.”
“The only woman in the world for me,” Carter quickly clarified.
Khela slowly drew away from him, unsure whether she should be confused or surprised. “That’s…uh…th-that’s just about the nicest thing any man has ever said to me,” she remarked with a soft laugh. “It actually sounds like a line from one of my books.”
Carter bent down and once again picked up the groceries. “We’d better get these dairy products up to your fridge,” he said in a rush. “Can’t have your fancy mozzarella going bad before you get a chance to eat it.”
“You’re gonna love that fancy mozzarella once I put fresh basil, sliced Roma tomatoes and white balsamic vinegar over it.”
Carter deactivated the emergency stop, declaring, “I would never pay twelve dollars a pound for a little knot of cheese.”
“Say that with a straight face after you taste it,” Khela challenged him as the elevator lurched into motion, jostling her into Carter. “There’s only about four ounces there. Just enough to taste.”
“That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. “You introduce me to the finer things in life.”
Khela righted herself, her smile fading as she turned to face the elevator doors. Carter continued talking, but his last words, The finer things in life, echoed between her ears, deafening her to whatever he was saying.
* * *
“Are you going to get that?” Carter asked over the tenth ring of the phone sitting on the ornate cherry wood table near the dining room table.
“No.” Khela stubbornly turned away from the phone. “It’s just Daphne again.”
Carter, rattling the silver bag of Scrabble tiles, shook his head. “You should talk to her. She obviously wants to talk to you. And she’ll be gone before you know it. Labor Day isn’t that far off.”
Khela watched him set five new tiles on his rack. She had been delighted when he’d agreed to play her favorite board game, and he kept her on her toes with the words he spelled. FOLKS had left him five tiles short, but he closed the points between his score and Khela’s to sixty-five.
Mr. Fix-It Page 15
