Divine Evil

tell you good-bye.”
    “Blair?”
    “He's decided to hang around for a couple of days.” She eased back to study him. “Rafferty, you look like hell. Why don't you go up, have a soak in that magic tub of yours? I'll heat up the pizza and fix you a beer.”
    “Slim.” He closed her hand into a fist and brought it to his lips. “You're going to have to marry me.”
    “I'm what?”
    He didn't really mind the shock in her eyes. “I like the idea of you meeting me at the door and heating up pizza.”
    She smiled even as she eased away. “Boy, do one good deed, and the guy expects a lifetime.”
    “Right now I'd settle for company in the tub.”
    Her smile became more relaxed. “So I can wash your back, I suppose.”
    “You wash mine, I'll wash yours.”
    “Deal.” She hoisted herself up and wrapped her legs around his waist. “What do you say we heat up the pizza later?”
    “I say good thinking.”
    They went upstairs as the sun began to lower.
    Others waited, restless, for sundown.

Chapter 22
    A T NINE'THIRXY , Rocco's was hopping. Joleen Butts had given up on the idea of closing early when the Hobbs family walked in, all seven of them. The youngest howled around the bottle in his mouth while the other four kids made beelines for the arcade games, their quarters ready. Joleen took the order for three large pizzas, loaded, then went back to sprinkling diced mushrooms on top of shredded mozzarella to the tune of the beeps and buzzes of Super Donkey Kong.
    Now all four booths were packed with bodies and pizza in varying degrees of annihilation. Balled-up paper napkins littered the tabletop. Their part-time delivery boy had just taken four extra cheese with pepperoni over to the fire hall. She noted that the youngest of the Hobbs troop was on the loose and was pressing gooey fingers on the glass of the display case as he peered at the soft drinks and candy bars.
    So much for a ten o'clock closing, she thought.
    In another couple of weeks, after school was out for the summer, they would keep the parlor open until midnight.Kids liked to hang out there, munching on pizza in the wooden booths, popping quarters in Dragon Master. Except her kid, she thought, and slid the pizza into the oven.
    He'd rather sit home alone and listen to his music.
    She smiled at her husband as he carried two cardboard boxes to the cash register. “Busy night,” he murmured and winked at her.
    Most were, she thought and began to build a submarine. They had made a success out of this place, just as they had dreamed they would. Since she and Will had been teenagers themselves, they had worked toward this. A place of their own, in a nice, small town where their children would be safe and happy. Their child, she corrected. Two miscarriages after Ernie had drawn the curtain on the notion of a big family.
    But they had everything else.
    She worried sometimes, but Will was probably right. Ernie was just going through a stage. Seventeen-year-olds weren't supposed to like their parents or want to spend time with them. When she was seventeen, her major goal in life had been to get out of the house. It was a lucky thing that Will had been out there waiting, just as eager.
    She knew they were the exceptions. Teenage marriages were almost always a mistake. But at thirty-six, with eighteen years of marriage under her belt, Joleen felt smug and secure and safe.
    Not that she wasn't glad that Ernie didn't seem to be serious about any particular girl. Maybe she and Will had been ready at a tender age to take the big leap, but Ernie wasn't. In some ways, he was still just a child. In others …
    Joleen pushed back her long brown braid. In others she didn't understand him at all. He seemed older than his father and tougher than nails. He needed to find his balance before he could be serious about a girl, or anything else.
    She liked Sally Simmons, though. The fresh face, the polite manners, the neat clothes. Sally could be a good influence on Ernie, bring him out of himself a little bit. That was all he needed.
    He was a good boy really. She wrapped the sub and rang it up, with a six-pack of Mountain Dew, for Deputy Morgan. “Working tonight?”
    “Nope.” Mick Morgan grinned at her. “Just hungry. Nobody makes a sub like you, Miz Butts.”
    “I doubled the onions.”
    “That's the way.” She was a pleasure to look at, he thought, with her face all flushed from the ovens, and the white bib apron over her jeans and shirt. She didn't look old