Fay Robinson - Coming Home To You

She slid into his booth with a cheery “Good morning,” as if they were old friends meeting for a pleasant breakfast. He could feel the envy of every man in the place.

He threw down his fork and it clattered on the plate. He gave her a look that said she was about as welcome as tight boots on a blood blister, but she just grinned at him and stole a piece of his bacon with her fingers.

“What are you doing?” he asked, annoyed at having the best hour of his week ruined by Kathryn Morgan.

“Eating breakfast.” She turned around and signaled to the waitress.

“Not with me.” When she reached over to get more bacon, he covered it with his hand. “And stop eating my bacon.”

She laughed at him then. Laughed at him! As if she found him amusing!

“Okay, stingy, I’ll get some of my own.” She turned to the waitress who had appeared with a menu and coffee. “Hi, Marleen. I’ll have the same thing he’s having, and bring us an extra order of bacon.”

“No,” Bret said.

“No, you don’t want extra bacon?”

“No, I don’t want to have breakfast with you.”

“Oh, don’t be such a grump. Eating with me won’t kill you.”

“Ms. Morgan, why are you bothering me again? I told you I wasn’t going to talk to you. Now leave, or I will.”

“If you want to leave, go ahead, but I’m planning to enjoy my breakfast. I’m absolutely starved.”

She poured cream in her coffee and casually stirred it with her spoon. She had the look of someone who was settling in.

Marleen waited for him to make up his mind. She glared at him, which made him feel like a first-class jerk.

“Bring her the stupid food,” he said with a growl, snatching up his folded newspaper. “And go ahead and start cooking my extra order.”

He’d ignore the pushy ratchet-jawed woman. That was what he’d do. Just pretend she wasn’t there, finish his breakfast and do his errands in town. Maybe she’d get the message and leave if he acted like she didn’t exist.

But that wasn’t easy to do. She had started watching him—no, studying him. She’d propped her elbows on the table and her chin rested on top of her clasped hands. He could almost feel her gaze touch his hair, his chin, his chest, and he didn’t like what it was doing to him.

That he found her physically attractive only increased his irritation with her. That he wondered if she found him attractive made him angry at himself.

He was glad he’d just shaved, had on a pair of his newer jeans and one of his good shirts. And yet he hated being glad. He hated that he could see, even without looking at her, the soft curve of her lips and how her eyes sparkled when she was amused—like now.

The harder he tried not to look at her, the harder it became. When he took a sip of coffee, he stole a glance over the top of the newspaper, and she smiled at him.

“You clean up real nice,” she said as if she’d read his thoughts. “But you need to learn not to grind your teeth when you’re irritated. You’ll give yourself a headache.”

He slammed down the newspaper and gave up all pretense of ignoring her. “You know, for somebody trying to get my help, you sure are going about it the wrong way.”

“Am I?” She cocked her head. “So what would work? I’ve tried asking and pleading.”

“And now you’re up to badgering and aggravating.”

“I’m sorry if you feel badgered. I honestly didn’t come here to be a pest. If I could get the information I need any other way, I’d pack up, leave and never bother you again.”

“So do it.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I have to finish this book. The good things James did in his life are in danger of being lost. Instead of honoring him as the genius he was, most people remember him only as a drugged-out rock star killed in a plane crash.”

“And you think you can single-handedly change how people remember him?”

“I’m sure going to try. No man’s life should be defined solely by his death, particularly a man like James. Don’t you want to help me preserve his legacy?”

He didn’t answer. He picked up his newspaper and tossed a five-dollar tip on the table. He paid his bill, grabbed his second order from the cashier and went out the door, letting it slam noisily behind him.

He’d parked his truck across the street. He walked to it and opened the passenger door. As he did every Saturday morning, he unwrapped the extra bacon and eggs and spread them on the paper sack for Sallie. He didn’t have to look back to know the annoying woman was watching him out the front window of the grill.

Help her preserve the legacy of James Hayes? Now, that was a laugh. He didn’t want to preserve that legacy. He’d spent the past six years trying to destroy it.

Chattanooga, Tennessee

“THAT NOSY WOMAN’S going to ruin everything.”

George Conner stopped his frantic pacing to look for the cigarettes he’d carried for fifty of his seventy-three years, desperate for something to calm his nerves. The phone call from his stepson had rattled him. Kathryn Morgan. In Alabama. Asking questions. Heaven help them!

He patted his shirt pocket. Belatedly he realized he didn’t have any cigarettes. Marianne had forced him to give them up last year, along with everything else that made life worthwhile. Cigarettes. Booze. Red meat. She even regulated their lovemaking, if you could call what they did lovemaking.

He’d probably live longer, but what for? When a man gave up his pleasures, he might as well be dead. And if that Morgan woman uncovered his lies and he was headed for prison, he preferred to go with a cigarette in his mouth, his pants down and a shot of Jack Daniel’s in his glass.

He flipped open the wooden box on the bar, taking out one of the hand-rolled cigars he kept for friends whose wives weren’t as dictatorial as his own. He held the cigar under his nose and savored the smell. Marianne watched him without comment until he put it in his mouth, then said in that maddening voice she used when she wanted to scold but didn’t want to sound like she was scolding, “I know you’re not seriously considering lighting that.”

He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t smoke cigars yet barely able to resist now that he’d gotten a taste for them. But then Marianne raised one eyebrow and that small gesture decided the issue. Mumbling a curse under his breath, George tossed the cigar on the bar, not as fearful of having another heart attack as being on the receiving end of Marianne’s wrath for the rest of the day.

He walked to the table where she sat, where she always sat, by the wall of windows that offered a spectacular view of the city far below. This room was her sanctuary in a dark monstrosity of stone, parapets and turrets that jutted obscenely above the trees at the top of Lookout Mountain and had earned the ire of the good citizens of Chattanooga. The Castle, most people called the house, although there’d been other less-flattering names over the years. The Dungeon. Hayes’s Folly.

Marianne hated it as much as everyone else. She had hated it every day of the nearly twenty years they had lived here, but no one other than George would ever know that. James had built the house for her as an expression of love. So she’d never move. That was an issue they had argued and settled a long time ago.

“Darling, sit down and I’ll have Agnes bring you some freshly squeezed juice,” she told him, taking a sip from her own glass. But he was too nervous to sit. He stood gazing out the window with his hands deep in the pockets of his polyester slacks, absentmindedly rattling his keys—and apparently Marianne’s patience—until she’d finally had enough.

“George, please,” she said shortly, drawing his attention. “He said he could handle her and he will. Now come sit down and relax.”