What Were You Expecting? (26 page)

Emma had probably been knocking at the door for several moments, but they hadn’t heard her through Maggie’s tirade. “Everything okay in there? I got the coffee.”

Nils gave Maggie a hard, humorless look, then stood up and opened the door for Emma, who glanced nervously between them, finally setting the cups down on the conference table before turning to leave.

As she walked out, Beck walked back in, brushing past Nils to go to Maggie, taking stock of her flushed cheeks and rigid posture. He rounded the table to sit beside her, putting his arm around her stiff shoulders. He gave Nils a menacing look as he shook his head back and forth, his hand rubbing her upper arm like he had a right to touch her.

“What’s wrong with you? Haven’t you hurt her
enough
?”

Staring back at Beck’s furious expression, Nils felt ashamed. He had, of course. He’d probably been hurting her for years. But he wanted to change that.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, still holding onto the door he’d opened for Emma. Maggie didn’t even glance up at him. He reached for the packet on the table and picked it up, nodding at Beck while Maggie stared wordlessly at the table. “I’ll have them done by Wednesday.”

Then he turned and strode out of the conference room, away from Beck, away from Maggie, into the warm evening air.

***

By the time Beck drove Maggie home, she wasn’t stewing anymore. She was embarrassed by her outburst. Not that Nils didn’t deserve it, but Maggie liked keeping a cool head. It made her cheeks flush with heat when she reviewed her short speech.

“I guess that didn’t go so well,” said Beck, as he pulled up in front of the Prairie Dawn, letting the engine of his BMW idle as he turned to her. “I’m so sorry I had to take that phone call. I promised I wouldn’t leave you alone with him and—”

“No, Beck,” she reassured him. “You’ve been so great to me. Please don’t apologize. How’s Francine Sparrow?”

“Still angry. We’re not getting anywhere. It’s almost like she’s holding onto her anger to hold on to Hank. The longer she throws roadblocks into the mix, the longer it’ll take to finalize the divorce.”

“Then she’d be wise to let go. Hank Sparrow is a philanderin’ ass.”

“More and more? I think she loves him. In spite of what he did. I don’t think she can turn off the way she feels about him, no matter how much she wishes she could.”

“More’s the pity for her, then.”

“We can’t help what we want, can we?”

He leaned over to kiss her good-night and without thinking first or meaning to, she drew back quickly, hitting her head lightly on the window in retreat. The movement was instinctual, and therefore definitive, and Beck’s face fell as he processed what it meant.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Sort of knew it would turn out this way.”

“What way?”

“When he got home.”

“N-no, Beck. No. I’m through with him. He—he left without a word, he doesn’t want me l-like that—he’s an overgrown man-child who canna even—”

“Maggie.” His eyes were kind and resigned. “Francine Sparrow can’t turn off the way she feels about Hank, no matter how much she wishes she could.” He paused and then continued, his voice measured and sensible with an underpinning of regret. “The day you married him, you told me, ‘It’s always been Nils for me.’ Remember that?”

She bit her bottom lip. Hard. Hard enough to taste blood. Then whispered, “Aye.”

“That hasn’t changed has it?” he tilted her chin upward with his finger. “Please be honest with me. I think I’ve earned that.”

She couldn’t seem to make the words, so she stared at him, feeling miserable.
No, it hasn’t changed. I tried so hard to hate him and all it took was one meeting for all of those feelings to rush back again. I can’t hate him and I’m so confused I could cry.

“Maggie? Has that changed? Because this is me giving up. If you don’t want that, say something right now. Tell me to hold on. Tell me not to walk away. Tell me not to give up hope.”

Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. “It hasn’t changed.”

He swallowed uncomfortably, dropping his finger from her chin and nodding. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“I’m not,” he said, offering her a regretful smile. “It was nice to hope again. It’s been a long time. A long, long time.”

“I hope you find someone, Beck. You’re such a very good man.”

“He doesn’t deserve you,” he mumbled.

She leaned over the bolster between them and kissed his cheek then drew back, making sure it was okay.

“Now
she kisses me,” he said with a sad grin.

She giggled through the last of her tears and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “Friends?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She waved as he pulled away then took her keys from her pocket and walked around the café to the back door that led to her apartment. She could make out a shadowed figure sitting on the stoop with his head hunched over his knees, and her muscles tightened in a fight-or-flight response until she noticed the shock of whitish-blond hair illuminated by her front door light.

Nils looked up as she approached, shifting his position slightly to rest his elbows on his knees and stare at her from the meager pool of light.

“What’re you doin’ here?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips in an annoyed stance and wishing her stomach would stop fluttering like crazy every time she saw him. It was hard to look indifferent when your whole body responded to someone like hers responded to Nils.

He stood up gracefully, picking up the questionnaire that had been sitting beside him.

“Need to talk to you.”

The easy-going act he was putting on at Beck’s office was more stilted now, but his eyes still looked far more relaxed and less hooded than she’d ever seen them. Maybe he
had
done some serious thinking, because she could see that he was different. She could tell that something had changed.

“What about?”

“Maggie, give me a break,” he deadpanned, his blue eyes searing in the dimness of her porch lamp. “This is bigger than you and me.”

“Fine.” She flicked a glance at her front door, remembering the last time they were alone in her apartment. Better to have a wide copper bar between them. “I’ll open the café. We can sit and talk…for a minute.”

Without waiting for his answer, she turned and headed to the front of the building, unlocking the door and flipping on the lights as he followed behind. “Do you want coffee?” she asked over her shoulder.

“No, don’t go to the trouble.”

“It’s a coffee shop. It’s not trouble. Do you want a cup or not?” She walked to the end of the bar, feeling slightly easier as soon as the familiar barrier stood between them.

“Sure. Decaf.”

She switched on the coffee maker and measured out the grounds, trying to calm her pounding heart with the mundane tasks that filled her regular days. She felt him behind her as he pulled out a stool and settled himself on it. His questionnaire hit the bar lightly, but she still didn’t turn around.

“Maggie, it’s not going to work,” he said quietly.

Her heart, which had been cantering, kicked into a gallop. Was he refusing to go to the interview? Did he want to surrender to the federal government and confess their marriage was fraudulent? Didn’t he understand that she’d be depor—

“I can’t learn all this stuff sitting across a conference table from you in some lawyer’s office, who happens to be the guy you’re dating. With him breathing down my neck, I’m either going to punch his lights out or use all of my energy not punching his lights out, but either way I’m not going to absorb anything.”

Her tightly bunched shoulders relaxed and she closed her eyes for a moment, exhaling. He wasn’t trying to get out of the interview. She thought about telling him that she and Beck weren’t seeing each other anymore but decided against it. Jealousy was a good motivator for Nils, and she needed him motivated. Taking a deep breath, she turned around, trying to keep her face impassive and expression hard. “What exactly do you suggest?”

“We need to spend time together.” He shook his head, looking down at the counter. “I know that spending time with me sounds pretty awful to you. I know I hurt you when I left. I didn’t mean to, I just…I couldn’t—I wasn’t ready for…”

“I never offered you anythin’,” she said, her cheeks blazing hot as she turned around to pour two cups of coffee into brightly painted ceramic mugs. She took cream from the mini fridge by her legs and put in the amount that he liked. She swirled it and placed it on the counter in front of him.

“I know that.” He exhaled loudly, picking up his cup and wincing at the heat as he took a sip. “I’m not good at this.”

“You were sayin’ we need to spend time together.”

“Yeah. I think…I mean, I wasn’t that great at book learning. You know, just learning a bunch of facts from a book or a—a questionnaire.” He swiped disdainfully at the packet on the bar in front of him. “I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want you to be deported. I did a lot of reading on the internet last night after I got your text. This Stokes interview? It’s hardcore, Maggie. We need to appear married. Really married. Not green-card married.”

She took a tentative sip of her coffee then leaned her elbows on the counter, looking up at him as he continued.

“And we’re not going to look married by memorizing a bunch of facts. You can read that my mother died of cancer, but I think you’ll answer the question totally differently if you’ve seen me talk about her death. You can read that my favorite food is meatballs, but it’s a hell of a lot different if you share a meal with me.”

She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “We’ve talked about your mother lots and I’ve seen you eat meatballs a hundred and one times.”

“Then you. You lost your father and I don’t even know how. I only just found out you were adopted. I don’t know how you feel about that. I want to know. I mean, I
should
know, um, for the interview. And I’m not going to learn it by reading the words ‘I felt sad when my dad died.’ on a form. They’re going to know we memorized facts. They’re going to know we’re lying.”

Nils wasn’t given to long speeches and this was one of the longest that he’d ever made that Maggie could recall. Again she wondered about the changes in him, the relaxing of his countenance, the loosening up of his communication, the way he could hold her eyes without flinching.

“I wish I could say that we don’t have to be friends, but we do. Married people are friends with each other. I wish I could say that I’d never touch you again, but married people touch each other, especially newlyweds.” He paused, looking at her gravely. “We need a truce. Just for the next few weeks. We don’t have time to be mad at each other and sort out all of that stuff from before I left. We need to do this. Just do it.”

“A truce?”

“So that we can figure this out together. Not with Beck. You. And me.”

He picked up his mug again and took another sip. She could tell he was finished speaking for now and he would patiently wait for her to respond.

She took a deep breath. What he was saying made complete and total sense, of course. They didn’t have time to process what had happened between them – they had to figure out, minimally, how to be friends again, and fast. He was right – they needed an immediate truce, no matter how hurt she was, no matter how much she wished things had worked out differently between them.

“Okay.” She sighed, rubbing her sweaty palms together. “How does this look? This
truce
?”

“Well, we were going to meet at Beck’s every night and do that stupid questionnaire, right?”

She nodded, trying to keep the corners of her mouth from tilting up.

“So, we will still meet every night. 7:00. Your place. Whenever I don’t have a tour.”

“And when you do?”

“Get Bethany to run the café. Come with me.”

Her eyes widened. “No! I canna do that, go cavortin’ all over Yellowst—”

“Maggie? My wife would occasionally go on tours with me. It’s a fact. And I’ve got one next weekend. Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.”

She huffed. Going on a tour with him was different from meeting for two or three hours over dinner. It meant spending a whole day together, possibly even sleeping—

She placed her hands over her cheeks. “Separate tents?”

He shook his head. “No. It’ll be the best possible opportunity for us to practice on other people. You can have your own sleeping bag and I’ll put my back to you, but…”

“But we’ll have to share.”

He shrugged. “Like a married couple.”

Like a married couple. She studied his face, considering the easy way he’d just said the words, words he could barely touch before he left. Before she’d yelled at him in the conference room, he mentioned he’d done a lot of thinking while out on tour. About what? What had he thought about that had relieved some of the perpetual burden he’d always carried on his shoulders.