One-Click Buy: March 2009 Harlequin Blaze

by Alison Kent

  Trey wasn’t exactly comfortable with this conversation, but he had to stick it out to the end. “So my great-grandfather was a philanderer. I don’t remember all of my history lessons, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t against the law, even in nineteen thirty-nine.”

  “You’re right. Philanderers weren’t put behind bars, but they weren’t admired for their prowess or conquests, either. Not in decent society.”

  Trey braced his elbow against the truck’s padded door and looked off toward the Speedway’s arched entrance. First his great-grandfather was a philanderer. Now he wasn’t fit for decent society.

  If Jeb was trying to justify what he’d done by tearing apart a dead man’s reputation, he wasn’t getting far with Trey. “I guess now you’re going to tell me about the girls he got pregnant and abandoned. Or ones he was rumored to have raped.”

  Jeb shook his head. “Like I told you, I was only nine. I wouldn’t have heard those rumors. But when I came home from school one day and found him in my ma’s bed, with her grunting and groaning and screaming beneath him, I wanted him dead for the hurt he was causing her.”

  Trey turned his head toward the older man, unable to breathe, his skin prickling as he waited for Jeb to continue.

  “When you’re nine years old, you hear people talk about dying, about going to heaven or meeting your maker, about being in a better place with family members who passed on years before. But there’s nothing there that really makes you understand what dead means. It’s just a word, and all you know is that the dead person’s not around anymore.”

  Jeb shifted in the seat, sitting a little straighter, scooting closer to the door as if he didn’t want to lose that means of escape—even though Trey knew he hadn’t done anything to make Cardin’s grandfather feel threatened.

  More than likely, because of what he’d done, Jeb had felt threatened all of his life. “So you killed him. You caught him in bed with your mother and you killed him.”

  “I did,” Jeb admitted, giving a solemn shake of his head. “I ran out of the house to the porch and grabbed a two-by-four. There was a stack there. My pa had been repairing the railing. It was a short board, but long enough to swing. And I was known by the rest of the kids I played ball with as a slugger.”

  Bile rose in the back of Trey’s throat. He pulled his gaze from Jeb’s profile and stared out the window. As hard as this was to hear, he couldn’t imagine that it was easy to tell. But the thought of a nine year old boy swinging a two-by-four at a grown man…He swallowed hard, and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his upper lip.

  “I’m guessing they never heard me come in, just heard me running out. Emmett ran off the porch, tugging on his shirt, his pants flapping open. I reared back behind him and swung like I was aiming for the center field fence. He fell. I’m pretty sure he was already dead, but I ran down the steps and hit him again. And again.”

  “Where was your mother all this time?” Trey croaked out.

  “That was about when she came through the door screaming. I dropped the board and ran, hid out in the woods and waited, watching her. She sat down in all that dirt and blood and held the board in her lap, crying like I’ve never seen anybody cry before. I must’ve fallen asleep—I’d curled up inside a rotten log—because when I woke up, there was a whole passel of men hovering around. My ma was nowhere to be seen. And we never saw her again.”

  Trey couldn’t even imagine what Cardin’s great-grandmother had been thinking. “She just took off?”

  Jeb nodded. “In your great-granddad’s car. They did find it down toward Nashville a day or so later. And I’m guessing that’s when she told the reporter that story, likely while she was drinking. But she never got in touch with my dad again, and that was the last time that I saw her, sitting there in the dirt, petticoats soaking up the blood.”

  There was so much to ask, so much that Trey was lost. “You never told anyone that she’d been there, or what you’d done, and she never told anybody except that reporter what she saw.”

  “That’s pretty much how it happened.”

  “Did the police question you?”

  Jeb nodded again. “They did. I told them I’d been in the woods. I liked to play like I was Eliot Ness hunting down Al Capone. When I walked out from the trees and my pa looked over at me, I could tell by his eyes that he suspected what I’d done.”

  “But he didn’t say anything to the police, either.”

  “Nope. We never talked about it. Not a word.” Jeb turned his hat round and round on his knee. “To tell you the truth, I think there was a big part of him that was relieved. I didn’t work that out until I was older and got to thinking back on how he’d taken Emmett’s death and my mother’s disappearance. I’m pretty damn sure he suspected what was going on with the two of them. But seeing as how Emmett was his partner, he didn’t quite know what to do.”

  What the hell? “The man was screwing his wife and he didn’t know what to do?”

  “Things were different then, Whip. Sure, rights were right and wrongs were wrong, but folks turned a blind eye to a lot of situations and made do with the hand they’d been dealt.”

  “This is so wrong. So fucked up. I don’t even know what to say.” Though murder had no statute of limitations, Jeb had been a juvenile at the time of the crime. Now he was almost eighty years old. Trey could turn him in, let the law deal, and ruin a lot of lives. Or he could keep Jeb’s secret and try to live with himself.

  Jeb shifted, cocking one knee onto the seat. “I want to say one more thing to you. I’m not trying to plead my case, but this I want you to understand. I wanted Emmett dead for what he was doing to my ma, but I never meant to kill him. I thought he was hurting her. I thought I was protecting her. When I came out of those woods and found she was gone, that was when I first knew that I’d been wrong about what I’d seen.”

  Trey stared at the emblem in the center of his steering wheel. “Why didn’t you explain to anyone what had happened?”

  “Because I was the only thing my pa had left, and I feared by telling the truth, the law would take me away from him forever. It was my fault that my ma left us, and I didn’t want him to be alone.”

  Not wanting his father to be alone had been the very reason Trey had stayed in Dahlia until he was twenty. He didn’t want to empathize with the child Jeb Worth had been, but his own mother had walked out when he was twelve. She hadn’t been the one to cheat on her marriage; his father had. But all those feelings Jeb had been through? Trey recognized each one and knew them well. The fact that he did made it even harder to know the right thing to do.

  He leaned his head back, and rubbed at his closed eyes, feeling emotionally battered, as if he was the one who had suffered the loss of a child’s innocence. He didn’t look up again until Jeb opened the door.

  The older man’s expression was solemn. “I figure I’ve given you enough to chew on for awhile. I won’t hold it against you, no matter what you do with the information. I only ask that you let me know first. Give me time to get my things in order.”

  Trey’s gut was in knots. He wasn’t in any kind of mood to suit up and take White Lightning down the track, but knew work would go a long way to helping him put the things he’d just learned into perspective.

  Because until he did that, until he had a solid handle on the big picture of Jeb killing his great-grandfather seventy years ago, he wouldn’t know which course of action would be the best to take.

  21

  CARDIN WAS HALFWAY TO WORK when she drove past Pammy’s Petals. Giving in to an irresistible urge, she U-turned in the middle of the road and pulled into the parking lot, sitting behind the wheel of Jeb’s truck and staring at the bakery’s two front windows where lacy curtains framed the words Pammy’s and Petals on either side of the door.

  The display counter beneath “Pammy’s” showed off her namesake flower-frosted cupcakes, along with brownies, cookies and the pastries that brought so many customers by first thing every day.<
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  In the right of the cabinet beneath “Petals” were kids’ birthday cakes—ones decorated to look like baseball caps, mermaid tails, fire engines and fairies, while the left side was devoted to Pammy’s specialty. Weddings.

  There was a two-tiered chocolate groom’s cake topped with a ball and chain of dark fudge. There were tiny bite-size cupcakes frosted to look like bridal gifts, with molded strips of sparkly sugar draped across them like bows.

  And taking up the corner as if on stage was the cake that made Cardin want to cry.

  She was being silly. Ridiculously emotional. What she was looking at was nothing but artfully crafted cardboard and paste. But oh, the swirls and ribbons and swoops of icing and ganache would make any princess dissolve into tears.

  How was a girl from small town Tennessee not supposed to?

  For a moment, she hesitated going inside. It was stupid to be looking at wedding cakes when she and Trey had only just made their engagement official; for all she knew, he might want a quick civil ceremony on his way back to joining the Corley team.

  But in the end, she couldn’t resist, telling herself it had been too long since she’d seen Pammy. Too long since she’d had one of the cupcakes customers came from far and wide to enjoy. She climbed down from the truck, smoothing back her ponytail before pushing open the door and walking inside.

  The chime was still playing Disney’s “It’s a Small World After All” when Pammy came out of the back. Her big green eyes went wide, and her bow of a mouth formed a huge round O as she screamed. “Oh, my God! Cardin! You’re going to marry Trey Davis!”

  Cardin smiled back as Pammy ran from behind the counter and wrapped her in a hug, rocking her back and forth until they were both laughing and sobbing and howling like mad girl hyenas.

  Pammy was the first to pull back, holding on to Cardin’s hands. “Do you remember in high school how we walked down all the halls where his classes were? Even though ours were across campus? He probably thought we were stalking him.”

  Giving Pammy’s hands a squeeze before letting go, Cardin ran both index fingers beneath her eyes to clear away what makeup had smeared. It tickled her to think she and Trey had just talked about the very same thing. “I don’t think we were the only ones. I think every girl in school stalked Trey.”

  “Yeah.” Sighing dreamily, Pammy reached up to settle the daisy hat that had slipped from the top of her head. “Especially Kim Halton. I was so glad she never came back to Dahlia. I heard she got pregnant her sophomore year at UT.”

  Her friend’s sources about the goings-on at the University of Tennessee—and with Kim Halton—were better than Cardin’s. She hadn’t heard anything at all. “If I had missed her, I might have realized that she never came back.”

  Pammy’s laugh came out like a snort, and she quickly covered her mouth, her cheeks coloring as if she were embarrassed to be so crass. “I’m going to get us some coffee. Or do you want a soda?”

  “I want a cupcake,” Cardin said.

  “A cupcake coming right up.” Pammy turned away, all five-foot-two of her flouncing.

  Cardin settled in a chair at one of the two café-style tables along the wall, and Pammy rejoined her moments later. The cupcake she set down had been centered on a China saucer, frosted in a glittery white icing and topped with what looked like a wedding corsage.

  Great. Cardin felt herself choking up again. Was this how it was going to be until she said her “I Do’s?” “I don’t know if I can eat this. It’s too gorgeous.”

  “Eat it.” Pammy pushed the plate closer. “There’s more where that came from. I promise the cake will be the lightest you’ve ever tasted in your life, and the scrumptious lemon mousse inside is to die for.”

  Cardin picked up her fork. “Who knew cupcakes would be all the rage?”

  “It’s having your cake and being able to eat it, too. You know. Kinda like marrying Trey Davis,” Pammy said, cradling her coffee mug in both hands and waggling her brows as she brought it to her mouth to sip.

  “It doesn’t seem real, you know.” Cardin cut into the cupcake with the side of her fork, the zing of lemon zest tingling her nose. “I keep waiting for someone to pinch me and wake me up.”

  “Why wouldn’t it seem real?” Pammy returned her mug to the table, her expression searching. “You’ve been with him for what? Almost a year? It’s about time you make it permanent, and really, I should smack you for keeping the relationship a secret to begin with.”

  Nice, Cardin. Way to almost screw up. She quickly recovered and came up with a plausible story. “Being with him in person makes it seem like the time apart was a dream, and it’s only just now real. But you’re right. I deserve to be smacked.”

  And she expected Pammy to do just that, but the other woman had grown pensive, frowning, staring down into her mug as she twisted it where it sat on the glass-topped table. “You’ll go with him when he goes back on the road, won’t you? You won’t stay here?”

  Cardin thought back to the conversation she and Trey had had with her parents, about where they would live, how they would live. Now that all of those things were real considerations, she was absolutely certain about only one. “I won’t stay here unless he’s here with me.”

  Sighing, Pammy sat back, pulling off her daisy and holding her mob of dark red curls away from her face with both hands. “You know, I never meant to make Dahlia my home forever. But then Kevin left me, and I had Boyd to take care of, and very little money for the two of us to live on.”

  Cardin knew how hard things had been for her friend after the divorce, and kicked herself for not staying in touch. “I haven’t seen Boyd in so long. He’s, what? Three now?”

  Pammy nodded. “Three, and fortunately he neither looks nor acts anything like his father. That little guy’s the reason I decided to make my mark right here. I knew I couldn’t haul him around while I figured out what to do and where to do it. He deserves a better life than that.”

  “Well, your mark is amazing. You are amazing, and Boyd’s going to grow up to be just the same.” Pressing the back of her fork into what crumbs were left on her plate, Cardin licked them away. “Pammy, seriously, that was the best cupcake I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to let me do your wedding cake? I can already see a groom’s cake in the shape of a dragster.” Pammy’s eyes widened. “Or better yet, a pair of headlights.”

  Cardin laughed. “Yeah, Trey would love that. A cake that looked like boobs.”

  “Speaking of boobs, Trey’s still good friends with Tater Rawls, right?”

  Cardin didn’t know if Pammy was calling Tater a boob, or labeling him as another man who liked them. Unless, like everyone else, she thought he was a boob for dating Sandy Larabie. “They’ve been best friends since they were kids, why?”

  “Does he know, or maybe you would know since you work with her, if this thing between Tater and Sandy is for real?”

  There could be only one reason Pammy wanted to know. “If you’re asking because you’ve got a thing for Tater, then it wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit if you made a move. He deserves better than Sandy Larabie.”

  “I think so, too. But I’m not a homewrecker. Even if what they have is casual, I’m not going to break it up.”

  Cardin’s decision then was spur of the moment, but it seemed so right she didn’t question it even once. She and Pammy had been friends forever, and she knew Trey would ask Tater to be his best man.

  She reached across the table, and took Pammy’s hands in hers. “Pammy, I would love it if you would be my maid of honor.”

  Pammy squealed. “Oh, my God, are you kidding me? I would die to be your maid of honor. I’m so honored that you would ask.”

  “Why wouldn’t I ask? There’s no one I would rather have witness my marriage to Trey, though,” Cardin had to tell her, “it may be no more than standing beside me in front of a judge. We haven’t even discussed when, where, how big of a wedding.”

&n
bsp; “But you’re still going to let me do your cake,” Pammy said, shaking her head at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour.

  “Of course I’m going to let you do my cake. I’m tempted to ask you to come live with me and be my personal chef.”

  Pammy laughed. “I only do baked goods. You’d be a blimp in no time. An undernourished one at that.”

  “Probably not a good idea then, since I might be living in a motor home with a very narrow bed. I’d hate for Trey to have to sleep on the floor.”

  “I don’t know. If there’s no room beside you, Trey might have to sleep on top of you all the time. And how could that be a bad thing?” The two women giggled like fools until Pammy sat back and sighed. “I wish I had someone to sleep on top of me every night. Or even once a week, I’m not greedy.”

  That was it. Cardin was going to play matchmaker and see that her friend got a chance to show Winston Tate Rawls what he was missing. “You know what we should do? Go to Beverly’s Closet and see what Beverly knows about what’s hot in wedding dresses. I swear, her ear is pressed harder to the ground than my grandpa’s. I’ll bet she’ll have the scoop on Sandy and Tater.”

  Pammy scrunched up her freckled nose. “Ooh, I like the way your devious mind works.”

  Little did the other woman know how Cardin’s devious mind had gotten her into trouble. “I need to get something to wear to the engagement party my grandpa’s throwing us, anyway.”

  “Is this some kind of private party? Because your maid of honor has not heard about it.”

  “I only heard about it today. Jeb told Trey that as long as everyone’s going to be at Headlights to celebrate the winner of the Moonshine Run, we might as well make it an engagement party.”

  “Tater will be there, right? Though I guess Sandy will, too.”

  “Don’t worry about Sandy. We’ll get Beverly to fix both of us up.”