Impossible Dreams (11 page)

She was already across the booth and almost out of her seat
before Axell could help her. Had she not been so pregnant, she’d probably
be out the door before he could get up. Like quicksilver, she shimmered and
glided and disappeared before his eyes. He’d never seen anything like it.
His front door closed after her before he could cross the restaurant.

Feeling considerably less burdened now that he had the
problem with Constance solved, Axell loped after her, whistling a happy tune.

***

“This is marvelous! This is
gorgeous
.”
Maya whirled around in the vast open space of the downstairs shop of the
restored old building. “The light from here is heavenly.”

“The foot traffic outside is heavier and should draw
more customers,” Axell added.

Ignoring him, Maya ran her fingers over the mahogany
banister to the upstairs. “Someone treated this place with respect.
There’s a much happier aura in here.”

“It’s called profit.” Axell examined the
ceiling tile twelve feet above them. “Heating and cooling is a problem
though.”

“There’s a ceiling fan. And look at the floor!
If I could just have it waxed...” Seeing that Axell was counting pennies,
Maya slipped up the stairs. She really shouldn’t take another place with
stairs, but what choice did she have? The baby would come when it was ready.
Ignoring a frisson of fear at her lack of preparation for that event, she
peeked around the corner at the living quarters. She didn’t own a crib or
baby clothes. She had no nesting instincts to rely on. So she ignored the
future in favor of the present.

“Perfect,” she murmured happily as she glimpsed
the upstairs. “Look at those windows! I could turn the front room into a
gallery if we didn’t have to live here.” Wrinkling her nose at the
thought of Cleo’s ugly plaid couch desecrating the marvelous airy space,
Maya crossed the wide front room to look out on the street below.

“Streetcars used to go up and down that road on the
half hour.”

She hadn’t heard Axell come up behind her, and she
caught her breath at his sudden proximity. His square build seemed so solid and
reassuring, she had to resist leaning into him. What would it be like having a
man like him to lean on?

Boring, she reminded herself. Just because she was
scratching the bottom of the barrel financially and longed for the security he
represented didn’t mean she’d be happy with riches. She needed a
man who understood her dreams, not a stiff Norse god who’d never had a
dream in his life.

“Wouldn’t it be lovely to have one of those cute
little trolley cars going up and down someday? Tourists love trolley cars, and
this town would be ideal for an artists’ colony. With these huge old
windows in most of the stores, we could have art galleries for paintings and
pottery and textiles. There’s room for antique dealers specializing in
the arts. Then in some of those larger places, someone could have flea market
and craft items for the less wealthy. An ice cream parlor! Wouldn’t that
be fabulous?”

“Would I have to serve artichoke hearts and
radicchio?”

She heard the sarcasm and shrugged it off. “Men would
love your place with the dark paneling and steaks and hearty fare. Someone else
would have to open a tea room for the women. And a bakery! With traditional
Southern desserts — mud pies!” She drooled of dream heaven.
“There’s room for all kinds.”

“I’m glad to know there’s still room for
me. In the meantime, don’t you think you ought to be putting together
some kind of business plan? You can’t continue operating on a song and a
prayer if you expect to make a profit.”

Maya wrinkled up her nose. “You and Selene sound just
alike. Where’s the room for creativity in a business plan?” She
turned and nearly bumped her nose into his chest. She looked upward but
couldn’t read his bland expression.

Axell stepped backward, putting more distance between them.
“I’m amazed Selene knows the definition of ‘business
plan.’ Are you going to look at the rest of the place?”

“Selene has vision, which is more than I can say for
most people,” Maya said pointedly, traipsing across the front room and
aiming for the back.

“I don’t know a damned thing about art
galleries,” he called after her, “except they can’t possibly
be profitable. People have to eat and wear clothes. That’s where the
money is. You’ll have a hell of a time finding a market for the inventory
your sister left.”

“Admittedly, there are better places to sell
enlightened art than this two-bit backwater, but the city is out there. We just
have to reach it.” Maya peered out the back bedroom windows overlooking
an alley. She’d prefer trees and grass, but beggars couldn’t be
choosers. It was better than Cleo had before.

“The people here are more practical than the
dilettantes in the city with more money than sense,” Axell argued from
behind her.

“And beauty isn’t practical.” She carried
her bulk to the narrow galley and shrugged off the comparison with
Axell’s enormous state-of-the-art kitchen. Well, at least the place came
furnished with a stove so she wouldn’t have to move that abomination from
Cleo’s home.

“I didn’t say that,” he answered grumpily.
“I just said you’ll have a hard time selling it out here.”

She was avoiding looking at him. She wasn’t much on
self-analysis, but generally she didn’t avoid looking at people. She
didn’t usually argue with them either. Maybe some of his distancing
technique was rubbing off on her.

Reluctantly, Maya turned and caught Axell’s gaze. He
seemed startled but this time refrained from backing away, although she saw the
wariness behind his eyes.

“Well, I can’t sell groceries, and I’m not
much of a cook, so I guess I’m stuck with Cleo’s inventory for now.
I’ll just have to make it work.”

With this admission of her weaknesses, Axell crossed his
arms over his chest and leaned back against the kitchen counter, master of all
he surveyed. “I think in your own best interests, we need to form a
partnership,” he announced.

Auntie Em: Hate you, hate Kansas. Taking the dog. Dorothy.

“She’s
staying
with you?” Katherine
asked incredulously as she escaped the demands of hostess to take a break at
the rear of the barroom where Axell surveyed the Saturday night crowd. He knew
nearly everyone in this room and had no compelling need to make his presence
known unless necessary. People didn’t expect it of him.

Axell eyed Headley at the far end of the room regaling some
young ingénue with his war stories. Headley had never been in a war. Axell
dipped his gaze back to Katherine who bristled with hostility, for what reason,
he couldn’t imagine.

“If you mean Maya Alyssum, yes,” he stated
calmly. “Unless we can rescue her things, she has nowhere else to go. If
you’re concerned about the proprieties, you might mention that to the mayor.
Once we retrieve her furniture, she can move next door.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she asked bitterly.
“You’re so damned blind, you can’t see beyond that bar over
there. That woman is out to get her hooks in you, and you’re helping her
shove them in.”

Axell raised his eyebrows at his hostess’s vehemence.
“She’s a pregnant schoolteacher, Katherine, not a temptress. If
anything, I’m making Constance deliriously happy by entertaining her. I
believe they’re finger painting right now.”

He tried not to remember the happy chaos he’d left
after supper — a pizza he’d provided because there was nothing in the refrigerator.
Maya had spread thick layers of newspapers over the antique oak kitchen table,
but he rather suspected the newspaper might be as bad as the water-logged
fingerpainting sheets. His housekeeper would have hysterics. His kitchen would
soon look like a war zone, given Matty’s penchant for red. But he’d
left Constance laughing ecstatically, and the almost-forgotten sound decimated
all objections. He knew his priorities. Constance was on the top of the list.

“You bought her clothes,” Katherine said accusingly,
jerking him back to the present.

Axell caught the eye of a waitress and nodded toward a table
where a patron had just spilled his drink. He returned his attention to
Katherine’s nagging. He’d never thought her the type to nag.

“All their clothes are in the building the mayor had
condemned,” he reminded her. “It’s not as if I supplied them
with designer outfits. It was all I could do to persuade her to buy at Wal-Mart
instead of the Goodwill store.”

Actually, he hadn’t persuaded her. Taking advantage of
her habit of nonconfrontation, he’d simply driven to Wal-Mart instead of
Goodwill. She’d speared him with her eyes, but looks couldn’t kill,
and she hadn’t been able to say anything in front of the kids. Axell
smiled remembering Matty happily accepting everything he chose for him. The
teacher, on the other hand, had insisted she needed only clean underwear and a
shirt. Once he’d figured out her size, he’d bought her two new
maternity dresses and a big sweater to keep her warm on these cool spring nights.

She’d insisting on writing him an IOU. He’d
considered trashing it, but for whatever reason, he’d carefully folded it
up and tucked it away in his wallet as a reminder of how far he’d come.
The grand sum total of their purchases equaled what he paid to have his cars
detailed once a month.

“She’s playing innocent,” Katherine fumed.
“Just you wait. She’ll have you caught, hook, line, and
sinker—if you don’t wake up soon.”

She flounced off to her duty of greeting customers, leaving
Axell to consider her warning.

True, he’d always had a habit of helping those who
couldn’t help themselves. Marrying Angela had probably been a result of
that, but he’d been much,
much
younger then. Her parents had just
divorced and moved away. She’d bombed out of college as a result and
taken a job as waitress at the bar. His father had just died. One thing had led
to another and she’d ended up pregnant. Marriage had seemed the best
thing to do at the time. Now that he understood the complexities of the wedded
state, he’d never make that mistake again. He wasn’t cut out for
sharing his life. Angela had called him uptight and heartless, but he just
didn’t see the need to expose his insides for all to see.

He didn’t think Maya Alyssum much interested in
marriage either, or in him. He occasionally caught her looking at him as if he
were some fascinating but particularly repellent bug. There were way too many
differences between them to find a common ground. He figured he was safe.

From the schoolteacher, anyway. As he watched Mayor Ralph
Arnold enter with the mayor’s mother and Sandra on his arms, Axell
wasn’t at all certain he was safe in anything else that mattered. His
mother-in-law and Ralph’s mother were old buddies, or biddies, he revised
spitefully. Watching the three of them take a table was like watching the enemy
occupying his turf.

Feeling like the French Resistance struggling with the
German occupiers, Axell ordered his bartender to send over a bottle of wine.
He’d yet to lose a battle. He wouldn’t start now. Constance was
his, if he had to pay the schoolteacher’s salary to keep her.

Noting a drunk and disorderly situation building to his
left, Axell released some of his frustration by collaring the jerk and hauling
him out to the local taxi. The jerk began yelling “Police brutality!”
as Axell heaved him into the taxi’s back seat. Another night, it might
have amused him. With the mayor inside and his license on the line, the comment
only seared more acid through his stomach.

Under the guise of retrieving a drink from the bar, the
mayor was waiting for him when Axell returned.

“Your bartenders are pushing too many drinks,”
Ralph said coldly, rattling the ice in his glass. “This is a family town.
Drunken disturbances won’t be tolerated.”

Axell was more than familiar with the Southern propensity to
hide liquor behind closed doors. The vote to ban all alcohol sales had narrowly
lost in the last election. Taking a swig of the mineral water his bartender
handed him, Axell bit down on his temper. “You’ll not have my license
on that flimsy excuse, Ralph, and if you really want that school gone,
you’d better find new tactics.” Now that he had the schoolteacher
in the palm of his hand, maybe he could bluff the mayor into a trade-off.

“That shopping center is more important to this community
than any artsy liberal kindergarten,” the mayor warned. “I’ll
do what it takes to take care of the people who elected me.”

Axell snorted. “You’ll do what it takes to take
care of yourself, Ralph. I’ve got the schoolteacher. If you want my
cooperation, you’ll leave my bar alone.”

“Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
Nodding approval, the mayor returned to his table.

Axell squeezed the plastic bottle in his hand until water
squirted from the opening. How could he trade a school teacher for a liquor license?
Cursing silently, he escaped to the orderly chaos of the kitchen.

***

“You could have moved in with me, you moron,”
Selene exclaimed over the phone line, “but I can’t complain if
you’re sleeping with the enemy. That goes well beyond the line of duty.”

Maya wrinkled her nose at Selene’s commentary and
watched as Matty proudly taped his creation to the vast barren space of the
refrigerator door. He might not be good at letters yet, but he was definitely
expressive in paint. “I wouldn’t want to cramp your style,
girl,” she returned her attention to the conversation, “and
I’ll have you remember ‘sleeping’ is the only thing a woman
in my delicate condition can do.”

Selene clucked disapprovingly. “Shows how much you
know. Does this mean we have a serious advocate on the city council?”

“For as long as it suits his purposes.” Maya
eased her weight onto a kitchen stool. If this baby wasn’t born soon, her
feet would be flatter than Matty’s painting. “He’s not
half-bad, once you get to know him. Just kind of stiff and proper and
accustomed to having his way.” Remembering the clothes shopping incident,
she figured that was the polite way of putting it. “Domineering,”
was the better word.