Ms. Miller and the Midas Man Read online

  She groaned. “Oh, God.” Now she was getting a headache. “Lydia, if you don’t stop trying to attach me to every unattached man in this town, I’m going back to New York. I’ll get a counter job at Macy’s and play backup in the first coffeehouse that’ll take me. And I’ll tell Mother it was your idea.”

  “That’s rich. She still thinks your move to Tylerville was my fault.”

  “You’re the one with the husband on the school board, and you’re the one who recommended me for the job of music director at the elementary school, and you’re the one who said you’d smooth things over with her if I came.”

  “And wasn’t I right? Tell me you didn’t have fun last year, teaching all those little kids to sing and play recorders and shake tambourines.”

  “All right. I did. It was fun.”

  Truth to tell, the best thing to date about coming to Tylerville was the discovery of children. She’d had little to no exposure to them before that time. Now she couldn’t seem to get enough of them. She found them open, creative, contagiously happy, and, in general, extremely easy to please.

  “And hasn’t Mother come around?”

  “She’s accepted the fact that I’m not good enough to play professionally anymore, yes. But I think she wants me to teach at Yale or Juilliard...or even MacPhail. Elementary school chorus and private violin lessons aren’t really what she’d define as preserving the arts.”

  “Of course it is. Who better to preserve it in than children? And how better to serve the community than by instilling an appreciation for music in its young? Answer me that? Your problem—and Mother’s problem—is that you take things too literally. You think too big. Little towns, little people, little things are just as important as big towns, big people, and big things. Maybe more.”

  “And your problem,” Gus said, after a few seconds of silent agreement and self-affirmation, “is the same as it’s always been. You’re too down-to-earth, and you’re too often right.”

  “That’s two problems.”

  “You see, you’re right again.”

  If you pinned her to the mat, Gus would eventually admit that she viewed her attendance at church services more as a tolerable social obligation than anything involving her religious attitudes.

  Fact of the matter was she enjoyed being...well, recognized was probably the proper word for it. It was a throwback to her days of being first violinist with the New York Philharmonic and soloist with the Chambers, a rather well-known and elite group of musicians who hired out for private gatherings and exhibitions.

  Granted, she was now Ms. Miller to the loud church whispers of children, and Augusta to the smiles and friendly greetings of their parents, who knew her as nothing more than a music teacher. But she could remember a time when people she considered to be colleagues and friends couldn’t bring themselves to look her in the eye, much less offer her a cheery good-morning.

  When she first arrived in Tylerville, she’d sat with Lydia and Alan and their three children as a family in church. It wasn’t long after that that Lydia had invited Howard Munce to a family picnic to meet her unmarried sister, or long after that that he started feeling obliged to take up the empty space in the pew beside her.

  She hadn’t lied to Scott Hammond when she’d told him she had an overabundance of friends. There was Howard, of course, a balding forty-something pharmacist who sat on the school board with her brother-in-law and had a tendency to monologue on the pros and cons of allergy therapy versus the frequent use of modern antihistamines, or some equally enthralling controversy. And there was Bill Wexell, the third-grade teacher who lived with his mother and enjoyed the fact that Tylerville was actually a state-designated bird sanctuary. And Louis Green, manager of the local Safeway, who frequently boasted of having the greenest produce in town.

  All fine men. All eager to please her. All as boring as watching grass grow.

  And so it was that she’d taken to eating her lunches in the music room at school and avoiding the third-grade classroom whenever possible, grocery shopping at the A & P, and coming in late to church on Sundays to take the last available seat among strangers—or the second to last available seat as it happened that particular Sunday. The very last space was taken by Scott Hammond, who wedged himself in beside her seconds before the service began.

  “This couldn’t have worked out better,” he said, breathless and grinning. Her insides were flipping and spinning. His Sunday best was more than enough to send her pulse racing—but under it was the bare wet chest from the day before, a thin and incredibly sexy line of dark hair straight down the middle of it, disappearing into the waistband of his pants...I’m usually too lazy to get all dressed up for church, but I saw you out the window, looking as pretty as spring’s first rose, and thought I’d give it a try. What do you think?” he asked, since he already had her ogle-eyed attention. “Is this tie okay? All my others are still packed in boxes.”

  She was speechless. After the day he’d had, he was worried about his tie? And why wasn’t she breathing?

  She was saved making a comment, one way or the other, when the congregation stood to sing the first hymn.

  “Oops. No more hymnals. I guess we’ll have to share,” he said, his dark eyes and naughty dimples twinkling happily. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  She lowered her eyes away, afraid the whole world could see just how much she did mind, and shifted her hands and the open book to the space between them—which he immediately narrowed by turning toward her and leaning close to see the music.

  He sang loud in a near perfect tenor voice, pronouncing the words clearly, modeling a devout believer—except when she happened to glance up during the second chorus and he winked at her. If a woman had curves, he had all the angles.

  They sat down and there was hardly enough room for his broad shoulders despite the fact that she was all but sitting in the lap of the woman next to her.

  “There appears to be more room in the pew behind us,” she whispered to him after a quick look over her shoulder.

  “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  “I think you’d be more comfortable back there.”

  “I’m comfortable here,” he said. He wiggled his shoulders closer to hers and smiled when she pushed back. “I like the way your hair smells, by the way.” He leaned over a tiny bit, inhaled deeply through his nose, then hummed out a little sigh. “Like a starry summer night.”

  No one but her could have heard it; still, she went hot all over and focused her eyes on the front of the church. Her pulse was pounding and she was too aware of his upper arm against hers, the scent of his aftershave, his neatly trimmed fingernails and long strong-looking fingers. And the heat. She decided there and then that it should be against the law to hold church services in August without air-conditioning. Truly, it was criminal.

  She jumped a foot when he reached over and covered her hand with his—to silence the agitated opening and closing of her hymnal that was distracting the people around them. After a little squeeze he removed his hand, leaving hers scorched and throbbing.

  “Nervous?” he muttered under his breath. As a bee in a bottle, if he was any judge.

  She cleared her throat softly and ignored him.

  “I don’t bite.”

  Ha! She bet he did. Nibbled, most likely. On tender places like necks...and maybe breasts...and the inside of a woman’s thigh...and...Humph! She wiggled and sat up a little taller. Those two women yesterday would know if he bit or not. Frankly, she didn’t care.

  Heavens, it was hot.

  Suddenly, they were singing again and whole chunks of the service were missing from her mind. She felt so distracted. He had his arm resting along the back of the pew behind her and was breathing down her neck as he sang.

  “Move your arm,” she said with tight lips. He wrapped it about her shoulders. “Remove your arm.” He let it fall to the back of the pew again and continued singing. “People are looking at us.”

  “I know,” he sa
id, close to her ear, his warm breath tickling her cheek. “They’re all thinking we’re a cute couple.”

  “Well, we’re not,” she said, turning her head to glare at him, finding herself nose to nose.

  “Not yet,” he said, his brown eyes soft, entrancing as a half-remembered tune, his lips a breath away, tempting her.

  She would have continued to sing the rest of the song, but she was just too flustered...no, too mad. She would have slapped him and stalked out of the church, but she was worried that making a scene would make things worse. She would have put her elbow through his ribs, but she was sure it would make him happy.

  She couldn’t honestly compliment Reverend Mutrux on his sermon that day. She found it incredibly long and tedious—and she couldn’t remember a single word of it. However, that didn’t mean she’d fallen asleep. She sang the final hymn with great verve, actually, anticipating the quick escape she had planned.

  Having spotted Dorothy Weise, Tylerville’s local Avon-Amway-Tupperware representative, across the aisle and two pews back it was a simple matter of timing her exit.

  “I want to apologize for yesterday,” he said while the last organ note still vibrated off the church walls, afraid she’d get away from him again before they could really talk. “I do know better than to distract children from their lessons. I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.” She was busy putting away the hymnal and gathering up her purse, and didn’t look at him—but she did appreciate his remorse. Perhaps his visit to church wasn’t a total loss. He did look very fine in his Sunday best. Scrubbed up nicely. Crisp. Clean. Sexy as hell.

  “I am,” he said, bending low to see her face. “I was wondering...I didn’t hear you playing last night...I...please don’t be so angry with me that you stop playing your violin,” he said in a rush. “I don’t know how we got off to a wrong start here, but I’m sure I’ve done something to offend you. If it’s the garbage thing?”

  Long personal discussions took a great deal of the casual out of the phrase “casual acquaintance.” What she did and how she felt were personal.

  “Mr. Ham—Scott,” she broke in.

  “My close friends call me Scotty.”

  “Please. I’d like to leave.”

  “Sure,” he said, backing out of the pew but blocking her exit. “I just wanted to apologize and to let you know I really like listening to you play. I mean, I’m sorry if I’m eavesdropping or...well, I’m not spying on you, really, it’s just that the windows are open and...I never knew a violin could sound like that.”

  “I’m glad it doesn’t irritate you. And believe me, I’ve overcome greater obstacles than you to play my violin. Excuse me, please?”

  “I noticed you walked here. Would you like a lift home? I happen to be going that way.”

  “No. But thanks,” she said, nudging him aside before her best chance got away. “Mrs. Weise. How are you?”

  Scotty knew Dorothy Weise and automatically panicked, his fight-or-flight instincts acute, until he noticed the glimmer in Gus’s eyes.

  “Low blow,” he muttered under his breath as the woman approached them. A giggle bubbled in her throat.

  “Augusta, dear, you look lovely this morning. And all you ever order is the twenty-four ounce Aroma Therapy Bubble Bath. It’s obviously working. Looking very refreshed and relaxed this morning.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and without hesitating she added, “Have you met Mr. Hammond? He’s recently moved back into his family home, which has stood empty for so long now that, well, you know how dirty things can get when they’re neglected. I was going to...”

  “Oh, my gracious, yes,” Dorothy said, feeling the baton in her hand and running with it. “I’ve known Scotty since he was no bigger than the little end of nothing. You sweet boy, how are you? I heard you were coming back to town.” She took hold of his forearm and Gus’s heart smiled. He wouldn’t be getting away any time soon. “And taking up your daddy’s old job no less. I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear it.”

  “Thank you, Mrs.—”

  “And that old house of yours. Lord A’mighty. What a terror it must be for you. I can’t even imagine the ground-in dust and dirt. This is the worst season of the year for mold and mildew and...”

  Gus began taking small steps backward, out of the conversation and out of the church. She couldn’t stop the chuckle. He deserved this, he really did, she decided, shrugging innocently when he issued her an I’ll-get-you-for-this look.

  Unconsciously, she fisted the fingers of her left hand and twisted her wrist in a small circle. Round and round—then back in the opposite direction. Actually, she was doing him a favor, she thought, appeasing what little guilt she felt for being so unkind to him. Someday he’d thank her for her disinterest. He would. She wasn’t a quick roll in the hay sort of woman, and anything more...well, even if he were looking for more, he wouldn’t find it in her.

  Disappointing people was what she was good at. It wasn’t a motivating force in her life, certainly, but when you’ve disappointed enough people—despite all your best efforts to do exactly the opposite—you eventually begin to recognize the pattern of your existence. Disappointment was Augusta’s pattern. So far, she’d been a massive disillusionment to everyone she’d ever cared about, including herself.

  Except for Lydia, of course.

  She watched her sister—over Howard’s right shoulder—later that afternoon. With baby Todd on her hip, she flipped hamburgers on the grill and warned her two older children to beware of the flowers as they kicked a soccer ball around the yard. She was, without a doubt, the most stubborn, blindly devoted, and tolerant sister ever born, Gus surmised.

  Or else she was just plain stupid.

  She managed never to disappoint anyone. Not her husband. Not her children. Not her sister. Not her teachers. Not her friends. Not her...

  “...and then Scotty Hammond joined the team and—”

  “What?” Gus asked, falling from her reverie so unexpectedly she felt dizzy. Yes. Yes, they were still in her tidy little backyard. It was her turn to hostess the Sunday barbecue. “Who did you say?”

  “Scott Hammond,” Howard said. “Lydia was saying he moved back into his parents’ house, next door to you.” He motioned toward the big house with his head.

  “He did. Yes. But I thought we were talking about asthma.”

  Lydia and Alan laughed. “Forgive her, Howard. The mind of a true artist is never really where it’s supposed to be,” her sister said, shaking her head. “It’s just sort of around, in the vicinity, dropping in now and again to catch up on the conversation. Pay attention, Gus.”

  Howard chuckled good-naturedly. Alan left to get drinks for the children.

  “We were talking about asthma, Augusta,” Howard said, carefully pronouncing all three syllables of her name. “Larry Masterson had terrible asthma growing up, but he was a terrific basketball player, except that he tired quickly. He was a couple years older than Scotty, but when he—Scotty—finally made the team, the two of them played off each other like pros. Scotty did all the rebounding and running around and Larry sank every ball he got his hands on. They went to the state championship games two years in a row.”

  “This is the mayor Larry Masterson?” Gus questioned. She’d never seen the man, but had heard a great deal about him from Alan and Lydia.

  “The very same. He and Scotty were like brothers growing up. Rumor has it, it was Larry who got Scotty to come back and take over at the high school.”

  “You’re a big Hammond fan, too, I take it.”

  Why someone didn’t simply canonize the man, she didn’t know.

  He took a plate with a hamburger on it from Lydia, who was giving her sister the eye to behave herself, as she seated the children around the small backyard picnic table. Alan was backing his way out the door with their drinks.

  “Everything the man touches turns to gold,” Howard said in his very serious way. “It’s hard not to like him.”

&nbs
p; Not for her.

  “Lydia tells me there are several sisters and they all still live here in town.”

  “Yes, yes, they do.”

  “Well, how many are there exactly? Lydia says there are six or seven of them.”

  “No no. There were a bunch of them all right, but only five sisters, with Scotty born smack in the middle of them. Big, busy family, volunteering for this, running that, seems like they’re everywhere. I’m a year or two older than Donna, so I didn’t know them well. It’s hard to keep track of them all.”

  In an eerie, unexpected moment the wind stopped rustling the leaves in the trees and the insects ceased buzzing and no one spoke as a clear, steady whistling drifted over the fence and filled the air around them like a...a rain cloud, was her first thought, her heart leaping into her throat then hitting hard somewhere near her feet.

  The others didn’t appear to be particularly put out by this untimely development. Eyes and heads turned to the fence as the snappy, happy tune drew closer. She could tell they were expecting Scott Hammond’s face to appear over the five-foot fence at any moment—but was she the only one holding her breath? And just exactly how uncool would it be to shoo him away with a broom?

  The whistling stopped abruptly, and the anticipation mounted rapidly. They waited. No sound. No Scotty. Their gazes drifted back to the table, to one another, then back to the fence.

  Alan, normally a great brother-in-law and the manager of the local fan factory that was one of the major veins of Tylerville’s economic structure, was, unfortunately, a get-it-done sort of fellow.

  “Scotty Hammond?” he bellowed. “That you over there?”

  “Why, yes, it is,” he replied, a little too casually to Gus’s thinking. “Who’s asking?” he said moments before his face rose, dimpled and curious, over the fence. “Well, look at this,” he said—and she was sure he had been for some time. “Howard. Alan. Lydia. Hi, kids,” he said, waving to the children. “Ms. Miller. I thought I smelled barbecue out here.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” Lydia, the dumbest sister in the world, asked. “Come join us. There’s plenty.”