Cob stopped, mouth open. The woman was pregnant, belly swollen and about to pop. Rollie had a woman? A young and beautiful woman. A pregnant woman. Shit! What’d the old man do, win the lottery?
He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, not wanting to frighten her any more than she obviously was. He heard the door open. “I won’t…” hurt you, he started to say.
“Damn right. You won’t do squat. Stay right there, Mister.”
Rollie, looking older and a lot smaller than Cob remembered, stood on the back porch holding a shotgun that wavered vaguely in Cob’s direction.
The woman, now behind his uncle, reached for the gun. “I got it, honey.”
“The hell you do. It’s my legs don’t work. I can shoot just fine.” He rested the barrel on the rail.
Hands still in the air, Cob said quietly, “Rollie, it’s me, Cob, your nephew,” he added, in case the old man had lost his mind as well as the use of his legs. He stared at the woman’s middle. Obviously other parts worked just fine.
“The hell you say. Cob’s dead. Been dead these last fourteen years.”
“Then how the hell am I standing here now?” Cob thought for a minute before he came up with something the old man would understand. “Did they ever send you a check?”
“Don’t deal in checks. It’s cash money or nothing. Anybody who knows me knows that.”
Cob’s head dropped to his chest. He gave it a quick shake and picked it up again. “You are as thick as the soles on a banker’s shoes, Rollie Roper.” It was what his mother said over and over when he was a boy.
Rollie took his finger off the trigger. “Step on over here so’s I can get a good look at ya.”
Rollie handed the shotgun to Lorelei and leaned over the rail to get a better look. The boy had been tall and skinny when he left. This feller wasn’t as tall as Dewey Tolliver, but he was twice as broad.
“What was your Mama’s name?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Cob started to lower his hands and then noticed how the woman held the weapon. She looked a damn sight more competent that Rollie.
“My mother’s name was Abigail. My father was Elijah. I was born in this house, or so I was told, in the same damn bed as you were, though I hope to God it wasn’t the same damn mattress. We came to live with you when I wasn’t much more than a baby. You had an old hound you called Boner that my mother hated though I didn’t understand at the time it was the name she hated, not the dog. He lived under that porch you’re standing on and you told me he would eat me alive if I dared leave the house without you or my mother. I believed it, you old bastard.”
Rollie slapped the rail. “I’ll be damned. I thought you was dead. Got notice from the gov’ment.”
“That I was wounded, not dead. Didn’t you listen to what they said?” He started to drop his hands again, stopped, looked at the woman and completed the move when she nodded and lowered the weapon, though she didn’t put the safety on when she cradled it across her arm.
“Didn’t talk to ‘em. Saw the car and the uniforms and knew why they were here. They don’t send a car lessen you’re dead. You best come in since you ain’t.” He turned, tottered, and was rescued from falling by the woman.
“Good to see you, too,” Cob muttered as he went to retrieve his duffle.
When he entered the kitchen, Rollie was sitting at the table and the woman was leaning over him, rubbing his back and cooing something into his ear. There was an aluminum walker next to the table. Rollie didn’t look good. Maybe she thought she and the baby would inherit this house when the old man died. She wasn’t wearing a ring. Still…
He heard Rollie blow his nose. The woman leaned further in and kissed the top of his uncle’s head. “Thanks for being there, honey. You’re my hero. I’m going out back to finish hanging my wash.” She glared at Cob, but spoke to Rollie. “You call if you need me.”
Cob moved out of the way as she passed. For a woman ‘great with child’, she moved gracefully without the waddling gait he’d noticed in other women in her state.
She stopped just past him and turned her head. “Don’t upset him again,” she warned.
Upset Rollie? His uncle wasn’t the one held at gunpoint, was he?
The screen door slammed behind her and he turned his attention to Rollie.
“Who the hell is she?”
The Alpha's Choice Page 34