One Plus One Makes Marriage
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Melanie was firmly convinced that she’d learned far more from the two women, about life and surviving as well as the usual subjects, than she ever would have in a school where knowledge was contained within four walls and within the pages of books. Her classroom had been the world in general and the movie set in particular. Or rather, behind the movie set, where drama and magic, make believe and truth played equal parts.
“Then these citations belong to you.” Removing the sheet from the clipboard, Lance handed it to her. It listed five direct violations of the fire code, and he knew he could have given her more.
Melanie glanced down at the sheet, then back up at the man who had given it to her. She shared a little of Joy’s confusion. “You’re a fire inspector?”
“Yes, and your shop, Ms. McCloud, is a fire waiting to happen.” Disapproval was etched on his chiseled, rigid features. Though some might find a place like this charming, Lance didn’t care for small, cluttered places. He liked wide-open spaces. The less people allowed junk to pile up, the less fuel there was for a fire and the less likely it would be for a fire to break out.
With the tip of his pen, Lance pointed toward the four huge boxes that had been delivered this morning. “Do you even realize that you’re blocking an exit with that stack of crates? If there was a fire, someone could be hurt because of your carelessness.”
The delivery man who’d brought in the shipment had looked and sounded as if he was coming down with a cold. Taking pity on him, Melanie had sent him away after he’d dropped off the crates right inside the rear of the shop rather than in the storeroom. Customers had arrived, and she just hadn’t gotten around to putting the crates into the storeroom.
Melanie eyed the inspector. The complaint seemed minor enough to her. Rules, except for the very basic ones, were meant to be a little flexible. Surely he could cut her a little slack. John Kelly always had. A kind, jovial man in his late fifties, the other fire inspector and she had hit it off the first time he’d walked into her shop. But then, he was an old movie buff, and they’d found a great deal to talk about even before he’d discovered that she’d practically grown up in movie studios.
“Yes, but—”
If she thought she could talk her way out of this, she was in for a surprise. He wasn’t a pushover, the way the recently retired inspector had been. Lance had seen the power of fire, watched it as it licked its way through a lifetime’s worth of possessions in less than ten minutes. There were no second chances with fire, no time to bargain or talk your way out of the havoc it brought.
Lance shook his head. “There is no ‘but,’ Ms. McCloud. Something is either a fire hazard or it isn’t. And that,” he tapped the pile of crates nearest him for emphasis, “is a fire hazard. If you had a fire,” he repeated pointedly, “and the people in your store tried to get out this way, they could be burned to death.” Glancing around, he judged that the whole place could go up like a tinderbox.
There was no reason to feel a fire would start here, Melanie thought. No one was allowed to smoke in the shop, and she’d just had the wiring checked, although, she noticed, according to the stone-faced inspector’s findings, the light switch in the storeroom was suspect.
“They could use the front door,” she suggested, trying her best to remain cheerful.
He knew better. Firsthand. “What if that way was inaccessible?”
He made Melanie think of someone who’d had what he believed to be an epiphany and now knew the “right” way when everyone else around him was still groping around in the dark. Rather than become irritated, she felt rather sorry for him. Inflexibility was a cross.
“Then I’d push the crates aside,” she responded easily to his question, still hoping to coax him into a smile.
Lance’s eyes narrowed until they were two gleaming points of a very sharp sword. “Fire isn’t a joke, Ms. McCloud.”
“I never said it was.” Melanie glanced at his name written in small, precise letters on his badge and cocked her head. “Do you have a hearing problem, Lance?”
Annoyance deepened the tiny furrow between his brows. He didn’t care for the way she made the leap from being a stranger to someone who was on a firstname basis with him. “No, why?”
“Well, you didn’t hear me when I asked you to call me Melanie, and you obviously thought you heard me say that fire was a joke when I didn’t.” She raised and lowered one slim shoulder. “I just thought that perhaps you had trouble hearing things.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder. The woman she’d left standing before the wall of photographs was still there. Reading her body language, Melanie knew she was ready to make her purchase. Momentarily ignoring Lance, Melanie placed her hand on Joy’s arm.
“I think that lady’s about to buy something, Joy.” She nodded toward the customer. “Why don’t you go over there and wait on her?”
There was nothing Joyce wanted to do more than to get as far away from the man with the dark, accusing eyes as possible. He made her feel guilty even when she hadn’t done anything. But she didn’t want to leave Melanie to cope with him by herself, either. Though she was younger than Melanie by several months, Joy felt very protective of her. Walking away right now would be tantamount to tossing a babe to the wolves.
Chewing her lower lip, Joy weighed obligation against self-preservation. “I don’t know, Mel—”
Melanie placed both hands on Joyce’s shoulders and turned her around toward the woman. “Never keep a customer waiting, remember?” She gave Joyce a little push in the right direction. “It’s okay,” Melanie assured her with confidence. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Melanie turned toward Lance as Joyce made her escape. “Isn’t it?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “After you pay your fine, that’s up to you.”