Axell caught her elbow again and shoved her out the open doors. "Out, Sandra. Go home and find a life." He slammed the door after her and shot the bolt. The restaurant wouldn't open for another hour anyway.
Fury still steaming through his blood, he swung around at the sound of clapping. Axell's kitchen staff and Headley stood in the far doorway, applauding his bad behavior. He really couldn't believe this. All his life he'd tried to be a model of mature control, and these morons were cheering his loss of it.
Not Katherine. She shot him a look full of venom and flounced out without a word. Headley shrugged. The chef—watching Katherine's hips swing in her miniskirt—sighed in regret, and the female staff grinned hugely.
"What the hell are you all staring at?" Axell yelled. "Don't you have anything better to do?"
The staff scattered. Headley remained.
"It takes guts to fight the establishment." Headley wandered back to the bar and helped himself to a bottle of ginger ale from the shelf. "Your father used to smile and keep his thoughts to himself rather than raise a stink, but he got things done. Saw him twist a gun from a madman once, then grin and pat the man on the back. He taught you well.:
Headley opened the bottle. "You'll need your fighting gear in shape, though, if you're planning on running for office with a woman like Maya as wife. She'll have every old biddy in town clucking with disapproval. The Garden Club will probably repossess your front lawn."
"Maya would just make a duck pond of the remains." Axell grabbed a bottle of mineral water, contemplated ripping the cap off with his teeth, but gave it a vicious twist instead. His father hadn't been any better with women and kids than he was. The old man had worked eighteen-hour days and expected his son to do the same. Axell had once thought his mother had died of loneliness.
"Women!" he growled in frustration, throwing back a gulp of water. "Why the devil am I doing this to myself?"
"Because you need a challenge?" Headley asked dryly.
That could very well be. Axell slumped on a barstool. Some men climbed the Himalayas. Others sailed around the world in forty-foot boats. Axell Holm married purple-haired gypsies. It made some kind of crazy sense. What else would one do in Wadeville, North Carolina for a challenge?
"All right, Headley, if I'm gonna do this, you're gonna help me." Axell slammed the bottle down decisively. "Dig out the dirt on that new shopping development. Our mealy-mouthed mayor is up to his ass in it somehow. Two can play at this game."
"Not if one plays fair and the other doesn't," Headley warned. "Politics is an evil business and you'll get your hands burned before this is all over."
Axell glared at the reporter. "Who said I'm playing fair?"
Headley grinned. "That's right. You've got our own Miss Alyssum on your side. That's definitely stacking the deck."
He walked out, cackling. Axell took another swig of his water. Maya wasn't capable of stacking decks. That would take planning. Maya would simply knock the whole card pile on the floor, kick it under the counter, and bring out her tarot deck.
For some idiot reason, that turned him on so fiercely, he had to swing around and face the bar to hide his arousal.
Damn, but he hoped he wasn't thinking with the part in his pants instead of his head. He'd been down that road before, and it was a dead end. He'd damned well better be certain of what he was doing before he did it this time.
* * *
"You're marrying Axell Holm!" Selene repeated, probably for about the third or fourth time, Maya figured. "You're going to live in that brick yuppie house in the middle of yuppie burbs and tool around in a Beamer? You're a cop-out, Maya Alyssum, a real cop-out. I can't believe you're doing this!"
Glumly, Maya couldn't believe she was doing it either—hadn't even realized she'd decided to do it—but the news was all over town. All the parents dropping their kids off at school this afternoon had made it a point to personally stop by the office and congratulate her.
"Well, I probably won't be driving the Beamer after Axell finds out I came back here," she admitted, leaning over to check that Alexa was still sleeping in a curled up little ball. "After we dropped off the kids at school, he gave me the keys so I