Free Smoke River by Krista Foss Page B

barricade
, thinks Mitch,
and I won’t. I just won’t
.
    “You know, I’m leaning towards the Dalwhinnie,” he says instead. He can hear the waver in his voice, the tentativeness it betrays.
    The dinner started with ceviche for an appetizer, followed by seafood risotto with braised fiddleheads and a salad of bitter greens. The menu was Mitch’s idea.
I think he’s probably like most men and would prefer a steak and some roasted potatoes
, Ella had said. (
Dessert?
she’d asked, and he shook his head.
Bad idea with all that diabetes in their community
. She’d made a snarky remark about why, then, they’d purchased enough wine for a wedding party.)
    When Ella came out in a lovely grey peau de soie blouse, worn with trim dress pants and shiny flats, Mitch stood back and shook his head.
Would you consider that black cocktail dress I bought you last Christmas?
    He didn’t want Barton to judge him on their centre-hall-plan home alone. Ella was the showpiece, the proof of his prowess as a man. Twenty years into their marriage and there’s still a bit of the not quite tall, not quite handsome, not quite affluent son of a grocer left in him. Not quite worthy of coppery, lithe Ella Nagy, swishing past the grocery store windows in an eyelet skirt that lifted ever so demurely in the breeze to reveal a pale flash of thigh. A year older. A star athlete. A conscientious student. There are still days when he asks himself where he got the balls to pursue her with such a gentle, unrelenting sureness. And even now, despite the internecine pettiness of a long marriage, he’s still not sure he deserves her. Let other men think he does:there always comes an ineffable spike in regard after he introduces Ella as his wife.
    The cocktail dress was a tight shift with a daringly exposed back – too formal for a dinner at home. And when, five minutes before their guest was expected, Ella swanned into the kitchen accessorized with teetering pumps, sheer hose, and a dainty diamond tennis bracelet, he regretted his request. There was something geisha-like about her in that outfit as she carried in hot dishes, tossed the salad, and cleared the plates; it irked Mitch, tempting him to whisper that she tone it down.
    All that effort, and for what? When Mitch offered a chilled Viognier he described as unoaked and fruit-forward, Barton asked for beer. It hadn’t occurred to Mitch to see if Las had left any. The Arborio rice was undercooked. Ella fished through the risotto to retrieve its morsels of salmon and shrimp as if she were beachcombing, but Barton ate his serving with gusto. Did that mean he was undiscerning or just polite? Mitch couldn’t tell.
    “The fifteen-year-old Dalwhinnie has too much ethanol on the palate, weird finish – probably too much attack for a man like you. The ten-year-old Speyburn is probably more your speed,” says Elijah.
    Mitch feels warmth spread out from his sternum, creep up his neck. He had welcomed Barton into his home and the man thanked him by letting his eyes stray along the curve of Ella’s hips, down the backs of her legs as she filled his glass with Perrier or poured him a cup of coffee. When she admired the rose gold of his watch, its corona of tiny diamonds, he held it out towards her.
The band is farm-raised Louisiana gator
, he said.
Give it a stroke
. She reached out and ran her fingertip along the shiny strap. Mitch watched her face brighten like a tulip.
    Now here’s Elijah in jeans and a black golf shirt, standing with one foot propped on the lowest shelf of liquor, revealing a flash of caiman-skin boots. Mitch tries to imagine himselfin such footwear but can’t. He won’t be talked out of the Dalwhinnie, dammit. And
attack
is exactly what he is after. But “I dunno” is all he can muster.
    “You see, the Laphroaig – and I’m talking the Quarter Cask here – is more of a peat monster. It risks being a bit offensive, all that iodine and sea salt in it. Tarty as hell … the way I