Never Alone Read online

  There was no decor to be seen: a few booths, counter and stools in a long, narrow room. The pinball machines near the entrance were the only splashes of color. Two ceiling fans with lights were the only illumination and ventilation. Several local patrons, who were all seated along the counter, watched the newcomers with politely veiled interest.

  Jane and Cash sat down in one of the booths and silently read the day’s menu, which was on a blackboard behind the counter.

  After eyeing them discreetly for about three minutes, a plump woman in jeans and a gray UW sweatshirt came over. “Hi, what’ll it be?”

  “I’ll have the hot plate special,” Jane said cheerfully.

  Cash pursed his lips. “I’ll try the Reuben.”

  The woman nodded and walked through the curtained doorway that obviously led to the kitchen. Cash heard her clearly tell Pearl their order.

  “You should have gotten the hot plate special,” Jane said quietly.

  “You may regret it.” He glanced around once again.

  “I don’t think so. Use your nose,” Jane suggested.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been so busy looking the place over that you missed the most important element. Haven’t you sniffed the delicious aroma emanating from the kitchen?”

  Only then did he become aware of the homey fragrance in the air. “Roast beef,” he said.

  She nodded, grinning. “I think we hit a good one.”

  The waitress came back with tableware and beverages. Then she delivered several plates to the men at the counter. After a few minutes she returned to their booth with two overflowing platters.

  Cash’s plate was covered by a huge pumpernickel Reuben sandwich and a mound of creamy potato salad. Jane’s was heaped with a hot roast beef sandwich and mashed potatoes, liberally doused with deep brown gravy. It was obvious that nothing on either plate had come from the contents of a premeasured box.

  Jane sighed with satisfaction. “Hold a piece of rhubarb pie for me.”

  “Make that two,” Cash added quickly. The waitress grinned and made a notation on their check. She turned back to the kitchen.

  “I don’t know why I said that,” Jane whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll make it through this, much less have room for dessert.”

  “Don’t worry, Jane. I’ll do everything I can to help you in this challenge.”

  Protectively Jane covered her plate with both hands. “Don’t even try it.”

  The food was down-home delicious. It had been a long time since breakfast. The two of them didn’t waste eating time with talk. Two pieces of rhubarb pie appeared at their elbows. Though he felt uncomfortably full, he eyed Jane’s pie teasingly. When he aimed his greedy fork toward her piece of pie, she—just as she had warned him—slapped his hand away.

  When all their plates were clean, Cash sat back. Now as he looked around, he noted the touches that made the long room homey. The sampler over the blue gingham curtains to the kitchen read: “Home is where you hang your heart,” and some child’s drawings were tacked onto the wall behind the counter. Again he was struck by Jane’s ability to make the mundane things of life interesting, enjoyable. He settled the modest bill, and they walked out to the Jeep. Outside, the clouds were as thick as they had been at dawn. Cash turned on the ignition and headed for home.

  Jane hummed along with the country station on the radio. While she listened to the lyrics about broken hearts, trucking men and true love, she took inventory of this unusual day. She had toured streets adorned by classic homes, then had eaten lunch at Bud and Pearl’s. She had been alternately sprinkled and doused by rain and had shared kisses under a red-and-white umbrella. She had stood at the center of the Northwestern World, chaperoned by two cows. What a country-western ballad that would make!

  Closing her eyes, she leaned back. The hum of the Jeep’s tires lulled her to sleep.

  The startling noise of pounding rain over her head woke Jane. She sat up, slightly disoriented.

  “It’s another cloudburst,” Cash muttered.

  In spite of the slashing wipers, she couldn’t see through the front windshield. She sat up tensely. “Cash, I—”

  “I’m going to have to pull off, but I don’t want to just pull off on the shoulder, it’s too dangerous.”

  For the next few minutes, the Jeep crawled along the highway till Cash finally glimpsed an exit ramp to their right. He followed the lane cautiously till he pulled into what appeared to be a parking lot. It was impossible to see whether it was a business or a public wayside. He stopped. Jane reached for him.

  “We’re okay,” he said, grasping her hand.

  “I don’t remember a summer where I’ve been so frightened by the weather. It makes me worry about Angie and Lucy—”

  “They’ll be fine. Lucy’s cottage is one of the safest places Angie could be.”

  “I know, but this weather still worries me. Storm after storm. What is it building up to?”

  In response to her worried tone, he took her other hand and tugged her toward him.

  Jane knew she should—for her own peace of mind—resist this closing of the gap she had tried to maintain between them. Cash leaned closer to her. She smelled the rain in his hair and clothing and bent to claim his mouth.

  Their first kisses of the day had been hesitant. This time when their mouths met, she felt like she was being swept away by a flash fire. Once again his lips passed over her brow, eyelids and throat. She whispered his name.

  “Jane.” He pulled her against him fiercely. He froze.

  Feeling the abrupt change in Cash, she surfaced from the sensations that had overwhelmed her. “Cash?”

  His arms around her had become protective. “The rain has slowed. There are two trucks parked near us. They’ll be pulling out soon, and they’ll be able to see us.”

  Jane looked around. The rain had lessened to a steady wash over the windows. She could see that they were parked at the edge of a gas station.

  Cash started the Jeep again and they drove back onto the highway in silence. It’s now or never. Everything he could surmise from her response to him today said, “green light.” It was time to put over the deal.

  “Jane,” Cash said.

  Momentarily Jane feared he would apologize once again for kissing her. She held her breath.

  “Jane, I’ve been thinking. We should get married.”

  For a few trembling moments, she doubted her ears. “Married?”

  “Yes.” He took a deep breath. The memory of seeing her with Hallawell last night had struck too close to what he feared. It was preposterous to believe that Jane wouldn’t marry. And the thought of another man, living with Jane, acting as Angie’s father, filled him with an intensity of panic he had never experienced before.

  He continued smoothly, “I’ve decided that it would be a good idea. Angie needs a family—a mother and a father—not just a guardian and an uncle. We could marry, and I’d build us a home at The Shores. I suppose you could call it a marriage of convenience, but I believe it would work out very well. What do you think?” His confidence had grown as he had explained his plan. Surely she would agree. Her response to him today had been more positive than he would have predicted.

  Jane trembled with a surge of anger stronger than any she had ever felt before. For uncounted moments, she was unable to do anything except hold out against the urge to scream her fury at Cash.

  Finally she surfaced from her emotional tempest. She became aware that Cash was driving through another steady rain, going north on the state highway toward Eagle Lake. What had she expected from Cash? He’d never said one word of love. She should have realized by now that only with Angie did he allow emotion. For a few moments she had thought he’d lowered the staunch walls around his heart. Dear God, how could I have been so wrong?

  She took a deep breath to still her lingering inner chaos. Without looking at Cash, which would only have stoked the flames of her anger all over, she said with deadly calm, “No, t
hank you. I don’t care to be a convenience to anyone.”

  Chapter Nine

  Inside a large tent in the city park, Jane smiled down at little twin girls with identical brown bangs. They shyly looked up. Both wore gold lamé dresses much too large for them, old fox fur boas and pillbox hats with nets askew. “How about lipstick?” Jane asked, the golden tube already poised in her hand.

  They nodded and submitted with serious concentration.

  “Ready to show your mother?”

  Without speaking, they turned and stumbled in their toolarge, high-heeled shoes out the door of the tent. Their mother waited outside with a camera. Jane’s assistant, Mel, cheerfully posed the duo. When the photo opportunity was exhausted, Mel and Jane helped the girls out of their finery. With shy waves, the twins left for the puppet show, which was already in progress at the far end of Tory Park.

  “They’re the last.” Mel sighed. “Now I have to go sell hot dogs and then help with the cleanup afterward.”

  “Better you than me,” Jane said. “I only have to rebox the clothes for use next year.”

  Mel hurried away, and Jane, suddenly feeling fatigued from a very busy morning, stretched her arms over her head and scanned the park. Under the tall oaks and evergreens of the city park were booths, very messy booths. “Art in the Park” was never neat. Wood-block sculptures, Jell-O finger paintings, pinecone-and-peanut-butter bird feeders, necklaces of dyed macaroni, littered the tables and benches and hung from low branches. All these would be claimed by the young artists after the puppet show, the grand finale. The aroma of freshly popped popcorn had taunted her all morning and now her empty stomach growled. She hadn’t had time for breakfast.

  At the face-painting area across from Jane’s tent, Lucy, dressed as a clown in a paint-smeared smock, finished another rainbow on a child’s chubby cheek. Lucy waved to Jane over the toddler’s head. Jane waved back. Then she went inside her drab green tent and began sorting the clothing into categories.

  “Hi.”

  She turned to see Cash in the tent’s entrance. Within seconds she felt her neck and face blazing with her anger. Her heart beat in a dizzy tempo. Stinging words bubbled up, but she tightened her mouth to hold them back. She finally asked brusquely, “Where’s Angie?”

  “With your dad at the puppet show.”

  “I see.” She wanted to know how Angie had liked her first art fair, but she would ask her father later. She wanted nothing to pass between Cash and her—not even polite conversation.

  “Like your outfit.”

  “Really?” she said without expression. To suit her volunteering job, she had dressed herself as a twenties flapper in a beige dress and matching cloche hat that had belonged to her great-grandmother. She had added many long strands of fake pearls, and gold-sequined garters held up her kneehigh hose.

  “It’s you all right.” His words sounded forced, and she noted the dark smudges under his eyes.

  But she turned away from him and started to fold dresses into a huge cardboard box.

  He persisted. “Are you busy for lunch?”

  “I don’t have time for lunch. I have to get back to the shop. Saturday is my busiest day.”

  “How about Sunday brunch, then?”

  His voice grated on her nerves. Provoked, she looked up. Their eyes connected and sparred. She knew she would have to see him tomorrow because he would arrive for his visit with Angie, but she wanted to accept nothing from him and give him nothing but the barest politeness. The memory of his proposal washed through her painfully. “I’ll leave Angie with my parents. Why don’t you stop over there after lunch tomorrow?”

  “Jane, I don’t understand why a simple proposal—”

  She cut him off. “That’s right you don’t understand, and I don’t feel like explaining it to you. My mother is working at the shop for me. I have to get back to relieve her.”

  He left without saying a word, snapping the flap closed behind himself.

  She clenched her teeth. Strong emotions coursed through her in wave after wave. Furious with him, she attacked the piles of clothes, sorting and folding, then taping and labeling the boxes.

  When she finished, she walked over to the park’s bath house, which was the changing area for volunteers.

  Retrieving her clothes from a locker, Jane stepped into one of the curtained cubicles. Carefully she hung her strings of pearls onto the wall hook and then undid the hook and eyes down the side of her flapper dress and slid off her garters.

  As she slipped into butterscotch crepe slacks, a taupe silk shell and an ivory jacket for work, she simmered with outrage. Trying to calm herself enough to face customers and her mother’s perceptive eyes, she fluffed her hair and outlined her lips with coral lipstick.

  Jane hurried down the block to her shop and entered from the rear. Tish was with a customer, but paused to tell Jane that Aunt Marge had driven out of town before the traffic had been unleashed after the puppet show.

  Another two women walked in. Jane sighed inwardly. She wanted to get away from everyone, but she went forward to greet the customers. At their question Jane directed them to the racks of the few remaining shorts and blouses, then waited by the register. Within minutes they both picked out several blouses and shorts combinations and returned to Jane.

  “My, that was quick,” Jane commented as she began the process of tearing off the tags.

  “We told our husbands that during vacation this year, they’d have to take a turn doing the laundry at the Laundromat,” one of them said.

  “Yes, and we may do this every year.” The other one chuckled. “They managed to destroy one load completely, so we get to buy a new summer wardrobe!”

  “We still haven’t figured out how they did it!” her friend explained cheerfully.

  “Jane!” Lucy called as she entered by the rear door.

  Jane’s spirits sank lower. I can’t face Grandmother. She’ll know something is dreadfully wrong.

  Jane finished the sale, then walked reluctantly downstairs, closing the door behind her. There was no escaping the inevitable.

  At the bottom of the staircase, Lucy, now transformed from a clown to a chic lady in ivory cotton slacks and a blue silk tunic, waited with a large, white paper bag in her hand. The unmistakable scent of ground beef and fries emanated from it. “I was in the mood for saturated fat today. I hope you are, too.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you.” Jane, trying to smooth the strain out of her voice, cleared one side of her desk, and Lucy brought out thick hamburgers and fries. They sat down and faced each other.

  “So why did you tell Cash he could see Angie at your parents’ cottage tomorrow? What’s happened?”

  Jane tried to deflect her grandmother’s words by teasing, “I’m so glad you are capable of subtlety.”

  “Well?”

  Stalling while she thought of her answer, Jane took a bite of her burger. She barely tasted it, and her empty, nervous stomach moved her near nausea.

  Under her grandmother’s thoughtful scrutiny, Jane suddenly wanted to cry. She battled herself and controlled the urge. Someone had told her once, Be careful what you pray for, you might get it. She had once prayed fervently that Cash would ask her to be his wife. Now he had, and she felt as if she were chewing a mouthful of ashes. She put down her sandwich and wiped her fingertips with a napkin. “I can’t seem to get my emotions under control today.”

  “What happened in Wausau?”

  Jane shook her head. “Please let’s talk abut something else.” Her love was a foolish hope, and not even to her grandmother could she reveal her emotions for Cash.

  “About Angie?”

  Jane wanted to shout, No! About Cash. I love him, but he doesn’t love me! Tears did come to Jane’s eyes then. They ran freely, and she wiped them away with her hands till Lucy handed her a flowered handkerchief from her pocket.

  In a rush of sensation Jane remembered Cash’s kisses as the final cloudburst had shielded them from the world. In t
hat private moment she had thought she and Cash had finally come together. But in light of his subsequent proposal, his kisses had only amounted to a test drive of a wife he intended to negotiate for.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, dear?”

  Jane sucked in a deep breath and resolutely picked up her sandwich. “I just miss Dena so,” Jane spoke her only alibi. “I’ll be all right.”

  Lucy gave her a look of heart-rending concern. “Yes, dear, I pray so.”

  The final evening hours of Crazy Days, Eagle Lake’s sidewalk sale came at last. Main Street had been blocked off with wooden barricades. The stores had all moved their sale merchandise out onto the sidewalk and the street itself. Though the month was July, Christmas lights had been wrapped around the city light poles. Shoppers milled around in the street and huddled around the store displays. Two clowns circulated through the crowd, amusing the children and giving away candy. Jane sat at a card table in front of her shop.

  “Hi, Tish. Hi, Mel.” Three teenage girls stopped to browse. Hearing Hi, Tish. Hi, Mel one more time made Jane’s jaw muscles clamp together painfully. Recalling the agony of the tension headache she had after the trip to Wausau, she consciously tightened and relaxed her muscles from the top of her head to the end of her spine.

  “Miss Everett, is there anything here that my mom would like for her birthday next week?”

  Jane opened her eyes. Del Ray Martin’s daughter had unhooked herself from her two friends, who were giggling with Tish.

  Jane stood up and picked out a few bright scarves that would suit Del Ray’s taste. The girl chose a bright-red-andblack scarf from Jane’s selection. Jane let Mel take care of the sale.

  One more hour, just one more hour and I can close. Shutting her eyes once more against the garish lights and the noisy combination of carnival and lounge music, she leaned back against her display window.

  “Hi, I like your jewelry.”

  Jane opened her eyes. “Hi, Rona. Glad you like it.” Rona was referring to the fact that some shop owners were dressed up as though it were Halloween to add more color to Crazy Days. Jane had decided that costuming for the event did not fit the mystique of her or her shop.