Cry Uncle (10 page)

Chuckling, Joe stood as well. “What the hell,
then—I’ll invite you. I definitely want a present from you.
Something really bridal. Sterling silver napkin rings, okay? Or
matching champagne flutes tied in white satin ribbon.”

“
Watch your step, Brenner,
or I’ll buy you a marital aid.”

“
Aagh!” Joe made a strangled
sound. “Do that and I’ll find myself another lawyer.”

Mary smiled smugly and hoisted the straps of
her tote onto her shoulder. “You need me more than I need you,
honey. Do me a favor—” she inclined her head toward Pamela “—and
try not to hurt her, okay? She doesn’t deserve what you’re going to
do to her.”

Before Joe could think of a clever retort,
Mary was gone.

He should have accompanied her around the
house to her bicycle, but her parting words had shaken loose his
tenuous grip on etiquette. What did Mary think he was going to do
to Pamela? What terrible thing that Pamela didn’t deserve?

He was providing the woman with a new
identity, far from a criminal who might or might not be out to get
her. He was giving her a home and the use of his name for as long
as she needed them. He was paying her expenses and offering her a
credible excuse to remain on the island.

Why would Mary think that Joe was going to
hurt Pamela?

Sure, she wasn’t his type. Sure, anyone who
knew him well might have trouble believing he’d turned over a new
leaf. But...

But he still remembered the way she’d felt in
his arms yesterday, her tears dampening his shirt, her body slim
and taut against his. He still remembered the sheer dread that
turned her eyes as pale as zinc, the fear that made her turn to
Joe, of all people, for solace.

He still remembered the way she’d called him
Jonas.

He stroked the day-old stubble of his beard,
wondering if being Pamela’s husband meant he would have to shave on
a daily basis. Hell, marriage was supposed to be about compromise.
If he had to shave every day, he would. The truth was, he was doing
it—shaving, getting married, compromising—for Lizard, not for
Pamela.

He pushed open the screen door and descended
the back steps to the yard. Pamela was standing beside the scruffy
patch of garden, her hands on her hips and her eyes wary. Lizard,
up to her elbows in dirt, was babbling. “See this? It’s a weed.
Birdie says a weed is just a plant that didn’t get enough
love.”

“
A weed is a plant that
isn’t happy unless it’s choking all the other plants to death,” Joe
asserted.

Lizard peered up at him and wrinkled her nose
in disdain. “That shows what you know,” she scoffed. “Birdie says,
half the people in the world are weeds. They just need a little
love.”

“
I’ll go along with the
first part—half the people in the world are weeds. Maybe
three-quarters.” Joe glanced at Pamela, hoping to find an ally.
Pamela remained impassive, her gaze darting back and forth between
uncle and niece. “So, Pam, has Lizzie told you everything you ever
wanted to know about chives?”

Pamela managed a feeble smile. “What did your
lawyer have to say?”

“
She thinks we’re perfect
for each other,” he lied.

Pamela frowned. “If she really said that, I
think you ought to consider looking for a smarter lawyer.”

Joe laughed. The corners of Pamela’s lips
twitched upward, as if she wanted to smile but she didn’t find
anything amusing in the situation. If Joe allowed himself to think
about it, he wouldn’t find it all that amusing, either.

He watched Lizard race to the side of the
house and return dragging the hose. “I’m gonna water,” she said
less than a second before she aimed the nozzle half at the garden
and half at Joe’s feet and squeezed the lever.

Joe didn’t care about getting his sneakers
wet. He did care about getting Pamela’s pristine outfit splattered,
however. Grabbing her arm, he yanked her out of the way.

She stumbled against him, then shook free of
his clasp and took another step back. Her brows dipped in a frown
as she watched Lizard wield the hose as if it were a boa
constrictor she was wrestling. The hose seemed to be winning the
tussle. Silvery arcs of water doused the rhododendrons, the lilacs,
the king palms and the rear shingles of the house.

Joe scrutinized Pamela’s sour expression and
heard Mary’s voice echo in his skull: A fish out of water. Although
if Pamela stuck around in the back yard much longer, she would most
definitely be in water.

He heard Mary’s voice again, haunting,
warning: She doesn’t deserve what you’re going to do to her. What
he was going to do, assuming Pamela married him, was saddle her
with an obstreperous little girl with a soft spot in her heart for
weeds. And it was true, Pamela didn’t deserve that. Joe wasn’t sure
anyone—himself included—did.

“
You hate Lizard, don’t
you,” he said, so Pamela wouldn’t have to say it.

Pamela meticulously dusted a few flecks of
dirt from her hands. “No, I don’t hate her.”

“
But the idea of living with
her makes you want to run howling into the night.”

“
She needs a little
guidance,” Pamela said. “And a lot of soap. But I can tolerate
her.”

Tolerate?
It was one thing for Joe to joke about his niece’s
feral proclivities, and quite another for Pamela to imply that
Lizard was to be tolerated, like bad weather or a booster
shot.
Tolerate?
.
Architect Hayes ought to realize that marrying her was the ultimate
act of tolerance on Joe’s part.

He wasn’t going to get into a competition
with her over who was being forced to tolerate more than whom. What
mattered was that his in-laws were planning to fight Joe’s custody
claim, and he had to get his act together pronto.

Turning his back on the havoc Lizard was
wreaking with the garden hose, he faced Pamela. She stared past him
at Lizard, but Joe took her hands in his, urging her attention to
him. Her hands felt cool, and once again he was astonished by how
slender and silky they felt.

“
Pam,” he said, gazing
directly into her metallic eyes, wishing they would thaw for
him—not melt into tears the way they had yesterday, but show some
warmth, some receptivity. “I’ve got to be down at the Shipwreck in
about a half hour, so we really ought to work some stuff out.
You’ve spent two afternoons at the house, and maybe that’s not
enough time to get a feel for things. But time isn’t something
we’ve got a whole lot of. Do you think we can make a go of
it?”

Either she was blushing, or the sun had added
some color to her face during the hour she’d spent in the yard with
Lizard. Her eyes, if not exactly warm, sparkled with ironic humor.
“Is this a proposal?”

He smiled wryly. “If you’ve got to ask, I
guess I haven’t done a very good job of it. You want me to get down
on my knees?”

“
No—the ground is too muddy.
It’s a wonder Lizard hasn’t washed away the entire yard with that
hose.” She slipped her hands free of his and crossed her arms,
although it looked as if she were actually hugging
herself.

“
Okay, so...” He hated to
pressure her, but he was under a bit of pressure himself. “Do you
want to go forward with this marriage set-up?”

She managed a limp smile. “No better ideas
have presented themselves, Jonas. I guess we may as well.”

“
Great.” He had to force
enthusiasm into his tone. If only she’d sounded a little less
resigned, a little more excited...

Why would she? He was as excited about the
prospect of marrying Pamela Hayes as he’d be about scheduling a
dental appointment. He knew it was good for him, he knew it was
necessary, he knew it would make his life better in the long run,
but really, a guy didn’t kick up his heels and shout for joy at the
thought of getting his ivories professionally cleaned and
flossed.

He might have only been imagining it, but
Pamela seemed to tighten her grip on herself. “What sort of time
frame are we looking at?” she asked.

“
The sooner, the better. I’m
friends with a semi-retired judge up on Big Pine Key. I think we
can get him to do the honors. You didn’t want a church wedding, did
you?” Cripes, they hadn’t even discussed religion. For all he knew,
Pamela could belong to a cult or something.

“
I think a church wedding
would be a bit hypocritical under the circumstances. Can we drive
up to Big Pine Key and have the judge take care of the paperwork
there?”

“
Well, actually, I’d like to
make it a little more public than that. If we want to convince the
family court that it’s a real marriage, we shouldn’t be too
secretive about the wedding. What I was thinking—if it’s all right
with you—is maybe closing the Shipwreck to outsiders on—let’s say,
Monday afternoon—and inviting some folks over, and hosting a small
party. My treat, of course. All you’ve got to do is show up and say
‘I do.’”

If she hugged herself any tighter, she’d
suffocate. Her smile glistened with pain. But he wasn’t going to
have the chance to comfort her; her eyes were as dry as cold ash.
Would she have preferred for him to sugarcoat the deal? Made it
sound like something genuine, something that came from his heart?
He was offering to pay for the bash. She didn’t have a right to
expect more.

She gazed past him once
more, at Lizard—who, from the sound of her whooping, was doing some
sort of Seminole fertility dance around the herb garden.
For her
, Joe wanted to
say.
This isn’t for me. It’s for
her
.

And for Pamela, too. For the sake of keeping
her head attached to her body, with no significant holes shot
through her vital organs. This marriage was for her good as well as
his, and if she didn’t like it, she could get the hell off his
property and—

“
Are you sure you wouldn’t
like me to chip in toward the party?”

His anger vanished before it had a chance to
build up much steam. If that was as close as she could come to a
yes, it was close enough. “Forget it. My treat.”

“
Okay.” Her voice was drier
than her eyes. Even her skin was dry. She should have been sweating
in the humid heat, but she was brisk and starchy, all business,
every messy emotion neatly tucked away.

He told himself that was good. He told
himself it was better that she refused to let her feelings out the
way she had yesterday. He told himself that this marriage was going
to serve the function he needed it to serve. A cool customer like
Pamela Hayes was going to blow his in-laws’ arguments to
smithereens. Everything was going to work out perfectly.

Even so... As Pamela broke from him and
picked a careful path through the puddles to Lizard, calling, “Liz,
it looks like your uncle and I are going to get married,” Joe
couldn’t stifle a twinge of...wistfulness? Regret? He wasn’t sure
exactly what he was feeling.

Except that it seemed an awful lot like
longing.

***

A BRIDE NEEDED her mother at a time like
this.

Sighing, Pamela leaned back into the pillows.
She was stretched out on her bed in the dreary furnished room that
was destined to be her address for only a few more days. Her eyes
burned, and she closed them against the too-bright light of the
bedside lamp. She wanted to believe her tears were a result of
frustration or even exhaustion. But she knew they weren’t.

Although it made no sense, she believed Jonas
Brenner was the cause of her weepiness.

She couldn’t begin to fathom what it was
about him that made her want to cry. Marrying him was far from the
most arduous task she had ever faced in her life. Living in the
charming room at the end of the upstairs hall in his house would be
a pleasure after the week she’d spent at the ticky-tacky apartment
complex. Lizard was a brat, but an intriguing one—and without her
work, Pamela needed something to occupy her mind. Lizard would
surely fit the bill.

So why were tears seeping through her lashes
and skittering down her cheeks? Why was it that she could witness a
cold-blooded murder, survive the ordeal of testifying against a
killer in court, comprehend that she was in danger and flee for her
life without shedding a single tear—and now all of a sudden, when
salvation seemed at hand, she was as touchy as a twelve-year-old
besieged by puberty?

Perhaps all brides went through this.
Pre-marriage jitters. Second thoughts. Abject dread. Wedding Bell
Blues. Third and fourth and fifth thoughts.

If only she could talk to her mother and ask
whether it was normal to experience this strange blend of
melancholia and exhilaration as she contemplated the step she was
about to take. Had her mother been this anxious on the eve of her
wedding?

Of course not. Her mother had been a sweet
young thing, and madly in love with the man she was about to marry.
She’d known him for two years, had a long, properly public
engagement, become a part of his family and welcomed him into
hers.

None of which described Pamela’s
situation.

She fingered the telephone on her bedstand,
then shoved it away. Her lawyer had warned her, for the safety of
her parents, not to try to contact them directly. She could convey
messages to him, and he would pass them along to her parents. “It’s
easy enough for Mick Morrow to find your parents, if you honestly
believe he’s after you,” her attorney had pointed out. “Don’t put
them in a position where they have to conceal information about
you. They’re safer if they don’t know anything.”

What would her mother say if Pamela called
with the news of her betrothal?