Natural Born Charmer

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  He’d never hurt a woman in his life, but he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. “You’re insane, you know that?” He stalked over to her. “I love you!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I love you, too.” She tossed in her duffel.

  “I mean it, Blue. We belong together. I should have told you how I felt last night, but you’re so damned skittish, I wanted to work up to it so I didn’t scare you off.”

  She planted a hand on her hip, playing the badass but not quite pulling it off. “Get real. You don’t love me.”

  “Is it so hard to believe?”

  “Yes. You’re Dean Robillard, and I’m Blue Bailey. You wear designer labels, and I’m happy with a Wal-Mart bargain. I’m a drifter, and you have a career that lights up the sky. Do you need to hear more?” She slammed the trunk lid closed.

  “That’s superficial crap.”

  “Hardly.” She pulled a pair of cheap black sunglasses from the purse she’d left on the roof of the car and slipped them on. Her bluster faded, and her lower lip trembled. “You had your life turned inside out this summer, Boo, and I was the go-to girl helping you get through it. I’ve loved every minute of these last seven weeks, but it hasn’t been real life. I’ve been Alice living in your Wonderland.”

  He hated feeling helpless and he went on the attack. “Believe me, I know the difference between reality and fantasy better than you do, judging from my dining room. You haven’t even figured out how frickin’ talented you are!”

  “Thanks.”

  “You love me, Blue.”

  Her jaw jutted forward. “I’m crazy about you, but I don’t fall in love.”

  “Yes, you do. But you haven’t got the guts to see it through. Smack-talking Blue Bailey lost her courage years ago.”

  He waited for her counterattack, but she dipped her head and rubbed the toe of her boot in the gravel. “I’m a realist. Someday you’re going to thank me.”

  All her sass and strut had disappeared. Her strength had been an act. She was a fake—soft inside, full of hurt and fear. He struggled to get his cool back but couldn’t manage it. “I can’t do this for you, Blue. You either have the guts to take a risk or you don’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you leave, I’m not coming after you.”

  “I understand.”

  He couldn’t believe she was doing this. Even as he watched her climb into the car, he waited for her to find her courage. But the engine turned over. A dog barked in the distance. She backed out into the alley. A bee buzzed past him toward a stand of hollyhocks, and she pulled away. He waited for her to stop. To turn around. She didn’t.

  The back door banged and Nita came down the steps, her robe flapping open over a crimson nightgown. He jumped into his truck before she could get to him. Something unthinkable pulled at the edges of his brain. He tried to push it away, but as he sped down the alley, it only gathered strength. What if Blue had told him the truth? What if he was the only one who’d fallen in love?

  Was it true? Blue asked herself as she drove down Church Street for the last time. Was she a coward? She pulled off her sunglasses and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Dean believed he loved her, or he’d never have said the words. But people had said they loved her before, and every one of them had let her go. Dean wouldn’t be any different. Men like him weren’t meant for women like her.

  She’d known from the beginning this affair put her in jeopardy, but even though she’d struggled to keep her emotions in check, she’d given her heart away. Maybe someday his words of love would be a sweet memory, but now they were a rusty knife twisting in her heart.

  The tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. She couldn’t shake off his hurtful words. Smack-talking Blue Bailey lost her courage years ago.

  He didn’t understand. Regardless of how hard she tried, no one ever loved her enough to keep her around. No one ever—

  She sucked in her breath. The town limit sign flashed by. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue. As she blew her nose, she took a hard look inside herself and saw a woman who was letting fear dictate the course of her life.

  She eased back on the accelerator. She couldn’t leave town like this. Dean wasn’t a fool. He didn’t give his heart away to anyone. Was she really too damaged to recognize love, or was she simply being a realist?

  She looked down the road for a place to turn around, but before she could find one, she heard the siren.

  An hour later, she gazed across the gray steel desk at the chief of police, Byron Wesley. “I didn’t steal her diamond necklace,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Nita planted it in my purse.”

  The chief looked over her head to the television, which was tuned to Meet the Press. “Now why would she do that?”

  “To keep me in Garrison. I told you.” She slapped her fist on the desk. “I want a lawyer.”

  The chief pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Hal Cates plays golf on Sunday morning, but you can leave a message.”

  “Hal Cates is Nita’s lawyer.”

  “He’s the only one in town.”

  Which meant Blue would have to call April.

  But April didn’t answer her phone, and Blue didn’t have Jack’s number. Nita was the one who’d had her arrested, and she was hardly likely to bail her out. That left Dean.

  “Lock me up,” she said to the deputy. “I need to think.”

  “Are you going to get Blue today?” Jack asked Monday afternoon, the day after Blue’s arrest, as he and Dean stood on side-by-side ladders giving the barn a fresh coat of white paint.

  Dean wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Nope.”

  April gazed up at him from the ground, where she was painting window trim. The red bandanna she’d twisted around her hair was already speckled with white. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “I’m sure. And I don’t want to talk about it.” He wasn’t sure at all. He only knew that Blue wasn’t tough enough to stay in the game. If Nita hadn’t stopped her, she would have been halfway across the country by now. When Dean got up this morning, he’d decided he could either get drunk and stay that way, or slap paint on this damned barn until he was too tired to feel the pain.

  “I miss her,” Jack said.

  Dean annihilated a cobweb with his paint rag. Despite everything he’d told her, she’d walked away from him.

  Riley piped up from the ground below. “I don’t think Blue and Dean are the only ones who had a fight. I think you and April did, too, Dad.”

  Jack kept his eyes on the area he was painting. “April and I didn’t fight.”

  “I think you fought,” Riley said. “You hardly talked to each other all yesterday, and nobody’s dancing.”

  “We’re painting,” April said. “You can’t dance all the time.”

  Riley cut to the chase. “I think you two should get married.”

  “Riley!” April, who never let anything embarrass her, turned red. Jack was harder to read.

  Riley persisted. “If you got married, Dean wouldn’t be a…You know.” She whispered, “A bastard.”

  “Your father’s the bastard,” April snapped. “Not Dean.”

  “That isn’t very nice.” Riley picked up Puffy.

  “April’s mad at me,” Jack said, dipping his roller in the pan attached to his ladder. “Even though all I did was tell her I think we should start dating.”

  Dean forced himself to put his own misery aside. He looked down at Riley. “Beat it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I need to talk to them,” he said. “Grown-up stuff. I’ll tell you everything later. I promise.”

  Riley thought for a moment, and then she and Puffy made their way to the house.

  “I don’t want to date him,” April hissed as Riley disappeared. “This is nothing more than his thinly disguised attempt to get me into bed. Not that I consider myself so irresistible these days, but try convincing him.”

  Dean winced. “
Please. Not in front of the child.”

  April pointed her brush at Jack, and a trickle of paint ran down her arm. “You like a challenge, and I won’t put out for you. That makes me a novelty.”

  As repulsive as it was to hear about his parents’ sex life—or apparent lack of one—he had a stake in this conversation, and he forced himself to stay put.

  “What makes you a novelty,” Jack said, “is the way you can’t shake off the past.”

  They started tossing around insults, both of them so intent on self-protection they didn’t see the hurt they were inflicting, but Dean saw it. He climbed down the ladder. Just because his own life was a mess didn’t mean he wasn’t clear about what other people needed to do. “It would mean a lot to me if the two of you really liked each other,” he said, “but I guess that’s my problem. I know you don’t want to make me feel like a mistake, and putting up a front whenever I’m around has to be getting old.”

  Sucker’s bait, and Blue would have seen right through it, but she was currently locked up in the city jail for stealing a necklace Nita had planted in her purse, and these two were awash in guilt. “A mistake?” April exclaimed, getting rid of her brush. “Don’t ever feel like you were a mistake.”

  Jack came down the ladder and moved to her side, the two of them suddenly a single unit. “You were a miracle, not a mistake.”

  Dean rubbed at some paint on his hand. “I don’t know, Jack. When your parents basically hate each other…”

  “We don’t hate each other,” he said sharply. “Even when we were at our worst, we never hated each other.”

  “That was then, and this is now.” Dean rubbed off more paint. “From where I stand…Never mind. I shouldn’t let it bother me. I’ll be satisfied with what I can get. When you come to my games, I’ll shuffle the tickets around so your seats are as far apart as I can get them.”

  Blue would have been rolling her eyes, but April pressed her hand to her chest, leaving a paint smear behind. “Oh, Dean…You don’t have to separate us. It’s not like that.”

  He pretended to look perplexed. “How is it then? Maybe you’d better tell me because I’m confused. Do I have a family or not?”

  She whipped off her bandanna. “I love your father, as stupid as that might be. I did then, and I do again. But that doesn’t mean he can pop in and out of my life whenever he pleases.” She was sounding more confrontational than loving, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when Jack took offense.

  “If you love me, why the hell are you giving me such a hard time?”

  The old man wasn’t handling this as well as he should, so Dean slipped his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Because she’s done with fly-by-night relationships, and that’s pretty much all you’re offering. Isn’t that right, April?” He turned back to his father. “You’ll take her to dinner a couple of times and then forget she exists.”

  “That’s bull,” Jack shot back. “And whose side are you on anyway?”

  Dean thought it over. “Hers.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Jack’s earring bobbled as he jerked his head toward the house. “Make yourself scarce, too. Your mother and I have a few things to settle.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dean snatched a water bottle and disappeared. He wanted to be by himself anyway.

  Jack grabbed April by the arm and hauled her inside the barn where they could have a little privacy. He was burning up, and not just from the midday heat. He was burning up from guilt, from fear, from lust, and from hope. The dusty barn still held the faint scent of hay and manure. He backed April against a stall.

  “Don’t you ever again say that all I want from you is sex. Do you hear me?” He gave her a little shake. “I love you. How could I not love you? We’re almost the same person. I want a future with you. And I think you should have let me figure that out on my own without trying to convince our son I’m a sleaze.”

  April couldn’t be intimidated. “Exactly when did you realize you loved me?”

  “Right away.” He saw the skepticism in her eyes. “Maybe not the first night. Maybe not exactly right away.”

  “How about yesterday?”

  He wanted to lie, but he couldn’t. “My heart knew it, but my head hadn’t completely sorted it out.” He brushed her cheek with his knuckles. “You were braver than me. The moment you said those words out there, it was like this big egg cracked open and I could finally see what was inside.”

  “Which was…?”

  “A heart filled with love for you. My sweet April.”

  His voice choked with emotion, but she was tough, and she looked him straight in the eye. “Tell me more.”

  “I’ll write you a song.”

  “You’ve already done that. Who could forget your memorable lyric about ‘blond beauty in a body bag’?”

  He smiled and let a lock of her hair slip through his fingers. “This time I’ll write you a nice song. I love you, April. You’ve given me back my daughter and my son. Until these past few months, I’ve been living in a world where all the colors had run together until they were muddy, but when I saw you, everything started to glow. You’re a magical, unexpected gift, and I don’t think I could survive if that gift disappeared.”

  He waited for her to give him more trouble. Instead, a smile gradually tugged at the corners of her soft mouth, and her hands dropped to the waistband of her shorts. “Okay. I’ll put out. Take off your clothes.”

  He gave a hoot of laughter and pulled her deeper into the barn. They found a mangy old blanket and stripped off their sweaty, paint-spattered clothes. Their bodies had lost the tautness of youth, but her softer contours pleased him, and she drank him in as if he were still twenty-three.

  He couldn’t disappoint her. He lay her back on the blanket where they kissed for an eternity. He explored her curves and recesses while the blades of light filtering through the barn’s slats fell in thin golden ropes over their bodies like bondage cords.

  When they could no longer tolerate the torment, he lowered himself gently upon her. She opened her legs. Let him in. She was wet, tight. The hard floor tested their bodies—tomorrow they’d pay—but, for now, neither of them cared. He began to move. This was missionary love. Straightforward, love inspired, pure. Without the randiness of youth, they had time to gaze into each other’s unshielded eyes. Time to speak wordless messages and make unspoken pledges. They moved together. Rocked together. Surged. And, when it was over, they rejoiced in the miracle that had happened to them.

  “You made me feel like a virgin,” she said.

  “You made me feel like a superhero,” he said.

  Enfolded by earthy smells of sex and dust, of sweat and long-forgotten farm animals, they held each other. Their joints ached from the hard floor. Their hearts sang. Her beautiful long hair skimmed his body as she eased herself onto her elbow and kissed his chest. He stroked the beads of her spine. “What are we going to do now, my love?”

  She smiled up at him through the golden web of her hair. “One day at a time, my love. We’re going to take it one day at a time.”

  Being incarcerated wasn’t quite the nightmare Blue had imagined. “I like the sunflowers,” Deputy Carl Dawks said, rubbing his short afro. “And the dragonflies are real pretty.”

  Blue wiped off her brush and went to the end of the hallway to check the proportions on the wings. “I like painting bugs. I’m going to add a spider, too.”

  “I don’t know. People are funny about spiders.”

  “They’ll like this one. The cobweb will look as if it’s made out of sequins.”

  “You sure do have some ideas, Blue.” Carl studied the mural from a new angle. “Chief Wesley thinks you should paint a skull and crossbones in the lobby as a warning to obey the law, but I told him you didn’t paint that kind of stuff.”

  “You told him right.” Her stay in jail had been oddly peaceful, as long as she didn’t let herself think about Dean. Now that she’d started painting what she wanted, ideas were flooding her brain so fas
t she couldn’t keep up with them.

  Carl wandered out into the office. It was Thursday morning. She’d been arrested on Sunday, and she’d worked on the mural in the jail’s hallway since Monday afternoon. She’d also made lasagna for the staff in the community kitchen and answered the phone for a couple of hours yesterday when Lorraine, the clerk, had picked up a bladder infection. So far April and Syl had visited, along with Penny Winters, Gary the hairdresser, Monica the real estate agent, and Jason, the bartender at the Barn Grill. All of them were sympathetic, but except for April, no one was anxious for her to get out of jail until Nita had signed the final papers agreeing to the town improvement project. That was the bargaining chip Nita had played to trigger Blue’s arrest. Blue was furious with her…and touched beyond words.

  The person who hadn’t visited was Dean. He’d warned her that he wouldn’t come after her, and he wasn’t a man for idle threats.

  Chief Wesley stuck his head into the hallway. “Blue, I just got word Lamont Daily is stoppin’ by for a cup of coffee.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The county sheriff.”

  “Gotcha.” She put down her brush, wiped her hands, and went back to her unlocked cell. She was currently the jail’s only prisoner, although Ronnie Archer had been here for a couple of hours after Carl had picked him up for driving with a suspended license. Karen Ann had bailed out her lover, unlike Dean. But then Carl’s bail was only two hundred dollars.

  Her jail cell had proven to be a good place to think about her life and sort through the rubbish that was shackling her. Syl had sent over an easy chair and a brass floor lamp. Monica had brought a couple of books and some magazines. The Bishops, the couple who would now be able to turn their Victorian house into a bed-and-breakfast, had provided her with decent bed linens and fluffy towels. But Blue couldn’t enjoy any of it. Tomorrow, Dean left for training camp. It was time for a jail break.

  A perfect fingernail moon shone down from the midnight sky onto the dark farmhouse. Blue parked by the barn, which had a fresh coat of white paint, and headed for the side door, only to discover it was locked. So was the front. A creeping sense of dread trickled through her. What if Dean had already left? But when she reached the backyard, she heard a porch glider squeak, and she could make out a broad-shouldered shape sitting there. The screen door was unlatched. She stepped inside. The clink of ice cubes drifted her way. He saw her but he didn’t say a word.