by Brenda Novak
“Great. She’s happy.” He smiled distantly, as if picturing his sister, then sobered. “I hope to hell Simon continues to treat her right. You know the kind of temptations he faces in Hollywood. He could have his pick of women.”
“He’ll be true to her. He’s as much in love as she is. Besides, he’ll have you to answer to if he doesn’t.”
He grinned at her teasing. “Damn straight. That’s my little sister.”
She tried the wine and liked it. “Do you remember the boy you grabbed by the shirtfront and tossed to the ground when I was a freshman?”
“No.” He seemed genuinely surprised. “Why would I do that?”
“Because he was making fun of my dress.”
“Sounds like he deserved it.”
“It was a pretty ugly dress,” she admitted with a laugh. “Everything about me was ugly back then.”
A contemplative expression came over his face. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re like my big brother, too.”
He paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. “Is that how you see me?”
She didn’t know how to answer. Yes would be the safest way to go. But it was also a lie. So she did what she could to avoid a direct reply. “I mean, you’ve never looked at me very critically.”
“I can tell when someone’s attractive, Chey.”
Her mouth went dry. “Of course you can. T-take Eve, for instance. She’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
His eyes never left her face. “Why are we talking about Eve again?”
“She’s my best friend.”
“I know. And she likes me. I get that.” He changed the subject as he glanced away. “Do you have any playing cards?”
She had several packs. Before her mother had gotten too sick to manage a game, they’d often played hearts to distract her from the pain. “In the drawer.”
“Any chance I could challenge you to a game?”
“Which one?”
“Poker?” he suggested with a shrug.
How long did he plan to stay? “Sure. But…what will we bet?”
“I’ll wager dollars toward oil changes and car repairs. Considering what I found when you brought your Olds in last time, it could use some work.”
“It could. But what will I wager? I help run a B and B, so…cooking and cleaning?”
His smile shifted to one side. “I’ll settle for some Christmas cookies and tree decorating the next time my girls are in town.”
“Why settle? You could have cooking, cleaning and decorating.” She smacked the cards on the table. “If you win.”
“I plan on winning,” he confided. “But that would still be settling, since it isn’t what I’d ask for if I could have anything.”
This took Cheyenne by surprise. “What would you ask for?”
He glanced at the sprig of mistletoe Presley had tied to the light fixture over the table. “Peace on earth,” he said with a wink. “So deal.”
7
He was flirting with her. There was no question about that. Cheyenne just didn’t know why. Was he trying to cheer her up? Was he interested in becoming closer friends? Had he stopped by because he’d told his sister that she’d started crying in the grocery store and Gail had asked him to?
He didn’t reveal what he was thinking or feeling, but they talked and laughed and laughed and talked until it grew late. By the time he yawned and said he should go, Cheyenne had lost a lot in tree decorating and cookies, and he wasn’t willing to let her attempt to win it back. All she could do was claim that one day of her baking and tree trimming services was worth an eight-hundred-dollar credit.
“You must be one hell of a Christmas decorator,” he said.
“I am.” She waved toward her only example. “Don’t let that fool you.”
“I’ll suspend my disbelief, for now. You can prove yourself next Saturday.”
“That’s when your girls are coming?”
“That’s when. But we should pick up the tree tomorrow, before all the good ones are gone.”
“We?” She corked the wine bottle since he’d declined a refill.
“I don’t want to buy something you wouldn’t be interested in decorating.”
Eve would, no doubt, find this arrangement odd if she heard about it. That made Cheyenne hesitate. As much as she wanted to spend time with Joe, she had no business doing it. “I’m easy to please.”
“Then why don’t you ever date?”
She shuffled the cards. “Nice segue.”
“I thought so.”
“How do you know I don’t?”
“We live in Whiskey Creek, remember? If you were seeing someone, I’d know about it. Everyone would.”
That was true. So she began searching for excuses. “I’ve been too preoccupied.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”
She tried not to laugh. “I was seeing John Kovinski there for a little bit.”
“Not Mr. Kovinski, the school principal…”
“’Fraid so.”
“When was this?”
She pretended she had to think about it, although the answer was on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t see any point in letting him know that she marked the events in her life by how they corresponded to his. “While you were married.” She forced herself to throw in, “I think,” even though she was as positive as she could get.
“That was five years ago!”
“I don’t get out much.”
“Not to mention he’s like…twice your age,” he added with a grimace. “Gail once dated a much older man, too. What’s the appeal?”
“Safety. Security. Companionship.”
“So no threat.”
She chuckled. “Maybe.”
“I must’ve missed the news that you were seeing him.”
Because the relationship hadn’t gone anywhere. They’d dated three times, and made out once. That wasn’t much for even the nosiest people in Whiskey Creek to gossip about.
Joe finished the last of the wine in his glass. “Who else have you dated?”
She put the cards back in the box. “I’ve been preoccupied, like I said. Who have you dated, Mr. DeMarco?”
“Too many girls to count,” he teased.
“Who’s there?” Her mother’s voice, cracked and pleading, came out of the bedroom. “I need my meds! Cheyenne? Presley? Bring me my morphine! Hurry!”
Joe jumped to his feet as if this sudden intrusion into their conversation had startled him. “She okay?”
The distress in her voice could be more than a little unnerving, especially for someone who wasn’t used to it. “Yeah. Don’t worry.”
“Is there anything I can help you do for her?”
“No, I’ve got it.” She took her mother’s painkiller from where she’d hidden it behind the refrigerator.
“That’s where you keep it?” he asked with a perplexed expression.
Because of Presley. But she didn’t want to go into that. “For the moment.”
“Okay.” He didn’t question her further. “I’ll put out the fire while you tend to her.”
She’d expected him to leave. She could only imagine how uncomfortable he felt now that Anita was awake. But her mother was so impatient she had to postpone their goodbye and he seemed willing to wait. “Calm down, Mom, I’m coming!” she called, grabbing a bottle of water in case Anita was thirsty.
“Where’s Presley?” her mother asked as soon as Cheyenne reached her bedside.
“On a date.”
“I heard two voices.”
Cheyenne ignored her obvious disappointment. “She’s not home.”
“Someone’s here!”
“I am,” Cheyenne insisted.
“Besides you.”
“No. No one.” She didn’t want her mother interacting with Joe. That he’d seen her situation at home was bad enough.
“I need to be moved. I can’t—” Anita gasped for breath “�
�if you could slide me over a bit and…turn me on my other side. My hip is aching.”
Cheyenne tried to do what she’d been asked, but her mother cried out. “You have to pick me up! You can’t shove me!” she shouted, then started moaning and weeping.
Afraid that Joe would hear, Cheyenne lowered her voice. “I wasn’t shoving. I was doing it the way I always do.” The only way she knew how. She wasn’t strong enough to lift Anita as easily as Anita wanted.
“Presley, come help your sister!” her mother called. “Hurry! She’s killing me!”
“Presley’s not home.”
“Yes, she is. I heard her. Presley?”
There was no doubt Anita was in pain. Cheyenne could see it in the hollowness of her eyes. But Cheyenne knew her mother was also being purposely difficult. She wanted Presley, and this gave her an excuse to demand her other daughter’s attention.
“Mom, please,” she said, but a sound at the door told her the noise had succeeded in drawing Joe to the room.
“What is it?” he asked.
Cheyenne could tell he wasn’t sure whether or not he could enter but wanted to help.
With a sigh, she tucked the tendrils of hair that’d fallen from her loose bun behind her ears. “My mom needs to be moved over and onto her right side.”
“I can do that.” He crossed to the bed and lifted her as though she weighed nothing.
Anita was so surprised to see a man in the house she didn’t complain. But she didn’t leave it at “thank you,” either. “Are you sleeping with my daughter?” she asked as he straightened the blankets. “Has someone finally taken her virginity? God, I hope you banged her good. She needs it. Maybe she won’t be so critical of the rest of us once she finds out what she’s been missing.”
Cheyenne’s face flushed hot but she ignored her mother’s vulgarity. “Thanks,” she told Joe. “I’m sure she’ll be fine from here on.”
Also ignoring what Anita had said, Joe mumbled a polite good-night and let Cheyenne walk him to the door. “That isn’t true, is it?” he asked when he’d stepped out on the porch.
“What?” Cheyenne said, but she knew. She just wasn’t sure how to respond.
“That you’ve never slept with anyone?”
She didn’t need his shock to tell her how unusual she was. These days, there weren’t many thirty-one-year-old virgins. Her lack of a sex life wasn’t a subject she wanted other people talking about. But she couldn’t hide who she really was, not from Joe. “Yes.”
“Why? Are you waiting or—” he rubbed his neck as if searching for the right words “—has something happened that’s made you unwilling to…be touched in that way?”
He obviously knew a great deal about her background. She probably had Gail to thank for that. Maybe Eve, too. There was no telling what they’d discussed at dinner last night. “A truck driver gave my mother twenty dollars to let him fondle me once.”
When Joe’s jaw tightened, she put up a hand. “But it stopped there and he isn’t the reason I’ve…held off. Growing up, I wanted sex to have some meaning. I’ve been waiting for the right time and place.” The right man.
“I see.” He nodded.
“Besides, we live in a small town.” She smiled, hoping to lighten the tone of the conversation. “I have a reputation to protect.”
“The threat of gossip doesn’t stop everybody.”
She wondered if he was alluding to her sister. “I guess it doesn’t.”
“Good night, Chey.”
He was halfway to his truck when she called after him. “Why’d you come, Joe?”
He slid his hands in his pockets as he pivoted to face her. It was so cold that she could see his breath misting in front of him, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. “I could say my father suggested it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He doesn’t think I get out enough.”
“But…”
“The truth has more to do with Eve.”
“Which means what?”
“I figured if she was going to make her move, I’d better be sure there isn’t something between you and me. Every once in a while, I’ve sort of wondered…what if?”
She hadn’t expected him to be so frank. Suddenly a bit weak in the knees, she grasped the pole that supported the porch. He was considering her now, of all times? Why couldn’t he have acted on that “what if?” a week ago? “And? What did you decide?”
“That we should see each other again.”
“I can’t,” she said. Not now that she knew he wasn’t merely being nice or looking for friendship.
He smiled. “You have to. You owe me, remember?”
* * *
Joe drove around town for fifteen minutes before finally turning toward home. He doubted his father would still be up. Martin was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy. So was he, since he had to work such long hours. But he’d felt so unsettled since leaving Cheyenne’s that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He’d gone to her place expecting to feel what he’d felt when he was with Eve. Respect for her as a person. A certain amount of admiration for her pretty face. The hope that they could maintain a friendship. But ultimately nothing that moved him, nothing that made him regret not asking her out before. He’d convinced himself that the spark he felt whenever Cheyenne was around was no more than curiosity and sympathy for everything she’d had to endure.
But their time together hadn’t felt nearly as platonic as he’d envisioned.
He could tell that she hadn’t been wearing a bra when she came to the door. She’d gone and put one on right away. But the gentle sway of her breasts as she moved in those first few seconds had reminded him that it had been a long time since he’d felt a woman’s soft body beneath his, especially a woman he wanted to make love to.
Those weren’t the kinds of thoughts he’d been anticipating in conjunction with his little sister’s unfortunate friend. When he let his father goad him into visiting her, he’d figured it was better than staying home or going to Sexy Sadie’s and milling around with the same old crowd.
Or…maybe he’d been lying to himself from the beginning. Maybe seeing Cheyenne as a desirable woman instead of a pity project was what he’d been hoping to avoid by keeping his distance from her in the first place.
A honk broke into his thoughts. Riley Stinson sat in his beat-up Explorer, idling at the light next to him.
Joe rolled down the passenger window. Riley was another of his sister’s friends, but Joe liked him as much as Gail did. Although most of Joe’s buddies from high school had moved on, as he’d originally done, the people in her group were still as tight as family.
“I don’t usually see you out so late,” Riley called above the rumble of their engines.
“Just checking to make sure the station’s locked up.” Joe wasn’t sure why he lied. He supposed he felt a little funny about seeing Cheyenne after going to dinner with Eve last night. Also, he knew that Cheyenne would appreciate the discretion.
“Everything okay?”
Someone had broken in after-hours about three years ago and looted the minimart. Whoever it was had taken all the alcohol, cigarettes and condoms. But there hadn’t been any trouble since. “Fine,” Joe replied. He had driven past the station, but only because, in a town this size, it was unavoidable. “What about you? What’re you up to?”
“Heading home.”
“From…”
“My folks.” He covered a yawn. “I fell asleep there a couple hours ago.”
“Where’s Jacob?” Riley had gotten a girl by the name of Phoenix pregnant while in high school. She’d always been a little different, definitely offbeat, but no one could’ve guessed she was capable of murder. She ran down the next girl he showed interest in and went to prison before the baby was even born. Riley and his parents had had Jacob since birth, when the authorities had shuttled the infant out to them.
That story had been the talk of the town back in the day. It was the most sensational
thing to ever happen in Whiskey Creek—except for the cave-in at the old mine, which had killed Noah Rackham’s twin brother right about the same time.
“I let him sleep over. I have to repair a roof first thing in the morning.”
“Doesn’t he usually go along and help if he’s on break?”
Riley, a contractor, was already teaching Jacob how to build and fix houses. As Jacob grew older, the two acted more like good buddies than father and son.
“I told him he could spend the day with Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow.”
“They getting ready for Christmas?”
Riley grinned. “He has cooking, decorating and going shopping to look forward to.”
Joe could tell Riley was glad to be off the hook. “How does Jacob feel about that?”
“He wanted to come with me, but I told him it would make Grandma happy to have him stay. The bells and whistles of the holidays are very important to my mom.” His tone suggested he didn’t quite understand, which made Joe smile. He didn’t see the point in some of the tacky decorations he saw, either. Putting up a tree just meant it had to be taken down. But he knew that was being too practical and was willing to do whatever it took to keep his girls happy.
The light had turned green twice already, but there wasn’t anyone behind them so they didn’t feel any pressure to drive on.
“How’s Gail?” Riley asked.
“Happy. Busy doing Simon’s PR and managing the other publicists at her firm. They have a star-studded list now.”
“Simon’s got another new movie coming out, I hear.”
Joe checked his rearview mirror again. Still clear. “Another blockbuster. This June.”
“I’ve been meaning to call Gail. I want to tell her I got a Christmas card from Phoenix.”
Leaning forward, Joe turned off his stereo. “Does she write you often?”
“She sends letters to Jacob all the time but I don’t pass them on. There’s no way I want to nurture that relationship. I rarely hear from her myelf, though.”
“Why do you think she sent the card?”
Suddenly pensive, he frowned and tapped his steering wheel. “She gets out this summer.”