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When Ty came up for air, he needed more than a gulp to catch his breath. That’s when he noticed another couple on the other side of the pond, watching them. He was in deep and it was either sink or swim. He’d never sunk before. That just wasn’t an option.
Curling an arm around Norma Rose’s shoulders, he said, “Let’s go.”
She didn’t protest. Walking beside her, the silence weighed heavy. Whatever he’d expected to gain from kissing her was backfiring more than a six-cylinder engine hitting on only four cylinders. He now wanted her more than ever. Not just to kiss her, either, but to love her. In every sense of the word. Deep inside his heart, which had been dark and cold, a forgotten organ simply doing its job to keep him upright, until she’d come along. It now beat to a different drum, hammered at the thought of her and left him feeling alive for the first time since he’d seen the carnage of Bodine’s attack on his parents.
His heart wasn’t all she’d opened up. He was taking things into consideration, too. Things he never had before. Prohibition wasn’t working, he’d known that for a long time, but he’d never looked at it from the other side. Through the eyes of those using it to feed their families.
They arrived at the car and he opened the passenger door. The smile she flashed him was tender and as delicate as the flimsy flowers filling the beds they’d wandered past. It could be crushed so easily and he didn’t want her or her smile crushed.
“Are we going home?” she asked, once he’d pulled out of the parking lot, onto the roadway.
Home. That was something else he’d started to want. The knot in his throat threatened to strangle him and he barely managed a nod.
“Then turn left at the stop sign. There’s a road going north that eventually angles over,” she instructed. “It’ll save us from going back downtown.”
He followed the road and the signs directing them toward White Bear Lake. The scenery rolled past unseen. How had this all happened in such a short time? Her. The changes inside him. It would be nice to say he’d felt them coming, but he hadn’t. They’d hit him unexpectedly, like a club on the back of the head in a dark alley.
She was watching him, her gaze burning the side of his face, which he kept forward, eyes on the road, hoping she didn’t speak. There was nothing he could say.
They entered White Bear Lake. “Is there anything you need from town?” he asked, the tension about to snap inside him.
“No,” she answered quietly.
He couldn’t take the chance of glancing her way because there was something else he needed to consider. If he was feeling this way, how was she feeling? Norma Rose was no doxy. She didn’t give away her favors for free. Yet, she’d let him kiss her, more than once, and that said a lot.
Actually, she hadn’t just let him kiss her, she’d been a full participant, and that said even more.
Ty’s mind and insides grew more twisted as he drove the final few miles and pulled her Cadillac into the garage.
“You can leave the keys in it,” she said, opening her door. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
When he glanced at her over the hood of the car her lips quivered, as if holding the slight smile there hurt.
“Father said to help you with whatever you needed.”
Ty nodded. He should thank her for her help today, but figured it would sound as hollow as he felt. Out of respect, which he held strongly for her, he walked her to the front door of the resort and then he headed for Dave’s cabin to confirm his beliefs.
* * *
Norma Rose closed the resort’s front door behind her and leaned her head upon the heavy wood. The heat of Ty’s kiss still radiated inside her and proclaimed the one thing that was never supposed to happen had happened. But how? She couldn’t have fallen in love. Not with Ty. Not this fast.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Twyla said, walking out of the ballroom. “I’m afraid I have bad news.”
Pushing away from the door, Norma Rose planted her feet onto the floor in preparation. “What?”
“Forrest refuses to talk to me,” Twyla said. “Says he’ll only talk to you.”
Norma Rose took a step, and then another, each one growing more purposeful until she was marching across the foyer and down the hall to her office.
“I’m sorry,” Twyla said. “I tried. I really did.”
“I’m sure you did,” Norma Rose answered, collecting herself with each second that ticked by. “Thank you.”
“For what?” Twyla said, following all the way into her office.
“For trying,” Norma Rose answered. “Please close the door.”
Twyla did, and Norma Rose picked up the phone. “Thelma,” she said once the operator down the hall answered. “Please ring the Plantation, Forrest Reynolds.”
“Right away, Norma Rose,” Thelma answered. “Hold, please.”
She barely had time to sit down before Forrest’s voice carried through the wire and into the phone. “Forrest here.”
Norma Rose waited a split second, just in case her body had a reaction she’d need to counteract. At one time she thought she’d been head over heels in love with Forrest, until he’d betrayed her, without saying a single word in her defense that night he’d left town so long ago. When nothing, not even lingering bitterness, appeared inside her, she said, “Forrest, it’s Norma Rose.”
“I’ve been expecting your call.”
“Then you know why I’m calling.”
“We should talk—”
“We are,” she interrupted. A sigh built then and she let it out. “What happened between us, between our families, was a long time ago and it’s past time it ended.” Before she lost her nerve, she continued, “We were teenagers who got caught alone together, something that happens to millions of people, and something that should never have escalated into a family war.”
“Your father sent my father to prison because of it,” Forrest said.
He sounded older, harsher than when they used to talk and laugh, but he didn’t sound angry. She wasn’t angry, either. She was just being honest. “My father may have paved the road, but your father drove himself there.” She paused briefly. “You know that, Forrest, as do I.”
The line was so quiet, she wondered if they’d lost connection, until she heard a faint sigh.
“Are you going to give me Slim Johnson for the next two Saturdays or not?” she asked, having said her piece.
“On one condition,” Forrest said.
Wanting to focus her time on other things, she was prepared to write a check for any amount he requested. “Which is?”
“That I’m invited to the parties,” Forrest said. “Both of them.”
“Done,” she answered without a thought. “Ask Slim to call me.”
“I will,” Forrest said. “I look forward to seeing you.”
“It’ll be good to see you, too,” she answered, again speaking without thinking. “Goodbye.”
“I’m glad you called,” Forrest said as she was about to pull the phone from her ear. “And for what it’s worth, I tried to stop my father’s allegations.”
She didn’t have time to worry about Galen Reynolds, or if Forrest had stood up for her or not. “Thank you,” she said. “But your sentiment is a little late.”
Norma Rose clicked off then.
“Bee’s knees,” Twyla whispered. “You are one hard dame.”
Sighing, Norma Rose leaned back in her chair. “Am I?”
Eyes wide, yet grinning, Twyla nodded, her head bobbing so hard her dangling earrings jingled.
Norma Rose released the air attempting to suffocate her from the inside. It had been what she’d wanted, to be a hard dame. One who held the appearance that nothing and no one got to her. It had worked for a while, years really, but was it truly who she was, who she wanted to be? What had it really gotten her?
“What’s going on today?” Twyla asked. “Father’s been locked in his office all day.”
In the past, Norma Rose would have told her sister it was none of her business, but it was Twyla’s business, and Josie’s, just as much as it was hers. The resort belonged to all of them. “I truly don’t know,” she admitted. “Not all of it, but I need your help. Josie’s, too.”
* * *
“I don’t believe it,” Roger repeated. “I pay that man well.”
Ty’s instincts had been right, but convincing Roger was difficult and proved where Norma Rose got her stubbornness. “Someone paid him more,” Ty said. “That shouldn’t surprise you. St. Paul hasn’t had an honest police chief in years. Dave said Charlie made his milk shake, but Janet carried it into the back room and then she left out the back door, to deliver a prescription order. He remembers her offering him a ride when he stumbled outside.”
“With prompting from you,” Roger insisted.
“I never mentioned her name, or anyone else’s—Dave did. I just listened as he talked,” Ty reminded. Roger had been in the cabin during the questioning, and still refused to believe it. “Dave also remembers Williams being in the car.”
