I fished around in the refrigerator and pulled out a rectangular lump swaddled in plastic wrap. I dropped it on the counter with a thud.
“What is that? A brick?” Tom asked.
“Fruitcake. I’ve been working on the recipe.”
I unwrapped the parcel to reveal a golden-brown cake the size and shape of a meatloaf. I cut a ragged slice from the end of it with a bread knife. The jagged chunk was yellow on the inside and dotted with artificial-looking red, green, brown and yellow candied fruit. On closer inspection, it reminded me of the plastic barf I’d once bought from Spencer’s as a kid. I plopped the slice on a plate and handed it to Tom.
“Here. Try this.”
Tom curled his lip as he broke off a small piece. “Hope it tastes better than it looks.” He resigned himself to his fate and popped the chunk in his mouth. He chewed once and his eyebrows rose an inch. “Whoa!”
I grimaced. “That bad?”
Tom shook his head. “No. Pretty good, actually. For fruitcake, I mean. But don’t give any to Jorge. He’d be officially off the wagon.”
I laughed. “Yeah. I think it’s gotta be about a hundred proof by now.” I reached inside the cupboard. “I’ve been marinating it for two weeks with this.” I held up the bottle of spiced rum.
“Well, that explains it,” Tom said. He pushed the plate away.
“You don’t want it?” I asked.
Tom smirked. “If I take another bite, you’re going to have to drive.”
“Fair enough,” I laughed. “Let me get my purse.”
“Feel like Chinese tonight?” Tom called after me as I padded down the hall to my bedroom.
“Sure. Why not?”
I grabbed my purse from the bed and tugged at the flimsy, tiger-print underwear creeping up my butt. When I turned around, Tom was standing in the doorway. I blushed. He shot me a sexy grin.
“Or, if you prefer, we could have something delivered to your cage, Tiger Lady....”
I was so used to Tom’s bad jokes they had become part of his charm. I dropped my purse back on the bed. Tom took me in his arms and kissed me hard on the lips. My back arched all on its own as he nibbled his way down my neck. I kicked off my work heels and forgot all about the fruitcake – I was too busy unbuttoning my blouse.
The doorbell rang. We both froze.
“Who could that be?” Tom asked, his hot breath tickling my ear.
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t answer it,” he whispered.
The bell rang again. Then again.
“It’s probably just Laverne,” I said. “Wait here. I’ll get rid of her.”
I fumbled down the hallway, re-buttoning my blouse as I went. When I stuck my eye on the peephole, my mouth fell open.
Standing in the doorway was a woman I, for the most part, only knew about through gossip. She was a familiar stranger to me, like a tabloid personality. I’d both hated and admired her from afar for nearly half a century. She rang the doorbell again and rolled her eyes.
I bit my lip and opened the door.
“Hiya, cuz,” she said.
Chapter Four
IT MIGHT’VE JUST BEEN a redneck thing, but when I was growing up a “family vacation” meant piling into a rundown station wagon and driving to a relative’s house, hopefully with no more than one breakdown along the way. Once we’d arrived, we’d hang around like useless leeches until either our father’s time off work ran out or somebody’s patience did. It was almost always the latter. Within a few days, some “misunderstanding” with the host relation and my mother usually had us Jolly clan packing lickety-split and on our way elsewhere.
What went around came around. I was the grown up now, and the bird-brain relatives had come home to roost at my place. It’s not like my next-door neighbor, Laverne, hadn’t warned me. She’d told me that having a house near the beach was akin to holding a winning lottery ticket. It was inevitable that every weird relative I ever knew – and some I’d never heard of – would at some point come crawling out of the woodwork and want to be my new best friend...at least for as long as their vacation days held out.
Lucky me.
I stood at my front door and stared at the first relation to arrive and stake a claim. Dressed in a too-short denim skirt, white t-shirt torn to fringe six inches from the bottom, red cowboy boots and a matching crimson Stetson, this mess of a midlife crisis could have been on her way to shoot the thirtieth-year reunion of Coyote Ugly. But no, she’d decided to bless me with her presence instead.
I took a quick glance around my front yard. For a split-second, I wondered if my friend Cold Cuts had put her up to this. Nope. No such luck.
“Tammy Jeeter. What are you doing here?”
“I had a week off. Wanted to see how my city-slicker cuz was doin’.”
I hadn’t gotten so much as a phone call from Tammy in a quarter century. Sure, we’d kept up to date on each other’s major victories and defeats through the family grapevine. But on my end, that had meant my mother’s version of events. I’d learned long ago any information Lucille Jolly shared with me arrived tainted with more than a touch of sour grapes.
But the information did, nonetheless, arrive. I sighed. For once I could actually take comfort in the fact that my mother lived to spread the family gossip. This meant I could reasonably assume that Tammy Jeeter wasn’t pregnant, recently escaped from a psycho ward, or on the lam from the law. Lucille Jolly was incapable of withholding news that juicy for more than thirty seconds.
From the doorway, I eyed Tammy up and down, unsure what to say to a woman I’d last seen when I wore a size six.
“Hi. I’m Tom Foreman. Val’s boyfriend.”
Tom’s strong, husky voice took me by surprise as it sounded from behind. But I didn’t turn around to introduce him properly. I was too aghast at the way Tammy was leering at him. She stepped forward, forcing me to turn sideways between them. Then she cocked her head and her right hip like a loaded, Saturday-night floozy.
“Well, look at you, handsome devil! Nice to meet you, Mr. Tom Foreman.”
“Likewise,” Tom said without enthusiasm.
Tammy held her hand out to be kissed. Tom smirked and shook her manicured paw instead. “Excuse me,” he uttered. “I’ll let you two catch up.”
Tom let go of Tammy’s hand and ambled over to the kitchen. I watched Tammy ogle Tom as he plopped down on a stool, put his elbows on the counter and rested his chin in his hands. He eyed the piece of cake we’d abandoned moments before my cousin’s unannounced visit had rendered our bedroom rendezvous null and void.
“Fruitcake,” he said sarcastically.
Tammy turned to me, angry-faced. She poked my arm hard. “Have you been talking bad about me, cuz?”
“What?”
Tammy scratched her bleach-blonde scalp with a navy-blue, press-on nail. “Did he just call me a fruitcake?”
“Huh? Oh! No...Tom...he just...offered you some cake.” I raised my voice. “Right, Tom?”
“What?” Tom looked up, confused. Tammy eyed him with suspicion.
I sighed. “So, look, Tammy, where are you staying?”
An artificial smile sweetened her thin, hard face. “No need to give up your bed, cuz. The couch is fine with me.”
Tammy tilted her head, looked past me, and spoke over my shoulder in a voice syrupy enough to induce a diabetic coma. “Oh, Tom, honey? Could you please help me, sugar? My suitcases are in the car.”
Tom’s sea-green eyes locked on mine, awaiting instructions. I pursed my lips and gave him an infinitesimal nod. He sighed, let go of his grudge about our interrupted evening, and forced a smile. “Sure. Be glad to.”
Tammy held up and shook a jumble of keys on a keyring adorned with an insipid, fuzzy white unicorn jumping over a rainbow. “You’re a real sweetheart, Tommy! They’re in the trunk.”
The way Tammy watched Tom walk out the door made me wish I had a lock on his belt buckle. She turned and curled her thin, upper lip. “Nice w
ork, Valiant.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s hot.”
I pretended not to notice. “Oh. Tom? Well....”
“Better watch out!” she cackled.
My eyebrows met halfway up my forehead.
“Just kidding,” Tammy backpedaled. “Got any more like him around here?”
“I thought you were with that guy...Tater Johnson.”
“Heck, no, Valiant. I dumped that cheatin’ rascal over three months ago.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. Sorry about that.”
“I’m not.” Tammy’s eyes narrowed and her thin, red lips twisted to one side like a potential serial killer. “Anyway, I had my sights set on your ex, Ricky. But your sister done beat me to him.”
Tammy’s gut-stab hit its mark. And hard.
“Annie’s dating Ricky?” I wheezed.
Tammy looked as innocent as a mail-order bride. “Oh. I thought you knew.”
“Mom never mentioned it.”
Tammy snickered. “I don’t doubt it. I’m sure Aunt Lucille was saving that bomb so she could see your face when she dropped it on you.”
The fact that Tammy was probably right did nothing to endear her to me. I was scrambling for what to say next when Tom came back inside and saved me the trouble. He shuffled through the front door carrying two butter-yellow suitcases from Sears. I recognized the brand because the Jolly family had graciously bestowed an identical set on me, too, right after high-school graduation thirty years ago.
“Where do you want these?” Tom asked me.
“In the second bedroom, please,” I answered sweetly.
Tom and I exchanged knowing smiles. The mattress in the second bedroom was a castoff from a buddy of Tom’s. It was as lumpy as month-old oatmeal and sagged in the middle like a rubber canoe in a lava pool. Tom’s friend couldn’t understand why on earth I’d thought the castoff bed had been worth salvaging. “It’s horrible,” he’d argued. “No one could possibly stand to sleep on it the whole night.” But as they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For my intents and purposes, the old mattress’s flaws were its assets. I didn’t care for house guests.
Tom disappeared down the hallway, lugging the scuffed, old luggage. Tammy tossed her purse on the couch and sauntered over to the slice of cake on the counter.
“So, this your fruitcake?”
“Yeah.”
She broke off a nibble and chewed it, smacking her red lips annoyingly. “Not bad, Valiant. But I don’t think it’s got a frog leg’s chance in France of winning against your mom’s.”
“Winning what?” Tom asked as he returned from his new job as Tammy’s porter.
“The family fruitcake competition, sugar,” Tammy cooed. She smiled at Tom and batted long, spidery eyelashes so thick with mascara they could have induced arachnophobia.
Tom didn’t seem to notice. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Family fruitcake competition?”
“It’s an old family tradition,” Tammy replied before I could answer. “The Family Fruitcake Frenzy.” She grinned at me with sadistic pleasure. “Valiant ain’t told you about it?”
I winced and took Tom by the hand. Familial pride and shame clashed and jostled about in my heart. Like oil and water, there was simply no way to make them blend.
“It’s kind of like the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys,” I explained. “Only, instead of shotguns, we use fruitcakes.”
Chapter Five
MY COUSIN TAMMY’S UNEXPECTED arrival had left me no choice but to invite her along on my Friday-night date with Tom. Besides, I’d thought it would be fun. We could catch up on all the Jolly family’s latest triumphs and catastrophes, and laugh our butts off.
But I’d been wrong. Dead wrong. The whole evening Tammy acted like a hellish crossbreed between a spoiled brat and a jaded nymphomaniac.
At the Chinese restaurant, every word out of my cousin’s cruel mouth was a complaint or an insult. “The seats are uncomfortable. The décor is shabby. The waiter is stupid.” When our food arrived, sullen Tammy picked at her plate of beef and broccoli, saying “It tastes funny.”
The only thing that appeared up to snuff with Tammy’s refined redneck standards was the syrupy-sweet plum wine. She’d downed three glasses of it before I could say chicken chow mien. That’s when she started to go nympho. Make that super-picky nympho. Between gulps of plum wine, the bitter, blonde country girl threw every man in the restaurant into the wood-chipper. “He’s too fat to get laid. He’s too old to get it up. He’s weird looking – probably some kind of sex offender.”
It wasn’t long before Tammy had dished out a plateful of ugly that had me questioning my own man-griping sessions with Milly. Then I realized there was a difference. Nothing that came out of Tammy’s mouth was even remotely funny. Compared to Tammy’s bitter, hateful monologue, Milly’s and my grousing over men came off like a sketch from Saturday Night Live.
No matter how Tom and I tried to steer the conversation, Tammy commandeered it and ran it headlong into a trash pile. After a while, we gave up, bit our lips and resigned ourselves to our fate. I was burning with annoyance and embarrassment. Tom was silent and squirming in his seat like the only rooster left in a coop full of capons. I couldn’t blame him. Tammy’s non-stop man-bashing could have shriveled James Bond’s nut-sack to molecular proportions.
On the ride home, Tammy expanded her repertoire of perturbing antics to include kicking the back of my seat over and over. Every time we passed a beach bar, snockered Tammy screeched, “Is that where all the good men hang out?” When we finally pulled into my driveway, to say I dreaded the fact Tammy was staying the night would have been an understatement on par with, “The sun is warm.”
Crap on a cracker! My weekend with Tom was officially toast, and Tammy was a rotten egg.
“So, what are we going to do now?” Tammy whined as Tom shut off the engine to his SUV. I glanced over at him. He stared straight ahead, his mood unreadable.
“I think we’re going to call it a night,” I said. I reached over the seat and handed Tammy the house keys. “Why don’t you go on in, Tammy. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“I want to go out and party,” Tammy complained. “How far is the closest beach bar from here?”
I turned around and stared into her scowling face. “Tammy, if you don’t mind, I want to say goodnight to Tom.”
“So? Say goodnight, then,” she said with the sullen face and crossed arms of an angry child.
“I meant in private.”
Tammy kicked my seat for good measure. “Oh. I get it. Excuuuse me.” She climbed out of the car, boot-stomped to the front door and went inside. A second later, I saw the blinds rustle. A pair of eyes peered out between the slits.
“Geeze, Tom! What am I gonna do? She’s only been here two hours! I don’t know how much more I can take!”
Tom blew out a huge sigh. “That woman is a piece of work, all right. I’ll admit it, Val, I don’t envy you one bit.”
“Gawd. It feels like she’s been here a year already.”
“Yeah. Well, at least you don’t have any balls for her to bust.”
I winced. “Sorry about all that.”
Tom shrugged. “Not your fault. Anyway, she might be nervous or drunk or something. Give her a little time to adjust.”
Gnawing dread mixed with anger in my gut. I pouted. “I don’t want to, Tom. I want her to go away. Now.” I glanced over at the front window. The blinds clicked shut. “Why do you think she’s here, anyway?”
Tom scrunched his eyebrows into a triangle. “I dunno. To see you?”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. I mean, to just drop in like that? Out of the blue? She’s got to be up to something.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a feeling.”
Tom pulled me close to him and managed a boyish grin. “Women’s intuition?”
I curled my lip. “More like survival instinct.”
Tom laughed
and kissed me on my crinkled nose. “You’re definitely a survivor, Val. No worries on that score.”
I blew out a disappointed sigh. “Sorry about fouling up our plans tonight.”
“Stop apologizing. You didn’t foul anything up. ‘Tantalizing Tammy’ did.”
I jerked away from Tom. “You find her tantalizing?”
“I’m a cop. I’m a sucker for a good crime case,” he said teased.
I wasn’t in the mood for games. “I don’t get the joke, Tom. What’s Tammy’s crime?”
Tom shot me a sideways grin and waggled his eyebrows. “Fishing on private property.”
Something clicked in my brain that made my temper flare. “Wait a second. You don’t think I’m jealous of Tammy do you?”
Tom grinned. “Come on, Val! How could you think that?” He shook his head. “You know, you’re pathetic when it comes to reading between the lines. I just told you I’m yours. Your private property. Get it?”
I did then.
I scooted next to Tom and touched my hand to his cheek. “So you’re my private property, hey?”
Tom took my hand in his and kissed me tenderly on the lips. “Absolutely, Val. And I’d like to think that you’re mine.”
AFTER AN R-RATED MAKE-out session in Tom’s SUV, I drug myself back inside to discover Tammy had transformed my home into a redneck sorority house. Sprawled out on my new couch in nothing but her shredded t-shirt and thong underwear, Tammy was guzzling a beer and munching on the last slice of my favorite leftover pizza. There wasn’t a napkin or coaster or butt towel in sight.
“So how long you been seeing him?” she asked as I locked the door behind me.
I tried not to bite through my own tongue. “A little over a year.”
Tammy whistled. “That’s a long time, Val. Are you expecting for Christmas?”
“What?” The woman was on my last nerve. “I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you mean.”
Tammy shook her head and eyed me as if I were pathetic. “No, doofus. A ring. Are you expecting an engagement ring for Christmas? To make it official?”
Family Fruitcake Frenzy Page 2