Heaven, Texas

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  The sack containing the box of condoms bumped against her hip, and she remembered her vow not to ignore Bobby Tom’s faults just because she’d fallen in love with him. With a sigh of resignation, she knew she had to take action. Even though he was officially her boss and the man who made her heart race, he needed a reminder that he couldn’t run roughshod over her without accepting the consequences.

  “Four clubs.”

  “Pass.”

  “Pass.”

  Nancy Kopek gave her bridge partner a sigh of exasperation. “That was Gerber, Suzy. I was asking you for aces. You shouldn’t have passed.”

  Suzy Denton smiled apologetically at her partner. “I’m sorry; I lost my concentration.” Instead of her bridge game, she had been thinking about what had happened in the drugstore several hours earlier. Gracie seemed to be preparing herself to make love with her son and because she liked her very much, she didn’t want to see her hurt. Nancy nodded good-naturedly at the two other women sitting around the table. “Suzy’s distracted because Bobby Tom’s home. She hasn’t been herself all afternoon.”

  Toni Samuels leaned forward. “I saw him at the DQ last night, but I didn’t get a chance to mention my niece to him. I know he’ll be crazy about her.”

  Toni’s partner, Maureen, frowned and led the six of spades. “My Kathy is a lot more his type than your niece, don’t you think so, Suzy?”

  “Let me freshen everybody’s drinks.” Suzy laid down her hand, glad she was the dummy so she could escape for a few minutes. Normally, she enjoyed her Thursday afternoon bridge game, but today she wasn’t up to it.

  When she reached the kitchen, she set the glasses on the counter and walked over to the bay window instead of going to the refrigerator. As she stared out at the bird feeder that hung from a magnolia next to the patio, she unconsciously pressed her fingertips to her hip and felt the small flesh-colored patch that supplied her body with the estrogen it could no longer produce on its own. She blinked her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. How could she be old enough for menopause? It seemed as if only a few years had passed since that hot summer day she’d married Hoyt Denton.

  An all-encompassing wave of despair settled over her. She missed him so much. He had been her husband, her lover, her best friend. She missed the clean soapy smell of him after he got out of the shower. She missed the solid feel of his arms wrapped around her, the love words he’d whisper when he drew her down on the bed, his laughter, his corny jokes and awful puns. As she gazed out at the empty bird feeder, she folded her arms across her chest and squeezed, trying for a moment to imagine that he was holding her.

  He’d just turned fifty the day before his car had been broad-sided by a semi during a terrible storm. After the funeral her desperate grief had combined with a stomach-gnawing anger at him for leaving her alone and putting an end to the marriage that had been the foundation of her life. It had been a horrible time, and she didn’t know how she would have survived it without Bobby Tom.

  He had taken her to Paris after the funeral, and they’d spent a month exploring the city, driving through French villages, touring châteaux and cathedrals. They’d laughed together, cried together, and, through her pain, she’d been filled with a humble gratitude that two scared youngsters had managed to produce such a son. She knew she’d begun to rely on him too much lately, but she was afraid if she stopped, he’d slip away from her, too.

  She’d been so certain when he was born that he would be the first of several children she would bear, but there hadn’t been any more, and sometimes she ached to have him small again. She wanted to hold him in her lap, to stroke his hair, bandage his bruises, and smell that sweaty, little boy smell. But her son had been a man for a long time now, and those days of dabbing mosquito bites with calamine lotion and healing hurts with kisses were gone forever.

  If only Hoyt were still alive.

  I miss you so much, my darling. Why did you have to leave me behind?

  By six o’clock, shooting had finished for the day. As Bobby Tom walked away from the corral, he was hot, tired, dirty, and irritable. He’d been eating dust all afternoon, and the schedule called for more of the same tomorrow. As far as he was concerned, this Jed Slade character was about the stupidest excuse for a human being he’d ever seen. Bobby Tom didn’t consider himself an expert on horses, but he knew enough about them to be absolutely certain that no self-respecting rancher, whether he was a drunk or not, would try to break a horse while he was half dressed.

  Throughout the course of the day, Bobby Tom’s irritation over his artificially oiled and dirt-smeared chest and his unzipped jeans had flared into righteous indignation. They were treating him like a sex object! It was damned demeaning, that’s what it was, being reduced to a set of oily pecs and a tight ass. Shit. A dozen years in the NFL, and this was what it had all come down to. Pecs and ass.

  He stormed toward his motor home, the heels of his boots churning up puffs of dust. He intended to take a quick shower, head for home, and lock the door for a while before he went to visit Suzy. He hoped to hell Gracie hadn’t run off because he was looking forward to taking out his bad mood on her. He pulled the door of the motor home open and stepped inside only to come to an abrupt halt as he saw that the interior was filled with women.

  “Bobby Tom!”

  “Hey, there, Bobby Tom!”

  “Hi, cowboy!”

  Six of them were scampering around like cockroaches, setting out homemade casseroles, cutting pies, and pulling beer from the refrigerator. One of them was an old acquaintance, three others he remembered having met that day on the set, two of them he didn’t recognize at all. And every bit of the activity was being directed by the seventh woman, an evil witch in a black-and-brown-striped dress that looked like a raccoon tail, who gave him a gloating smile as she stood in the middle of the commotion and handed out orders.

  “Shelley, that casserole looks delicious; I’m sure Bobby Tom is going to enjoy every bite. Marsha, I don’t remember ever seeing such a beautiful pie. How thoughtful of you to bake it. You did a wonderful job on the floor, Laurie. I know Bobby Tom appreciates it. He’s very particular about his linoleum, aren’t you, Bobby Tom?”

  She gazed at him with the serenity of a madonna, but her clear gray eyes glittered with triumph. She knew damn well that a gaggle of matrimonially inclined females was the last thing he wanted to face right now, but instead of getting rid of them, she had encouraged them to hang around! He finally understood Gracie’s function in his life. She was God’s joke on him.

  A woman with big hair and a stretchy top handed him a can of beer. “I’m Mary Louise Finster, Bobby Tom. Ed Randolph’s nephew’s wife is my first cousin. Ed told me I should stop in and say hello.”

  He took the beer and smiled automatically, even though his cheeks ached from the effort. “It sure is nice to meet you, Mary Louise. How’s Ed doing these days?”

  “Why, just fine, thank you for asking.” She turned to the woman at her side. “And this is my best friend, Marsha Watts. She used to go out with Riley Carter’s brother Phil.”

  One by one the women pressed themselves forward. He dispensed courtesies and flattery like Pez candy, while his head ached and his skin itched from dirt and baby oil. There was enough perfume in the air to poke a brand-new hole in the ozone layer and he fought the urge to sneeze.

  The door opened behind him, slapping him in the butt. He automatically stepped aside, an action that unfortunately permitted another woman to push her way in.

  “You remember me, don’t you, Bobby Tom? I’m Colleen Baxter, used to be Timms before I was married; but I’m divorced now from that cheatin’ sonovabitch used to work at Ames Body Shop. Me and you went to high school together, but I was two years behind you.”

  He smiled at Colleen through the angry red haze swirling in front of his eyes. “You’ve gotten so beautiful, sweetheart, I hardly recognized you. Not that you weren’t a pretty little thing back then.”

  Her high-pitched
giggle set his teeth on edge, and he saw a lipstick smudge on one of her incisors. “You’re too much, Bobby Tom.”

  She batted playfully at his arm, then turned to Gracie and passed over a plastic grocery sack from the IGA. “I got that Neapolitan ice cream you told me Bobby Tom just loves, but you’d better put it in the freezer right away. The air-conditioning in my car’s broke, and it’s gettin’ real soft.”

  Bobby Tom hated Neapolitan ice cream. Like most of life’s compromises, it just wasn’t satisfying.

  “Thank you, Colleen.” As Gracie pulled the carton from the IGA sack, her Sunday-School-teacher smile was in sharp contrast to the devil-lights flashing in her gray eyes. “Wasn’t that sweet of Colleen to drive all the way back into town, Bobby Tom, just so you could have some ice cream?”

  “Real sweet.” While he spoke evenly, the look he gave her carried such clear promise of evil intention that he was half-surprised he didn’t incinerate her right there on the spot.

  Colleen tried to get a grip on his arm, but her hand kept sliding around in the baby oil, rubbing the grit deeper into his skin. “I’ve been studying up on football, Bobby Tom. I’m hoping I get a chance to take the quiz before you leave Telarosa.”

  “I’ve been studyin’, too,” her friend Marsha piped in. “The library’s entire collection of football books was picked clean the minute word got around that you were comin’ back.”

  He’d reached the end of his patience, and with a sigh of pure regret, he placed a hand on each woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to do this to you, ladies, but truth is, Gracie passed the quiz just last night and consented to be Mrs. Bobby Tom.”

  A deep silence fell over the trailer. Gracie froze in place, the half gallon of Neapolitan ice cream beginning to drip in her hands.

  The women’s eyes flew back and forth between the two of them, and Colleen’s mouth flopped like a guppy’s. “Gracie?”

  “That Gracie?” Mary Louise said, her eyes cataloging every one of Gracie’s fashion and grooming mistakes.

  Bobby Tom gave his intended the best facsimile of a tender smile he could manage to bestow on someone he planned to murder in cold blood. “This sweet lady right here.” He squeezed through the Reba McEntire hairdos to get to her side. “I told you we weren’t going to be able to keep it a secret for long, darlin’.”

  Slipping his arm around her shoulders, he hauled her against his bare chest where he did his best to smear dirt and baby oil all over the side of her face. “I’m tellin’ you, ladies, Gracie knows more Super Bowl history than any woman I ever met. Lordy, but she is pure magic when it comes to quoting postseason game records. The way you called out those passing percentages last night, sweetheart, just ’bout brought tears to my eyes.”

  She was making funny little strangling sounds against his chest, and he squeezed her tighter. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Passing Gracie off as his fiancée was the perfect way to buy himself some peace and quiet during his stay in Telarosa.

  He shifted her across his body so he could smear up the other side of her face, then sucked in his breath as a frigid half gallon of Neapolitan hit him square in the stomach.

  Mary Louise Finster looked as if she’d swallowed a chicken bone. “But, Bobby Tom, Gracie isn’t— She’s real nice and all, but she isn’t exactly—”

  He inhaled sharply against the cold and dug his fingers into the hair on the back of Gracie’s head where nobody could see. “Shoot, are you talkin’ ’bout the way Gracie looks right now? She just dresses like this sometimes ’cause I ask her to. Otherwise, she gets too much attention from men, isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

  Her response was lost against his chest as she tried to ram the carton into his side. He tightened his grip on her hair and jiggled her head up and down while he smiled to beat the band. “Some of those boys on the crew look sort of wild, and I’m afraid they might get too worked up around her.”

  Just as he’d hoped, the announcement of his engagement took away the girls’ party spirit. Doing his best to ignore the leaking ice cream, he kept Gracie close to his side while he said good-bye to his visitors. When the trailer door finally shut behind the last of them, he released her and looked down.

  Dirt and oil smeared her face and most of the front of her raccoon tail dress, while melting ice cream sloshed out from under the lid of the squashed container and ran in muddy chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla trickles over her fingers.

  He waited for an outburst of indignation, but instead of exhibiting anger, her eyes narrowed with determination. Just as he remembered that Gracie hardly ever reacted in a predictable fashion, her hand shot out and she grabbed the V-shaped opening at the top of his jeans. Before he could react, she had dumped melting ice cream down the front of his pants.

  He yowled and leaped straight up in the air.

  She dropped the carton to the floor with a splat and crossed her arms over her chest. “That,” she said, “is for making me buy condoms in front of your mother!”

  It was hard to yell, hop up and down, cuss, and laugh at the same time, but Bobby Tom somehow managed it.

  While he suffered, Gracie stood in a spreading pool of melting Neapolitan and watched. Fairness compelled her to admire his attitude. He had been wrong to bait her, she had retaliated, and, with the exception of an excess of vulgar language, he was being a remarkably good sport about it.

  At that precise moment, Gracie saw his hand move to his zipper and knew she had allowed herself to relax too soon. She took an instinctive step away from him only to feel her heel catch on the ice cream carton. The next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back looking up at him.

  “Well, now, what do we have here?” A diabolical gleam sparkled in his eyes as he gazed down at her, one hand still on his zipper, the other on his hip. Cold slapped the bare backs of her thighs where her skirt had ridden up. She planted the heels of her hands on the linoleum so she could scramble to her feet only to have Bobby Tom drop down on his knees next to her.

  “Not so fast, sweetheart.”

  She regarded him warily while she tried to scoot away. “I don’t know what you’ve got on your mind, but whatever it is, forget it right now.”

  One corner of his mouth curled malevolently. “Oh, it’ll take me a long time to forget something like that.”

  She gave a hiss of alarm as his gooey hands settled on her shoulders and he flipped her over onto her stomach. Her cheek squished into a mound of melting vanilla and she yelped. Before she could scramble back up, something that felt very much like his knee settled into the small of her back.

  “What are you doing?” she cried as she found herself pinned to the linoleum.

  He began working at the hook above her zipper. “Now, don’t you worry ’bout a thing, honey. I’ve been undressing women longer than I can remember, and it won’t take me but a few seconds to get this dress right off you.”

  When she’d imagined storing up memories, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind. “I don’t want you to take my dress off!”

  “’Course you do.” The hook gave. “Stripes are a funny thing. Unless you’re planning to officiate at a football game, I’d suggest you avoid ’em in the future.”

  “I don’t need a fashion lecture from— Oh! Leave that zipper alone! Stop that!” He peeled the back of her dress open, lifted his knee, and, ignoring her squeals of protest, began pulling it down over her hips.

  “Steady now, sweetheart. Dang, you do have some nice underwear.” In one motion, he removed the dress and flipped her onto her back, but he gazed at her white lace demibra and bikini underpants a moment too long.

  Her hand closed around a clump of semisolid chocolate, and she flung it at him.

  He gave a startled yelp as it hit him in the jaw, then he lunged for the carton. “That’s going to be a fifteen-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness.”

  “Bobby Tom . . .” She screeched as he scooped out a big messy glob, dropped it on her stomach, and began rubbing it over her
skin with the palm of his hand. Gasping against the cold, she struggled to get away.

  He grinned down at her. “Say ‘Forgive me, Bobby Tom, sir, for causin’ you all this trouble, and I promise I’ll do every single thing you tell me from now on. Amen.’ ”

  She repeated one of his favorite rude words instead, and he laughed, giving her a golden opportunity to catch him in the chest with some strawberry.

  From then on, it was a free-for-all. Bobby Tom had the advantage since he still wore his jeans and had better traction on the slippery linoleum than she did. He was also a well-conditioned athlete who knew far too many dirty tricks for someone who had once been named Sportsman of the Year. On the other hand, he kept having funny lapses of attention when he was smearing various parts of her with ice cream, and she took advantage of each one of them to plaster him with everything she could grab. She was yelping, laughing, and imploring him to stop all at the same time, but he had much more endurance than she, and it wasn’t long before she ran out of steam.

  “Stop! No more!” She fell back to the floor. Her breasts strained against the lacy bra cups as her chest heaved from exertion.

  “Say ‘Pretty please.’ ”

  “Pretty please.” She gulped for air. She had ice cream everywhere, in her hair, her mouth, all over her body. Her once white underwear was streaked with muddy pink and brown. Not that he looked much better. She was especially pleased with the amount of strawberry she’d been able to work into his hair.

  And then her mouth went dry as her eyes slid over his chest to the arrow-straight line of golden brown hair that traveled from above his navel down into the open V of his jeans. She stared at the large bulge that had grown there. Had she done that to him? Her eyes flew to his.

  He regarded her with lazy amusement. For a moment neither of them moved, and then he spoke in a husky voice. “Pretty please with ice cream on top of it.”

  She shuddered, not from the cold but from a coil of heat spreading through her. The excitement of the struggle had camouflaged her body’s violent reaction to the bombardment of sensations it was receiving. She was suddenly conscious of the contrast between the frigid ice cream and the blistering heat of her skin. She felt the rough scrape of denim against her thigh, the slipperiness of the oil between her fingers, the faint abrasion caused by the dirt that had been smeared on his chest and now covered her as well.