“Mr. B!” Hazel dropped her dust cloth and held her hand over her heart. “Lordy, you scared me to death.” The hall clock bonged four. “Are you sick or something?”
“Or something, Hazel.” Joseph hung his jacket in the hall closet and loosened his tie. “I decided to come home early today.”
“It’s about time.” She picked up her cloth and resumed her dusting. “Most folks think you live down there at that office. Some of them even ask me about it.”
“Some people have nothing better to do than indulge in idle gossip.” Joseph kissed her cheek. “Not you, of course, Hazel.”
“They see your car parked down there on Broadway, that’s all. You know me, Mr. B. They don’t get a thing out of me. Not even the time of day.”
Hazel picked up the mail and handed it to him, a large red envelope. “This came today. Special delivery.”
Who would send him a letter in a red envelope? One person popped immediately into his mind. He turned the envelope over, and sure enough, there it was, Magic Maxie’s logo.
Smiling, he crammed the envelope into his pocket.
“I made some lemon icebox pie today. Do you want me to fix you some?”
“It sounds wonderful, but I’ll get it.” The envelope was burning a hole in his pocket. “Take the rest of the day off, Hazel.”
“I haven’t dusted the library.”
“It can wait. Everybody deserves a break now and then.”
“Thanks, Mr. B. I don’t care if folks do call you a tight ass. In my book, you’re as good as they come.”
“Folks call me a tight ass, do they?”
“Lordy, I ought to cut my tongue out. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Hazel, when have you ever been less than blunt?” He took the dust cloth, then got her jacket from the hall closet. “That’s one of the reasons I need you—to keep me in line.”
“I can tell you one thing, the way you were squiring that flashy woman around at Bogart’s last night, it won’t be long before folks will be calling you a Don Juan. It’s about time too.” Hazel slid into her jacket, then squashed her black straw hat on top of her head.
“How did you acquire that bit of information, may I ask?”
“My sister. Her daughter Ruthie waits tables down there. ‘Night, Mr. B. See you tomorrow.”
As Hazel’s ancient green Cadillac pulled out of the driveway, Joseph cut himself a generous slice of pie, then settled down at the kitchen table.
He put the red envelope on the table in plain sight, then dug into his pie. Eating dessert before dinner. It was a small defiance, another way of breaking his own rules. And it felt good. Damned good.
The red envelope lay on his table, a vivid reminder of the woman who had sent it. He wondered what she’d think if she knew people were calling him a Don Juan.
It didn’t matter what she thought. His visit to Bogart’s had taught him something: Maxie was out of his league. Theirs wasn’t merely a difference in lifestyle: They didn’t even inhabit the same planet.
He tore into the envelope and spread her letter on the table.
“Joseph,” it read. “I won’t address you as dear because there’s nothing endearing about you.”
He chuckled. Maxie had revealed herself with one single line. She was still furious at him. And with good cause.
He wondered if he would ever be able to persuade her to think of him as anything except the enemy.
Still chuckling, he continued reading her letter.
“Since you haven’t bothered to return my checklist of party suggestions, I assume that you absolutely hate everything I’m planning for Baby Joe. Good! I’m equally certain that I’m going to hate everything you plan.”
When Maxie got hot, she was very hot. The letter practically scorched Joseph’s hand. He poured himself a cool glass of lemonade and drank the whole thing before he returned to her letter.
“I’m going over to B. J.’s Saturday morning to get some ideas for the decorations. I’m going to use lively colors, red and yellow and purple. I’m sure you’re going to want something conservative. Sorry. When I was at the store I asked about gray pinstriped balloons. They don’t make them.
“The only thing pinstriped I can think of is a zebra. Do you know where we can get an angel to ride it? I would volunteer for the job, but as you know, I’m no angel. Maxie.”
Joseph hooted with laughter. “You can say that again, Maxie.”
Maxie Corban was many things, but angelic was not one of them. Joseph carried the letter to his library and unlocked the bottom left-hand drawer of his mahogany desk. There were only two items in the drawer, and he placed them both on top of his desk, a wisp of red lace and a gold sequined high-heeled shoe, both compliments of Maxie.
He was immersed in memories when the doorbell rang. It was Crash.
“Great jumping jelly beans, what are you doing carrying a woman’s shoe?”
Until Crash pointed out the obvious, Joe wasn’t even aware he clutched Maxie’s shoe.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got a little time. B. J. and the baby are home napping.”
“How are they doing?”
“Great. Have you got anything to eat? I’m starving.”
“Hazel made lemon icebox pie.”
“Lead me to it.”
Joseph set the shoe on the table and cut a slice of pie while Crash rummaged for a plate and fork.
“Might as well put two slices for starters.” Crash picked up his fork. “Whose shoe is it? Anybody I know?”
“You know her.”
“Susan wouldn’t be caught dead in that shoe.” Crash held it up to the light, and it sparkled. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Whose is it?”
“Maxie’s.”
“Maxie!” Crash quirked an eyebrow. “She left her shoes at your house? I thought the two of you didn’t gee haw.”
“We don’t. She threw it at me last night at Bogart’s.”
Joseph grinned at his brother’s expression. He’d always been the staid, steady one, the one who never surprised a soul. It tickled him that for once he’d left Crash speechless.
“You’re kidding me. Right?”
Joseph pulled out his chair, then plucked the shoe out of his brother’s hand.
“Actually, she wasn’t aiming at me, but I caught it anyhow.”
Crash completely forgot about his pie. Propping his elbows on the table, he leaned toward his brother.
“Are you going to make me drag this story out of you bit by bit?”
“It all started last night when I took Letty Grimseley to Bogart’s....”
Still holding Maxie’s shoe, Joe leaned back in his chair and told his brother the story, the edited version.
“Maxie was there, with Claude, both of them dancing up a storm. That woman has more moves than a cat on a hot tin roof.”
Joseph got hot just thinking about the way she’d moved on the dance floor. And what he was feeling the day after was nothing compared to what he’d felt sitting at a corner table watching Maxie in the living, pulsating flesh.
“After she finished her dance, I thought she and Claude were going to leave. She’d spotted me. As you probably know, I top her list of people she’d like to push over a cliff.”
“That’s our Maxie.” Grinning, Crash dug into his pie with gusto. “Keep talking. Don’t mind if I snack. This is delicious.”
“Suddenly she turned around and marched toward the bandstand. Before I knew it, she was center stage, belting out a song.”
“I didn’t even know she could sing.”
“I don’t think there’s anything that woman can’t do.”
Not only was Maxie singing, but she was singing well, in a throaty, sexy voice that had every man in Bogart’s spellbound. Joseph was jealous of them all.
“What was she singing?”
“ ‘Hard Hearted Hannah.’ “
“... the vamp of Savannah.” Crash slapped his thigh, laughing. “Great balls of fire, that must have been something.”
“It was. And it got better when she started to strip.”
“She stripped? In Tupelo, Mississippi?”
“Not all the way, but enough.”
“Enough for what?”
Enough to make Joseph completely forget that he’d brought another woman to Bogart’s. Enough to give him ideas he’d never had before. Enough to make sitting at his table an act of sheer will.
She’d started with her jacket, a spangled and fringed bolero. Purple. Folks might have thought she was merely too hot if it hadn’t been for the way she got out of the thing. Slowly. Sensuously. Maxie’s movements had put Joe in mind of a tigress on the prowl. She had actually purred into the mike while she’d removed her jacket.
She’d worn nothing underneath but a gold spangled bustier. Joseph had actually groaned aloud. Fortunately, the band had been playing too loudly for his date to hear.
“Enough to make every stud in Bogart’s go wild.”
“Including you?”
Joseph ignored that remark. “When she tossed her jacket, she brought down the house. Next came her bangle bracelets, one by one. By now every man in the room is yelling, ‘Take it off. Take it all off.’ “
“Not even Maxie would go that far. Or did she?”
“She didn’t. She stopped with her shoes.”
When the first one had sailed through the air, there’d been a stampede to catch it. A tall, lanky man in a cowboy hat had snagged it. He immediately poured his beer into the shoe and took a long swig. Everybody had yelled like crazy.
When she’d taken off her second shoe, he had been determined to catch it, no matter who got in his way. And dozens had. Every red-blooded man in the room had vied for Maxie’s second shoe. Fortunately Joseph had the long arms of a very tall man.
When he’d snatched it out of the air, Maxie had missed a beat in her song. She recovered quickly enough, but that marked the end of her striptease act.
If Joseph hadn’t caught her shoe, how far would she have gone? With Maxie, you never knew. That was one of the things that made her so exciting.
“And that’s how I came to have one of Maxie’s shoes. End of story.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding? I’m your brother, remember? I’ve had your number since we were kids.” Crash rummaged in the refrigerator and came up with fixings for ham and cheese sandwiches. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
“Look, first of all you’re out with that woman from the chancery clerk’s office, which means you’ve ended it with Susan. Joe minus one.” Crash didn’t need confirmation. He knew his brother well.
He passed Joe a sandwich, then made one for himself. “Second, you’re in a place you wouldn’t have been caught dead in last week. I suspect that has something to do with Maxie, but what I don’t know is how she figures in this equation.”
“She doesn’t. I can’t think of a woman more totally unsuitable for me than Maxie Corban.”
“That’s what I thought about B. J. when I first met her. And look how all that turned out.”
“You’re not suggesting that we’re alike, are you?”
“I don’t know, Joe. For a minute there, I thought you’d discovered you had a heart.”
“I’ve discovered a number of things, namely that I need a little more excitement in my life. But I’ve never made life-altering decisions based on messy emotions, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“Someday I’ll remind you of that.”
Joseph put the pie plates in the sink and turned on the water.
“Don’t make any rash judgments because of one incident at Bogart’s, Crash. I’m making a few changes in my life, that’s all.”