by Mary McBride
One way to get her mind off her troubles, she concluded, was to fix a fabulous breakfast for Sam. How hard could an omelette be, after all? Eggs weren’t so scary. Neither was cheese. But when she opened the refrigerator and found herself standing on one foot and then the other, staring stupidly at packages of Parmesan, Gruyère, Fontina and feta, Laura suddenly remembered why she always ate the same brand of cold cereal in the mornings. Who could make these decisions so early in the day? Jeez. Who even wanted to?
She poured a glass of orange juice and got the coffeemaker going, enjoying its busy gurgling while she listened for sounds of life upstairs. After a few minutes, there was a creak in a floorboard overhead, followed shortly by faint shower noises. Sam was up!
Why that made her smile and caused her heart to beat a little faster, Laura couldn’t have said. She’d spent half the night clutching her pillow to her face, trying to silence her sobs so Sam wouldn’t feel obliged to comfort her. If they were indeed friends, as he had said, then she intended for them to stay that way. Just friends. Nothing more.
The shower was still running upstairs, and it was easy to picture Sam’s big hands plying a bar of soap into a lather, the white foam working into the wet fur on his chest, then the suds streaming down his corded abdomen and strong calves to disappear in a swirl down the drain.
What was she thinking?
Delicious as it was, Laura forced the image from her brain. Friends, after all, didn’t conjure up images of each other in the shower. Did they? Friends met for lunch and dinner. They traded gossip and books. They gave each other birthday presents and good advice. But they kept their clothes on all the while and maintained a seemly, friendly distance.
She retrieved a cup from the cabinet and was pouring herself some of the freshly brewed coffee when there was a knock on the back door. She stared at the door a moment, remembering that the last time somebody had knocked she’d been wearing Sam’s shirt and had gotten the hairy eyeball from Janey Sayles. This time she was at least clothed, although she couldn’t vouch for the fragrance of her jeans and T-shirt on their second day of wear.
She opened the door only slightly warily, but instead of Janey with a sour look on her face, there was a uniformed man with a great big grin.
“Morning, ma’am,” he said.
“Hi,” Laura said, eyeing the gleaming badge on the breast pocket of his brown shirt. “You’re with the county sheriff’s department. Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no. Nothing’s wrong. I just stopped by to have a little talk with Sam.” He leaned to his left and peered over her shoulder into the kitchen. “He up yet?”
“Well, he’s…”
“He’s up.”
Sam’s voice sounded behind her. Laura turned to see his showered, slicked-back hair and freshly shaven face. He was dressed in his usual navy polo shirt and softly faded jeans, and as he came closer, the fragrance of soap and shaving cream was so luscious, so incredibly beguiling that Laura had to fight off her earlier sudsy and overly familiar visions.
“Come on in. Charlie,” he said, “this is my friend, Laura McNeal. Laura, this is Charlie Travis.”
Friend. There was that word again, Laura thought.
“Oh, I don’t want to bother you, Sam.” Officer Travis’s gaze bounced meaningfully from Sam to Laura and back. “Actually, I stopped to ask if you noticed anything suspicious around here last night. We got a couple calls about a possible prowler in the area.”
“A prowler!” Laura gasped.
“It was probably nothing, ma’am.” He gave her a quick smile meant to be reassuring before he said to Sam, “We sent out a patrol car, but Donovan didn’t see anything except for a coyote going through a spilled trash can.”
Laura gasped again, louder. “A coyote! Oh, my God.”
Officer Travis’s smile this time seemed a little more condescending than reassuring. “They’re a lot more afraid of you, ma’am, than you are of them.”
“That’s what you think,” Laura said.
Sam chuckled. “Well, then, it’d probably be a good idea for you to wait inside while I go out and talk some more to Charlie.”
He moved past her, still smelling divine in a friendly sort of way, and pushed open the screen door.
Laura drank a second cup of coffee while the two of them conversed on the back porch. She tried to eavesdrop, but found their low tones impossible to decipher. She tried to decide which was worse, a prowler or a coyote, and finally decided on the prowler, thinking that Artie could disguise himself as one of those, but being so squat and muscle-bound, he could never in a million years pass for a coyote.
When Sam came back in, he looked worried. His forehead was furrowed and the set of his mouth was pretty grim.
“What’s the verdict?” she asked. “Prowler or coyote?”
“Coyote,” he said, grinning a bit as he watched her shiver.
“Aren’t they dangerous?”
He shook his head. “Not really. They’re more—”
“I know. I know.” Laura rolled her eyes. “More afraid of me than I am of them. Well, if that’s true, there must be some terrified coyotes running around out there.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said as he poured a cup of coffee, then proceeded to shovel an ungodly amount of sugar into it. “Charlie stops by on some lame excuse every couple of weeks to try to get me to run for county sheriff again. He’s not too thrilled with my replacement.”
“You were the sheriff?” she asked, trying to imagine him in a brown shirt similar to Charlie’s, only more trim and tailored. “I didn’t know that, Sam. Why did you quit?”
“I stopped being good at it.”
The answer, accompanied by a shrug, was casual enough, but Laura saw something flicker deep in Sam’s eyes when he spoke. She’d never seen him look quite so sad. Poor Sam. Laura wondered if quit ting his job as sheriff had something to do with his dead fiancée, but she didn’t want to pursue a subject that seemed to cause him so much pain.
“I think you’re good at everything,” she said.
That sad smile turned ineffably sweet. Laura wondered if he thought she was including lovemaking in the everything he was good at. But if that had been the case, she would have said great.
“I’m not good at much,” she added almost as an afterthought, then immediately regretted her candor. It made her sound so pitiful. “I mean, I can’t cook or play the piano.”
“You could if you tried. Hell, anybody can follow a recipe or read notes on a page, Laura.”
“Almost anybody,” she corrected. “The last time I tried to cook, the men from the fire department suggested I’d be better off eating out.”
“You have to cook,” he said, taking a sip of his sugar-laden brew.
“No, I don’t.”
“What are you going to do when you get married and have a family?”
She laughed. “That’s easy. I’m not going to get married and have a family.”
“Sure you are.”
“No,” she said a bit more firmly, “I’m not.”
Sam was looking at her as if she were a lunatic instead of a very rational person who had long ago concluded that her heart couldn’t be broken if she didn’t play the game, that a man couldn’t leave her if she never invited him to stay.
“Are you?” she asked him.
“Am I what?”
“Going to get married and have a family?”
Now he looked at her as if she were a lunatic whose hair was on fire. “Well, no, I’m not, but that’s completely different. You’re a young, beautiful woman, Laura, with your whole life ahead of you.”
“Well, what are you, Sam? A doddering old man with his life behind him?”
Instead of laughing at her question and dismissing it, he actually seemed to be seriously considering it while he sipped his coffee and worked his forehead into worried lines. For the first time since she’d met him, Laura got the impression that Sam Zachary hadn’t the slightest idea th
at he was a hunk. He was back in Clark Kent mode at the moment, oblivious of his alter ego.
“I’m just pretty set in my ways,” he finally said.
“Ah. The old confirmed-bachelor routine.”
“Something like that.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting late. I’ve got a meeting in town. Want me to drop you off someplace to shop for a while?”
“Shop?”
His gaze warmed significantly as it took her in from head to toe. “Unless you intend to wear those jeans and that T-shirt the rest of your life.”
“Oh. I guess I do need to get a few things, don’t I?” She sighed, trying to ward off feelings of sadness and loss, trying to generate a bit of enthusiasm at the prospect of a whole new wardrobe. “Let me run upstairs and get my checkbook.”
“Take your time.”
She started to leave, then turned back. “This meeting of yours? It wouldn’t happen to be with a new client named Artie, would it?”
He nodded. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
“Famous last words,” she muttered. But in spite of all her fears, Laura was beginning to think she did.
“Cash is okay, right?”
Even as he asked, Art Hammerman, Jr., was slowly peeling five hundreds from a wad of bills he’d pulled from the pocket of his loose, pleated pants. For some reason Sam couldn’t fathom, the kid dressed like somebody trying out for a part in Guys and Dolls.
“Cash is fine,” Sam said, glancing around at what young Artie referred to as his office, which in reality was a storage room tucked in a far corner of the spacious Hammerman Building. It was probably the Hammer’s way of keeping his aggressive son on a very short leash.
“My father says you do good work,” Artie said, handing the bills across the empty expanse of his desktop.
“I appreciate that. Thanks.” He jammed the money in his pocket, ignoring his feelings of guilt and apprehensions about losing his P.I. license. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“There’s this girl…”
For the next twenty minutes or so, Sam sat expressionless while young Artie Hammerman attempted to describe Laura McNeal, his feelings for her, and his eagerness to find her.
As he listened, Sam found himself silently editing the kid’s descriptions. The face that Artie described as real cute, Sam pictured as beautiful beyond belief. The eyes that Artie saw as kinda blue, maybe gray, Sam saw as cornflowers speckled with bits of golden pollen. He couldn’t even allow himself to think about the bruise, knowing he’d be tempted to do the same to the perpetrator.
She wasn’t short. Jenny had been short, but Laura’s head, when he held her, fit beneath his chin as if she’d been custom-designed for him. And she wasn’t on the skinny side. She was just right, and perfectly fleshed out from her trim calves to her soft, fragrant neck. Her breasts. Ah, God. Her breasts were…
“So, anyway, Zachary, this chick’s really hot,” Artie said in summation. “And I want her back.”
Over my dead body, bozo. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Keep me posted, will you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Sam left Artie with the impression that he was the strong and silent type, rather than the unethical and lying type, and while he was driving to the mall where he had dropped off Laura earlier, he seriously considered stopping by his office, cleaning it out, and closing it up for good.
What a lousy way to make a living. He never felt he actually helped anybody, but only increased their misery.
I’m sorry. Your birth mother died three years ago.
I’m sorry. Here are the photographs of your wife and her seventeen-year-old lover.
Sorry, ma’am, but your husband hasn’t been playing pinochle on Tuesday nights all these years.
He’d enjoyed his years in the military, but it was the job as sheriff that he’d truly loved. He felt helpful, whether it was putting up a roadblock after a bank robbery or deploying his limited personnel for a murder investigation or just generally keeping watch over the sixteen thousand souls in his county.
Then Jenny had died and he couldn’t even keep watch over himself for a while. When she skidded off the road, so had he. The marriage he’d looked forward to would never happen. Or the children.
As he turned into the mall parking lot, his mind veered, as well, from Jenny to Laura. Why the hell was the woman so determined never to marry and have kids? In his experience, all women wanted families. Didn’t they?
Jenny had wanted that even though she’d postponed it until it was too late. Janey Sayles had wanted a child so badly that she’d hopscotched over the notion of marriage in order to have Samantha all to herself. One of his female deputies had taken a leave of absence to do the same.
Even though he’d had his chance and lost it, Sam still believed that marriage and family were essential to happiness. Just because he was no longer a candidate for happiness, didn’t mean that everyone else shouldn’t be.
He braked for a young woman pushing a stroller while pulling another child along by the hand. She resembled Laura, even though she wasn’t half so lithe or lovely. What a waste, he thought, for those shapely genes not to be passed on, if only to beautify the world.
Sam parked, then headed for the mall’s front entrance, hoping he wouldn’t have to play detective and scope out three-dozen stores before he found her. He figured her for a boutique and kiosk shopper, flitting from one concession to another, rather than one who patronized sensible, sell-all department stores. Still fifty yards from the main doors, his heart kicked in an extra beat when he saw her just outside the entrance, perched on a huge cement flower pot, her face turned up toward the noon sky like a pretty sunflower.
A smile ignited on his face and he lifted a hand to wave just as a baseball-capped kid on roller blades shot past Laura, snatching her little beaded purse.
“Hold it!” Sam shouted out, then sprinted after the kid who was already threading his way across the parking lot, weaving in and out of cars at an amazing clip, probably headed for the Wilson Boulevard exit, hoping to lose himself in lunchtime traffic.
Sam cut through a gaggle of teenage girls, vaulted over the hood of a Jeep, beat the kid to the exit by two seconds, then grabbed back the purse just as the little felon flew past. Damn. If he’d had his Reebok trainers on, he would have pursued the kid and dragged his sorry ass into mall security, but wearing his leather-soled loafers, he already considered himself pretty lucky not to have broken his neck.
“You rotten creep!” Laura appeared at Sam’s elbow, her face flushed from her own race across the parking lot, her fist shaking in the direction of the disappearing roller blader.
Sam dragged in a few deep breaths. “Here.” He slapped the little beaded bag in Laura’s hand. “Hang onto it now, will you? I’m not as fast as I used to be.”
“Fast enough,” she said, drawing the bag’s strap up her arm and securing it over her shoulder. “Thank you, Sam.”
She smiled up at him, but her lips wavered and her pretty face sort of pruned up when she said, “I’d hate to lose this, too. It’s all I’ve got left of my grandmother.”
“You’re welcome.” He refrained from adding “That’s what friends are for” because it sounded way too sappy and her friend was sorely tempted to kiss those quivering lips just then. “Are you all done shopping?”
She nodded.
“Good. Let’s go home.” He looped his arm around her shoulder. “Home where the only bad guys are spiders and coyotes.”
Sam was negotiating traffic, but he was still able to glance at the few meager shopping bags Laura had tossed into the back seat. “Is that all you bought?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure whether his frown was from irritation with her or simply from bright sunlight reflecting off the chrome on the car ahead of them.
“I tried. I really did. Nothing appealed to me.”
“You’ve got to have clothes,” he said.
Laura let out a soft little sigh of disgust. “Maybe
I should join a nudist colony. That would solve my homelessness and my wardrobe problem in one fell swoop.”
He chuckled, unaware that she was almost serious.
She had drifted around the mall for an hour and a half, fingering fabrics, rarely taking an item off the rack for closer inspection. If the color was right, the style was wrong. If the style had even minor appeal, there were major problems with its price. In the end, she’d plucked two bras and half a dozen pairs of panties from a sale bin, added a pair of jeans and a couple tops, then called it a day.
“How’d it go with Artie?” she asked, hoping Sam’s morning had been better than her own.
“Okay.”
“I take it you’re on his payroll, then?”
“Yep.” He slanted a grin in her direction. “Don’t tell anybody in the Better Business Bureau, will you?”
“Not as long as you don’t tell rotten Artie where I am.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a pitiful groan. “Oh, Sam. What am I going to do?”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said.
By the time they got home, however, they hadn’t figured out anything except what to have for lunch. While Sam’s head and shoulders all but disappeared inside the refrigerator, Laura took her packages upstairs. She had barely put her foot on the first step when she smelled something burning. The odor was unpleasant, acrid, like burning plastic.
She shouted for Sam as she raced up the stairs. Not seeing any smoke, she followed her nose and headed for the bathroom where it only took a second to locate the source of the foul smell. An electric curling iron was melting its way through the Formica countertop of the vanity.
For a panicky second, Laura didn’t know what to do. Unplug it? Throw water on it? What?
Then Sam sort of lifted her out of his way, plucked the cord from the wall switch, and poured a glass of water on the countertop. The curling iron sizzled and sent up a thin shaft of gray smoke.
