Peg Sutherland - All-American Baby

“I overheard some people at the party. I thought you were in danger.”

Another paranoid man? Melina’s life had been so distorted by her father’s obsessive fear that it was a disappointment to find out that Ash was cut from the same cloth. His fears did not concern her in the least. She swallowed and chased with vanilla shake. “What people? What were you doing at the party? What kind of danger?”

“You don’t sound especially concerned.”

“If I flew apart every time someone worried about me, I’d have three ulcers now. Then I would not be able to enjoy this cheeseburger.”

“You won’t enjoy it anyway if it gets any colder.”

He was right. She ate another bite, dragged two fries through catsup, ate another bite of hamburger. Ash, she noticed, was barely touching his meal.

“What people?” she pressed, determined to ferret out what he was actually up to. “My father’s security people?”

“Yes.”

“You heard my father tell his security people to lock me up and that made you think I was in danger? Don’t you think that’s overreacting?”

“Do they routinely lock you up?”

“You don’t read many fairy tales, do you? Princesses are always locked up.” She feigned casual indifference, finishing her hamburger. Then she started on the fish fillet sandwich and the chocolate milk shake she’d also insisted on sampling. The fish was crispy and the milk shake sweet and thick. She sighed with pleasure. She couldn’t wait for breakfast. Eggs and hash browns, maybe, at a greasy spoon. Then, for lunch, pizza. A meat-lover’s pizza. And for dinner tomorrow, tacos and burritos. Or maybe fried chicken.

Life was good. Very good.

She finished her food. Ash had only picked at his. She’d studied him carefully. Funny what tricks the mind could play with memory in only a few short months. Before, in London, he’d always seemed so worldly, so mature, so versed in life. Tonight, he looked younger, troubled, as if he were adrift in a current he couldn’t navigate. She found she liked him at this disadvantage; it made him seem vulnerable. It made her feel strong.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” she asked.

He looked at her intently, the way he had sometimes after they made love. Rather, after they had sex. Clearly, there had been no lovemaking. That had been her delusion.

“You’re a grown woman,” he said quietly. “Why do you keep running away? Why not just leave? Permanently.”

She had noticed in looking around that average Americans cleaned up after themselves, wadding up their paper wrappers and stuffing everything back into the sacks. She busied herself doing the same.

“What kind of danger?” she asked, to keep him from pursuing his own questions. “What else did you hear?”

He snatched their bags from the table and stood. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I like it here.”

“Well, I don’t. And I have the car keys.”

She smiled. “No, you don’t.”

His eyes grew dark and troubled. “No. I don’t. But neither do you.”

She stood and walked toward the door with him. As they exited, she looked up at him sweetly and said, “I watched what you did when you hot-wired the car. I think I could do it, too.”

He made tiny slits of his eyes and jabbed one of his blunt fingers into her chest. “Don’t even think about it.”

She merely smiled. She liked distressing him. She liked the little sizzle of danger that pinged through her when his fingertip met her chest.

“I mean it, princess. A night in the pokey might sound like a lark, but it could be the least of your problems.”

“Oh?”

“Some people wouldn’t mind shooting a car thief.”

They were walking away from the restaurant, away from the sports car they’d driven up in. “I see. Like horse thieves.”

“Yeah. Like horse thieves.”

“We’re going the wrong way,” she pointed out.

“No, we’re not.”

They made their way to the darkest part of the parking lot, beside a massive discount store.

“Are we shopping for a new car?” she asked.

“You’re sharp, princess.”

“I like that one.” She pointed to another convertible with sleek, sporty lines.

“This time I pick.”

He chose a boring sedan with faded brown paint. It had a canvas bag of knitting in the passenger’s seat and an array of straw hats in the back seat.

“We shouldn’t take her knitting,” Melina said.

“She’ll get it back before she can count the stitches in the next row.”

The car rumbled to life when he hot-wired it, and they headed out of the parking lot.

Melina reached in back for one of the straw hats, a rolled-brim number with an orange-and-lime band. It didn’t fit. “I guess that’s why we’re leaving the other one. So its owner can get it back soon.” She didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in her voice.

He said nothing.

They drove through the traffic, beyond the neon, into the darkness that soon led them to the coastal highway. Moonlight glittered off the restless Pacific. Melina rolled down the car window to let the sound of the surf break the silence.

“Why’d you have to lie?”

His question came out of nowhere, but she knew what he meant. Why had she pretended to be someone she wasn’t when they’d met in London? She wished she could have seen his eyes when he asked. Was there hurt? Anger? Or just idle curiosity? Melina didn’t know how to answer his question truthfully. Three months ago she would have been happy to confide in Ash. But she knew better than to trust him now.

She decided on another lie. “It was just a game.”

“Who won?”

She didn’t know how to answer that, either. He was the one who’d walked away, so some might call him the winner.

But she knew better. Their...liaison had been much more than a game, and in about six months, she’d have the evidence to prove that. “Why, I did.”

SWEET IDA’S TEAROOM stayed open late that night, to accommodate the Hope Springs high-schoolers finishing up their prom dates. Granted, most of them ended the evening at Confederate Cove with a flask of vodka, a carton of orange juice and steamed-up windows. But Sweet Ida’s was a tradition, too.

Ida Monroe had been staying open late on prom night for longer than any of these young ’uns had been alive and she expected to keep up the tradition as long as she still had anything to say about it.

Ida perched on her stool behind the counter, smiling fondly at the half-dozen youngsters attempting to look and act grown-up. She knew them all by name, remembered each and every one of them in diapers. Ida loved prom night.

There was Honey Lou Weidemann, looking like Scarlet O’Hara about to fall off her platform shoes. And Richie Holcomb, who didn’t know what to do with the tails on his cutaway when he sat. Stacy Tillman, the sheriff’s daughter, elegant as a model. And Winnie Wickerstaff, poured into something that ought to be illegal for underage girls. All of them sipping tea or coffee and nibbling on pastries and giggling over the night’s activities.

Ida was content to sit and watch.

Finally most of the couples paid up and left. She was down to one lingering couple, and preparing to lock up after they left, when the front door of the tearoom opened to admit a couple who weren’t dressed in formal wear. Maddie Sheffer and Leon Betton wore the uniforms of emergency medical technicians. They looked wrung-out.

“Thank goodness you’re still open,” Maddie said. She sounded as worn-out as she looked. “If we don’t get some coffee, they might have to come haul us down to County General.”

“Bad night?” Ida was already pouring the last of her coffee for them.

“Could’ve been worse, I suppose,” Leon said, taking the cup she brought and sprinkling in some sugar. “Didn’t lose anybody.”