Hale Maree (8 page)

“
What are you thinking
about?” Oscar asks, as he takes fresh clothes from his bag. No way
am I telling him any of
that.

“
I was thinking I should go
home today.”

He pauses. “Hale, you have to stop with
that.” Then he jumps subjects. “We’ve got to get some food for
around here and, if there’s anything you need, make a list.”

“
How long are you expecting
to stay out here?”

“
Probably a couple of weeks.
However long it takes for you to trust me.”

“
What you mean is: until I
say ‘yes’ to marriage.”

“
Pretty much.” He smiles at
me.

“
How can you act like this
is all normal?” I say.

“
Because it has to be,” he
says simply. “Arranged marriages work. We just have to get used to
each other.”

“
That’s really optimistic,”
I say. “So, it wouldn’t matter to you who you had to marry to get
your dad out of trouble?”

Oscar tosses his clothes on the bed and
steps in close to me. We’re only standing a foot apart and I can
feel the heat radiating off his skin.

“
If my dad was in trouble
and I had to get with a toad, well then, it’s a pretty sure bet
that I’d get with a toad because, and you’ll see this over time,
the Maree family is as loyal to one another as they come. But,” he
says, moving in so close that my nose is nearly touching his chest
and the smell of apples and sandalwood fill every breath I take, “I
got incredibly lucky that I didn’t have to take a toad for the
team. In fact, if you are half as much on the inside as you are on
the outside, Hale, than I didn’t even have to dodge a bullet. What
I did was hit the mother of all jackpots.”

He stands there a minute, making me sway
under the compliments, and his scent, and his closeness. Then he
leans over me, brushing up against me as he grabs his clothes.

“
I’m going to grab a
shower,” he says. “I’ll try to leave you some hot
water.”

#

He’s on the phone when I emerge from the
bathroom, my teeth chattering. Despite his quick shower, the hot
water ran out half way through mine. I throw on a pair of jeans and
a long sleeve white tee, and they stick to me, but I thank God
again that my father actually threw some of the clothes I like into
my bags.

I don’t sit with him at the table. His
conversation never pauses, but his eyes follow me to the chair near
the wall of windows. The sun shines in, and the chair is warm as I
brush out my hair. I put my back to Oscar, and I can’t help but
hear every word of his conversation.

“
You can come up and meet
her, sure...You’re bringing Amy? So, you guys are making it work,
huh? Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea...they’re best
friends...What do you
think
she’s going to do? Ok, yeah, ok...we’ll see you
then.”

I hear him click off his phone and set it
down on the table. I keep brushing my hair, even as the chair grits
across the floor and his footsteps tread toward me. I think he’s
going to put his hands on my shoulders, or lean down and try to
kiss my neck. As I think of all the things he could do, and how it
might feel so shamefully good in the warm sunlight, he walks past
me instead.

“
Ready to go?” he
asks.

“
Go where?”

“
Town. We need food. Aren’t
you hungry?” he asks. I just nod. I feel so stupidly helpless
without money, a car, or even a phone. I’ve got no way to take care
of myself right now besides trusting him to do it for me. Part of
me wants to kick him in the nuts and steal his truck. The other
part knows that, even if I had his truck, there’d be nowhere for me
to really go. So,I get on my shoes, even though I feel as though
I’m moving like a tin man.

Outside, the air really hits me. It’s colder
than I expect and it smells cleaner than I’m used to. I can hear
the water rippling up to the shore as we get into the truck, and it
seems like I should be happy instead of still so tense. Oscar must
see it too, because he starts talking.

“
My friend, Landon, is
coming up on Friday,” he says. Two days from now. Then, with a
little less enthusiasm, “He’s bringing Amy, his new girlfriend
too.”

“
Isn’t it going to be create
a total train wreck that I’m here?” I say, as Oscar puts his arm
over the back of my seat to back up the truck. Something about it
feels intimate, like I’m in his arms, even though I’m really only
at his fingertips. I press my back to the edge of the seat. “Sophia
doesn’t even know about me yet, does she?”

“
No. But Landon won’t bat an
eye. He’s the closest friend I’ve got, and he never liked Sophia
much anyway. But he’s also with Amy. That could be more of a
problem.”

“
Didn’t you say on the phone
that Sophia and Amy are best friends?”

“
I did,” he says, removing
his arm from the back of my seat. He puts the truck in drive and
steers us down the winding dirt drive back to the paved, main road.
The Marees seem to have a thing for long, obscured driveways, and
this one is beautiful. The trees stretch up along the sides and
nearly touch overhead, like a cathedral ceiling. “I’ll have to call
Sophia today and tell her I’m leaving her for you.”

“
Great,” I grumble. “I get
to be the bitch that took you away from your
girlfriend.”

“
No,” he corrects me softly.
“What I’ll tell her is that you are the girl I couldn’t resist. You
are the girl that I met by chance, because our fathers were doing
business together, and I fell in love with you at first sight. I
was the one that pursued you, even though I had a girlfriend at the
time. I couldn’t help myself. I’ll tell her you were never
the
other
woman,
Hale, because you are
the
one
.”

When he stops talking, I realize I’m leaning
a little off my seat with my mouth open. The way he looks at me is
so intense, even just the fleeting glance he takes from the road to
give to me, throws me off-guard and it takes me a moment to
remember that this whole thing is just a cover up. But, if he can
say it again the way he just did, making me forget that he’s not
really in love with me, than I’m sure his friends won’t have any
trouble believing the lie either.

“
Yeah, stick with that,” I
say, settling back against the seat. “It sounds real.”

“
It should,” he says, but he
keeps his eyes on the road and his jaw seems to harden a little.
“We need to be on the same page.”

“
Your page has a wedding
certificate on it though.”

“
So should
yours.”

“
No,” I wiggle in the seat.
“Mine has more of a note on it.”

That gets me a glance with a cocked eyebrow
attached to it.

“
A note?” he
asks.

“
Like a
would you like to date me
note.”

“
Oh,” he says and closes his
mouth with a thoughtful
hmm
. It takes a second before he
continues, “I’ll tell you what. Let’s consider this a date. We’re
going to be at the beach house for a while, so let’s think of this
as one long, uninterrupted date.”

“
But dating doesn’t mean
we’ll end up together.”

“
I think we both realize
that this date has to end exactly like that,” he says solidly. “But
we don’t have to make anything official overnight either. I don’t
have any problem with you taking some time to get comfortable with
me.”

It’s as much breathing space as I’m going to
get out of him, I think.

“
And you can get comfortable
with me too,” I say.

“
No need,” he says. “I was
comfortable with you from the first moment I met you.” His glance
jumps from the road, and washes over me in static waves that make
my heart blink a beat before he looks away.

#

“
What do you like to eat?”
he asks as we pull up in front of a grocery store. ‘Town’ is a
strip of individual buildings that house all the necessary stores:
a grocery, a gas station, a hardware and a rickety brown building
with a hand-painted sign that says:

COME IN ITALIANS FOOD

“
Not Italians. I don’t eat
them,” I say pointing to the sign, and he laughs.

While we walk through the aisles of the
grocery store, I try to decipher things about Oscar by what he puts
in the cart. He likes pickles- two jars of kosher spears- and he
buys expensive coffee. He gets eggs, milk and bread (snore) and
fruit, chicken, steak, hamburger with buns and lunchmeat (snore
more). He throws in peanut butter and a few bagged salads, bottled
water, champagne, beer, dressing and carrots...the list keeps going
and the cart is piled like we’ll never see civilization again.

I’m not a detective after all. The only
thing that the grocery cart says about Oscar is that he doesn’t
know what he’s doing, because he’s buying way too much of
everything. It would probably cost him less to have the entire
store relocated onto the front lawn of the cabin.

He pays the bill, while I hold a teetering
cake in place, so it doesn’t plop out onto the floor.

“
You really think we’re
going to eat all of this?” I ask, as he grabs the cart handle and
pushes our mammoth pile slowly enough that I can still hold onto
the cake and manage the three bags of chips that want to slide off
the top of Mt. Grocery.

“
I was waiting for you to
say what you liked,” he says. “You didn’t, so I got a little of
everything. I’m starving...you like bagels?”

I nod. We heave everything into the truck,
stacking and smashing it all, so we can make it fit. Oscar hands me
the cake and a carton of eggs.

“
You go ahead and get in.
I’ve got the rest of this,” he says. When he finally gets in the
truck, he’s got two cinnamon bagels with cream cheese on them, and
a plastic knife hanging out of his mouth. He flashes me a grin
around the knife and hands one of the bagels to me.

With the cake and eggs stacked on my lap for
the ride back, I nibble on the bagel and realize that the one thing
I’ve learned about Oscar Maree is that he’s trying a lot harder
than I am. And I might want to change that.

#

“
I’m still hungry, are you?”
Oscar says when we’ve dragged the carload of groceries
inside.

“
Yes,” I say, and the way he
smiles makes me feel warm inside. He takes the eggs from the fridge
and pulls a skillet from a cupboard.

“
Eggs sound good? I can make
them however you want, as long as you want them
scrambled.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Growing up, my mom always
poached them, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

I step up beside him and take the
skillet.

“
It’s just boiling salty
water, there’s nothing to poaching an egg.”

“
Unless you’re me,” he says,
stepping aside. I fill the skillet with water, dump in some salt
from a shaker on the back of the stove, and set the pan on the oven
with a thunk.

“
Wait, a minute,” I say.
“You just want to see if I can cook.”

“
Maybe I don’t want you to
see how bad I am at it.”

I roll my eyes at him.

“
Whatever,” I say. “You’ve
got a mother that made poached eggs for you?”

“
I had a mother that made
eggs. My mom died of breast cancer six years ago.”

“
Sorry,” I tell him, and I
mean it. I hear how his voice dips, and I see how he looks away
across the floor and out the windows toward the beach. “Is your dad
remarried?”

“
No,” he says. “It’s just
him and me.”

“
No brothers or sisters
either?”

“
Nope. What about you?
Siblings?”

I shake my head, watching the tiny bubbles
beginning to form in the bottom of the skillet.

“
Just me and my dad. My
mom’s in Texas somewhere, with her new husband and new kids,” I
say. Oscar winces.

“
How long has she been
gone?”

“
Forever.” I shrug, as the
skillet bubbles jump up to the top and burst, one after another. I
crack an egg into the water. I don’t know why I say it, but I tell
him, “That’s what got my dad drinking.”

Oscar steps a little closer, peering into
the skillet. I flick water over the eggs so the tops cook too.

“
So that’s how you do that,”
he murmurs as if the egg is really interesting. He watches me lift
his egg out, drain off the water and slip it into a coffee mug. I
hold out the cup to him, but without looking up at me, Oscar adds,
“Your dad’s been drinking a while then, huh?”

“
Yes.”

Oscar makes a low rumble in his throat. “I
don’t drink. You?”

“
Yeah right.”

“
You’re a good girl,
Hale.”

I shoot him a sour glare. “I’m a woman,
Oscar.”

But the glare doesn’t do what I expect.
Instead of pushing him away, Oscar moves closer so the eggcup only
separates our bodies at waist level.

“
Are you now?” Oscar’s voice
is deep and sultry. I think of a dozen comebacks, but every single
one makes me sound like a little kid. With Oscar staring down at
me, and the steam of the egg rising up, the room suddenly feels too
warm. But I won’t let him scare me. I won’t look away. Instead, I
want to call his bluff and let him know I’m not some little kid he
can boss around.