Barry took her jacket from her before she slid into the booth, and he set their coats next to him as he sat across from her. They both gathered plates and glasses and stacked them at the end of the table. As Maxine used a paper napkin to wipe water rings from the table, the waitress approached. “What can I get you?”
Barry pointed at Maxine, who shrugged and said, “Anything seared meat.”
He smiled and ordered. “Two Reubens, double meat. Instead of fries, we’ll take carrot sticks and celery with some Ranch and Blue Cheese. And two waters, with lemon if you have it.” The waitress jotted her shorthand quickly on her pad, then took as many of the dishes as she could. “I’ll come back for the rest,” she said.
Once she left, Maxine scanned the televisions in her view and decided that none of the games held her interest much. Instead, she focused on Barry. “Thank you for taking me to the game today.”
He grinned. “Good game.”
“Do you miss it?”
The shake of his head happened suddenly, like a reflex. “Never have. I didn’t ever have a passion for it. I simply used it as a tool to get me through law school without having to pay back student loans for a decade.” He fiddled with the Super Bowl ring on his hand. Maxine noticed that he’d moved it from his left ring finger to his right ring finger. She wondered when he did that. “I played third string – took a beating from the first and second string players at practice and hardly left the bench during the regular games.”
The waitress rushed by their table and slid their waters toward them with barely a pause. She did reach into the small apron she wore on her hip and grabbed a handful of straws, two of which she tossed on their table, then grabbed the remaining dishes.
“What was playing in the Super Bowl like?”
The grin covered his face quickly. “Thrilling. More than I’d like to admit.”
Her chuckle flowed over him, through him. “Why more? Isn’t it every man’s dream?”
He casually shrugged. “I’d just passed the bar and it was the end of my contract. I never had to put the uniform on again. But that game, we had three touchdowns the first quarter. By the third quarter, we were ahead by twenty points. Their offensive line decided that they needed to break down our defense. I was a defensive lineman, but our first string was the best in the country, which is why I rarely played.”
“Did you get to play?”
With a smile, he twisted the ring on his finger. “Yeah. Four of our guys were on stretchers in the locker room at the half and two of them on the bench with ice packs or bandages by the fourth quarter. By then I was angry. They weren’t playing football, they’d decided to go to war. They’d managed to push the score up to just a six-point spread and by then we were in the second half of the fourth quarter. The crowd was insane. It was cold and rainy, but I was so mad, I didn’t even care. Without ever even speaking the words, we decided to give back. Only we didn’t hit their offensive line. We went straight for the jugular.”
Maxine turned her body so that her back was in the corner of the booth and she could stretch her long legs along the bench. She played with the straw in her water and enjoyed watching him talk. She could almost feel the cold, hear the roar of the crowd. “You went after the quarterback,” she said with a smile.
“Yes. And he knew it. He started getting scared. They kept losing yardage, because he’d fall back so far, trying to get as far away from us as possible. But most of us on the line were fresh. We hadn’t been playing for hours, and they’d hurt our guys, not just as part of the game, but intentionally tried to wreck a few careers, so we started playing for blood.”
“What happened?”
“We sacked him three times in five minutes.”
“You did that?”
He gave her a quick, heart stopping grin. “Once.” His eyes shone with the memory he relived in his mind. “And as you know, we won. It was amazing. The crowd was so loud you could feel them inside of your chest.”
She smiled. “Then what happened?”
His shrug wasn’t as casual this time. “Then the season was over, I turned down another contract with a huge signing bonus, and Jacqueline never forgave me.”
Maxine didn’t want to breach Jacqueline territory just yet. “So what was next?”
“I took the money I earned from playing football and paid back my student loans. I had enough money left over to rent a little office in downtown Boston and hang a shingle on the door. Ten days later, this street-tough kid named Antonio Viscolli, barely twenty-one, walks into my office full of God and genius and says he needs a lawyer for a big business deal he was about to venture into.”
Maxine straightened in her seat as the waitress came to their table with platters of food. “And history was made.”
Barry helped the waitress set plates of food and bowls of dressings on the table then nodded his thanks. “No, that day it was just forged. One month later, the green attorney and the street rat bought a boat engine manufacturing plant for one quarter of its net worth.”
“Ah,” she said as she dipped a carrot stick in some Blue Cheese dressing and took a big bite. “That sealed it. That’s awesome.” She waited to see if he intended to pray over the meal, but he simply picked his sandwich up and started eating so she followed suit. It made her a little uncomfortable. She’d known Barry for a few years. While they hadn’t been praying over coffee and tea and croissants, she’d never shared a real meal with him, other than the day of Jacqueline’s funeral, when he also didn’t ask God to bless the meal. Again, Robin’s worries whispered through her subconscious but she shrugged it off. “I’m glad you still like to watch football, though.”
He ripped a paper napkin out of the holder before responding. “Yeah? Why is that?”
She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud. Taking a pull of her water, she formed her response carefully. “Because it brought us together and made us friends when we first met.”
Barry paused eating and stared at her for the space of several heartbeats. Maxine felt a rush from her heart spread through her veins and up her neck in a warm flush. He finally spoke. “Yeah.” Maxine wondered if he meant as much in that one syllable word as she hoped he meant. He broke the stare and picked up a celery stick. “I love to watch. It’s why I didn’t mind sitting on the bench. I’ve always had the tickets I have. I rarely miss a home game. And some buddies of mine and I always pick a bowl game to go to every year. We take our wives and make a big weekend of it.” He froze, obviously realizing what he’d said.
Maxine let it slide. You couldn’t spend the better part of two decades of your life with someone and have them gone in an instant and not trip up occasionally. She wished he’d realize that. “Where are you going this year?”
“MAACO.” He cleared his throat and relaxed again. “Christmas week in Las Vegas.”
With a smile, Maxine took a small bite of her sandwich. “Talk about Christmas lights.”
“It’s going to be fantastic.”
“You probably had to use every string you have to get those tickets.”
“You know it.” He smiled. “Want to come?”
As he asked, she swallowed, then promptly choked. Her eyes watered and she couldn’t catch her breath. Finally, with the help of the water and God, she managed to get the little piece of corned beef dislodged from her windpipe and swallowed properly. She wiped her eyes with a fresh napkin and looked at him. “What?”
“Well,” he drawled, “I have this extra ticket. I thought about asking my dad if he wanted to go, but I bet you’d get a kick out of it. Vegas at Christmas is a hard place to beat.”
“I don’t think …”
He leaned forward and reached for her hand. She saw him coming and put both of her hands in her lap, so instead he just rested his large palm on the table in front of her. “Come on, Maxi. I have a suite – two bedrooms and a living room. It would be perfectly respectable. And, it’s MAACO. Don’t tell me you’ve never wished you could go to one of t
hose holiday bowl games.”
With a grin, she picked up a carrot stick and nervously broke it into pieces. “You’re right. I have wished I could go.”
“But …?”
“But Robin …”
“Robin has Tony and Sarah. Sarah’s a nurse. An OB nurse. There’s nothing that you could do for her in the three days you’d be gone that one of them couldn’t do.”
As she wavered between really-really wanting to go and really-really knowing she shouldn’t go at all, he pressed forward. “It will be so much fun. We’d fly out the day before and come back the day after. Tony’s loaning us the Viscolli G-5 so we wouldn’t even have to deal with the crazy holiday travel at the airport.”
All of her instincts screamed in panic to turn him down. She didn’t go on out of town trips with men. She didn’t share hotel suites with men. She didn’t do anything with a man that would lead him to think that she’d be willing to …
But this was Barry. He didn’t buy the tickets or get the hotel room in order to set a scene with her. He didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what the trip would bring.
Against her own will, her mouth formed the words, “Sure. That would be a lot of fun.” To hide her nervousness over what she just said, she picked up her sandwich and took a bite.
He relaxed and leaned back in his seat. “Really? That’s great. We’re going to have such a great time.”
She held up a hand. “As long as you get two hotel rooms. Suite or not, I want separate rooms.”
Barry nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Maxine just smiled and took another bite and wondered, really, what she’d just gotten herself into.
CHAPTER 9
STEVEN Tyler appealed to Maxine to dream on while her paintbrush maneuvered in time to the music, rapidly dotting the green landscape she had created with Scottish heather on the stretched canvas before her. Gray mountains rose in the distance and the gold of the rising sun reflected off the scabbard of the lone armor clad horseman riding wearily toward the keep.
One final stroke of her brush marked the end of the song and the completion of the painting. Maxine, barefoot in ripped jeans and a half-top, stepped back from the canvas and narrowed her eyes, seeking any flaw in the oils. As she shifted her eyes, the mirrored wall across from her caught her attention. Something about her stance made her look primitive, primal, elemental. She shook her head to clear the image of another painting as a mandolin heralded the next song, and Robert Plant began singing about the Queen of Light.
Satisfied, Maxine set her palette and brush down and rubbed the back of her neck with paint splotched fingertips. She felt drained, sucked dry, like she felt every time she finished a painting, but it was in no way a bad thing. In fact, she sought this feeling, this cleansing, perhaps, as her chief goal.
With natural grace, she slid across the hardwood floor of her studio and silenced the music. She rolled her head on her neck as she walked back into the main apartment.
Long before Tony entered their lives, Robin had worked two jobs to put Maxine and Sarah through college. Maxine lived with her even after college and after securing a good job with an advertising agency. While she tried to help Robin pay for tuition or living expenses or even food, Robin thwarted every attempt until Maxine just decided to start banking the money with the intent of handing Robin a paid tuition package the year after Sarah graduated. Before that could happen, Robin married Tony. So, Maxine had a large portfolio and no plans for it.
With Tony’s sharp business mind, he took half of her savings and taught her how to invest it. With the other half, she purchased the top floor of a brownstone on Newbury Street. The two large apartments on that floor easily converted to one large apartment and one studio. With the help of a contracting company that Tony owned, she soundproofed the studio and installed a state-of-the art stereo system that played music with enough volume that she could feel the beat in her pulse, but kept the noise contained so as not to disturb everyone within a three-block radius.
She often found herself pulling all-nighters, rushing home from work, kicking off her heels, slipping out of the suit of the day, throwing on torn and tattered jeans and an old football jersey or sweatshirt from her college days and just painting and painting until the sun peaked through the blinds. Despite the artistic outlet her job afforded, she resented its intrusion on her purely creative side and often wondered, “when?”
When would she feel comfortable enough with her portfolio to quit that high paying job with the newly acquired office and shared secretary and just give in to her dreams of simply painting? Painting; the passion of her life; the succor her jaded soul required; the solace her troubled heart sought. When could she just paint?
Tony’s guidance and mentorship had allowed her portfolio to grow and grow. Every quarter, Maxine watched the numbers and had almost reached her comfort level. She owned her apartment, she owned her car, and she owed no one anything. Maybe in another three months, she’d have the magic number savings that would allow her to quit her job and rely fully on her painting for the rest of her days. The very thought made fear and anxiety form into a tight little ball in her stomach. What if she couldn’t succeed?
Maybe she needed to raise the number a little higher. Growing up the daughter of a drug addict who pimped herself out to whatever druggie boyfriend would take in her and her three girls made security extremely important to Maxine. So many nights she’d lay on her bare mattress or on dirty sheets next to one or both of her sisters and her stomach would growl with such intensity that the pain of hunger would claw through her body. The first twelve years of her life revolved around terror and hunger and pain. She needed that cushion of self-sufficiency to back her so that no matter what happened, no matter if she ended up completely alone and isolated from everyone she loved, she would still never be hungry again.
Maxine moved through her apartment. A brick wall on the far end made the room feel very “Newbury” Street to her. She loved it and had installed it, brick-by-brick, herself.
Her big red leather couch sat against that wall covered in bright pillows designed with stripes, polka-dots, zigzags – it didn’t matter to Maxine. She sought a hodgepodge look with the patterns and kept a similar color scheme going. Angled with the couch sat a love seat in a red and blue with yellow floral design. Maxine found it at a flea market and fell in love with it so instantly that she sat on it while bargaining over the price because she worried someone else would come and take the treasure away before she could complete the deal. A large area rug with a large, modern floral design in muted reds and blues and soft yellows sat on the hardwood floor between the two couches. She covered the walls with her art, picking up little details from the furniture pillows or rugs or bright knickknacks and painting them to tie all of the room together.
Against the picture window looking out onto the street she dearly loved sat her Christmas tree. She surprised herself by going traditional with it – a green tree with reds and golds and silvers. She had it decorated with angels and stars. On the top of the tree sat a tacky plastic lit-up star covered in worn-out gold tinsel. Robin bought that to go on top of their very first Christmas tree when Maxine was sixteen. She’d been with Robin for just a few months, then, after being separated from her for two long years. As they put that cheap little star on the top of their sad little tree, they vowed that no matter what, they would win. They would win in this battle they called life – the pitiful hands they’d been dealt would win the house.
The first Christmas after Robin and Tony married, she and Maxine fought over who got to keep the star. They ended up drawing straws for it. Maxine won, and in the subsequent three Christmases, she had her sisters over for dinner and together the three of them decorated her tree and topped it with that star.
She moved past her living room and through her dining room with the stark black table and Amish backed-chairs. A flat gold bowl of red ornaments sat on the center of the table.
Maxine had rem
odeled the kitchen almost immediately upon completion of the studio. She loved to cook and loved to entertain, so she had a large island work station installed along with a commercial-grade stainless steel stove, double ovens in the wall, a massive refrigerator, and deep steel sinks. She could spend hours in the kitchen, preparing recipes, making big trays of perfect little hors d’oeuvres, applying frosting to a sister’s birthday cake. She loved the whole art of preparing food and often hosted dinner parties with church friends or work colleagues.
She reached the sink and used the back of her hand to flip the handle to open up a stream of warm water. Before going to her studio to paint, she’d left a dish of olive oil by the sink. She dipped her hands in it and started scrubbing the paint off. The oil worked the oil paint off her hands in no time. Then she used a light soap to remove the oil.
Grabbing the towel she’d lain out for herself, she went back through the dining room and living room to enter her bedroom. This room she’d decorated in grays and turquoise. A thick gray rug covered the floor, a shade lighter than the walls. A turquoise spread covered the bed accented with dark and light gray pillows.
The open suitcase on the bed made her stop. Little butterflies of anticipation reawakened in her stomach and started fluttering around. Her heart beat a little bit faster and sweat beaded her upper lip. Why in the world had she agreed to go with Barry to Las Vegas?
Shopping bags covered the bed. For some reason, her extensive wardrobe didn’t seem to suit for this trip. In a fit of nervous energy, she’d left work last night and gone straight to her favorite mall. New boots, new pants, new sweaters – Christmas and plain – new pajamas … they all lay on the bright spread while she put together outfits and tried to think of what else she’d need. Maxine knew they would be with friends, so she assumed there would be dinners out and such. That in mind, she tried to add some dressy and some casual until she just wanted to call him and cancel the whole thing.
Emerald Fire (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) Page 8
