Impossible Dreams (44 page)

“It’s all right,” he murmured, stroking
her back, wishing he knew something, anything, about comforting women in
moments of disaster. “No one’s hurt.”

That wasn’t enough. He had more to say, but
didn’t know how to say it.

She nodded against his chest, hiccups shaking her through
the sobs. “I can’t look, Axell. Tell me they’re all
okay.”

“Muldoon’s on Matty’s head, yowling.
There’s a teenager rocking Alexa. Your teachers are explaining to the
kids what the firemen are doing. They’re all fine. You’re the one
who scared me out of my wits. So help me, Maya, if you ever do anything like
that again...” He still shook with fear. This isn’t what he’d
meant to say. The words pounded at his chest and screamed in his heart, needing
release.

“The school is a loss,” she whispered what they
both already knew.

“I’ll build you another,” he promised.
“We’ll make it look just like this one, if you like. I know
contractors, architects...”

He couldn’t help it, her quiet hiccups tore at his
already shredded insides. Axell pulled her into his arms, for all the world to
see. As she buried her face against his shirt, the fear of never being able to
say the words caused them to pour out in a rush. “I love you,
Maya.” The fear of never being able to say the words caused them to pour
out in a rush. “I love you, and I don’t want to lose you,
too.”

She looked up at him through tear-glazed eyes. All the
wonder and excitement he so prized shone back at him now. “You love
me?” she whispered, then hiccupped again. Embarrassed, she buried her
head against his shirt. “No one’s ever told me they loved me
before.”

“I do. I love everything about you. I love your purple
hair and purple flowers and kaleidoscope eyes. I don’t want to live
without you, Maya. It’s been driving me crazy, trying to pretend I
don’t care when it’s tearing me apart. I couldn’t bear it if
I lost you.”

“If you love me, you can’t lose me,” she
said insensibly, her words muffled as she swung her head back and forth.
“You can’t lose the ones you love, Axell,” she announced more
emphatically, lifting her head and defying him to argue. “Haven’t
you learned that?”

She rubbed her eyes and tried to speak firmly, but her voice
cracked. “I was only ten when I lost my mother, but I can remember how
her hair bobbed up and down when she laughed, how she loved pushing us in the
swings, how the wind felt blowing through my hair as I swung higher and higher
and she laughed with such joy...”

She gulped on a sob and Axell crushed her closer. Just to
hear her voice was Beethoven’s Fifth and a child’s laughter all
wrapped into one. He understood joy again. Ice shards of his heart melted into
warm, rainbowed puddles.

“And my father,” she continued brokenly.
“He used to wear ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots and swing me up in his
arms and call me his cowgirl. He’d put his hat on my head and it would
cover me up to the shoulders and we’d laugh and laugh. He bought me
cowboy boots of my own. God, I loved him so much. And he’s still here. He
is
,” she insisted when he didn’t respond soon enough.

“What happened to them?” Axell asked quietly,
slowly absorbing her words, working them around inside himself to see how they
fit, pulling out memories of his own parents and trying to put them into the
picture.

She wiped her eyes on his shirt. “My mother died of
appendicitis. We were poor. We didn’t have insurance. She figured it was
just a stomach ache. By the time she collapsed and the neighbors called an
ambulance, it was too late.”

Axell clutched her tighter as she wept. She had so much love
inside her, and now he saw where it came from. Her mother had died to save the
pennies for food on their table. He could see it because that was what Maya
would do. “And your father?”

She hiccupped. “When he lost his job here and we
started drifting, he started drinking. My mother had a thing about alcohol, so
she started nagging. That made him drink more. They broke up when I was pretty
little, but I remember the arguments. I never saw him again. We never knew what
happened to him until the social workers went looking for him after Mom died.
They found out he died in a drunk-driving accident in Texas. Some days, I could
never forgive him, but I can’t forget him either.”

She was weeping quietly now, a torrent of tears and
heartaches Axell couldn’t bear as his own memories flooded through him.
He knew love. Maybe it wasn’t a loud and joyous love filled with laughter
and tears like Maya’s, but it was strong and solid and he could offer it
to her, if she would accept it.

“Come home with me, please,” he pleaded.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to make you love me, Maya. I’m
sorry, so sorry I’m such an ass. I’ll never tell you what to do
again. You can have cowboy hats and swings and the school and anything you like.
You were right and I was wrong and I’ll get down on my damned knees and
beg if I have to...”

Her sobs began to shake suspiciously like laughter. Warily,
Axell lifted his head from hers and tried to see her face. She buried it in his
shoulder and clutched his shirt tighter. He’d ruined more shirts this
way... He’d have to start buying wash-and-wear.

“Don’t b-beg,” she stuttered into his
shirt between sobs and laughter. “Please don’t beg, then I’d
have to grovel and I’m really no good at it. God, Axell, just hold me.
Tell me you love me some more. I love you so much it scares hell out of me and
I don’t know what to do about it, and running just seemed simplest, but
it’s not, really.”

She practically disappeared into his arms when he held her
this close. He’d hold her closer if he could, pull her inside of him
where she could never be hurt again. Pain and joy ripped at what remained of
his insides. Or his heart, or whatever it was Maya had gotten into and claimed
for her own. She could have it. He didn’t need it anymore. He just needed
her — and the dreams she made possible.

“I love you, Maya, I need you. We all need you.
Don’t ever do this to me again.”

She nodded against his chest. Her sobs had lessened
somewhat. She hiccupped. “I was coming home, honest. I decided if I meant
to learn to fight, it ought to be for something more important than a building.
It’s all right about the school. It’s just boards and walls. I
shouldn’t have hurt you, though, or Constance. I won’t do it again,
I promise.”

Something tight and hard unfurled inside Axell’s
chest, and he relaxed and loosened his grip enough to rub her back.
“It’s all right if you need a time-out every once in a while. You
can swim to some safe place and come back again when you’re ready.
We’ll understand, just as long as we know you’re coming
back.”

She lifted her head, and red-rimmed eyes shimmered with
tears as she gazed at him worshipfully. “Loving you is the scariest thing
I’ve ever done, Axell Holm. If you understand me any better, I’ll
feel like a walking, talking crystal ball.”

He grinned. “Don’t worry. You’re more like
a kaleidoscope. I can see through you, but boy, is it confusing. Not to
mention, colorful.” He glanced over her shoulder. “And speaking of
colorful...” He sighed in expectation of the walking, talking disaster
climbing out of the police car at the end of the drive. “Here comes your
sister.”

Staying solidly within the circle of Axell’s arms,
Maya turned to watch as Cleo gathered up Matty and cat and purposefully strode
in their direction. She couldn’t bear watching the school go up in
flames, so she focused on what was important. Cleo trailing a policeman was
important.

She wiped her tears on the back of her hand and waited.
Axell’s arms made everything all right. He’d said he loved her.
Axell loved her for herself, just as she was, without any compromises. The
words smiled in her heart and the world glowed brighter. She could handle
anything right now.

“I used up all your honey,” Cleo declared
harshly as she came within speaking distance.

Puzzled, Maya blinked. “That’s okay, I’ll
buy more. Your teapot’s safe. I’ve got it in the car.”

Hugging Matty against her, Cleo nodded and looked past Maya
to Axell. “Cueball is puking his guts all over the police station.”

Axell’s arms tightened around Maya. She had the
feeling she wasn’t catching something here. “Who’s Cueball?
Does he have food poisoning?”

Axell stroked her reassuringly as if she were a darned cat,
and she glared over her shoulder at him. He was looking worried but that
curious light gleamed in his eyes.

He watched her carefully as he answered. “The fires
weren’t accidental.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she
practically spat out. “And if I ever get my hands on the
slimeball...” Her eyes widened as she read their expressions in a different
light. “You know who did it!” And then the honey statement kicked
in.

Maya stared at her sister with disbelief. “You
didn’t? Tell me you didn’t, Cleo?”

Cleo shrugged. “The shop had a little ant problem.
I’ll call the exterminator when I get back.”

Maya could sense Axell struggling to follow, but she
couldn’t explain. She still didn’t believe. “They have fire
ants down here, Cleo,” she said in horror. “Tell me they
weren’t fire ants.”

Cleo scratched her son’s head and didn’t offer
any expression at all. “He sells dope to kids, Maya. He offs old men for
refusing to help him hide the stuff. He sets fire to buildings, little sis. I
made sure they were fire ants, just like the last time.”

The policeman was almost grinning, even if Cleo didn’t
crack a muscle. “We had to take a hose to him. Any time he doesn’t
answer a question, we turn the water off. Mr. Holm, we need to ask you some
questions when you have a chance.”

Maya heard Axell choking behind her. She wasn’t
certain if it was laughter or not, and she refused to turn and find out. She
didn’t have a violent bone in her body. She remembered the time Cleo had
dumped honey over one of her tormentors and left him for the ants to find. It
hadn’t been funny then. It wasn’t funny now.

Smelling the smoke as her dream and a century of history
burned to ashes, Maya thought maybe it wasn’t funny, but it sure the hell
was justified.

She watched as Headley limped through the crowd of
onlookers. Parents had started arriving to take their children home. Several of
the matrons from the Garden Club were shaking their heads and checking the
roses on the boundaries to see if they’d survived the intense heat, and
flood from the fire hoses.

The plants near the house would be a total loss. Maya
couldn’t turn and look. She could still hear the hiss of hoses and steam.
Even if they saved part of the structure, it couldn’t be rebuilt. She
leaned into Axell’s embrace. She could stand on her own if she wanted.
She just didn’t want to right now.

“I’m sorry, Maya,” Headley said with complete
sincerity as he reached them. “I’m getting old and not as quick as
I used to be. If I’d put two and two together a little faster...”

“The pusher killed Pfeiffer,” Axell interrupted
coldly. “But someone paid him to burn the school. Who?”

“It’s not what you’re thinking,
Axell,” the reporter said warningly. “There isn’t any way you
could...”

Maya watched with interest as a silver Mercedes halted in
the driveway and the mayor leapt out, searching the crowd frantically. As soon
as he saw them, he hurried in their direction. Amazingly enough, Selene slipped
elegantly from the passenger side and sauntered in his wake.

Headley caught the object of Maya’s interest and
stopped what he was about to say until the newcomers arrived.

“Hello, Cousin,” Maya said dryly as Mayor Arnold
approached. Behind her, Axell groaned and squeezed her shoulder warningly, but
she wasn’t afraid of Ralph Arnold.

The mayor shot Maya a dubious look but turned his full
attention on the elderly reporter. “Headley, damn you, if you report this,
I’ll rip your head off and stuff it down the toilet.”

Headley shrugged his sloping shoulders and tut-tutted.

“Admit it, Ralph,” Selene said in a bored voice,
“You picked the wrong investment this time. I warned you, but you
wouldn’t listen. There are plenty of entrepreneurs right here who could
make money hand over fist, but no, you had to go hunting down Yankee
strangers.”

“Selene, so help me,” Arnold glared at his
companion, “I’ll paddle your rear end if you don’t shut up
and let me handle this myself.”

Selene beamed and tousled his moussed hair.
“Promise?”

Maya stared at her partner in astonishment but didn’t
manage a word. The byplay looked entirely sexual to her, but what did she know?
Selene was perfectly capable of consorting with the enemy for her own purposes.
But what about Katherine?

The mayor gripped Selene’s wrist and pulled her out of
his hair as he faced Maya and Axell. “I know what everyone is saying, but
I didn’t have anything to do with this,” he declared. “I have
the connections to get that road through here without taking such drastic
measures. But I won’t,” he added hastily. “I’m
recalling the petition for a through road. The shopping center operation is
defunct until new investment money is found.”

It was a little late for that, Maya thought, but she merely
snuggled into Axell’s arms and pretended this was all a movie. She kind
of liked being a hooked fish. She would face the disaster of the school when
she was stronger.

“Tell it all, Mayor,” Headley prompted.
“The whole town will know it sooner or later.”

Ralph gritted his teeth and glanced helplessly at the small
crowd of people around them. “Let me just talk to Axell.”

At any other time, Maya would have objected, but she read
something in the mayor’s face that spoke of desperation, and she thought
she was beginning to understand. Squeezing Axell’s hand as he started to
protest, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Cleo and I
will see to the kids. I can’t bear watching the place burn to ashes. Come
home and tell me about it later.”