Mail-Order Millionaire (2 page)

The waitress came by and Ariel ordered the clam chowder and half a sandwich before asking, “What do you mean, ‘knowing him’? How well do you know him?”

Miranda told the waitress she’d have the same, then turned her attention to her sister’s probing gaze.

“I don’t know him at all, but I told him I’d deliver the boots in person if they don’t get there tomorrow.”

“How exciting. Is he married?”

Miranda leaned back against the vinyl padding of the booth and sighed. “How should I know? I suppose you would have asked him?”

“There are ways. You could have said, ‘What about a pair of boots for your wife or your small barefoot children?’ Or, ‘Will there be someone home, your wife maybe, to sign for the package?’“

Miranda shook her head in awe. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder how your mind works. I don’t have the time or energy to delve into the personal lives of the customers, especially not today. Donna and Mavis are out sick. Penny’s son has chicken pox and Lianne’s at the dentist. So I’ve had a lot of complaints today, all theirs and mine, too, but his was the worst, he was the most insistent.... And then he had the nerve to call me ma’am.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed vigorously.

“I wonder why he called you ma’am.”

“Probably because he’s from the South.”

Ariel cocked her head to one side. “What’s his name, anyway, or did you forget to ask?”

“Carter, Maxwell Randolph Carter.”

Ariel licked her spoon and gazed dreamily past Miranda. “From an old aristocratic family, I’ll bet, with a mansion just dripping with magnolias.”

“We’re from an old family. We go back to the revolutionary war.”

“Only we had icicles dripping from our house,” Ariel reminded her.

“I remember Grandma wouldn’t let us keep them in the freezer for the summer. She made us throw them out.”

“I don’t know how Grandma and Grandpa managed. And we weren’t even their own kids. We just got dumped on their doorstep.”

Miranda sighed. “I wish I’d had a chance to tell them I was coming back.”

Ariel squeezed her hand. “They knew you would.”

“Did they ever have a sapping season when there was no sap?”

Ariel shook her head. “Never. Just be patient. Conditions aren’t right yet. Temperatures have to drop below freezing at night and then warm up during the day.”

Miranda frowned. “I’m counting on the sap.”

Her sister leaned forward. “Miranda, don’t count on the sap. Find a man and count on him.”

“Like you did.”

“Yes, and then when things go wrong at work and someone yells at you or the sap doesn’t run, you’ve got somebody to lean on and a shoulder to cry on. That’s what husbands are for. And if anybody needs one, you do.”

Finished with their food, they laid their money in the little plastic tray provided on top of the check on their table and walked out the door. “That sounds like a song I heard on the radio this morning. Why don’t you quit your job in the retail outlet and write the words to country music?” Miranda asked teasingly.

Ariel shook her head, taking her sister’s words seriously. “No, I don’t think so. I need to get out of the house for a few hours every day. Besides, I like it in the store. People from New York come in and they think everything’s so quaint and rustic. Then when I go home to the kids and Rob I forget about it. Why don’t you ask to transfer? You need to get out of that cubbyhole and meet some people. Normal people, who have no complaints.”

Miranda tossed her scarf over her shoulder. “I’ve already met enough New Yorkers. That’s why I left the city, so I wouldn’t have to meet any more of them.”

Ariel slanted a long, sympathetic glance in her direction. “You can’t blame the whole population for what happened to you.”

“I don’t blame anyone but myself. I shouldn’t have ever gone to the city. You warned me. But I guess I had to find out for myself.” Miranda felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind blowing up the street. No matter how unpleasant things got back in complaints, she’d never been mugged or harassed or burglarized in Northwood, and she probably never would.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Ariel said, “but I’m glad you came home. For two years I had no one to eat lunch with, no one to leave the kids with...”

“No one to nag about getting out and getting married.”

Her sister grinned and they parted at the front door of Green Mountain Merchants. Ariel turned right, to the retail outlet, and Miranda went back to her desk to solve more problems. But in between calls she thought about the man without the boots. She filed his order under unsolved mysteries and shoved it to the back of the drawer, but the sound of his voice came back to her, the way he rounded off his consonants and hung onto his vowels. He had the accent all right, but he was no Southern gentleman. Maybe he’d been up north too long, long enough to lose any Southern charm he’d arrived with.

Disgusted with herself for daydreaming, she turned on her answering machine at precisely five o’clock and went to get her jacket. Maybe Ariel was right, maybe she did need to get out and meet people. But what people? She already knew everyone in town. On the way home she prayed for cold weather, cold enough to make the sap run so she could make a living selling syrup and she’d never have to deal with irate customers or work for anyone again.

A hundred and twenty miles to the northeast, Max Carter scanned the sky from the weather station on top of Mount Henry. The wind blew across the rooftop observation deck, nowhere near the record two hundred and thirty miles per hour, but strong enough to knock all six feet three inches of him down to his knees as he tried to read the barometer. He picked himself up and braced his hands against the railing. This wouldn’t have happened if he’d had his new boots with the rubber chain-tread outsole on.

Ice built up on his goggles until he could hardly see. He couldn’t blame that on Miranda Morrison of Green Mountain Merchants, but just about everything else he could. He couldn’t stay outside long enough to take accurate readings, that was her fault. He couldn’t walk without sliding in the snow, that was her fault. And he couldn’t concentrate on fixing the broken psychometric calculator, that was definitely her fault. He stomped inside the observatory, removed three outer layers of clothes and hung them to dry next to the stove.

Of course, it might help his concentration to put away the Green Mountain Merchants catalog, or at least turn the page so he wouldn’t have to look at her picture anymore. He had to admit, it surprised him. Talking to her, he’d expected a little pinched face with rimless glasses and hair pulled tight in a bun. But she looked like an advertisement for health food instead of long underwear. He sat in his swivel chair, propped his stocking-clad feet on his desk between his computer and the shortwave radio and looked at her picture again.

Blond hair in a...what did they call it...a French braid? Wide brown eyes and pink cheeks. Not a trace of makeup, as if she’d just gotten up or was just going to bed. The long johns weren’t sexy, but she sure was, with high, full breasts, a narrow waist and long slender legs.

Dream on, he told himself. You picked the wrong kind of job for that kind of woman. Or any kind. Women liked to have their men around, not just half time, but all the time. Otherwise they got lonely and started looking around. You couldn’t blame them for that. He had once, but not anymore.

He hoped the weather would clear tomorrow so Fred could get up the road in the Sno-Cat. Not only would he bring the boots, but he’d also bring fresh food. That’s what he needed, hush puppies and crab cakes, not a call from a cool, unfeeling clerk with the face of an angel and the body of Venus in long underwear.

The next morning he ate the last of his bacon for breakfast. He called Fred at noon after a long morning trying to track the altocumulus clouds that were breaking up. “Mail come yet?”

“Yep. You got a bill from Green Mountain Merchants.”

“A bill?” He felt the back of his neck burn. “Is that all?”

“Nope. You got a postcard from Florida, want me to read it?”

“No, thanks. Is that all?”

“That’s it.”

“Looks like it’s going to clear today. What time are you coming up?”

“ ‘Bout three, I guess, unless I hear from Ellie. The baby isn’t due for another week, but you never know. You sure about the weather? Because I wouldn’t want to get stuck up there.”

“No guarantees, but it looks good right now. Don’t forget the box of food from New Orleans labeled Perishable.”

“The UPS people put it right in the tractor.”

Max hung up and dialed again. It was just past twelve. She’d probably be at lunch. She’d probably be at lunch for hours, knowing her. Not that he knew her very well, just well enough to know she didn’t take missing packages seriously. He braced himself for a recording. After an eternity a human voice answered, but it wasn’t hers. He was momentarily speechless. Should he explain the situation to this person, or should he ask for Ms. Morrison, or should he hang up and try again? He opened his mouth. “This is Maxwell Carter—”

“Just a moment,” the voice interrupted.

“Don’t put me on hold,” he ordered, but she did. The next voice he heard was Miranda’s. When he told her the boots hadn’t arrived, she said she was sorry and then there was a long silence.

“Are you sure they didn’t get there?” she asked.

“Positive. The bill got here, though. You had no problem getting that here on time.”

“That wasn’t me, that was accounting.”

“That explains it.”

There was a short pause and he pictured her bent over her desk, her blond hair escaping from the braid and cascading down her back and over her long underwear.

“As you know, Green Mountain guarantees satisfaction.” Her voice jolted him back to reality.

With the phone in his hand he walked to the window and looked out at the snow-covered mountains in the distance. “So they say.”

“They don’t just say it, they mean it.” She cleared her throat. “So... I intend to deliver your boots to you this afternoon, or rather to the ranger station if that’s acceptable.”

“You have to be here by three o’clock.”

“I’ll be there if the weather holds.”

“It will. Uh...Ms. Morrison?”

“Yes?”

“Drive carefully.”

“Don’t worry. If anything happens to me, your boots are fully insured.”

“If anything happens to you, would someone else take your place?”

“Yes, so you see, you can’t lose either way.”

“Right.”

Miranda hung up and ran her fingers through her hair. She took her headset off and confided in Donna, who’d gone to high school with her and now occupied the cubbyhole next to hers. As she always did, Donna told her exactly what she wanted to hear. That she had no choice but to requisition another pair of all-weather boots and a pair of double-ply men’s long underwear—which she’d forgotten to send yesterday, anyway—and drive to New Hampshire. She, Donna, would cover for Miranda the way Miranda had covered for her the day her son was in the nursery school play.

Still, Miranda wouldn’t have considered leaving early if Mr. Northwood were breathing down her neck, but he was home with the flu. So she slipped into the warehouse, thinking that in a few hours she’d have delivered the package and would be on her way back, leaving behind a satisfied customer. And maybe she’d even solve the mystery of the two pairs of missing boots while she was there.

With the package under her arm, she stopped by the pine-paneled outlet on her way out. Ariel was wrapping a hand-knit cardigan for a customer. When she finished, she regarded her sister with openmouthed surprise. “Where are you going so early?”