Disturbing the Peace (Sunday Cove)

by Webb, Peggy

  “I haven’t enjoyed a meal this much since I arrived in Sunday Cove,” Amy said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Was it the food or the company?”

  “Both.” She laughed. “Can I amend my stuffy judge remark? I want to make that ‘audacious judge.’ “

  “Careful. I don’t share my fortune cookies with women who misbehave.”

  She made a show of lowering her eyes and folding her hands in her lap. “Decorum is my middle name.”

  “In that case, have a cookie.”

  He passed the basket to her. Her hand hovered over it as she pondered her selection.

  “I don’t know whether the big ones have the best fortunes, or if the small ones are better,” she mused aloud. “What do you think?”

  He loved watching her. He loved the way she bit her lower lip in concentration and the way she tipped her head so that her hair spilled away from that small, determined jaw.

  “It’s a momentous decision,” he said. “I think you should take your time deciding ... two or three days perhaps.”

  Her head shot up. There was no mistaking his intention.

  “Todd.” It was a soft plea, a useless denial of the tension between them.

  His chair hit the floor as he jumped up and strode around the table. He put his hands on her shoulders and lifted her from the chair. She turned as naturally in his arms as if she were meant to be there.

  “I’ve been wanting to do this all evening,” he said as he lowered his lips to hers.

  The magic began. The kiss didn’t pretend to be a gentle tasting as the one in the soap had been. It was an explosion of passions too long denied. It was fireworks and drum rolls and bombs bursting in air. It was lightning and whirlwinds and summer storms. And it took Amy completely by surprise. She had known she was attracted to Todd, but she had never suspected this kind of overwhelming desire.

  She was astounded as the wild need built within her. She hadn’t known she possessed such primitive passions. Nothing in her past had prepared her for such an onslaught of feelings. Never had she felt as though she were reaching out to touch the sun.

  She wound her hands in his hair—that wonderful soldier hair, crisp and commanding—and pressed herself as close as she could to his chest. At that moment, she thought it was the most magnificent, the most reassuring chest in the whole world. And she didn’t ever want to leave it.

  With their lips still melted together, Todd backed Amy out of the kitchen and into his den. A passion almost out of control guided him toward the sofa. Amy felt the soft cushions press into the backs of her legs. Another moment, and she knew she would be past the point of no return. She struggled briefly with her feelings. She didn’t want to give up the magic, she didn’t want to let go of the joy, but could she go one step further? She made a small sound of indecision against his lips.

  He slackened his hold just as an enormous grandfather clock chimed the hour. It was the clock chime that broke the spell. She eased out of his arms.

  “No.” The word was barely a whisper.

  Todd looked down at her. “Amy?”

  “I can’t... The clock ...”

  “I’m going to chop that thing up into firewood.” With a great effort he reined in his fierce emotions. “What about the clock, Amy?”

  “It reminded me of what time does. It takes away. Things happen.”

  She stopped, confused. The words had just come pouring out. Alarmed that she confided so easily in this man she’d known only days, she set her chin at a determined angle and smiled. “The clock reminded me that I forgot all about Aunt Syl. She’s probably up there in that empty apartment wondering where in the world I am.”

  “If I know your aunt, she’s so busy being delightfully eccentric she’s hardly given it a thought.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Stay.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “I’m beginning to hate that word.”

  She laughed. “It serves the purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “Subterfuge.” She reached toward him, then changed her mind. How could she touch him and not stay? “Good-bye, Todd. Thanks for the dinner.”

  “Then you’re really leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go quickly while I can still let you.”

  She spun around and fairly flew from the room. She was halfway to the front door before she remembered Herman.

  “I forgot my robot.”

  Todd had recovered sufficiently to remember that he was the host and she was a departing guest. He followed her into the kitchen, where she was bent over Herman’s computer panel.

  “Amy.”

  She jumped as if she had been shot. “Don’t ask me again to stay,” she said without turning around.

  “I just wanted to say thank you for being my dinner guest.”

  She turned and smiled. “You’re welcome, and thank you for being my rescuer.” With one hand she switched on the little robot, then headed for the front door.

  Todd watched her until she was almost across the room, then he grabbed the cookie basket and followed her.

  “Amy.”

  She turned slowly toward him, thinking that if he called her name one more time in his magnificent iron-velvet voice, her legs would never carry her out the door.

  “Yes?”

  “You forgot your fortune cookie.”

  He reached for her hand and pressed a fat cookie into it. “You’ll never know your future until you read this. He held on to her hand until the air fairly crackled between them.

  She withdrew her hand and laughed somewhat breathlessly. “With all the uncertainty in Washington, everybody should have a fortune cookie. Thanks.” She flew out the door, flush-faced and bright-eyed.

  “Hurry, Herman. She raced toward the elevator. “Aunt Syl will be in a panic over our disappearance.” As she pressed the elevator button, she knew that Aunt Syl had nothing to do with her flight. The reason was Judge Todd Cunningham, standing behind his solid door in his immaculate apartment, beckoning her to come into his orderly life. She clenched her fist, fighting temptation. She squeezed so hard that her fortune cookie disintegrated.

  As the crumbs dropped to the floor, she felt the slip of paper in her hand.

  “Who believes in fortunes?” she muttered. She started to throw the paper away, then changed her mind. “Littering.” Bending over, she carefully picked the cookie crumbs off the floor and dropped them into her pocket. But she still clutched the fortune in her hand.

  Herman caught up with her just as the elevator door swung open, and they rode upstairs to her floor, her apartment.

  “I’m home, Aunt Syl,” she called when she opened the front door.

  Aunt Syl walked out of the kitchen. “Have you been somewhere, dear?”

  Amy dropped the small slip of paper into her toolbox as she bent over and kissed her aunt’s wrinkled cheek. “I can see you missed me.”

  Aunt Syl swept through the apartment in her bright blue caftan and waved her hands as she talked. “Did you know that Justin is an expert on weapons?”

  “Justin?”

  “Todd’s butler.”

  “I know. But how did you?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you. have I, dear?” With her caftan billowing around her and her Cleopatra wig securely on her head for once, she sat in a chair. “He came to get the tub while you and Herman were gone. We started talking.” She laughed. “He’s a delightful man. Witty, articulate, absolutely charming. Anyway, we started talking and ended up going to the concert together. He’s promised to be my weapons consultant for the book I’m working on.”

  “Aunt Syl, you amaze me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you collect friends the way some people collect coins. You seem to—” Amy stopped, at a loss for words.

  “Embrace life is the phrase you’re seeking, Amy.”

  “I s
uppose.”

  Aunt Syl laughed. “It’s catching.” She stood up and headed toward her bedroom. “Good night, dear. It’s been a longer day than I thought, and for once in my life I’m going to admit that I’m tired.”

  “Good night.” Amy had never heard her aunt say she was tired. She watched Aunt Syl leave the room and noticed that she was actually quite fragile-looking. The thought alarmed her. Her aunt was so vital that she had never thought of her as being old. “Please, God, not my Aunt Syl,” she whispered.

  Amy dressed quickly for bed and pulled the covers up under her chin. Never mind that the air conditioner was laboring almost uselessly and that the apartment was hot and muggy. Covering up was an old childhood habit, a shutting out of all the bad things that could befall a person. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “I just won’t think about it,” she said aloud. Aunt Syl looking fragile and Todd looking virile became jumbled in her mind. “Not any of it,” she muttered. “I won’t think about any of it.”

  And with those defiant words, she tried to sleep.

  o0o

  Considering the restless night, Amy felt better in the morning than she had imagined she would. She bounced out of bed, humming. The first thing she did after dressing was check on Aunt Syl. Pushing open the bedroom door, she tiptoed in. The bed was empty.

  “Aunt Syl,” she called softly.

  “Down here, dear.” The old woman was stretched out on the floor.

  Amy rushed across the room and knelt beside her. “Aunt Syl! Don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “Why? Has somebody died?” Aunt Syl grunted as she sat up. “Three,” she said.

  “Three what? Aunt Syl, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Three sit-ups, Amy.” Aunt Syl got up stiffly and sat on the edge of the bed. “I can do only three sit-ups.”

  “You were doing sit-ups? I thought you’d had a heart attack.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Amy. When I get ready to die, I’ll do it in style, not on the floor.”

  Amy’s laugh was shaky as she sat down on the bed and hugged her aunt. “Nobody’s going to die,” she whispered into the sparse, cream-puff hair. “You’re too tough to die.”

  “Darned right.” Aunt Syl pulled away and patted her niece’s face. “Unless you squeeze me to death. What has you in such a dither this morning?”

  “You scared me last night with your talk of feeling tired. You’re never tired.”

  “Yes, I am, Amy, I just rarely admit it. When a person gets to be my age, he has to focus on the positive. If I let myself think about being old and tired, I’d be sitting useless somewhere, wrapped in a shawl and watching time pass by. I don’t watch life from the sidelines, Amy. I get in the game.”

  “Stay in the game, Aunt Syl. I need you.”

  “I intend to.” She smoothed Amy’s hair back from her forehead. “You don’t need me as much as you think, Amy. You’re strong and you just don’t know it.”

  Amy didn’t want to think about being strong without Aunt Syl.

  “Neither one of us will be strong if we sit on the bed all day. What do you want for breakfast. Aunt Syl?”

  “I’ll have some bran muffins later, dear. Right now, Clyde, the incredible cad, is calling me.”

  Amy left Aunt Syl with her incredible cad and hurried toward the kitchen. On her way through the sitting room she paused to look at her walls.

  “There are too many pictures in here,” she said. She took one of Tim’s watercolors down and stood back to view the empty space. “That’s better.”

  She reached for another, and another. The more paintings she took down, the better she felt. The stack of them grew into a huge pile. She dragged a box from the closet and carefully packed them away. When she had shut the closet door on the paintings, she viewed her walls with satisfaction. One seascape, her favorite, remained on the wall. It was a view of the Gulf coast, a blue-green wash of water, sparkling in the sun. In the foreground was a shrimp boat with an old man leaning over the rails, pulling in a net.

  Amy suddenly realized that the picture was her favorite because of the fisherman. Tim rarely put people in his paintings, but he had captured the old man perfectly—his shock of white hair, the lively eyes peering out of a brown, wizened face. The old man’s zest for living seemed to leap from the canvas.

  Her moment of epiphany came as she studied the painting. Her marriage had not been perfect. She had been clinging to an exalted version of the past. In a quiet way, her marriage had been good; but something had been missing. This painting held the key. Amy loved and enjoyed people; Tim had not. His frequent withdrawal into the world of art had not been dedication, but escape. Even their intimate relationship reflected his failure to relate well to people.

  Amy felt a sense of relief as she turned away from the painting and went into the kitchen. It was good not to have the burden of perpetuating a shrine. Had she finally put Tim’s death into perspective?

  As she poured milk onto her cereal she felt such a stirring of energy she could hardly wait to start her day. The first thing she was going to do was organize her workroom.

  After breakfast she tackled the project with enthusiasm. Aunt Syl’s typewriter, clacking away in the next room, made a perky accompaniment to her task. She stacked small sheets of metal and separated computer parts. She collected scattered tools off the floor. For thirty minutes she was an efficient whirlwind, then she glanced down at her toolbox. The small slip of paper was still there, the fortune she’d never read.

  Her multicolored peasant skirt flared as she sat on the floor and picked up the paper.

  “One plus one equals happiness,” she read aloud. “How obscure,” she muttered, wadding the paper into a tiny ball. She dropped it into the bottom of her toolbox. She started to turn away, but the paper seemed to stare accusingly at her. Reaching into the box, she retrieved the fortune and smoothed it open. Her fingernail traced the words as she thought of one plus one. Todd. Todd and Amy. Sailing into the sunset. Laughing over the Chinese meal. Embracing in the soap. Happiness.

  “Maybe there’s more to these Chinese fortunes than people think,” she said to nobody in particular.

  Feeling hot and more than a little bothered, she folded the fortune, tucked it into her skirt pocket, and got on with the business of housecleaning. The more she cleaned, the more clutter she created. She discovered that organizing required boxes, which had to be fetched from the closet. And boxes required shelves, which she didn’t have. She stopped amid her accumulated clutter and started to build a shelf.

  The hammering sent Hortense into a pout on top of the chandelier and drowned out the sound of Aunt Syl’s typewriter. As she worked, Amy felt a song coming on, and of course she had to sing loudly in order to be heard over the noise of the hammer.

  o0o

  Todd was on a mission to borrow sugar. It was a pitiful, transparent excuse, but it was the best he could come up with.

  The minute he stepped out of the elevator, Todd heard Amy’s enthusiastic carpentry and rousing song. He hurried toward her door and had his hand poised over her doorbell when the words of her song became clear. A slow smile spread across his face. He wouldn’t have pressed that doorbell for all the tea in China.

  Amy was belting out a Fats Waller blues song—”Honeysuckle Rose.”

  When she got to the part about not buying sugar but simply touching her cup, he decided that fate must have smiled on him today. He tapped his cup lightly in his hand as he listened to the rest of the song. He had never considered himself an egotistical man, but he naturally assumed he was the sugar she intended to stir up. And that was fine with him. Better than fine. It was absolutely the best plan he had heard all day. Better than borrowing sugar. Yes sir, he mused, he’d go right in there and let Amy stir his sugar up.

  The song came to a crashing conclusion, crashing because it sounded to Todd as if she had dropped the hammer on the floor. He pressed the bell in alarm as another loud crash sounded through the
door.

  “Come in,” a voice called.

  Todd needed no further invitation. He pushed open the door as Hortense continued her tirade. “Come in, come in, fool. Holy terror, Bulldogs. Batten the hatches. Come in.”

  Todd completely ignored the bird. All his attention was focused on Amy, standing in the middle of what looked like the wreckage from a tornado, looking down at her hammer and the remains of a shelf.

  “Oh, dear,” she said as she looked up at him. “It broke.”

  Todd picked his way across the clutter and gently took a nail from her hand. “Carpentry is not your strong point.”

  They plunged as naturally into the conversation as if Todd had been expected. Since the cup was no longer needed as an excuse, he placed it on an upturned box and reached down to pick up the hammer.

  “What are you trying to build?” he asked. “I’m a pretty good hand at this.”

  “Where are your robes?”

  “You lost me.”

  “I thought judges had to wear robes in court.”

  “I’m not in court today. Sometimes judges get days off.”

  “Shelves.”

  “I beg your pardon?” As usual, he felt as if he had stepped through Alice’s looking glass. He couldn’t decide whether it was the topsy-turvy apartment or the enchanting woman. Probably both.

  “I’m building shelves,” she explained. “I’m getting my workroom organized.”

  He suppressed a laugh as he viewed the disorder she called organization.

  “So I see.” But, of course, he didn’t. Organization to him meant polished floors and neatly arranged furniture and everything in its place. “Perhaps I can help.”

  “Do you have a magic wand?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t know whether you can help or not. I don’t seem to be very good at organizing things.”