Authors: Z. A. Maxfield
Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #LGBT WWII-era Historical
Gold pressed his lips together.
Christ,
Spence was a heel.
“I told Kathryn I was working too,” Ash Gallagher admitted. “I don’t think she
believed me.”
Rafe peered around the table. Of the eleven men, eight were married, one was
engaged, and one was seriously dating a girl. In his case, there was talk of a proposal on
New Year’s Eve. Rafe was the outlier. “So are all you sorry bastards lying to your wives
tonight?”
This was met with a lot of good-natured jostling and some embarrassed
obfuscation. Andersen, a big Swede with a hearty appetite for food and drink—and
women—summed up the general attitude. “What they don’t know don’t hurt ’em.”
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“I see.” Rafe picked up his whiskey and let it flood his mouth with flavor. It was
strong and fine and cleansed his palate from all the lies he told as he prepared another.
“Better I shouldn’t get married, I think. I’m a terrible liar.”
This was met with guffaws. Someone, maybe Keller, said, “Oh no. Colman
never
lies.”
More laughter. Spence gave him a playful shove. “Only when he opens his mouth.”
Rafe flushed. “No one is calling me a liar here, I think.” For a minute, tension
gripped the table. Rafe wasn’t going to let them off the hook easily, so he let it drag out
for a few uncomfortable seconds. “You’re calling me the best salesman at the table,
right?”
Laughter broke over the group like an unexpected wave, washing away what had
grown dangerously close to stressful silence.
Andersen said, “That’s right, Rafe. Tell ’em what they need to hear to get the job
done. Nobody does it better.”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Gold agreed.
Rafe relaxed, satisfied that no one had actually called him a liar to his face.
If they only knew.
At his elbow, his second drink of the night appeared—as if by magic—in the hand
of the girl who would be taking him home.
“I am the king,” he admitted modestly.
“Long live the king,” they echoed. Eleven pairs of eyes held curiosity and envy in
equal measure.
Spencer stood and cleared his throat. “To that end, it is my great pleasure to give
you this.” Spence produced a wooden plaque with an engraved brass plate on it
proclaiming Rafe Colman Paradise Realty’s #1 Salesman of the Month. Again.
“Gentlemen. A toast to Rafe Colman. Again.”
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Everyone stood except Rafe, who accepted the tribute like an Ottoman potentate.
He gave a regal nod of his head.
“I’m honored.” Damn it, when he got emotional, the accent was stronger. He
gathered in a deep breath. “I will continue to work hard for our mutual success.
Prost!
”
More toasts followed, along with an immoderate amount of drinking, the end result
of which required him to leave his brand new Buick in the parking lot at Cinnabar. As
anticipated, he was driven home by Benita the cocktail waitress.
In close quarters and without the apron, she was even prettier than she’d been at
Cinnabar, and she smelled good—Chanel No. 5—indicating she either made excellent
tips or she had a beau. He didn’t care. He’d given the address of the small suburban
house he owned, and she was within a few minutes of pulling up to the curb there with
a boatload of expectations he had no intention of fulfilling.
Time for the second sale of the day
.
“Ah, Benita.”
Christ
, he sounded like the other Colman, the actor from whom Rafe
had taken his American surname. He couldn’t have predicted that if he’d tried. “You
remind me of a girl from home.”
“In Austria?”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t allowed to see her because, you see, she wasn’t
our
kind
.”
“Oh, you poor thing.”
“Can you picture me as a very, very young man in love with a pretty ballerina?”
“I can. You seem like the type to fall hard.”
Rafe gave an embarrassed chuckle. “The hardest.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” Benita turned the car. In seconds he would see his house on the
right. “Stop the car here, please.”
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Dutifully, she pulled over. “Wait—you don’t know what happened to the girl you
loved?”
“I know she was taken. I know she was killed.” He had told this story enough that
he nearly believed it. He wasn’t unmoved by it. “I don’t know how it happened or
when.”
“I’m so sorry,” Benita whispered. Her hands clenched on the steering wheel, but
she made no move toward him, which made things easier.
“May I tell you a great secret?” Rafe asked. “One I wouldn’t like to get back to my
friends?”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“We made love the night before they took her away. She’s the only girl I’ve ever…”
Benita’s eyes widened. “The
only
one?”
“There are many girls in the world, Benita. Some are so much more beautiful than
my Elsa, but I…I can’t tarnish her memory. I just can’t.”
“Wait,
what
?”
“I’m going to get out here. Let me walk the rest of the way to my house. Let me go
alone. I give you my word that you are the most beautiful, the most enticing woman
I’ve ever had the privilege of being with like this, but…I think about my Elsa, and I just
can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t” Benita eyed him. She was a curious little thing. Usually by that
time, they were weeping. Benita was made of sterner stuff.
“I really”—he bit his lip in consternation and gripped up his plaque—“can’t. I’m so
ashamed. If anyone should find out that the salesman of the year from Paradise Realty
couldn’t…consummate an affair with a woman as lovely as yourself because of an
earnest promise made to a long-dead lover…that would be terribly embarrassing,
would it not?”
“You really loved her?”
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“With all my heart. She
was
my heart.”
“Like Romeo and Juliet.”
Here’s where an accent comes in handy. Women are always quicker to believe a lie if it’s said
with an accent by an attractive man.
“Ah, Fräulein. Don’t be sad for me. May I tell you another secret?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I truly believe if I remain pure, God will bring us together again in heaven.”
That felt like it might have been a little much, but…he waited.
At last, Benita shed a tear.
About damned time.
“That’s so beautiful.” She gave up a shuddering sigh. “All right. Good night, then,
Rafe.”
“My secret is safe with you?”
“Of course.” A brave, slightly watery smile.
Thank God for that
. Now everyone would hear how he was both a ladies’ man and
entirely off limits, which could only raise his stock with the ladies of Cinnabar that
much more.
Rafe exited Benita’s car after a heartfelt hug and a kiss that was a little too
enthusiastic on her part. He watched her drive off, lifting a melancholy wave in her
direction.
He tucked his plaque safely under his arm and got his keys out on the walk up the
path to his front door.
Nobody says no to Rafe.
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Chapter Two
Once safely inside his house, Rafe Colman—
Rolf Kohn
—slid the bolt home. He
pressed his forehead to the door and closed his eyes against the dizziness generated by
drink, tobacco, and the adrenaline common to his daily high-wire act. His Mooki
scrabbled around his ankles, trying to climb him like a tree.
“Patience, Mooki. Give me time,” he said over the excited clatter of her toenails on
the linoleum floor.
The dog clearly didn’t understand. She even ventured a
yip
or two, desperately,
though she probably knew her master would bark back.
“
Ruhig, Hund. Mach mich nicht verrückt
.”
Mooki tagged along as he walked to his bedroom and emptied his pockets onto his
dresser. From there she followed him to hang up his coat and tried to squeeze through
the door when he went in the bathroom to piss. Suit pants neatly folded, he wore his
shorts and undershirt to the kitchen where he gathered up the makings for a little late
dinner.
“Papa tried to drink his dinner this night, Mooki.” He pulled two eggs and a bowl
of leftover fried cabbage and wurst from the Frigidaire, giving it a careful sniff. “Mutti
would have apoplexy, but Papa is not the cook she was, is he?”
He missed his mother’s cooking so much. There were regional German
restaurants—even a good one in the mountains—but none carried the simplicity or the
hearty goodness of his mother’s home-cooked meals. Simple, seasonal foods prepared
well. Unsalted butter and white wine. Potatoes, cabbage, and apples.
On impulse, he got out an extra egg. Mooki’s coat benefited from a little egg every
now and again, and he liked to spoil her. She could see it in his eyes too, when she won
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him over and he was about to give her a treat. She stood on her hind legs and twirled
like the ballerina he pulled from his imagination to deter girls.
“Yes, yes… You’re my girl, aren’t you, Mooki.”
He hummed while he scrambled Mooki’s egg separately. Once it was cooling on a
little plate, he warmed his cabbage and wurst, then broke the eggs into it.
“Gourmet? No. I don’t think so. Just above pig food, Mutti would say.”
Mooki didn’t seem to disagree, although she’d probably have liked to have gotten
at the sausage.
He placed her food on the floor and ate his from the pan at the sink, watching her
lick the little china saucer all the way across the kitchen floor.
“I think it’s finished,
Liebling
.”
While he took her outside, he glanced around, taking stock of what Rafe Colman
had achieved.
The man had a nice, well-furnished home. Elegant clothes. People who loved him,
even if they didn’t really know him. They thought they did, anyway. They invited him
to parties and holiday dinners and tried to set him up with sisters, cousins, and the
occasional aunt. He had Mooki, who loved him—and nobody could go mad for a dog
like an Austrian boy. He had a backyard with attractive, padded iron furnishings and a
place to cook burgers. If he was lonely, he only noticed at moments like this, when he
might have had the girl from Cinnabar with him to fumble through some sort of
physical encounter.
It wouldn’t have worked. That lesson, learned painfully—learned early—had stuck
with him. His friends said he was too choosy, and their wives spread his carefully
concocted lie. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the truth, which would get him
shunned or killed.
Rolf Kohn hadn’t escaped his death at the hands of the Third Reich only to give
some new detractor a second chance to do the job.
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“
Komm mit mir, Hund, wir gehen rein
.”
Mooki followed him, no doubt happy that she’d met all her objectives for the
evening. He brushed his teeth, turned bedding down, and climbed between crisp,
ironed sheets. Mooki scrambled up to lie in the V of his legs. Before he even had much
of a chance to punch his pillows, he fell asleep.
* * * *
She dug at him frantically with her forepaws, butting his face with her nose.
“
Was ist los mit dir
?” He shook off sleep, trying to catch his newly
übergeschnappter
Hund
to find out what she wanted. “
Bitte sie ruhig
, Mooki.”
Then he smelled smoke and heard sirens.
Terror like he’d never felt seized him. He grabbed Mooki by her collar and pulled
her to his chest. On the way out of the bedroom, he rummaged through the secret
drawer in his writing desk until he located a small box of tiny photographs. If he lost
those… He'd never forgive himself.
He hushed Mooki, cradling her to him like a baby while he scooped the few
pictures he'd brought with him from home, a handful of family portraits, into his
pocket. They were all that was left of his childhood. Satisfied he could safely carry the
two things he couldn't bear to lose, he ran like hell.
Firelight flickered through the windows at the back of the house, so he raced for the
front door, thanking his stars that the path was clear. He and Mooki shot through it and
ran for the front lawn just as a fire truck arrived at his curb.
The firefighters barked questions as they started to work, and Rafe told them what
he knew. He assured them there was no one still inside the house and let them work.
Blankly, he turned to look. His first thought was that the wires must have shorted
out, sparked, or combusted somehow, but his Christmas lights were no longer on; he’d