by MJ Rodgers
He wasted no time now in lifting Octavia and setting her on her feet. He felt the flash of heat to his arms and chest as her body brushed his. He tried to ignore it and all those other urgings inside him. He slipped his hands from her waist. He stepped quickly back.
“Thank you.” She had the nerve to smile at him before turning toward the chair where her purse lay. She seemed totally unmoved, unaffected.
It was only then that he understood. Her earlier comment had not been an invitation up on that table at all—just a sarcastic dare she was sure he wouldn’t accept.
He scowled in irritation to discover that she thought she could so safely taunt him.
“I’ll drive you home,” he heard himself say.
She started toward the door, slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
“Why?” she asked.
Why, indeed, he wondered. “It occurred to me you might need a ride,” he said, keeping the defensiveness out of his tone.
She studied his face for a moment and then smiled. Brett didn’t know what that smile meant. He never knew what her smiles meant. He was beginning to think he didn’t want to know.
“I do need a ride,” she agreed. “Thank you for the offer.”
As soon as they were settled in his car, Octavia turned on Brett’s stereo and tuned it to KRIS. Christmas music was playing. Between directions, Octavia sang along with every tune. She knew all the words, and her strong contralto voice showed no hesitancy to hit the high notes. She had a pleasant singing voice—deep, mellow, merry.
Brett shook his head, suddenly, unaccountably feeling amused. She was totally alien—an infuriating, foolish, utterly fascinating woman.
She wouldn’t fit, refused to fit, into any category he tried to place her. Prior to this business with her grandmother, she had an enviable reputation as an attorney—one could even call it exemplary.
Yet here she was, fabricating a native American find without a wit of concern for the law she had sworn to uphold or for the consequences she would be forced to face once she was caught.
It was he who was worrying about those consequences. For it was he who would be instrumental in making sure she paid them. He had to. He was sworn to uphold the law.
Damn. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of it?
She stopped singing as they approached Mab’s house.
“Don’t turn into the driveway. Sergeant Patterson said he would see it was sanded tomorrow.”
Brett pulled up to the curb and parked. All he could see from that position was a line of fir trees.
“The house is set back about three hundred feet,” Octavia explained.
They got out of the car and wove their way through the dense brush and trees. When the house came into view, Brett stopped and stared.
It was an older, neat white house dwarfed by a huge, riotous garden—and the weight of an enormous madrona tree that had fallen and smashed through the living room. Nudging its upended trunk was the demolished front end of a deep blue 1971 Mercedes-Benz with a license plate that read JUST LAW.
A deep frown furrowed Brett’s brow. “You’re very lucky you only received a cut on the forehead.”
“I’m very lucky it wasn’t my grandmother who drove down that driveway,” Octavia amended.
“Where is she going to stay?”
“With Constance, until I can get things in order here.”
“And Constance is?”
“A friend at the Silver Power League. I have a tow truck scheduled to pull my car to a body shop in the morning and a contractor who has agreed to come by and give me an estimate on the damage to the house.”
“Where will you stay tonight?”
She started forward. “Right here.”
He followed. “You can’t. A tree has caved in the roof.”
She smiled sweetly at him over her shoulder. “Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention.”
“Octavia, it’s not safe.”
She proceeded boldly forward. “Your client is after my grandmother, not me, remember?”
He ignored the pointed accusation of these words as he looked at the split beam above the smashed living room window.
“The entire structure looks compromised. Get some clothes together, and I’ll drive you to a hotel.”
Octavia stopped and turned to him, the toss of her head sending the long waves of flame-red hair to dance around her shoulders. A very expressive eyebrow rose up her forehead.
“Mr. Merlin, has anyone ever mentioned to you the possibility that a woman might not appreciate a man presuming to tell her what to do?”
How did she manage to be so damn sarcastic with such a sweet, mellow-sounding voice?
“No, Ms. Osborne,” he said with his stiffest upper lip. “No one has mentioned it.”
She stared at him a moment longer before breaking out in a sudden laugh, whole and unrestrained.
He realized then how much he liked the sound of her laugh. It had as much music as her singing, and both were rich with a life well-lived.
A life well-lived? Where had that come from?
He frowned to realize he was too tardy to erase such thoughts. He reminded himself he couldn’t afford to like anything about her. He shouldn’t even be here with her.
“It’s all right,” she said when her laughter had stopped. “I refused to let Mab drive me to the emergency room until the contractor came by and assured me the kitchen, guest room and bath at the back are still safe. Come on.”
As they circled around the house, Brett noticed that the riotous garden was quite overgrown and weedy. One small patch near the back porch had been seen to recently, however. The Christmas berry bushes were in full fruit and scrupulously weeded.
Once up the stairs, through the small porch and inside the house, Octavia made immediately for an old-fashioned wall telephone in the kitchen.
“Who are you going to call?” Brett asked.
“Whoever is making my beeper vibrate.”
Brett watched as she pulled the muted beeper off the waistband of her suit skirt. “It’s the community center’s number,” she said. “Must be Mab.”
She picked up the receiver and dialed while he surveyed the small, cozy kitchen, smelling so enticingly of cinnamon. Christmas stockings, sewn of rich tapestry fabric and embroidered in gold thread, hung on the walls. A garland of the berry bushes from the outside garden circled the table. There was a comfortable, homey feel to this room. He could picture her as a youngster here, sharing confidences and laughter with her grandmother.
“Hi, Mab. I’m here at—”
Brett turned toward Octavia as her voice stopped in midsentence. He watched with growing unease as Octavia listened to whatever was being communicated on the other end of the telephone, her eyes focused intently out the window but, obviously, seeing something much less pleasant.
“I’ll be right over,” she said finally and shoved the receiver back onto the wall base.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Brett asked.
Her voice was smooth and calm, but the look in her eyes and the sudden tightness to her lips told a different story.
“A sewer line broke. The community center is flooding.”
* * *
OCTAVIA’S NOSE TWITCHED as she stood at the entrance to the Silver Power League’s community center and gazed inside. The overhead fluorescents illuminated the once-magnificent Christmas tree and decorations, now floating like flotsam and jetsam over the smelly sludge weaving over the tile floor.
All the lovely, graceful furniture was also ruined, soggy and seeped with the stench of raw sewage.
It was an incredibly disheartening scene of decimation.
Octavia turned to Mab, standing quietly by her side. “No one was hurt?”
“Not physically,” Mab said.
Her grandmother’s phraseology was telling. It was hard for Octavia to view this desecration. She understood it had to be a hundred times harder for the seniors, all silentl
y surveying the smelly blight on their once-beautiful center.
She put her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders and hugged her, knowing no words could convey the hot, heavy sadness that sunk inside her own chest.
“It happened so fast,” Constance said, her voice trembling.
“The sewage just began to gush in through the open back door,” John said, dismay clear in his voice.
“The back door was open,” Mab said sadly.
“It was coming in so fast and so hard, I couldn’t even get near the door to close it,” John added.
“We all concentrated on evacuating everyone as quickly as possible,” Mab explained.
“Except Douglas,” Constance said. “He ran out the front door. He said he was going to circle around back to try to find out where it was coming from.”
“As soon as everyone was out of the community center, we took refuge in the greenhouse,” Mab said. “Fortunately, it’s on higher ground, so the sewage didn’t reach there.”
“The firemen must have finally found the break,” John said. “The gushing slowed to a trickle a few moments ago.”
The rapid-fire explanations ceased and another uncomfortable quiet dropped over those gathered.
Octavia felt Brett’s hand lightly grasp her arm in an unexpected gesture of comfort and support. Despite the dispiriting scene in front of her, a warm tingling began in her fingertips and spread into her chest.
“We have to meet here early tomorrow morning, everyone,” Mab announced, almost fiercely. “We’ll need to organize into teams and committees. There’s so much to do to fix things up.”
Octavia watched as John’s hand slipped around Mab’s. His voice was gentle. “I’m not sure we can fix it this time, Mab.”
“We have to, John,” Mab said. “So many count on us to lead the way. This center has come to represent the strength and vitality of our community. We’ve all worked so hard to make it something special.”
“But, Mab—” Constance began.
“This is a...difficult setback, yes,” Mab interrupted, her volume and determination picking up with each word. “But our members need this celebration of Christmas this year more than any other. So many are far away from their families. For some, we are their only family. Now, we’ve promised them a real dress-up Christmas party here. We’re just going to have to work harder to keep that promise.”
Mab’s indomitable spirit in the face of the unspeakable destruction before them brought a small lump to Octavia’s throat and several appreciative mumbles from the seniors behind them. John smiled and sandwiched Mab’s hand between both of his.
“Okay, Mab. Tomorrow we begin again.”
A chorus of affirmative responses rose up behind them.
“Someone needs to tell Douglas,” Constance said. “Why hasn’t he come back? He might have fallen out there somewhere in the dark. He might have—”
“Found out what the hell happened,” Douglas finished her sentence as he stomped toward the group gathered in front of the entrance to the community center, a look of both triumph and anger across his rough features.
They turned as one toward him.
“What is it, Douglas?” Octavia asked, a question that was immediately echoed by several others.
“The flex-fitting on the sewer pipe running through Scroogen’s construction site next door was severed right at the section pointed at the community center. The firemen suspect it was deliberate sabotage. And I’ll give you one guess who was behind it.”
Sabotage. Scroogen. The two words buzzed concurrently through the seniors like a roar.
From the moment she had met Scroogen, Octavia had disliked him. Now, as she once again looked upon the devastating aftermath of such a wanton act, she wondered if it could be possible that Scroogen was so petty and vindictive as to have purposely planned and executed such a thing.
He was so much in her thoughts that when his distinctive whiny voice suddenly erupted behind her, Octavia was startled into spinning around. Scroogen’s hands wove beneath his suit coat to thumb his checkered suspenders as he arrogantly pushed his way through the crowd.
He stopped at the entrance to the center and let out a low grunt as he took in the scene inside. Octavia could have sworn there was a mixture of disgust and glee in his whiny voice.
“Well, this is really quite a mess. You people better clean it up before I take possession of this place next month, or I’ll see to it that my lawyer slaps a hefty fine on you.”
It was an incredibly hateful remark, even for Scroogen. Octavia was overcome by an almost irresistible urge to punch the man in the mouth.
She might have succumbed to that urge, too, if her grandmother hadn’t beaten her to it. Mab stepped right up to Scroogen and smacked him squarely across his sour puss with her purse.
* * *
“I‘M BLEEDING!” Scroogen whined.
Brett shook his head as he returned the first-aid kit to the glove compartment of his car. He had spirited Scroogen away from the angry seniors as quickly as he could. No telling which one would have taken a swing at him next.
“You’ve a bloody nose is all, Dole. What in the hell are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what am I doing here? This is my property!”
“And it’s eight o’clock at night, not exactly the time when a landlord comes calling.”
“I was driving to the store to get some wine when I heard the fire engine. As soon as I saw it heading toward the construction site, I followed.”
“You live on the other side of town. Why would you have to drive over here to pick up some wine?”
“Because the vintage I buy is only sold over here. What’s with all these questions, anyway?”
“They’re a preview of the coming attractions. The police will be asking them soon. Did you have anything to do with severing that main sewer line on your construction site?”
“Don’t you try to put me on the defensive! I’m the injured party here, Merlin. I’m filing charges against that woman!”
“It would be a waste of time, Dole. You’re not really injured and you were the one who provoked the fight.”
“I provoked the fight? I did no such thing!”
“The center they have worked on so hard is swamped in sewage and you threaten a stupid fine if they don’t clean it up. That was enough to light anyone’s fuse. Let it go, Dole. You’ll only make a bad situation worse.”
“You accuse me of making a bad situation worse? Let me remind you, Merlin, that before you came, work was progressing on my condominium complex! Before you came, no one was selling dolls that poked fun at me! I never should have listened to Nancy when she said I needed your help. I don’t need your help. I never did. I can handle this on my own. You’re fired!”
Dole jumped out of the passenger seat of Brett’s car and stomped away into the dark night.
Brett just sat there staring in surprise at the retreating figure, feeling the icy night air swirl into the car. Finally, he leaned over to grasp the passenger door and pull it closed. His arm squeezed the packaged doll of Scroogen’s likeness sitting between the seats, the one he had never bothered to open.
A whiny voice spat out into the car. Read it and weep, I’m raising your rent.
Brett straightened as a sudden chuckle erupted in his throat. Damn, if that didn’t sound exactly like his ex-client.
Ex-client. The full implications of what had just happened sunk in then. Dole was no longer his client.
Brett could call Zane off the case tonight. He didn’t have to stay around, uncover Octavia’s wrongdoing and throw her into jail. Tomorrow, he could get his climbing gear together and head for Rainier. He was out of it. Totally out of it.
His lips circled into a smile, a very big smile. What the hell, maybe he’d been wrong all these years. Maybe wishes did come true. Maybe there even was a Santa Claus.
* * *
“GOOD MORNING, DOLE,” Tami Lammock said as Scroogen pushed through the d
oor into his office. “Another one of those letters came in so I put it...”
The rest of his secretary’s sentence froze on her lips as her eyes darted over her boss’s appearance.
“Geez, Dole, you look like you just got out of a mud bath. What on earth happened?”
“I’ve been knocked down and attacked.” He turned his left side toward her and pointed at his shoulder.
Tami scooted around her desk to get a closer look. Her small hazel eyes widened as they took in the telltale red stain seeping through his shirt.
She reached out a tentative hand to lightly touch his arm, her bottom lip quivering. “My God! You’re bleeding!”
“Yes, this time those senile seniors have gone too far.”
Tami’s eyes shot to his. “Someone from the Silver Power League did this?”
“Attacked me in the parking lot not three minutes ago. From behind, of course. I’ll lay you odds it was Mab Osborne, too!”
Tami dropped her hand from Scroogen’s shirtsleeve and plopped her forest-green, polyester pant-suited bottom against the edge of her desk.
“But it’s so hard to believe that an old woman would—”
Scroogen swung impatiently toward the open door to his inner office, interrupting what he did not want to hear, slinging his words over his shoulder.
“Tell my son I want to see him in my office. Now.”
“He’s not in yet.”
“Forget him. You’re witness enough to my condition. Get the chief of police on the phone. I’m pressing charges. And get hold of the newspaper editor, too. They’ve been so eager to splash stories about that damn stone carving all over the front page. Let’s see how eager they are to run this one!”
Scroogen stomped into his enormous paneled office, leaving a trail of muddy footprints on the thick gold carpet. He slammed the solid oak door behind him for added emphasis.
The wound stung. But it was more of an irritation than a jab of real pain.
Still, he would have gladly endured even real pain to have her where he had her now. He would see to it that the police arrested her for attacking him.
As he circled his huge oak desk, he slowed as a peculiar burning sensation spread from his back into his arms and legs.
