“But I’ll bet you do expensive restaurants.”
She brightened immediately. “I
“Nowhere around men if you’re going to wear those heels and look like that. Hell, I need oxygen before I can find the strength to drive the car.”
“Damn it, Harm. You go straight to my head. Cut it out.”
He didn’t want to cut it out. He strongly suspected she wasn’t normally into blushing, and his ego thrived on flustering her.
The drive wasn’t far, and he put the car on zoom, because both of them really were hungry and needed a decent meal. He admitted wanting to impress her, and he knew she’d like the restaurant. He’d been there twice. He couldn’t pronounce a thing on the menu, but everything went down easy. It was in an old house, each room uniquely decorated, but all had subtle lighting and long, graceful drapes and restful chairs.
The waiter offered them a wine list, then the menu-which Cate, with a glance at Harm, suggested they didn’t really need. “How about if you just bring us whatever the chef thinks is his favorite tonight?”
The older man smiled. “He’ll love that. And I think you will, too.”
This might be the only peaceful meal they’d have for days, Harm thought, and it was going to be perfect.
That illusion lasted maybe three minutes.
“Okay,” she said, after the first sip of wine, “maybe it’s time you told me about those first two wives.”
“Now you want to hear? I’ve offered a half dozen times.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just figured we’d have a more restful dinner if we didn’t talk about murder and larceny and all that for a little while.”
He was more than willing to tell her. “The first one was Zoe. We got married the day after my eighteenth birthday. She was pregnant. Neither of us had a brain, crossed state lines, found a justice of the peace, figured we’d somehow work it all out and conquer the world. We were 100 percent in love. Never doubted for a minute our love could endure anything-including her parents’ disapproval and mine.”
“So what tore it apart?”
“Not parents. Not poverty. Not idiocy. But…she miscarried in her sixth month. It tore us both up. I guess that has to sound pretty nuts for an eighteen-year-old kid to want a baby that bad. But I did. Anyway, neither of us had the maturity to survive the loss, at least not together, because we both caved after that. Nothing I’m proud to admit.”
“Cripes, Harm. That’s a sad story. What a thing to go through…” She suddenly shook her head. “What?”
By then the waiter had served dinner with a flourish of sterling and bone china. Cate hadn’t eaten two bites before she started in.
“The chef wouldn’t know fresh cilantro if it knocked at his front door,” she murmured. “And the wine’s all right, although there are certainly better choices. So do you ever still see her? Zoe?”
“No. We stayed in touch for a while. Then that disappeared except for an e-mail at Christmas. She’s been married for a while, on her third kid-I don’t believe her husband even knows there was a marriage before him.”
She had several more comments to make about dinner, but he wasn’t deluded that she was finished grilling him. “Well, you might as well tell me about wife number two, since we started this. And I certainly hope that story is a lot more scandalous than the first one.”
“Okay.” He’d devoured his dinner by then. “I went to school after that. Liked engineering, but didn’t like going to classes, that whole school environment. So I enlisted in the army. My dad thought that was crazy-I never owned a weapon, never wanted to, don’t like anything about wars-but I seriously believed that career army was going to work for me. I didn’t want to be an engineer who sat at a desk. I wanted to be one of those people who built bridges and roads and dams across the planet.”
“And did you?”
“Oh, yeah. For years. Now what’s wrong?” He saw the slight shake of her head.
“Nothing. I was just inclined for a second to go back to the kitchen and give the chef some friendly advice.” She waved a fork. “Forget I said anything. You still haven’t gotten into wife number two. Hard to imagine how a woman could have fit into that life program.”
“Well, this wasn’t exactly a typical marriage. In fact, what I’m about to tell you has a little tinge of not exactly kosher.”
She shivered all over. “Good. Let’s hear it.” The dessert menu came and went. Some kind of fancy coffee was served, along with… Well, whatever it was tasted richer than Croesus.
“Kayla was Muslim. I met her in a hospital where I was getting stitches-not for anything interesting, just a minor accident, long cut on my side. Anyway. She was eighteen. A baby. So beat-up the doctors weren’t sure she could survive it. I didn’t see her initially-being a Muslim woman, she was treated only by females, and only behind closed curtains. But after I heard the story…I couldn’t let it go. She was supposed to marry this man that she’d met, and strongly disliked. He was much older than she was. He told her up front what he expected in a wife. Her own father beat her when she claimed she couldn’t marry him.”
“My heavens,” Cate murmured.
“She was suicidal. It wasn’t just that she said it. I believed it. I think she would have killed herself if she had to go back to her family, to that ‘fiance.’ So…”
“So you married her?”
“I know. That’s the part that wasn’t exactly kosher. Complicated as hell to pull off besides. There are too many people trying to immigrate to America, any way they can, so for a marriage to be ‘valid’, the pair has to stay together for a serious amount of time. She didn’t have anyone here, didn’t have any idea what to do with herself, her time, her life. All she wanted was to come to America, to get away from the situation she was in.”
“How long did you stay married?”
Harm frowned, trying to remember. “First off, I got her in school-she was smart, just not educated in a system like ours. Thankfully, my family took to her, helped get her set up in a job after that, close enough they could be part of her world. I was still army then, still working projects around the world, so I couldn’t be that close. But she thrived, almost from the start. It just took time to make it right, to make it work.”
“Did you love her, Harm?”
“From the moment I first met her, I liked her. I cared about her. So, sure, I loved her.”
“I mean, did you
He answered the questions he figured she hadn’t gotten around to asking yet. “I wasn’t in love with anyone else. She was and is a terrific person. I honestly never regretted the marriage. I don’t believe she did, either.”
“But you did divorce.”
He nodded. “She finally fell in love. But not with me. And to be honest-it was a relief, because I think she would have stayed with me out of loyalty and respect, and yeah, out of love. But not the right kind of love. Anyway, I still see her. She still sees my family. If I get you out to the left coast one of these days, you’ll meet her, too. I guarantee you’ll like her.”
“Harm.”
“What?”
“That was really a heroic thing to do!”
He frowned. “No, it wasn’t. I wasn’t with anyone else. I couldn’t just walk away. I don’t think anyone could have. I’m not exaggerating her situation. She would have died, and she had no possible way to help herself. Not in that culture.” He cupped his chin in a hand. “You know, I was trying to treat you to a really nice dinner. You know. Like a date, even.”
“This is a nice dinner! Thank you very much.” Her voice radiated sincerity, although she did plunk down her spoon with a little distracted thunk. “Anyone can have a problem with cream. I’ll bet he had an under chef handling the desserts, and he doesn’t realize it’s been overwhipped.”
Harm shook his head. “Just so you know. If I ever want to seduce you or stage a romantic setting, I’m never taking you to a restaurant again. Maybe ever. It’s a little too much like taking a cop to a robbery on his off day.”
“What’d I do? What’d I say?” she asked bewilderedly.
“Nothing, Cookie. Now…you’ve got the story about my marriages out of me. Don’t you think it’s your turn to tell me about your guys?”
