Circle of Shadows

by Curry, Edna

  “Yes, of course. I did spreadsheets and reports on computer in St. Louis. But Dad never learned, so we don’t have one.”

  “I’ve ordered one for you. The whole setup should be delivered Monday or Tuesday,” he said, that watchful expression still in his hazel eyes.

  “Just like that? Don’t I get any say in what kind of computer I’d prefer, or what system I’m used to working with?”

  His voice stayed calm and quiet, but now it had a steely edge in response to her angry outburst. “I’m sorry, but no, that’s not possible. All my stores’ computers and software programs have to be compatible with mine, so all the systems are alike.”

  “I see.” She drew a deep breath, listening to the details of his system. What he said made sense. Of course her system would need to be compatible with his, and she, as the new kid on the block, would have to be the one to learn new software.

  “There’s no hurry. If you have time on Sunday, Lili, I could go over the software program with you on mine.”

  “All right.” She glanced at her watch, and pushed back her chair. “I really must get back.”

  “How about one o’clock on Sunday? I’ll pick you up.”

  “Fine. Thank you for dinner, Ken.”

  She picked up her phone and hurried away. The delicious dinner she’d eaten sat like a lump in the pit of her stomach. So many changes, so fast. She wanted to go home and cry, but duty called. Two more hours until closing time. If she was lucky and the tills balanced, she would be home shortly after that.

  But of course, the tills didn’t balance. She counted and re-counted the cash, ran two tapes on the checks and came up with two different totals. Frustrated, she laid the two adding machine tapes side by side and found the mistake. Then she added the totals on her accounting sheet three times before she found another mistake.

  It was all Ken’s fault, she thought unreasonably. She kept seeing his sandy brown hair and the crinkles his smile made around his hazel eyes on the page in front of her. And thinking of the way his touch made her tingle, instead of how the charges and paid on accounts added up. No wonder she was making mistakes.

  Sunday she was going to have to go to his house to learn the new software program. Why-ever had she agreed to that? They would be alone in his home! People around here would talk if they knew. Landers was a small town, full of gossips. But she was looking forward to it, her traitorous body reminded her.

  She went home, built a fire in the fireplace, and relaxed in front of it with a tall glass of iced tea.

  She wondered what he was doing at this moment. He’d said he was getting settled in a house on Long Lake.

  Staring at the flames, she imagined him moving furniture around and hanging pictures in his new home. His muscles would be rippling under his tee-shirt, like they had as he swam laps at the pool. She wondered how those muscles would feel moving under her hands, if she placed her hands on that hairy chest as he moved his arms to put them around her.

  Damn the man. She should be figuring out ways to regain control of Adams’ Foods from him, not mooning over his body. What was the matter with her anyway? Was she going to let her hormones rule her head? Couldn’t she control her own feelings?

  By noon Saturday Lili was furious for another reason. Three people had told her how pleased they were that Mr. Mills had purchased Agnes’ house. All her employees knew before she did. It was a dreary, rainy day that suited her mood exactly. The gossip was Mrs. Langley’s fault, of course. Happy about her large sales commission, she’d told someone, and then that person had told three others. Lili knew how Landers’ grapevine worked. Of course, it really didn’t matter that she had told, Lili scolded herself. The sale was a fact, and in any small town nothing anyone did was a secret for long.

  Wasn’t she really only angry that Ken hadn’t told her himself at dinner last night? She should have guessed, should have put the pieces together. She’d known someone had bought Agnes’ house. Why did she mind that it was Ken?

  By the time Ken picked her up on Sunday, she’d brought her temper under control and was able to smile and converse politely as he drove.

  The rain had washed everything clean and made the grass and trees a brilliant shade of green. Dandelions formed a carpet of yellow along the roadsides, as if challenging anyone to call them an ugly nuisance.

  “Are you getting settled?” Lili asked.

  “Pretty well. I’ll have to buy a few more pieces of furniture. My apartment was considerably smaller.”

  She noticed his furtive glance and guessed he was wondering if she knew which house he was talking about. For just an instant she wondered if he might be as uncomfortable about her feelings as she was about his. She made no comment as he turned into the drive to the house she knew so well.

  She couldn’t help noticing the pride in his face as he looked at the house before getting out and coming around the car to open the door for her.

  “You knew this was the house I’d bought?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Yes. I heard through the grapevine.”

  “I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Mind? Of course not.” She pushed away the prick of her conscience for uttering the lie, and added the bitter truth. “Aunt Agnes put the house on the market. It was her decision to make, not mine.”

  “Yes, it was,” he said, glancing at her.

  She looked away, out across the blue water of the lake. The sunlight shimmered off the surface, which was only slightly broken with ripples. Down past the corner of the house, she could glimpse Agnes’ favorite red tulips. She turned back toward him and caught her breath when she found him watching her.

  His eyes said he didn’t believe her, but he nodded and led the way up the path of flat stones to the door, and unlocked it.

  She noted that the lock had already been changed; even the locksmith seemed to do his bidding on a speedy basis.

  The rooms already had a different, more conservative look. His furniture looked plain, but she realized as she glanced around, that was deceptive. Every piece, upon closer inspection, was expensive, solid oak and beautifully built.

  “Your aunt’s taste in basic colors was luckily very similar to mine. I won’t have to change much in this room,” he commented. “There’s some coffee left. Would you like some? Or do you prefer tea or pop?”

  “A can of diet lemon-lime pop would be nice, if you have it. Or whatever.”

  “Diet lemon-lime it is.” He bent to get the can from the refrigerator, and his blue sweater rode up from his belt, revealing a bare expanse of suntanned skin. A tingle of awareness shot through her at the sight. She wondered if he went to a tanning booth, or just to some tropical island often enough to keep that tan through the winter. A thrill of anticipation slipped down her insides as she realized that she would get to know him well enough over the next year or two to find out.

  His fingers brushed hers as he handed her the ice-cold can. She took it quickly to separate them. Flashing her a knowing smile, he said, “My office is down this hall.”

  As they walked together, he reached out and put his hand on her waist. “Watch this step. One of the workmen tore the carpet when he didn’t lift a chest of drawers quite high enough. I’ll need to replace it.”

  She tried to tell herself that his guiding hand was just that, and meant nothing more. She also tried to tell herself that her warm reaction to his nearness was foolish and one-sided.

  Ken’s office was the large yellow-painted room at the end of the hall. It was filled with computer equipment and file cabinets.

  “It looks a little different, now,” she commented. “It contained wall-to-wall beds and chests of drawers when my cousins and I slept here. We all shared this room when I visited them.”

  “That sounds like fun. My brother and I used to share a room. We’d have pillow fights and try our damnedest to hold down the giggles enough so that our parents wouldn’t hear. My mom grounded me and took away my bicycle for a week after on
e fight.”

  “Really? That sounds a little drastic.”

  “Not really.” He grinned. “You should have seen the mess we made. We’d burst the pillows and our room was buried under a layer of feathers.”

  “Oh!” Lili burst out laughing at the picture his words drew in her mind. “Our pillows broke once, too. Aunt Agnes made us pick up all the feathers and put them back inside the ticking, and then sew them up by hand. It took us hours.”

  Their eyes met and held for a long searching moment before Lili drew a deep breath and looked away. What had gotten into her? She rarely talked about her personal life or her past to good friends, let alone to a man she hardly knew.

  Ken seemed to sense her withdrawal. He stepped forward and sat down in front of his computer. His voice sounded a bit ragged as he said, “Pull up a chair and watch, then I’ll let you try it. You can tell me what you understand and what you don’t as we go along.”

  Lili obeyed and was surprised to find him an excellent teacher. While the system was similar to the one she was used to, the accounting software was new. It looked so easy when he did it, but when she tried, she’d forget some little detail that brought everything to a halt. Then Ken would patiently explain it all over again.

  Each time he leaned close to correct something that she had done or tell her how to correct it, her pulse and breath quickened. No wonder she couldn’t keep her thoughts on remembering the computer commands.

  He went over the commands again. The spreadsheet of dollar figures danced in rows on the screen in front of her. The cursor and his long fingers moved in a smooth, choreographed dance across the keys. Figures and formulas appeared on the screen as if by magic.

  “Then you can check your work this way.” His voice went on, and his fingers followed, then he leaned close to watch the screen as she imitated his actions.

  She tried not to notice how his nearness affected her mind. “I understand. The principle used is the same as the program I used in St. Louis, but the commands and set-up are different.”

  “Good. I’ll give you a sample spreadsheet, so you can look back to mine if you forget. I’m sure you’ll be doing it automatically in a short time.”

  At last Ken stood up and stretched. “Let’s quit for today. You can ask me more questions, after you get your machine and have had a chance to play around with it for a while. Wait until you’re comfortable with it before you try doing your reports on the computer. Give Renee your figures and she can enter them for you for a couple of weeks.”

  “All right,” she agreed, still looking a bit skeptical.

  “Will all this stuff be delivered in boxes?” She waved a hand at the array of equipment he had spread out on the long table along one wall that served as his desk.

  He grinned at her nervousness. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Someone from the computer shop will deliver it all. He’ll set up your system, install the software, and make sure that everything is working properly. I’m sure you have more important things to do with your time than reading those obscure instruction manuals in order to figure out what plugs into what.”

  Relieved, she nodded. “Thanks. I’m not very mechanical.”

  “How about some dinner? Are you hungry?”

  Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to see that it was after five. Her stomach agreed that food was a nice idea.

  “Sounds great.”

  As they stepped outside, she craned her neck to see if it had indeed been Aunt Agnes’ tulips and daffodils she had glimpsed from the overlook the day after her father’s funeral.

  Ken locked the door, and noticed her glance. “Would you like to see the flowers? They’re blooming beautifully already,” he said. “Yesterday’s rain seemed to make them just pop open.”

  “Oh, I’d love to. Aunt Agnes was always so proud of them.”

  She followed the path to the back of the house, and exclaimed enthusiastically over the beds of gold and red blooms edging the house. White rock lined the flower beds and low evergreen shrubs completed the picture. He followed her down the flat rock paths that led from the patio to the dock stretching out into the lake.

  “They’re beautiful, but they must be a lot of work to keep up, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but they’re worth it.” Along the side of the house, Lili spied a spot of yellow in a clearing between the trees. She walked towards it. “Oh, look, the Lady’s Slippers are out already.”

  Ken followed, walking carefully on the rain-softened ground. Old pine needles protected their shoes from the rich brown soil, but made the hillside slippery.

  Lili bent to touch the yellow petals. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  “Yes, and well named. They really are shaped like a Lady’s Slipper.”

  She nodded. “They’re wild orchids. They’ve probably been growing here for hundreds of years. There should be some of the smaller pink ones, too; at least, there always were.” She looked around, stepping carefully lest she should inadvertently crush them and smiled happily when she discovered one.

  “Aunt Agnes loved these,” she said. “She used to photograph them, and kept all the pictures in a scrapbook.”

  “You love them, too.” His voice felt like a soft caress.

  “Yes. And the tulips and daffodils. Each spring I watched for the little purple crocus my mother planted on the hill just outside her kitchen window. They were the first ones to bloom. Seeing them appear after a long and dreary winter year after year, was like...like magic, or a miracle.”

  She glanced at him shyly and caught her breath when she saw him staring at her in an odd way. Embarrassed at having voiced her fantasies, she stood up quickly and headed back around the house to the car. “You must think that’s silly.”

  “No, I think it’s beautiful. And very true,” he said quietly. He unlocked the car door and seated her. “Not many women I’ve met would know what a wildflower looked like, let alone how to find one, or know anything about planting tulip and crocus bulbs. My mother always talked about flowers like that, too.”

  His mother! Honestly, no man had ever compared her to his mother before. Should she be insulted or did he mean it as a compliment? Would she ever figure this man out?

  Chapter 6

  They drove around the lake, back to the Lakeview Lounge where they’d gone the first night, and sat at the same table overlooking the water. Lili was beginning to think of it as their table.

  As they ate, Ken told her about the other store managers in his group.

  “Harry is the oldest, and has also been with me the longest. He’ll show you his grandchildren’s pictures at the drop of a hat. He’s steady and sensible, and knows my way of doing things pretty well. He’s also the best one to call if you have a problem and need advice when I’m not available.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Lili said, trying to quell the resentment she felt at his words. What about my way of doing things, she thought rebelliously, but pushed the thought away as Ken went on.

  “Rudy’s young and a bit shy. He’s a confirmed bachelor. John isn’t very talkative. But he’s a good guy to have on your side, very honest and dependable.”

  Lili listened as he continued describing the other managers. “They sound like a fairly congenial group.”

  “They are, for the most part. But there’s some jealousy and competition between them, too. I’ve been working with most of them quite a while, in one capacity or another.” Grinning, he teased, “Since you’re new, you’ll be seeing a lot of me for a while. Later, I’ll be harder to find, but you can always leave a message with Renee.”

  Flustered, she attempted to get the conversation back to business. In a hopeful tone she asked, “But each store is essentially on its own? I mean, the managers of the other stores will have nothing to do with my store or vice versa?”

  “Exactly. Except for social events, and attending warehouse business meetings, they rarely get together. We have a company picnic in June, and a Christmas party early in December, before
the last-minute rush.”

  “Am I the only woman manager?”

  He eyed her thoughtfully. “Yes, I’m afraid so. But plenty of the company reps and warehouse wheels are women, so my other managers are used to working with women.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Don’t worry that you won’t have anything in common with the other women. Some of the managers’ wives work with them on a daily basis, and they come to the parties too. Renee is the only one you’ll need to contact on a regular basis. I’m usually off on the road somewhere, but she always knows where I am.”

  Lili felt a stab of resentment for the secretary, without knowing why. She told herself it was only that Renee apparently had a comfortable working relationship with this attractive man. On the other hand, she still felt their relationship was like a large, slippery balloon that might pop at any moment, leaving her holding nothing but thin air.

  He was sending her a long slow look that shook her to her toes. She forgot what they had been talking about, and cast about for something to say to break the tension. Oh, yes, store parties. She found her tongue and asked, “Does your family attend these parties?” Then she groaned inwardly, wondering if he would think that too personal a question.

  He seemed not to notice, and answered readily, “No. My parents are dead. I do have a brother in New York and a sister, Jill, in Florida, but both are much too busy with their own lives to be interested.”

  She let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “You don’t have a wife or children?”

  “No.” He raised a dark eyebrow, and speared a tomato from his salad. “Do you? Have a husband or children?”

  She shook her head, wondering why the fact that he was single should make her feel so happy.

  Much later, he drove her home and walked her to her door. A gentle breeze brought them the mingled scents of springtime—freshly cut grass, wet from the recent rain, and apple trees in bloom.

  She turned to say goodnight, and looked up at him, noticing how his hair glistened under the street light. She resisted the urge to reach up and run her fingers through it just for the pleasure of touching him. Forcing her voice into a semblance of normalcy, she said, “Thank you for dinner, and teaching me the computer program. I feel much better about the whole idea now.”