Snowbound Halloween Read online

  “Look, Nick, I have to get to work here. My desk is full of paperwork.”

  Full was definitely exaggeration. There were only two folders left from yesterday to be taken care of this morning.

  The tone of unhappiness in Nick’s voice strengthened. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong? Kara said she thought we’d been fighting.”

  Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone? Wasn’t it bad enough he’d impregnated her? Did he really have to give her the first degree too?

  “Do you remember fighting with me last time we got together?” Thea asked him.

  If he said yes she would forget about the baby and go over to his bar and kill him. Two nights ago she’d finally gotten Nick to try a little light bondage and she hadn’t known she could orgasm that powerfully. He’d gotten into it, too—into it enough to joke with her about changing their costumes to warden and prisoner. She had struggled a little but they had definitely not been fighting.

  “No, I don’t think we disagreed at all,” Nick said. He sounded very thoughtful, as if he were racking his brain to try and remember what he’d done wrong.

  “There you have it then! I’ve got to get to work.”

  She hung up the phone and stood nearly quivering with anger.

  “Wow!” Jo said. “What did he do?”

  The question surprised Thea. “What? Nothing! Nick didn’t do anything. We didn’t fight?”

  Jo slowly shook her head from side to side. “I’ll bet you that’s not what Nick thinks right now.”

  Thea didn’t have time for all this nonsense. “What are you talking about?”

  Jo backed up a step, taking umbrage at Thea’s tone. “It’s none of my business, but if my boyfriend hung up on me the way you just did Nick, I’d be trying to figure out what he was angry about—and getting really pissed off when I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong.”

  Jo stalked away leaving Thea to wonder how much worse life could get today.

  When Thea pulled into the parking lot of The Church Key, Nick’s hole-in-the-wall little bar, she could see his truck in its usual space in the back of the lot and the cars of perhaps fifteen customers huddled closer to the front door. It never ceased to amaze her how many people drank during the afternoon—or during the morning for that matter. There hadn’t been any drinking in her house growing up—Mom would not permit it—but somewhere along the way Thea had formed the opinion that drinking was a nighttime and weekend recreational activity. After dating Nick for ten months she now knew just how far from the truth her naïve beliefs were. The recreational drinkers were an important part of Nick’s business, but there was a significant core of heavier imbibers who liked to show up for a round before they went into the office, always swung by at lunch for a little pick me up, and began to slip back into the bar during the early afternoon to add a little liquid cheer to their day. They weren’t the majority of Nick’s patronage, but they were a steady source of income upon which his bar depended.

  She wondered idly how many would trouble themselves to put on a costume when evening came.

  Not that that was her big concern today. She touched her stomach wondering how long it would be before she could feel the little boy or girl moving inside of her. Technically her little child didn’t have a gender yet—another thing she’d have to read up on so she would know what to expect from her pregnancy. At least she had a lot of friends with children she could ask when she was ready to let people know she was expecting.

  She parked her car, turned off the engine, grabbed her purse and opened the door. The sky was gray and turning cold—bad news for all the children planning to Trick-or-Treat tonight. At least in October it was still too early to worry about snow. They’d had two hard winters in a row and Thea was not looking forward to another season of Nick’s backup bartender, Jim, interrupting their few nights off with panicked calls that the streets were turning hazardous with a fluffy white blanket. Not that he was that much better during regular storms. How a man with his sort of fears ever expected to move out of his mother’s basement was beyond Thea.

  She walked briskly across the parking lot, her eyes not quite taking in the skeletons and scarecrows that adorned the front of the building. Nick had even bought a couple of bales of hay and a dozen pumpkins to decorate the entrance. His brother, Tim, had carved a couple of massive jack-o-lanterns to make the display look more like Halloween than simply autumn. They’d been planning tonight’s party for more than a month but with the results of her pregnancy test heavy on her mind, Thea wasn’t in the mood to enjoy the occasion.

  She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, ready to push it open and enter the bar. Maybe she was being foolish. Nick really did seem to care about her. Maybe she should just go inside, take him back to his little office and tell him he was about to be a father. But with all of their friends and a good chunk of their families coming over tonight, Thea just couldn’t bring herself to risk a major embarrassing fight that would spoil the evening for everyone. She felt like the hostess tonight, even though it was Nick’s bar, and she wasn’t going to do anything that would make the Halloween party fail.

  At least that was what she kept telling herself. It was just as possible that she was simply too afraid to discover that Nick really didn’t love her as much as she thought he did a couple of days ago.

  She pushed open the bar door. The light was gloomier inside even before they started putting up shrouds of fake cobwebs and black and orange crepe paper. Blowup ghosts and monsters decorated the corners and every wall was plastered with the image of a witch or a skeleton. The tables were already piled with bowls of treats—Mini Snickers, Milky Ways and Three Musketeers, plus Sweet Tarts, Milk Duds, Tootsie Rolls, Junior Mints, candy corn, and M&Ms. And that didn’t count the traditional salty treats like peanuts, pretzels and potato chips. Thea still wasn’t certain if Nick just really liked candy. He never indulged himself, but when it came to the bar he often went a little crazy.

  She couldn’t help wondering which would be more important to him—his bar or his baby.

  “Thea!” Nick put down a half-opened box from which he had been extracting a witch’s cauldron and hurried over to greet her just as he always did. But there was something in his walk and his face that told Thea he wasn’t that excited to see her. He looked wary to Thea as if he expected to fight, even if he wasn’t certain what they were arguing about.

  It made Thea angry. Why he couldn’t he cut her some slack? Didn’t he know she was pregnant?

  She hesitated in her stride.

  Of course Nick didn’t know she was pregnant. She hadn’t told him yet. That was a huge part of the problem.

  Nick reached her side and tried to give her a little kiss but Thea avoided him. She didn’t want a kiss right now. She was going to have a baby and didn’t know what she and Nick were going to do about it.

  Nick instantly stepped back and began searching for what was troubling her. “What’s wrong, Thea? I’ve racked my brain searching for what I did and I just can’t think of anything. Did you have another fight with your mother?”

  This was the moment she needed to just tell him what the pregnancy test had shown. The bar wasn’t that full and they had as much privacy as they were likely to get until the wee hours of the morning. She opened her mouth to tell him she needed to talk to him in his office when Charlie, one of Nick’s most loyal patrons, lumbered over to say hello.

  “Hi, Thea, you look great! What a costume! Are you a doctor or something?”

  Thea sighed and looked down at the uniform she wore in Dr. Bartlett’s office. While her title was that of administrative assistant—she answered the phones and filed all the payment requests with the insurance company—she dressed as if she were one of the oral hygienists. “This isn’t a costume, Charlie. It’s my everyday work clothes.”

  Her correction seemed to off foot Charlie for a moment. He scratched the chin beneath his long Grizzly Adams beard and searched for something to say. “Well, they
um, look great.”

  She suppressed the urge to sigh again and forced herself to give the big guy half a hug. He couldn’t help it if he were awkward and clumsy in every conceivable social setting. “Thanks, Charlie, but if you like this one wait until you see my costume tonight.”

  Charlie immediately brightened up again. “Wait until you see mine! I think you’re all really going to be impressed.”

  Nick had permitted this interruption without ever losing the serious expression of concern on his face. Now he patted Charlie on the back and said: “We can’t wait to see it! But if you don’t mind, Thea and I have to finish getting set up if we’re going to be ready when people start arriving tonight.”

  Charlie nodded affably. “No problem! You need a hand?”

  “You want to call for a couple of pizzas and go pick them up for us?” Nick suggested.

  By most people’s meal schedules, it was a little early to be thinking of dinner, but Nick tended to eat about four o’clock to make certain that his meals were done before business started picking up with the rush hour crowd.

  Charlie nodded again. “I can do that! What do you want on them?”

  “Why don’t you surprise us?” Nick said. He turned Charlie about so he faced the bar with its telephone. “Just be sure to get a receipt so I can reimburse you.”

  Charlie wandered off toward the phone.

  Nick turned back to Thea. “Now what’s wrong? I know that expression. Something is really bothering you.”

  This statement annoyed Thea too. I know that expression. Was Nick saying she was always in a bad mood? She opened her mouth to comment on this when the door opened behind her admitting a handful of Nick’s younger customers. “Hey, Nick, Thea, you ready to party?”

  Thea turned around to see three twenty-one year old college seniors in full costumes pushing their way into the bar. She knew them each by name like she and Nick knew all of the regular customers. Brad was wearing a poorly fashioned toga over t-shirt, shorts and a beer gut that was pretty impressive for a man who had only reached legal drinking age a few months before. His friend A.J. had dressed as Elvis—a very fit and muscular Elvis who liked to show off his chest beneath his white jump suit. And Victor had come as the Grim Reaper with long black cloak and hood, but no sickle.

  A little part of Thea felt a thrill of excitement to see the costumed customers arriving. The whole party had been her idea and she wasn’t certain it would really work until right now. But one look at the faces of these three young men and she knew they had a winning event on their hands.

  Then she saw the look of pure joy on Nick’s face and it squelched the surge of happiness inside of her. He hadn’t lit up that way when he saw her tonight! Why the hell did the stupid party matter so much anyway? She was pregnant, damn it! She needed to talk to him, needed a little reassurance, needed to know that Nick was going to stick with her and help her raise this baby. But what did Nick care about? His god damned stupid bar!

  Thea stood frozen while Nick stepped past her to greet his customers as an insidious thought percolated inside of her. She was jealous of Nick’s bar. That was crazy, wasn’t it? She couldn’t be jealous of a thing, could she?

  She slowly shook her head, discarding the notion. Then an even more disturbing thought struck her. The Church Key wasn’t just a thing to Nick, was it? This bar was his whole life. Not only did it take up most of his time and nearly all of his energy, but it followed him around even when he wasn’t working. On his rare nights off, Jim always called with some bullshit problem or other. And Nick talked incessantly about the place when they were together. The Church Key wasn’t just a thing to Nick, it was like another lover, or a mistress, or worse yet, Nick’s wife. She wondered why she’d never thought of it that way before. What kind of father was Nick going to make if his heart was focused on a building instead of his baby?

  Thea didn’t know the answer to that question.

  And she wasn’t certain she wanted to stick around to find out.

  Chapter Three

  “I think that’s all we can do,” Nick said as he wiped his hand on his apron. They had the fog machine going outside in front of the door, strobe lights and black lights illuminating the bar, and every conceivable bit of wall space covered with decorations. The fancy punches were made with fruit juice doubling as blood and olives turned into eyeballs. And Nick had replaced the jukebox with a stereo system to play Halloween classics all night long.

  He was right. They were as ready as they’d ever be and even if they weren’t it was just about time to start the party anyway. Heck, they already had a dozen customers here in costume taking advantage of the discounted beers.

  Nick stepped up beside Thea and put his arm half around her. He’d been trying to be nice, but Thea quite frankly wasn’t in the mood for it. “Why don’t you go back to my place and get changed?” he suggested. “It’s the only break you’re going to get until we close tonight.”

  Thea had been thinking about the need to change into their costumes. It was the desire to dress up fancy that had inspired her to suggest this whole party. She and Nick had been doing a lot of role playing in the bedroom and it had seemed like a great idea to give them the excuse to invest in some actual costumes—not that they’d chosen the most practical outfits for tonight.

  She touched her belly. Somehow it seemed like a very foolish and childish idea now, but at least it would give the two of them a chance to talk in privacy. Earlier today, she hadn’t been able to face the idea of telling Nick, but the longer she was near him, the greater her desire to let him know what was going on. She wanted him to make a choice and if he was going to choose wrong, she wanted to know it now.

  “I’ll get my purse out of the office. Do you have a jacket?” she asked. They’d started to have sex in that office once, but it really wasn’t private when the bar was full. No place in The Church Key really was. It would be better to get him alone at his place to break the news.

  “I don’t need a jacket,” Nick told her. “I brought my costume to the bar with me this morning. I’ll change in the office. I just thought you’d want a little more privacy then that.”

  Normally such thoughtfulness would make Thea happy. Changing in The Church Key would never be a good idea. But today when she had important news to share, Nick’s thoughtfulness felt like a strategy to keep her as far away as possible so she couldn’t share her secret. She knew that thought was crazy—Nick had no idea they were going to have a baby. But knowing she was irrationally annoyed only served to make Thea feel even angrier. It was a no win situation.

  She turned in a huff and crossed the bar to the office.

  Nick caught up with her as she picked up her purse. “Hey, what’s wrong? You’re not yourself today.”

  If he had stopped with what’s wrong she might have told him, but that extra sentence stoked up the bitchy irritability churning in her stomach. “And who am I then?” she snapped as she jerked her arm free of his and stormed back across the barroom floor.

  “Thea!” Nick called after her.

  He was fast—she had to give him that, even if fast wasn’t what she wanted from him right now. She dodged his second attempt to grab hold of her and pushed the front door open. “Just stay and look after your customers, why don’t you? It’s what your best at after all!”

  Nick was still standing in the doorway looking after her as she got in her little second-hand car and drove out of the parking lot.

  Thea smoothed the soft fabric of her purple wizardess robes down across her stomach and imagined for a moment that the bump that would soon be caused by the baby growing inside of her was already visible. It couldn’t be, of course—she was only a few weeks pregnant, after all—but she smoothed the fabric down over her belly a second time to reassure herself.

  She’d sewn the whole garment she was wearing according to patterns she’d found on the Internet. She’d made Nick’s costume as well. She imagined what it would be like to create cool Halloween c
ostumes for the three-month-old infant she would have next year. She could do family coordinated costumes like the three bears, or farm animals.

  That assumed, of course, that Nick wanted them to be together—that there would be an actual family to sew for after she gave him the news tonight.

  She picked up her face paint kit and with the help of the bathroom mirror began to sketch stars onto her cheeks. She’d enjoyed sewing the costumes—she used to be quite handy with a needle and thread—but a few years back when her nephew Jamal had reached elementary school, he’d started refusing to wear her costumes, insisting his mother buy cheap ones at the department store instead. She wondered if her little son or daughter would reject her as Jamal had.

  She wondered if she could get any more depressed on what ought to be the happiest day of her life.

  She put down the paints and touched up her lipstick. Then dropped that too, not bothering to put the lid back on the tube.

  Nick’s apartment was really too small for a family. Maybe it was large enough for a mother, a father, and an infant, but it really wasn’t big enough once that infant required his or her own room.

  Not that any of these thoughts would probably matter. The bar was what Nick cared about—not the baby, not her.

  She picked up her purse and opened the front door. On impulse, she glanced around Nick’s barren little place one last time—wondering if she’d be welcome here again once Nick found out he was going to be a father.

  She turned out the light and closed the door.

  The parking lot was filling up by the time Thea got back to the bar.

  It was early yet, but more than half the spaces were already filled—a sure sign that the costume party was going to be a roaring success. Ahead of her, a Jedi knight helped a cheerleader out of a car, while a hairy-masked werewolf escorted Little Bo Peep through the artificial fog at the Church Key’s door. Thea didn’t know how the werewolf was going to drink through his mask but she loved seeing people turn out in support of her idea.