Kansas. Taking the dog. Dorothy.
"She's staying with you?" Katherine asked incredulously as she escaped the demands of hostess to take a break at the table where Axell surveyed the Saturday night crowd.
He eyed Headley at the far end of the room regaling some young ingenue with his war stories. Headley had never been in a war. Axell dipped his gaze back to Katherine who bristled with hostility, for what reason, he couldn't imagine.
"If you mean Maya Alyssum, yes," he stated calmly. "Unless we can rescue her things, she has nowhere else to go. If you're concerned about the proprieties, you might mention that to the mayor. Once we retrieve her furniture, she can move next door."
"You don't get it, do you?" she asked bitterly. "You're so damned blind, you can't see beyond that bar over there. That woman is out to get her hooks in you, and you're helping her shove them in."
Axell raised his eyebrows. "She's a pregnant schoolteacher, Katherine, not a temptress. If anything, I'm making Constance deliriously happy by entertaining her. I believe they're finger painting right now."
He tried not to remember the happy chaos he'd left after supper—a pizza he'd provided because there was nothing in the refrigerator. Maya had spread thick layers of newspapers over the antique oak kitchen table, but he rather suspected the newspaper might be as bad as the water-logged finger-painting sheets. His housekeeper would have hysterics. His kitchen would soon look like a war zone, given Matty's penchant for red. But he'd left Constance laughing ecstatically, and the almost-forgotten sound decimated all objections. He knew his priorities. Constance was on the top of the list.
"You bought her clothes," Katherine said accusingly, jerking him back to the present.
Axell caught the eye of a waitress and nodded toward a table where a patron had just spilled his drink. He returned his attention to Katherine's nagging. He'd never thought her the type to nag. Just more evidence that he didn't understand women.
"All their clothes are in the building the mayor had condemned," he reminded her. "It's not as if I supplied them with designer outfits. It was all I could do to persuade her to buy at Wal-Mart instead of the Goodwill store."
Actually, he hadn't persuaded her. Taking advantage of her habit of nonconfrontation, he'd simply driven to Wal-Mart instead of Goodwill. She'd speared him with her eyes, but looks couldn't kill, and she hadn't been able to say anything in front of the kids. Axell smiled remembering Matty happily accepting everything he chose for him. The teacher, on the other hand, had insisted she needed only clean underwear and a shirt. Once he'd figured out her size, he'd bought her two new maternity dresses and a big sweater to keep her warm on these cool spring nights.
She'd insisting on writing him an IOU. He'd considered trashing it, but for whatever reason, he'd carefully folded it up and tucked it away in his wallet as a reminder of how far he'd come. The grand sum total of their purchases equaled what he paid to have his cars detailed once a month.
"She's playing innocent," Katherine fumed. "Just you wait. She'll have you caught, hook, line, and sinker—if you don't wake up soon."
She flounced off to her duty of greeting customers, leaving Axell to consider her warning.
True, he'd always had a habit of helping those who couldn't help themselves. Marrying Angela had probably been a result of that, but he'd been much, much younger then. Her parents had just divorced and moved away. She'd bombed out of college as a result and taken a job as waitress at the bar. His father had just died. One thing had led to another and she'd ended up pregnant. Marriage had seemed the best thing at the time. Now that he understood the complexities of the wedded state, he'd never make that mistake again.
He didn't think Maya Alyssum much interested in marriage either, or in him. He occasionally caught her looking at him as if he were some fascinating but particularly repellent bug. He figured he was safe.
From the schoolteacher, anyway. As he watched Mayor Ralph Arnold enter with the mayor's mother and Sandra on his arms, Axell wasn't at all certain he was safe in anything else that mattered. His mother-in-law and Ralph's mother were old buddies, or biddies, he revised spitefully.
Feeling like the French Resistance struggling with the German occupiers, Axell ordered his bartender to send over a bottle of wine. He'd yet to lose a battle.