walk back with Chris. You can take your time over another cup of coffee here and then drive Edna home in the Mercedes.”
Edna turned to Margaret, explaining ruefully, “I don’t drive. It’s the one thing I don’t do. Tried it from time to time but couldn’t get the hang of it.”
Chris leaned toward Ken and told him in an aside, “Leadfoot smashed up every car she ever tried to drive. One time in Denver she put Uncle Ed’s station wagon into reverse and took out the garage door.”
“I heard that!” Edna snapped. “That wasn’t my fault. It was that dang electronic door opener that didn’t work right. Besides, my foot slipped. I didn’t mean to go just then.”
Ken trundled Chris into her ski jacket and pushed her toward the door. “Don’t you know that discretion is the better part of valor? Edna will feed you lima bean soup tonight for that crack about her driving.”
“I hate lima bean soup.”
“I know,” he said softly.
Chris felt a lump form in her throat at the tender intimacy of his response. They stopped and looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Chris saw questions there-questions that had no answers. And regret. She knew her eyes reflected the same. Tears prickled deep inside her. She felt them spill over her lower lashes and slide down her cheeks.
Ken stared silently at the tears for a moment. He pressed his lips together and brushed his thumb gently across her cheeks. “I wish I could make you happy,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. He gathered her to his chest and held her close, bowing his head into her hair and closing his eyes against its softness. “I know you’re scared and angry, and I obviously did a lot of things wrong. But now I don’t know how to make them right.” He pressed a lingering kiss against her ear.
She trembled against him, not knowing what to say. This morning he hadn’t seemed to care at all, and now he seemed to love her again. Maybe he was just a sucker for tears, she thought. Or maybe sitting together in the booth had triggered a testosterone attack. Although, there were none of the obvious signs…
A horn blared at them, and a truck pulled into the restaurant parking lot. A burly young man leaned out of the truck window. “We’ve got problems,” he called to Ken. “The new compressor was just delivered, and Marty says it’s not the right one.”
“Of course,” Ken muttered. “Murphy’s Law. If anything can go wrong…it will.” He wrapped an arm around Chris. “Come on, we’ll hitch a ride back with Steve.”
Chris quickly wiped away the last remnants of tears and slid up onto the large bench seat of the Ford. Ken read her mind as he took his place next to her. “Yeah”-he smiled regretfully-“life would be a lot less complicated if my truck had been this big.”
Paint cans and carpenters’ paraphernalia had been stacked in the corner of the box office. A spattered tan dropcloth covered tables and chairs. A bare forty-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, shedding a depressing circle of grim light on the papers in front of Chris. She stared blank-faced at her surroundings, feeling as if she’d been pushed into a corner, both literally and figuratively. A mound of paperwork and the prospect of coming eyeball to eyeball with Ken had kept her chained to her desk. For a fleeting moment in the restaurant parking lot, Chris had thought she felt something holding them together…a gossamer-thin, fragile thread of caring and affection. And then it was gone. Broken by the honking of a truck horn.
So here I sit, she brooded. Hiding in here like a stupid fugitive. She rested her chin on her hand. It was damn depressing: She loved a man who didn’t exist; her aunt was planning a wedding that would never take place; and she worked for a skating rink that, as far as she could tell, didn’t have a name.
Ken stood in the open doorway and watched her. Finally, he forced his mouth into a tight smile. “I’ll bet my problems are worse than yours.”
Chris looked up and stared at him stonily.
He slouched against the door and tucked his hands into his pockets. “The compressor is all wrong,” he offered.
“Who cares?”
“You should care. We can’t make ice without a compressor.”
I don’t want to make ice, she thought miserably. I want to make love.
He turned away from her and poured himself half a cup of coffee. He drank it in silence and threw the paper cup into the trash. “I’d like to oversee this project personally, but I can’t. It’s going to be up to you and Marty to make sure the rink opens in a week.” He took a business card from his wallet and scribbled a number on it. “This is where I can be reached in Chicago. If there are any problems, business or otherwise, give me a call.”
Chris’ hand clenched, inadvertently crumpling the card, as she made a mental note never again to fall in love. “And what consitutes an ‘otherwise’ problem? Canceling the caterer and the florist? You could afford to sit in that damn restaurant and chuckle about all of this. You’re flying off to Chicago. And who knows where you’ll spend the week after that…Bangkok? Zanzibar? I have to stay here and live with Edna. I have to somehow convince her that there will not be a wedding taking place.”
Ken looked at her levelly for a full minute. His mouth quirked into a smile that Chris thought looked slightly fiendish. “Do you think she’d actually go ahead and plan a wedding?”
Chris threw her hands into the air. “Of course, she’d go ahead and plan a wedding. You don’t know what it’s like to stop her once she sets her mind on something.” Chris sank back into her chair. “Maybe I should just let her go ahead and plan the wedding and book myself on a flight to Orlando the night before.”
“There’s another alternative.” Ken grinned wolfishly. “We could go ahead and get married. I could probably fit it into my schedule if I leave Zanzibar out of my itinerary.”
Without thinking, Chris grabbed the electric pencil sharpener and hurled it at him. It whistled past his ear and smashed against the door. Ken looked unperturbed. The infuriating smile stayed on his lips. “I suppose that means I can go to Zanzibar, after all.” He picked up the undamaged sharpener and placed it on a paint can well out of Chris’ reach. “I’ve made arrangements for Steve to take you home. He’ll be here until five. Just look him up when you want to leave.”
“You’re going now?”
“Do you care?”
“No!”
“Hmmmm.” He smiled pleasantly, slipped out of the office, and closed the door behind him.
Chris stared at the door for a long time before she realized she was smiling, too. “Damn!”
Chapter 12
Chris stood at curbside, looking balefully at her new car. It was a glistening black Mustang with a black spoiler, and custom striping. And it was a mistake. A twenty-thousand-dollar mistake with black leather upholstery and a sound system that could shatter glass. “You’re a great car,” she told it, “but you were destined for somebody else.” Chris paced on the sidewalk. She’d wanted to get a little front-wheel drive station wagon-something sensible. Something cheap. She sighed. She didn’t know what had come over her in the car lot. Suddenly, she’d had this craving for power and flash-and the day before she’d slunk into a naughty lingerie store and bought a black lace garter belt. Chris made a questioning gesture at the car. “Why? Why am I doing these things?” Because I’m crazy. Kenneth Callahan Knight has made me crazy. Look at this. He has me talking to cars.
She looked over at the Mercedes, also parked at curbside. Tasteful, she thought. Understated elegance. Not the sort of car a woman who owns a black lace garter belt would drive. It has to go back to Darby Hills; there’s no reason to keep it. Chris sighed and ran her hand along a sleek silver fender. The truth was, she admitted reluctantly, she hated to see it go: I miss Ken more than I ever thought possible, and I like driving his car. The car had become a tenuous thread that bound her to him; when she returned the car, one more tie would be severed.
It had been two weeks since Ken had left for Chicago. Somehow he’d managed to send her postcards from around the world. Bangkok. Singapore. Zurich. Lima.
“Dear Chris,” he’d written on the Bangkok card. “Business is taking longer than expected and Bangkok is lonely
