An Improbable Wife
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Sally Carleen
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Chapter One
With a cup of coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other, Carson Thayer strolled out onto his front balcony. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of lilacs and fresh-cut grass as the fragrances drifted to him on the early-morning breeze.
Across the street Mrs. Johnson came down her walk in her pink chenille bathrobe and matching foam curlers. She stooped to pick up her paper, then waved to him. “Good morning, Mr. Thayer!”
“Morning,” he returned. With a sigh of contentment, he settled into a wrought-iron chair half hidden in the branches of the big oak tree and set his coffee on the matching table. He should have cut the tree back last winter, but he rather liked the feeling of privacy the encroaching foliage gave him.
As he unfolded his paper and prepared to indulge in a leisurely reading, the quiet old Kansas City neighborhood suddenly exploded with shouting and honking.
He jumped, startled, and looked down. A caravan careened along his tranquil street—a caravan led by a turquoise Volkswagen Bug, followed by a red sports car with a large plant growing from the open sunroof, a yellow convertible sprouting chairs and lamps, three pickup trucks loaded with furniture, two more cars and another pickup.
He spread his paper in front of his face again, determined to ignore the intrusion until it disappeared into the distance.
It turned into his driveway.
He sighed, stood, set his paper down beside his coffee and leaned over the rail. “Are you lost?” he called down.
“Hi!” The door of the Volkswagen opened and the driver swung out her tanned legs—all ten feet of them. “It’s me!”
She lifted her sunglasses and squinted up at him, full lips curved in a big smile. The morning sun lifted golden streaks from her short, straight hair. In her bright green shorts and hot pink T-shirt, she burst over him like a ray of sunshine. In spite of his irritation at the noisy invasion, he had to admit she possessed a certain dizzying charm. He couldn’t help but return her smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think you have the wrong place.”
Her laughter drifted up to him like sparkles from Fourth of July fireworks. “I’m Emily James. Your new tenant. I’m moving in today. Remember?”
He blinked, swallowed hard. This was the sedate third-grade teacher who’d answered his ad for a tenant to lease the bottom half of his duplex? This disturbing blaze of energy was going to live in his grandmother’s apartment?
As if her mere presence weren’t unsettling enough, the horde she’d brought with her began piling out of cars, laughing and talking, carrying lamps and plants and boxes, converging on his front porch.
He watched in horror as a child climbed out of the passenger side of the Volkswagen.
“Carson Thayer, this is Jeremy Miller.” She indicated the boy.
“You didn’t tell me you had a son.” That wouldn’t do at all. Home was his refuge. He could barely tolerate the commotion at work because he knew peace and quiet waited at home.
She tousled the boy’s blond hair, and he grinned up at her.
“Jeremy is just helping me move in, like my other friends,” she said.
“Emily, we could use a key here,” someone called from the middle of the melee on the porch.
“Coming!” With a wave and a smile, Emily merged into the crowd.
Carson sank back into his chair, overwhelmed and smothered by the invasion. A third-grade teacher. Someone who’d live below him without causing any stir. Someone whose presence he’d never notice. He’d even told her it would be all right if she got a cat to keep her company.
How could he possibly have made such a major mistake? More importantly, how was he going to live with it? There could be little doubt this woman was going to make her presence known. And she’d signed a year’s lease!
He lifted his coffee and drank deeply, but its rich warmth failed to comfort him. He searched his memory, recalling the evening she’d come over after a PTA meeting to view the property.
She’d worn a dark suit then, and her hair had been a well behaved light brown. But the evening had been dark, with no sunshine to reflect off her.
He remembered the Volkswagen parked at the curb and how he had been impressed with her thrift. In the shadows, he hadn’t realized it was turquoise.
Maybe, he thought hopefully, when all the moving activity was over, she’d settle into a routine. Maybe it wouldn’t be so unbearable after all. This was early Saturday morning. Of course she’d be full of energy now. But after teaching a classroom full of third graders all day, she’d come home exhausted, play classical music, flop into bed. His retreat would be inviolate.
But it was already the first of May. School would dismiss for summer vacation soon.
He took another sip of coffee and tried to reassure himself. Maybe he’d overreacted. He’d had a particularly bad week arguing with the city council while trying to keep an eye on his building contractors and making sure his grandmother was settled and happy in the retirement community. Of course he was stressed. Crowds and loud noise were the last thing he needed, and he’d just been assaulted by a heavy dose of both.
Beneath him, doors slammed and people shouted. And laughed. Everyone was laughing. What could possibly be so funny? Then he heard her sparkling laughter, distinctive even in the masses. It was beautiful, like a shower of musical rain.
But the surrounding cacophony grated on his nerves.
He stood and looked over the rail. Her friends were returning to the cars and trucks for another load. They seemed to come out in an endless stream. How many friends did the woman have? How many friends did one person need? And how long were they going to be charging in and out of his building, disturbing his peace?
With that many people, it couldn’t take long to move her, he reassured himself. He’d go pick up Grandmother, take her shopping, maybe even to a movie. She was settling into her new home very well, but he didn’t think she was ready to come back here to see someone else moving into her old place.
That should work out, he decided. When he got back here, his new tenant would be moved in and all would be back to normal.
“I found the CD player!” someone shouted from below. A chorus of cheers went up.
Carson moved a little faster, scarcely taking the time to rinse out his coffee cup before grabbing his key ring and fleeing downstairs. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear the music they were planning to play.
* * *
“Oh, Emily, the hunk from upstairs is leaving!” Carla called as she came through the front door. Tendrils of Swedish ivy trailed behind her from the large hanging basket she carried.
“He’ll be back. He lives here. You can hang that in the bay window in the kitchen. It already has some hooks in the ceiling.” Emily dumped the contents of a box onto the hardwood floor and began to sort through it.
“Your landlord looks really familiar,” Laura commented, grunting as she set down a large ceramic lamp.
“He’s on the city council. You’ve probably seen him on the news.” She scooted across the floor and began digging through another box.
“Oh, yeah. He’s the one who renovated most of the houses in this area, isn’t he? Civic minded and successful as well as pretty. Do you want him? If you don’t, can I have him?”
Emily looked up from her rummaging. “What? Do I want him? I just met him! But you can’t have him, anyway. What would your husband say?”
“Hmm. Yeah, you’re right. Kevin would probably notice eventually.”
Emily smiled as her friends went out to get another load. Carson Thayer was indeed a “hunk.” But fooling around with your landlord, especially when he lived right above you, was on the same level as fooling around with somebody you worked with. Not a smart thing to do.
Though she had to admit, he’d made an awfully attractive picture this morning...so tall and stately against the backdrop of that tree, his bark brown hair and leaf green eyes blending with the foliage. In his immaculate white shirt, tucked smoothly into his sharply creased khaki pants, he’d looked pristine and perfect.
Which probably meant he was boring no matter how pretty the picture. “Pristine” and “perfect” were not her best friends. Not even frequent visitors. More like sinister foreigners.
“Has anybody seen the hose adapter for the water bed?” she called, returning her attention to the situation at hand.
“Is that a little white plastic gadget?” Ed asked, grunting as he set a box on the floor. “What have you got in here? Weights?”
“No, books. Romance novels. Yes, it’s a little white gadget, and if I don’t find it soon, I’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight.”
“I think Sam put it in his pocket when we were packing so it wouldn’t get lost.”
Rock music suddenly blasted through the essentially vacant apartment, echoing off the walls.
“Alfie! Turn that down! Sam! Where is he?”
“In your bedroom with Mary, trying to figure out how to put your water bed together the last time I saw him.”
“Sam,” she called, heading in the direction of her bedroom, “do you have my adapter in your pocket? Oh, dear.” She paused in the doorway. “My water bed never looked like that before. You have the pieces sideways or upside down or something.” Part of the pedestal was on top, part of the rails on the bottom, and an odd board hung loosely from one side.
Sam ran a hand through his shaggy hair and grinned. “Any chance you could sleep in it this way?”
“Do we have part of the kitchen table in here, maybe?” Mary contributed.
Emily peered closer. “No, I believe it’s actually a shelf from my bookcase. What if we take this apart here and move it over there....” She began unscrewing, wishing she’d saved the directions.
By afternoon her new place was in total chaos, the final state before order, she decided. Boxes that were halfway unpacked with contents strewn meant part of the contents had been put away, and the rest were visible, ready to be relocated.
She dumped her underwear into the top drawer of her dresser and spread them fairly evenly. Lifting one corner, she shoved carefully, then raised the entire drawer to just the right angle and jiggled it in. Someday maybe she’d try to fix it so it would work easier. Though it would never move smoothly like the new, vapid drawers that slid on rollers.
She patted the scarred surface and smiled at her mottled reflection in the ancient mirror. Old and warped was better than new and vapid in her book any day.
The doorbell chimed. Pizza delivery. She snatched up her wallet and dashed through the house, leaping over boxes and shoving Sam aside in her efforts to reach the door first.
“You order five large pizzas?” the teenager on the front porch asked.
She paid the youth, slapping Sam’s hand as he reached around her and tried to pay first. “Just take the pizzas,” she urged him. “Feeding you is the least I can do after all this work everybody’s done for me.”
Sam kissed her cheek as he juggled the cardboard boxes. “For once you’re right. Feeding us is the least of the things you do for your friends.”
Emily felt the warm glow Sam’s words evoked rise to her cheeks and knew she was blushing. Fortunately he’d already moved on. “Pizza in the kitchen!” he called to the house at large.
Jeremy bounced out of the bedroom Emily had designated as her office. “Did you get anchovy and jalapeño?”
“I sure did. A large one just for you and me.” She wrapped one arm around the boy’s shoulders. “How’s it coming with the computer?”
He shrugged and grinned sheepishly. “It’s up and running. I’ve just been...”
“Testing it?” she supplied.
“Yeah. You’ve got some really neat games.”
The doorbell rang again.
“Maybe I gave the delivery boy the wrong amount. Go find our pizza. Sodas are in the big ice chest.”
Jeremy darted away with the superfluous energy of a ten-year-old, and she returned to the door.
Carson “The Hunk” Thayer stood on the porch beside a short elderly woman with white hair in a wedge cut. She looked stylish and elegant in her beige cotton pantsuit. Her face was creased with many deep lines, but they all seemed to flow upward, giving her an impish expression that belied her obvious age.
“I’m Celia Thayer.” The woman extended a well-manicured hand. “You must be Emily James.”
“Yes, I am.” Emily shook her hand, finding the older woman’s grip to be cool and dry and surprisingly firm. “Come in.” She stood back and held the door open.
The woman stepped inside without hesitation.
Carson followed...reluctantly, it seemed. “This is my grandmother. She wanted to meet you and see the place. She lived here until a few weeks ago.” Emily could tell from the edge of irritation in his tone that he had come under protest. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” But as Mrs. Thayer looked around at the disorder, Emily mentally cringed. Carson’s grandmother had probably kept an immaculate home; Emily must seem like not only a usurper, but a messy usurper. Though her untidy habits rarely bothered her, she found that she didn’t want to disappoint this woman with laughter in every line of her face. “I haven’t got everything put away yet,” she apologized.
“It’s fine,” Mrs. Thayer said. “Nice, actually.” She smiled up at her grandson. “I like your Emily.”
Emily followed Mrs. Thayer’s gaze and was surprised to see a look of relief cross Carson’s chiseled features. He had been more worried than she about his grandmother’s reaction.
“Carson tried to keep me away from here today, but I love this place. I lived here for ten years. I had to see what was happening to it, and I approve. You’ll keep it alive.” Her twinkling gaze swept the disorder of the room, pausing at the dining room door from which loud talking, laughter, and spicy odors emanated.
Emily smiled. The woman hadn’t said she’d keep the apartment clean—just alive. “I know I’m going to love it here. My last place was a tiny apartment. This is so spacious and open, and I have a guest room for my friends.”
“Thank you very much for letting us look,” Carson said, taking his grandmother’s arm.
“Oh, don’t leave yet. Come join us for pizza,” Emily invited impulsively. She had felt an immediate camaraderie with the older woman—maybe partly because Mrs. Thayer had approved of her unstructured life-style!—and surely it would be all right to invite her “hunky” landlord to stay if his grandmother came along.
“Why, thank you,” Mrs. Thayer said happily.
At the same time Carson refused with a polite, “No, thank you.”
Mrs. Thayer took Emily’s arm with her free hand and urged them both toward the kitchen. “You have some lovely furniture. That’s a beautiful china cabinet in the corner over there. Not going to store your china in the living room, are you?”
“No, that’s for my knickknacks. If I keep them behind glass, I don’t have to dust them all the time.”
“Grandmother, you can’t eat pizza!” Carson protested.
“Certainly I can. I had my dentures relined last week.”
“But what about your cholesterol?”
“What about it? I’m eighty-four years old. How much longer do you think I’m going to live, anyway? Oh, and you have the good kind of cola. All they keep in the machines at that place where I live now is that other stuff. Hello, everybody. I’m Celia Thayer. Please call me Celia.”
Emily introduced Carson and Celia to the roomful of noisy people. Her friends immediately made room at the long table for the newcomers.
Carson looked a little uncomfortable, but Sam handed him a piece of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate and began talking to him. He’d be bound to feel at home in no time. Sam had that effect on people.
Emily smiled happily as she squeezed in between Jeremy and Celia. Pizza, friends and “the good kind of cola.” What more could anybody ask for?
Carson took a bite of the greasy pizza and wished fervently for a beer rather than a soft drink. He should be—and he was—pleased that his grandmother was happy. He’d been concerned about her reaction to seeing someone else in her old home.
But he couldn’t relax with so many people and so much noise. The small room was absolutely full of bodies, and everybody was talking at once. This was worse than being at work—at least the chaos there had a purpose. This was nothing but an invasion of his space.
The young man sitting next to him was saying something about the issues the city council was working on. But with all the distractions, Carson had to make a real effort to concentrate on his words.
Across from him, Grandmother took a big bite, cheese stringing for several inches. She and his new tenant exchanged glances and laughed uproariously.
He didn’t see anything funny. What he did see was the plaque building up in his grandmother’s arteries.
He tried to focus his attention on the young man beside him, give him a quasi-rational reply. What was the man’s name? Usually he remembered every name in a party of a hundred, but this raucous activity had his mind spinning.
“You have some very good ideas,” Carson said. “I know I won’t remember all of them. Would you mind very much writing me a letter just to refresh my memory? Here, let me give you my card.”
The man beamed as he accepted the card, and Carson breathed a sigh of relief. He’d managed to salvage the situation without upsetting anyone.
“Sam!” Carson and the young man turned at the sound of his grandmother’s voice. Sam. Yes, that was his name.
“Emily says you have a race car.”
“Sort of. It’s really just an old dragster.”
“Can I come watch the next time you race?”
“Sure you can!”
Carson gaped at his grandmother. Now she wanted to go to a drag race? She really was losing her faculties. He’d persuaded her to go to that retirement community just in time. He couldn’t be around all day to look after her, and evidently she needed continual supervision.
Beside her, Emily munched on pizza and looked thrilled with the whole situation. He’d have to talk to her later, let her know how fragile Grandmother was...physically and mentally.
“You can come along, too,” Emily invited. She smiled at him, and a ray of sunshine somehow found its way past the branches of the trees and through the dining room window. It danced and flashed on the gold hidden in her perfectly ordinary light brown hair and eyes. Did she attract sunshine like a magnet or did she manufacture it?
He shook his head to dispel the irrational thought.
“No?” she asked at the gesture.
“No what?”
“You don’t want to come to the races with Celia and me?” She tilted her head to one side questioningly.
“Carson, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud. He gets that from his mother, not from my side of the family, I assure you.” Celia took another piece of pizza.
“Well, he doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to.”
“Emily,” Carson said, then cleared his throat. The word had come out in a pleading tone. “Emily, I’d like to talk to you later, if I might.”
“Oh, Carson, don’t go telling her how senile you think I am.” Celia reached for the salt shaker and added more. How could anyone add salt to pizza?
“I don’t think you’re senile at all. Your body just isn’t what it used to be.” He resisted the urge to take the shaker away from her.
“Neither is yours,” she replied archly. “And I, for one, am glad. I got awfully tired of changing your diapers and powdering your—”
“Grandmother!”
But the damage was done. Emily, Sam and Jeremy immediately burst into laughter with Grandmother joining them. He could hear the story being repeated for the benefit of those at the ends of the table who might have missed some gory detail. Soon everyone was laughing.
Beside him, Sam stood and raised his glass high. “To our new friends, Celia and Carson, and their ever-changing bodies.”
“Hear, hear!” Everyone clapped and whistled, and Sam sank down again, patting him on the back.
Carson forced himself to smile, to take the bantering in the way he knew it was intended.
Then his eyes locked with Emily’s. Emily, the talking, the music, all seemed to blend together and the racket burst inside him, invading his body, jarring his entire being with a cadence that beat rhythmically albeit in a wild, out-of-control way. His blood raced and bounced through his veins, pounded in his ears like a drum. He had an insane urge to leap up and begin dancing, to grab this strange, exciting woman and—
He gulped and his glass slid from his grasp, spilling ice and liquid on the table. Before he could do anything about the accident, hundreds of napkins, or so it seemed, rushed to the rescue, Emily’s among them. He jerked away, afraid to touch her tanned fingers.
Not after he’d been getting aroused just looking at her.
“Grandmother, we really need to go.”
“Where, dear?”
“What?”
“Where is it we need to go?”
“To the movies.” He blurted the first thing that came into his head.
She shrugged, drained her glass, set it down and stood. “Thank you, Emily, for inviting us into your home. It’s been a pleasure meeting all of you.”
“Please come back again,” Emily invited, and Carson heard the sincerity in her voice, saw the welcoming glow in her eyes. “Both of you.”
He nodded noncommittally. She meant well. She couldn’t help being a major irritant.
“I’ll get that letter in the mail right away,” Sam said, offering his hand.
“I’ll look forward to receiving it.” As he shook Sam’s hand, he found himself wondering if the man was more to Emily than just a friend. He had sort of taken on the duties of host, entertaining the newcomers.
Then he had to wonder at himself for wondering. Certainly he had no interest in a woman who made him a nervous wreck.
At the door Emily hugged his grandmother good-night. To his immense relief and surprising disappointment she didn’t try to repeat the performance with him.
Instead she offered her hand. And that was almost enough to do him in.
Her fingertips curled around his in the perfectly usual, accepted manner, but the effect was decidedly sensual. He looked at her in surprise and saw the same disconcerted desire on her face.
He shook briefly, releasing her hand quickly lest he should hold it too long, and escaped out the door...onto the quiet serenity of the porch.
“She’s very pretty,” Grandmother said, and he wondered how much of the tension she’d picked up on. A few years ago he’d have been willing to bet she hadn’t missed a thing. But now...
“She’s very hyper,” he said gruffly. “She’s an ulcer waiting to happen.” And she wasn’t going to happen to him.
