I pulled back and looked up at him, frowning. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t making sense. Of course it was the books. Poor man; he’d been spending too much time with plumbing fixtures.
He kissed the tip of my nose. “It’s you. Your quirky sense of humor and your sense of fun, but most of all your warm heart.” His lips touched mine softly. I would have put my arms around him and leaned into the kiss, but I didn’t want to get a stiff neck. Our height differential necessitated a couch for even mildly amorous activities. Either that or a step.
“You,” he whispered, and kissed my forehead. “You make this store a haven.”
He was wrong, but it was a nice thing to say.
“That’s why I want to warn you about this decision.” He kissed me again then released me. “Your sense of fairness is exceptional, and I’m afraid it could land you in trouble.”
Back to Yvonne. Rats. I thought the topic had been successfully buried. “She didn’t kill anyone.”
“A lot of people think she did.”
“They’re wrong.” I folded my arms.
“Your customers’ perceptions count more than any fact,” he said. “If we didn’t have an unsolved murder in town, this issue wouldn’t be so crucial, but the facts are undeniable. Yvonne was sentenced to life in prison for murder by way of strangulation. Sam Helmstetter was killed the same way.” Evan took one of my hands between his two large ones, hiding it completely. “Let’s think about this differently. If a pediatrician came to town and you heard that he’d been accused of malpractice, would you consider taking Jenna and Oliver to him?”
“Of course not,” I said indignantly. And as I said the words, I realized what I’d said. “Um, not until I’d done some investigating . . .” My voice trailed off to silence.
“Point taken?” Evan asked. His tone was gentle.
I nodded, unhappy with myself for leaping right into the trap. “Some days reality stinks.”
He laughed. “Ah, it’s not so bad. We’re alive, breathing, and in good health. What else could you want?”
My answer was automatic. “Full-ride college scholarships. Two of them, please.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He opened his palms and kissed the back of my hand. “Thanks for listening.”
“You’re welcome.” I looked at my hand. The only other person who’d ever kissed my hand had been Uncle Rolly on my thirteenth birthday. “Thanks for caring enough to voice your concerns.”
“I care about you.”
“And I care about you.” This was as close as we’d come to saying the scary “I love you” thing. Stronger than “I like you,” but much safer than the
“You mean—”
“I’m not going to ask Yvonne to leave.”
He sighed. “I had that feeling.”
“If this town turns against the store, we’ll survive. Over half of our customers are from Madison.” Which I only knew because we’d started to ask for zip codes. Though I disliked asking, the information was helping us decide which advertising was worthwhile. My advertising budget was about the size of a twelve-year-old’s allowance, which made wasting even a single dollar painful.
Evan looked unconvinced. “If you lose—let’s just hypothesize here—twenty percent of your Rynwood customers, how would your monthly revenues match your budget forecast?”
I did the math in my head. Then, since I didn’t like the way it turned out, I did it again. “Math isn’t my strong suit.” But even I could recognize impending doom when the edge of the cliff was rushing near. For once, however, I wasn’t going to worry about it. “And it doesn’t matter. Yvonne is staying.”
“It sounds as if you’re making this a statement of principle.”
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. Principles weren’t something I thought about on a daily basis. “I suppose I am.”
He frowned. “Principles can be expensive. I hope the cost isn’t too high.”
“You and me both,” I said, hoping to make him smile. “Stop worrying, or your face is going to freeze like that.”
He didn’t laugh, but he did smile a little. “Are we still on for Saturday night? I have—”
The phone rang. Then again. “Sorry,” I murmured. “Children’s Bookshelf, how may I help you?”
“Beth,” said Richard, my ex-husband. “It’s Richard.”
“Hello, Richard.”
As soon as the name came out of my mouth, Evan stood and headed for the door. “Wait,” I said.
“What?” asked Richard.
“What?” asked Evan.
“Not you,” I said into the phone. “You,” I said to Evan. “Saturday is still good. Five o’clock?”
“How about four?” He smiled as he shut the door behind him.
“Okay, I’m back,” I told Richard. As always after seeing Evan, I felt as if I could solve the world’s problems and be home in time to cook dinner. “What’s up?”
He said three short words and my life changed. There were other sets of three words that changed lives: “I love you,” “It’s a girl,” or the pronouncement of “husband and wife.” Those were all good changes, at least most of the time. No, Richard’s three words were the bad kind, the kind you hoped you’d never hear. But maybe I’d heard wrong. I didn’t always listen to Richard as closely as I might. Maybe he’d said something else. “I’m sorry, Richard. What did you say?”
“I’ve been fired.”
Chapter 7
Marina’s kitchen was bright and cheerful, a welcome change from the blustery Friday evening weather that had pushed me inside the door. I was flying solo tonight. Evan kept the hardware open on Friday nights, and the kids were with their newly unemployed father, doing the trick-or-treat thing. I’d taken them out last year, so this year was Richard’s turn.
Poor Richard. I hoped they’d be able to distract him from his worries. He’d worked for the insurance company for over twenty years, been CFO for almost ten. A few months ago a merger had swallowed them whole, but he hadn’t been worried. “I have too much corporate memory,” he’d said, tapping the side of his head. Either the new guys didn’t care about his memory or he’d been sucked dry.
Marina turned over a slab of pork and it sizzled in the cast-iron frying pan. “What did he say after that?”
My stiff-upper-lip ex-husband had broken down in tears, but I wasn’t going to tell Marina. Two years of divorce didn’t entirely stamp out the loyalty built in a marriage. “Oh,” I said, “you know men.”
“The gender is a blight on the planet.” Marina grabbed a potholder. She yanked open the oven door and pulled out a cookie sheet covered with potato slices. “What do we need them for, anyway?” The potatoes looked seasoned enough to me, but Marina grabbed her shaker of special spices and shook it furiously.
“Aside from the need to propagate the species?”
She tossed away the notion with a shower of the spices. “We’ll figure out another way to reproduce. Name another reason.”
The oven door slammed shut and I wondered what Marina’s Devoted Husband had done to deserve such ire. “Opening jars that won’t open.”
“
“Taking the car to the mechanic. No matter what, I always feel like an idiot.”
“When all the mechanics are women, that won’t matter, now will it? You get one last chance for the continuation of male humans. Why, pray tell, should we keep them around?”
“To get rid of dead things.”
Marina’s mouth opened, then closed. A slow grin cleansed her stormy face. “Reason enough, mine friend. Since you’ve answered my question of the day, shall I answer yours?”
“Well, I am wondering how Mrs. Tolliver, and therefore the whole of Rynwood, found out so quickly that
