The Man, The Moon And The Marriage Vow Read online

  But then, when the pain was screaming inside him, the Jones woman had touched him. She had reached over and laid her hand on his.

  And the pain was gone. A peace such as he’d never known had settled over him.

  It had been a brief peace, because he’d quickly pulled away from her soft touch. Yet still, he recalled it. And couldn’t help cherishing the sweetness of it in memory—not to mention being a little astounded that tonight he could write out a whole verse of that song without any agony at all. All he felt was a tender sadness, that Carolyn was gone.

  Hardly knowing he would do it, Erik wrote a certain name:

  Evie

  Then he wrote the whole name:

  Evie Jones

  And then he wondered at what “Evie” might stand for. Evelyn or simply Eve. But he didn’t think so.

  She was like…an angel. Yes, her skin so pale, her eyes brandy colored like her silky hair. Her nose slim, perfectly shaped. And her mouth so soft and pliant and full.

  He wrote the name Evangeline and knew that it was right.

  And then, with great care, Erik capped his fine pen. He swiveled on his stool so that he could look out the window at the night. His studio was on the second floor, so he could see beyond the backyard to the dry late-summer grasses of Ebert’s field, which lay between Pine Street and Gold Rush Way. He could see the final sliver of an old moon, pale and silvery in the starry sky.

  Evangeline, his mind whispered. He smiled at the skinny bit of moon.

  Funny how, after today, he felt so…warmly toward her. It wasn’t like him. Not as he’d been these past years. He hadn’t felt warmly toward a woman in the longest damn time. Truth to tell, after all the agony with Carolyn, he had never expected to feel much for any woman ever againexcluding the safe and supportive love he shared with the women in his family, of course. To Erik, for a long time now, the thought of a woman equaled pain, pain that could grab hold of him out of nowhere, pain that could find him in something so sweet and simple as the melody of an old hymn.

  But Evangeline had taken the pain away. And she drew him. He had to admit it. He wanted…to get to know her better.

  Erik shifted on the stool, thinking. Of course, he realized, he couldn’t get to know her too well. He could never allow it go beyond friendship. Beyond friendship, what did he have to offer a woman? Responsibility for another woman’s three children and a mountain of debt, that was what.

  No, she could never be his in the most complete way.

  But friendship was possible, wasn’t it? If she were willing. And if he were totally honest with her right from the first about all of the reasons they could never have more.

  In her bed in the apartment over her shop, Evie lay gazing dreamily out the window at the sliver of moon. She grinned to herself.

  She was thinking of Erik. Thinking of how…warmly she felt toward him now.

  True, she should probably watch out for him. He’d proved twice that she was vulnerable to him, dangerously vulnerable. He could break down the wall.

  She should be frightened.

  But she simply wasn’t frightened. Not one bit.

  Since this morning, since what had happened in the shop and afterward, she trusted him in a deep and instinctive way. Of course, she knew she could never trust him too much. She could never actually give her heart and soul to him, because if she did that, he was bound to find out about her special gifts. And that was never going to happen.

  Evie never spoke of her gifts with anyone, not even her sisters.

  Nevada and Faith accepted that Evie knew things, that she had a soothing touch. They’d seen for themselves that when Evie became too agitated, breakable objects nearby could be in danger of destruction—without Evie ever actually bumping them. But it wasn’t something they discussed. Evie always refused to talk about it.

  And what good could talking do anyway? Nothing that Evie could see. She’d been hiding her gifts ever since she’d turned eighteen and her sisters helped her get away from her father. In fact, hiding her gifts had become so ingrained with her now that she had no idea how to break the chains of secrecy that bound her.

  Evie rolled onto her back and frowned at the white lace canopy overhead. What was she thinking? The truth was, she had no desire to reveal the truth about her gifts. Not to anyone, and not ever.

  She wanted a normal life—or as normal a life as someone like her could ever have.

  And that normal life would never include love and marriage. She’d accepted that long ago.

  But friendship. Now maybe that would be possible. With a certain kind of man. A good man, an understanding man. A man like Erik Riggins, as a matter of fact.

  Erik saw Evie on the street the very next day. North Magdalene was such a small town. They were bound to run into each other often.

  They met in front of North Magdalene Grocery. He was coming out and she was going in.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, shifting his brown bag full of groceries from one arm to the other, thinking that her eyes were softer, bigger, browner than he’d remembered. And that her hair was the deepest, richest auburn he’d ever seen anywhere. And had there ever been a face like that? A perfect oval, and then there were those eyes, that nose, that mouth. She seemed to glow. As if her skin had been lit from within by the warm soft light of a candle’s flame.

  As a rule, Erik never painted portraits. When he could get a rare few hours to himself, he painted high snow-capped mountains and Alpine valleys—wild places where no people went, because such work made him feel free. But just this once, with Evie Jones, he’d like to make an exception. He’d like to paint her in her odd little shop, surrounded by all the lace and china figurines—or as the fairy princess in the snow globe, the one he’d seen on the counter by the cash register, which had been shattered a few minutes later, when he so roughly grabbed her and she must have knocked it down trying to pull free.

  “I’m feeling wonderful,” she was saying. “Just wonderful.”

  He focused on talking to her, instead of just staring like a fool. “Completely recovered from that big scare I gave you?”

  “Yes. Completely. I really am doing great.”

  He ran out of things to say. But she didn’t seem to mind. They stood and smiled at each other, there on the sidewalk in front of the store, each knowing they should make more small talk or move on, yet neither quite doing it. As they stood there, Roger McCleb, a local yahoo in his twenties who’d recently found a job again after a long dry spell, pulled up in his pickup right beside them and climbed out.

  Roger slammed his door good and loud, then called out over the roof of the cab, “Hey, Erik. How’s it goin’?”

  Erik blinked and tore his gaze away from Evie. “Hey, Roger,” he called back, then returned to looking in Evie’s incredible brown eyes.

  “How ‘bout a cold brew, Erik?” Roger offered. “I’m workin’ now, so it’s on me.”

  Erik wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Evie’s eyes. They were kind of a golden brown, actually. And they shone, the same way her skin did.

  “Erik, buddy, you listenin’?”

  Erik went on looking at Evie. But he did raise his hand and give Roger a wave. “Thanks, Roger,” he said. “Some other time.”

  Roger looked from Erik to Evie and back again. Then he grunted and turned to stroll across the street, where he disappeared through the double doors of the Hole in the Wall Saloon.

  Right about then, Erik actually thought of something to say. “You sell shoes, in that store of yours?”

  Evie nodded. “Oh, of course. Lots of shoes.”

  “I didn’t see any yesterday. Not that I was really looking.”

  “Well, I do have them. Most of them are upstairs, in the storage area. The fall order came in, but I just haven’t brought them out yet. In a few weeks, when tourist season’s over, I was planning to bring more of them downstairs and to generally move things around a little, in preparation for the winter.”

  He
wasn’t following. “Move things around?”

  “Yes. In winter, I switch some of my stock around. I put the emphasis on more practical stuff, like shoes, everyday clothing, winter outerwear and school supplies. That way, during the off-season, people who live around here will start thinking of Wishbook as an alternative to some of the stores in Grass Valley and Nevada City.” She paused to wave at ancient Alondra Quail, who was toddling by, leaning heavily on her walker for support. Then she turned those brown eyes his way again. “Am I making sense?”

  “Perfect sense.” Erik really did feel like an idiot—but he could not stop smiling.

  “So who needs shoes?” she asked.

  “Everyone.”

  She chuckled. There was actually a dimple on the side of her mouth when she did that. “Everyone?”

  “Well, all three of the kids. Pete and Jenny. Becca, too. For school. They need school shoes.”

  “Bring them in. I’ll bet I can fit them.”

  “I will. Probably Saturday.”

  “Anytime is fine.”

  “Good, then.”

  They looked at each other some more. And then they both sighed at the same time and agreed that they’d see each other soon. Evie vanished inside the grocery store and Erik strolled off up the street, whistling, not realizing he was headed in the wrong direction until he was passing the post office. Then, his face feeling hot to the roots of his hair, he shot a quick glance all around to see if anyone had noticed.

  When he saw that no one seemed to care that Erik Riggins was going nowhere, he turned around and marched back to where he’d left his truck.

  At home, the girls ran to greet him. His sister Tawny, who had looked after the kids today, came from the kitchen to take the groceries from him. The moment his hands were free, he hoisted a giggling Becca up on his shoulders and hooked Jenny, squealing, beneath an arm. Then he carried them both over to the couch where he plunked them down, which was cause for even more giggling and squealing.

  When they’d settled down a little, Becca said, “Daddy, I made you a picture.”

  “And I dusted,” Jenny announced with great pride, “the whole house, by myself.”

  He praised Jenny and then waited while Becca produced her picture, of which he was appropriately admiring and grateful. He suggested, with great gravity, that it should be displayed in the place of honor—on the refrigerator door. Then he asked where Pete was.

  “Next door at Marnie Jones’s,” Jenny told him and stuck out her lower lip. “They wouldn’t let me play. Marnie’s got cousin Kenny and Mark Drury and Petey, too, all over at her house. They told me ‘No girls allowed.’ And I said to them, ‘Well, Marnie’s a girl.’ And you know what Petey, my own brother, said to me?” Jenny was too eager to tell the rest to wait for Erik to ask, No, what? She rushed on. “Petey said, ‘Marnie doesn’t count as a girl. She’s a true Mountaineer.’”

  Erik frowned. “A Mountaineer?”

  “Oh,” Jenny snorted. “It’s just some stupid club they have.”

  “They wouldn’t let me play, either,” Becca complained.

  Jenny looked sideways at her sister. “Well, I can understand it with you. You’re too young.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are so.”

  “Am not. Daddy, tell her I’m not.”

  Erik put up both hands. “Hold it, hold it.”

  Two obstinate faces looked up at him, waiting, demanding that he solve all their problems, expecting him to have the answers to questions they hadn’t even asked yet.

  He waited for the feeling of inadequacy that was his constant companion so often now to rise within him.

  It didn’t come. In his mind, he saw Evie, on the street a little earlier, looking at him with those amber-brown eyes. And he felt calm. He felt that it was all right if he didn’t have all the answers, that the world would go on turning even if Erik Riggins didn’t know it all.

  “Daddy,” Jenny whined. “Daddy, tell her. She’s too young.”

  “No, I’m not. Not, not, not…”

  Erik only smiled.

  After a moment, when their father’s face didn’t twist up with anguish over the squabble they were having, both girls fell silent.

  Becca said to her sister, “I think we’re being dumb.”

  Jenny scratched her arm. “Well. Maybe. But I wanted to play with the Mountaineers.”

  “Your brother’s eleven,” Erik pointed out to Jenny. “And you’re eight. Maybe both you and Becca are a little young to be tagging along with him all the time. Maybe you ought to find some friends your own age.”

  “But who?” Jenny wailed.

  “School starts in a little over a week,” Erik said. “You’ll meet more kids then.”

  “What kids? If there were kids my age I didn’t know about in this dinky town, they’d have to be kids who never leave their house. Who wants a friend who never leaves the house?”

  “Jenny, be patient.”

  “A week, “ Jenny moaned, as if that were forever and a day.

  “You’ll live until then,” Erik promised.

  “I’ll die from being bored,” Jenny vowed.

  And then Tawny appeared from the kitchen and announced that dinner would be ready in half an hour. Erik chucked Becca under the chin and ruffled Jenny’s hair and headed upstairs for the long, hot shower that would wash the smell of paint thinners from his skin and his clothes.

  Jenny turned to her aunt Tawny when Erik was gone. “Does he seem…different to you?”

  “What do you mean?” Tawny asked.

  Jenny’s analytical abilities weren’t yet as well developed as her instincts. “I don’t know. Just different.”

  Tawny flipped a hank of pale hair back over her shoulder and shrugged. “Hmm. Maybe. Come on. Set the table for me. Becca, you can put the napkins around.”

  Becca fell right in step behind her aunt. Jenny lingered for a moment, staring in the direction of the stairs where her father had gone. And then she, too, shrugged and followed after her sister and Tawny.

  “Shoes,” Evie muttered happily. “Time to start getting ready for school.”

  She’d just finished cleaning up the dishes after her light supper. Now was as good a time as any to start moving things around a little down in the shop. It was hours before bedtime, and there was nothing she enjoyed so much as setting up a new display.

  Humming to herself, Evie strolled across the landing to the storage rooms on the other half of the second floor. Her extra shoe stock was in the back. She got to work, digging out the shoes, trekking up and down the stairs, exchanging floor stock for storage and vice versa. When she had all the shoes downstairs, she cleared an area near the front door and set up a shoe display, complete with a big sign that read:

  Back-To-School Sale—20% Off Ticketed Price

  That done, she brushed off her hands, feeling very satisfled with herself. And then she started thinking that maybe she ought to go ahead right now and rearrange the stationery section to put the emphasis on school supplies. She’d had an order come in just a few days ago—rulers and binders and the like. They were waiting upstairs for her to unpack them.

  Yes, she might as well get a head start on that now. Still humming, she started for the stairs again.

  It was well past midnight when her head finally hit the pillow. She went to sleep smiling and woke the next day feeling absolutely great.

  Though Erik was working that Saturday, he knocked off a little early. Then he went home and cleaned up and got the kids together and walked them over to Main Street to buy them some shoes from Evie Jones.

  Pete complained through most of the short stroll to Evie’s shop. He’d been having fun over at Marnie’s and everyone was going over to Mark’s, because Mark had a new computer game called Space Death.

  “Mark and Marnie and Kenny are all over at the Drurys’ house now, playing Space Death,” Pete said pointedly. “They’ll be getting really good at it, and then when I finally get there—if
I ever, get there—they’ll just be able to wipe me out.

  “And who cares about dumb shoes anyway?” Pete kicked a rock off the sidewalk and into the street. “We can get dumb shoes anytime, but Space Death is brand-new. And all’s I want you to realize, Dad, is I’m missing out on something really important to me, to go over and buy some stupid school shoes…”

  Erik let him moan. He’d been a kid once himself, after all.

  They had to stop twice to wait for Becca, who was always getting sidetracked. She’d see a cat sitting on a front porch and she’d have to stop and call to it. Or she’d spot a ladybug on the trunk of a tree and have to study it, up close and personal, her eyes almost crossing as she peered at it from a fraction of an inch away.

  Erik didn’t mind waiting for Becca. Not today, anyway. Nothing could really bother him today. He was on his way to buy shoes he probably couldn’t afford from the most beautiful woman in the whole damn world. And he felt wonderful.

  When they reached the shop, Evie hurried to greet them, her pale cheeks pinkening, her smile wide and bright.

  “Oh. You came,” she said, and then she laughed a little.

  Erik grinned like a fool. “Gotta have those shoes.”

  “Yes,” she said. And then they were quiet, just looking at each other, both wearing wide, silly smiles.

  Pete broke that up. He groaned. “Can we get this over with? Please?”

  “Pete.” Erik turned and leveled a warning look at his son.

  Pete rolled his eyes and groaned once more. “Gee, Dad. I explained to you, I’ve got things to do, you know?”

  “The shoes are over here,” Evie said, pointing the way.

  Erik saw the display she’d set up then, shoes of all types and sizes with a big sale sign looming over it.

  He knew immediately that she’d set the thing up for his sake—and probably marked the prices down for him, too. He didn’t like it.