Her eyes widened.
“I’ve been around people like her all my life, and if I didn’t think Lonnie knew what she was doing, or understood what we were doing, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t.” He shook his head.
Sophie felt like screaming at him to leave Lonnie alone, but she knew in her gut what the reaction would be. “She could get pregnant.”
“I’m careful. We use protection. I’m going to marry her, Sophie.”
“Dante, you don’t understand.”
“No offense, Sophie, but, maybe…you’re the one who doesn’t understand.” He toyed with the door handle as he said, “Look, talk to Lonnie, see what she says…okay?”
Sophie swallowed the lump in her throat. “All right.”
“Can I go?”
She nodded, still too shaken up and not knowing exactly how to handle this situation. It was supposed to have been a simple task of warning the boy off, not possibly confronting two people who thought themselves in love. After all, who was she to say they weren’t?
Given her own shaky relationship, she was the last person to give advice on love.
Dante started to open the door, and then paused. “My sister, she has a job and her own place, and she does what she wants to do. I know there are some people with the condition who are not able to have that kind of a life, but Lonnie can. She’s a lot like my sister. She’s okay.”
When he opened the door to leave, she caught a glimpse of El coming out of the walk-in fridge. For a brief moment, their eyes met, but neither acknowledged the other or whatever had passed between them the night before. But that night, after the store was locked up, El did not come to her.
Chapter 13
The first time Wayne bumped against him, Eliot decided it was an accident and simply ignored it. Five minutes later the other man passed him again, this time bumping a little harder. Eliot grew suspicious. The third time Wayne came shoulder to shoulder with him, Eliot stepped back and let him pass, and he could see the instant anger in the other man.
“You got something you want to say to me, Wayne?”
Wayne turned to face him, and the two men stared at each other for several moments before Wayne walked back to him, and whispered near his ear, “You have no idea how much I want to kill you right now. If this were a different place, and a different time, you would be dead already.”
“What’s stopping you?” Eliot asked, refusing to back down. This had been coming from the day he walked into the store.
“My love for these people,” he said, and started to walk away.
“Name the where and when, I’ll be there,” El said, before turning back to the preparation table where he was rolling swirl
ing buns. The attack came out of nowhere. Wayne charged at his midsection and slammed him against the walk-in freezer.
But Eliot expected the attack. He was able to shift his body with relative ease to get his arms up under the other man’s body. He lifted Wayne a little, then slammed him down and was able to break free.
Wayne came at his middle again, throwing him back against the freezer once more. In the distance, Eliot could hear Lonnie screaming Sophie’s name. But his attention was on breaking the choke hold Wayne had managed to get on him.
He turned, twisted, and shoved his elbow into the other man, causing him to double over.
“What is going on in here?” He heard Mae coming in from the front, but before he could tell her to get back out of the way, a wall fell on his back.
“Damn!” Dante’s high-pitched squeal reflected El’s true feelings. He was pinned beneath the other man, and Wayne knew it. He started punching Eliot in the sides, and each blow felt like a steel mallet pounding away at him.
There was nowhere he could go to get away from the torture, so he reached under the preparation table, grabbed a large pan and swung it upward to hit Wayne in the head.
Wayne let up long enough to cover his head, but it was all the opening Eliot needed. His sides and stomach aching, he pulled himself out from under Wayne and stumbled to his feet. He tried to catch his breath as Wayne stood, too.
One look at his face and El understood something he hadn’t given much thought to before. He and Wayne were about the same age, and despite Wayne’s physical advantages as a result of his weight lifting, they were both at about the same fitness level.
Wayne took that moment to swing at El. He ducked, easily escaping the blow. The two men staggered back and forth, each taking a punch now and then and occasionally landing a hit. But it didn’t take long for them both to run out of steam.
Eliot, wandered out the front door needing fresh air. He sat down on the curb and realized there was blood dripping from his face. Receiving some strange stares from passersby, he started to get up and go back inside. Just then he noticed a pair of familiar
men’s shoes standing beside him. He looked up and up and grimaced, wondering if his face looked nearly as bad as Wayne’s.
Wayne sat down on the curb next to him, and the two men just sat in silence for a long time. After what seemed an hour, Wayne finally said, “I’ve gotten soft working in this place.”
“All those big lunches Mama Mae feeds us,” Eliot said, feeling a touch bad for blaming his lack of conditioning on that sweet old lady.
Wayne huffed. “And it isa bakery. I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t occasionally sample the goods.”
The silence fell back in place for several more minutes, but Eliot had to know. “What was that about?”
“I can’t stand your ass.”
“I know that, but you’ve never come at me before today. What’s changed?”
Wayne looked away down the street, and for a second Eliot didn’t think he would answer. Finally, he said, “You know what’s changed.”
Eliot did. On some instinctual level he’d known the moment Wayne charged him. Somehow Wayne had found out about his affair with Sophie. “It’s none of your business, man.”
“I know.” He glanced at Eliot, his hands tightening into fists, and Eliot was instantly on guard. “But I look at you and all I see is red haze. I hate you so much…for something neither one of us had any control over. Sophie thinks for herself, and she chose you. I understand that up here.” He tapped his temple, and sighed heavily. “It’s just going to take me a minute to accept it in here,” he said and touched his chest.
Eliot couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the man. It wasn’t hard to imagine the pain of losing Sophie. In fact, it was becoming his worst nightmare.
The door opened behind them. “Get on in here so we can clean you up!” Mae snapped from the door. “Damn bullheaded jackas—”
The rest of the statement was cut off as the door closed. Eliot looked at Wayne with a slight smile. “You made Mama Mae curse.”
“I got news for you,” Wayne said. He stood and stretched out his hand to El. “She curses quite a bit when no one’s around.”
Eliot took the hand and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. “So? We straight?”
Wayne glanced down at the ground and nodded. “For the moment.” He looked up with a small smile. “But I’m sure you’ll do something else to piss me off eventually.”
El sat patiently on the floor by Sophie’s twin bed while she examined his bruises. She sniffed hesitantly. “Oh, yuck. Grandma used some of her stinky salve on you, didn’t she?”
He scrunched his nose. “I was instructed not to wash it off for twenty-four hours.”
“It stinks, but it works.” She turned his head at another angle. “Wow, he really worked you over.”
“Hey, I got in a couple of good punches, too.”
She tilted his head up to kiss his lips, cooing, “Yes, you did, my brave warrior.” Once she’d satisfied herself that he would heal, she sat back and wiped the smelly salve from her hands on a nearby towel. “So, what was that about, anyway?”
Eliot stood and started pulling his shirt over his head. “Minor disagreement.”
“If that was minor, I would hate to see major.”
“Did you talk to Dante?”
“Yes, and you were right. They are sleeping together. He says he wants to marry Lonnie.”
“Well, there you go.”
“No, not quite. Tomorrow I talk to Lonnie.” She smiled up at him. “I was planning to talk to her today, but then I was distracted by your impressive display of manliness,” she said.
“Ha, ha.” He kicked off his boots and started on his pants. “Scoot over.”
She pulled the covers to her chest, and refused to budge. “Not until you tell me one thing about yourself that I do not know.”
He arched an eyebrow. “What’s this? The price of admission?”
Her healthy leg shot out of the covers and kicked, catching his upper back thigh.
“Ouch.”
“Let’s try this again—without the insults.”
“What kind of woman are you?!” He rubbed at his bottom. “I get my butt kicked all over by one of your little henchmen, come in here looking for a little sympathy, and what do you do? Kick my butt!”
“Sorry, but I’m serious about this, and you’re making jokes. You’re so secretive, yet you want me to believe you want a committed relationship. Prove it. Tell me at least one thing I do not know.”
He sighed. “One thing you don’t know…hmm.”
“It could be anything. Something about your career, your family, your childhood. Anything! I’m not picky.”
“I’m an only child.”
“Really?”
“Yes, now scoot,” he said.
She scooted over in the bed.
El climbed in beside her. “I don’t like the idea of having to earn my way into your bed.”
“I don’t like the idea of having to earn my way into your life.”
“I just have to figure out some things, that’s all.”
“Well, while you’re working some things out, you can share at least one new thing with me every day to keep me off your back. How’s that?”
With lightning speed, he flipped her over on her side and came up behind her. “How are you going to keep me off your back?” he whispered in her ear, even as his busy fingers were working their way into her moist opening.
Sophie gasped when she felt the first touch of his latex-covered penis pushing into her body. Reveling in the feel of his hands on her, she whispered back, “Who says I want to?”
Chapter 14
The next day, Eliot sat in one of the chairs in the front of the store as Mae examined his wounds and the handiwork of her homemade ointment. She nodded in satisfaction, then moved to another chair where Wayne sat, staring him down. She nodded again.
“All right, I’ve done all I can do for you. The rest is up to nature.” Like an efficient doctor, she packed up her small box of salves and ointments and put it back behind the counter.
Wayne got up and headed back into the kitchen, but Eliot stalled a bit. He wanted to talk to Mae alone.
“Mama Mae, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate all your help.”
She smiled. “That’s what I’m here for. But I won’t tolerate you and Wayne tearing this place up, you hear?” She shook her frail index finger at him. “Sophie works hard to keep this place up and running.”
Eliot glanced over his shoulder. “How long has Sophie been running the store?”
“Not sure.” Mae laughed. “Started when she was just a girl. Her mama and daddy didn’t like her spending so much time here. Said me and Earl was putting crazy ideas in her head.” Mae shrugged. “I guess they didn’t like that she was more like us than them. But that wasn’t our fault. It’s in the blood.”
“If Sophie ever wanted to sell would you be okay with that?”
“I guess I would have to be. I know I can’t run this place alone anymore.”
Eliot sighed in relief. Now all he had to do was talk Sophie into selling, and then she would convince her grandmother. Maybe there was a way out of this nightmare scenario after all.
“You know,” Mae continued, oblivious to his plotting, “when we started this place, we always thought the kids would take over eventually.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“The older ones had seen too much, and the younger ones hadn’t seen enough. Me and Earl, we ran into some money problems in the first part of our married years. This bakery wasn’t our only effort to run a business, just the only one that lasted.”
“It’s not easy running a business.”
“No, it’s not.” She picked up a rag and began wiping down the counter, and Eliot realized it was more out of habit than need. The counter was already spotless. “How did you learn to cook so good, El?”
“Culinary school,” he answered automatically, but the look she gave him told him that was not the answer she was looking for. He smiled. “My mother. She was an excellent baker, and sometimes she’d let me help her. Eventually, I was coming up with my own ideas for things.”
“I always said ain’t nothing wrong with a mother teaching her son to cook.” Mae finished the counter and slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. Then she began to arrange the pastries on the counter.
“You remind me of her,” he said quietly.
“Your mother?” She was consolidating the pastries on the trays in the front counter and removing the empties.
He nodded. “Look, I’ll talk to you later,” he said, then turned
and headed back into the kitchen. He had gotten the answer he needed, now if he could just convince Sophie to go along.
He would have Steve draw up yet another offer. The new package would provide for everyone—Sophie, her grandmother, even Dante, Lonnie and Wayne would be taken care of with a severance package. And then he could tell Sophie the truth and clear his conscience. Just the idea of it was enough to make him sigh in relief. The weight of his deceit was becoming way too heavy.
Sophie and Lonnie sat on opposite sides of the desk in her office. Lonnie was playing with the leaves of a fake plant on the corner of the desk, and Sophie was glancing through the mail, stalling for time. She had no idea how to broach the subject with Lonnie. With Dante she just said what she was thinking—but what if Lonnie got embarrassed or upset? Even though she was nineteen years old, in many ways she was much younger.
“Lonnie?”
“Hmm?” She looked up at Sophie with liquid-chocolate eyes, much like her own.
“You and Dante…do you like him?”
She nodded, continuing to toy with the plant.
“Like a girl likes a boy like him? Or like a friend?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Both.”
Sophie cleared her throat, deciding to just go for it. “Lonnie, do you understand what sex is?”
Lonnie laughed. “Of course, Sophie. Don’t be silly.”
“Are you having sex with Dante?”
Lonnie stopped playing with the plant, her eyes coming up to meet Sophie’s. “Who told you that?”
Seeing she was becoming alarmed, she reached across the desk and took her hand. “No one, no one said anything. But I can tell something is happening between you two. Are you?”
Lonnie looked her directly in the eyes with a clarity Sophie had rarely seen. “I love Dante and he loves me, and we are going to be married,” she said.
Sophie’s eyes narrowed on her face. “Did Dante tell you he would marry you if you had sex with him?”
She shook her head. “No—afterwards.” She quickly covered her mouth as if she had said too much.
Sophie swallowed. Things were coming into perspective, but she still felt as if she were treading on thin ice. “Lonnie, what makes you think you love Dante? Because you had sex with him?”
She continued to toy with the plant for a long time before finally answering: “He doesn’t treat me like I’m stupid.”
Sophie frowned. “No one treats you like you’re stupid.”
“You do.” She nodded. “Sometimes.”
Sophie wanted to shake her head and deny it, but obviously it was how Lonnie felt. “When have I ever treated you like you were stupid?”
“All the time,” Lonnie said. She glanced up and quickly looked away. “I know you don’t mean it bad, but sometimes you act like I can’t do anything. All you let me do around here is sweep and carry boxes.”
Sophie watched her thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize you wanted to do more.”
She smiled shyly. “Sometimes when we leave on deliveries, Dante takes me by the old abandoned mill, and then he lets me get behind the wheel and drive around the lot.” She toyed with a leaf. “I’m getting good at it, too. He said after we get married, he was going to let me take driving lessons.”
Sophie was listening attentively now, seeing a side of her little cousin she’d never known existed. “What else does Dante let you do?”
She glanced at Sophie again. “He lets me talk to customers, but…”
“But?”
“But, sometimes, he won’t let me talk to the men. He said some of them only pretend to be friendly, but they’re just trying to—you know.”
Sophie swallowed. “Yes, I know.” She waited a moment, wondering if she should speak her thought, then said, “But, you don’t think Dante is being nice just to…you know?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. I swear I had the hardest time getting him to do it. He kept saying no, over and over and over,” she said, and she shook her head in exasperation.
Sophie’s eyes widened again. “It was youridea?”
Lonnie retreated into the shy shell, her shoulders hunched in and she looked back to the fake plant. Sophie realized she may have said more than she intended. “It’s okay, Lonnie, if you did. I was just wondering.”
Slowly, she nodded.
Sophie sat back with a heavy sigh, thinking how things could change so drastically in just a few moments. How had she not seen all this happening around her? She started thinking back to when and how Dante and Lonnie had started spending so much time together. And it hit her in a flash: the friendship or relationship had been initiated when Lonnie started tagging along after Dante, and the boy had begrudgingly taken her along.
“Lonnie, can I ask how long you and Dante have been…having sex?”
She frowned thoughtfully again, then shrugged. “I don’t know—a while.”
“Before Christmas?”
She shook her head no. “No, around Valentine’s Day, because Mama Mae was making all those pink heart-shaped cookies. Those were so good.”
Sophie smiled. “Yes they were.”
“El cooks good, too.” Lonnie smiled, but there was something about the smile that sent a signal to Sophie. “He’s cute, too. I like his hair.”
“Lonnie, El’s not like Dante.”
Lonnie sighed. “I know. Dante already said if I had sex with anyone else he wouldn’t marry me.”
Sophie frowned, wondering how often Dante issued warnings like that. “When did Dante tell you that?”
“Once when I met this cute boy by the playground, where we go sometimes after deliveries. Dante made the boy leave, but he was nice. Then there was that time the customer was saying
hello, Dante told me not to smile so much at the customers. And then I was talking to El, and he got mad about that, too.”
“Lonnie, you can’t go around having sex with anyone and everyone. You understand? Something could happen, you could get pregnant, or…worse.”
She shook her head. “No, Mama Mae took me to the doctor and now I take a pill every morning so I won’t get a baby, until me and Dante want to.”
“Grandma took you to the doctor?!” Seeing Lonnie’s alarmed expression, she tried to reign in her outrage. It was just too shocking to realize, apparently everyone knew about Dante and Lonnie except her. Even her seventy-year-old grandmother had known. “When did Grandma take you to the doctor?”
Lonnie was watching her with fearful eyes now. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I shouldn’t take the pills?”
Sophie swallowed hard and forced a smile. “No, Lonnie, no—take the pills. The pills are a good thing.” She tilted her head to the side. “I’m just a little surprised Grandma didn’t tell me, that’s all. Okay?”
Lonnie nodded warily.
“Okay. You can go back to work now. And Lonnie, thank you for talking to me.”
She smiled. “It was fun. I like talking to you Sophie.”
As Lonnie turned to leave, Sophie called out. “And—I amgoing to give you more things to do around here. Would you like that?”
Her smile brightened. “Yes. Can I learn how to cook?”
Sophie smiled back. “You can do anything you want to do.” And as Sophie watched her cousin leave the room, for the first time she realized it was true.
“At what point were you going to tell me Lonnie was having sex with Dante?”
Sophie waited for the lone customer to leave the store, and then quietly came up behind her grandmother.
Mae jumped in startled surprise. “Oh, Lord, Sophie! You trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Lonnie, Grandma. Why didn’t you tell me about Lonnie?”
“Didn’t see any need to.”
“You didn’t think I should know that my deliveryman and my mentally challenged cousin were lovers?” she whispered.
Mae shook her head. “No, I didn’t. In case you’ve forgotten, I am Lonnie’s legal guardian, not you. Not that it matters, considering both of them are over the age of consent.”
Another customer entered the store, and Sophie waited patiently for her grandmother to take care of him. Her brain was busy processing all she’d learned. And it bothered her a little that El, who’d only been working there a short while, had already figured all this out.
Once the customer left, she picked up where they’d left off. “Well?”
Mae glanced at her over her shoulder. “Well, what?”
“Lonnie. You took her to get birth-control pills and didn’t even tell me.”
As if she’d reached her end, Mae turned fully to her granddaughter, and Sophie knew the winds had changed when she put both hands on her hips. “Let’s get something straight, Sophie. I know you think I’m some senile old woman, but don’t forget I managed to raise five children, three of which were girls, long before you came into the world. And although I appreciate your help, I was also running this store long before you came into the world. I did what I thought was best for Lonnie and I don’t owe you, her trifling mama or anyone else an explanation for the decisions I made regarding that child. Is that understood?”
Sophie nodded dumbly.
Mae shook her head. “Sometimes, girl, you take too much on your shoulders. You’re not responsible for the whole world. Certainly not Lonnie and me.” Mae walked back into the kitchen, leaving Sophie alone in the front of the store.
“But sometimes, I feel like it,” Sophie said, then followed her grandmother into the kitchen.