Winning Dixie Read online

  Once again she reminded herself that Wade could have any woman he wanted. She’d wondered why he would be interested in her. Now, it seemed, he wasn’t.

  She sniffed. Okay. She didn’t have to let it bother her. She went to the kitchen and sipped coffee while she helped Pops fix Ben’s and Tate’s breakfasts.

  From the time Dixie turned over the open sign, customers started pouring in. It seemed that everyone in town was hungry this morning. The earlybirds had already cleared out and their replacements were sipping a final cup of coffee when she saw Wade leave the kitchen and make his way to the banquet room.

  She’d have to thank him for that. She hadn’t had time to clean up after Ben and Tate, and Wade was doing it for her.

  She finished taking an order for a Denver omelette, then turned it in to Pops and picked up an empty tub to bus the front corner booth.

  “Dixie?”

  She turned sharply at Wade’s soft call. He held the kitchen door open and stepped out.

  She moved toward him so they wouldn’t have to yell at each other. “Yes?”

  “One of the boys left this in the booth back there.”

  Dixie recognized the math book Wade held as Ben’s. His homework pages were sticking out. She groaned in frustration. “That boy. I think his math class starts around nine-thirty. Well, I can’t leave to take it to him, so he’ll just have to do without and take his lumps.”

  “I could take it to him,” Wade offered.

  “As busy as we are, you’re needed here,” she countered.

  “It’s what, a ten-minute walk to the grade school? You’re not going to run out of dishes before I get back.”

  Dixie studied his face for a moment and realized he was serious. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”

  He smiled. “Of course I wouldn’t mind. I volunteered, didn’t I?”

  A tightness in Dixie’s chest eased at his smile. “Okay. Thanks. Ben will owe you a big favor for this.”

  Wade chuckled. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  Despite everything that weighed on Wade’s mind, he couldn’t help but smile. He’d never walked to school before, and here he was, an adult with a math book under his arm doing that very thing. It was scarcely nine o’clock, yet the temperature was already rising and the humidity was up. But the sky was gloriously blue, and the traffic—well, every now and then a car went by.

  He’d been right that it would take him ten minutes to reach the elementary school. The redbrick building was long and low, with a large gymnasium on one end and a fenced playground on the other. In the center of the building sat the main entrance, complete with a covered walkway.

  Wade chose to enter through the door near the gym because it was closer, and it was propped open. When he stepped inside, he realized why. The floor was wet.

  “Watch your step,” a man called out.

  Wade glanced down the connecting hallway that ran the length of the school and saw a janitor pushing an industrial-size mop back and forth across the floor.

  Wade stepped carefully. “Sorry to track up your clean floor, but I have a book to deliver.” Something about the man tickled the back of Wade’s memory. “I thought you guys did this after school.”

  “I do, usually, but this morning’s water balloons were filled with grape Kool-Aid.”

  “Good one.” Wade held out his hand. “Wade Harrison. If you’d point me toward the office, I’d appreciate it.”

  The janitor narrowed his eyes as he held out his hand to shake. “I thought you looked familiar.” Recognition shined in his eyes. “Nick Carlucci. Welcome to Tribute Elementary. And delivering a book aside, what the hell are you doing in Tribute, Texas?”

  “Carlucci,” Wade said softly, noting the way the man favored his left leg. “Carlucci.” Firefighter. FDNY. “That Nick Carlucci?” The man was a legend in New York. He’d lost his father and brother when the Twin Towers collapsed, then went on to save a half-dozen or so other rescuers from a falling beam, only to have that same beam crush his spine.

  What the hell was he doing mopping floors in a grade school in the middle of Texas? “I could ask you the same question.”

  Carlucci glanced around sharply, as if to check and make sure no one was listening. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I know who you are. Nick Carlucci, firefighter, 9/11.”

  “If you’d keep that to yourself, I’d appreciate it,” Carlucci said. “Around here I’m just Nick the janitor.”

  “Fine by me. Around here I’m just Wade the dishwasher over at Dixie’s Diner.”

  “Ah, that dishwasher.”

  “Pardon?”

  Carlucci shrugged and smiled. “Small town. Word gets around.”

  “What word would that be?”

  “That there’s a hot new studmuffin working over at the diner.”

  “A what?” Heat stung Wade’s cheeks. Good God, he was blushing. Then again, it was a comment worthy of a good blush.

  Carlucci raised one hand while holding on to the mop handle with the other. “Hey, man, don’t shoot the messenger.”

  Wade ran a hand down his face, trying to rub away the embarrassment. “What are the odds, two guys from Manhattan ending up in Tribute, Texas?”

  “Two guys who would just as soon everyone not know all the details of their past lives?”

  Wade nodded.

  “Astronomical, I’d say.”

  “Yeah,” Wade agreed. “Hey, listen, we should both get back to work. If you’ll point me to the office.”

  “Sure. Down the hall, right across from the main entrance.”

  “Thanks.” Wade started past the man, then paused. “We should get together for a beer sometime.” Then he thought better of it. “Or…not.”

  Carlucci nodded. “Yeah. Maybe not.”

  The fireman went back to his mopping while the CEO went looking for a ten-year-old.

  A young woman behind the counter in the school’s office looked up Ben’s classroom and gave Wade directions. He got the book to Ben and made it back to the diner, having been gone under thirty minutes total.

  “Thank you, Wade,” Dixie told him.

  “You’re welcome.” And my, he thought, how polite they’d become with each other. Polite and distant. All because he’d been unable to keep his hands and his mouth, to himself.

  “Dixie,” he said softly as she turned to leave.

  She paused, turned her head toward him. “Yes?”

  “Did I ruin things?”

  She frowned “Ruin what? Ben’s math book?”

  “No. Things between us.”

  Her gaze darted away. “Don’t be silly. We’re still friends, aren’t we? Last night was just…”

  “Last night was just what?”

  “It just happened, that’s all. It doesn’t have to change anything.”

  She wasn’t saying what was on her mind. He could tell that from the way she refused to meet his gaze. He might consider pushing her on it, but not while she had work on her mind and Pops as an audience.

  She turned and left, and he tackled the stacks of dirty dishes that had accumulated while he’d been gone.

  Later that afternoon, shortly before the boys came in for their after-school snack, Wade overheard Dixie telling someone that she was sorry but there were no openings at the diner.

  Wade peered through the window in the door to the dining room and saw a middle-aged Latino man who appeared to take the news hard but silently. If he squeezed and twisted his straw cowboy hat any harder against his chest, the hat was going to end up in shreds. Wade didn’t think he’d ever seen any man look that disappointed.

  Pops came and looked over Wade’s shoulder. “Takin’ it kinda hard, looks to me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “‘There but by the grace of God…’” Pops murmured.

  Wade felt like a fraud. There was a man who needed a job, even a minimum-wage dishwashing job, and the only thing standing between him and a paycheck was Wade, who had more mo
ney than he could spend in three lifetimes.

  Son of a bitch.

  That afternoon after work, Wade took his usual walk through town. It was time, as his granddad Conrad used to say, to fish or cut bait. Or, as Grandfather Harrison would have put it, “Young man, it’s time to vote or sign over your proxy.”

  As to the current situation, it was time he did something positive for the boys and go home. Or just go home. Yet he found himself strongly reluctant to leave Tribute. There was something he was supposed to do. He could feel it deep inside. He just didn’t know what that something was. Until he figured it out, he would not leave town.

  First things first, he decided as he turned the corner and started walking down Main. First meant making sure the boys were amply provided for. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed his attorney. It was after 7:00 p.m. in New York, but he didn’t care. The hefty retainer he paid ought to be good for something.

  “Carl, I need you to do something for me.”

  “All right. But first are you aware that rumors of your whereabouts are circulating rapidly?”

  “Some people don’t have enough to do with their time, I suppose. I want you to set up a couple of college funds for me.”

  “College funds?”

  “That’s right.” He glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to him to overhear. “Fifty thousand each.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. My broker will know where to put it.”

  “All right. Names?”

  He looked around again, making sure he was free from prying ears. “Ben McCormick and Tate McCormick. They can’t touch it except for college, but then they can use it for tuition, books, housing, transportation, food, just about anything.”

  “Entertainment?”

  “Sure.”

  “If they don’t go to college?”

  “They can withdraw up to half the original amount when they reach twenty-one.”

  “Up to twenty-five thousand, regardless of the current value of the account?”

  “That’s right. If something goes wrong with the investment and there’s not at least twenty-five thousand still there, they can withdraw half of whatever’s left. The rest gets converted to a retirement account.”

  “And if something happens to one or both before they reach college age, where do you want the money to go?”

  “To their mother, Dixie McCormick.”

  “Dixie? You’re kidding. Is that her legal name?”

  “It is.”

  They firmed up a few more details. Wade would follow up with addresses and other information, then Carl would send him a draft of the details they had just discussed. If it was what Wade wanted, Carl would proceed and set up the accounts.

  That took care of item number one on Wade’s list of things to do. Now all he had to do was determine precisely what constituted item number two.

  Dixie held her breath the next morning until the boys left the diner for school. Hoping, praying that Tate would not invite Wade to his Little League game that night. Praise God, her prayers were answered.

  That didn’t mean Wade wouldn’t show, but that her son hadn’t invited him was the best she could hope for.

  Wade had been nice yesterday, taking Ben’s book to school for him, then catching up on the backlog of dirty dishes in no time at all. But that distance she’d felt yesterday morning between them was still there, and now it felt like a mile-wide gap.

  She knew the man had secrets. He had an entire past that she knew nothing about. She suspected that he might be on the run, hiding from someone or something.

  Then again, that could simply be her overactive imagination. She had no proof of anything being wrong.

  “Boy, howdy, I guess Carrie was right.”

  Dixie refilled Maria Arvelos’s tea and smiled. “Right about what?” The three of them, Carrie, Maria and Dixie, had known each other since first grade.

  “About you being distracted. She swears it’s because of your new dishwasher. What’s his name?”

  “Carrie is full of it. His name is Wade, and I’m not distracted.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Maria smirked. “Then how come you just filled my cola glass with tea?”

  Dixie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’ll get you a new drink.”

  “I’ll let you, too. When you come back, be prepared to tell all.”

  “Ha. Don’t hold your breath, girlfriend. First I’d have to know something before I could tell it,” Dixie all but growled.

  “Listen,” Maria said when Dixie returned with a fresh cola for her. “We need a girls’ night. Can you get Pops to stay with your boys, say, Friday night?”

  “Probably,” Dixie said, thinking a girls’ night sounded like just the thing to get her mind off a certain dishwasher.

  “Of course, what we should do is go over to Terri’s just about dark, or before sunup.”

  “Not that I wouldn’t want to visit Terri, but why at dark or before sunup?”

  Maria leaned toward her and lowered her voice. “Because we can watch the track.”

  Dixie leaned down and whispered. “Why do we want to watch the track?”

  Maria sat up and made a face. “You really don’t know anything, do you? That’s when your dishwasher runs.”

  Dixie was confused. “Runs?”

  “Yeah, you know, moving forward at a pace faster than walking?”

  “Maria, quit dancing around the subject and spill it. What the devil are you talking about?”

  At that moment a middle-aged couple entered the diner, and at the same time Wade came out of the kitchen to bus tables.

  “Never mind,” Maria said out of the side of her mouth. “Tell you later.”

  Her friend, Dixie decided, had lost her marbles.

  Dixie seated the new couple, gave them menus and took their drink orders. She returned to the kitchen right after Wade. Considering Maria’s comments, Dixie didn’t dare look him in the eye. No way could she explain away something she didn’t understand.

  As it turned out, she had no need to explain anything, because Wade made no attempt to engage her in conversation. In fact, when she did finally look at him, he seemed as preoccupied with his own thoughts as she’d been with hers.

  It surprised her, then, that with the way they were all but avoiding each other, and he had no specific invitation from her sons, that he turned up at Tate’s game that evening.

  Dixie wasn’t sure why she was surprised, seeing that he’d been to every one of Ben’s and Tate’s games since he’d come to town. Maybe it wasn’t surprise but dismay. Crushed hopes? Or maybe some part of her was worried that her boys were becoming too fond of a man none of them knew anything about.

  Or maybe she was just looking for excuses to avoid facing her own feelings for him.

  The wind had picked up in the two hours since she’d left work. Clouds had been piling up and rolling away, then piling up again all afternoon. They’d be lucky to make it through the game without a storm hitting.

  Pops gave her a none-too-gentle nudge. “Aren’t you going to invite him to sit with us?”

  “Invite who?” she said, playing ignorant.

  “Ha. Lie to yourself all you want, girl, but you can’t fool me. You knew the minute he stepped foot in the park.”

  Dixie crossed her arms and glared. “Don’t be ridiculous. How would I know such a thing?”

  “’Cuz you’ve got radar, that’s how. Wade radar. Looky there, you can’t keep your eyes off him even while you’re listening to me run off at the mouth. Might as well be talking to myself,” he added, muttering.

  And he was right. She couldn’t keep her gaze from straying, now that she knew Wade was there. But that didn’t mean she had to admit it.

  “Wade radar,” she muttered. “I won’t even dignify that with a response.”

  “Seems to me you just did.”

  “Give it a rest, Pops.”

  “You know—”
<
br />   “I can call myself an idiot just the same as you can,” she told him with a sigh.

  “Well, then. There you go. Now, invite that young man up here so he can sit with friends instead of with strangers or by himself.”

  “You want him up here, you invite him.”

  Pops didn’t bat an eye. He stood and waved at Wade to come and join them.

  Dixie forced a smile. She needed to snap out of whatever this mood was. Wade was her employee and, she hoped, her friend. Whatever was going on inside her little pea brain, and that included the part that managed hormones, was not worth losing a friend over.

  “Hi,” she said when he joined them. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Here.” Pops scooted away from Dixie and patted the empty space left. “Have a seat and rest your bones.”

  Wade looked at Dixie as if not sure of his welcome. “You don’t mind?”

  It was good to know, Dixie thought, that she wasn’t the only one suffering from uncertainty. And it was silly that either one of them did. They were grown-ups. They worked together, and they had kissed. End of story. She offered him a smile, and this time she meant it.

  “No,” she told him. “I don’t mind. Join us. Please.”

  Wade felt a tightness in his chest ease. He had come to the game out of habit, and because he didn’t know what else to do with himself unless he wanted to stay home and read or drive around the countryside.

  He should have stayed home and figured out what else, if anything, he was going to do regarding Ben and Tate. The college funds he’d established were plenty. His conscience would allow him to end it there and go home to New York.

  But something else deep inside told him he wasn’t finished in Tribute. There was something else, something vitally important left for him to do. So, for now, he would watch Little League.

  He took a seat between Dixie and Pops and somehow felt right at home there. He shouldn’t have been surprised. They had always made him feel welcome, from the first day. Lying to them by not telling them who he was and what he was doing there seemed a poor way to repay them. Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to reveal the truth.