Emerald Fire (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (12 page)

She had looked forward to Sunday all week, knowing that they’d get back into their football watching schedule that they’d shared for the last few years. When he pulled tickets out of his pocket Thursday morning, Maxine laughed with delight and snatched them from his hand. Friday morning, he had a breakfast meeting and couldn’t work out with her. She didn’t enjoy doing it alone, but the anticipation of Sunday made the time go by much quicker than usual.

They reached the little pub in short order. Once they left the football traffic behind them, they encountered very few cars. Set outside the city limits, more toward Barry’s neighborhood, the little pub had a very full parking lot.

Barry held her door open as she got out of the Jeep and stepped into the cold air. Maxine shoved her hands into her pockets and rushed toward the door while the wind cut through her jacket and fleece pullover. Walking into the welcoming warmth of the building, she pushed her cap off her head and unwound her scarf. Barry stood above her, scanning the room, and nodded in the direction of a couple standing near a booth putting on their coats. “Let’s grab that table,” he said, putting a hand on the small of her back to guide her. Maxine inched forward as much as possible hoping to create a space between his hand and her back.

As they maneuvered their way through the full crowd, a cheer erupted around them. Maxine looked at one of the many wide-screened televisions that seemed to cover every spare inch of wall space and saw the game everyone else seemed to be watching. She noticed that the booth would offer no good view of that game, but it beat sitting at the bar.

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 those 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.

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.