Charles looked up at his employer with sparkling eyes, obviously enjoying the whole masquerade.
“I hear he has a kitchen that can handle a catering company,” Jason said as he glared at his chef. Only someone of Charles’s caliber could get away with what the man did.
“Oh, yes,” Charles said in that tone he used with women. In his kitchen he used a whole other tone, one of command that brooked no disobedience, but now he practically purred to Amy. “I have the most divine kitchen. Copper pots from France, a cook stove as big as my first apartment. You must come and see it.”
“I’d love to,” Amy said eagerly. “Maybe you’d give me a few cooking lessons.”
“I will give you anything you want,” Charles said seductively as he raised her hand to kiss the palm.
But at the exact moment that Charles’s lips were to touch Amy’s flesh, Jason accidently knocked over Max’s high chair and the clatter made her jump away. Max was frightened by the noise, so he started to scream, and Amy grabbed him from the floor.
After a moment she had him settled, and she turned back to Jason. “So, what so you think about Charles’s opening his own business? I told him you’d have good advice.”
When Jason just stood there in silence, she looked nervously at Charles. “Yes, well, I think it’s a good idea. Max has eaten more of your food in the last day than he has in his whole little life. If you want to do more testing, I can get some other women you can supply baby food to and they’ll be your guinea pigs. And we’ll all write letters of recommendation for you.”
For a moment Jason smirked at this idea. Charles and baby food! The idea was laughable. Charles was such a snob that he complained about what people wore when they ate his food. “That woman crumbled crackers in my soup,” he once said, then refused to ever again cook for her, saying that she wasn’t worth his time. And later Jason found out he was right: the woman was a gold digger of extraordinary greed.
But now Jason could see that Charles was thinking about Amy’s idea of going into business. Which would mean that he’d lose his chef!
“You don’t know how difficult it is cooking for a baby,” Amy was saying. “If you cook a butternut squash, you have enough for a dozen meals and who wants to eat butternut squash for a solid week?”
“I see. It is a problem. I had never tasted baby food from jars until this week. Awful, dreadful stuff. No wonder American children hate proper food and prefer living on hamburgers and hot dogs.”
“Exactly. So that’s why—”
She broke off because Jason suddenly stepped between them. “I think we need to get ready to go now, so you’d better leave,” he said to Charles.
“But we were just getting started. I’d like to hear more about this baby food idea. Maybe I could—”
“Maybe you couldn’t,” Jason said as he pulled the chair back so Charles could stand. So help him, if he lost his chef to this whole fiasco of David’s, he was going to—
“For you, my beautiful lady,” Charles was saying, “I will deliver free dinners every night for the next two weeks. And perhaps lunch too.”
“Oh, really, I haven’t done anything,” Amy said, but she was blushing prettily as Charles once again reached for her hand to kiss.
But Jason stepped between them and in the next moment Charles was out the door. “I could have stayed in the most expensive hotel in the world for less than what this trip is costing me,” Jason muttered as he leaned against the door.
“You were awfully rude to him,” Amy said, frowning. “Why?”
When Jason could think of nothing to explain his actions, he picked up Max and started toward the living room. “I think we should go shopping today,” he threw over his shoulder. “Unless you have all your Christmas shopping done already.”
“Oh, no, I haven’t. I, uh, yes, I’ll get ready in a moment,” she said, then disappeared into her bedroom.
“Lesson number one, ol’ man,” Jason said as he lifted Max high over his head, “if you want to distract a woman, mention shopping. The worst you’ll have to do is spend the day in a mall, but it’s better than answering questions you don’t want to answer.”
CHAPTER TEN
“WAS CHARLES YOUR LOVER?” AMY ASKED AS SOON as they were in Jason’s car. The vehicle was much cleaner now that she’d spent hours cleaning it, but the interior, including the upholstery, had been ruined.
“My what?” Jason asked as he swung the car into the street.
“Why do you always say that when I ask about your personal life? You can see all about my life, but I know nothing about you. What was Charles to you? You obviously know him well.”
“Not as well as you think,” Jason said, looking in the rearview mirror at Max as he chewed on his fingers and stared out the window. “Where did you get that coat Max is wearing?”
“Mildred,” Amy said quickly, giving her mother-in-law’s name. “What about Charles? Would you rather that I didn’t take food from him?”
“Charles is a brilliant chef, so of course you should take his food. Can Max choke on that?”
Instantly, Amy turned around in her seat, entangling herself in the seat belt, only to see that Max wasn’t chewing on anything. “I guess that means you don’t want to talk about that side of your life,” she said heavily as she turned back around.
Jason didn’t answer but kept his eyes on the road—and his mind imagining ways to murder his little brother.
“Have you ever thought of going to a therapist?” Amy asked softly. “Being gay is nothing to be ashamed of, you know.”
“Where do you think we should park?” Jason asked as he pulled into the lot of the mall. Since it was a mere two days before Christmas, there were few places. “Looks like we’re going to have to hike,” Jason said cheerfully, as he found a place that looked to be half a mile from the stores.
Amy was sitting still, not moving an inch, and when Jason opened the back door behind her to get Max, she still sat where she was.
“You going with us?” Jason asked, somehow pleased by her disgust with his refusal to talk about his personal life.
“Yeah, sure,” she said as she climbed out of the car, then stood back as Jason unfastened Max from the car seat and inserted him into the new stroller.
“Maybe I can change,” Jason said when Max was strapped into the stroller. “Maybe I can find the right girl and she could change me.” With that, he started pushing Max toward the stores.
“Right,” Amy said as she hurried after them. “And tomorrow I’m going to go the other way.”
“Could be,” Jason said. “I guess stranger things have happened. Now, where do we begin?”
“I have no idea,” Amy said, looking at the huge crowds moving from one store to another, their arms straining under the weight of the bags they carried. “Shopping isn’t something I do a lot of.” She was feeling as though he’d snubbed her, and she hated the way he laughed at her every time she asked him a personal question.
“I think Max needs a new coat, so where’s the best shop?”
“I really have no idea,” she said aloofly, turning away from him to look at the crowds. When he didn’t speak, she turned back and he was looking at her with an expression of, I don’t believe a word you’re saying.
“There’s a BabyGap—”
“Where would you like to buy Max’s clothes? Money no object.”
For a moment Amy hesitated; then she gave a sigh and pointed. “Down that aisle, take a left at the second intersection, four stores down on the right. But it’s no use going there. The clothes cost much too much.”
“Would you let me worry about the money?” he said.
For a moment she squinted at him. “Is this the way you ordered your lover around? Is this why he kicked you out?”
“My last lover threatened to commit suicide if I left, so do you want to lead or follow?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think we can travel through these crowds side by side
,” he answered. He was having to speak almost into her ear to be heard over the noise.
“No, I meant why did he threaten to commit suicide?”
“Couldn’t bear the thought of living without me,” Jason answered, then thought, and my money. “Could we continue this later? Max is going to be hungry soon, you’ll be dripping milk, and I’d like to watch a football game this afternoon.”
With another sigh, Amy gave up, then turned and started making her way toward the baby store.
Jason watched her moving ahead of him and Max, and he felt better than he had in weeks, maybe in years. He wasn’t sure what was making him feel so good, but something was.
It took them several minutes to make their way through the crowds to the little store at one end of an aisle off the main artery of the mall, and as soon as Jason saw the place, he admitted that Amy had taste. If she was going to fantasize about what to buy her son, then she was going to start at the top.
The walls were full of double rows of the most beautiful clothes, for boys on one side, girls on the other. Each set was a whole outfit, with shirt, trousers, hat, shoes, and jacket to match. By the time Jason made his way into the store, Amy was already looking up at the expensive little sets with stars in her eyes. As Jason entered, he saw her put out her hand to touch a little blue jacket, but she withdrew it as though she couldn’t allow herself such a pleasure.
“So what do you like?” Jason asked, maneuvering Max between the stands of clothing.
“All of it,” Amy said quickly. “So now that we’ve seen it, let’s go.”
Jason ignored her. “I like this one,” he said, holding up a yellow-and-black set that had a matching raincoat. Little yellow boots had eyes on them, and he knew Max would like trying to get the eyes in his mouth. “What’s his size?”
“Nine to twelve months,” Amy said quickly. “We have to go—”
“What is it?” Jason asked, for Amy’s face seemed to drain of color.
“Out. Now,” she gasped, then tried to hide behind him.
Jason found he rather liked her hands on his waist and the way she hid behind him, but when he looked up, he saw nothing but another woman with a baby about Max’s age entering the store.
“It’s Julie Wilson,” Amy hissed up at him. “Her husband owns the John Deere store and has horses.”
Jason didn’t see what this information had to do with anything in the known world.
“We went to prenatal classes together,” Amy said; then she tightened her grip on his waist and started to pull Jason out of the store, using his big body to hide her from view of the woman.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Jason whispered down to her, then nodded toward Max, who had managed to pull eight boxes of shoes off a shelf and was now busily eating the ties off two mismatched shoes.
“Heaven help me, I have failed motherhood,” Amy gasped; then, crouching low, she made her way back to her son.
“Hello, Mrs. Wilson,” the shop clerk was saying in a fawning way. “I have your order in the back. If you’ll just come this way, we’ll see if it fits little Abigail.”
Jason recognized that tone of voice, since he’d heard it many times. It said that the clerk knew the woman and knew that she could afford anything in the shop. The snobby little clerk had not so much as asked Jason and Amy if they needed help when they entered, so he suspected that Amy was known to the girl. Abernathy was a tiny place, and even though this mall was a few miles out of the town, Jason guessed that it was known that Amy couldn’t afford the clothes in this shop, therefore she was ignored.
“Let’s go!” Amy said as soon as the woman had disappeared into the back.
“I have no intention of leaving,” Jason said, and there was anger in his voice.
“You don’t understand,” Amy said, nearly in tears. “Julie married the richest boy in town, while I married—”
“The most likable boy in school,” Jason said quickly, and instantly there were tears of gratitude in her eyes.
“Did she marry Tommy Wilson?”
“Yes. I told you, his father—”
“When we get home, I’m going to tell you all about Tommy Wilson and his father; then you won’t be hiding from any woman who had the misfortune to marry either one of them. Now, help me here,” Jason said as he began pulling one outfit after another off the shelves and slinging them over his arm.
“What in the world are you doing?” Amy gasped. “You can’t—”
“I can buy everything now and return them later, right?”
“I guess so,” Amy said, hesitantly; then as she began to think about what he was saying, she picked up a little outfit with a blue teddy bear on the front of it. “I just love this one.”
“Think quantity and forget about choosing.”
Amy giggled, then got into the mood of pulling clothes off the racks and plonking them down onto the sales counter. There were yellow overalls with a red giraffe embroidered on the bib, a red shirt, a red-and-yellow jacket, with the most adorable red-and-yellow sandals to match. For once in her life, Amy didn’t look at a price tag as she tossed things onto the counter.
When the clerk returned, Julie Wilson behind her, she stopped so suddenly that the baby carriage hit her in the heels. “Sir!” she said sternly, then opened her mouth to let Jason know that she didn’t appreciate the mess they had made. But Jason held up a platinum American Express card, and the woman’s frown turned into a smile.
“Did you see her face?” Amy was saying as she licked her ice cream cone. She and Jason were sitting on a bench by the fountain in the mall, Max in his carriage between them. All around them were bags and bags of clothes for Max.
“Of course, I’ll have to hear the lecture from that snippy little salesgirl when I take all of it back, but it was worth it to see Julie’s face. And you were marvelous.” Amy was swinging her legs back and forth like a child, licking the ice cream before it melted and smiling as she watched Jason sharing his cone with Max.
“Was she really awful to you in class?”
“Worse than you can imagine,” Amy said cheerfully. “She couldn’t wait to tell me every rotten thing Billy had done at school. Not that she was there, but her husband was. Heavens, that must mean he’s as old as you are.”
At that Jason raised an eyebrow at her. “I hardly think I’m at death’s door yet,” he said archly.
“Got ya,” Amy said, laughing. “Oh, but you were wonderful. But you shouldn’t have told her that you and I were an item. You don’t remember what Abernathy is like. Within two hours everyone in town will think I’m living with some great virile hunk of a man and they won’t have any idea of the truth.”
“And what is the truth?”
“That you’ve been having an affair with Charles, of course.”
“I did not say—”
“And you didn’t deny it, either. Hey! What are you doing?”
“I’m putting a new shirt on Max, that’s what. I’m sick of this worn-out thing.”
“But we have to take them back, and—” She broke off to stare at him. “You have no intention of taking these clothes back, do you?”
“None whatever.”
“I wish I could understand you. Why did you agree to stay with Max and me in my leaky old house?”
“To give David a chance with you,” Jason said simply.
“I didn’t think you’d tell me the truth. Come on, Max, let’s go see what the bottom half of you has done.” She took the handles of the carriage and wheeled Max toward the women’s restroom.
When he was alone, Jason looked around the mall. Two weeks ago he would never have believed that he would be spending his Christmas holidays like this. Usually he celebrated Christmas at some extravagantly expensive resort, and his customary gift to the woman he was with was a pair of diamond earrings. Her gift to him was something in bed. Maybe he was getting old, but sometimes he wished the women would shell out for a tie or a pair of socks.
“You are
getting old, Wilding,” he muttered, then got up to give his place on the bench to a woman who looked about ready to deliver twins. He picked up the bags, then walked a few stores down as he waited for Amy, and he saw in a window the perfect dress for her to wear on her date with David tonight. It was a lavender short-sleeve sweater with a matching cardigan, and a pleated skirt of dark purple with tiny tulips on it.
Jason didn’t hesitate in entering the store, and immediately three attractive saleswomen ran to help him. He told them he had about five minutes, and he wanted the outfit in the window with hose, shoes, and jewelry to go with it.
The tallest of the women, a striking redhead, didn’t bat an eyelash. “Underwear?”
Jason nodded curtly. “She’s about that woman’s size,” he said, glancing at a shopper. Minutes later he’d signed the charge slip and the clothes were in the bag.
“Big one,” Amy said as soon as she saw Jason, referring to Max. “Sorry we took so long. What did you buy now?”
Jason grinned at her. “I bought you something to wear tonight.”
“You—Oh, I see. Gay men are good at that, aren’t they? I mean, you like to choose women’s clothes, don’t you?”
Jason bent over her until his nose was almost touching hers. “Do you know the words ‘thank you’? Or is my wanting to hear them more evidence of my sexual orientation?”
“Sorry,” Amy murmured. “It’s just that I—” She broke off, her eyes wide as she stared at something behind Jason. The next minute, she pushed him aside, stretched out her arms, and squealed, “Sally!” and a short, very attractive young woman came running toward Amy.
Jason stood to one side as he watched the two women hug each other and talk over the top of one another, their words tumbling out in a cascade.
“How long—”
“When did you—”
“Why didn’t you—”
“This is Max,” Amy said at last, then stepped back to show her friend her son.
But the woman only glanced at the baby in the carriage, for her attention was on the gorgeous man who had his long-fingered hand on the back of the stroller. “Who is this?” she breathed, and Jason was quite pleased to be seen as a handsome man. Amy sure didn’t seem to notice!