Mr. Fix-It (15 page)

“You?” Carter asked.

“No,” Khela chuckled. “
You
.”

“You know, if Miss Angela upsets you so much, you don’t have to shop here,” he suggested. “I think you like scrappin’ with that gal. Everybody else tells you how much they love your books, but that one doesn’t cotton to ’em.”

Khela hid a guilty smile. “I appreciate her candor, to be sure. And she’s interesting, too. She’s a
real
character, unlike so many of the other characters I spend my time with.”

Chapter 9

“A lover doesn’t have to be your friend, but the best lovers start out as best friends.”

—from
Mr. Wrong
by Khela Halliday

Balancing three paper bags of groceries in his arms, Carter used his chin to shift the greens on the beets in the center bag to keep them from obscuring his view as he stepped off the curb and into the street. He stopped, waiting for a break in traffic. But Khela, walking beside him, was staring at her feet and continued forward. Blaring its horn, an oncoming Yellow Cab showed no sign of stopping. Dropping the bags, Carter lunged forward and yanked Khela from the path of the speeding taxi.

“Cockass!” he yelled after the taxi before turning his full attention back to a shaken Khela. “Wanna tell me what’s got your eyes turned so far inward that you’ve forgotten how to cross a street?” Carter’s heart throbbed painfully as he walked her a short way to a bench at a bus shelter.

She seemed to have trouble catching her breath, but had little to say once she had. “Someone’s going to steal our groceries.”

“Let ’em.” Carter squatted before her. “You’ve been odd and moody all day. What’s on your mind? Is it still Mangela?”

She shook her head, fixing her gaze on something beyond Carter’s shoulder.

He cupped her face, gently urging her to look at him. She obliged, and his concern shattered her emotionless façade.

“Hey, now,” he said tenderly. He used the pads of his thumb to strike away the tears seeping from her eyes. “Is it really as bad as all that?”

“It’s not bad at all,” she croaked. “It’s good. Daphne is getting married.”

Carter’s face broke into a wide smile. “That’s a good one,” he chuckled. “You almost had me there.”

“I’m not kidding,” Khela wept. “She told me yesterday afternoon. She’s running off with that auctioneer. She’s leaving in a few weeks. They’re getting married, and then he’ll be taking her to the other side of the Atlantic.”

“Seems kinda quick to me,” Carter said.

“Duh!” Khela agreed, giving voice to her inner adolescent. “And he’s a lot older than she is.”

“How old is he? Fifty?”

“He’s thirty-seven, but he looks fifty, doesn’t he?”

“No,” Carter grinned. “I was just being a smart ass.”

A big navel orange rolled into the street, and Khela recognized it as hers since it had a hole in it about the same width as Angela’s thumb. She got up and retrieved one of the bags lying on its side at the curb.

Carter collected the other two bags, shoving a cello-wrapped package of celery hearts and a box of whole-wheat spaghetti back into a bag. They continued to Khela’s building in silence until they reached the front door.

“You and Daphne have been together a long time, haven’t you?” Carter asked, standing aside as Khela unlocked the massive door.

“Since freshman year in college,” Khela answered. “We were assigned to the same dorm room. We’re total opposites, but we hit it off right away.” Clutching the heavy bag of groceries to her chest, Khela used her foot to hold the door open for Carter. “Apparently, she’s secretly hated me ever since.”

“I doubt that.” Carter walked ahead of Khela and pressed the
up
button for the elevator. “You two are thicker than thieves. Daphne’s crazy about you.”

“You got the crazy part right,” Khela scoffed, entering the elevator. “She accused me of being completely self-centered. She says that I turn everything she tells me about her life into something about me.”

“Do you?” Carter used the toe of his sneaker to press the button for the top floor.

“I can’t believe you think that—”

Khela’s complaint was cut off when Carter set down his bags, cupped Khela’s face and brought his lips to hers. Khela’s bag tumbled out of her arms, once again spilling its contents. Her arms went around Carter’s neck, his hands went to her waist, and Khela found herself pressed against the back of the car.

Carter’s hands moved over her backside on their way to her thighs, where he clutched her, to help her boost herself onto the brass rail along the back of the elevator.

Carter’s lips sought her throat, then traveled farther south, to the opening of her crisp white sleeveless shirt. “We can’t do this here,” she breathed hard in his ear. “Someone will walk in on us.”

Smiling, Carter shot out a hand and activated the emergency stop button. The elevator whined to a halt, bouncing slightly as it hung by its unseen cables. Carter returned to Khela and began unfastening the prim white buttons on her shirt.

“The day you moved in, I fantasized about what I could do to you in this brass box,” he told her.

“Sex in an elevator is such a cliché,” Khela moaned as his tongue dipped into her ear.

“You call it a cliché, I call it a dream come true,” Carter murmured. “Every time I ride this elevator, I think about what it would be like to take you for a ride in it.”

His confession gave Khela an extra thrill, but she masked her enjoyment by smiling at the roof as Carter exposed the white lace cups of her bra. She surrendered to him, her body and mind devoted to the pleasures he offered so generously.

This was the third of the fourteen days she’d given him, and Khela found herself hoping that day four would never come, only because it meant they would be one day closer to parting ways. In satisfying one of his fantasies, Carter brought to life one of Khela’s, which was to experience the kind of spontaneous couplings she wrote about. Carter was gentle, unhurried and completely devoted to satisfying her. His touch sure and knowing, he exhausted her with his loving.

“It’s like something from one of my books,” she sighed, fastening the buttons of her shirt as he embraced her from behind. “Real men never give women the kind of attention you just gave me.”

“Is that so?” Carter asked innocently. “Are you speaking for all women, or just your own experience?”

“I’m speaking for myself and all of the women who write telling me that their husbands and lovers don’t listen.” Khela zipped up her khaki shorts and then shoved her foot into the Keds sneaker that had flown off in the middle of their romp. “In my books, when my heroine tells the hero what she wants, he does it. He doesn’t make faces or act stupid, and he’s certainly not selfish.” She pressed her body to Carter’s, hooking her arms under his to hug him. “You could give lessons in how to make a woman feel like the only woman in the world.”

“The only woman in the world for
me
,” Carter quickly clarified.

Khela slowly drew away from him, unsure whether she should be confused or surprised. “That’s…uh…th-that’s just about the nicest thing any man has ever said to me,” she remarked with a soft laugh. “It actually sounds like a line from one of my books.”

Carter bent down and once again picked up the groceries. “We’d better get these dairy products up to your fridge,” he said in a rush. “Can’t have your fancy mozzarella going bad before you get a chance to eat it.”

“You’re gonna love that fancy mozzarella once I put fresh basil, sliced Roma tomatoes and white balsamic vinegar over it.”

Carter deactivated the emergency stop, declaring, “I would never pay twelve dollars a pound for a little knot of cheese.”

“Say that with a straight face after you taste it,” Khela challenged him as the elevator lurched into motion, jostling her into Carter. “There’s only about four ounces there. Just enough to taste.”

“That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. “You introduce me to the finer things in life.”

Khela righted herself, her smile fading as she turned to face the elevator doors. Carter continued talking, but his last words,
The finer things in life
, echoed between her ears, deafening her to whatever he was saying.

* * *

“Are you going to get that?” Carter asked over the tenth ring of the phone sitting on the ornate cherry wood table near the dining room table.

“No.” Khela stubbornly turned away from the phone. “It’s just Daphne again.”

Carter, rattling the silver bag of Scrabble tiles, shook his head. “You should talk to her. She obviously wants to talk to you. And she’ll be gone before you know it. Labor Day isn’t that far off.”

Khela watched him set five new tiles on his rack. She had been delighted when he’d agreed to play her favorite board game, and he kept her on her toes with the words he spelled. FOLKS had left him five tiles short, but he closed the points between his score and Khela’s to sixty-five.

Ordinarily, Khela had a cutthroat, take-no-prisoners approach to Scrabble. If she won by two hundred or more points, so be it. But her heart wasn’t in the game, not with Daphne calling every few minutes.

“Khela,” Carter said, a plaintive note in his voice.

She scowled at her tiles, trying to ignore the incessant ringing of the phone.

“She obviously knows you’re here. The only way you’re going to get her to stop calling is to talk to her.”

“What am I supposed to say?” Khela asked petulantly. She jostled the wooden table when she slapped down six tiles, one covering a red triple word square, to spell JINGLY while turning Carter’s FOLKS into FOLKSY.

Carter calculated Khela’s score, which put her up another ninety-three points. “In all the years you’ve lived here, I’ve never known you and Daphne to have a fight.”

The phone stopped ringing, and Khela stared at it as if it had betrayed her somehow. “She pitched the biggest jealousy fit in Starbucks. It was sickening.”

Carter started to speak, but Khela talked over him. “Do you know how many times I offered to give her manuscripts to my editors?”

“Three?” Carter randomly suggested.

“Try three dozen, but she always refused!” Khela gave the three Is in her tray a disgusted sneer. “She wants to get published on her own, with no help from anybody. Even if I gave her a leg up by getting her work in front of an editor, it won’t get published unless it’s good. I don’t know why she won’t let me give her a shortcut.”

“Some folks like doing things all on their own,” Carter said. “Considering all the strangers who ask you to forward their work to your publisher, you should be glad that Daphne doesn’t want to hitch a ride on your coattails.”

“Daphne is ten times a better writer than I am, a hundred times! She’s a good storyteller
and
a good writer. Do you know how rare that is?”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

Khela fussily pinched her lips together and glared at him. “Of course not. Almost anyone can open their mouths and tell a story that holds your attention. Very few people can sit at a keyboard and create stories that do with words what Monet did with paint.”

“Or what Mozart did with music.”

Clearly appreciating his understanding, Khela relaxed, the tension leaving her face. “Exactly.”

“The best writers tell beautiful stories beautifully,” Carter said.

“Who’s your favorite author?” she asked him, the new topic mollifying her unhappiness over her fight with Daphne.

“You are.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, who else besides me?”

“I’ve always liked F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

Khela’s eyebrows rose. “Really? I would have pegged you for a Hemingway fan.”

“He’s too macho for me.”

“You’re macho,” Khela giggled. “It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

“Don’t confuse macho with manly,” he advised.

“Point taken,” Khela said. “It’s your turn, you know.”

“I know.” Carter’s gaze moved from his tile rack to the game board and back again. “You didn’t give me much to work with in your new word, and there’s not much I can do with no vowels.”

Khela grabbed Carter’s wrist and glanced at his watch. “Are you hungry? If we leave now, we can beat the dinner rush at Pizzeria Regina.”

Carter began packing up the game. “You bought all that overpriced cheese just to let it sit in the fridge? Let’s eat in tonight. I’ll cook.”

“Shoot, I won’t turn down an offer like that,” Khela grinned. “You can cook, can’t you?”

“What do you think?” Carter asked suggestively.

“I think there’s not a whole lot you aren’t good at.”

He closed the Scrabble box and took her hand, clasping it atop the box. “That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Well…” Khela cast her eyes down shyly. “It’s true. You surprise me with the things you know and the things you can do.”

“You thought I was just another pretty face?”

Khela looked at him, unsure if she’d actually heard a note of sadness in his question. “You’re more than just another pretty face. You have one of the best faces I’ve ever seen.”

Rising from the table, Carter pulled his hand from hers. “I kinda wish you’d stop saying that.”

“Saying what? Did I say something wrong?”

He took the Scrabble box and returned it to its home atop Monopoly and underneath Yahtzee on the oak bookcase spanning one wall of Khela’s living room. “How do you feel about pasta for dinner?”

“I thought you said you could cook,” Khela said, hoping to douse the flicker of tension that had suddenly risen between them. “Boiling pasta isn’t cooking.”

“You gotta cook to make a good sauce.” He went to the kitchen and began opening cabinets and the refrigerator, collecting the items he would need. “Mind if I use some of the vine-ripened tomatoes?”

“Go ahead,” Khela said. “Just leave me two of them.”

She sat back in her comfortable wing chair, listening to Carter’s movements in the kitchen. The wall dividing the kitchen from the living and dining room areas kept him out of sight, but his quiet humming and murmured words reached her ears. And touched her heart in unexpected ways. The soft Southern purr of his accent took her years back to the summer vacations she spent in Mississippi and Alabama visiting the older relatives of her adopted family.

Her Great Aunt Sugar in Tupelo had been born in Mobile, Alabama, and had moved to Mississippi after marrying Grady Robertson, a man from Jackson. While there was no mistaking the part of the country from which Sugar and Grady hailed, their dialects couldn’t have sounded more different to Khela.

Grady’s was clipped, while Sugar’s was languid. Sugar had a touch of the Gulf in her speech, and no matter how hard Khela had tried to copy it, she couldn’t make her mouth form words into such lovely sounds.