Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
“Shit.” Swinging his chair to face the window as he hung up the phone, Axell glanced out in time to see Katherine and Ralph Arnold scurrying from the building next door. He couldn’t think of anything good coming from a conversation between Maya and the mayor.
He was probably better off letting Maya simmer in peace until she’d had time to cool off. But he’d held her naked in his arms just hours before and the memory of that closeness still warmed the long-empty hollows of his heart. He didn’t want to lose the tentative ties they’d begun to form. If marriage was anything like a business, it had to be tended carefully. With that kind of rational outlook instead of a sentimental one, he should be able to make this marriage work.
Not knowing whether he’d meet the newly confrontational Maya or the fey one, Axell took the stairs two at a time. If nothing else, life with Maya would never be boring. He’d never realized he had such a strong streak of curiosity in him, or that it thrived on constant nourishment.
The sound system was ominously silent as he entered the shop. Belatedly, he realized Cleo was in charge now, but he’d seen Maya arrive earlier. The mayor wouldn’t have gotten far with Cleo.
Fog still hid the sunshine this morning, and no one had turned on lights in the back of the shop. Axell smacked the switch and discovered Maya curled up in her wicker chair, cuddling a cooing Alexa in her arms. The empty chambers of his heart clanged hollow as he read her look.
“All right, what did the mayor have to say?” Axell asked in resignation as he took the other chair. He wished she would offer him a cup of tea. She still hadn’t brought the damned cups back.
“I’ll scratch my own back, thank you very much,” she said coldly.
That should make no sense at all, but he’d learned to look past Maya’s words to the convoluted path of her mind. He didn’t have far to go for this one. “I never said that, and at the time the mayor suggested it, I had to get him and the alcohol board off my back,” he reminded her. “I figured I could find you another property if I had to.”
“I don’t want another property.” Stubbornly, she refused to look at him. “The school is mine and you have nothing to do with it.”
Definitely not the tack he’d hoped to take. “Maya, I hate to say this,” he began cautiously, “but it’s possible Mr. Pfeiffer died over that land. The mayor and the developer are pretty heavily involved in that shopping center. I’m not laying any blame, just pointing out the danger. I don’t want anything happening to you or the kids.”
“You think someone murdered poor Mr. Pfeiffer over that old house? That’s crazy! You’re more paranoid Scorpio than I thought. He didn’t even have a will.”
“That just means the land goes into escrow until the court sells it and divides the proceeds between the heirs, which is what the mayor wants. If you produce that lease and fight the sale, you’re in his way.”
The more Axell thought about it, the more nervous he became. He couldn’t believe the mayor guilty of murder, but he knew little or nothing about the heirs and the developer.
“It’s still a stupid place to put a road.” Maya set her small chin at a determined tilt. “It’s a flood zone. It’s historic property. If it’s sold, they’ll turn the land into tacky boxes and condiments.”
“Condominiums,” Axell corrected with a grin.
“Cheap condiments for hiding bad taste,” she insisted. “The tobacco field down the road is a better alternative.”
“Look, Maya, I don’t want to argue with you — ”
Her eyes flashed with pleasure. “I am arguing, aren’t I? Are you mad at me yet?”
She peered at him from beneath thick long lashes and Axell almost forgot the question. The knowing slant of her lips returned him to the moment. He kept forgetting that even if she looked like somebody’s fairy godchild, Maya was no damned innocent.
“I’m not mad at you. I just want you to see sense.”
“Then don’t call my sister names. I’m still furious at you for that one,” she responded irrelevantly. “Cleo’s made mistakes. She’s had a rough time of it. But with a little help — ”
“Dammit, Maya!” Axell tried not to shout but he didn’t think he was succeeding. “Drug addiction is not something that goes away. Your sister will always be an addict. I was just stating facts. Maybe she’s reformed. I don’t know. That’s not the point — ”
“It is the point!” she said loudly enough to startle Alexa into a surprised cry. Calming her voice, Maya continued. “You want to control our lives, and I won’t let you. They’re our lives, to mess up as we will. The school is mine, Axell. It’s my dream. You can’t tell me what to do with it.”
There was something wrong with this argument, but Maya had his mind twisted in so many directions, he couldn’t pinpoint where they’d strayed from the path. If she weren’t holding Alexa like a shield, he’d lean over and kiss her until their heads spun in the same direction. Axell derived some satisfaction in knowing he had that much influence.
“The kids are my concern as well as yours,” he warned. “If I think they’re in danger, I’ll act on it. Right now, there isn’t much anyone can do with the property tied up in escrow. The minute that changes...”
Maya returned to rocking Alexa. “You’re a worrywart, Axell. I heard Mr. Pfeiffer died with a whiskey glass in his hand, and his nieces just got all atwitter because they claim he never drank alcohol.” Her eyes lit. “You know what Cleo told me this morning?”
Axell was afraid to find out. He suspected Cleo was capable of saying almost anything. “What?”
“She said Old Man Pfeiffer claimed to be our grandfather.”
“Shit.” Axell closed his eyes and sank back in his chair. He was accustomed to an orderly process of thought, but Maya kept knocking him into tailspins. “If that turns out to be true,” he ground out, “the mayor will be accusing the two of you of murder. Pfeiffer had no children by his wife. If you could prove that tall tale, you could stand to inherit a substantial share of the property over distant relatives.”
“Oh.”
Maya sounded mildly interested, and Axell winced. Obviously, he’d just handed her another weapon for her arsenal. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned.
She shrugged and beamed her Maya smile. “My mother never knew who her father was. I just thought it might be interesting for Alexa to know her heritage. Maybe not,” she concluded hastily at his glare.
“We can do the genealogy after the murderer’s caught.” Axell pried himself from the chair before he got too comfortable. It was getting harder and harder to remember he had a business to run.
“Cleo will do what’s best for Matty,” she called after him.
As if that reassured him any. Squaring his shoulders, Axell marched out.
Women were for motherhood and sex, he repeated mentally as the sound system blared on behind him. Sex-sex-sex...
***
“This is what I wanted, Kitty,” Maya muttered as she ripped the sheets from her bed, crumpled them in a ball, and flung them into the hall. It was nearly midnight, and Axell wasn’t home.
The tangerine kitten — one of several named “Kitty” because Matty couldn’t tell one from the other — peered down from his perch on the dresser and licked his paw.
“You’re a fat lot of help. If you’re so tidy, why haven’t you cleaned this room by now?” She shook out a fresh pillowcase and jammed a pillow into it. “I’m not waiting up for him any longer,” she warned the kitten. “We don’t have that kind of marriage. He’ll probably go straight to his room rather than risk life and limb coming in here.”
Maya studied the explosion of clothing strewn over every surface and spilling from drawers. She’d never owned so many clothes in her life, and she wasn’t entirely certain what to do with them. Sorting between dry cleaning and laundry alone required a Ph.D. in household maintenance which she didn’t possess. She wasn’t even certain where all the clothes had come from.
She supposed she could put away the card table with the remains of the dragon mobile, but if she didn’t use up the rest of those paints soon, they’d dry out. And she had this idea for...
In the distance, she heard the garage door open. Double-D bad word, she grumbled to herself, punching the pillow deeper into the case. If Axell came back here, he’d probably think all this excess energy was for him.
She’d never known sexual frustration, and she wasn’t about to admit to it now. Axell Holm could go directly to his own bed, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Maya. The kids would be up at the crack of dawn, and she needed her sleep.
She heard his step in the kitchen below as she punched the second pillow into its case. She should have turned out the light. She shouldn’t have stayed up in the first place. She was still mad at him for thinking her school expendable and Cleo, unreliable. He obviously thought her a real ditz who couldn’t get her head out of a bucket. She could have gone for the Ph.D. if she’d had any money — or if she’d thought it necessary. She wasn’t a ditz.
She knew the instant Axell appeared in her doorway, even though she deliberately kept her back to the door. His subtle aftershave wafted on the currents she was stirring. She glanced up at the mirror and saw him prop his shoulder against the doorjamb. His tie was unknotted, his golden hair rumpled, and his suit coat hung over his arm as he watched her. His eyes looked tired, but damn, he looked too sexy for words.
He threw the coat over a chair already decorated with two dresses. Silently, he crossed to the other side of the bed and helped to pull the bottom sheet across the mattress.
“Matty’s in his room?” he asked cautiously.
“Matty’s with Cleo. Social Services said she could have him for the weekend.” She sounded stiff, even to herself. Matty with his forlorn waif eyes and puckish grin had wormed so deep in her heart, he would always be a part of her.
“Is Stephen still over there?” Axell asked with lingering wariness, smoothing a sheet corner at the bottom of the bed.
He shouldn’t look so damned handsome and masculine making a bed. Maya’s wormy heart pounded a little louder. “He skipped out for Nashville yesterday, something about fixing a track on the new album.”
“That figures,” he said dryly.
“It’s not as if working is irresponsible,” Maya snapped.
The kitten pounced on the fresh pillowcase. As casually as if she were stripping a sheet, Maya scooped the cat up, tossed him into the laundry in the hall, and shut the door.
“I didn’t say otherwise,” Axell protested. “Why are you mad now?”
“Because you want to tuck us into little boxes,” she retorted without thinking. Because she’d wanted him home hours ago. Because she wanted to be on this bed with him right now. Because he’d taught her to want things she knew she couldn’t have or that wouldn’t last. “Mad” didn’t even begin to touch her mood.
“All right,” Axell replied warily, taking the corner of the top sheet she tossed him. “I like things organized,” he admitted. “Structure makes it easier to choose priorities and get things done.”
Now he was even trying to understand her, damn the man. “We’re not things!” Maya tossed a freshly made pillow at him. “And fish don’t nest, and trees don’t bend, and we must have been insane to believe this would work.”
Axell grappled with her words as he untangled the sheet. Talking to Maya was like working a crossword puzzle. He just needed to understand the references. He understood her last declaration well enough for fear to grip his stomach. He’d walked into this marriage with eyes wide open — any failure would be all his fault.
“Some fish don’t swim far from their spawning grounds,” he offered tentatively. He didn’t know a hell of a lot about fish, but he figured she was talking about herself, so he could improvise.
Maya shot him a dark look. “There won’t be any spawning around here at this hour.”
He almost grinned at that, but he thought she’d throw him out on his ear like the cat. “It’s Friday,” he pointed out patiently. “I’m lucky to get home before two a.m. The new trainee doesn’t know the clientele yet.”
He folded a hospital corner on his side of the bed while she shoved her sheet under the mattress without looking at it. “If that’s all you’re mad about, I’m sorry, but I warned you.”
“That’s not what I’m mad about.” She flung the comforter across the bed. “I’m mad because you think my school is less important than your damned bar. School — bar,” she spat out, “Just listen to the words! Think, Axell. What’s more important, teaching kids or feeding drunks?”
This was going a little too far. Grabbing the comforter she was flinging on sideways, Axell shook it out straight. “That bar paid for this house, bought the building your sister’s damned shop is in, and pays for the food we eat. Intellectual exercise is very nice, but not of much use on an empty stomach.”
“I was keeping food in our stomachs, that’s not the point.” Maya tugged the comforter farther to her side. “The point is, all my life, ever since grade school, I’ve wanted to build a school that was like family.”
Axell halted his straightening and let her tug the comforter where she wanted. Maya was arguing, so this had to be important. He just wished she’d speak in terms he understood: goals and touchdowns, invoices and assets. “Life” and “family” were too broad to translate.
“I wanted a school where the teachers treated each child like their own, whether they were wearing hundred-dollar Nikes or Goodwill Keds. Do you have any idea how much more attention the polite, well-dressed, country club kids receive than the unruly, or the poorly dressed, or the misfits? The child who can do math gets heaped with praise but the one who can only build block castles gets ignored. It’s not right. Every child has something he’s good at, even if it’s not recognized as one of the three R’s.” She flung the lacy pillow shams on top of the comforter.
Axell eyed the decorative pillows skeptically, but didn’t argue with their placement. He didn’t know why they were making a bed at midnight when they should be unmaking it, anyway.
He could hear the creative child she’d been crying out in protest and figured she knew what she was talking about. He’d been one of the country club kids by the time he was in his teens. Before that... Well, he’d always played sports well. He’d never felt unaccepted. Maya had.
“You want a school where the poor kids and the creative kids and the kids who can work with their hands better than their brains can all be equal,” he translated. “That’s not possible. You’re dreaming.”
“Damned right, I’m dreaming. Somebody has to.” She scowled at him. “It’s obvious you quit long ago, if you ever dreamed at all.”
She was heading for emotional meltdown, and Axell was at a loss as to how to handle it. He’d gone this route with Angela. She’d scream and he’d stare at her in bewilderment. He could see it happening all over again. The cliff’s edge he walked on crumbled a little more with each step.
“Dreaming doesn’t pay,” he answered guardedly. “But you’re entitled to try it your way. I wish you’d give me straight answers though. I told you, I don’t do well at reading between the lines.”
To his surprise, Maya’s scowl vanished. She finished straightening the bottom of the bed and sauntered to his side with a definitely wicked gleam in her eye. Axell wondered if it was too late to run. Glancing at the sway of her hips, he decided running wasn’t an option he wanted to take.
“Actually, you’ve been doing exceptionally well,” she murmured, sliding her hands behind his neck until soft curves brushed him in tempting places, backing him up against the bed. “Let’s see if you understand this.”
Standing on tiptoes, she gyrated her hips against his zipper until Axell thought his pants would explode. She was right. This, he understood.
Falling backward onto the mattress, he pulled her with him. Before she could scramble away, Axell flipped over, pinning her beneath him. Capturing Maya’s flailing arms, he proceeded to kiss her into a different form of passion. Maya did passion exceptionally well.
Tomorrow night, maybe they’d make it to his room.
***
May, 1970
I cannot tell anyone but my journal, so I have dug it out after all these years to record my tears and joy — my daughter was married today to a fine, upstanding young man. I don’t know whether her mother is watching from heaven or hell, but I’m sure she is smiling with the same teary-eyed happiness as I am.