Eddie’s Prize (11 page)

“I like this color, and the material is good, but if we put princess seams here—” she tucked the fabric over her bust to imitate the curved seam “—it would look more elegant, don’t you think?”

Hannah’s eyes narrowed as she visualized the change. Soon they were talking up a storm, discussing what types of fabrics were available and how blouses and dresses could be made more stylish. Lisa forgot about Eddie while she and Hannah forged a business partnership. Lisa would do sketches of designs she thought would work, and Hannah would sew them. Lisa was so thrilled at the prospect she gave Hannah an impulsive hug.

When Lisa came out of the back room reserved for ladies, she was wearing new jeans and a western-style blouse and glowing with excitement. Eddie was talking with a man whose long, silver ponytail Lisa thought was vaguely familiar. Eddie broke off his conversation to smile approvingly at her new blue blouse and stiff jeans. He held his hand out to her.

“Lisa, I want you to meet Steve Herrick. He was one of the referees at the Bride Fight.”

No wonder the silver ponytail looked familiar. Lisa nodded distantly. “Hello.”

Steve’s weathered face creased in a smile that made him instantly attractive. The distaste Lisa felt for anything tied to the Bride Fight dissolved into a warmer smile.

“Well,” Steve said. “Guess I’ll let you two lovebirds get on with your day.”

After Eddie had steered her out of the shop and back on the street, she gave his waist an excited squeeze. “Eddie, Hannah and I are going into business! I’m going to help design clothes for her to sell. I’m so happy! First of all, I have you for a husband. And now I have a job I know I’ll enjoy.”

He looked at her with a strange look on his face. “A job? You don’t need a job. I am able to support you just fine.”

“Of course, you can.” Inside, Lisa said,
Old fashioned, much? Since when does a woman need a man to support her?
Outside, she said, “I’m used to being busy. I’d be bored to death with nothing to do.”

Eddie stopped walking. “Lisa-love, you have to learn to cook, and there’s the house to keep, and soon the children will come.”

How long did he expect cooking and cleaning to take? And babies? She wasn’t sure she wanted kids, at least not right now. “It’s not like I’ll be spending ten hours a day designing clothes,” she said soothingly. “It’s only part time, okay? It will make me happy.”

Eddie’s turquoise eyes glowed brightly in a shaft of sunlight. “I want you to be happy, so if you want to do it, fine.”

She kissed him right there on the street. “Thank you.”

A faint flush colored his cheeks. “Come on. I want you to meet Mr. Gray. He’s one of the most respected men in Kearney. Even my dad listens when he talks.”

She realized Mr. Gray must work in the big, gray stone building at the corner because that was where Eddie took her. He opened the door for her and took a deep breath as if to savor the aroma of the place. “I love it here.”

She read the words carved into the stone arch above the door. “The library? You like to read?”

“Yes, but what I really like is the displays, things from the Times Before. It’s a museum. Maybe you’ll feel at home with the things here.”

Her husband really did like the library, it seemed. Ignoring the tall bookshelves in the main part of the library, he led her to glass cases on the other side of the marble-floored foyer and named the items the cases contained with a reverent voice. Lisa shivered when she saw the things under glass as if they were precious historical artifacts preserved in a museum. As her eyes slid from the smart phone to the tablet, to the Bluetooth headset, she swallowed dizzy nausea.

“These things were all collected by Mr. Gray, who was actually alive during the Times Before.” Eddie’s enthusiastic voice almost managed to clear her numbness.

“I was alive then too, Eddie.” Her fingers clenched on the edge of the case she leaned on. “You think these are antiques? I used them every day.”

Eddie didn’t notice her distress. “Good. Then you will be a big help when we start working on getting electricity up and running.”

“Me? I’m not a techie.”

“Come on,” he said, tugging her away from the display cases toward a narrow hallway. “I want you to meet Mr. Gray. When he was a young man, he traveled hundreds of miles from the east to come to Kearney, and he can even get some of these gadgets to work sometime. He’s the only man within a hundred miles to have been alive in the Times Before. Dane Overdahl has a bicycle he uses to make a tiny bit of electricity.” Eddie’s voice held the excitement of a kid on Christmas Eve. “He can power small kitchen contraptions like a machine that toasts bread without a fire.”

A toaster
, Lisa thought
. Eddie is excited by a toaster, for God’s sake
. During the last two days in bed with a new energetic husband, she had almost forgotten she’d left her old world behind. Reality hurt, and what hurt even more was Eddie didn’t notice.

She didn’t say anything as they went down the dark hallway to a door whose glass window had been replaced by raw boards. Her husband rapped once, and then opened the door and drew her inside with his arm around her waist. Three tall, narrow windows let light in, revealing an office crowded by boxes of junk lining one wall, a large wooden desk at one side, and a working fireplace at the other.

Old Mr. Gray was there, dozing in a ratty recliner in front of the small fire. Eddie cleared his throat to wake him. Mr. Gray looked ancient, but he jumped up spryly when he saw them in front of the door. Eddie squeezed his arm around Lisa’s waist.

“Mr. Gray, I’d like you to meet my wife,” Eddie began proudly.

“Lisa Anton,” said the old man reverently. “The model. I heard Ray Mason had a pair of women from the Times Before and one of them was named Lisa Anton, but I didn’t believe it was
you
.”

Lisa surprised herself by blushing. “You’ve heard of me?”

“Heard of you? When I was twenty, I had the biggest crush on you ever!” He shook his head with a mostly toothless grin. “Eddie, you are a lucky man. In my time, about every man on the planet was in love with Lisa Anton.”

Lisa squeezed her husband’s arm. “Well, too bad for them. I’m taken now.”

Eddie’s smooth forehead was faintly wrinkled. “You knew my wife?”

“Personally? Heavens, no! A student like me wouldn’t ever meet a famous model like Lisa Anton.” Mr. Gray gave a thin, cackling laugh. “You don’t know who it is you’ve married. I’ve got a few publications with Lisa in them here. Let’s go find them. Then you’ll understand.” The old man fumbled to fasten the buttons on his cardigan sweater. “There were a couple
PopNation
magazines, and a
Sports Illustrated
, and…” His voice trailed off, and he stared at Lisa again for a long moment. “I can’t believe this. Lisa Anton is here, in my office. Why don’t you two come with me to the magazine archives?”

Eddie and Lisa followed the old man down the dark hall to a musty section of the old library lit by a few narrow windows. It was colder here than in the office where the fireplace glowed with coals and low flames. Lisa understood why the old man had buttoned his sweater. As she looked at the tall metal shelves crowded with periodicals in archival boxes, all neatly labeled in fading type with the name of the magazines inside and their dates of issue, she was wrapped in that same dizzy numbness she’d felt earlier. These yellowed, dusty things were the same age she was. How strange was that? She paused by a set of boxes labeled
Cosmopolitan
.

“You know,” she told the two men, “I don’t need to see all those articles again. I probably have them memorized. But I think there’s a
Cosmo
I haven’t read yet. It must have come out after I—the plane…” Lisa’s nose prickled with incipient tears. “I think I’ll go over there to that bench under the window and read for a bit, okay?”

*

A small frown wrinkled Eddie’s forehead as he watched his wife settle herself on the wooden library bench against the wall. She sounded sad. He followed Mr. Gray to where he took down a box similar to the one Lisa had clutched. The memory of Mr. Gray taking him and some of his friends down an aisle just like this to show them the magazines of naked women made his cock stir. After this, he would take Lisa home and make love to her for hours.

“Yes! See who’s on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
’s swimsuit edition?” crowed Mr. Gray. “And here she is on
Vanity Fair
, and look, isn’t she gorgeous in that evening gown on
PopNation
?”

Eddie took the stack of yellowed magazines and peered through the dim light at the cover of the one on top. An image of Lisa that looked more like a painted doll than the woman he was coming to love shocked him. She was wearing a long, silver-blue dress that looked like it was painted on. It barely covered her breasts and glittered with tiny silver beads. Her face was painted vividly, and her mouth was glossy bright red. She stood on a red carpet in the embrace of a man in a black coat, and they smiled at each other as if they were deeply in love. Eddie’s heart convulsed with a sharp pain. This must be her husband, the one who had taught her about bedroom passion. The printing that slashed over the skirt of her dress said—
Lisa and Brent! Are they through?

Eddie turned to the article with a feeling of dread. His stomach churned as he read. Lisa had “dated” a dozen men. Eddie wasn’t sure what that meant, but there were pictures of her with several different men, and in some pictures she was hanging on their arms with an infatuated look on her face, and in some pictures she was wearing something called a bikini that covered almost nothing of her body. Her body, that too-slender body, which he had licked and sucked and kissed, was on display for anyone to see. Tiny flares of pain erupted at the ends of his fingers as his claws tried to punch out. He jerked in deep breaths through clenched teeth to control himself.

Whoever wrote the article called Lisa a heartbreaker who went through men like some women went through handbags, falling desperately in love only to spurn the man a month later. Her current lover was someone named Brent Hoff, who had moved into her residence three months ago. But, asked the article, was it over? Lisa had been seen with a mystery man on a beach in the Caribbean. That photo was grainy, but the blonde woman in the picture was clearly naked, covered by black rectangles in strategic places, and a black-haired man was sucking on her toes.

Eddie smothered the urge to rip the magazine to shreds. No wonder she was experienced in bed. She’d had plenty of practice. Eddie dropped the magazine on a shelf and looked blindly at Mr. Gray. “My wife … is a harlot?”

Mr. Gray looked stricken. “No! Of course not! Eddie, it was a different world then. I taught you women and men behaved differently in the Times Before than we do now.”

“A good woman would do this?” Eddie flicked a finger at the magazine. “Live with one man and play sex games with another?”

Mr. Gray took a deep breath. “You can’t believe everything you read. Publishers printed anything to sell their product. Lisa filed a defamation lawsuit against
PopNation
. I remember that. She said the story was a lie!”

“Pictures don’t lie.” Eddie turned mechanically to find his wife. At the end of the aisle of bookcases he saw her on the bench, thigh to thigh with Dane Overdahl, both blond heads bent over her open purse. The nausea churning in his belly was overwhelmed by betrayal. Betrayal was swallowed by homicidal fury. Nothing could keep the claws under his skin or the roar in his chest.

“
Dane!
I’m going to kill you!”

Lisa went to the bench, holding the magazine like a long lost friend. Since the moment she’d set foot in the library, she been painfully reminded of all the things that were gone forever. Her old life was over, and she was alone in this new world.
If anyone ever had reason to cry
, she decided,
it’s me
. The magazine she held like a long lost friend was loaded with advertisements for skin care products, makeup, and clothes. She would never blow dry her hair again. She would never pose for a camera again, never saunter down a runway, or laugh when she flubbed her lines for a commercial.

She tried to control herself. Dwelling on unpleasant things was unproductive. She’d always preferred to concentrate on good things. Every time someone hurt her feelings, every time a man she was in love with dumped her, every time her family disappointed her, she focused on something else, something better. But the obvious age of a magazine that should have been only a few days old brought her to tears. She cried for family and friends probably long dead. Had her selfish mother survived? Or her deadbeat father? Honestly, she didn’t care about them. The only one she really cared about was her little brother. She truly loved Derek. He was the only person in her family who hadn’t taken advantage of her beauty, her fame, or her money.

Lisa drew a quivering breath, closing her eyes against the pain. She should have spent more time with Derek. It wasn’t a good enough excuse she’d been busy with her modeling career on the West Coast and he was busy opening his own landscaping business in central Minnesota. Why hadn’t she made time for Derek? He had just gotten engaged to a girl named Emily. She only called him to say congratulations, even though she had been at the Mall of America for a photo shoot only a few hours away. She could have taken time to drive up to see them. She
should
have taken the time. Out of all her family and friends—even men she’d thought she loved—only Derek had really loved her back.

As she wept silently on the bench, a pair of boots came into her watery view. She was embarrassed and relieved Eddie had seen her tears. Crying made her eyes red, and she hated to be seen as anything less than perfect, but like Derek, Eddie loved her. He wouldn’t care her face was blotchy, only that she was crying. He would remind her of the good things in this new world.

But it wasn’t Eddie. It was his friend, Dane Overdahl, holding out a handkerchief. “Are you all right?” he asked awkwardly. “Where’s Eddie?”