by Ramsay, Hope
“Is he alive?” Molly yelled through the door.
“Uh, yeah,” the voice said. “But he’s kind of passed out.”
“Oh, good,” Molly muttered. “That means I can kill him when he wakes up.” She turned away from the door, picked up her laundry, and headed toward the laundry room.
Where she discovered destruction that only a group of drunken fools could unleash. The room reeked of beer. There were empty bottles and cans everywhere. But that was nothing compared with what those boys had done to Momma’s state-of-the-art, front-loading LG washing machine—the one Coach had given Momma for their anniversary a month ago. The one that had disappointed Momma because she had expected two tickets to someplace exotic.
The sleek, stainless-steel machine had been disconnected from the water and pulled out from the wall. It looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it. The control panel had popped off and hung upside down by a few wires. The stainless veneer on the washer’s top had come off and lay bent on the laundry room floor. The door had been taken off its hinges and leaned against the far wall.
Molly peered into the machine’s basket.
Someone had thrown a sizable rock into it. No doubt the a-holes had turned the machine on with it tumbling inside.
She stood there not really knowing what to think or feel. She was so surprised and angry that she went numb, except for the little hole in the middle of her forehead where it felt like someone was jackhammering. Of course the boys had been drunk. And all of Allen’s friends were rednecks. They got into trouble on a regular basis.
But Momma’s washing machine? Really?
She coldly headed toward the front closet where she found Allen’s old aluminum baseball bat. She walked down the hall and vented all of her emotions on Allen’s doorknob.
Eventually the lock gave way. She stalked into the room, which smelled like old socks and sweaty sex. Her brother was just waking up. He squinted up at her.
“Hey, Molly, wazzup?”
“You murdered Momma’s washing machine.” She lifted her bat. The naked girl with red and purple hair, smudged eyeliner, and press-on purple fangs gave a little squeak and then slid from the bed onto the floor. She had some kind of weird tattoo all down her back that was not terribly attractive. She started gathering up random pieces of black leather clothing.
“Uh …” Allen winced. “You’re not going to actually use that bat, are you?”
Molly stood there trembling, her whole body on fire. What the hell was she going to tell Coach when he got back from his fishing trip? What the hell was she going to tell Momma?
Then it occurred to her that Momma might not be all that heartbroken to see the washer in little bits and pieces. And then she thought about how maybe Allen was just as upset about Momma being gone as she was. And maybe in some drunken rage, he’d taken all that anger out on the damn washing machine. Maybe Momma should have left him a book on meditation, too.
And then it occurred to her that no amount of meditation could make this situation any better. Besides, who had time for it? Especially since she now had a boatload of laundry and no washing machine.
She threw the bat at the wall. It hit the only window in Allen’s room and shattered it. Allen’s bed buddy squealed and headed for the hills.
“Hey, what did you do that for?”
“Because otherwise I might have broken your head. And that wouldn’t have made me feel any better. Did it make you feel better to destroy Momma’s washer?”
She didn’t wait to hear her brother’s explanations. She simply turned on her heel and left Allen’s bedroom just in time to see the girl head into the bathroom and slam the door.
She shouldn’t have broken Allen’s door. She shouldn’t have thrown the bat. She’d only contributed to the destruction that Allen had unleashed.
Molly went into her room and slammed the door behind her. She was not going to cry. Crying was for sissies. She was going to get herself dressed, without clean underwear, and she was going to go to the Wash-O-Rama next to the Knit & Stitch. She would dump the dirty clothes into the washer and then she’d go sit down quietly in the store and knit for an hour.
She picked up the book Momma had left her. Maybe she would actually try to read One Minute Meditations.
And maybe then she would stop feeling so angry.
Thirty minutes later, Molly found herself lugging laundry—both hers and Allen’s—from her Charger into the Last Chance Wash-O-Rama. She started dumping clothes into washers and then realized that she didn’t have any change for the machines.
She stood there gazing down at the five full machines, feeling angry and discouraged. She was so exhausted her head felt kind of spacey and her back hurt and her legs felt like lead.
She needed coffee. Bad.
She turned on her heel, leaving her clothes where they were, and headed toward the Kountry Kitchen, a few doors down the block.
It being Saturday morning, the place was busy. But today, T-Bone Carter, the proprietor and main short-order cook, appeared to be having his own very bad day. Floretta Kemp, his new waitress, looked harried, and orders were piling up in the pass-through between the kitchen and the dining room. Meanwhile Flo seemed utterly confused as to which order belonged to which customer.
Molly felt a twinge of guilt. She’d unleashed this chaos on T-Bone by hiring Ricki. Of course, Momma was responsible for this. It was a classic case of unintended consequences.
She stood just inside the door for a moment, watching the flustered waitress move from table to table. The usual Saturday crowd was there with one exception. Lark Chaikin and Simon Wolfe were sitting together in one of the front booths sipping coffee and looking surprisingly chummy for a couple of people who were total strangers.
She wanted to march up to Simon and give him a little piece of her mind. But that wouldn’t help her calm down, would it? And making a big spectacle of herself here in the Kitchen wouldn’t get her Shelby back either.
She headed toward the counter, where there were seats available. But she didn’t get very far before Lark called her by name.
“Molly,” she said, “I just found out you were thinking about buying the Coca-Cola building. I wish I had known that.”
It was a real good thing that Molly didn’t have Coach’s shotgun at that moment, because she probably would have aimed it at Simon Wolfe and pulled the trigger. It was bad enough that Momma had deserted her, and Allen had destroyed the washing machine, but Simon was the personification of every other bad thing that had recently happened in her life. He hadn’t done a thing to stop the bank from taking over Wolfe Ford, and now he was sitting there telling Lark Chaikin all about her own plans for the Coca-Cola building. Such as they were.
Damn him.
A true southern lady would smile at a moment like this and say something sweet and benign and completely bitchy. But Molly wasn’t good at that. She was good at telling the truth. “Well, it looks like I’m out of luck,” she said, “because Simon has leased the place, and even after his lease is up, Arlo told me that someone else has already made an offer to buy the place.”
She couldn’t help herself. She gave Simon the stink eye and turned away from them. She found a seat. She had to wait five minutes before Flo came over to take her order, and then another ten minutes before the coffee finally arrived.
In the meantime, she had nothing better to do than to eavesdrop on the conversation going on in the booth behind her.
And that’s when she discovered that it was Lark Chaikin who was planning to buy the building so she could create some kind of froufrou artists’ colony. Great, just what Last Chance needed—a bunch of hippies getting subsidies so they could live their bohemian lifestyles, make cheesy art, and sell it to tourists.
Last Chance was getting more citified every day of the week. And Molly wasn’t all that happy about it.
But she couldn’t stop it. Lark was on the Angel Development board of directors. And she was related to Tulane Rhod
es, the NASCAR driver whose wife, Sarah, was the mover and shaker behind the efforts to rebuild Palmetto Avenue’s business district. Lark had the inside track. And Simon Wolfe was exactly like one of those citified artist types that Lark wanted to attract.
Molly was sunk. Officially. She didn’t have the Shelby. Her best friend had lost his job. Her mother had flown the coop. Arlo was having a hard time finding acceptable garage space anywhere in Allenberg County. Her lawyer of choice had been hired by the enemy. And she didn’t even have any clean clothes.
Life could not get much worse.
Except that it did, the moment Ricki Wilson opened the door and cried, “Someone, come quick, Jane’s having her baby at the Knit & Stitch.”
Molly turned in time to see Ricki, wearing a short skirt in a leopard print, a really tight tank top, and a pair of high-heeled boots that had probably stayed in the back of her closet when she’d been a waitress. She was dancing from one high heel to another, and she was hyperventilating.
And so was the tiny, shivering dog in her arms.
“Oh God, Molly, you have to come. She’s screaming in pain.”
“Did you call nine-one-one, or Doc Cooper?”
Ricki just stood there dancing from foot to foot with a deer-in-the-headlights kind of expression.
“Jeez Louise. Ricki, go run down to the hardware store and tell Clay.”
Ricki crumbled. “I can’t do that,” she sobbed. Her yappy little dog started to bark in addition to shivering.
“I’ll do it,” Lark said, standing up and racing to the door.
Molly was not happy with Lark Chaikin, but she was Clay’s sister-in-law and had a reputation for being cool under fire.
Molly jumped up and headed out the door. She got five steps down the sidewalk before she realized Simon was following her.
“Are you some kind of ambulance chaser or something? I don’t think Jane needs some strange man with her right at this moment.”
He didn’t give her the benefit of a reply as they raced down the sidewalk to the Knit & Stitch. Molly pushed through the door and found Jane on the floor making funny, squeaky noises and breathing hard. The carpet underneath her was wet. Thank God it wasn’t bloody because Molly, as tough as she was, didn’t think she could deal with blood right at the moment, even if she hadn’t had her breakfast yet. She sure wasn’t ready to witness childbirth either. In fact, the whole childbirth thing gave her a serious case of the willies.
Before Molly could do or say anything, Simon was down on his knees beside Jane talking to her in a low, quiet, calm voice. He held her hand and touched her baby bump like he knew what he was doing.
Who the hell was this guy?
Jane’s body arched in a contraction. Simon lifted up her maternity dress and in one swift move had her panties off.
Clay, Jane’s husband, came rushing into the store and got down on his knees beside his wife. She was crying. She seemed to be really, really worried about something bad happening to the baby. But Clay was steady, like he always was.
And Simon … well, Simon had taken charge like he knew exactly what he was doing. He kept telling Jane to breathe, but Jane was too busy freaking out.
Molly backed away. This was beyond her. She reached for her cell phone, just as she heard the siren of an emergency vehicle. She put her cell phone back in her pocket and looked through the front windows where Ricky and her dog (since when did Ricki have a dog?) were pacing back and forth like they were the expectant father, except that Ricki was crying and her mascara was running down her cheeks. Clay’s baby being born right there in front of her was obviously causing Ricki a whole lot of psychic pain and heartache.
“I need a blanket or something,” Simon said, pulling Molly’s attention back to the issue at hand.
Molly grabbed the bright pink display blanket that Momma had knitted using Baby Ull yarn from Denmark. It was a sissy, lacy, girlie thing. Perfect for little Faith, who was about to make her debut.
She handed it to Simon and allowed herself to look at what was really happening. There was blood on the carpet now, and Jane wasn’t breathing hard. She was red-faced and pushing. And the top of the baby’s head was clearly visible.
Things happened incredibly fast after that. The baby started crying, hard and loud and kind of angry, before she was all the way born. Simon steadied the little one with his long-fingered hands as Jane gave one final push. The baby slid out, and Simon tipped the wet and slippery newborn over onto Jane’s tummy and covered it with the blanket. The baby was crying like it was the end of the world.
Clay was crying, too, but in an entirely alpha-man kind of way.
“He’s going to be fine. He’s big and pink and loud,” Simon said.
A moment later the afterbirth slipped out, making a big mess on Molly’s carpet. Simon let the blood drain out of the umbilical cord and then used a piece of superwash merino to tie it.
Jane raised her head. She had stopped freaking out. But she didn’t exactly look all that Madonna-like. “What do you mean, ‘he’?” she said, frowning.
Simon blinked. “It’s a boy. Were you expecting something else?”
Clay stopped crying. “It’s a boy?” He lifted the sissy pink blanket and checked. “Uh, how in the Sam Hill did the ultrasound technician miss that?”
“It’s a boy?” Jane asked.
“It’s a boy,” Clay responded.
“Oh, my God, Clay, we painted the nursery pink.”
CHAPTER
9
Simon stood at the small sink in the back room of the Knit & Stitch, washing his hands. He was surrounded by plastic bags stuffed with yarn. The place practically smelled like lanolin.
“So are you gonna tell me where you learned how to do that?” Molly stood in the doorway to the stockroom, her arms folded across her chest, obscuring the message on her T-shirt. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed.
Her hair was all tumbled and curly and vaguely uncombed. She had pulled it through the back of her ball cap, but that hardly kept it under control. Her T-shirt was slightly wrinkled, and her oversized sweatpants bagged around her hips and ankles.
She looked like a candidate for that reality makeover show Gillian used to watch all the time. Even so, there was something incredibly feminine about her. She looked utterly fetching standing there studying him with eyes that reminded him of the paint pigment called “ancient earth,” light brown with just a touch of tarnished copper green.
His fingers itched to touch her hair. He wanted to take her out into the sunlight and study its color. It was quite dark, but strands of burgundy and claret ran through it. She would be magnificent naked, her pale skin almost translucent except for a dusting of pale freckles.
“You going to answer my question or stand there looking shell-shocked? Because I’ll tell you something, I am definitely shell-shocked. Childbirth gives me the heebie-jeebies. So I’m kind of blown away that you just walked right in and took charge. Where did you learn to do what you just did?”
“From Coach.”
Molly rolled her eyes like a teenager. It underscored the vast difference in their ages.
“What is it about ex-Rebels?” she asked. “You all worship at Coach’s knee. And I know he’s a take-charge kind of guy, but the thing is, Coach doesn’t know crap about delivering babies.”
“Oh, that.” He looked away. He didn’t like talking about this. It was like excavating ancient pieces of himself long buried.
“Yeah, that,” Molly said. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“I studied medicine in college. For almost six years.”
“You’re a doctor? I thought you were—”
“I’m not a doctor,” he interrupted. “I never finished my internship or residency. And that’s all there is to discuss.”
“But—”
He held up his still-damp hand. “Molly, I didn’t do anything. When a baby has decided it’s time to be born, sometimes all you have to do is play catch.”
She chuckled. “Now you’re sounding like Coach. He’d probably say you need a wide receiver with a good pair of hands.”
She glanced at his hands, and he had the sudden desire to hide them behind his back. Instead, he tore off a length of paper towel and dried them. “Yeah, well, as you may recall, I was not a wide receiver,” he said, dropping the damp towel into the trash can.
He checked his watch. Great. He was running late. Mother wouldn’t forgive him for being late. She had always told him that punctuality is the politeness of kings. He hadn’t really understood what she meant as a boy, but as a man, he’d learned. It was incredibly rude to waste other people’s time.
“I gotta go. I left Mother at Lillian Bray’s for the garden club meeting. But I need to pick her up before she starts to worry.”
He headed toward the front of the shop with Molly trailing after him. He got within three feet of the front door and realized he was in trouble. A surprisingly large group of females had gathered in the front of the shop. Their numbers were so large that they had spilled out onto the sidewalk. The minute he made his appearance, they started clapping.
Earlier this morning, he’d felt like a pariah in this town, blamed for things that he hadn’t done. Now they were applauding him for doing absolutely nothing but catching a baby. Jane had done the work this morning.
His face heated as he edged his way toward the door, checking his watch again. But he needn’t have bothered because the door swung open with a little jingle, and Mother came into the shop arm-in-arm with an ancient, white-haired lady wearing rhinestone-studded eyeglasses. The old lady had been at Tuesday’s Purly Girls meeting but he didn’t remember her name.
Mother stared at him, blinking, as if she were trying to place him in time and space. The old woman with her gave him a sober look out of a pair of sharp brown eyes.
“Simon,” the old woman said, “looks like you didn’t throw all that medical training out entirely.”
“Do I know you?” he asked.
She flashed her dentures. “I’m Miriam Randall. You remember me, don’t you?”