Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set

by Julie Ortolon

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

  “Don’t you want to eat?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I want to eat.”

  “Then don’t you think we should get going?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if we go, we won’t be able to eat.”

  He saw annoyance warring with amusement in her deep blue eyes and loved it. “Paul -”

  “All right, all right,” he gave in with a laugh. “Turn around.” He saw her take in the small sign that read Mama Artemis, then laughed again when she turned back to him with a grimace.

  “You’re a fiend.”

  “I know.” He took her elbow again to guide her through the door and along the narrow hallway that led between two shops before widening to the restaurant proper, tucked into the back of the building. Having his hand around her elbow already felt pleasantly familiar.

  “Paul!” A small, round woman with gray streaking the dark hair piled on top of her head wrapped plump arms around him with enthusiasm. “It’s been too long! Much too long. You must tell us how you have been all these long months we have seen nothing of you. And your mama and papa, and your dear little sister. But now you come, come and sit, you and your young lady.”

  Bette would barely have had time to absorb the lightning switch from the frown and scolding to the smile and invitation before she was towed along between crowded tables. But she didn’t seem thrown.

  He shrugged and headed after them.

  In a far corner, amid deep, rich colors aglow in candlelight, Bette slid into a tiny booth, its seat a quarter of a circle so small that when he sat next to her their knees tangled.

  “Here. Now you settle, get comfortable, and I get wine. Then we talk about the dinner and I will tell you what you must have to eat.” The woman patted Bette’s hand and Paul’s shoulder, and hurried away.

  “Is that Mama Artemis?”

  “No. That’s her daughter, Ardith. Mama Artemis is much more forceful.”

  Bette shook her head as she chuckled. “Where are they from? I don’t recognize the accent.”

  “I really don’t know. Not that I haven’t asked. I have. But when they start talking about it they get into a lot of complicated history, and just when I think I’m starting to follow it, they get excited and lapse into their native language. Best I can tell you is somewhere in southeastern Europe. I guess one of those places that’s been passed back and forth a good bit.”

  Ardith bustled back with a bottle of wine swaddled in a napkin to catch the weeping condensation.

  “How is Mama Artemis, Ardith?”

  “Ah, Mama. She is the same. Always Mama.” She poured pale gold liquid into the chunky clear glass in front of Paul. “She is a terror, Mama.” Her affection and admiration and made “terror” a term of respect.

  At her gesture, Paul tasted the wine and gave wholehearted approval.

  “Glad to hear she’s doing well,” he said. “Be sure to tell her Jan had her baby today. A boy.”

  “Ah, a baby! Yes, yes, I will tell her. Such a happy thing, young Jan to have a baby. And you should be having babies, too. You should find a woman, marry her, settle down and have babies.”

  “Aw, Ardith.” The refrain was so familiar he responded automatically, but underneath a memory stirred uneasily of that same refrain spoken in another voice.

  “Yes, yes, many babies. Baby girls for you to spoil and baby boys to play with the toys like you do with my nephews. They ask for you. Goran has found three soldiers he wants to show you. And a new engine. You come some Sunday. And you bring your young lady.”

  As she launched into a description of the meal she would serve them, Paul knew it had been more edict than invitation, and if he didn’t bring Bette, he’d spend all his time explaining why.

  Ardith left them, apparently satisfied that their choices - more accurately, her choices for them - were in order.

  “I don’t know why I come here,” he grumbled, only half-kidding. A lot could be said for places where nobody asked you to Sunday dinner or cared whom you were with or speculated on when you’d start having babies.

  “Isn’t the food good?”

  “The food’s terrific.”

  “Maybe that’s the reason,” Bette said as if she meant it, but he spotted a glint in her eyes. “Or maybe it’s because you’re obviously adored here.”

  “You saying I have an ego problem, huh?”

  She shrugged, a movement that also raised and lowered her knee a fraction of an inch where it touched his, just enough to send sensation up his leg. “Or maybe it’s because they invite you to come over on Sundays to enjoy the children’s toys.”

  He grinned, trying to ignore where that sensation had concentrated. “Occupational hazard.”

  “Occupational? It sounds more like child’s play.”

  He tilted his head. “Didn’t Jan tell you what I do?”

  “Of course she did. I couldn’t select possible temporaries for you without knowing what they’d be doing.”

  “What do I do?” He saw her resistance. “Humor me, please?”

  She let out a short breath. As she started to answer, part of him experienced inordinate pleasure at the idea that she was willing to humor him.

  “You are an independent appraiser, with a good bit of business coming from referrals from Centurian Insurance Group as well as several other major firms, although you do a variety of noninsurance-related appraisals. And Jan mentioned you’ve worked with some large museums.”

  He nodded, hoping he’d masked an automatic frown. At least Jan hadn’t mentioned the Smithsonian offer specifically. Prestige was one thing, but you had to consider the cost, too.

  “That’s true as far as it goes, but do you know what I appraise?”

  He saw her quick intelligence grasp the ramifications of that question. He could practically hear her thinking that insurance companies rarely hired independent appraisers for the bulk of their business - the cars, boats, houses and routine household goods they could assess through statistics galore.

  “A specialty. Something out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s right.” He waited.

  “What is it? What’s your specialty?”

  He liked Bette Wharton a lot at that moment. She didn’t want to have to ask. He figured she felt not knowing the answer represented a slipup in her preparation. But she didn’t allow any of that in her tone.

  He wanted to kiss her.

  To lean forward across the small table and let his lips explore that up-swung lip of hers, to slip his tongue along it and then inside it.

  The blood quickening through his body was a warning. Better get his mind - and hormones - off that track, or he’d be doing just what his imagination had conjured up.

  Because Bette was the kind of woman to take it all seriously.

  Yes, better to stick to business. Even if she wasn’t likely to take his business too seriously.

  “I mostly appraise cards, trains and books.”

  “Cards, trains and books?” she repeated blankly.

  “Baseball cards, toy trains and comic books.”

  Bette stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Most of the time, yes. But not about this. I also operate as a sort of clearinghouse for specialists in other areas from all over the country, and I specialize in appraising other stuff myself, too. Like original Monopoly games, nineteenth-century mechanical toys, vintage Erector sets. But I’d say those three - baseball cards, toy trains and comic books - are the most common in my trade.”

  “Then your occupation really is child’s play.”

  He’d heard it before. He’d heard notes of censure a lot stronger than the faint echo in Bette’s words. But they had never bothered him before.

  He smiled.

  “That’s me, a kid at heart.”

  Chapter Two

  *

  BETTE TRIED TO ignore the strange frisson of relief and disappointment.

  A kid at
heart.

  She believed he’d spoken no more than the absolute truth, and that relieved her. Because that meant the undercurrent of attraction would soon wither.

  Dependability, solidity, maturity - those were the attributes she valued. Someone who would work through the difficulties in life as she did, someone who anticipated them and prepared for them. Certainly not someone who admitted to being - bragged about being - a kid at heart.

  So why are you disappointed ? asked a voice inside her.

  To quiet it, she asked, “How did you get to know Mama Artemis and Ardith?”

  “I did a job for them.” Paul gestured widely to the room around them. “Appraising.”

  For the first time Bette noticed one wall was decorated with wooden game boards, the colors mellowed and softened by age. On a shelf along the opposite wall resided arrangements of old-fashioned toys, a teddy bear appearing to pull a wagon bearing two dolls, a wooden sled next to ancient-looking skates, a hoop, and stick.

  “The toys? You appraised these toys?”

  “These and a whole lot more. This is the tip of the collection.”

  “Did they bring all these things with them when they came to America?” She wondered again about the origins of Mama Artemis and her family. Not Poland; she’d heard no trace of her grandfather’s speech in Ardith’s voice.

  “No way. Mama Artemis had just been widowed, didn’t have much anyway, and she left everything behind except the clothes on her back and her two children. She came to Chicago because she had a cousin she could live with at first, though I guess it got pretty crowded.”

  Bette’s lips curved. She could hear her grandfather’s rich, deep tones and exotic accent, recounting with pride each step his family had taken toward the American Dream. As if it were a bedtime story, he would tell her again and again, each movement forward in education or position or savings.

  “So Mama Artemis started looking around for a job,” Paul said.

  Like Mama Artemis, Bette’s grandparents had lived with relatives at first. How proudly her grandfather had recounted to her how soon they had rented a whole apartment for themselves. Then came moves to a better neighborhood, a bigger apartment.

  He would say over and over how proud he was of his daughter - Bette’s mother - who had graduated from high school, earned an associate degree, and married a man who owned his own home. She remembered how her grandfather beamed the day she’d graduated from college, and how two years later, sick as he was, he had made her sit on his hospital bed and tell him every detail of the ceremony that entitled her to the initials MBA.

  “Are you with me?”

  Paul Monroe’s touch on her wrist was fleeting, but left behind a tingle of warmth.

  “What? Oh. Yes, I’m with you.” She wasn’t surprised to discover that one level of her mind really had absorbed what he said. Many times in business she’d blessed her dual-track mind. “You were saying Mama Artemis went to work as a housekeeper for an eccentric old man.”

  “Yeah, and it turned out he had this terrific collection of toys and games and dolls he’d put together bit by bit for decades. When he died, he left it all to Mama Artemis.”

  “How did you get her as a client?”

  “I didn’t. At least not if you mean going out and pursuing the account. I hadn’t even set up in business at that point. I’d been working for this insurance company - a rising young executive, they said. I hated it.”

  He said it so cheerfully she could almost doubt he meant it. “You used it as a springboard to establishing your own appraising business?”

  “I used it as a springboard to paying my rent,” he said dryly. “I drifted into insurance after college.”

  “You majored in business?”

  “No. History. Probably the only history major who never considered going to law school.” The sharp note was so at odds with his usual tone that she wondered if she imagined it. Especially when he continued easily, “But that might be because I didn’t intend to be a history major. I just liked history. A quarter before graduation, I looked at my courses and figured I lacked one class each to major in psych and history, and I liked the history offering better that spring, so there I was - a history major.”

  Bette shook her head, thinking of her carefully considered selections, each a plotted step on the road to owning a business, each a piece in the foundation on which to build her future.

  He took her gesture another way. “Go ahead and shake your head. You probably already know what I discovered - there aren’t any want ads for history grads. That’s where insurance came in.”

  “And then Mama Artemis?” she prompted.

  He grinned. “I lucked into that. I’d fallen into being a troubleshooter for the insurance company, getting appraisals for unusual stuff nobody else wanted to bother with. Not the real antiques, but nostalgia items and some oddball collections. It was an excuse to get out of the nine-to-five rut at the office, so I took courses, read a lot, asked questions. A friend of a friend told Mama Artemis about me, and she asked me to help. I was too stupid to know what I’d gotten myself into until I stood waist-deep in one of the finest collections in the country. It was worth a fortune.” He gestured to the surroundings. “More than enough to set up a successful restaurant on the Near North Side.”

  “So you helped Mama Artemis sell off some of the collection to finance the restaurant?”

  “You mean as a dealer? No.” His words were crisp, hard even. But just as suddenly he was his easy, amused self once more. “You just ran smack-dab into my hobbyhorse. I don’t think appraisers should be dealers, and vice versa. If nothing else, somebody telling you your Great-Aunt Gertie’s vase is worth $22.50 when that same person’s in the market to buy it poses one hell of a conflict of interest. Most folks who do both are honest, but why go dangling temptation out there like a carrot?”

  “And Mama Artemis’s inheritance was worth considerably more than $22.50?”

  He grinned at her dryness. “Considerably more. Even with a string of zeros. I tell you, I spent the first few months scrambling around trying to figure out exactly how over my head I was. By the end of it, Mama had her restaurant, I had enough contacts to get out of insurance, a couple dozen collectors and several museums had acquired rare finds and the people of Chicago had the opportunity to enjoy this great cooking.”

  Bette looked at Paul and considered how different his approach to business - to life - was from hers. He talked of drifting, luck, happenstance and scrambling. She lived by forethought, diligence and perseverance.

  Yet, she couldn’t resist smiling back at him.

  Ardith’s arrival made Bette jump a little at the realization that she and Paul had been smiling foolishly at each other. It must have been contagious, because Ardith wore a smile as she set platters of steaming, aromatic food on the table, fussed with their arrangement, then exhorted Paul and Bette to enjoy their meal.

  They did. Both the food and the conversation.

  Bette surprised herself. She seldom dived into food like this - and never during a business meal.

  She found herself using a business trick of drawing out her companion by asking questions. But she knew the difference between obligatory questions and a true desire to know.

  She’d never laughed as much as she did at Paul’s accounts of his hair-raising childhood exploits. And she’d never felt so disinclined to move away from the brush of arms and legs that occurred in the tiny booth.

  Replete, and with an additional sensation of content, she sat back. “You’ve lived a charmed life, Paul Monroe.”

  He examined his half-full water glass. Maybe he had lived a charmed life.

  He had good friends, a good business. He’d benefited from a good mind and good education. And family … Well, he couldn’t deny the strains and differences, but the bottom line was that he loved them and they loved him - with one exception. And he’d fought his way clear of that one exception’s influence years ago, so he had freedom, too. What else c
ould anybody need?

  Without conscious thought, his gaze went to Bette’s face.

  Her smile pleased him at a level he couldn’t explain. More than the way her lips curved - although that was nice - he liked the way her cheeks and eyebrows lifted, providing a new showcase for her deep blue eyes. Even more, he liked knowing he had drawn the smile out. It was a shame to keep that spark locked up behind the dusty seriousness she seemed to think necessary.

  He wanted to see her laugh again. Here, in the soft shadows of their corner.

  “You sound just like Michael,” he said.

  “Michael? Your brother?”

  “Friend. Michael Dickinson, Grady Roberts and I were college roommates.”

  He told her about finding fungus growing in the closet at the end of sophomore year and, though she wrinkled her nose in distaste, she laughed. Laughter looked even better on her than a smile.

  “By the time Tris came we had quite a reputation.”

  “Tris? Your sister?”

  “Nope. Wrong again.” He recognized the flick of annoyance. Bette didn’t like being wrong, and especially not twice.

  “But you do have a sister.”

  “How do you - oh, of course, Ardith. Yeah, I have a sister, but Judi’s in college now. She’s eleven years younger than me. Tris Donlin’s my cousin. Her freshman year the three of us - Grady, Michael and I - were seniors, and we all hung around together.”

  “It sounds as if you had a wonderful childhood.”

  “Had? You look like you think I’m still going through it.” He laughed, noting the startled look in her eyes, as if he’d caught her at something impolite.

  “I’m sorry, I -”

  “It’s all right, I was kidding.”

  He didn’t want a repeat of the tone she’d used to describe his work as child’s play.

  Better to turn the conversation.

  “Of course everything wasn’t roses, you know. At one time I thought the only answer was to get away. I wanted nothing to do with my family.” He kept words and tone light, consciously pushing aside a jumble of old feelings.

  Why had he brought this up?

  “About sixteen or seventeen? I think every kid goes through that stage.”