Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

I 'd sold four Susie Cooper teacups and saucers, which was a start because Art Deco china is not cheap. It was enough that I could invite Max to stay for a second dinner if he was still around tomorrow. Then Melissa Merriweather, one of our two funeral directors in town, called to say that Pike had called her about picking up Ozzie's body from her funeral home. She said it would be much easier if she handled the cremation rather than the supposed celebration that Pike had in mind and asked me to tell him that. She sounded irritated with Pike, but she was irritable in general unless you were the family of somebody who'd died. Good mortician, though.

I had no idea what Pike had in mind, but since he and Ozzie had been friends forever, I was pretty sure it was what Ozzie had wanted. I told her I was fine with Pike doing whatever he was doing; besides, I didn't really have a legal claim to the body. Much like I didn't have a legal claim to this store or the Pathfinder out back or pretty much anything. Melissa reluctantly agreed. No one in town had ever gone up against either Pike or Ozzie.

Then I went back to the kitchen door, but Max was gone. I began to wonder if he'd come back or just keep walking? —

"Mom?" Poppy said, and I walked farther into the kitchen to see her on the floor in front of the back bay window, combing the snarls out of Max's long-haired German Shepherd. That was going to take some time.

Max would absolutely come back for his dog.

"We're having steak tomorrow night," I said.

"Good," Poppy said. "Max went out to get his rucksack."

"Okay."

I started on the dishes, trying to sort my thoughts, which were pretty evenly divided among what Junior wanted, what exactly Pike had planned for Ozzie's funeral, how Poppy and I were going to survive the next ten months till she went to college, how I was going to survive the years after that, and Max and his cheekbones. I'd decided that Junior wouldn't come back because Pike had probably found him, Pike would give Ozzie the kind of send-off he probably wanted, Poppy and I would probably think of something brilliant for our futures, and Max was none of my damn business.

Half an hour later, he knocked on the back door—I could see him through the window, looking exhausted and stoic as usual—and Poppy yelled, "Come in!" and Maggs barked, William ignored us all as beneath his dignity, and I smiled at Max. Couldn't help it, I was glad to see him again. He came in and locked the door behind him. He was carrying a rucksack that looked like it was from the beginning of time, the dirt baked into it, and I wanted to rip it off his back and toss it in the washing machine.

His clothes were pretty bad, too.

The problem was, Max was screwing with my thought processes. He was so there, you know? Silent and dark and sort of ominous in a good way. A human Maltese Falcon. And very, very male.

Except that hanging out with men had never worked out well for me. Not that he was asking.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw Maggs. Poppy had been working on her, and her black hair glistened and flowed along her body. Despite the cone, she looked happy, lolling against Poppy's knee in the twilight .

"Traitor," Max said to her, exasperated.

"I'm trying to decide what the right shampoo will be for her once I get everything unsnarled," Poppy said.

"She'll just get dirty again on the trail," Max said, which earned him another roll of the eyes.

"Did you raise her from a puppy?" Poppy asked.

He carefully lowered his rucksack to the floor. "No."

"Is she a rescue?" Poppy asked. "We work with the rescue in Bearton, but I found William in the woods." She pointed to the giant cat on the shelf over the window.

"Did you save Maggs?" Poppy asked.

He shook his head. "I was paired with her when—" He stopped abruptly. "She's a service dog," he ended and took off his coat.

"Service dog?" Poppy repeated, eyeing him critically.

He eyed her back.

I eyed him. Black t-shirt and pants, and the t-shirt was torn. I could fix that. If I got the t-shirt off him. No, Rose.

"Okay, I'm curious, too, Poppy," I said, "but Max has made it blindingly clear that he values his privacy."

Max wilted under Poppy's glare about an able-bodied man having a service dog. "Military service. It's complicated."

"You were in the Army together?" Poppy asked.

"No."

"Air Force?" Poppy asked.

"No."

"Marines?"

"No."

"Coast guard?"

"Ha, funny."

"Why is it funny?" Poppy asked. "Seems like the Coast Guard is the best of them because they're always saving people, not killing them."

That gave Max pause. He nodded. "You're right. I take back my derisive comment about the Coast Guard. A noble profession. But Maggs and I weren't in the military together. Maggs is retired. She finished out her service. That's why she's with me. "

"Hmm," Poppy said.

Max looked like he'd finished out his service too, worn and frayed. I smiled at him, impressed by how fast he'd acknowledged that Poppy was right. A man who could admit to being wrong, how rare is that? "How do you feel about steak and twice-baked potatoes for dinner tomorrow?"

"I'll be gone by then," he said, "although I will take you up on the offer of the room for the night. If that's still on the table."

"Definitely on the table," Poppy said.

Somebody knocked on the back door, and I saw Poppy's best friend, Mei Kwan, through the window. I let her in and said, "Hiya, baby, what's up?" and then smiled at her when she said, "We're going to do homework, I swear," because they probably were, at least part of the time.

Max was looking at Poppy like he knew she was up to something, so I decided it was a good time to get Max some non-Poppy time and vice versa. Whatever she was up to could wait.

I said, "Come with me," to Max, and he picked up his ruck and followed me into the shop.

"Nice kid," he said when Poppy and Mei had moved to the table and the kitchen door was closed behind us.

"Mei? You met her mother, Lian, earlier. She is a nice kid."

"I meant Poppy. Who's Lian?"

"Pink taser."

"Right." He nodded at the stripe painted on the shop floor through the archway into the other rooms as we went up the steps behind the counter on the Carolina side. "So the blue line divides this place into two states?"

"Yes," I said. "Rocky Start is split down the middle between Tennessee and North Carolina, and the line runs through the middle of our place since Ozzie combined two different storefronts to make it. The blue line is there on the street so people won't get confused." He looked puzzled, so I added, "There's sales tax in both states but it's lower in North Carolina. Two different post offices. All our kids go to school in Tennessee, though. Bearton. "

"And the line runs through the house?"

"Ozzie painted those lines, not the city. It was also practical. He put the cash register and the store entrance on the North Carolina side because of the lower sales tax. He hated paying taxes."

At the top of the stairs was our living room, Poppy's and mine, full of books and papers and yarn and my workbench full of junk and William's cat tree, which looks like a cactus. Not tidy. I crossed the room to the door fast to get through the mess and motioned him into the hall that separated the two apartments, the one Ozzie had built to join the buildings. The hall also had the blue line painted down the center. Ozzie had pointed to it the first time he showed me the apartment. "State line," he'd said. "Do not cross it."

I crossed it, opened the door, and flipped on the light. "All of this is yours," I said, looking at the clutter. "Welcome to Tennessee." We were in Ozzie's workroom, big tables filled with things that Ozzie was repairing or cleaning or whatever.

I looked around, feeling guilty I hadn't cleared it out and was offering Max this mess. I should have cleaned it. It wasn't like Ozzie was coming back. Damn it.

I turned to apologize and found Max staring at the strange old print of a painting that Ozzie had on the wall by the door. The print was mostly brown, an exhausted man on a tired horse on a dirt road leading to a brown-walled fortress in the distance and dark mountains in the background. Happy it was not.

"Ozzie's had that there forever," I said as he stared at it. "Not very inspiring."

"On the contrary," he said, almost to himself. "He made it out alive."

"Who made it out of what?"

He nodded at the painting. "The only survivor of the retreat by the British Army from Kabul to Jalalabad in 1842 during the Anglo-Afghan War. It's titled Remnants of an Army . I don't remember the man's name. William something."

"William Brydon?"

Max looked at me, surprised. "Yeah. "

"That's what Ozzie named the cat," I told him. "William only has three paws. Ozzie liked survivors."

Max nodded. Not a great conversationalist.

I nodded back. "Okay, then. There's a bedroom on each side of this room, bathroom on the right side. I'd put you in the spare room," I pointed toward the rear of the building, "but it's probably full of stuff, plus Ozzie always kept it locked and I've never been in there, so it could be anything. I don't even know if there's a bed in there. I'll get the sheets changed in Ozzie's bedroom, which is that one." I pointed to the right, toward the front of the building.

"I can do that," he said, as if he wanted me out of there, but I went to the closet and got the clean bedding and took it into the front bedroom. There's a limit to how lousy I'll let my hostessing get.

I pulled the sheets and blanket off Ozzie's bed—Ozzie didn't go in for comforters or quilts—and dropped it all on the floor as Max came in with his ruck. When I snapped the fitted sheet over the mattress, Max put the ruck down, caught the other side, and helped me stretch it corner to corner, which was great because putting a fitted sheet on a queen bed is a pain in the ass. I flipped the top sheet over the bed and he caught that, too, and helped me smooth it out. Then I picked up a pillowcase and he said, "Give me one," and I threw the other case to him, and we finished the pillows together.

It was weirdly homey.

And also there was a bed.

And Max, while too thin, was hot. Those dark eyes. Compelling, even.

And okay, that crack about orgasm that Coral had made earlier really annoyed me. If Coral had been putting sheets on a bed with Max, she'd have had him on his back in a second, maybe with a knife to his throat. I'd been celibate for years—the few times I'd tried to date early on being confusing for Poppy and annoying for Ozzie and disappointing for me—and I had no intentions of breaking that streak now, really, but . . .

I stole a glance at Max, who was looking around the room. Not at me .

He was thin, but the man had muscle under that torn t-shirt, lovely broad shoulders, and even with that limp, he moved well, silently, which was a little creepy, but even that was kind of a turn-on.

But.

I had no idea how to make a pass. I wasn't even sure I wanted to. He didn't look like the flirtatious type. You had to speak to flirt. I was hopeless at that stuff. Also, maybe flirting with an armed stranger you'd trapped in a bedroom was a bad idea. I still didn't know what he was doing in town. Maybe?—

"You okay?" he said.

"Yes," I said, smiling Cheerfully again. "Why?"

"You were looking at me as if you didn't trust me. We can go sleep in the woods."

It took me a minute to realize that "we" meant him and the dog.

I shook my head. "No, I'm just having a bad day. I'm grateful to you for throwing Junior into the street. And for turfing Norman."

"The lasagna pretty much paid me off for that," he said. "We're good."

I flipped the clean blanket over the bed, and Max caught it again, and we stretched it over the mattress.

"This bed needs a comforter," I said.

"This is fine," he said. He nodded to his backpack. "I have a sleeping bag in the ruck."

"No, it needs a comforter."

The silence stretched out, so I gave up and picked up the old bedding from the floor and said, "I'll send Poppy up with a comforter. Let me know if you need anything else," and went back across the state line to my own apartment where I belonged.