Cry Uncle (7 page)

How many steps loomed between the two rooms?
she wondered. How many paces separated a husband and a wife?

Silly thought. Ridiculous thought. No one
would be pacing anywhere. That was the way she wanted it, the way
they both wanted it. If she and Joe got married, that was the way
it would be.

“
It’s a very nice room,” she
said one final time, then edged past him and out the door, ready to
face the next hurdle: his niece.

Chapter Three

A MILD BREEZE wafted through the screened
porch as they sat around the table. Lois, one of the barmaids at
the Shipwreck, boasted of having read everything Martha Stewart had
ever written, and she’d suggested that they eat lunch on the porch
instead of in the dining room—”Too stodgy,” she’d said—or the
kitchen—”Too familiar. The porch is just right. Casual elegance.
Even kinda romantic.” Lois had also suggested that Joe festoon the
house with cut flowers, and that he set the table with cloth
napkins rolled and tied with string as if they were diplomas, and
that he serve deviled eggs and endive salad in a vinaigrette for
lunch. Some of her suggestions were better than others.

Canned tuna fell within his limited culinary
capabilities, so that, accompanied by sliced tomatoes and a loaf of
seven-grain bread, was the menu he went with. He knew some women
preferred green, crunchy things for lunch, but as eager as he was
to make a good impression on Pamela, he wasn’t going to impress her
at the expense of his own stomach.

Besides, Lizard considered salads toxic. Not
that that mattered much; nowadays, the only thing she would
consider eating for lunch was peanut-butter and mashed banana on a
bagel, accompanied by a glass of milk flavored with enough
strawberry syrup to turn it shocking-pink.

She was seated across the table from him,
gnawing on her bagel and glaring at Pamela, who sipped her
water-on-the-rocks and pretended Lizard’s flagrant rudeness wasn’t
getting to her. Joe was tempted to haul the brat out of her chair
and throttle her.

Instead, like Pamela, he pretended not to
notice her testy mood. “So, does the house meet with your
approval?” he asked Pamela.

“
It’s lovely. It’s larger
than I expected. Have you lived here long?”

“
Ever since Lizzie came to
live with me. Before that I lived on a house boat.”

“
A house boat?” Pamela
looked astonished.

He stifled a reflexive sigh. Man, but he’d
loved that house boat. He’d loved the smell of the Gulf surrounding
him, clinging to him, and the way the timbers creaked and the ropes
clanked and the wind whispered its secrets to him. Most of all,
he’d loved lying in bed and being rocked by the waves, caressed by
the tide. Sometimes he’d liked that even more than the usual
rocking and caressing that went on in his bed.

He supposed it all depended on who—or
what—one was being rocked and caressed by. For not the first time,
he wondered how Pamela would stack up as a bed-mate. Better than
the Gulf tides?

He would never know. And he ought to quit
thinking about it. “I couldn’t continue living on the boat with a
rowdy little toddler,” he explained. “She could have toddled
overboard.”

“
I’m not rowdy,” Lizard
protested, then took another lusty bite out of her
bagel.

“
Sweetheart, you are the
definition of rowdy. Anyway—” he turned back to Pamela “—the fellow
who owned this house had just been divorced and was antsy to remove
himself from the scene of his folly. He wanted to sail away from
all his troubles, and I wanted to put some terra firma under
Lizard’s feet. So he and I swapped homes, with a bit of cash thrown
in to make up the difference.”

“
I don’t need anything under
my feet,” Lizard announced, then held her half-eaten bagel above
her chin, hiding her mouth behind the semicircular sandwich.
“Look,” she said. “I’m smiling.”

“
Don’t play with your
food.”

“
I’m not playing. I’m
smiling.” She turned her bagel grin to Pamela. Her voice emerged
from behind the sandwich: “You like our house?”

“
I do indeed,” Pamela
said.

“
You gonna move into the
spare room upstairs?”

“
Maybe.”

Lizard’s big, dark gaze slid back to Joe.
“What if I don’t like her?”

“
Lizard—”

“
No, that’s all right,”
Pamela interrupted, her hand reaching across the table to pat his
arm. Her touch was brief but consoling, her fingers cool and soft
against his skin, like silk ribbons. Before he could react, she
retreated, shifting in her seat so she could address Lizard
directly. “You don’t have to like me, Lizard. And I don’t have to
like you. All we have to do is get along.”

Lizard sized her up. “You gonna marry my
uncle?”

She shot Joe a look even more fleeting than
her touch. Then she turned back to Lizard. “Maybe.”

“
Does that mean you love
him?”

“
It means he and I think we
can make a life together.”

“
My mommy loved my
daddy.”

Pamela had been batting a thousand up until
then, but Lizard’s fastball whipped past her for a strike. She fell
back in her seat and glanced toward Joe, evidently expecting him to
step up to the plate and pinch-hit for her.

Not knowing what else to say, he opted for
the truth. “Yes, Liz. Your mommy and daddy loved each other.”

“
Is that the way you love
her?” Lizard asked, tilting her head toward Pamela, who had somehow
managed to twist her napkin tighter than a nautical
rope.

“
No two people ever love
each other the way two other people do,” he said, relying on vague
platitudes. “Besides, Pamela and I haven’t known each other that
long. But I think she’ll be a nice addition to the household, don’t
you?”

“
I think,” Lizard said with
titanic self-importance, “she doesn’t eat enough.”

Joe had noticed that, too. Maybe Pamela
didn’t like tuna. Maybe she wanted green crunchy things.

“
It’s the heat,” Pamela told
Lizard. “I’m not used to such hot weather. It takes my appetite
away.”

Lizard slurped her milk, then squirmed into a
kneeling position on her chair. “What do you do?”

“
I beg your
pardon?”

“
What do you do? Like Megan,
she’s sometimes my best friend when she isn’t being a dope? Her
mother is a county at the Casa Marina.”

“
An accountant,” Joe
translated, secretly pleased that Lizard had asked Pamela what he
himself had wanted to ask.

“
Or like Birdie? She’s a Boo
Doo Chief.”

Pamela sent a bewildered look Joe’s way.
“Voodoo,” he mumbled, recalling that he’d already identified Birdie
as Lizard’s baby-sitter. Birdie had immigrated from Haiti back in
the eighties, and the older she got, the quirkier she got. She made
puffy fabric dolls and used them for pin cushions, and she spent
hours with Lizard in the back yard, mixing dirt from the garden and
water from the hose, a sprig of this and a leaf of that, and
chanting mumbo-jumbo. Joe didn’t believe her routines accomplished
anything more useful than keeping Lizard entertained—which,
granted, was no small feat.

Pamela nodded uncertainly, then turned back
to Lizard. “I’m an architect,” she said.

Joe swore under his breath. Sure, he’d wanted
the woman he married to make a positive impression on anyone who
had the power to take Lizard away from him. He’d wanted his wife to
be educated and affluent and well put together and all that. But he
didn’t want her to be a hot-shot. He didn’t want to be stuck
married to an uppity yuppie who would pontificate on Corinthian
columns and Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius at the drop of a hat.

An architect. Shit.

He cautioned himself not to panic. For one
thing, there wasn’t much an architect could do in Key West,
professionally speaking—not without a commission and some
heavy-duty financial backing, neither of which Pamela was likely to
have in her current predicament. For another thing, once she
married Joe—her savior, her protector—she would be beholden to him,
wouldn’t she? She couldn’t put on airs, not when her neck was on
the block.

Okay. He could handle being married to an
architectt. As long as she didn’t act like an architect.

“
What’s an ock-attack?”
Lizard asked.

“
It’s someone who designs
buildings,” Joe told her.

“
Like with
Legos?”

“
Sure.”

“
I got lots of Legos. I
guess I’m an ock-attack too.” Lizard dropped her half-eaten
sandwich onto her plate and shoved back her chair. “If you want to
eat the rest of my bagel, go ahead. I’m done,” she announced,
rising and heading for the door out to the yard.

Joe reached out and snagged her wrist. “Hey,
pal, what do you say?”

“
May-I-be-excused,” she
recited, as if it were a single word, not a question. She slipped
out of his grasp and raced outside.

Pamela watched through the screened walls as
Lizard bounded across the back yard, tramping haphazardly through
the scraggly herb garden she and Birdie had planted and vanishing
into the denser shrubs beyond. Then Pamela lifted her glass and
sipped her water. Her eyes were hard and silver, like the ice cubes
clinking in her glass.

The silence grew as heavy as the thick, warm
air. Joe felt obliged to say something. “Lizard has a way to go
when it comes to manners,” he explained with what he hoped was an
endearing smile. “She tends to confuse bluntness with honesty.”

“
That’s all right,” Pamela
said, though she didn’t look all right. She looked pale and fragile
and uncomfortable—which, under the circumstances, he should have
expected.

Even so, he wanted to vanquish the worry that
shadowed her eyes and pinched her lips. “Really, she’s a great kid.
A little mouthy, but...”

“
She said I was ugly,”
Pamela announced.

Joe opened his mouth and then shut it.
Definitely, the brat deserved a throttling. “When did she say
that?”

Pamela seemed embarrassed all of a sudden.
“Oh, I know she didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t know why I
mentioned it—”

“
You are not
ugly.”

“
As you said, she’s very
honest.”

“
I didn’t say that. She’s a
little beast, and she’ll do anything to get a rise out of people.
Please—” he wanted to grab hold of Pamela, hug her, reassure her
“—trust me. You’re not ugly.”

“
Thank you,” she said
stiffly.

Did she think he was just handing her a line?
Trying to preserve her ego? Should he haul her into his arms and
kiss her, ravish those pursed lips of hers until she realized her
appearance wasn’t a turn-off?

He swallowed a wry laugh. If he tried to kiss
her, she’d probably slap his face or kick him someplace lower. One
wrong move on his part, and she’d decide she was better off dealing
with her Seattle assassin than marrying Joe.

“
You know what?” he said,
trying a new tack. “I think Lizzie’s biggest problem is that she
doesn’t have a female role model. She needs someone to show her the
proper courtesies. I try—it took me two years to train her to ask
to be excused before she bolted from the table, and she still
doesn’t always remember. Maybe she needs a woman in her
life.”

“
She has Birdie,” Pamela
pointed out.

The Boo Doo Chief. Joe rolled his eyes and
laughed.

“
And Kitty. Kitty told me
she adores Lizard.”

“
Yeah, well...Kitty’s a
great lady, to say nothing of the best waitress I’ve ever had. But
role-modeling isn’t her forte. Are you sure you don’t want some
more to eat? Should I make some coffee, or tea?”

“
After all the trouble you
went to to get those tea bags, I suppose I should have tea.” The
smile Pamela gave him was brittle.

Things were falling apart, and Joe was having
trouble finding the crack and repairing it. Lizard had done her
part, sure. And he himself was still unsettled by the news that
Pamela was a member of a highly esteemed profession, a good two
thousand rungs up the ladder from bar owner. But more than that was
wrong. There was an undercurrent of uneasiness, a tension between
Pamela and him that he needed to fix before the situation was
broken beyond repair.

He had to touch her. No kisses, no graphic
proof of her lack of ugliness, but he had to connect with her in
some friendly way. If she misread him, if she slapped and kicked
and otherwise gave vent to her rage at his taking even the mildest
of liberties, well, so be it. If this engagement was doomed, better
to find out now, while he still had a little time to hunt down a
wife on the mainland before his in-laws showed up and staked their
claim on Lizard.

It was unlike him to make such a big deal out
of taking a woman’s hand. He’d held her hand last night at the
Shipwreck, and no thunderbolts had descended from the heavens. But
now that his niece—the beast, the monster, the troublemaker
extraordinaire—had introduced the subject of Pamela’s
attractiveness, to say nothing of love...

The hell with it. He stopped dissecting his
impulses, eased Pamela’s hand free from her tortured napkin, and
sandwiched it between his palms.

Despite the heat, her fingers were as icy as
her eyes. If she’d had less poise, she no doubt would have been
trembling.