Passion to Die For

“Well, come back to reality, where the sky is gray, the temperature is cold and the rain hasn’t stopped falling.” Sherry held up the bag. “Joe’s order is ready.”

Ellie looked blankly at the bag before remembering: Joe Saldana had called in an order to go, and she’d offered to deliver it to him. He’d promised her a tall chai tea, his own special blend, as a fee.

“I can take it for you.”

“You’re married, Sherry,” Ellie reminded her as she rose from the chair, then took her jacket from the coat tree in the corner.

“But there’s no harm in looking.”

The waitress handed over the bag, and the fragrant aromas of the day’s special—roasted chicken, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, along with a piece of apple pie—drifted into the air. It was enough to remind Ellie that she had skipped lunch, and breakfast, as well. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of food.

Not with the sour stenches of fear, bourbon and nicotine that had gripped her for the past fifteen hours or so.

“I’ll tell Joe you send your regards,” she said as she squeezed past Sherry and started down the hall.

“Oh, honey,” Sherry murmured behind her. “I want to give him a whole lot more than that.”

Ellie’s faint smile faded before she reached the door. They’d had a busy lunch, and one of the staff had called in sick, so she’d had to pitch in and wait tables. Busy was good; it kept her from thinking about anything more than the task at hand.

But busy couldn’t last forever, and once the lunch rush was over, she’d retreated to her office and brooded. She’d faced a lot of problems in her life, but there had always been solutions. This one had solutions, too—just none that she could face at the moment.

The rain came in steady, small plops against her lemon-yellow slicker until she reached the protection of the awnings that fronted the other businesses on the block. There she pushed the hood back and drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air. Speaking to the few people she passed on the sidewalk, Ellie realized with some measure of surprise that she would miss Copper Lake if she had to leave. She’d tried not to get overly attached to the town or the people in it. Home was a concept, not a place, and people let you down. From the day she’d come there, she’d wanted to be able to leave without regret.

Tried. Wanted. Truth was, she was attached. She could own another dozen restaurants, and none of them would mean the same as the deli. She could make a hundred new friends, but they would never replace Anamaria and Jamie, the Calloways, Carmen and everyone else. She could have a thousand more affairs, but not one of them—

Grimly she stopped herself midthought as the fragrance of fresh-roasted coffee drifted into her senses. A Cuppa Joe occupied the corner lot, a full block from her own place. Ironically, Joe Saldana hadn’t named the gourmet shop. It was just coincidence that Joe now owned A Cuppa Joe.

I don’t believe in coincidence.

Scowling at the words she’d heard more than once from Tommy, she pushed open the plate-glass door and went inside. Louis Armstrong played softly on the stereo—Joe didn’t listen to anything recorded after 1960—and coffee scents perfumed the air.

She was halfway across the shop, already anticipating the first sip of chai tea, when she realized that something was amiss. Slowing her steps, Ellie glanced over her shoulder, then came to an abrupt stop and turned.

Martha was sitting at the front table farthest from the door.

With Tommy.

A chill shivered through her as she stared at them and they stared back. There was malice in Martha’s expression, speculation and something more in Tommy’s. A little longing. Maybe regret. Definitely curiosity.

How had they wound up in the coffee shop together? Had it been Tommy’s doing, his way of finding out answers she hadn’t given him the night before? Or had Martha sought him out? Did she somehow know they’d been involved?

Ellie couldn’t speak, couldn’t move or look away, until Joe’s voice broke the shock that held her.

“Hey, Ellie. How much do I owe you?”

Bit by bit, she forced her attention from Tommy and Martha to Joe, who was sliding his wallet from his hip pocket as he came out from behind the counter. She tried to remember how much the lunch special was, but couldn’t. Gratefully, though, she recognized the ticket nestled atop the foam container in the plastic bag and pulled it out, handing it over.

“Nina’s getting your tea,” Joe said, offering her a ten-dollar bill in exchange for the bag. “Why don’t you come on back with me?”

Ellie still felt Tommy’s and Martha’s gazes, though, prickling down her spine and into her somersaulting stomach as Joe took her arm, guiding her behind the counter. She numbly went along. As soon as they reached the rear space that served as both storeroom and office, he closed the door and the prickling went away.

He released her, went to the battered desk and unpacked his lunch. “So you and Maricci still aren’t friendly.”

She shook her head.

“I doubt you have to worry much about the woman with him. She’s not his type.”

He was wrong. Martha was the biggest worry in her life.

“Okay, bad joke. What’s wrong? This is hardly the first time you’ve seen him since…” With typical male tact, he shrugged instead of finishing. Since he walked away from you. Since he gave up on you.

“It’s not that,” she said, and it was only half a lie. She could handle seeing Tommy. She could even handle seeing him with Sophy. But with Martha, who hadn’t been satisfied with ruining her life fifteen years ago? Who’d come to Copper Lake for the sole purpose of ruining what was left?

“Then what is it?” Joe asked as he cut a generous bite of chicken.

“Complicated,” she said with a helpless shrug.

“Sex always is.”

Leave it to a man to boil down her and Tommy’s relationship to its most basic component. If it were only sex, they would have no problem, because the sex was always good.

“And how’s your sex life?” she asked to change the subject.

“I’m thinking about it.”

She snorted. In the year since he’d come to town, he’d caught the eye of every available woman—and a few who weren’t. Six foot four, tanned, muscular, with unruly blond hair and blue eyes, he could have women lined up around the block. Had had women lined up the day he’d reopened A Cuppa Joe after remodeling. But to the best of her knowledge, he’d never gone out with any of them. He was friendly, considerate and disinterested.

“How long can a man go without?” she asked.

His forehead wrinkled for a moment, then smoothed. “Eighteen months, two weeks and three days. And counting.”

She gazed at him a long time, while he sampled the mashed potatoes, dipped a forkful of dressing into the gravy, then cut another piece of chicken. Finally she shook her head and started toward the rear wall. “Can I use your back door?”

“You gonna slink back down the alley to the diner? Coward.” But he gestured toward the door with careless approval.

She let herself out the door with a wave, then stood underneath the roof overhang while pulling the slicker hood into place. Hands shoved into her pockets, she turned left toward the deli, but after a dozen feet, turned around and headed along the sidewalk in the other direction instead. Shivering more than the weather called for, she turned at the next block and headed aimlessly out of the business district and into a neighborhood of lovely old homes.

Five years ago Ellie had chosen Copper Lake as her new home based on only one thing: the two-hundred-year-old general store turned restaurant turned hot investment property. Randolph Aiken, her mentor, for lack of a better word, had contacted her in Charleston, where she’d been working for a friend of his in a lush, plush, black-tie restaurant and told her about the space. It would be a great investment, he’d said, for that money she’d been saving.

Payoff money.

When she’d driven through Copper Lake that first time, her initial thought had been that it was too pretty, too small-town perfect. She didn’t belong in such a place.

But she hadn’t fit in in Charleston, either, or Atlanta. She didn’t belong anywhere, so she might as well not belong in Copper Lake, where she could have her own modest restaurant.

Then something strange had happened along the way. The town and its people had made a place for her. They’d welcomed her, befriended her and treated her like any normal person.

Tommy’s welcome had been the sweetest.

A short, sharp tap of a car horn sounded as she was about to cross a driveway. She drew up short, realizing she’d reached the Jasmine, one of Copper Lake’s historic gems, as an elegant gray Mercedes glided to a stop in front of her. The driver rolled down the window, and both he and the passenger, the inn’s owners, smiled up at her. “Look at this, Jared. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and Ellie Chase is out taking a stroll,” Jeffrey Goldman said.

“Let me mark this date on the calendar. I do believe it’s a first,” Jared Franklin replied.

Ellie couldn’t help but smile at both men. Like her, like Joe Saldana, they’d come to Copper Lake to make a new start. Unlike her and Joe, everyone knew the basic facts of their lives. They were open and unashamed; they had nothing to hide.

“I’m not at the deli all the time,” she protested.

“No, of course not,” Jeffrey agreed. “You have to sleep sometime.”

“You’re not still sleeping on that couch in your office, are you?” Jared asked.

“One time. And it was just a nap. I’d worked late the night before for…What was it? Oh, yeah, your birthday party.” Ironic that a birthday party for a retired lawyer had turned into the largest and most boisterous private event the restaurant had ever hosted. The sheer number of people who’d made the drive from Atlanta had been astounding—lawyers, judges, criminals. She’d spent half the night in the kitchen, afraid she would run into someone who’d known her from before.

That was no way to live, but if she gave in to Martha’s blackmail demands, she would live the rest of her life just like that.

“Why don’t you let us give you a ride to wherever you’re going?” Jeffrey asked.

She was about to say no, thanks, when another car approached. It was black and looked so unlike a police car, she had once teased, that of course it was. The turn signal was on, the driver—Tommy, of course—preparing to turn into the Jasmine’s other entrance, the one that circled around to the small guest parking area. In the passenger seat, a glimpse of sallow skin and tufty gray hair proved that Martha was still with him.

It was hard to walk off your problems when they kept showing up.

Turning her gaze back to the men, Ellie smiled. “If you’re not worried that I’ll ruin your upholstery, I would like a ride back to the deli.”

“Upholstery can be cleaned,” Jeffrey said with a negligible wave.

The electric locks clicked, and she opened the rear door before either man could get out to do so for her. As she slid onto the buttery leather seat, the Charger disappeared behind a hedge of neatly groomed azaleas.

“Do you have a guest named Martha?” she asked, striving for a conversational tone as the Mercedes began moving again.

Jared’s nose twitched subtly. “Yes, we do.”

“She came to the restaurant last night. Wow. I couldn’t afford to stay at your place unless you hired me as the live-in help. I guess appearances really can be deceiving.”

Jeffrey ignored Jared’s snort. “She has money. We have rooms. And you know, we’d always cut you a deal, Ellie. You’re our favorite restaurant owner in town.”

“She has money, all right,” Jared said. “She paid for a week from a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. Said she’d never stayed in a place quite so fancy.” He put a twang on the last few words that should have made Ellie smile, but didn’t.

Where had Martha gotten a stack of hundred-dollar bills? Had Oliver had life insurance enough for her to bury him, pay her usual bills and allow her to splurge on a two-hundred-dollar-a-night bed-and-breakfast? Maybe she hadn’t wasted any money on a burial. After all, he was no use to her dead.

Just as her daughter had been no use to her.

It didn’t make sense. If Martha needed money—and she must; how else would she survive with her aversion to work?—why wasn’t she staying at the Riverview Motel? One night at the Jasmine would cover nearly a week at the Riverview.

Thinking about it made her head hurt. Thinking about Martha with Tommy made it hurt worse.

Staring out the window, she listened to Jeffrey and Jared’s idle chatter until they reached the restaurant. She thanked them for the ride and climbed out into heavier rain.

“Next time you need a break from work, come on over,” Jared invited. “I’ll fix you my special Long Island iced tea, and we’ll dish on all the guests. I could tell you things…”

Politely she said she would, then hurried along the sidewalk and up the steps to the porch. As she shrugged out of her slicker, she remembered that she’d forgotten to pick up her chai tea at A Cuppa Joe.

Too bad. She could have used it.

Tommy didn’t feel guilty for taking care of personal matters on department time. He put in way more than his forty hours a week, routinely getting called out too early in the morning and too late at night, to say nothing of spending more than a fair amount of his evenings writing and reading reports, studying notes and trying to figure out why people did the things they did.

The rain had stopped after he’d dropped Martha Dempsey off at the Jasmine, and now the sun was making a so-so stab at breaking through the clouds in the western sky. Finding no space on the square, he parked in Robbie’s law office lot and jogged across the street, careful not to spill the still-warm chai tea in the cup he carried.

Ellie’s Deli sat fifteen feet back from the sidewalk, the path to the steps flanked on both sides with beds of yellow and purple pansies. Those had been his mother’s favorite flowers, back in the days when she’d found the energy to plant anything at all, and his father had continued to plant them for years. The autumn he’d stopped, Tommy thought, was when he’d finally accepted that Lilah wasn’t coming back.

By then, she’d been gone for eleven years.

Like father, like son. Mooning endlessly over women who didn’t want them.

The main dining room was empty except for a half dozen girls gathered in one corner wearing the uniform of Copper Lake High School cheerleaders, and a waitress, poring over a textbook while waiting for something to do.

“Is Ellie here?”

The waitress, a high school student herself, nodded before a burst of laughter drew her gaze, a bit longing, to the girls. It wasn’t fun, Tommy would bet, having to wait on the cool kids. Thanks to his friendship with Robbie, he’d been one of the cool kids in school, for all the difference it made. Some of them had gone on to achieve a lot; some of them were regular visitors at the Copper Lake Correctional Facility.

“She’s in her office,” the girl said. “I’ll get her—”

“That’s okay. I know the way.” He passed through the main dining room, past the bathrooms and the bar, dimly lit for now, until the evening bartender came on at five, then stopped at the next door. For more than four years, he’d been in the habit of walking right in, without a knock or warning. But such familiarity didn’t seem appropriate at the moment.

Then his jaw tightened. How had his life come to this, that familiarity with the one woman he knew better than himself wasn’t appropriate?

He rapped at the door, sharper than he’d intended to, and a quiet invitation followed. “Come in.”

He could do the polite thing: give the tea to the girl up front and let her deliver it. Or the smart thing: toss the cup in the nearest trash can and beat it out the back door. But he didn’t stand a chance trying to find out what he wanted to know by being polite, and he couldn’t spend even a moment with her if he slipped out the back door the way she had earlier. So he twisted the knob, let himself in and closed the door behind him.

Ellie was a hands-on manager, chatting with the guests, refilling drinks, clearing tables, delivering food and even, on a regular basis, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen. She knew every job as well as her employees and was energetic enough that she could run the place sans two or three of them without showing the strain.

This afternoon, as she sat alone in her office, doing nothing, the strain showed.

He set the chai tea on the middle of the desk pad, nudged the visitor chair with one boot toe, then took a few steps back to lean instead against a narrow oak table that butted up to the wall. “Nina said you forgot that.”

She didn’t touch the cup. “She could have delivered it herself or just thrown it away.”

“She was too busy.” Joe’s was a popular place after school, with its wireless Internet connections and doctored drinks that tasted more like dessert than coffee. Besides, Tommy hadn’t given her much of a chance. She left without her tea, Nina had complained, and he’d been quick to respond. I’ll take it to her.

Martha Dempsey had given him a look, part slyness, part meanness and part curiosity. He’d ignored her. Though ignoring Martha Dempsey too often, he figured, was the express route to trouble.

Ellie looked at it a moment as if she might do what he hadn’t: throw it away. She even picked it up and started to turn to the side, but the wisps of steam drifting up from the small hole in the lid were rich with cinnamon and cloves. Instead of completing the move toward the wastebasket behind her desk, she lifted the cover, wrapped both hands around the still-warm cup and breathed deeply. After taking a tentative sip, then a long, savoring drink, she grudgingly said, “Thank you.”

He watched her, taking far too much pleasure in her pleasure, growing warm inside his jacket, remembering not long ago when he would have made some suggestive comment, when she would have responded with suggestiveness of her own. Back when they were together. When he’d thought they had a chance.

He waited until she lowered the cup again to remark, “You saw that I had coffee with Martha Dempsey.”

Darkness eased into Ellie’s features—nothing so obvious as a scowl, just a subtle displeasure, dislike, distrust. If he didn’t know her so well, he probably would have missed it. “Your idea or hers?”

“Mine. I’m a cop, Ellie. I get answers one way or another.”

“And what answers are you looking for about her?”

“She’s new in town. She looks like she doesn’t have a dime, but she’s staying at the Jasmine. And just the sight of her upsets you.” He shrugged. “All that makes me curious.”

“You could mind your own business.”

Though she was totally serious, he laughed. “I haven’t minded my own business since I was five years old. That’s why I became a cop in the first place.” He’d always wanted answers, and if he didn’t get them the usual way, he found them another.

“Martha said she hasn’t seen you since you were a teenager. That her coming to Copper Lake and finding you here is a happy coincidence.”

When neither comment drew a response from her, Tommy fired off a third one, embellished for effect. “She said she’s looking forward to living out her life here, close to you.”

Something flashed in Ellie’s eyes, and a muscle convulsed in her jaw with the effort to keep her mouth shut, but she succeeded. After a moment, with a faintly strangled quality to her voice, she replied, “It’s a free country. She can move wherever she wants.”

“Why wouldn’t you want her here?”

“Why would I? I hardly know the woman, and I have no desire to get to know her better.”

“Where do you know her from?”

A heavy silence developed as Ellie studied him. Her chin was lifted, the soft swing of her pale hair brushing the delicate skin there. Her heart rate had settled to its usual throb, visible at the base of her throat, and her features looked as if they had been carved from ice.

Finally she rose from the desk, circling to the front, mimicking his pose. Her hips rested against the worn oak, her ankles crossed, her fingers still cradling the tea. “She’s from my father’s past,” she said flatly. “Not mine.”

Maybe two yards of dull pine separated their feet. As relaxed as she looked, it should be an easy thing to push away from the table and reach her before she could think about retreating. But her ease was deceptive. If he so much as breathed deeply, she would be an instant from fleeing.

In five years she hadn’t talked a lot about her parents. Her upbringing had been boringly conventional. Mother, father and only child, blue house not far from the beach, across the Cooper River from Charleston. Mother had died in a car wreck eight or ten years ago, father soon after of a heart attack. Normal life. No unusual traumas, no major dramas.

And he’d had no reason to doubt her. For every person who found comfort in talking about times that were past and people who were gone, there was one who found it tough. Some memories were better kept to oneself.

She’s from my father’s past.

Some hurts, like a father’s betrayal of a mother, were better buried.

Silence settled, as if one confidence was all she had in her. He wished he could close that six-foot distance, earn another secret or even just a moment being silent together. Six months ago he could have held her, and she would have let him. Let him, but not opened to him. There had always been distance between them, that had pushed them apart time after time, that had caused him to finally give her an ultimatum: commit or end it. All or nothing.

Saying “I want everything” was a hell of a lot easier than living with nothing.

“Well…” They both spoke at once, both broke off at once.

Ellie moved away from the desk. “I’ve got things to do….”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Still, it took an effort for him to move. He wished she would walk past him and into the hall. Not too close. Just enough that her clothing would brush his, that her perfume would tickle his nose.

She didn’t, though, instead returning to her desk, focusing her attention on the paperwork there. Grimly, he walked out.

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