Impossible Dreams (15 page)

“The mayor can’t do anything personally, but he
can pull strings. I’ll have to investigate the financing behind that
shopping center. I thought Ralph had kept his hands clean, but he’s
dumping too much into this to be doing it just for campaign
contributions.” Axell shrugged and didn’t move from his position
against the counter. “Thanks for the warning, Headley, but you
shouldn’t have worried Miss Alyssum. I’ll take care of this.”

“
You’ll
take care of this? Someone is
insulting my integrity, threatening my sister’s shop and my school, and
you’ll
take care of this? Do you have any idea what kind of catastrophe this could be
for me? They could take Matty away, take my school away, destroy Cleo’s
livelihood...” Maya shoved up from her chair. “I’ll damned
well snatch the mayor bald before that happens.”

Axell grabbed her arm as she stalked by. “It’s
my liquor license and my fight, and you don’t have the experience to deal
with it. Now go on upstairs with the kids and get some rest. Ralph and I have
been battling it out since he switched to a Charlotte football team in high
school.”

Had she been in any condition to swing a punch, she would
have. Instead, Maya smiled sweetly and shrugged off his hold. “Of course,
honey bear. You do that. You just look out for little ol’ me.
You’re so good at it.” She patted Axell’s wide chest, decided
touching him was a mistake if the tension triggering up her fingertips was any
indication, then pinched his cheek in defiance. “I’ll just sashay
upstairs and let you big ol’ men take care of everything.”

Axell’s eyes narrowed into stony slits, his jaw muscle
twitched, and he crossed his arms again, apparently restraining himself from
shaking her. “When I need a woman to fight my battles, I’ll let you
know.”

“Why, sure thing, sugar dumplin’. Isn’t
that what Ah just said?” She mimicked her mother’s drawl.
“I’ll just go upstairs and call Selene and we’ll have us a
real nice gossip. You call me if you need anything, y’heah?”

Flowing skirts twirling around her, Maya drifted up the
stairs and out of sight.

Headley grunted and shoved up from the awkward parlor chair.
“If she’s talking about Selene Blackburn, you got your hands full,
son. That little witch could scalp an army and leave them grinning. You
won’t have to worry about poor Ralph, except where to send the flowers
for his funeral.”

“Selene? She’s a pest, but from what I hear, she
didn’t even graduate high school.” Uncomfortably catching himself
watching the empty stairs, Axell adjusted his focus. Maya could damned well do
whatever she wanted to do. She wasn’t any of his concern. He just had to decide
the best way of handling this. “Selene will call her daddy and have
Ralph’s accounts audited or something.”

Headley snorted and shook his shaggy head.
“You’re living in a dream world, boy. You need to get out and
around women more often.” He glanced at the stairway. “And I reckon
that one bears watching as well. She might look like an addlepate, but keep in
mind: she arrived broke and homeless seven months ago and already she has a
school and a shop and a hook in you and one of the richest families around.
She’s not dumb. She’s got an agenda. You might look further into
her
background.”

No, Maya wasn’t dumb, but agendas weren’t
precisely her method of operation. Axell glared at Headley, then glared at the
far wall after Headley strolled out.

He had to remember why he was doing any of this: Constance.

And she might not even be his own kid.

A wave of emptiness engulfed him, and wearily, Axell
unfolded from the counter to head back to the restaurant. He’d pick up
Constance later, after he got off work. He just couldn’t face her again
right now. He kept searching for signs of himself in her, and even
he
knew kids were sensitive to things like that.

Ain’t nothin’ in the middle of the road but
yellow stripes and dead armadillos.

The tension headache pounding in the back of his skull
matched the churning in his gut as Axell watched Ralph Arnold parade up and
down the floor, oozing sincerity. The mayor’s office in this tiny town
was scarcely a standard of high living, but the polished desk and the flag hanging
behind it offered a semblance of Southern patriotism. The mayor, with his
professionally styled chestnut hair and gym-maintained physique, practiced the
role of up-and-coming politician with more arrogance than the office deserved.

“Alyssum. That’s the name of the woman who owns
that shop, isn’t it? I’d heard her family was from here, but that
name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Only ding-a-lings hear bells, Ralph,” Axell
growled. In a town like this, family name was everything, but he wasn’t
buying into that tradition. “It doesn’t matter who their
connections are. The point is, these rumors are bordering on slander, and I
want an end to them.”

The mayor shrugged. “Where there’s smoke,
there’s usually fire. Charlotte police have been cracking down hard on
dealers, but drug use is escalating. Face it, Holm, the dealers are moving out
here where they figure we don’t have enough police to catch them. And
they’re probably right.”

“They’re not using my premises,” Axell
said irritably. “Let the police do their drug busts elsewhere.”

“It’s not my venue, Axell, you know that. I have
nothing to do with any of it.”

Grimly, Axell slapped his hands on the huge desk and leaned
forward. “Don’t give me that bull, Ralph. It’s got your
signature all over it. Those busboys have only been with me a week. In another
week, they’d have been gone. Kitchen help comes and goes faster than
flies. It was only a matter of time before some of them got busted for
something. You just made sure it was on
my
time and that the incident
got publicized.”

Ralph shrugged his padded shoulders again and stared out the
window blinds to the rain-puddled parking lot. “I don’t tell the
police department what to do.”

“You damned well should. That’s your job.”
Axell removed his hands from the desk and swung around, heading for the door.
“And if you don’t back off, I’m taking that job away from
you. That’s a promise.” He slammed the door after him.

He didn’t usually slam doors. Ralph’s secretary
looked up in surprise, but Axell merely nodded and strode out without greeting.
He figured he’d bite off the head of anyone who so much as smiled at him.
If he were the kind who snarled, he’d snarl. Instead, he left his car at
the curb and dodged raindrops to the rear of restaurant, releasing what little
steam he could in the short walk.

The damage was already done. There wasn’t much the
mayor could do now unless Ralph called the governor and told him to have the
alcohol board back off on the liquor license inquiry. Axell couldn’t see
that happening. If Axell called a news conference and announced he was filing
for the mayor’s job, that would only drive Ralph to speed up the license
inquiry. The only way out of this trap would be to pacify Ralph by persuading
Maya to close her damned school, and that would lower him to the mayor’s
level of slime.

By the time he reached his office, Axell’s brain was
steaming full speed ahead. He needed to convince Ralph he had the power to make
Maya and Selene change their minds about the Pfieffer property. Maybe he could
find them another property. Ralph really didn’t care about the
bar’s liquor license. He wasn’t that petty minded. For some reason,
he was just determined to have that shopping center road and parking lot and
was using the license inquiry as leverage. If he thought Axell could give him
what he wanted...

“It’s about time you got here. The ABC people
are crawling all over the kitchen.”

Katherine was pacing up and down his office, looking more
spectacular than usual with her blond hair cut in some bouncy new way so it
swung and danced every time she moved. And she moved a lot. Axell could
appreciate the performance, even if he wasn’t interested in the play
itself.

“You want me to set out mousetraps for them?” he
asked, dropping into his chair to jot notes. Last night’s dream of red-haired
leprechauns had gotten under his skin. He’d actually been hoping
he’d come in here and find Maya waiting for him instead of Katherine.
She’d promised to stop over and consult him about the shop’s grand
reopening. The house had echoed emptier than ever last night without her and
Matty in it.

“Very funny.” Katherine stalked up and down one
more time for good effect. Her mini-skirt was shorter than usual today, and her
legs flashed enticingly above her high-soled shoes.

Axell thought irrelevantly of Maya’s dragon-decorated
sneakers and bit back a grin wondering if Katherine would dare have her shoes
tattooed. That led him to wonder if Maya had ever had anything else but her
shoes tattooed, and from there, his mind degenerated into wondering what she looked
like naked. He blinked in horror at the wayward path of his thoughts.

Katherine sat on the corner of his desk and her skirt slid
to the top of her thigh. She wore shimmering pantyhose that caught the morning
light, but Axell’s mind traveled rebelliously to a rainbow-prismed purple
streak. Maybe he was having some kind of mental breakdown. He should take a
vacation.

He slapped his pencil on the desk, leaned back in his chair,
and ignoring his assistant’s flashing leg, glared up at her. “Did
you want something, Katherine?”

He thought she’d explode. Her eyes narrowed
dangerously, her lips thinned to half their usual size, and her cheeks pinkened
beyond their cosmetically-applied blush. “I wanted to
help
, but
obviously, your mind is on more important things.” She slid off the desk
and stormed toward the door before turning for her parting shot. “Judge
Tony called me yesterday, making inquiries about how often Constance eats in
the kitchen and who takes care of her while you work. I’m thinking of
taking up Ralph’s offer of a job.”

Axell winced as she slammed out. This was not going to be a
good day.

Picking up his pencil, he dialed his lawyer.

***

Sitting at the parlor table, her wrought-iron chair padded
with a cushion from the upstairs sofa, Maya polished Cleo’s myriad gnomes
and dragons while the cleaning crew worked on unpacking and dusting the rest of
the inventory. Cleo had always loved playing with the action figures from fast
food chains, she remembered. The child in her must have thought this ugly pewter
would sell well. Cleo’s inventory tended to reflect the toys she’d
never had rather than any spiritual interest in New Age mysticism.

She ought to be at school, drawing up lesson plans for
summer sessions and their first full-time program. They had several teachers
already lined up, and Maya prayed Cleo would be home in time to take over the
store by then. The after-school program worked out nicely for now, in these
last months of her pregnancy, but she would be eager to return to the challenge
of full-time teaching once the baby was born.

The rain poured down outside. After living these past few
years in southern California, she wasn’t used to rain. The novelty had
worn off in this last day or two of wading through rivers of mud. She wondered
if Noah had finished his ark yet.

Or if Axell had recovered from his snit. She’d thought
he’d been coming around yesterday until Headley had arrived. He’d
even managed a smile or two. She didn’t know why it mattered if she
dragged a smile or two out of a stuffed turkey like Axell Holm. But he looked
at Constance with such pain and suffering and obvious love that her heart went
out to him anyway.

She had no business offering her heart to anyone but Matty
and the infant in her womb. Arching her aching back, Maya wondered if
she’d been working too hard as Axell had declared. The baby wasn’t
moving much today. It was due in two weeks, and she still didn’t have a
crib.

She needed the CD player she’d left for the movers to
connect. A good rousing song would lift her spirits. Or a chant, to soothe her
nerves. Maybe she should brave the weather and go see Axell. Planning the grand
opening had to be more entertaining than polishing gnomes.

But Axell had barely spoken to her last night when
he’d arrived to pick up a sleepy Constance. And she didn’t have an
umbrella or the energy to walk even the few yards over to the restaurant in
this downpour. She was restless and jumpy and not much in the mood to deal with
her “silent” partner.

Selene had promised to get to the bottom of the drug-possession
scam and to stave off the gossip as much as possible, since it affected the
school as well as Axell. She just couldn’t promise to do more than that.
Her influence was more social than political, although she’d promised to
give some thought in that arena, too. Maybe Selene could finance Axell’s
campaign for mayor...

The door chimes rang, and Maya looked up eagerly at this new
distraction. A stranger in a dripping raincoat closed his umbrella and looked
around. Nobody good ever wore raincoats. Maybe he’d come to repossess
Cleo’s counter. She didn’t think there was much else left of any
value.

Wincing at the ache in her back as she stood up, Maya
greeted the new arrival. “May I help you?”

The man removed his hat to reveal a balding head and a reasonably
jovial expression. “Miss Alyssum? I’m Fred Carpenter, the building
inspector.”

Maya hid a bolt of anxiety behind a vague smile. “A
carpenter to inspect buildings! How lovely. What do you inspect them for? To
see if they’re buildings?”

He looked a little startled. “For safety, mostly.
After the collapse of the facade down the street, the mayor wants to prevent
what could be a tragedy next time.”

“You’re quite right, of course,” she
agreed with a modicum of relief. Inspections were a good thing. She was turning
paranoid. “I was so upset at almost losing everything I owned, I
didn’t even think of what could have happened. By all means, inspect
away. Would you like some tea?”