Double Trouble (11 page)

I land on my feet, but I’ve been doing that all my life. It would be kind of a shame if Granite Man shattered into a thousand shards as a result of this.

Don’t even go there, Maralys. With Marcia gone 404 and James going cuckoo, I could end up with kids after all.

Wait, I feel a nervous breakdown coming on.

I stopped cold in the street, feeling decidedly queasy. No doubt about it, I was coming down with a bad case of dependencies.

This called for sushi.

* * *

Nothing soothes the troubled mind better than a few hours in the kitchen, such as mine is. And I was in need of some serious soul sustenance.

The root of the problem here was that James wasn’t his father’s son. It was hard to believe, you know, because the two of them really did seem to be cut from the same cloth.

At least I’d thought so up until now. The last twenty-four hours were making me reassess James’ Jerk Quotient. He certainly had nothing on the old man in that department.

Not just the dimple, then. I liked that he was more worried about his kids than himself. Probably because it surprised me. I like unpredictability, and I’d thought this guy was as predictable as milk curdling two weeks past its Best Before date.

I was getting curious. A dangerous proposition.

And okay, I liked that he could hide his thoughts like a pro.

Danger, danger, hormones on full alert.

Time for sushi.

Yes, it’s a huge pain to make your own sushi. It takes eons to get it just right, but it’s soothing in a way. Nice repetitive, detail-oriented gestures. Not unlike writing code, come to think of it. Two things I do well.

Very well.

I like sushi, like it a lot, but am always a bit leery of buying it already prepared. You do not want day-old sushi, or at least I don’t. If it’s not prepped right, the nori becomes soggy city once it’s all assembled. Yuck.

Fresh would be the point of sushi, right?

So, I put on some tunes and set to work—if the sushi didn’t perk me up, then the soundtrack from “Cabaret” and that box of Passionate Persimmon hair color ought to do the trick. I’m blessed with thick and healthy hair, though I’ve tried my best to mess with it over the years. I can’t bear to cut it, so I color it. Often. Wildly. It’s a hobby.

It was perhaps the fourth time I had belted out the soundtrack with Liza, and I was just realizing that, as usual, I had gotten enthused and bought too much fish, when the freight elevator clattered and groaned into action. I listened, fully expecting that one of my neighbors was arriving, but naturally suspicious all the same. Here’s the problem—I’d been so excited about getting to the fishies that I hadn’t locked down the hatch.

There are a few disadvantages to my living circumstances. Here’s a big one—the isolation-lack-of-personal-security combo-pak. I don’t worry about it too much, but when that elevator goes in the night, my pulse certainly picks up. Usually, I’m the only one in the building after six or seven.

This is not a good feeling.

The elevator made the unmistakable sound of halting at my floor. I hadn’t invited anyone—as if!—and a quick glance at the glass bricks revealed an impressionist interpretation of a night sky. All I could see through the industrial grade mesh surrounding the elevator was a silhouette tall enough, broad enough and male enough to be a serious problem.

Don’t tell anyone—
anyone
, you hear!—but this kind of thing scares the living crap out of me. I have far too vivid an imagination and in moments like this, I think it should be against some law for me to live alone.

Fortunately, the moment of potential dependency usually passes and leaves few discernible scars.

And even more fortunately, the elevator door takes a few weeks to open. I grabbed my trusty fourteen-inch cast-iron skillet and assumed position. The grate groaned open, I lifted the skillet over my head, and a man stepped into my loft. He moved cautiously into the shadows, as though uncertain what he would find.

I had a surprise for him.

“Hey!” I shouted, then swung the skillet. It’s not sporting, after all, to just bash someone on the head from behind.

I like to see the whites of their eyes.

He turned, swore, and I saw in the nick of time that it was James. I averted my swing just as he caught my wrist.

“What kind of greeting is that?”

“Security system,” I said, my heart still going like a trip hammer. “Crude but effective.”

He exhaled, the epitome of skepticism. “As long as there’s only one person. Why don’t you live somewhere safer?”

He didn’t let go of my wrist. His grip wasn’t tight enough that I couldn’t have squirmed free, but he was warm and I told myself that a little human touch was welcome post-crisis.

Assuming for the moment that James wasn’t pure predator of some genetically distant class of reptiles. He could probably feel the race of my pulse, smell my blood and all that. That would explain the glint of his eyes.

“Because it’s cheap space and I’m impoverished. Sadly, I don’t have your array of choices for real estate.” I pulled my wrist out of his grip and headed back to the kitchen zone. My heart was still racing only because of the shock, I was sure.

It had nothing,
nothing
, to do with James Coxwell standing in my place for the very first time ever, looking around with undisguised curiosity. There was someone in my cave and that was bad enough.

I chopped with a vengeance, but forced myself to stop when I tore the nori seaweed in my frenzy. I took a deep breath but couldn’t dispel my incredible unease with having James in my loft.

Probably he wanted something. Sadly there was no good way of tossing him out, at least not without his cooperation. He’s a lot bigger than me and stubborn enough to not leave before he was ready. Even rudeness wouldn’t scare him off.

I looked through my lashes, just checking, and noticed only now that he had changed out of his suit. His khakis were too perfectly fitted to be off the rack, his casual shirt was open at the collar and his leather jacket was brown. He looked utterly suburban.

And surprisingly good. I was definitely losing my edge. Celibacy was adversely affecting my judgment.

More time running the stairs was definitely in order. I’d double up tomorrow.

James was watching me, as if he could read my thoughts or at least gauge my attraction to him. Sick, sick, sick, to even be thinking of my sister’s husband in any sort of sexual terms. Sordid. Tacky. Beneath my status as a reasonable and sensible individual.

Even if... but never mind that for now.

So, the strategy obviously was to give James whatever he came for and do so ASAP, thus to restore my precious privacy.

“Any particular reason for this unexpected pleasure?” I asked, infusing my words with about as much warmth as he had greeted me with earlier.

He smiled, shoved his hands into the pockets of his khakis and sauntered closer. “Is that a payback for the way I welcomed you today?”

Caught. I shrugged, sheepish, and made a fuss over my fishies. “Something like that.”

“I’m sorry.” He leaned against my counter-on-wheels. Fortunately, the wheels were locked down, saving him from a graceless tumble.

But then, maybe it wouldn’t have been graceless. He’d probably checked the brakes before leaning. I had to remind myself that James was more observant than the average bear. Calculating.

God only knew what he was concluding on the basis of my agitation. In self-defense, I gave him a double dose of attitude. “What do you want anyhow?”

“Advice.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Be serious.”

“I am. You’re the only person who knows the whole deal.”

Wow, there was a frightening assertion. I feigned ignorance. “Me? I know nothing...”

“Be serious, Maralys.” He dismissed my act with a flick of the wrist. “You listened to the whole thing today and I know it.”

And here I thought I’d be so stealthy. I snuck a glance, but he looked more amused than angry.

“What kind of person do you think I am?” I demanded, but couldn’t summon the right tone of indignation.

“The same kind of person as I am. You listened. I would have listened. Case closed.”

Well, what could I say to that? I chopped.

“Go ahead,” James prompted, almost teasing. “Tell me that you were just curious.”

“Well...”

“Well, I would have been surprised if you’d done anything different.”

Liza began “Farewell Mein Leibenherr” one more time and I considered that it wasn’t perhaps the most sensitive choice of music. I hit the remote and cycled the CD player on to the next disk, an Ella Fitzgerald greatest hits compilation. Cole Porter stuff. A bit more intimate than I’d like, but I wasn’t going to go change the CD’s—then he’d know that it bothered me.

James seemed to be content to wait for me to say something. He was studying me closely, the kind of carefully assessing look that makes your hair prickle.

Oh yes, lots of that male-female vibe. Hawk on the hunt for lunch. Or at least a good romp in the nest. I was a bit too aware of the proximity of the futon.

“Don’t you have kids?” I demanded.

“Karate night. I have -” he checked his watch, which was a nice elegant piece of machinery. You’ve got to love the style of a man who doesn’t flaunt his bucks with gaudy junk. “- forty-five minutes before I have to start back.”

“And you came all the way into the evil city, just to see me. What’s wrong with this picture, James?”

“You’re suddenly very modest.”

I spared him a sharp glance, but his expression was all innocence. “Is that a joke?”

“What do you think?”

I glared at him, suspecting that he was messing with my mind and not knowing how to prove it. Yet. “It can’t be a joke, because you have no sense of humor. This is an established fact. And a man without a sense of humor cannot make a joke, at least not intentionally..”

“Res ipsa loquitur.”

I gave him a poisonous look. “If you’re trying to make me aware that you enjoyed some eight years of post-secondary education, while I copped out after one, your point is made.”

“I’m not. It means ‘the matter speaks for itself’.”

“Do lawyers all speak gook?”

“Not so much anymore. But I really liked Latin.”

“Because it’s logical and tough to learn?”

“Because I loved Classics.” He picked up a slice of cucumber and ate it. “Given my choice, I would have been a Classics major, maybe taught Roman history somewhere and deciphered old inscriptions.”

I stared at him. This did not jive with what I knew of him, but then a lot of the things I’d seen and heard regarding James Coxwell in the last twenty-four hours didn’t jive with what I thought I’d known about him. That sentence is not nearly as troubling as its import, btw. “Get out.”

“It’s true.”

“Then, why didn’t you do it?”

“I said given my choice.” He arched one brow, daring me to challenge him on this. “I haven’t had choices ever. It’s kind of a novelty.”

“You could have made choices anyhow.”

James chuckled and I knew what he was thinking. I’d heard his father. How could a kid have defied that? And I suppose that sooner or later, doing what you’re told becomes a habit.

Just like
not
doing what you’re told does.

“Was he always that way?”

“What way?”

“Bombastic. Judgmental. Furious. Choose a negative attribute—your former father seems to have them all in abundance supply.”

James winced. “No. I’ve only seen him lose it a couple of times and that’s been recent. He was always old stone face, the king of self-control.”

“At least you came by that honestly.”

He laughed.

I didn’t. I chopped, and James looked around. What more could I say?

Well, I did have one question. “So, are you a victim of your father’s parenting?”

“How so?”

I had his attention but good, and trod carefully. “Well, is that why you give away so little and make such tough calls?”

Subtext being—is that why your marriage tanked?

James thought about it, considering the question before he replied. “No. I’m a product of it.”

“Explain.”

“More accurately, I’ve experienced that parenting. What I make of that experience is up to me. I don’t have to, for example, parent the way he did, although the instinctive reaction is often the one I experienced.”

I remembered Marcia saying how annoying it was to be sounding like our Mom when she scolded the boys. I nodded, then looked at him. “Do you follow that instinct?”

“I try like hell not to.”

“You don’t seem to have done much with that experience yet. I mean, it could be said that you’re living a shadow of your father’s life.”

“It could have been,” he corrected softly. “But I’m just getting warmed up. Maybe the real test is seeing what I do with it from here.”

Our gazes met and held and things definitely headed to the land of toasty. I could imagine that learning that Robert Coxwell wasn’t really your father might not entirely be a bad thing. I looked away, feigning fascination with my prep work and James looked around, the silence stretching between us.

“What do you do here, anyhow?” he asked finally.

“I write code.” I checked but James was still waiting, my answer clearly having been deemed insufficient. “Besides the advice column, which was an idea that has yet to generate the advertising revenue I’d hoped for, I design websites and web-interactive business solutions.”

“Like?”

“You don’t really want to know.”

He pulled up a stool and shed his jacket. “Actually, I do.”

I looked again, looked hard, but James really did seem interested. “In forty-five minutes?”

He grinned. “Forty. Give me the executive summary.”

I put down my knife and gave it to him from both barrels. He’d asked for it, but I didn’t expect him to survive. “Okay, right now I’m doing a remote human resources solution for a software company with telecommuting employees and freelancers all over the world. They don’t want to ship forms all over the place, so we’ve created a secure web portal for employees. They can log in and update their records and request forms and modify their coverage. They have a cafeteria style benefits plan that people can change as their needs change and their single office person was drowning in paperwork. This way it’s streamlined and the single person can still keep on top of things.”