Impossible Dreams (28 page)

She beamed her understanding gypsy smile over the rim of her
cup. “Gotcha.”

Oh, God, that look struck him with the full force of an
arrow through the heart. Rattled, he set down his water and stood. The mayor
would kill him if he approached the city council with this new tactic. Asking
for a cost study would delay everything. He could be certain the ABC inspectors
would return. But Maya’s beaming smile bestowed him with invincibility.
Or lust was infecting his brain. “I’ll look into it. People understand
taxes and money more than historic monuments.”

“Thought so,” Maya murmured, lowering her cup
and watching him hurry to the door. She didn’t think civilization was
healthy for Viking gods. Axell looked as if he needed a broadax and helmet as
he stalked into the sunlight, his square jaw set for war. He really needed some
violent physical outlet besides pens and legal posturing.

She thought she knew what he really needed, but he
didn’t seem willing to commit to the physical side of their marriage yet.
She hadn’t decided whether that was a relief or not. She was physically
more than ready. Just watching Axell bare-chested and sweating as he’d
dug the hole for her gardenia bush had almost boiled her blood and melted her
resistance. But emotionally, she was a basket case, and sex could easily upset
the basket.

Having a life steeped in irony instead of disaster was a
pleasant change, she reflected as she finished her tea and watched Alexa waving
her fingers at dust motes. Or maybe the continually looming disasters were
cushioned by the distance and comfort Axell provided. She was still in danger
of losing her school and all the dreams it represented. Stephen was overhead,
scheming to separate her from her daughter.

And Axell wasn’t exactly offering her passion or love.

Well, as she’d decided long before, she didn’t
need either. She could survive knowing the children were happy. They could give
her the love she missed.

Only, sometimes, in her dreams maybe, she really, really
wished she could have something deeper and more satisfying than sex and safety
with Axell.

The door chimed and Katherine the Long-Legged intruded on
Maya’s reverie. Relaxed on the high of jasmine tea, Maya merely smiled
and lifted her cup in greeting. “Come to buy a love potion to bind our favorite
mayor into matrimony?” she asked without resentment.

Katherine’s smooth blond hair bobbed as she swung to
find Maya nearly hidden by the huge chair. “What the devil do you mean by
that?”

“Leos can’t tolerate loneliness,” Maya
replied calmly, pouring more tea. “And they love the center of attention.
The mayor is a perfect choice for you. You’d make a good
politician’s wife.”

Looking shell-shocked, Katherine dropped into the chair
across from her and accepted the cup of tea Maya pushed toward her. “You’re
spooky, you know that?”

Maya shrugged. “Nah, I’ve just learned survival.
I’m better at astrology than tarot, but I can read your cards if
you’d like.”

“I don’t believe in that mumbo-jumbo,”
Katherine said. “I’ve just come to tell you that Ralph’s willing
to cut a deal with you over the Pfeiffer property so we can speed up
proceedings rather than waiting on DOT.”

Maya handed Katherine the tarot deck. “Shuffle,”
she insisted. “Humor me.”

Katherine grabbed the deck and shuffled half-heartedly.
“There’s no reason we can’t come to some suitable compromise
without dragging this into the hostilities of a public meeting.” She
smacked the deck down on the intricately carved wooden table Maya had
discovered in the store room.

Laying out the cards, Maya raised her eyebrows as Death
appeared, but she didn’t interpret the possibilities out loud. “Oh,
I imagine the hostilities will come from the taxpayers who discover how much a
bridge over that creek will cost, not from me. The direct route is not always
the best one.”

She tapped a card in front of her. “Take love, for
instance. Coupled with the Fool over here,” she tapped another card,
“it doesn’t stand a chance in the normal run of things.” She
tapped another card. “But if you subvert the Fool with power, sort of do
an end run around the goal as Axell puts it, then you can tackle the
unsuspecting object of your interest.”

Tearing her gaze away from the horrifying Death card that
Maya ignored, Katherine looked at her with disbelief. “You’re
crazier than a bedbug.”

Maya shrugged and smiled. “I’ve never seen a
bedbug, but I’ve never seen a crazy insect either. They know exactly what
they’re doing. Wish the mayor well for me.”

For a moment, Katherine cast the scattered cards a hesitant
look. Then she shook her head and pushed her chair back. “I take it that
means you’re going to drag this into a legal battle.”

“Oh, Axell will hire lawyers, I’m sure.”
Maya curled up in her chair and insouciantly sipped her tea. “Me,
I’ll just take it to the people. Did you know the Garden Club asked me to
join them? It seems they’re aching to get their green thumbs on some of
those old-fashioned roses out at the school.”

That topic wasn’t as irrelevant as it sounded. The
Garden Club was an old Southern tradition. It included the wives of some of the
richest and most influential men in town. Maya benevolently refrained from
grinning as Katherine absorbed that blow. Maybe she would learn how to fight
back from a position of power. It sure beat running.

“You don’t own that property,” Katherine warned.
“The lease can still be challenged. And if Axell’s not careful, he
could be too busy with the ABC board to care.” She slammed out with a
violent tinkling of chimes.

Well, two points to the lady in the red suit — she’d hit
the school and Axell’s major weak spots. Maya glanced at the tarot layout
and frowned. She wished she was a little better at actually reading the cards
instead of playing with people’s minds. She didn’t like the looks
of that Death card in Katherine’s pack. Generally, it meant some form of
transformation, not something so literal as death. But she very definitely did
not like the threat in the lady’s voice. Did Axell’s kindnesses
have a cost — her school for his license?

***

“You look like you need a drink, honey,” the
woman at the bar murmured as she leaned over and pushed a glass toward Axell,
bending just enough to expose an astounding expanse of cleavage for his
benefit.

Her heavy perfume soaked his senses more than a bottle of
rum. Fascinated by the deep shadow between the heavy platform of her breasts,
Axell wondered how she held up all that weight. Without thinking, he sipped the
drink she shoved at him. He sputtered and almost spat out the whiskey. Knowing
his preferences, Maya always handed him water.

The perfume and the whiskey and thoughts of Maya stirred
baser interests, and Axell shifted uncomfortably on the stool. The woman beside
him could pull local political strings, and he’d thought it circumspect
to garner her interest, but not this kind of interest. He frowned at the blood
red fingernails tapping the sleeve of his suit. Maya had said he didn’t
notice women, but there was a reason for that. He didn’t want to get
involved.

He pushed her hand away and stood up. “My wife’s
waiting and I have to go.”

He liked the freedom that one little sentence offered. The
minute some barracuda closed in for the kill, he could wave Maya like a
harpoon. They didn’t have to know she was harmless.

Almost harmless. She had the power to stir sexual images
he’d thought he’d left behind with adolescence, but Axell figured
that was a result of prolonged abstinence. He rather enjoyed idling a spare
minute or three conjuring up the moment when he confirmed his memory that she
was a natural redhead.

He hadn’t found the perfect opportunity yet. He was
always home late and didn’t want to disturb her or the kids by
trespassing on their side of the house. Maybe he should hire a sitter and take
Maya out on a formal date of some sort. Constance would probably hunt them down
afterward, but his bedroom door had locks. He’d have to figure out how to
know when Maya was ready. He hated trying to read a woman’s mind. Had he
missed her signals already?

Thinking the evening was fairly quiet and maybe he could
escape early, Axell sighed in frustration as Headley strode through the front
door, looking primed for bear. He thought the damned man had decided to retire,
but he knew that look. The metropolis of Wadeville had just suffered a
newsworthy act of violence.

Axell didn’t try to hide as Headley stalked toward
him. The old man was as close to a father figure as he’d had since his
own father had died. He cleared a stool at the end of the bar and Headley
signaled the bartender for his usual.

“I don’t suppose I can be so lucky as to hope
Katherine murdered the mayor?” Axell inquired facetiously as the reporter
threw back his requested drink.

The older man turned his shaggy white head and glared at
him. “Almost as good. Old Man Pfeiffer died tonight. The coroner
doesn’t think it was from natural causes.”

Pfeiffer. Maya’s landlord. The school would now be
owned by a motley lot of scattered relatives who would all demand its sale.

The cops wouldn’t have to look far for motives for
murder. The problem would be deciding which one of all those cockroach
relatives would be the most likely suspect.

And the clamor for Maya to give up her dream would escalate.

***

January, 1946

I proposed marriage to Dolly today. She accepted. Her father
promoted me to general manager as of the first of the month.

I will have to tell Helen.

Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.

Later that night, while bending over to reach the
strawberries in the fruit drawer of the refrigerator, Maya nearly jumped out of
her nightie as the kitchen door slammed behind her. Axell never slammed doors.

She swung around to face a man shredding the last black
thread of his temper — a far cry from the calm, self-assured character
she’d married. As his steely gaze slid to the garbage heaps of crumpled
newspapers on his once pristine kitchen floor to the clutter of paint pots,
paste, and streamers across the antique kitchen table, Maya thought he’d
lose his grip for certain.

The dangerous flare of his nostrils and the sensual
narrowing of his eyes as his gaze finally settled on her — or her scanty
nightshirt — warned the disintegration of Axell’s personal Berlin Wall had
begun on all fronts.

Maya shivered in anticipation as he looked from the rather
revealing neckline of her silky shirt to the length of her legs exposed by the
high hem, and back again to focus on her breasts. She had the urge to cross her
arms to protect herself, but the imp inside her head took command. Maybe she
hadn’t deliberately planned this scene, but subconsciously, she was
capable of anything. She propped her hands on the table behind her and struck a
seductive pose.

“Finally broke you, did I?” she taunted.

She should have remembered Norse gods were dangerous and
unpredictable when provoked. The hank of golden hair cascading over
Axell’s brow nearly quivered with his intensity. He’d thrown off
his suit coat and tie in the humidity of the May night, and his shoulders
strained at the tailored cut of his blue silk shirt.

Fixated on the V of his open shirt collar, Maya didn’t
dare drop her gaze lower. She didn’t generally inspire men to unbridled
passion — unless it was fury — but she sensed Axell had gone past the point of
reason.

He struggled gamely to regain control, but when she
deliberately rested her weight on her hands, flaunting her breasts in his face,
he threw restraint to the winds. Dropping his coat on a kitchen chair, he
narrowed the distance between them in a single step.

Maya gasped as Axell swung her against him as easily as he
did Matty. Slammed against his broad chest, her feet dangling inches from the
floor, she nearly succumbed to heart failure as she grabbed for his shoulders.
When Axell’s mouth covered hers, she stopped functioning on any rational
level at all.

She tasted the whiskey of his breath as his mouth crushed
hers. His hand cupped her bottom through the thin nightshirt, and she knew the
strength with which he held her was far greater than her own. Experience had
taught her to fear the combination of power and alcohol. But Axell’s
breath was sweet with the taste of desire, and she’d wanted to sample it
for so long, she couldn’t resist now. The reassuring heat of his hand
through her shirt melted any resistance that remained. She trusted him — in this,
at least.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Maya surrendered to the
heady bliss of Axell’s kiss. If this was a sample of the passionate
nature he so successfully penned inside, she’d have to drive him to the
brink more often. Arching her breasts against his chest, crooking one leg
around his knee, Maya opened her mouth beneath his, until all the air expelled
from his lungs, and he drank desperately of hers. She gave without protest or
complaint, not only accepting his devouring kiss, but meeting it with an equal
hunger.

Greedily, Axell set her on the table and molded her breasts
with his palms. Lifting his head long enough to admire the treasure he had
captured, he murmured, “I never thought I could be jealous of a baby.
Alexa doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

Maya nearly swooned as Axell’s capable hands swooped
inside the loose neckline of her shirt and bared her breasts. She was scarcely
in any condition to comprehend his words. When his mouth fastened over her
nipple and suckled to show what he meant, she cried out in delight and near
panic at the sudden, insistent urges swamping her.

Grabbing his shirt, she jerked at the buttons, instinctively
seeking the heat of his skin to share the flames of her own. The slippery silk
practically flew apart, and Axell groaned deep in his throat as her hands
spread across his chest. Frantically, she tugged the shirttails from his
trousers so she could unfasten the whole placket and shove it aside.