Chocolate Kisses (11 page)

“It
means,” he explained, “that I’ll give Fantasy Feasts financial guidance for
free, but you’ll have to keep me supplied in chocolate kisses for free.”

She
grinned. “That sounds fair.”

He
reached for the box with the candy in it. “When I saw Edie packing up the
leftover chocolate kisses—and there weren’t many left—I grabbed the last one. I
put it in this box so it wouldn’t melt all over the inside of my pocket.”

“No,”
Claudia teased. “You put it in the box because my kisses are as precious as jewels.”

He
wedged the candy between her lips to silence her. “They are,” he agreed, then
angled his head and bit the other half of the kiss. Their lips touched, their
mouths merged and their tongues shared the marvelously complicated flavor as
Ned closed his arms around her.

If
this was his world, Claudia thought, she would never leave. She belonged here,
in his arms, in his heart…and in his bed.

As
the final seconds of Valentine’s Day ticked away, they sealed their promise of
love—with the sweetest of chocolate kisses.

###

A Sneak Peek at Judith Arnold’s
Change
of Life

Chapter One

THE
DAY BEGAN LIKE SO MANY OTHERS: with a fight.

“You
stole my pencil!” Michael shrieked.

“Did
not!”

“Did
too! You’re a little thief. That was my best pencil—and look, you got gunk all
over it. How’d it get in your drawer?”

“Well—you
got all the good pencils,” Danny whined. “I don’t have any pencils with erasers
on them.”

“That’s
on account of you’re an idiot. You don’t think before you write. So you write
stupid stuff and then you have to erase it. That’s how come you use up all your
erasers.”

“I’m
not an idiot!
You’re
an idiot!”

“
You’re
an idiot,” Michael declared, and then proceeded to list several orifices into
which Danny might consider inserting his eraserless pencils.

“Do
something with them, would you?” Ken muttered from inside the walk-in closet,
where he was searching for a tie to wear with his charcoal pinstripe suit. “I can’t
stand listening to this.”

Lila’s
head pounded. She couldn’t stand listening to it, either. She finished
smoothing the blanket out across the bed and then lifted her robe from the hook
on the back of the closet door. Flinging her arms through the sleeves, she
stumbled out of the bedroom and down the hall to Danny’s room.

Danny
had on his underwear; his pajamas lay in a heap on top of his unmade bed.
Michael stood near the dresser, clothed except for his shoes and brandishing a
pencil. “Look at what he did, Mom!” he roared indignantly, waving the pencil
inches from Lila’s face. “There’s, like, chewing gum or something on this!”

“Well,
I don’t have any pencils with erasers,” Danny complained in a querulous voice.
“Michael has all the good pencils. He stole them.”

“
You
stole them, Danny!”

Lila
shut her eyes held up her hand. “Hush, both of you,” she commanded. A brief
exchange of snarls, and they fell silent. “Now,” she said, opening her eyes and
staring at her two sons. “I’m going shopping today. I’ll buy a new package of
pencils and divvy them up, half for each of you, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Hey,
that’s not fair!” Danny protested. “He’s already got a hundred—”

“Half
for each of you,” she interrupted sternly. “But if I hear one more word about
it, neither of you will get any. Is that clear?”

They
gazed up at her, their features nearly identical despite the two-year age
difference between them. Both had scruffy reddish-brown hair, dark eyes,
triangular chins and not yet developed button noses. Michael appeared a touch
smug, Danny resentful, but neither of them dared to contradict their mother.

“Okay.
Finish getting dressed. I’m going to make breakfast.”

Exhaling
wearily, she turned and plodded down the stairs to the kitchen. Her headache
seemed to have sprouted wings which batted incessantly against her temples. She
ought to get some aspirin, but she didn’t have the energy to climb back
upstairs. Instead, she turned on the radio for the weather report, got a more
immediate weather report by looking out the window above the sink and seeing
the morning sky dark with swollen rain clouds, and shut the radio off.

Within
a few minutes Ken, Michael and Danny had joined her in the kitchen. The boys
engaged in a minor scuffle over who would get to read the back of the Cheerios
box while they ate. Ken glanced at his English muffins, mumbled, “Sorry, hon—I
really don’t have time,” and gulped down half his mug of coffee without
bothering to sit. Time, she knew, wasn’t at issue as much as nerves. Sometime
this week he would be learning whether he’d gotten the promotion. After having
lived with uncertainty for so long, Lila would be relieved even to hear he
hadn’t gotten it. Not knowing was driving him crazy—and he, in turn, was
driving her crazy.

He
thumped his mug down onto the table, splattering brown drops of coffee across
the front page of the newspaper, and left the kitchen. When he returned he was
carrying his raincoat. He brushed Lila’s cheek with a hasty kiss. “Wish me
luck,” he said before stalking through the mudroom to the garage.

As
soon as he was gone, Danny and Michael resumed their quarrel over the Cheerios
box. Lila removed it from the table. “Five minutes till the bus gets here,” she
alerted them. They scampered off to brush their teeth, their bowls still full
of cereal.

Lila
gazed at the table, the array of breakfast foods served and uneaten, the
stained newspaper and the mess of Cheerios under Danny’s chair. On some
mornings she would simply shrug at such a dismal sight. On some mornings she
would curse.

Today
she had to fight back tears.

She
shuffled the boys out to the bus stop, cleaned the kitchen, went upstairs and
took a couple of aspirin. Then she got dressed and drove to the supermarket.
She spent two hundred and ten dollars, including a buck-ninety-nine plus tax
for a box of pencils, and drove home wondering how much of the food she’d
purchased would actually be consumed and how much would wind up on the floor
under Danny’s chair.

By
eleven o’clock the groceries were all put away and she left the house again,
this time driving to the soup kitchen in the basement of Mt. Zion Methodist
Church in Roxbury. She arrived too late to help with the food preparation, but
Claudette told her not to worry about it. “I got most of it done,” she said.
“Just carry in the apples. We haven’t got much today.”

Lila
surveyed the day’s offerings: macaroni and cheese, two large bowls full of limp
green salad, milk, coffee, graham crackers and a bushel basket of macintosh
apples. “No meat?”

Claudette
shrugged. “What are you going to do? We take what we can get.”

Lila
nodded. She thought of the food wasted at home and of the people lining up in
the rain outside the church basement door, anxious to partake of a free hot
meal. That she was here didn’t seem enough. She should have bought something
extra at the supermarket that morning, some sandwich meat or canned fish or
something.

At
noon the door opened and the people—clients, Claudette called them—filed in.
Most of them were men, but a few women were scattered in their midst, some with
children in tow. Lila scanned the line in search of Mitzie. She spotted her and
waved.

Mitzie
waved back. A few years younger than Lila, she was dressed, as usual, in a
grubby sweat suit and a tattered denim jacket. Her hair was the color and
consistency of straw, lying in an uneven shag about her drawn, pallid face.

“Is
it still raining?” Lila asked Mitzie as she slid her tray along the counter.

“Yeah,
a little,” Mitzie answered. Thanks to the precipitation, perhaps, her face was
less grimy than usual.

“Have
you got a dry place to stay tonight?”

“Don’t
worry about me,” Mitzie said.

“Fat
chance of that,” Lila argued gently. “I
will
worry about you.”

“Thanks,”
Mitzie said, smiling bashfully. “Thanks for the food, Mrs. Chapin.” She waved
again and carried her tray to one of the long tables set up throughout the
room.

Lila
sighed and tucked a stray strand of pale brown hair behind her ear. Her head
hadn’t stopped throbbing, but hearing Mitzie say “thanks” had done more for the
pain than the aspirin she’d taken that morning. She smoothed out her apron and
shaped a smile for the unshaven man across the counter from her.

“How
are you doing?” Claudette asked her once the flow of clients had ebbed to a
trickle. “You look beat.”

“Just
tired,” Lila replied. “I’m feeling tired and old.”

“Old!”
Claudette let out a hoot. She stacked the empty macaroni pans and carried them
into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I’d like to be as old as you
are.” Claudette was in her fifties, but she was so youthful and energetic Lila
often forgot that the woman was a grandmother.

By
two-thirty, all the pots and pans were scoured, the remaining apples had been
distributed among the clients and the basement was clean. “See you Wednesday,”
Claudette said as she and Lila parted ways in the parking lot behind the
church.

“I’ll
try to get here earlier,” Lila promised.

Claudette
swatted the air with her hand. “Whenever you get here, I appreciate it.”

Lila
smiled and climbed into her car.

Michael
and Danny were already home from school by the time Lila pulled into the
garage. Danny had found the new box of pencils on the kitchen table and was
sharpening them. Michael was storming around the basement, complaining about
the lack of good materials for a science project. “Mark Nugent, his dad’s got
dry cells and switches and everything,” Michael moaned. “He’s gonna get a
better grade than me.”

“I’m
sure you can put together a decent science project with what we’ve got,” Lila
attempted to bolster him. “Maybe you can make a weather chart out of oaktag and
paint.”

“I
don’t want to make a chart. You don’t get an A-plus for something like a
weather chart. I want to make something neat, like, something with electricity.”

“Why
don’t you do dinosaurs?” Danny hollered down the stairs.

“That’s
kid stuff.”

“I’m
doing dinosaurs in my class,” Danny noted.

“Yeah,
on account of you’re in third grade. In fifth grade we do better
stuff—electricity and stuff. How come we never have any neat things to do
science projects with, Mom?”

Lila
suppressed the urge to snap at Michael. “I’m sure we’ve got something down here
you can use for a science project,” she said, surveying the shelves lining the
walls. They were crammed with toys, art supplies, tools and seasonal items.
“Maybe you could do something with ice,” she suggested, inspired by the cooler
chest.

“Yeah,
what?”

“I
don’t know. It’s your project.”

“Ice
melts. Big deal.” Michael shoved his hands into the pockets of his dungarees
and sulked.

“How
about mold? You could grow bread mold.”

His
face brightened. “Hey, yeah, that’s an idea. It’s not as neat as dry cells and
switches, but yeah, maybe I could do that.” Michael bounded up the stairs,
leaving Lila to turn off the lights.

She
helped Michael to set up an experiment with slices of bread, then prepared
dinner. Ken got home late, and his piqued expression conveyed that he hadn’t
heard anything about the promotion. Lila gave him a reassuring hug, which he
returned. “Where’s Tom Petty when I need him?” he lamented before heading
upstairs to change his clothes. “The waiting is the hardest part.”

Dinner
was the usual—Danny rambling about the intrigues of his classmates and Michael
griping about how his meat was too dry. Lila picked at her own food, her
appetite gone.
Tired and old
, she thought, trying to tune out Michael’s
long-winded criticism of her cooking.
Tired and old.

After
dinner the boys repaired to their bedrooms and Ken buried himself in the
newspaper. Lila cleaned the kitchen, oversaw the boys’ preparations for
bedtime, tucked them in and returned to the den, where she settled in the
recliner to watch television. She waited, glancing occasionally at Ken,
wondering whether he had remembered but comprehending, deep in her heart, that
he hadn’t, that the day was lost, that this was her life and nothing was ever
going to change.

He
was a handsome man, his body trim and fit in a pair of jeans and a cotton
sweater, his thick auburn hair swept across his forehead and dropping to his
collar in back, his eyes framed by faint laugh lines and the skin beneath his
jaw as smooth and taut as that of a man half his age. He looked younger than
she did, she thought. Despite his preoccupation with his status at work he
looked young and rested and at peace with himself.