Wedding For One: Wedding For One / Tattoo For Two

“Here’s your new partner,” her father said to Nathan.

“Dad, I’m not a partner, I’m—”

“Observing, yeah, yeah. Anyway, Mariah, Nate here has been my right hand. He knows everything I know and does half of it better,” her father said, resting a hand affectionately on Nathan’s shoulders.

“I’ve just done what needed doing, Abe. You set up the business and now it practically runs itself.”

Affection passed between the two men and Mariah felt a surprising jolt of loneliness. What would it have been like to share the workday with her father in the family business? To have him describe her as his “right hand.”

Suffocating, that’s what it would have been. She’d have been controlled, bossed, fussed over, and watched every minute. Thank goodness she’d escaped.

“You should be very proud, Abe,” Nathan continued. “You’ve left a tremendous legacy.”

“Hold on. I’m just retiring, not dying. I’m just handing it over to you two.”

“Dad, I’m just—”

“Observing. Right. Well, I’ve got to get back to the gumdrops. I’ll leave you two…all on your own.” He gave Nate a wink.

A wink! Like there was going to be hanky-panky or something. She felt herself blush and fought it down. She was relieved to see that Nate had turned a matching pink. She changed the subject. “I guess I’m a little late.”

“Ninety-two minutes,” he said, his brow dipping. “I thought you’d reneged on our deal.”

“I just lost track of time. I tend to do that. My mind is such a whirly-gig.” Her stomach tightened at the words. She usually fought the airhead impression she sometimes left because of the way she dressed and how her brain spun, kaleidoscope-like. She believed you could be professional without being all linear and uptight. With Nathan, however, her job was to intensify the effect. She needed to be airhead incarnate.

The misrepresentation would be worth it to be done with this and gone. Plus, the more irritated he was with her, the less attractive he’d be. Men who got annoyed with her were complete turnoffs. Which was exactly what she needed to be around Nathan—turned off. “I just can’t help being a butterfly.”

“Right,” he said, rolling his eyes at her. Perfect. She’d already gotten the eye roll. Soon she’d get the heavy sigh, the head-shake, then the lecture. She’d argue, and it would be happily downhill from there.

He looked her over. “I see you’re dressing for success.”

Oooh, even better. He was already insulting her. “So, this is your office,” she said, ignoring the dig.

“It could easily become yours.”

She gave an exaggerated shudder. It was so not her. The place looked like a museum display of an office—practically shellacked into neatness. Perfectly arranged file folders, everything at right angles. There were no stacks of paper, no open books, scattered pens or left-over fast-food meals. If Nathan was as hopelessly anal-retentive as he seemed, frustrating him would be easier than she’d thought.

“I’m just finishing up analyzing the month’s receipts and the profit-loss statement,” Nathan said. “It’s all on computer. I’ll show you if you’ll step over here.”

“Oh, I believe you,” she said, barely glancing his way.

“I had this software customized to suit our process,” he said. “With it, I can track cost per candy, and—”

He looked up as she started the steel-ball perpetual motion pendulum toy clacking on his desk. “Go on,” she said innocently. “You can track…?”

With an irritated sigh, he reached out and stopped the steel balls from knocking together. “Would you come here and look at this?”

“Maybe later. I’m deadly with numbers.” She grinned sweetly at him, then picked up a manipulable desk sculpture made of small metal diamonds shaped around a magnet, and changed its rectilinear shape to a helix.

He did not like that, she could see. This was fun. “Why don’t you show me the plant?” she asked.

“All right.” Nathan pushed away from his desk, stood and came toward her, wearing a long-suffering expression.

At the doorway, she paused to brush her finger on a bad painting on the wall, so that it hung slightly crooked. Then she picked up a huge geode from the top of his bookcase to examine its purple-and-white crystal interior before placing it on a lower shelf before she walked out, watching Nathan as he followed.

Sure enough, he paused to straighten the picture and replace the geode. She smiled. Things were going like clockwork.

At the end of the hall, Nathan pushed open a double door into a wide hallway where the factory began. The hum of human activity, machinery, and steam filled the air, along with the familiar smell of her childhood—candy cooking. Nathan led the way to the first archway. “The mixing room. Where we put it all together.” He led her farther into the room.

“I remember,” she said. “When I was a kid, everything in here seemed so huge.” She’d loved to watch her daddy work with the gigantic mixing bowls with their huge mechanical stirrers.

“Almost all of our products—the jelly, jellied candies, taffy and lollipops—come from the juice of the prickly pear cactus fruit,” he said, sounding like a tour guide. “Summer is prickly pear harvest time. Over just six weeks each summer, we process all the juice we’ll use for a year’s product. We had an exceptional harvest this year. In fact, we’ll be freezing a substantial amount for next year. Here’s where it starts.” He indicated a huge vat where red bulbs of cactus fruit bobbed and bubbled in boiling water.

“Once the fruit is softened, we crush it with this.” He indicated a wooden device.

“The wine press from Italy,” she said. “Dad was always so proud of that.”

“Yep. He got it straight from a vineyard. Anyway, after that, the juice is strained, then sent through these pipes,” he indicated shiny brass tubes overhead, “to the separate areas to create each kind of candy.”

He moved to a stainless-steel tub. “Here is where we make our most popular item—jellied candy squares. Here we add lemon, corn syrup and eventually gelatin,” he said.

The juice bubbled in the drum, cranberry red, giving off a tart steam that filled her nose. She paused to identify the elements. “Lemon, lime, cranberries and cotton candy all rolled into one great smell.”

Nathan took a quick, short sniff. “It’s nice, I guess.”

He walked over to a man who reached up with a pole to switch off a valve, then scooped out some of the red jelly, which he allowed to fall slowly back into the bowl.

“How’s the consistency, Jed?” Nathan asked the man.

“Better. That new coil evened the heat like you said it would.”

“Great,” Nathan said, his eyes alight with satisfaction.

He was proud of his work here, she could tell, but she wouldn’t mention it. Not yet. He’d just deny it.

“When I was little, Dad would let me add ingredients sometimes.” She’d loved watching the corn syrup cascade into the mixture, a river of sweetness. “It was like Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory, only for real.”

“Sounds like you loved it here.”

Whoops. She didn’t want him to think she missed the place. “It got old, though. Imagine every day as the day after Halloween. Pretty soon if you see one more piece of candy you want to throw up.”

“Exactly. Imagine eight solid years of Halloween. That’s why I need to move on.”

This was backfiring. She had to point out the good things about the place to encourage Nathan to stay, but not give him the idea she’d ever consider staying herself.

“The problem was me, not the factory, Nathan,” she said. “When I started getting into trouble, Mom grounded me here while she did the bookkeeping and reception work.”

“What did you do that was trouble? When I met you, Nikki and you were doing a lot of ditching.”