Jordan borrowed a book of wedding stationery samples from her new wedding adviser, Valerie Florin. She couldn’t wait to go over them with James and tell him all about their flowers. Driving home alone after the heady visit to Your Dream Wedding, Camille let the radio “seek” button sail right past All Things Considered and settle on oldies rock, where she knew all the words.
As long as no one was listening, she was hoping for “Goin’ to the Chapel,” grooving to her own unanticipated enthusiasm for frou-frou. One shimmering idea after another popped into her head. If she wanted to, she could turn the banquet room at the Countryside Inn into a veritable paradise. She had the ingenuity, and she could get the goods.
Finding Creed’s pickup in her driveway seemed to cap off a headful of wackiness just perfectly, although she wasn’t too crazy about finding him messing around in her kitchen again.
“Rosemary let me in,” he explained, as though the look she gave him meant something besides Just because you know where everything is doesn’t mean you’re allowed to drag it all out.
“That’s fine,” she said.
No greetings. He’d never been the “Honey, I’m home” kind of a husband, but by the end of their marriage they’d long since fallen out of the habit of exchanging hellos. She’d wanted explanations, and he’d stopped giving them.
But he seemed to realize that explanations were back in order now that he was not.
“I’m getting us something to eat.” With a gesture he indicated the open cupboard, where they’d always kept the canned goods. “She says she’s not hungry, but she also admitted she hasn’t eaten today. That can’t be good.”
“It isn’t. She was sewing when I left, so I took her some…”
He pointed to the plate of raisin toast with peanut butter, untouched and undoubtedly turned to cardboard.
“That’s what she said she wanted,” Camille said with a sigh. She tossed her keys on the kitchen table, noting the tray he’d set there, arrayed with eating utensils, napkins, salt and pepper.
He’d thought of a tray?
“I didn’t ask her what she wanted, but I know she’s not going to let a guest eat alone. It’s not polite. And I’m hungry.” He opened the dish cupboard. “How about you? I made plenty.”
“What…? I mean, why…?”
“Oh.” Dishes aside, he shoved his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out folded cash, which he handed over like an installment on some debt. “I got paid for last weekend, and we’re booked into next month.” He caught her quizzical look. “For the wedding.”
“What are you going to live on?”
“Your charity.” His eyes sparkled with his teasing and his contribution to her cause. “I hired on with a roofer. Maybe I’ll work for him through the summer.”
“You hate roofing.”
“I said maybe.” He reached into the cupboard and pulled out three soup mugs, one at a time. “Maybe something better will come along.”
“You’re providing the music, Creed. That’s a big contribution.”
“I want to do more.” He turned, studying the third mug as though there were something in the bottom of it. “I had a college fund for her, you know. I started it up three or four times. But then I’d have to dip into it for something, and pretty soon there wasn’t enough to buy books, so I’d clean it out. Figured there was still time to start over. I don’t know where it all went. You know, the time.”
He looked up at her, chuckling, his eyes filled with a telling helplessness, as though the joke was on him. “Those are about the lamest words a person can say, aren’t they? ‘I don’t know where the time went.’”
“You were pretty good about helping support her.”
“I’m pretty good at a lot of things. I should’ve done better for my daughter. I didn’t always send as much as we agreed on.”
“Sometimes you sent more.”
He shrugged, wagged his shaggy head. He needed a haircut. She wondered whether she would still know how to give him one.
“How much does a wedding cost?” he asked. “You know, a nice one.”
Stop acting so damned innocent and looking so damned…
“Not as much as college, which is what I wish we were paying for.”
“She can still go back. Some people need a little more time than others. Take me, for instance.”
“I did.”
He laughed. “That’s right. For better or for worse, you said.”
“As I recall, our civil vows didn’t include that line.”
“What have you had since? Better or worse?”
She gave him a look that should have burned a hole between his eyes.
He raised his brow. “Doesn’t hurt to ask, does it? You used to ask me all the time.” Palms up, he surrendered. “Okay, sorry. I just answered my own question. It does.”
“I’m not asking anymore, am I?”
He cocked a finger, gave a cluck and a wink. “I knew I was missing something.”
“Anyway, I never asked about better or worse. If there’s someone else, who cares whether she’s better or worse?”
He laughed. “More proof that we come from different planets.”
“All right, I’ll ask, even though it’s none of my business and it doesn’t matter anymore.” She had that corsage list to consider. “Are you—what’s the current phrase—with someone at the moment?”
“At the moment I’m with you.”
“There, you see? Typical Creed Burke answer.”
“Straight as an arrow.” He jerked his chin in her direction. “That was a typical Camille Burke question. Carefully phrased so I could answer it without telling you anything. So I did.” He shrugged. “My answer never mattered. Your question was always more important to you.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I finally realized that the question would always be there no matter what I did.”
“So what did you do?”
“I did a lot of things. Some things I’m proud of, some I’m not.” But he smiled. “When you said you weren’t asking anymore, I thought, Good for you.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“I know. Old habit.” He gave a quick nod. “But the truth is, I thought, Good for you, Camille. You seem happy. I don’t know if letting all that shit go is the main reason, but if you’re happy now, good for you.”
“Are you ‘happy now’?” she chirped, trotting out a bit of mimicry and sass. “Good for you.”
“That’s not what I said either, is it?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Even if you’ve had better since me.” He tried to touch her shoulder, but she saw it coming in time to step away, leaving his hand outstretched and empty. “Good for you.”
“I haven’t gone looking for better.” She snatched the cold toast off the plate and tossed it into the sink. “I haven’t had time.”
“Twelve years?”
“I’ve been very busy. Besides, men are so much work.” She ran cold water over the toast, using a fork to feed it to the snarling disposal.
The flip of a switch, the slap of a faucet handle, an uneasy silence.
“Did I tell you how good you were the other night?” She turned, smiling because he looked genuinely perplexed. “Your music.”
“Thank God. I was afraid I blinked and missed something else.”
“It’s really a good group, and you’re better than you ever were. Do you think you might record something?”
“Only the demos we use to get jobs.” He turned his attention back to the soup he’d left on the stove.
“But you’re so good. You could—”
“I like what I’m doing.” He turned, saw what was coming, and warned her with an upraised soupspoon. “Don’t, Camille. I like the part where you said I was good. But you always want more.”
And he always choked on any confidence she showed in him. She thought better of saying she didn’t want anything, that he still didn’t get it, that he still couldn’t take even the simplest compliment from her.
He saw the storm coming, too, and he shifted gears smoothly, giving a sly smile. “Now, if we were talking about sex, no problem. Right? If you want better, you come to me.”
“You’re as good as anyone on the radio,” she muttered.
The ding from the toaster startled her.
He laughed. “Thanks, honey, but I know you’re just saying that. Not to flatter me, but because you don’t know what you’re talking about. I know you haven’t been around that much.”
“Cut it out, now, I’m serious. I’m not pushing either. I have no reason to push you. I’m just trying to encourage you because…” She wasn’t sure he was listening. He was reading the label on a peanut butter jar. “Well, you never liked roofing.”
“No chunky?” he asked.
“Only my hips,” she quipped, but she opened another cupboard and handed him a new jar.
“Much better,” he said, spinning the lid. “No wonder Rosie didn’t eat that other stuff. Got any Marshmallow Creme?”
“Why haven’t you gained any weight?”
“I would if my cupboards were stocked the way yours are,” he said when she handed him another jar. “I never liked roofing because it’s hard work, and I’m basically lazy. Funny the height doesn’t bother me.”
“You’ve never had problems with height.”
“Oh, yeah, I have. That stage at the state fairgrounds was too high for me.” He scooped a dollop of Marshmallow Creme out of the jar and sucked it off his finger. “Mmm, sweet. I like what I’m doing. Bigger gigs pay better, but I never was very good with money. You know that. You always handled it better than I did.”
“I just hate to see things like money and talent go to waste.”
“Really?” He offered her a fingerful of marshmallow.
Camille thought about giving him something he’d never expect from her. A shock. A thrill. Slickery, lickery lips closing over his finger, throat sucking, tongue slip-sliding, drawing that sweet sticky white stuff into her mouth. Pressing her lips together, she stared at his finger. Lots of other women would.
Lots of other women undoubtedly had.
She snatched the stuff quickly, a bird stealing a treat from his hand. Her teeth scraped his skin, and the taste of him came with the confection. Or maybe the taste of him was the confection.
Maybe she did need to get out more.
“You want it with peanut butter?”
“What?” she asked innocently. “Talent? Or money?”
“I gave you all I had, sweetheart. All I have left is my hands, but at least they’re clean.” Another sly smile. “By the way, I took a tour of the workshop a little while ago. Great stuff back there. You’ve got a lot of talent, Camille. Why are you wasting it making stuff for rich people to stick in their yards?”
“That’s what artists do for a living,” she said, easily shrugging off his cleverness without giving him the touché she knew he deserved. “They make things for rich people to do whatever they want with. Stick in their yards or hang on their walls or decorate their tombs.”
“So if Bill Gates stops in at the bar tonight and listens to a set, I can call myself an artist?”
“You are an artist, but so few people ever get to…enjoy what you do.”
“Yeah, but at least those few are alive. Mostly. The Countryside Inn is damn sure no graveyard.” He grimaced. “People really use your stuff to decorate graves?”
“Not my stuff.”
He nodded, as though the sparing of her stuff consoled him enough that he could get back to fixing soup.
“Not graves,” she insisted, trailing him to the stove. “Tombs. Michelangelo was commissioned to make statues for rich people’s tombs.”
“And that’s not a waste of money and talent?”
“I’m paying you a compliment on your music, and you’re being difficult.”
“Like I said, I enjoy what I do.” He turned, soup pot in hand, grinning. “You ran out of answers, didn’t you?”
A long time ago, she thought, but she decided to let him have the last word. I can’t live like this had long since been her final answer.
He was about to pour soup into the mugs and splash it on her counter. She opened a drawer and handed him a ladle. Without looking up, he took the ladle, set it down on the counter, and proceeded to pour cream of something soup into the three mugs.
“Jordan chose her flowers today,” Camille reported as she reached for the sponge. “We put in a preliminary order. There’s no getting around it; weddings are expensive. Now that we’re into it, I want to make it special for her.”
She looked for splashes to wipe up behind his back while he was returning the pot to the stove. There were none.
“I want to help.” He glanced at the sponge in her hand. “But I don’t have to come around if you don’t want to see me.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“I don’t drink much anymore.”
“You were the other night,” she pointed out, meeting his gaze.
“I had a couple of beers. Did I get out of line?”
She shook her head. The sponge slipped from her hand, into the sink.
“You don’t have to worry about me at the wedding,” he promised quietly.
“I’m not worried.”
“Liar.” He tipped his head to one side, considering her eyes. “Do you mind if I bring a date?”
“Of course not.”
He laughed. “Damn, you can lie.”
“That makes two of us, I guess.”
“I guess.” He turned away, looking for something more to do with the food. “You want toast?”
“Just the soup,” she repeated. “Is it still hot?”
“Rosie showed me what she was working on for Jordan and how it’s gonna look.” He handed her one of the mugs. “I didn’t know she did that kind of sewing. That’s gonna be some dress. Have you found one for yourself yet?”
“I’m not ready to shop for my dress yet. I need to lose”—she glanced at the cream soup and smiled sheepishly—“well, a little weight. Does it show?”
He lifted one shoulder. “I’d say there’s about twenty pounds more of you than there was when I first met you.”
“Oh, boy, that’s quite a candid answer. When we were married, you would have dodged that one for sure.”
“When we were married, I had more to lose by telling the naked truth. As for whether you need to lose…” He gave her a quick once-over. “You look real good to me.”
“Understand that this is a sensitive subject. You wouldn’t just say that, would you?”
“What would it get me? It takes a lot of effort to lie, and I don’t go to that much trouble for nothing.”
“‘You look real good to me,’” she aped. “Effortlessly said.”
“Not for you.”
She questioned him with a look.
“You’ve done that twice now, and it’s not easy for you. You want me to think it is, but you don’t really like to mock people. So you can’t quite pull it off.”
“Bullshit.”
He laughed. “You can’t quite pull that off either.”
“I heard a rumor that somebody was making us something to eat,” Rosemary said by way of announcing herself. “Did I just overhear the last word on the rumor?”
“No, ma’am. I’ve got it all fixed right here.” He pulled a chair away from the table and held it for her. “But I’ll have to heat it up again. Your daughter’s one powerful distraction.”
“I’m sure I heard cussing.”
“It was too lame to count, Rosie. Sit down and start with some toast while I nuke the soup.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ll eat his toast,” Camille complained when her mother took a bite. She punched Creed’s shoulder. “You big brownie.”
He laughed. “You got that right, hon.”