“Back to the salt mines,” he commented. “The gallery’s open until six, so I’ll be up a little later than yesterday.”
“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’m shooting for dinner around seven.”
“Sounds good.”
If our relationship had been different, this was the moment where he should have bent down to kiss me goodbye before he left. But we weren’t there. Not by a long shot.
He left, and I went back to work.
* * *
Around two-thirty I took a break, as I was waiting for the broth from the pork roast to cool so I could skim off the fat. The day had gradually begun to darken, but not because of approaching night. Not that early. No, I could see gray clouds gathering outside. It had done the same thing the day before, but no snow had fallen, so I wasn’t sure what the lowering skies really meant.
I went to the window to look at the weather and the streets below. Not that much had changed, although they didn’t seem quite as crowded as they had been the day before. Well, that made sense, since today was a Monday and probably a lot of people were at work. But it was still busy enough, and once again I found myself wishing that I could be down there in the fresh air, window-shopping and enjoying myself. Making tamales was a welcome distraction, but it didn’t exactly provide much mental stimulation.
As I watched, a sleek black Range Rover pulled up to an empty spot at the curb just below the apartment and in front of the gallery. The door opened, and a tall dark-haired man got out. Almost at once I recognized him as Damon Wilcox, and I pulled in a worried little breath, wondering if he was going to come up to the apartment again. I really didn’t want to imagine what his reaction might be if he barged in here and found me playing domestic goddess in his brother’s kitchen.
But as the minutes ticked by and he didn’t appear, I realized the apartment must not have been his destination at all. He must have gone to the gallery.
While I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation, I didn’t possess the sort of clairvoyance that would allow me to eavesdrop on the two brothers from up here. All I could do was wonder what it was that Damon wanted. Scratch that. I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. I was just surprised that he’d approach Connor in his gallery. It might be owned by a Wilcox, but it was still a public place that most likely would be filled with civilians doing their last-minute holiday shopping.
“My, you’ve been busy,” came a voice from behind me, and I jumped. Literally jumped. Maybe just an inch or two, but still.
My heart resumed a more or less normal rhythm when my brain registered that the voice was feminine, and definitely didn’t belong to Damon Wilcox. “Hi, Mary,” I said.
The ghost trailed her way from the living room back to the kitchen, where she cast an appreciative eye over the visible evidence of my industry. “What are you making?”
“Tamales.”
She looked confused. “I don’t think I know what that is.”
“It’s a Mexican dish. A lot of people make it around the holidays.”
A ghostly finger trailed over the glass top of the crockpot. Anyone else would have jerked her hand back right away, since the crock was plenty hot even on the low setting, but of course Mary Mullen was far removed from any such concerns. “I’ll bet it smells good.”
“It does,” I assured her. Then, since she didn’t seem inclined to do much more than wander around the kitchen, I asked, “Is there something you wanted?”
“No,” she said absently. “That is, I thought I’d check in when I heard all this clatter in the kitchen. Connor barely uses it, except to put things in that.” A condemnatory finger was thrust in the direction of the microwave.
It seemed she and Maisie had a good deal in common when it came to modern contrivances. “I know. Fancy kitchen, and he hardly sets foot in here. I thought it was time that stove was put to good use.”
“I knew you’d be good for him. That I did. I was always a good judge of character. None of those other girls ever came in here and cooked for him.”
“About those girls,” I began, but she shook her head.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. You’re here now. And I’ve been thinking about it — you know, after you asked me how long it had been since the last girl was here. I thought hard, and looked at the calendar he has pinned to the wall there, and I think I figured it out. Two months, just about. Not since Halloween.”
Halloween. When we’d come face to face for the first time. Of course I hadn’t known who he was, not then, but he certainly knew I was Angela McAllister. He’d met the girl he’d been dreaming of, and hadn’t been with anyone else since then.