by Leslie Kelly
Because Ida Mae would give her a fight all right. One this town would never forget.
So forty minutes later, when she arrived downtown and saw her sister looking up at Mortimer Potts with her false-tooth smile, and simpering with that same giggle she’d used on Buddy Hoolihan sixty-some years ago, Ida Mae charged right into battle.
CHAPTER SIX
FLY WITH HIM.
Sabrina sat completely still in the booth in Tootie’s Tavern, staring into Max Taylor’s handsome face, feeling as though the hook-nosed child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was offering her a huge lollipop. A juicy one. A sour apple one—her favorite.
Oh, was she tempted. And, oh, she did want to accept the offer. Because of the book, a mental voice insisted.
Yeah. Right. Him trying to get her alone was probably his first step in seduction; he probably always got in a woman’s pants by showing her his…cockpit.
She should go for it, strictly for the sake of her career. That was the only reason she would even consider it, she was quite sure.
Maybe if she kept telling herself that the good fairy would make it be true, too. Because it was complete bull. Wanting to lock herself in an enclosed space with Max Taylor and spend a morning soaring to the highest heights with him, plane or no plane, had absolutely nothing to do with any book. It was entirely to do with the man.
But right now, at this particular moment, she wasn’t sure which man intrigued her more. The wicked playboy pilot she’d been secretly fantasizing about for months? Or the friendly, funny mechanic with his big, strong hands, that great laugh and those glittering green eyes?
“You want to take me flying on your private plane?” she asked, her voice trembling as she gave the idea serious consideration.
He tilted his head to one side, appearing curious. “Did I tell you I had my own plane?”
Whoops. He hadn’t. To her knowledge, he hadn’t even admitted yesterday that he was, in actuality, a pilot. So she should have acted surprised by his invitation.
Stupid, you’re going to blow this.
Striving to keep her tone even, she replied, “Your grandfather must have mentioned it.”
“Oh, right,” he said with an unconcerned shrug. “Well, it’s true, I do have a little beauty at the dinky airstrip in Weldon, which is about twenty miles from here.”
The very idea, while exciting, also sent a shiver through her. Sabrina had never even seen the inside of a private aircraft, much less been invited to fly in one. “I’ve never been in a plane smaller than a 737.”
“Can’t compare. Commercial jumbos are so impersonal. You haven’t really flown until you’re soaring ten thousand feet above the ground, only a thin tube of metal separating you from all that open air.”
She felt queasy. And it wasn’t from the lousy food in this place, since hers hadn’t arrived yet. “Maybe not.”
“You aren’t afraid, are you?” He leaned closer as if to reassure her. “Because you shouldn’t be. Many more people die in car accidents every year than in plane crashes.”
“But at least after many car accidents there are survivors. They can even walk away a lot of the time,” she pointed out, her tone skeptical. “I somehow don’t think somebody can brush off the dust and flirt with the cops to avoid a ticket after falling several thousand feet out of the sky and landing in a fiery heap of metal.”
A puzzled frown creased his brow and he stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “You’re serious? You’re genuinely afraid of crashing?”
“It’s possible.”
“I’m an outstanding pilot.”
“So was Amelia Earhart.”
“Do you honestly think I’d let you be hurt?”
He sounded…wounded, somehow. As if she’d truly offended him. Which gave her a glimpse into exactly how confident a man he was. Not cocky. He hadn’t shown any signs of that. Just completely sure of his abilities.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone so self-assured,” she murmured, knowing it was true. And wondering how it must feel to be so good at something you never ever second-guessed yourself about it.
“Is that so strange? Aren’t you confident of a few things you do really well?”
“Uh, not exactly.”
Sabrina knew she was a good editor, and she had some talent with writing, too—a secret wish she’d never seriously pursued but sometimes dabbled with. But second-guessing yourself was a way of life when you grew up in a small town in a modest house full of modest people. Especially when you heard daily fire-and-brimstone speeches from a grandfather who didn’t seem to like anyone, and more moderate ones from a mother who—while loving—had to walk a fine line between her longing-to-live children and her longing-to-suppress father.
Sabrina had grown up being told that congratulations and praise were a prelude to vanity, so she’d seldom heard them. It had been all Sabrina could do to hide her pride at landing a four-year scholarship to Penn State after high school, but she’d done it, knowing her grandfather had already been preaching against her going.
Her mother had, for the first time in as long as Sabrina could remember, stood up to him. Right when she’d begun to wonder if the woman who used to swing her in big circles by her feet in Central Park had ceased to exist, she’d found her mother again, and the discovery had given Sabrina all the encouragement she needed to fight for what she wanted.
Mom’s support had helped, but Sabrina knew, deep inside, that she would have gone without it. She wouldn’t have let him—anyone—stop her. At age eighteen, she’d had too many years of suppressing her need to be free and be herself, to live life to its fullest, to allow a thing like family disapproval stop her from getting the hell out of Bridgerton, Ohio.
What a fine example she’d set for her feisty, funny little sister to emulate.
God, Allie. I’m so sorry.
“I still can’t believe you think I’d let us crash,” he said, shaking his head in bemusement.
Before she could reply, the waitress returned with their food. Max’s breakfast looked every bit as unappealing as she’d thought it would, but there wasn’t much that could go wrong with toast and fresh fruit. Nibbling on a corner of her stale, crumbly bread made only slightly moist by a thin spread of lumpy margarine, she watched as Max smothered his plate with most of a bottle of maple syrup. He took a bite, grimaced, then gamely continued eating.
“I don’t think you’d let us crash. I’m sure you’re very skilled,” she finally said, having thought about his words. “But things do happen that are out of anyone’s control. That’s why they call them accidents.”
He still looked offended, and now surprised. “You mean you’d let the fear that something bad might happen keep you from doing something you really want to do?”
“Who said I really want to go flying with you?”
He smiled slowly, staring her in the eyes and silently daring her to deny that a big part of her did want to take him up on his invitation. She didn’t even try.
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” she said, wanting him to understand, and wanting to understand him.
“Sure. The IRS.”
“Who’s not?”
“Scary movies.”
What a liar. “You phony, you love them.”
“Sure I do, because they scare me. Isn’t that why you love them?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she admitted, never having thought about it. She’d always just sort of figured she had a morbid streak. Kind of an inherent need to have the bejesus scared out of her once in a while, since her home life had always been so…pure. Wholesome. Nondescript.
Like her?
“The reason those movies work is that they scare you to pieces but you still walk out of the theater feeling powerful and confident, knowing everything’s okay in the real world,” he explained. “You tell yourself it was just a movie, laugh it off and get on with your life.”
True.
“Except,” he continued, lower
ing his voice to a heavy whisper, his eyes twinkling, “that you jump when you see the huge shadow around the corner as you exit the building. And you’re a little nervous about the guy wearing the hockey mask standing by your car with a butcher knife in his hand.”
Oh, the man could make her laugh. Because he’d gotten that part right, too. “Okay, so, yes, on occasion I do like the thrill of being scared. And the moment of uncertainty that comes even after I think everything’s okay.”
“Flying can be like that.” Then he added, “But not with me, because you’d have absolutely nothing to be afraid of.”
Ha. She had a lot to be afraid of with him. Falling out of the sky in a tiny airplane was only the beginning. “There’s that confidence again,” she murmured. “Be serious. Isn’t there anything that really, truly frightens you?”
He met her stare, his gaze steady. The smile slowly fading from his face, he thought about it. Finally, after a long pause, he admitted—perhaps only to himself—“I’m afraid of losing someone else I care about.”
A universal fear. But his emphasis told her he’d already experienced such loss. Too much of it, given the dark expression that flashed across his face and was just as quickly gone.
Something else they had in common, then. How can this man be so right, and yet so wrong?
“I’m afraid of cancer.”
She heard the unspoken admission in his voice. Whoever it was he’d lost, this was how the person had died. Given what she’d read about Max and his brothers being raised by their grandfather, she had to assume it was a parent.
She didn’t ask for details. If he wanted her to know, he’d continue. Sabrina certainly didn’t go around volunteering information about her father’s death.
“Sometimes, I’m even afraid of myself.”
Sabrina raised a brow. “Why?”
“Because I’ve had a few close calls in my life when I’ve nearly ruined it. Everything I had.” Max pushed his plate away and continued, almost matter-of-factly. “I won’t let myself get that close to the edge again, and I walk a careful line to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“Make sure what doesn’t happen?” she asked, wondering if he knew how much he was revealing about himself. And wondering if her desire to hear more was about the book she was supposed to be saving, or about how much she already liked Max Taylor.
She didn’t have to wonder for long. Right now, Sabrina couldn’t even remember the title of Grace What’s-her-name’s book.
He shrugged. “I won’t ever let myself become so vulnerable to my emotions that I sabotage myself and nearly destroy everything I’ve worked for out of hurt or anger.”
He spoke from experience—he’d felt heartbreak. The stab of jealousy that realization caused deep inside her surprised Sabrina. She hadn’t felt this kind of resentment when thinking about Max’s supposed womanizing. But Max actually in love with someone? Why, she wondered, did that thought hurt so much?
He met her stare evenly, as if watching for her reaction, and said, “One of my greatest fears is that I’ll be fooled into letting down my guard with someone I should never have trusted. Someone who never really cared for the real me at all.”
Oh, God, as she was trying to fool him now? Was she even fooling him at all? More importantly, did she really want to anymore?
She bit into her toast, hoping it would calm her suddenly upset stomach.
“Or that I’ll be so disappointed when things don’t go the way I want them to that I’ll do something idiotic.” Lifting his coffee cup, Max shook his head and sighed. “And blow it again.”
All these hints at things that were important to him—things that had happened in his past—intrigued her. How had this man nearly ‘blown it?’ He seemed to have everything—wealth, power, a fabulous, successful business. Good looks, charm and intelligence. But he’d been hurt, he’d been reckless.
She wanted more than anything to know why, sensing Max was finally revealing the true man. Not the flyboy. Not the mechanic. But the real person existing inside that gorgeous exterior.
To her disappointment, he shifted gears on her, shutting himself back down as physically as if someone had turned a key and cut his engine. “Not quite serial-killer material, is it?”
He glanced out the window, obviously not wanting the conversation to continue, then closed his eyes, rubbed at the corners of them with two fingers, and opened them again. Shaking his head, he sighed. “Of course, there is one more thing I’m afraid of.”
“What?” she asked.
“I’m afraid someday that’s going to be me.”
Pointing out the window, he directed her gaze toward the sidewalk running along the front of the restaurant. And Sabrina instantly understood what he meant.
“I live in abject terror that one day I will be the one with a bewildered expression on my face while two old ladies have a bitch-slapping fight over me on a public street.”
TOM KING HAD LIVED in Trouble his whole life—all sixty-one years of it. And in all those years, he’d never imagined that someday his hometown would be sold out from under him.
The day that foolish old millionaire bought this place had been one of the worst days of Tom’s life. Mainly because it had come within just a few weeks of what he’d thought had been one of the best days of his life.
They said the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Tom King, however, had been on the taketh-away side of the equation for far too long. It was time for something good to come in his direction. Time for him to take, to reclaim that which had been stolen and try to salvage what was left of his life.
He could have done it. He would have done it.
Imagine. After five years, he’d finally figured out the riddle—finally had something to go on. Five long years of waiting, wondering, worrying, muddling. Not to mention searching.
Then he’d been given the key. And to think those wicked old women had been the ones who handed it to him.
It was a good thing for him that neither of them had dropped dead—as he had often wished they would over the years, while in the grip of their delicate, oh-so-ladylike blackmail scheme. Because if they had, he’d never have come up with a new theory about what Wilhelm Stuttgardt’s cryptic last words had meant.
What he hoped they’d meant. After so many false leads, it was getting harder to remain positive.
The old witches had put him on the right track, though, he felt sure of it. And wouldn’t they hate it if they knew. The Feeney sisters were never happy unless everyone else was miserable. So he’d never let on that they’d given him a clue to getting at old Stuttgardt’s money.
Everything would have been fine—he could have searched the old house to his heart’s content—if that rich old fool hadn’t come to Trouble. And now this, a grandson. One who, perhaps, wasn’t as whimsical and easily fooled as his grandfather. One who mightn’t sleep as soundly during Tom’s nightly visits.
It was unfair. From the ruin Wilhelm Stuttgardt had brought down on them all to this latest invasion by Mortimer Potts.
Life wasn’t supposed to have turned out like this. All those years working in a dingy factory office surrounded by those stupid clocks were supposed to have been for something. He should have had some kind of support to look forward to in his last years. But now, look at him. In his sixties and he had nothing but an old house in a town that was breathing its last. No job, no future. Certainly no pension, since the fat old German bastard had stolen it from him, as he had from so many others.
I could find it. Fix it. Set things right for everyone. Maybe even be able to forgive himself for his part in it.
He was close, he felt it. “But the obstacles,” he whispered. Obstacles like Mortimer Potts seemed insurmountable.
Driving his old car—which bounced hard enough to snap his neck because he couldn’t afford to replace the shocks—toward Given’s Grocery Saturday morning, he nearly ran off the road when he saw the object of his disdain standing outside Tootie’s Tavern. The m
an had ventured from home, which hadn’t happened often, to Tom’s frustration. He was so excited he hardly noticed the ruckus going on at Mortimer Potts’s feet.
Grabbing his cell phone, he ignored the changing of the stoplight from red to green and dialed a familiar number.
“Yes?”
“Potts is here, downtown, right now.”
A pause. Before the response came the muffled sound of chattering voices. “The grandson is in Tootie’s.”
King nodded. Fortune, it appeared, was smiling on him this morning. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
His friend obviously agreed. “I’ll keep watch and will call to warn you when they leave to go home.”
“I’m on my way.”
Yes, on his way to take advantage of whatever time he had. Because time was growing short. If he didn’t find what he was looking for soon, this Mortimer Potts idiot might just stick around for good. Throwing his money around. Making changes. Bringing his big-world evil into Tom’s hometown.
And that, Tom King wouldn’t allow. After what Stuttgardt had done, nobody was ever again going to corrupt this quaint little place where everything was peaceful, perfect and kind.
HALF THE TOWN came outside to watch the old ladies brawl.
From what Sabrina could gather from the shouts and not-terribly-discreet wagering going on in the crowd, the women rolling around on the grass between the sidewalk and the street were regulars when it came to fighting. The expressions on the onlookers’ faces ranged from amusement to excitement to bored disapproval. But not surprise.
Sabrina, Max and his grandfather appeared to be the only ones at all shocked by the sight of two gray-haired women rolling on the ground, slapping, scratching and punching one another.
Too bad Don King wasn’t here. He could come up with a whole new class for professional boxing. Granny Weight.
“The Feeney sisters are always good for a few rounds,” someone said.
Another voice piped in. “Miss Ida’s going for the hair. Miss Ivy’ll get her for that.”
