Do You Take This Maverick?

“Love alone never solved anything,” Melba retorted.

Gene gave her a sly, knowing look. “Maybe not, but it sure gave us something to look forward to on those cold, long nights. Remember?”

Melba pressed her lips together and swatted her husband’s arm. She could feel her cheeks warming. “Behave yourself, Gene.”

Gene chuckled, amused. “You don’t really mean that and you know it,” he told her.

The impish, sexy look he gave her melted the years away and brought them both back to a time when the only aches they felt involved their hearts and striving to be together over her parents’ wishes otherwise.

Rising from his side of the desk, he circled around to where his wife was sitting. Hands bracketing her shoulders, he brought her up to her feet before him. Melba was a small woman. Her bombastic personality made him forget that at times. In reality, Gene all but dwarfed her when he stood beside his wife.

Height difference notwithstanding, Melba filled up his whole world and had from the moment he’d first met her.

“Give him a chance, Mel,” he requested. “Give themboth a chance to work this out.”

Melba thought of how hurt Claire had been when she first came to them. How hurt she still seemed to be. “And if she doesn’t want to?” she challenged.

“I have a feeling that she does,” Gene told her confidently. He saw the skeptical look come over her face and said, “They have a daughter and four years invested in one another, two of them as a married couple. They’ve simply run into some turbulence just like a lot of other couples, but abandoning ship isn’t the answer. If they do, if they don’t try to make this work, they’ll never forgive each other—or themselves.”

Melba frowned, looking at her husband as if for the first time. “Since when did you get to be such a hopeless romantic?” she wanted to know.

That was an easy one to answer. “Since I married the most beautiful girl at the dance,” he told her.

Melba huffed and shook her head. Her husband’s answer both surprised her and pleased her, but she couldn’t let him see that. If she did, she felt that she’d lose the upper hand in their relationship.

“Fine, Levi can stay,” she informed him. “But he pays rent like everyone else,” she warned. This wasn’t a charity mission she was running here, she thought.

Levi had been one step ahead of Melba, Gene now thought. Insisting on paying more than the usual rate had been very smart of him. “I told you, that was already part of the deal.”

Melba looked far from pleased. The scowl on her face not only remained, it deepened, too. “One wrong move and he’s out of here.”

“Understood.” Gene paused, allowing her to savor her moment before he decided to bedevil her a little and asked, “Define wrong move.”

She was at a disadvantage and not thinking as clearly as she should, Melba realized. Her mind was already on other matters that concerned the boarding house.

She chose the vague way out.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” she snapped. “Now I have to see if Gina has gotten dinner started,” she told him, referring to the boarding-house cook. To that end, Melba shrugged off her husband’s large, capable hands from about her shoulders. “One wrong move,” she repeated warningly just before she left the room.

“Hard to believe that woman once had what I took to be a soft heart underneath all that,” Gene said out loud to the other occupant of the area once his wife had left the room.

Turning around he looked at the young man he knew had been standing in the shadows of the hallway until the matter of his staying at the boarding house had been resolved. He was a little bit afraid of Melba—as were they all.

“But she does,” Gene affirmed.

Levi looked off in the direction the woman had gone in. “She doesn’t like me very much, does she?”

It wasn’t a question so much as an observation on Levi’s part.

“She likes you fine, boy,” Gene assured him. “What she doesn’t like is the situation. She’s very protective of the people she loves, kind of like a lioness guarding her cubs. And there is no second-guessing her moves.” He looked pointedly at his granddaughter’s husband. “Consider yourself warned.”

Levi nodded. “Yes, sir. And I appreciate you taking my side in this,” he said with genuine gratitude and feeling.

“Not taking sides,” Gene corrected the younger man. “Just facilitating things so that they can move ahead if that’s what’s in the cards. I think that little girl loves you,” Gene told the young man who had come to him with his hat in his hand as well as his heart on his sleeve. “The problem is that she just got really overwhelmed by everything.

“People figure that getting married and having babies is no big deal—but it is. It’s a huge deal, and there’s a lot of adjusting to be done by everybody. You impress me as a sensible, hardworking young man, and I can tell that you love Claire—just like I can tell that she loves you. But she expected that life would go on being one great big party, and that’s just not so. Marriage takes work and sacrifice. That’s the part people forget about. If you find someone you love, there always comes a time when you have to fight for them. And that’s a good thing in the long run because nothing that’s precious gets that way if it’s too easy.”

Levi nodded. “I’m willing to fight for Claire until my dying breath.”

“Nobody’s talking about dying, boy,” Gene told him, clapping one hand against Levi’s broad shoulders. “Now come with me. I’ve got some things in the basement I need moved around and brought up to the kitchen. I could use a hand with them.”

“Absolutely,” Levi responded eagerly, wanting nothing more than to try to pay the man back in some small way for his kindness in allowing him this chance to win back the only woman he had ever loved.

* * *

Not a day went by when Claire didn’t regret all the hot words that just seemed to fly out of her mouth on their own accord that fateful morning after the wedding reception. Most of all, she regretted throwing Levi out—and throwing her wedding ring at him. But she had been so angry and so hurt that he had preferred a stupid card game to being with her, she’d lost all reason. She’d been so furious, she was almost blinded by it.

At first she’d been so angry, she felt justified in leaving his phone calls unanswered.

But then he’d stopped calling.

Which meant to her that he had stopped caring. Because if Levi cared, he would have upped the number of his calls, not stopped them so abruptly. If he cared about her, truly cared, he would have come looking for her and wouldn’t have stopped—not to eat or drink or sleep—until he found her. And then he would have gone on to move heaven and earth to win her back.

Since none of that, heretofore, had happened, nor did it appear to be happening, it just told her that she was right.

Levi didn’t care anymore.

Well, if he didn’t care anymore, then she didn’t, either.

Except that she did.

She cared so much, she literally hurt inside. Which just served to make her feel as if she was a fool. Only a fool pined for someone who wasn’t worth it, she argued over and over again.

What she needed to do, she told herself at least once a day, was to forget all about Levi and just move on, the way normal people did.

But how could she forget about him when every time she looked down into her daughter’s face, she saw traces of Levi?

How could she move on when every morning began with thoughts of Levi? And every night ended that way, as well?

How could she forget about Levi when, in her head, she kept hearing his voice? Seeing his face? Everywhere she turned, she could swear he’d been there, or even was there.

She felt haunted, and with each day it was just getting worse, not better.

“Okay, today is the first day of the rest of your life, and you are going to stop this,” Claire ordered her reflection in the mirror over the bureau. “You are going to take your adorable baby and march right out that door and into the rest of your life. A life without boundaries and without Levi.”

Easier said than done, a little voice said in her head.

Still, she couldn’t just live her life standing here in this room, staring at her reflection, too afraid to venture out.