Moonglow, Texas

by Mary McBride

  Molly watched the teller count out the bills, make an entry on her keyboard and then recount the money, slowly, in a hushed voice, for Molly’s benefit.

  “Do you want an envelope for that, hon?” Doris asked.

  “No, thanks.” Molly folded the bills and stashed them in her bag.

  “You have a nice day, now, you hear?”

  When she stepped outside into the bright sunlight, however, Molly saw the sheriff’s cruiser parked not far from the bank’s front door, and she immediately sensed that her day wasn’t going to be quite as “nice” as Doris had wished.

  Gil Watson hauled his bulk out from behind the steering wheel. He gave his cap a little nudge. “Afternoon, Miss Hansen. Fine day, isn’t it?”

  “Hello, Sheriff Watson. Yes, it’s lovely.” At least it had been.

  “Everything going all right at your place, ma’am?”

  “Fine and dandy,” she said cheerfully.

  “Danny making pretty good headway on those repairs?”

  “Oh, my, yes.” Not that it’s any business of yours, buster, she thought. Who did he think he was, anyway, the decor police?

  “Glad to hear it.” He touched the brim of his cap again. “You just let me or my deputy know if you have any problems, now, you hear?”

  That just about did it. Molly crossed her arms. “Problems?”

  Gil Watson grinned as if he’d been just dying to elaborate on his grave concerns. “Well, you’re new to Moonglow, so you probably don’t know that Danny Shackelford wasn’t exactly one of our leading citizens when he resided here.”

  “That was twenty years ago, Sheriff.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s been my experience that folks don’t change all that much.”

  “You might try giving him the benefit of the doubt, you know.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, if you say he’s doing a fine job, then I guess I will have to change my opinion, won’t I?”

  “I guess you will,” she said with a snort. “Have a nice day, Sheriff.”

  Molly had to restrain herself from stomping away from the big lout. As irritated as she was with him, she couldn’t help but worry about what the man had said. Dan wasn’t doing a bang-up job with the repairs on her house. In fact, he was doing such a lousy job that he’d just had to appeal to a sixteen-year-old kid for help. Some handyman. But it made absolutely no sense to her that he’d pass himself off as one if that wasn’t the case.

  Of course, he couldn’t very well make a living by passing himself off as the greatest kisser north of the Rio Grande, could he?

  Or maybe he could, she thought, suddenly aware of the three hundred dollars tucked in her purse. Maybe he just could.

  Dan was under the kitchen sink when Molly returned home. In her absence, he’d taken a quick look at his “borrowed” home-repair manual, and decided that fixing the leak under the sink would be a cinch.

  Only it wasn’t. He had no idea how he’d made it worse, but now what had formerly been a soundless drop per minute had increased to a definite, even loud plip, plip, plip.

  “Oh, good. You’re fixing the sink.” Molly’s voice had a certain amount of relief in it.

  “Yep,” he said, wincing as he took another cold plip on his cheek. “I might have to pick up another wrench, though. This one’s not quite right for the job. You got something I can put down here in the meantime to catch the drips?”

  “Sure.”

  A second later Molly’s hand appeared over his head, clutching a saucer.

  “Uh. I was thinking of something a little bigger than that,” Dan said rather sheepishly. “You got a bucket or something?”

  “A bucket! Oh, my God. Is it worse?”

  “Just a little.” He slid out from beneath the cabinet, grinning up at her. “No problem, though. I just need a bigger wrench.”

  She rolled her eyes, then handed him a dish towel. Snapped it at him, actually. “Here. You’re all wet.”

  Dan dabbed the towel at his face and neck. “How was beautiful downtown Moonglow?” he asked.

  “Wonderful,” she answered, pushing him aside in order to shove a bucket under the sink. “I had a little run-in with your old friend, Gil Watson. He sends his regards.”

  Dan snorted. “I’ll bet.”

  “The guy’s really on your case, you know that, Dan?” she said indignantly. “I’d complain if I were you.”

  He laughed. “Who should I complain to, Molly? Mayor Fyler? He probably has a lower opinion of me than Gil.”

  “Well, I don’t know. But it just isn’t right that the man keeps acting like you’re Public Enemy Number One.”

  Dan shrugged. “My coming back is probably the biggest thing that’s happened in law enforcement here in the past two decades. Don’t worry about it. I’m not.” He gestured toward the sink. “I’m more worried about how I’m going to stop that leak.”

  “Plumbing really isn’t one of your strong suits, huh?”

  Her comment, uttered with more kindness than sarcasm, still managed to find its mark. The truth of it was that Dan wasn’t sure he had any strong suits left, and he wasn’t all that eager to be put to the test.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Molly picked up the handbag she had tossed on the kitchen table and stuck her hand inside. “I got the three hundred in twenties,” she said, handing the little wad to him. “I hope that’s all right.”

  If his confidence had been wobbling only a moment before, it practically took a nosedive now.

  “Thanks.” He shoved the bills in his pocket without looking at them or even counting them. “I’ll pay you back just as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She turned her head to look longingly at the sink. “Well, it doesn’t look as if I’ll be able to do much hand-washing today, so I’d better make a trip to the Sudsy Dudsy.”

  “Is that place still in business?”

  Molly nodded. “As long as I have to go, want me to take along a few things for you?”

  His entire wardrobe, Dan thought. “Let me just get some things together and I’ll come with you.”

  Molly stared in awe at the amount of clothing and bed linens Dan was able to stuff into a single machine while she carefully sorted her own lights and darks and delicates. He poured in an unmeasured stream of her liquid detergent, then patted his pockets for change.

  She reached into her skirt pocket and handed him two quarters.

  “Oh, no. Thanks, but no thanks, Molly. I’m not going any deeper in debt than I already am.”

  “I don’t think the change machine takes twenties,” she said, holding the quarters out to him again.

  “Well then, I’ll just run into Cooley’s and get some change.” He aimed a finger at his crammed washing machine. “Watch that, now. Don’t let anybody run off with my stuff.”

  Instead, Molly watched Dan as he pushed out the door and passed by the laundromat’s big front window. He moved like an athlete, she suddenly realized, with a graceful kind of restrained power in his stride. Even the slight limp from the sprain didn’t altogether mar the impression of strength and coordination.

  Well, maybe he was a marvel of speed and grace on a football field or a tennis court, she thought, but the man was still a ten-thumbed klutz when it came to anything inside a house.

  Almost anything. The memory of the kiss she had missed the night before came back to haunt her. It had been a long time since she’d been kissed. Nearly a year. She thought back to the last time she had seen Ethan in her hospital room. He’d hardly been able to make contact with her through all the bandages, but even so, his rather thin, usually tightly compressed lips never did have Molly seeing stars or feeling the earth reel beneath her feet.

  The letters Ethan wrote her so regularly, imploring her to get in touch, seemed far more passionate than he had ever been in the flesh. She felt another little twinge of guilt for not responding to those pleas, but by the time she had put two quarters in each of her three machines and started them up, the twinge had
all but passed.

  Molly was sorely tempted to put a couple quarters in Dan’s machine, too, otherwise they’d be here all day. Just as she was reaching into her pocket, she caught a glimpse of Dan outside the window. His dark glasses were lodged atop his head and he was leaning against a parking meter, laughing it up with an astonishingly beautiful woman with short blond hair and unbelievably long legs.

  She couldn’t claim to know everyone in Moonglow, but she at least thought she had seen everyone. But not this woman. Dan certainly seemed to know her, though. And there wasn’t any doubt that she knew him and was eager to resume just where they had left off twenty years ago.

  There was a big lipstick smudge on Dan’s cheek when he finally ambled back into the Sudsy Dudsy, but rather than the lecherous grin on his face that Molly was expecting, he looked almost grim.

  “Another satisfied member of the Danny Shackelford Fan Club?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  He didn’t answer but shoved two coins in his machine to start the first cycle, then, when it didn’t start up immediately, he gave it a good thump with his fist and followed it with a solid kick.

  “Sorry I asked,” Molly said.

  Dan angled his head toward her. “That was Linda Marie Chapman,” he said. When Molly merely stared at him blankly, he added, “Better known today by her married name of Linda Marie Watson.”

  Molly felt her blank stare solidify in a kind of horrified mask. “Watson, as in Gil Watson?”

  Dan nodded. “That’s Gil, as in ‘You better not even look at my woman if you want to stay alive’ Watson.”

  “Oh, jeez.”

  “Yeah,” Dan said through clenched teeth. “Oh, jeez.”

  As was her habit, Molly had brought a book to read while her clothes washed and dried. For his part, Dan kept a grim silence with one eye on the garments tumbling in the dryer and the other eye on Main Street, probably expecting to see the sheriff’s cruiser pull up at any moment.

  He didn’t seem any more relaxed two hours later when he helped her carry her clean laundry into the house. He went immediately into the living room to check for any calls that had come during their absence.

  “Godammit,” Molly heard him mutter on her way to the bedroom. She dropped her basket and went to see what the problem was.

  “Who called?” she asked.

  “Linda Watson. Twice.” He swore again. “And Raylene.”

  “I wonder what she wanted.”

  “If you mean Raylene, I have no idea. If you mean Linda, I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “Actually, I meant Raylene,” Molly said. “But if I had to guess about Linda, my first guess would be sex. My second guess would be great sex. And my third would be really great sex. Would I be right?”

  He curled his lip and practically growled. “Try clandestine, illicit or lethal sex. Little wonder Gil’s always prowling around town.”

  “Little wonder,” Molly murmured, picking up the receiver and punching in Raylene’s number, hoping the hairdresser wasn’t calling to warn them about the sheriff.

  As it turned out, however, Raylene wanted to know if Buddy Jr. could begin his wallpaper stripping job this evening rather than the next day. It seemed the boy was more than a little eager to get his hands on Dan’s two hundred dollars. Molly told her that was fine, but as soon as she hung up, she realized she had just graciously ousted herself from her own bedroom, at least for tonight. The fumes from the stripping probably weren’t going to make sleeping on the couch very pleasant, either.

  She looked at Dan and smiled. “I’ve never slept in a trailer before.”

  Molly had never felt so content as she sat sipping a lemonade and watching Dan tending the hot dogs on the grill. The sun was going down, turning her little corner of Moonglow a luscious gold. A breeze overhead riffled the leaves of the live oak. She hadn’t felt this calm in a long time. Maybe never.

  “I hope the potato salad doesn’t taste like wallpaper stripper,” she said. “It’s permeating everything in the house.”

  “Guess that means young Buddy knows what he’s doing, then,” Dan said.

  His green eyes were mellow from the sunset hues, even if his disposition seemed less so. Molly assumed he wasn’t thrilled about sharing his trailer with her. She, on the other hand, was looking forward to it, even though she was a bit nervous. It was a little like anticipating a date with the wildest boy in class. Maybe, she thought, she’d finally find out about his reputation as a kisser. Maybe, she thought, Moonglow wasn’t such a horrible place after all. How could it be when she found herself suddenly so happy here?

  “What are you grinning at?” Dan was staring at her, his head tilted quizzically to one side.

  “Was I?” She sipped her lemonade, using the glass to hide the smile she couldn’t suppress. You’d have thought she was in Manhattan, about to dine on rack of lamb with a gorgeous investment broker, rather than in Moonglow and about to eat hot dogs with an itinerant handyman.

  No. Not just a handyman. Dan. In some strange way she felt as if she’d known him forever.

  It wasn’t like her at all to become so mesmerized, so infatuated, by a man so quickly. Use your head. Slow down, she told herself. Stop, for heaven’s sake.

  Only Molly wasn’t listening. At least, not to her head.

  “Well, come on in if you’re coming,” Dan said an hour after dinner, not bothering to disguise his irritation. Other than himself, nobody had been inside his trailer before. He’d grown oblivious to the clutter, but he dreaded seeing the shambles of his life through somebody else’s eyes. Through Molly’s eyes.

  She couldn’t very well have slept in her house, though. That was obvious after Buddy Jr., wearing a fumigator’s mask and CD headphones, had started applying the stripper solution to the walls. And, as Molly had predicted, her potato salad had tasted suspiciously like the chemical fumes in the house. Other than letting her sleep in his trailer, Dan’s only choice would have been accompanying her to the nearest motel, the Sweet Dreams Inn, out on Route 12. If memory served, that dive was even worse than his Airstream.

  He turned on a battery-powered hanging lantern, illuminating the messy interior, then discreetly checked to make sure the drawer, where he’d stashed his gun, as well as his badge and Marshals Service ID, was still securely locked.

  “Mi casa es su casa,” he said in his best Tex-Mex accent when she stepped hesitantly over the threshold, wearing a tightly cinched plaid flannel robe and clutching the pillow she’d brought with her as if it were a little girl’s teddy bear.

  “This is cozy,” she said, gazing around as if she’d just arrived on another planet. “Oh, look. There’s even a little kitchen in here.”

  “It’s purely for decoration,” Dan said, using his foot to push a pile of clean laundry aside.

  “A refrigerator, too!” She opened its small square door. “But how does it run if you’re not hooked up to electricity?”

  “Portable gas tank on the front of the trailer.”

  She opened the door to the bathroom, glanced around, then closed it again. “Reminds me of an airplane.”

  “Same principle,” he said while he shook out a clean sheet for the air mattress. “Only you don’t get Mile High Club privileges.”

  Molly raised an eyebrow. “You’d know about that, I’m sure.”

  Dan tucked the sheet tightly under the edges of the mattress, then reached for another. “You take this,” he said, “and I’ll just bed down here on the floor.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair, Dan. When I invited myself, I didn’t intend to be putting you out of your bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. I don’t mind. Really.”

  “Well, I mind.” He smoothed the top sheet out, then snapped a blanket over it. “There. All set.”

  When Molly’s mouth set in a stubborn line, he took her by the shoulders and sat her down on the mattress. “My trailer, my rules,” he told her, reaching up to snap off the lantern.

  She grumbled a little as she fought h
er way out of her robe in the close quarters, then Dan heard her legs sliding between the sheets and had to warn himself immediately to forget the sound of that sleek flesh colliding with the cool cotton, and the way she kind of thumped around, her backside carving out a comfy, warm niche in the mattress while her head settled deeply into her pillow.

  He found himself looking forward to sleeping in those same sheets tomorrow night and nights to come, breathing in the sweet scents of Molly’s lotions and perfumes. A pretty pitiful state, he thought, when a man was fantasizing about sleeping in an empty bed while a woman like Molly was currently filling that very bed.

  Dan sighed roughly and shifted positions atop the sleeping bag he’d slung out on the floor.

  “I really wish you’d change places with me,” Molly whispered.

  “This is fine. Go to sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can while I’m feeling so guilty,” she said. “It really isn’t fair at all that you—”

  “Shh,” he hissed, levering up on his elbows and cocking his head toward the window.

  “I’m serious, Dan. It isn’t—”

  “Shh.” He sat all the way up, leaned to his left and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Be quiet, Molly, will you? I think I hear somebody outside.”

  “Who?” she croaked.

  No sooner was the word out of her mouth than there was a soft rapping on the trailer’s door and a woman’s voice calling, “Danny, are you in there?”

  Dan recognized the voice immediately, and let out a blue stream of whispered curses.

  “Who is it?” Molly asked.

  “Linda Watson.” He cursed again.

  Molly made a little gulping sound. “The sheriff’s wife?”

  “Da-a-anny,” the woman cooed. It sounded as if she were running her fingernails along the Airstream’s aluminum siding. “I know you’re in there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Molly asked.

  Dan could only shrug. Other than pretending he was deaf or dead asleep or just plain dead, he didn’t have a clue.

  “Da-a-anny.”

  “All right,” Molly snapped. “That does it. I’m going out there and tell that female tomcat to get lost. Where’s my robe?”