Cry Uncle (15 page)

She dragged herself out of the bed in the
pretty yellow room, and donned a pair of cargo shorts and a camp
shirt. They were among the garments Kitty had insisted that Pamela
buy in the days before the wedding. She’d stocked up on shorts,
T-shirts—a Key West version of a trousseau. This wasn’t a place
where any of her professional suits and dresses were going to do
her much good.

Once she was dressed, she brushed her hair
and then inched open the door. The upstairs hall was silent. Joe
must still be asleep. If she was lucky, she would be able to drink
a cup of coffee and pull herself together before she had to
confront him.

She tiptoed along the hall to the stairs and
down. The aroma of coffee wafted from the kitchen, cheering her
until she realized its significance: Joe was up, probably in the
kitchen. She would have no caffeine in her when she came face to
face with the man she’d married yesterday, the man who had spent
his first night as her husband in a bed at the opposite end of the
house from her.

Inhaling for fortitude, she followed the
fragrance into the kitchen. Joe stood at the sink, his back to her
as he rinsed stray coffee grounds from the basket of the coffee
maker. He turned as she entered, and his blue eyes froze her in
place.

She hadn’t thought he was so terribly
handsome the first time she’d met him, had she? She had thought he
was a bum—and he was, she insisted. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair
was tousled. Dressed in a pair of fraying denim cut-offs and a
T-shirt that said “It’s Better In Bimini,” he looked more than a
little disreputable.

He also looked like someone who hadn’t slept
very well. His eyes were bloodshot, underlined with shadow. The
smile he gave her could have passed for a grimace.

“
Good morning,” she said,
trying not to wince at how formal she sounded.

“‘
Morning.” He scrubbed his
hand through his hair, then turned back to the sink and set the
basket on the drying rack.

When he said nothing more, she ventured
timidly into the room. It was bigger than the kitchen in her condo,
but not as nice. The cabinets were varnished pine, the counter-tops
Formica, the floor a checkerboard of scuffed black and white tiles.
The major appliances seemed fairly old, but they’d been augmented
with more up-to-date equipment: a microwave oven, a food processor
and the blessed coffee maker, its decanter full to the rim.

“
I’m usually not up this
early,” Joe said without looking at her. “What with the bar and
all. If it’s my turn to stay till closing time, I don’t get home
till the wee hours.”

“
I’m a morning person,”
Pamela told him.

He nodded, as if he’d expected as much.
“Lizard’s a morning person, too. She knows she’s not supposed to
wake me up. She usually just grabs a box of cereal and goes into
the den to watch TV.”

Pamela knew she ought to say something, but
the house was too quiet, the atmosphere too formal. She eyed the
cupboards, wondering which one held the coffee cups.

He answered her unasked question by pulling
two mugs from a cabinet. Then he swung open another cabinet door to
reveal a shelf stacked with assorted boxes of cereal. “We’ve got
every sugary cereal known to man,” he told her, smiling
sheepishly.

Suffering a pang of shyness, Pamela smiled
back. Looking at him seemed too dangerous, so she quickly shifted
direction to focus on the selection of cereals. Indeed, they all
appeared to be sickeningly sweet: chocolate puffs, honeyed wheat,
sugared flakes, frosted corn, and something that, according to the
picture on the front of the box, was pink.

“
It’s supposed to taste like
berries,” Joe explained, noticing the angle of her gaze. “It’s
Lizard’s favorite.”

Grimacing, Pamela closed the cupboard door
and opened the bread drawer. “I think I’ll just make some
toast.”

He gestured toward the toaster, then pulled a
plate for her from a shelf and got butter and jam out of the
refrigerator. She felt him hovering behind her as she made her
toast, as if he wasn’t sure whether he ought to be making it for
her. His nearness unnerved her. She wanted him either to give her a
reassuring hug or to back off. Having him so close but not touching
her only emphasized the tension between them.

“
I get the daily paper out
of Miami,” he said, indicating the newspaper on the table. “They
usually toss it onto the driveway. I don’t know if you like to read
the paper over breakfast....” He drifted off uncertainly, then
smiled even more uncertainly.

His words brought home to Pamela how very
little they knew about each other. Not just the trivia about
whether they liked to read the paper over breakfast, whether Joe
liked to watch TV with his dinner, what day he usually did the
laundry—but real issues, like whom he’d voted for in the last
election or whether he had a bad temper, or whether he liked sex
hot and fast or slow and slinky or...

She felt her cheeks grow warm. She didn’t
care how he liked sex. For that matter, she didn’t care whom he’d
voted for.

Her toast popped up, and she carried it to
the table and sat. He had the newspaper in front of him, but he
didn’t look at it. He only held his mug and watched her. She smiled
bashfully, then fussed with her toast, meticulously buttering it so
she’d have something to do. Her mind scrambled furiously for
something, anything, to latch on to so she wouldn’t have to wonder
about how Joe liked sex.

“
Bones,” she
said.

“
Huh?”

“
Kitty told me your mother
digs bones.” When Kitty had mentioned that, Pamela wasn’t sure
she’d heard her correctly. Now that she gave voice to the notion,
she was sure she hadn’t.

Joe proved her wrong. “Yeah,” he said,
relaxing in his chair. “She’s sifting soil at some old Mayan ruin
in Yucatan.”

“
Is she an
archeologist?”

“
Nah. She’s a
dilettante.”

“
It’s an unusual
hobby.”

He shrugged and lowered his gaze to his
coffee.

Pamela studied him intently. Now that they
were finally talking, she wasn’t going to abandon the subject. “How
did she wind up in Mexico?”

Joe seemed to understand how anxious Pamela
was to keep the conversation alive. He lifted his gaze back to her
and smiled. “Her last boyfriend. They decided to sail across the
Gulf of Mexico together. According to her, somewhere along the way
they had a falling out, and the last few days were hell. He was
ready to have her walk the plank; she was ready to mutiny. Soon as
they reached Cancun they parted ways. I figure she must have hooked
up with somebody there who was on his way to the ruins, and the
next thing she knew, she was digging up ancient artifacts.”

“
Isn’t that odd?” Pamela
asked carefully, hoping he wouldn’t take offense.

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean,
odd?”

“
Well, I don’t know....” As
she chewed a bite of toast she pictured her own mother, as staid
and stable a woman as ever existed. The only thing her mother ever
dug was the soil in her flower beds, in her own yard. To sail to
another country with a boyfriend, break up halfway through the
voyage, and grab hold of another boyfriend was simply something her
mother would never do.

“
My mother is a character,”
Joe conceded. “Headstrong, bitchy and a whole lot of fun. You can’t
always rely on her, though.”

“
That’s more or less what
Kitty said.”

“
Kitty was speaking the
truth.”

Pamela ate a bit more of her toast. “How
about your father?”

“
He died ten years ago.” Joe
drained his mug, then stood and crossed to the coffee pot for a
refill. “Thing about my mother, she was real loyal and steadfast as
a wife. Then, when my father passed away, she spent a while
mourning, and then she cut loose. She’d had enough of the loyal,
steadfast wife routine.”

“
Yes, but then when you got
Lizard, your mother wasn’t there to help you.”

“
She tried,” Joe defended
her. “But you know, she’d already raised two kids of her own. And
then she’d lost her daughter, and she just didn’t want to settle
down and deal with it.” He shrugged again. “So I settled down and
dealt with it, instead.”

“
Your family has had more
than its fair share of pain,” Pamela murmured.

“
Hey, what’s a fair share?
You get what you get.”

“
How did your sister
die?”

“
Ballooning.”

Pamela almost choked on her coffee. “I beg
your pardon?”

“
She and my brother-in-law
were ballooning. They got caught in a wind sheer and
crashed.”

“
That’s...pretty
dramatic.”

Joe smiled wistfully. “What you mean is, it’s
odd.”

“
Well...yes.”

“
They wanted to try
ballooning. It’s supposed to be fantastic. They didn’t expect to
die, and they didn’t want to, but my sister was adventurous and
nothing stopped her. She was absolutely fearless. That was what my
brother-in-law loved about her.” His smile grew bitter as he added,
“And that’s what my brother-in-law’s family hated about her. He was
a real stuffed shirt when she met him. She unstuffed him. He was
crazy about her.”

“
Their daughter seems to
have inherited their free spirit,” Pamela noted.

Joe agreed with a grim nod. “Lizard’ll die if
she’s got to go live with that bunch of stuffed shirts. They’ll sit
on her till her spirit dries up and dies.”

“
Was your father a free
spirit, too?”

His smile returned. “My father,” he boasted,
“was a bar owner.”

“
Oh?”

“
He left me the Shipwreck in
his will.”

“
But ten years ago—” she
eyed him speculatively “—wouldn’t you have been too young to own a
bar?”

“
We wiggled around that.” He
grinned. “This is Key West, Pam. People don’t bother with the fine
print around here.”

She finished her coffee, pleased to have
learned a bit about her husband, even if what she’d learned struck
her as rather strange. Through the open window above the sink, she
heard the chirping of a bird. Sunlight bathed the room in golden
warmth. Joe continued to grin at her.

It was all too domestic, too cozy. If last
night she’d been raging with passion, this morning she was awash in
the tranquillity of home and hearth—which, in its own way, was just
as dangerous.

Abruptly she stood and carried her empty
plate and mug to the sink. “Speaking of small print,” she said as
she rinsed the dishes, “this morning I’d like to take care of some
paperwork—getting my driver’s license and car registration changed,
making sure my name is amended to Pamela Brenner on all my records
and that kind of thing.”

“
That’s what you married me
for,” he commented.

She tried to interpret the hint of
seriousness in his tone, then decided not to be so analytical. Joe
was probably just sleepy.

Not that she would dare to turn around and
look at him. Just as he’d kept his back to her at the sink when
she’d entered the kitchen, now she remained at the sink with her
back to him. Life seemed marginally safer when she wasn’t gazing
into his gorgeous blue eyes.

“
I was figuring I ought to
go across the street and pick up Lizard first. It’s important for
me to get to know Birdie a little better.”

“
Sure.”

“
Do you think it’s too early
to call on them?” She glanced at the wall clock. Nearly nine
o’clock.

“
They’ll be up. Probably
performing some black magic ritual, even as we speak. Go on
over.”

Once again she struggled to interpret the
wistfulness coloring his voice. Did he want to get rid of her? Did
he feel as awkward with her as she did with him? Where had their
companionability gone? Were they going to be this uncomfortable
with each other for the rest of their married life?

If so, how in God’s name was Pamela going to
endure it?

She shook the excess water from her hands,
then dried them on a towel. “Well,” she said, sounding wooden.
“I’ll need a key to your door.”

“
I have a spare upstairs.
You won’t need it to run across the street, though. I’ll leave the
door unlocked.”

“
Okay.” She wanted to say
something more: that she understood his discomfort and shared it.
That if they both put their minds to it—or took their minds off
it—they could keep the strain between them to a minimum. That if
Joe maintained his derelict grooming, she would probably stop
experiencing an unwelcome surge of lust every time she looked at
him. That once Lizard was back home, they would have her to
distract them from each other, and to drain them of energy so
completely that the thought of sleeping together would
vanish.

Then again, Joe might never have had much
interest in sleeping with Pamela. Last night might have been an
anomaly. This morning, perhaps, his edginess might simply be a
result of his wanting to let her down easy, to back off from her
without hurting her feelings.

And perhaps she was analyzing too much
again.

She tried to smile, but it was a lame effort
and Joe wasn’t looking at her, anyway. “See you later,” she said,
then raced out of the room with all the subtlety of an Olympic
sprinter, hoping with all her heart that Joe wouldn’t be around
when she got back.

***