Joslyn didn’t feel very classy, especially next to Kendra in that breathtaking outfit, but she rummaged up a brave smile anyway, because it was definitely show time.
A few people nodded in recognition and acknowledgment as she and Kendra waded into the group, stopping in the very center, where a slender, dark-haired woman with expressive amber-brown eyes stood chatting with several men, a glass of white wine in one hand.
“Tara Kendall,” Kendra said, “meet my best friend, Joslyn Kirk.”
Joslyn blinked. This was Tara? The future chicken farmer? She looked more like a fashion model or a famous actress in her pale blue summer dress and strappy high-heeled sandals. Her dark hair hung well past her shoulders, and when she smiled, her entire face lit up.
“Glad to meet you, Joslyn,” Tara said, extending her free hand.
Joslyn took it and gave the long, elegant fingers a brief squeeze in greeting. “Welcome to Parable,” she replied, smiling.
People were milling all around them by then. The three-man, one-woman country band was tuning up, and the workers from the Butter Biscuit Café bustled around, setting out dishes of food, buffet style. Smoky aromas rolled on the soft summer breeze, and hunger curled in the pit of Joslyn’s stomach but was quickly dulled by nerves.
“Thanks,” Tara responded warmly and with a twinkle of humor in her eyes. She obviously realized she didn’t look anything like a chicken farmer—whatever a chicken farmer was supposed to look like—and enjoyed getting a reaction to the fact. “I’m happy to be here.”
Joslyn, well aware that she’d been noticed, couldn’t have said the same. Stares burned into her from all directions, and a thrumming hush had fallen beneath the squeak of a fiddle and the twangs of guitar strings. If she could have clicked her heels together and vanished, she would have done it.
Kendra, still standing beside Joslyn, gave her a light jab with one elbow. “Head high,” she counseled. “Shoulders back, chin up.”
Tara looked puzzled by this exchange but offered no comment.
Joslyn, however, took Kendra’s cue and stood up straight and proud.
Deftly, Kendra snatched two glasses off a tray that was being passed around and fairly shoved one into Joslyn’s hand.
“Here’s to coming home!” Kendra said, making sure her voice carried, raising her glass high.
Both Joslyn and Tara raised their glasses, too, and there was a cheery clink of crystal as the rims touched.
Joslyn was briefly reminded of the three-of-cups, a Tarot card showing a trio of women raising chalices high over their heads in the same sort of pose.
She was struck by the strange poignancy of the moment, the beginning of some new era—one of those times when people and situations just fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.
Kendra and Tara seemed to feel it, too, because their eyes widened, and then they smiled.
All three women sipped from their wineglasses.
“You’ll be all right?” Kendra said, giving the question the tone and inflection of a statement. She was, after all, the hostess, and she needed to move among her guests and make sure everyone felt welcome.
“I’ll be fine,” Joslyn said.
And the three of them, Joslyn, Kendra and Tara, were swept apart then, on the varying currents of the gathering itself, and Joslyn suddenly found herself practically chest to chest with Slade Barlow.
He must have been on duty, since he’d clipped his badge onto his belt, but otherwise, he was dressed like most of the other men at the barbecue, in jeans and polished boots and a long-sleeved cotton shirt, crisply pressed.
Joslyn’s heart lurched at the sight of him and the scent of him, and the hard heat of his proximity to her.
“Afternoon,” he said, with the slightest grin and blue mayhem dancing in his eyes. “Nice party.”
Joslyn was hardly aware of the party, nice or otherwise. The man made her breath jam up in her throat and then swell there.
Or was that her heart?
That was when she realized that she’d spilled some of her wine on his white shirt when they collided.
“I’m—”
He cut her off by resting a fingertip on her lips. “Don’t say you’re sorry,” he said.
She blushed, even as fire raced through her system, glad that the wine was white, at least. It probably wouldn’t stain his shirt.
Still, she dabbed at the mark ineffectually with the fingertips of her right hand, having shifted the glass to her left.
“Joslyn,” Slade said, closing his hand around hers, stilling the motion of her fingers. “No harm done.”
She blushed and would have jerked her hand back if he hadn’t still been holding it. “I guess I am a little nervous,” she confided. She knew people were looking at her, talking about her—she could feel the vibrations in every nerve.
“Why should you be nervous?” Slade asked.
Men, Joslyn thought.
“You know why,” she said, flustered. Slade hadn’t let go of her hand yet, and that was both a plus and a minus—a plus because she sensed all that quiet, masculine strength coursing into her, and a minus because…she sensed all that quiet, masculine strength coursing into her. “Because of Elliott and what he did.”
Slade absorbed that, then visibly dismissed it from his mind. “I have to get back to work pretty soon,” he said, releasing her hand at last. “How about running interference while I cut in at the front of the grub line?”
Joslyn smiled at that. Since the “grub line” hadn’t formed yet, there wouldn’t be any need to cut in.
Glad to have something to do, she led the way over to the barbecue grill and the long tables packed with salads and fruit, mounds of her focaccia bread, condiments and soda and beer and wine chilling in big tubs of ice, picked up a plate and handed it to him.
“There you are, Sheriff,” she said. “Dig in.”
One of the food service workers manning the barbecue grill forked a medium-size steak onto Slade’s plate, and the two men exchanged the brief, easy words of people who have known each other all their lives.
Both of them probably took it for granted, Joslyn thought, mildly peevish. Would she ever belong like that—not necessarily in Parable, but anywhere at all?
The possibility that she wouldn’t made the backs of her eyes throb. Again, she wanted to retreat—hide out in the guesthouse with the doors locked and the curtains pulled, just her and Lucy-Maude, until all the party guests went home.
But she didn’t. Wouldn’t. After all, pride was about all she had left. She’d shed everything else like an extra skin—her business, her job, her condo in Phoenix with all its carefully chosen furniture—all so she could repay someone else’s debt. She’d bid her friends—okay, they were mostly acquaintances, not friends—a breezy adieu and driven to Parable in her secondhand car, having no idea of what to expect.
Slade, holding a plate mounded high with food, broke into her thoughts. “Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked.
“Later,” Joslyn said with a shake of her head.
His eyes moved over her hair, as warm as a caress, before locking with hers. “Keep me company, then?” he asked. He sounded solemn, but there was a twinkle in those too-blue depths. “Otherwise, people are bound to gang up on me, wanting to know if I plan to run for reelection later this year.”
Joslyn remembered their discussion the day before and cast a furtive glance around her as Slade took a place at one of the as-yet empty picnic tables set up for the occasion.
“Is he here?” she whispered.
“Is who here?” Slade asked, waiting until she sat down across the table before taking a seat himself.
She realized she was still holding her wineglass and set it aside, promptly forgetting all about it again. “The man you don’t want to be elected sheriff in your place,” she whispered, irritated because she knew he was playing with her.
Slade looked around, shook his head once and stabbed a plastic fork into his potato salad. �
�Nope,” he said after chewing and swallowing. His gaze drifted briefly over the bodice of her dress and her bare arms before returning to her face. “I don’t see him.”
Another man approached through the crowd just then. Unlike the sheriff, his boss, Deputy Boone Taylor, was in uniform. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, Boone had been a heartthrob back in high school, and he was still mighty easy on the eyeballs, in Joslyn’s opinion.
“You’re supposed to be off duty,” Slade told him, slicing into the steak on his plastic plate.
“McQuillan called in sick,” Boone answered, sparing a how-ya-been nod for Joslyn. “Asked me to fill in for him.”
A muscle bunched in Slade’s jaw and smoothed out again, as if by force of will. “McQuillan called you?” he asked in a tone that sounded idle and was anything but.
“Actually, he sent me a text,” Boone said, his gaze catching on Tara, the guest of honor, now being herded toward the buffet table by half a dozen male admirers. “Is that the chicken rancher? In the blue dress?”
“Yes,” Joslyn said helpfully. There was a different kind of tension in the air now, and even though she sensed it had nothing whatsoever to do with her, she still felt uncomfortable. “That’s Tara Kendall. I could introduce you—”
But Boone shook his head, dragging his attention back to Slade and, peripherally, Joslyn.
“What’s wrong with Deputy McQuillan this time?” Slade asked Boone. He’d set his knife and fork down now, and his fingers were curled back into his palms, though not exactly fisted. “And why didn’t he contact me if he needed a day off?”
Boone sighed and hooked his thumbs in his service belt. Some men could carry off a uniform without looking like an overgrown Eagle Scout, and he was one of them. “I don’t know, Sheriff,” he said, narrowing his eyes a little as he looked straight into Slade’s face. “I guess you’ll have to ask him that.”
The atmosphere between the two men almost crackled.
“Get something to eat if you’re hungry,” Slade told his deputy. It was a dismissal.
Without another word, Boone headed for the buffet table.
“It’s Boone Taylor,” Joslyn chided, when she and Slade were alone in the midst of the swirling crowd. “He’s the one you don’t want elected sheriff.”
Slade gave her a wry look and stabbed at another piece of his steak. Before, he’d seemed hungry, but now, Joslyn could tell, he was just going through the motions of eating. “Nice guess, but you’re way off,” he replied. “It’s McQuillan who’d probably go after the job.”
Joslyn raised one eyebrow, frowning a little. “That name isn’t familiar. Do I know him?”
“No,” Slade said. “And if you have any sense, you’ll keep it that way.”
“Harsh,” Joslyn said, intrigued. “If you don’t like Deputy McQuillan, why did you hire him in the first place?”
He gave her another look, one that clearly said, “Keep your voice down.”
As if anyone would have heard her over the lively tune the band was playing. The lead singer was Cookie Jean Crown—she’d starred in all the musicals back when they were all attending Parable High. Everybody had expected her to go on to fame and fortune, she was so talented, but here she was, older, like the rest of them, harder around the edges and considerably heavier.
“I didn’t hire McQuillan,” Slade said, his voice taut and low. “I inherited him from my predecessor.”
“Oh,” Joslyn said. It seemed a fortuitous moment to change the subject; she could ask Kendra about the deputy and the roots of Slade’s evident antipathy toward him, later on. “Cookie Jean’s still quite the singer,” she remarked. She waggled her fingers at the other woman, now crooning “Georgia” to the band’s accompaniment, and Cookie Jean saw the wave.
She didn’t return it, though, and she didn’t smile.
In fact, she glared hard and then, still singing, pointedly looked away.
Joslyn felt as though she’d been slapped. “Ouch,” she said, to no one in particular.
This was it. The kind of response she’d been dreading.
Mentally, she went over the long list, compiled by her attorneys, of people slated to receive compensation checks, but Cookie Jean’s name wasn’t on it, as far as she could recall.
When she turned around on the bench of that picnic table, Slade was looking at her. And there wasn’t any doubt at all that he’d not only seen the exchange between her and her onetime classmate and friend, he knew what it meant.
Of course.
“Who was it?” Joslyn asked, bruised.
Slade didn’t need clarification. “Her uncle, George Tulverson,” he replied. “Took out a second mortgage on the dairy farm—it wasn’t much of a place, but it was in the family for almost a hundred years—wanting to get in on Elliott’s get-rich-quick scheme. George lost his shirt, like everybody else, and the farm went along with it.”
Joslyn automatically put a hand to her mouth.
Hungry only a little while before, she felt now as though she might throw up.
“Folks can be pretty quick to judge,” Slade said, pushing his plate away, his meal unfinished. “Especially when there’s money involved. What some of them seem to forget is that while Elliott Rossiter certainly played a key role in the whole mess, nobody put a gun to their heads and forced them to invest. There were some who saw the scheme for what it was and stayed clear, even warned their friends to do the same thing.”
Joslyn nodded, swallowed. She could feel other people watching her again now, their glances weighted. Maybe they’d been looking at her all the time, but she’d forgotten for a while because of Slade.
Now he was about to toss his plate into one of the strategically placed trash bins and go back to work.
“Joslyn?” he said, on his feet by then.
She looked up at him, unable to hide her misery, as much as she wanted to do just that.
“Don’t run,” Slade told her quietly. “You’ve got friends here, as well as a few enemies. Remember that.”
She didn’t want him to go, but she’d no more have said so than booked a seat on a flight to beautiful downtown Baghdad. “I’ll be just fine,” she said, jutting out her chin and hoping he hadn’t seen the little shiver that went through her. “But thanks for your concern.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome,” he said.
With that, he was gone, disposing of his plate and seeking out Tara Kendall, who was with Kendra and some others at another table.
Out of the corner of her eye, Joslyn watched as Slade spoke to Tara and laughed at something Kendra said.
She felt excluded, on the outside looking in, although she knew that was silly.
The air was full of delicious aromas and happy noise, but Joslyn had neither an appetite nor an inclination to celebrate with the rest of the community.
Given her druthers, she would still have hidden out in the guesthouse until everyone was gone, but that hadn’t been an option before Slade’s quiet, “Don’t run” and it wasn’t an option afterward, either.
Slade departed, leaving a hole in the fabric of the afternoon.
The party wore on. The band took breaks, eating and drinking with everyone else, and then went back to making music. People came and people went.
Joslyn circulated, following her mother’s time-honored rule: if you’re uncomfortable at a social gathering, forget about yourself and try to make others feel comfortable. Some of the guests were cordial, others were cool, and a few went out of their way to avoid speaking to her, which stung.
Hutch Carmody showed up just as some of the other men were unloading planks from a flatbed truck parked in the alley. He helped arrange the lumber into a makeshift dance floor in the middle of Kendra’s backyard.
Cookie Jean and the band finished their gig and were replaced by two guys with fiddles.
Seeing her former classmate cutting around the side of the main house, Joslyn threw caution to the wind and hurried after her.
“Cookie Jean?�
�� she called.
The other woman stopped, stiff-spined, but didn’t turn around. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Joslyn Kirk,” she said.
Under other circumstances, the irony of that remark would have made Joslyn smile.
“Well, I have something to say to you,” Joslyn insisted, going around Cookie Jean on the stone path and then pivoting to face her. “I’m sorry,” she said, after gathering up courage from her dwindling supply. “About what Elliott did, I mean. It was terrible. But I had no part in it, and you know that. We used to be friends, Cookie Jean. Remember?”
Cookie Jean’s trouble-hardened face paled a little. She’d sung away her lipstick and, because of the heat and the exertions of performing, the rest of her makeup was rubbing off, too. Her overdyed blond hair hung limp from the pins that held it up in an out-of-date French twist at the back of her head.
“You mean,” she said angrily, “that I was part of your adoring entourage. Do you think I didn’t know, Joslyn, about all those slumber parties here—” She indicated the monstrously large house next to them with a motion of her head. “The ones only the popular girls got invited to?”
There was no denying there had been slumber parties at Joslyn’s place, ones that hadn’t included Cookie Jean and the other kids who rode the school bus in from the countryside surrounding Parable. What she couldn’t bring herself to explain was that Elliott had limited those gatherings to six girls, including Joslyn herself, and he was the one who made out the guest list.
“It wasn’t what you think,” Joslyn said lamely.
“Wasn’t it?” Cookie Jean snapped, shaking a finger under Joslyn’s nose. She drew in a moist, shaky breath, and Joslyn realized the other woman was near tears. Well, fine—so was she. “Why did you come back here, anyway? You’re not welcome in Parable, Joslyn. You’re a reminder of bad times, that’s all!”
Joslyn refrained from asking if Cookie Jean or someone in her family had received a large check in the mail recently. She couldn’t buy back what Elliott had so callously thrown away, the trust and livelihoods of people who had considered him a friend, and she knew it only too well.
If she was going to leave Parable as a whole person, able to move on with her life, she would have to ride out encounters like this one—and some that were even worse, probably. Joslyn knew she ought to shut up, just cut her losses and run, figuratively speaking, but she couldn’t. Someone had to face up to the harm and loss her stepfather had caused, and since he was dead and her mother didn’t feel the same drive to make things right, the task had fallen to her.
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