Imperfect Magic (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 11)

by Patricia Watters

  Sharply at six, Mario arrived, with a bottle of wine displaying the Whispering Springs label in his hand. Holding it out, he said, "You told me you liked white wine so that's what I brought."

  Julia stared at the bottle, having no memory of talking about wine during those pitch-black hours while trapped in a nightmare that seemed to have no end. The problem was, she never drank alcohol of any kind now, aware that people with phobias often turned to alcohol or drugs to deal with their symptoms.

  "You do drink wine, don't you?" Mario asked, when she made no attempt to take the bottle.

  Deciding one glass wouldn't hurt, Julia said, "Yes, wine would be nice. The label caught my attention since it's from the winery here." She took the bottle from him and set it on the table beside a basket of cornbread muffins.

  "Your cabin looks nice," Mario commented, as he stepped inside. "I don't bother putting things around at Christmas, but I like it when someone else does."

  "Then I'll make a decoration for your cabin door, just to let everyone know Scrooge isn't staying there," Julia said.

  Mario laughed. "I doubt that will change their minds, but it would at least confuse them."

  Although Mario was joking, Julia knew there was some truth to his words. On a professional level, she knew the Hansen family appreciated his dedication to keeping Jeremy and Billy safe, but they probably never tried to know him on a personal level, although she suspected he wasn't a man who'd cozy up to people. But she knew the kind of man he was in his heart, and she loved the idea of making a decoration for his door, and doing other things for him, things to brighten his world because she suspected it was a lonely world. "I hope you're not very hungry," she said. "I've been too busy to grocery shop and the cupboards were kind of bare."

  Mario tossed a couple of Granola bars on the table. "That's okay. I came prepared."

  Julia looked up from the Granola bars to find Mario smiling. "Good, because you'll probably need those. And if you're serious about picking up some groceries when you go to Portland tomorrow, I'd really appreciate it."

  "Get me the list."

  Julia took a folded paper from the kitchen counter and handed it to him.

  After taking an inordinate amount of time to study a two-column list that stretched a page long, Mario said, "I take it you don't shop very often."

  "You're right," Julia replied. "Grocery shopping's at the bottom of my list of favorite things to do. Actually, just above spending five hours stuck in traffic on the freeway, so I shop about once a month, which is why dinner's a little skimpy tonight."

  Mario folded the paper over a couple of times and shoved it in the front pocket of his jeans. "I'll be fine," he said. "Marshals learn survivor skills. They come in handy at times."

  When Julia caught his slight smile she knew he was kidding, which had the effect of revving up her heart, and making her face feel hot, and her breath quicken, all symptoms of her phobias, but in a totally different way because she knew she wasn't heading for a panic attack, and that made all the difference. It was odd that such similar reactions could be positive in one instance, and negative in the other.

  "What's going through your head?" Mario asked. "You're frowning."

  Julia blinked several times, a habit she'd developed when searching for a plausible explanation for some facet of her behavior. "I was just thinking that I'm glad you're here. I've thought about you often over the years."

  "I've thought about you too," Mario said.

  Julia took a moment to digest that. She'd assumed over the years, that Mario hadn't given her any thought because if he'd wanted to make contact with her, as a marshal, he could have found out who she was, and where the EMTs had taken her, but he didn’t. "I'm surprised," she said. "I always figured I was just a hysterical woman you were trapped with."

  "You were, but you were also engaged," Mario said. "I figured your fiancé wouldn't appreciate some random marshal hanging around. I might have looked you up if I'd known the engagement was on shaky ground. You didn't mention it at the time, only that the wedding was two months away. What happened?"

  Mario held her gaze and waited, and Julia realized he was expecting an explanation, which she had no intention of giving him, at least not the real reason for the breakup. Instead, she shrugged, and said, "We discovered before it was too late that we weren't right for each other. Meanwhile, make yourself at home and I'll serve dinner." She turned away and busied herself at the stove and hoped the subject of her broken engagement wouldn't come up again.

  She wasn't sure what she wanted from Mario at this point, but she was sure she wanted to stay connected with him after he left, so when she'd finally overcome her phobias, which she was determined to do by spring, maybe the time would be right to move to the next level in a relationship. From Mario's last comment, he seemed open to the idea. He would not be a difficult man to love. Maybe she was already halfway there. But for now, she didn't want knowledge of her phobias to drive him away.

  "Get me a corkscrew and a couple of wine glasses," Mario said.

  Julia rummaged through the kitchen drawer and found a corkscrew, which she handed to him, and while he uncorked the bottle, she took two stemmed wine glasses out of a cabinet over the counter and set them on the table. After lighting the candles, she looked at the cozy setting, a table for two, letting her know she wouldn't be eating alone. A little frisson of pleasure brought a smile to her lips.

  "You want to tell me what that's about?" Mario asked.

  "What?"

  "Your smile."

  Julia shrugged. "I was just feeling happy. The place looks Christmassy." It was odd feeling happy. More than happy. Buoyant. She wished the week would never end. Such a small thing, Mario's presence in her life, if only for a few days. She sensed that even after he'd leave, her life would in some way be better than before he arrived, maybe because, if there would be a chance that he'd be in her life, she'd have an even stronger incentive to take control of it.

  Meanwhile, she smelled tamales cooking, or more correctly, over-cooking, and rushed to open the oven door to the small stove. To her relief, the meager fare was still edible, but when she lifted the small casserole out of the oven, she saw that the tamales had decreased in size. "I seriously hope you're not very hungry," she said in a morose voice. "Everything shrunk."

  When she approached the table, Mario looked at the bowl between her oven mitts, and said, "That's plenty of food."

  "For one maybe, but it's not all for you. I get one of those tamales," she replied, while setting the casserole on a hot pad.

  Mario laughed. "Okay, confession time. I ate a sandwich before coming."

  "Are you serious?"

  Mario gave her a wry smile. "I'm a big boy. It takes a lot of food to keep me going."

  Julia found herself scanning the length of him, both aware and appreciative of the way he looked in the same snug black T-shirt and jeans he was wearing earlier. He hadn't changed for dinner, which could be either a positive or a negative she decided. Positive because he felt relaxed and comfortable, or negative because he hadn't bothered because it didn't matter.

  "Okay, you just gave me the once-over," Mario said. "I don't get invited to dinner much, so maybe I didn't follow the rules."

  "There are no rules," Julia replied. "You're here and that's what's important, so sit down and pretend this is the last course in a seven-course meal." She placed a small bowl of creamed corn on the table then took her place opposite Mario, who looked steadily at her between the flickers of dual flames, and said, "I'm thinking if you came to Portland with me tomorrow, you could shop for all those groceries on your list while I'm at the Federal Building."

  Julia felt a rush of adrenaline at the thought of entering a supermarket, which she quickly quashed by saying, "I have work to get out, but you don't really have to do my shopping. I didn't realize I needed so much until I started making the list."

  "Shopping's no problem. After I finish at the Federal Building I'll have all day," Mario
said. "I just thought I'd like your company."

  Julia tried to force herself to say 'yes, I'll come because I'd like your company too,' but one of her greatest fears was of being trapped in a freeway tie-up, with all exits cut off. Even thinking about it made her anxious, as did the thought of long grocery aisles lined with tall shelves.

  Dismissing those troubling images, she turned her attention to the dinner, and said to Mario, who seemed to be waiting for her to begin, "Go ahead and serve yourself. You can fill in the empty spaces in your stomach with corn muffins."

  While Mario was dishing up the tamales, along with several spoonful's of creamed corn and a couple of muffins, she said, "Since you'll be doing all my grocery shopping, maybe you'll come for dinner again tomorrow night for a real home-cooked meal, everything fixed from scratch, and you can add to my list whatever you want to eat."

  Mario looked thoughtfully at her, and said, "I haven't had a home-cooked meal in a long time. Maybe I'll take you up on that."

  Holding his steady gaze, Julia replied, "When you were looking after Jeremy and Billy, didn't you eat with them, or with your sister and brother-in-law?"

  Mario shook his head. "Once I get witnesses settled, I live away from them, but close enough to keep tabs. Jeremy and Billy didn't need watching, but I had to live near Billy's sister and brother-in-law to make sure they didn't do something to jeopardize themselves. As for meals, I find a good café in the area and eat with the regulars, or microwave frozen dinners in my apartment."

  "Then there's no one in your life to do things for you?" Julia asked, a thought that tugged at her heart. There was nothing she could imagine more satisfying than to be the means of filling whatever loneliness Mario might have.

  Mario shrugged. "I've been a loner so long I don't relate so well on a personal basis. I'm also pretty set in my ways."

  "So am I," Julia said, "but I still like someone to share a meal with. So, if you had your choice of anything to eat, what would it be?"

  "Sausage and sauerkraut, and a mound of mashed potatoes," Mario replied.

  "You're Italian," Julia said. "Sausage and sauerkraut's German food."

  "I branched out when I was fourteen and my sister and I went into witness protection," Mario replied. "Hilda and Otto, the German couple who owned the ranch where we were placed, and which we later inherited, were older and had no kids, so they took us under their wings, and that's the kind of food Hilda fixed."

  "You never said anything about being in witness protection," Julia said.

  "I couldn't talk about it at the time of the bombing because Roberta was still in the program, even though I opted out," Mario replied.

  "So your real name isn't Mario Moretti."

  Mario shook his head. "I left that punk tough guy behind when I was given a new identity and background and decided I liked the new guy better. Before then, I was bouncing around pool halls, listening to bookies discussing races they planned to fix, and being a general flake up, while setting my sights on becoming a made man. But when Roberta witnessed a mafia execution by three wiseguys who turned out to be men I'd looked up to because they could say and do anything, and no one ever challenged them, I had to face some serious realities."

  "Executed in what way?" Julia asked, aware that it wasn't exactly the dinner conversation she'd envisioned, but it was a part of Mario's life, and she wanted to know everything about him.

  "An icepick-kill," Mario replied. "That's when a couple of wiseguys hold the victim while another jams an ice pick through the victim's eardrum and into his brain, resulting in death by cerebral hemorrhage. That's also when I decided I'd rather be on the other side of things, and once I left witness protection, I never went back to the old neighborhood."

  "What about your parents? Where were they?" Julia asked.

  "My mother died when I was two, and my father worked long hours in his own Italian deli until he died of a heart attack when I was twelve. But the one thing I remember about the old neighborhood was that kids and old people could walk around safely because the mob made sure no one harmed them or anyone else in the neighborhood. The mob boss and his soldiers looked after everyone like we mattered. My father's deli was off-limits because he made the best Italian sausage in Chicago, but most in the neighborhood never saw into the black souls of these men, so they were admired and respected, because they did look after us."

  "Did the killers see your sister?" Julia asked.

  "No, but she saw them clearly, and knew exactly who they were."

  "Then why did you have to go into witness protection?" Julia asked. "Couldn't your sister just tell the authorities what she saw, and let them take it from there?"

  "It doesn't work that way," Mario replied. "Her testimony was needed to convince a jury. The Feds can have fingerprints, forensic evidence, and murder weapons, but there's nothing as convincing as a credible eyewitness who takes the stand, and swears under oath, that they were there and saw it."

  Julia said nothing, but she was beginning to get a better picture of the man sitting opposite her, and she admired him even more for the path he took, to dedicate his life to stopping the kind of people he once looked up to.

  After they'd finished eating, which didn't take long, Mario shoved his chair back and stood. Taking his plate to the kitchen, he said to Julia, "I don't cook much, but I can wash dishes."

  Julia took her own plate and set it by the sink. "Leave the rest. I'll do dishes later. I want to hear the rest of the story."

  "What? About mafia executions?" Mario asked.

  "No, about what happened after you left the old neighborhood," Julia replied. "You became another person. That doesn't happen every day." She sat on the two-person couch positioned a short distance from the wood stove and motioned for him to sit next to her.

  Mario lowered himself beside her, sitting with his arm stretched along the back of the couch, and his hand resting behind Julia's head. Being so close to Mario triggered memories of being pressed against him in the curve of his arm during a time when she'd thought of nothing but the fact that there was a human being with her, her guardian angel, whose arm was around her for protection and assurance, but now, if Mario were to put his arm around her, it would be for a very different reason. The thought both excited and frightened her…

  "Okay, to give you a rundown of my life," Mario said, "after leaving the old neighborhood, I was a cowboy all my teenage years, helping Otto run several hundred head of cattle on his ranch in Wyoming, which meant summers were spent getting up at daybreak and working my ass off until sundown, and during bitter winters making sure the stock were tended, even pulling me out of school some days when he needed me, but he never had me do anything he wouldn't do himself, even though he was in his sixties. He knew where I was headed before we were placed on the ranch, and he had big hopes for me, so I decided I wanted to be the man he expected me to be. But the U.S. Deputy Marshal overseeing Roberta and me was the one who had me thinking I could do what he did, and be instrumental in getting a whole lot of wiseguys off the streets and behind bars, and that's what I set my sights on."

  "But going into law enforcement meant leaving the ranch," Julia said. "Didn't that bother Otto, since he needed you to help with the stock?"

  "No, Otto was a philosophical man. He figured my growing up in a neighborhood run by the mob happened for a reason, and I needed to use what I'd learned and turn it against the wiseguys. It worked for me too. Roberta's the one who took to ranching. She could round up cattle with the best of them, and before Otto died, she was managing the ranch and hiring the wranglers. All I did over the years was spend my vacations making repairs and stretching fences. So that about sums it up. The rest of the time I've spent babysitting stoolies."

  Julia was about to question him further when she felt the tingle of Mario's fingers toying with her hair, accompanied by his words, "You have nice hair. Are you a natural blonde?"

  Surprised, but amused by his question because she knew he didn't mean it in an offensi
ve way, Julia looked at him and said, with wryness, "Do you realize the jeopardy you put yourself in by asking a woman that question?"

  Mario sobered at once. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business," he said. "Social graces aren't one of my strong suits."

  "I've suspected that from the start," Julia replied, "but to answer your question, yes, I'm a natural blond. If I wasn't, there wouldn't be so many silver threads among the gold."

  Mario gave her a half-smile then moved toward her, and studying her hair more closely, said while toying with a lock, "In a few years you'll be a platinum blond."

  "Don't remind me," Julia said, while feeling Mario's breath against her temple, making her heart quicken while sending flurries to her tummy and a flush of warmth creeping up her face.

  "That was a compliment," Mario said.

  Their cozy moment was broken by a knock on the door. Julia moved away quickly and stood, hoping whoever it was wouldn't stay. She wanted this time with Mario. It was like she'd waited twenty years to be with him again. And she'd never had such a curiosity about anyone before. She sensed intuitively that he was a man with many layers, but the world around him knew only one layer—the gruff, take-control, U.S. Marshal layer ready to put his life on the line and kill if necessary. Yet, she knew him as a man with softness and goodness, a man she very much wanted in her life, implausible as it was.

  On opening the door, she was surprised to see Maddy, accompanied by two fair-skinned, blue-eyed kids with blond hair, a boy about ten, and a girl who looked to be around five.

  "This is Sergei and Irina," Maddy said. "They're staying with Mom and Dad over Christmas. When I saw that Sergei had several of your video games, I told him the person who wrote the games was here, and he asked if he could meet you."