Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2)

by Willow, Jevenna

  Roundabout Road

  By Jevenna Willow

  Saving the Sinners of Preacher’s Bend

  Book 2

  Roundabout Road

  Copyright © June 2014 Print

  Ebook copyright Sept 2015

  J. Yost

  All work in this book is made up in the mind of the author. No names, dates, or places are real, and only in the imagination of its creator. I thank you for respecting my work.

  Pirating author’s work is a crime, punishable by law. Years of dedication go into each of my books, and to respect the author is to respect the author’s copyrighted words.

  If you did not make a monetary purchase for this copy, please do so, reporting the violation of any free downloading sights as pirating. Thank You.

  Cover art by Linda Kage

  Roundabout

  Road

  Saving the Sinners of Preacher’s Bend

  Book 2

  Jevenna Willow

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank those who helped along the way,

  those who gave great advice, and all the wonderful authors

  I’ve had the privilege to work with, and who are just as dedicated to the craft of storytelling as I am.…

  Thank you, for all the pushes, slaps side the head for me to keep at this, no matter what...

  If not for others caring about the achievement of fellow authors, this would not have happened.

  Chapter One

  Lidia Humphrey-Giotti. Her friends just called her Liddy.

  She’d wanted folks to remember this name, but not in the context or duration for which they had. So, when fate screwed with Ms. Humphrey-Giotti, she screwed right back just to make things a bit more even.

  Now, all she had to do was locate the whereabouts of one really lousy, lowlife, useless piece of trash named Jake Giotti and she could fix an entire town’s selective memory defect. And Jake, bless his soul, was still living in Preacher’s Bend exactly where she’d left him ten years prior, so it should be fairly easy to find him.

  On a dire technicality the man was still her husband, however.

  Finding Jake wasn’t going to be pleasant. Liddy was prepared for any unpleasantness. She could probably alter fate’s screw job, locating his sorry ass, but Jake doing what was expected of him? Hell no. Any redeeming, responsible nature he’d ever had somehow turned into the unexpected to most folks.

  When last she’d seen him, he’d been fully adorned in a thick leather jacket and low riding Harley between his legs. What’s not to love about a guy on a Harley.

  On a whim, he’d placed a large boa with devil horns on an arm at least ten inches thick, all solid muscle. Beefy jocks had nothing on Mr. Giotti.

  The darling man’s short-cropped hair grew long literally overnight. So long, every girl in Preacher’s Bend talked about him, dreamed about what it would be like to touch the man, and they’d wanted any part of him any way that could be had of him. He’d turned into a demi-god in the span of only a few short years.

  Liddy certainly talked about the incredibly handsome Mr. Giotti. Not about the smokin’ hot bod only a well-disciplined man could achieve, just the man; the entire package of all that hotness. She liked hearing herself talk. At least she could say someone was listening to her.

  Somehow it felt . . .

  Well, it just felt right to speak his name, as if she was supposed to talk about him. What she’d wanted she’d been determined to get. She might have mentioned to God only once or twice—oaky, at least a billion times—she’d get Jake to marry her, they’d have babies, and she would grow old with her soul mate drenched in the throes of matrimonial bliss. Every girl in town wanted this pipe dream, or so it seemed.

  Liddy never got quite past what would happen to her, or to him, if the dire wish came true. In fact, she’d gotten far more than she could have bargained for when he’d placed that gold ring on her finger. Four long months of hard-earned emotional entrapment to a man who couldn’t love anyone but himself. It was probably he wouldn’t, and since she was still working out the specifics, she wasn’t going to make a definite decision about whether it was couldn’t or wouldn’t. The truth of the matter was Jake had been unable to love a woman unconditionally. Oh, he’d lusted after enough of them; he just didn’t commit his heart to any one in particular.

  She did eventually get the snake, the snake’s name, and his volatile temper whenever pushed too far. What she didn’t get was the fun she’d expected, or that fun to last her until a ripe old age. She’d quite foolishly thought to be the only woman in his life. How very wrong. Okay! Okay! How very brain-dead.

  Sure, she should’ve known better; she did have working mush inside her skull. Every woman alive should expect a man with an inked boa constrictor wrapped around his upper arm, and the damn thing sporting devil horns, wasn’t about to be faithful to a wife. Or, a man as incredible as he would not be her soul mate.

  Many women came and went while they’d been married those few short months, and a few too many burned the bridges of reconciliation after that. Eliza Porter was one of those names. Now there’s a woman Liddy could truly call a bitch and get away with.

  Eliza had been the lowest-classed bitch who ever lived. It came as perks to the circumstances of her birth, same as Liddys’. She’d been born on the same side of the tracks as Liddy had. But to Liddy’s best guess, Eliza perfected bitch to an art form.

  She was the reason Jake and Liddy split up.

  Liddy had caught the two of them in bed. This vow-smashing infidelity done on her twenty-second birthday, because bare-assed and in the throes of hot, sweaty sex with another woman hadn’t been enough to burn out her eye sockets. The efin` bastard couldn’t even wait until the next day?

  She would never forget the moment when he called her just minutes before he was supposed to pick her up from work for their long-awaited date, to tell her he had to work late himself and if she could find a ride home she wasn’t to wait up for him. She’d been quite able to hear the telltale giggling in the background. What the hell had he been thinking? She was a complete idiot? Only half her brain cells worked properly?

  It did not take a rocket scientist to know exactly what was going on right under her nose. Nor did it take one to figure out what next to do about it. She grabbed the keys to her best friend’s car, drove straight over there, and should’ve probably loaded one of Gill Hillard’s shotguns beforehand. It would’ve saved her so much heartache in the end. But then, she would have used that gun on his bared ass, and lost so much more than simply her pride.

  Even though Liddy was no rocket scientist, she knew exactly what to do about betrayal on such a grandiose scale—and, what to do about his cheating on their marriage vows. She’d been a woman scorned. Who better to have dealt with the problem head on?

  Well, that neither here nor there, a past was called a past because it was—a past . . . as no longer viable and no longer a matter of any real importance. Her past? Liddy’s wasted years were dried up, regrettable mistakes, and only murky waters sat under this rotting bridge. She’d let it go.

  She’d let many things go; evens herself, to a point. Bits of sweat and tears as punishment for letting it go in the first place, surely with a little effort she could get it all back. But time ripped apart and clawed a deep cavern of what once had been true love, a little bit deeper, and in many respects a little bit wider.

  Jake and she parted ways after four months of a very heart-wrenching marriage. He went his way. She’d gone hers. And she’d never looked back at the consequences to their decisions, becau
se she never had to.

  Ever.

  Until now.

  In fact, she hadn’t seen the whites of his eyes since that fate-filled day. She’d kept by hook or by crook her sanity due to this one small miracle.

  Jake still lives in Preacher’s Bend probably because he’d just gotten out of jail a few months ago, and she supposed the man with nowhere else to go. Old lady Theodora Rosebud remains here because she’s too old and feeble to move ninety-six years of her life out of a great big eight bedroom farmhouse without the help of her two useless, uncaring brats she’d unwittingly birthed. Mrs. Rosebud’s words, not Liddy’s. Besides, Theodora wasn’t exactly right in the head. When someone so old was not right in the head . . . it was always best to leave that particular individual right where she was until she up and died.

  Theodora did no one any actual harm. She could scare you a bit. But she never really hurt anyone in particular. She had Jake by her side, and it was all anyone of her age could ever ask for.

  Liddy no longer considered herself a foolish woman. She was frugal—wasn’t an actual crime, was it? And she’d become a bit wiser with age. Smart, if she really thought about it.

  Yet how frugal and wise could a person truly be when this same person isn’t able to touch a single penny of their hard-earned money unless for something necessary, instead of something wanted?

  She probably would have spent most of the money by now . . . She couldn’t help it there was a damn fine pair of shoes and matching handbag she’d set her sights upon. And, always a stickler to the facts, Jake could’ve easily gotten his hands on the money had she not tied it up in Mutual Funds, Stocks and Bonds, as Mack Wells told her to do.

  Although no longer foolish, she could certainly attest to being a genuine procrastinator and a person who tends to listen to what others tell her, even if what they’re saying may or may not have been for her own good.

  Liddy’s fetish for four-inch heels was going to be her downfall someday. The shoes were on layaway until she returned home.

  So, time in many respects slipped by unnoticed. Honestly? It just went on without her. It laughed and laughed at poor white trash Lidia Humphrey-Giotti until its sides ached. Time, pardon her French . . . fucking sucks!

  She’d left this life-altering, mind-draining black hole when she had the first opportunity to do so. She couldn't sit back and simply take the chance at running into Jake with another woman hanging all over him, or him hanging all over her; and Liddy not wanting him back in her life . . . and his latest bed-warming bitch of the hour dead. A person would have to be certifiable to forget about their sordid past and actually forgive the man.

  An expensive therapist said she wasn’t crazy, and she had the bills to prove it. Although leather, tattoos, and long hair had been an enormous thing of hers, each buried deep within her past . . . leather, tattoos, and long hair were not within her immediate future.

  Clean shaven, suit, ties, the works were more to her tastes these days. No more Harley’s, no more snake tattoos, no matter what anyone said to contradict this.

  Her future was to hold a deeply scented bouquet of white roses while she and her bridesmaids were standing in front of the altar of St. Mary on the Hills in three short weeks. Her future was to be dressed in a one-of-a-kind wedding gown costing fifty thousand dollars. Then, Liddy looking lovingly toward a groom of unquestionable wealth at the far end of the aisle while that select choice of bridesmaids according to their inheritance and charm and four delectable groomsmen bound for every hot romance cover ever made stood on her betrothed’s right.

  Not to mention, all of his family bearing well wishes, and plenty of extremely expensive gifts to shower the happy couple with.

  Her future was to have a gold band set with an eighteen-carat yellow diamond in the shape of a heart, soldered to a single band of thick yellow gold, put around her ring finger after the I-do. Heart shaped! And do not get her started on what the inscription inside the band reads. She might get teary eyed again, and that would just about ruin her day.

  Lidia Humphrey-Giotti’s future was in the right direction of having something to finally look forward to. Perhaps she to obtain that one thing she could actually say she’d hung onto for longer than a few blessedly hot, sweaty months of endless passion and sleepless nights; where, later on, even her name got lost in the fog of sexual satisfaction.

  Damnit! Better yet . . . damn him.

  Jake might have been great in bed, and while she would be the first to admit he’d certainly done her a super large favor by having gotten her out of the suffocating trap she’d been locked in, it was not her bed he’d been so great in most of the time. Now was it? There’d been plenty of others he’d warmed. Plenty of warmed bodies the total jerkofabastard had been quite willing to dive headfirst into until satisfied.

  He hadn’t stuck to the sanctity of their wedding vows as she had. He hadn’t cared as much about being married to her as she had about being married to him. Jake hadn’t cared enough about her . . . period. He shoved their wedding vows into the dirt face first. Then, when the urge came about, he turned everything around and shoved every mistake she every made right in her face.

  Liddy finally figured this all out—a rather late bloomer in the ‘figuring things out’ department.

  Yet with all this wretched happenstance occurring over the course of her existence, and with all she’d been put through, Liddy could not have a future, nor could she do any further planning to an upcoming wedding until she found Jake.

  Her fiancée wasn’t speaking to her right now. This could’ve had a little something to do with her not telling Mack about Jake until late last week, and then doing so right in the middle of one of his firm’s quickly put-together congratulatory parties, because it was the only time she’d gotten alone time with Mack for two weeks, and the only time she’d worked up the courage to speak Jake’s name aloud.

  She and Mack had been so busy with their careers and cases they’d simply been too busy for each other.

  So how could she know Mack was ticked? It pretty much hit home the second her darling betrothed slammed the door in her face while she’d been packing a few articles of clothing for this rather unexpected, slightly unplanned trip. In addition, right now, as he refuses to answer any one of her numerous phone calls.

  Shoving her cell phone back into her pocket, disgusted with all men, and knowing Mack could hold a grudge as well as he could hold back on other . . . Well, he held back on far more important aspects of his life if the mood suited him or he knew he could get away with it.

  Still, he’d said time and time again unless she had something to say to him he actually wanted to hear—perhaps at this late stage of the game, such as “I’m sorry, I should have told you much, much sooner about still being married to Jake”—and before Mack got up the nerve to propose to her, and then made really big plans for the rest of their lives, and before he’d made of complete fool of himself in front of his peers—he wasn’t picking up the line.

  Damnit! Mack Wells not speaking to her wasn’t something she could live with. They always spoke to each other. There wasn’t a single day or night passing they did not say they love each other.

  Most men at some point in their lives turn into stubborn jackasses—usually at will—and Mack was certainly a man.

  When this sordid mess was dealt with, when able to take a deep breath, he’ll surely see the error of his ways. When all this over, the love of her life will come crawling on hands and knees to beg forgiveness from her. You’ll see. You’ll see, and you can then be the first in line to say, ‘See? Liddy was right!’ Foolish women do get it right every so often.

  Jake and she . . .

  Okay! Enough already! So what if they never actually got around to filing for divorce from one another? There’re far worse things in life to forget, worse crimes to commit. Adultery, for one. Buckshot sent into a man’s ass, for another.

  And so what if she couldn’t marry Mack—legally—until Jake signe
d a few . . .Damnit, technically speaking, and in a legal sort of way, until the wretched bastard signs a few documents she now had in her possession and then those documents processed through the judicial system.

  If Liddy could not marry Mack, all hell might break loose. If all hell broke loose, she could lose her one and only chance at having her name put up in neon lights. She could lose Mack. Better yet, she won’t be able to show her face in Miami—ever!

  Liddy would rather not find out what the rest of her life was going to be if this happened.

  All because of a lousy, lowlife, scum-sucking piece of trash who she couldn’t seem to get rid of? Well, of course. Why would she have thought being married to Jake would have turned out any differently?

  Oh, just speaking his name aloud made her blood boil.

  However, she was quite certain this terrible circumstance could be corrected—given time. In her possession was a thick packet of annulment papers. Thirty-eight sheets of crisp white paper copied four times and notarized. Unfortunately, notarized or not, no one in Preacher’s Bend was to get an annulment. It’s sort of an unspoken rule here.

  Liddy supposed it was right up there with never stealing strawberries from old ladies’ strawberry beds while not looking; and when the cows get out you help put them back in, whether they be your cows or not. Generosity came in waves in Preacher’s Bend.

  The tide to Liddy’s limited supply of generosity drifted out to sea, late yesterday afternoon; the full moon keeping it as far out of reach as possible, and the anxiety because of this increasing each passing second it stayed out of her reach.

  Oh, sure! In Preacher’s Bend a man could sleep with as many women as he liked, run off with as many as he could get away with swiping out of other folks’ beds, and make babies with just about every single one of them, if he had too. But a woman was not—not now, not later, not ever!—allowed to correct a dire mistake by getting an annulment, especially in a town named after a saintly preacher.