Ready & Willing (21 page)

“Well, for example, the ability to converse about something other than the latest fashions or who did what at someone’s latest soiree.”

“Yeah, that would be admirable, all right,” Cecilia agreed, biting back a smile. “What else?”

He must have needed to think about that, because he didn’t reply right away. “Also, having skills beyond sewing and embroidery. The ability to ride vigorously, say, or enjoy a brandy without losing her faculties.”

“Yep, those are pretty admirable qualities, too,” Cecilia agreed. “But I can think of a few others.”

“Such as?”

“What about refusing to submit to marriage and wearing bloomers and protesting for the right to vote?” she asked. “I’d think those things would all be traits of a strong, admirable woman.”

This time, he didn’t hesitate at all. “No, Cecilia, those are traits of a rabble-rouser.”

She smiled again. “I would have been a rabble-rouser if I’d lived in your time.”

“And yet,” he said, “I would have welcomed your company anyway.”

She chuckled at that.

He added, “Once I bailed you out of jail, I mean.”

That made her actually laugh. Not a huge laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. And only after completing it did she realize how long it had been since she’d done that. Years, she marveled. It had been years since she last laughed.

“That, Cecilia, is the most delightful sound I believe I have ever heard,” Silas said. “Yet something tells me it’s one that isn’t often heard.”

He must have picked up on what she was thinking, she decided. Not that she was going to verify that for him. Instead, she only said, “Well, it’s been that kind of day.” For the last several years, she added to herself.

“No, that’s not it,” he disagreed with confidence. “I watched you today. You looked genuinely happy among Audrey’s clientele. Not so happy that you laughed,” he mused further, “but still happy.”

He was right, she thought, realizing it only now. She had been happy today. Only it hadn’t been Audrey’s clientele that made her feel that way. It had been the fact that she was doing something. Something productive, something she was good at, something that made her feel worthwhile. Vincent had robbed her of all those feelings while she was with him. She hadn’t felt like herself since . . .

Well. In a lot of ways, she’d never felt like herself. Because she’d never had a chance to figure out who
herself
was.

But today, some of herself had started to creep out. She had enjoyed working in Finery today. And she’d done a good job helping women figure out what they wanted and what styles suited them best. She’d enjoyed talking to Audrey, the first friend she’d made in a very long time. This had actually been a
good
day, she marveled. A very good day. And all because it was so wonderfully, astoundingly, deliciously . . .

Ordinary. The sort of day normal people lived. People who weren’t cowed by fear and looking over their shoulder and trying to shrink from life so no one would notice them. Yeah, okay, so she was talking to a ghost at the moment, which maybe wasn’t what most ordinary people did during their ordinary days. Somehow, Silas made it feel ordinary. Made it feel right. Made it feel normal.

Normal and ordinary
, Cecilia thought with satisfaction as she surveyed the room she’d just tidied, knowing she would be back in the morning to do it all over again. She had a normal, ordinary life. With the occasional conversation with a dead guy. All in all, not a bad way to go.

No, not a bad way to go at all.

Ten

WHEN NATHANIEL HAD AGREED TO LET AUDREY
choose their dinner destination the next time they met, he hadn’t realized she would pick the Chow Wagon, even if it was, as she had pointed out, a Derby tradition. For the few weeks prior to the race, a cornucopia of independent vendors—most of whom served their fare from garishly painted and luridly lit trailers more suited to a carnival midway—corralled themselves inside chain link fences in various places around town, serving the type of food that was guaranteed to harden arteries upon contact. Apple pie, barbecue, cole slaw—and that was just for the first three letters in the alphabet—along with ice cream, beer, pie, and deep-fried whatever-the-hell-you-want. And, it went without saying, that ancient, arcane gastronomic mainstay of Kentucky festivals, burgoo, a chililike concoction into which went everything except chilis. Inevitably, a stage was set up somewhere amidst the culinary mayhem for local bands to perform, making for often decent music, and always lousy acoustics. Acoustics made even lousier thanks to the accompaniment of the lawnmower-like din of scores of generators fueling all the garishly painted and luridly lit trailers.

In spite of that, the moment Nathaniel entered the Chow Wagon, he was transported back to his adolescence, when he and his friends would spend entire days here, wolfing down gyros and tiger ears and sno-cones, listening to Southern-fried rock and trying to buy beer with fake IDs that never fooled anyone. Even though nearly two decades had passed, the Chow Wagon hadn’t changed one iota. Hell, he’d even bet some of the people beind the counters of those trailers were the same ones who had waited on him when he was a kid.

But he wasn’t that kid anymore and hadn’t been for a very long time. He told himself the kind of man he had become should look around this place and find it, at best, plebeian, and, at worst, grotesque. It was exactly the kind of environment he avoided now, expressly because he didn’t want to be reminded of his humble beginnings. But he couldn’t quite keep himself from closing his eyes, filling his lungs with the mingling aromas of fried onions and tepid beer, and filling his ears with a scratchy, feedback-laden rendition of that bluegrass staple, “Rocky Top.” Somewhere in the distance, a woman laughed raucously, a man shouted coarsely to a friend, and a baby began to cry. And Nathaniel was surprised to discover that, contrary to being repelled by his surroundings, he actually wanted to smile. Because he realized that here, among the gaudy trailers and unhealthy food and blaring music, people were enjoying their lives. And they were enjoying them infinitely more than he had ever enjoyed his.

Well, except for a handful of nights as a teenager, when he and his friends came to the Chow Wagon.

He was grateful Audrey had selected the Chow Wagon downtown on the Belvedere so they had a gorgeous view of the Ohio River at sunset from the picnic table where they now sat. The
Belle of Louisville
, the city’s resident paddle wheeler, had just set off for an evening cruise, but hadn’t pulled so far away from the dock that she was out of view. Her bright red paddle wheel churned the brown water behind her, her cheery white decks festooned with twinkling lights. If he listened closely, he could still hear the calliope belting out an exuberant rendition of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” punctuated now and then with the jovial
Bwaaamp! Bwaaamp! Bwaaamp!
of her whistle.

Traffic was still brisk on the Second Street Bridge above the steamboat, the cars’ headlights bouncing along almost in time with the music as they headed to and from Indiana on the other side. The sun had dropped low on the horizon, tipping out a long, orangey spill of light over the shallow hills and historic buildings of New Albany, staining the rest of the skyline with pink and gold. The bluegrass band made way for one that played Southern rock, so at least they were giving the generators a run for their money. And although Nathaniel would have sworn he’d lost his taste for Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute bands when he was a teenager—mostly because he’d never had a taste for Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute bands to begin with—he had to admit the new guys weren’t half bad. Even more surprising, he didn’t mind drinking a tepid beer from a plastic cup when he could have been sipping a nice shiraz from Reidel crystal at any number of restaurants around town instead.

Tonight, for some reason, this wasn’t such a bad way to have dinner. Even if he did suspect that Audrey’s choice was probably her way of getting even with him for paying the bill for both of them three nights ago after underhandedly accosting their server for the bill when she slipped off to the ladies’ room.

Well, the joke was on her, he thought further. Because he was having a damned nice time. Which was weird, because in addition to not normally being comfortable in such surroundings, he wouldn’t have thought he would take pleasure in watching a woman sit at a picnic table covered with a plastic table cloth and eat burgoo out of a plastic foam bowl with disposable utensils. But damned if Audrey Magill didn’t make the activity look downright erotic. Even though erotic was the last thing she should have looked when the two of them were dressed so similarly. But where his jeans and midnight blue sweater were fairly nondescript, her jeans hugged her body like a second skin, and her pale sweater was woven with flecks of gold that complemented the black hair plaited into a fat braid that fell over one shoulder.

Even better, the neck of that sweater dipped low enough for him to see the elegant contours of her collarbones and the faintest hint of the upper swells of her breasts. It also, unfortunately, allowed him to see the twin lines of the gold chain dipping into that neckline, reminding him of the heavy ring that pulled it to its lowest point. The ring that had belonged to her husband. The ring she evidently had on her person at all times, because every time he’d seen her, he’d noticed that gold chain disappearing into whatever she’d had on.

Inescapably, his gaze fell to the ring on her left hand, too, which was infinitely more meaningful—and, to him, more troubling—than the one she wore around her neck.

And why was it so troubling?
he asked himself. From his very first meeting with Audrey Magill, he’d been struck again and again by how different she was from the women he normally dated. He’d reminded himself over and over how she was the last sort of woman with whom he should get involved. It didn’t matter how beautiful she looked across a candlelit table. It didn’t matter that he’d had more meaningful conversations with her than he’d ever had with anyone. It didn’t matter how good it felt to have her weave her fingers with his. And it didn’t matter that he could be sitting in the sort of environment he normally disdained and suddenly find it charming, just because she happened to be in it, too.

None of that mattered. Because Audrey Magill was the sort of woman who continued to wear her wedding ring years after her marriage had ended. She was the sort of woman who remained faithful to the memory of her husband, even after that husband’s death. She was the sort of woman for whom feelings obviously ran very, very deep. The sort of woman who, when she fell in love, stayed in love forever. And he . . .

Hell, he was a guy who was so detached from his emotions that he couldn’t even hang on to his own soul.

Nathaniel shoved back a wave of discontent and returned his attention to her face, but all that did was make him realize again how beautiful she was, even absent any cosmetic enhancement. He also noticed how much she was savoring her burgoo, and that, finally, made him smile.

He’d never seen anyone enjoy eating as much as she did. Especially women. Usually, when he took a woman out to dinner, she ordered crap. Salads and broiled chicken and other such tasteless, texture-free fare. But two night’s ago at Buck’s, she’d eaten the bulk of their scallop appetizer, cleaned her plate of baked goat cheese salad, ate every bite of her strip steak—with blue cheese and mushrooms—and then had refused to share so much as a nibble of her mocha dacquoise with him, insisting he had to order his own. And tonight, the burgoo was just for starters. She’d also heaped high on her red plastic tray a bratwurst, an onion rosette, a corndog, and an elephant ear. Oh, and fudge, which she said she was taking home with her, but she was already eyeing it with as much interest as she was showing everything else, so his money was on mass consumption by night’s end.

Still he had to admit it was good to see a woman with an appetite for a change. Inevitably, though, before he could stop the thought from coming, he found himself wondering if her appetites extended to something besides food.

Three years, he marveled. That was how long her husband had been dead. And since she’d told him she still considered herself to be married, it must mean it had been three years since she’d been with a man. He tried to remember what he’d been doing three years ago. Let’s see . . . He hadn’t opened his downtown office yet, and he’d been living in the east end. Wow. That was a long time ago. Then he tried to remember the last time he’d had sex. Less than a month ago, he recalled, when an old college flame had come to town on business and looked him up for a weekend hookup. Even that felt like forever. He couldn’t imagine going three years without sex.

But Audrey Magill had. The woman must be made of ice.

He watched as she picked up her corndog and nibbled the end, closing her eyes in near ecstasy and making one of those
mmm-mmm-mmm
sounds women made whenever they were close to orgasm or eating Godiva chocolate. Then she opened her mouth wider and covered the end of the corndog completely, her full lips closing around it in a way that made Nathaniel’s cock twitch.

Oh, great. Just what he needed. A Beavis and Butthead reaction to carnival food. Being reduced to a hormonally driven thirteen-year-old in this, his forty-second year of life, after having bedded more women than a thirteen-year-old could even dream about.

Naturally, Audrey opened her eyes then and caught Nathaniel watching her. God only knew what she saw in his face, because her eyes went wide, and she gagged a little on the corndog before pulling it out of her mouth. But where that should have thrown a bucket of cold water on any errant erotic—and adolescent—ideas he might have been having, instead he found himself wanting to reach across the table to close his fingers around the corndog and guide it back to her mouth, then encourage her to try again, taking all of it this time.

It was immediately clear that she was uncomfortable under his scrutiny, which meant—damn—she’d probably known exactly what he was thinking about. Well, except for how he’d had her dressed in knee socks and a little plaid skirt, but they were both probably better off not having that part made clear. After mumbling something about saving the porndog—ah, he meant
corn
dog, of course—for later, she wrapped it in a napkin and went to work on her elephant ear instead, and Nathaniel resigned himself to getting no satisfaction tonight.