Sweet Return

by Anna Jeffrey

  “No! It isn’t Alicia. And don’t you dare tell people that. And you don’t know that she screws around with him.”

  Shari gave her a flat look. “Joanna. I’m not an idiot. And I’m not blind.”

  “I don’t want you spreading tales about Alicia.”

  “Then it’s you.” She pointed a bite of lettuce on the end of her fork straight at Joanna’s nose. “Yep, it’s you, girlfriend. I can read you like a book. I’ve known you too long.” She leaned across the table and whispered, “You went to Lubbock yesterday. You got back together with Scott Goodman.”

  A rush of tears burned Joanna’s eyes, but she blinked them back. “Dammit, Shari, I’m not ready to discuss it. I just want the answer to a simple question.”

  A look of concern crossed Shari’s face. “Oh, my God. You’re upset. Joanna, I’m your best friend. You can tell me about it.”

  Joanna quickly wiped the moisture from her eyes. “No. I’m not ready to talk about it.”

  “Okay, don’t tell me. But I know it’s Scott. I heard he was upset when you broke off with him.”

  Just go ahead and think that, Joanna thought.

  Shari’s brow knit into a thoughtful frown and she rambled on. “At your age, I don’t think you have to worry as much. Once you’re past thirty, the odds against are real high.”

  “Shari, get real. I see pregnant women my age every day.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t see as many as you think.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Well…” Shari stirred her salad around her plate, then forked a chunk of chicken. “Because Jay and I started trying again a few years ago. We wanted another baby.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “We didn’t tell anybody. We didn’t want people to get all excited. You know that old saying about a watched pot never boiling. I got off the pill and everything. Jay and I did it nearly every night for two months. He even came home at lunch a few times.” She leaned forward again, still whispering. “Listen, we did it all kinds of ways. We used to get naked and watch porn movies.”

  “Porn movies?” Joanna’s brow knit into a frown. She had never watched a porn movie, wouldn’t know where to get one if she wanted to. “Where did you get porn movies in Hatlow?”

  “Jay bought a couple once when he was in Fort Worth.”

  “Shari, you’ve got kids.”

  Shari sat back against the booth, an expression of righteous indignation on her face. “Well, we keep them hidden, Joanna.”

  Joanna shook her head, frowning. “I don’t get it. How does watching porn movies help you get pregnant?”

  “Well, stop and think about it. Jay and I’ve been married going on eighteen years. I’ve never been with anybody but him. And if he’s ever been with anybody but me, he had better never let me find out about it. We were infants and virgins when we started doing it with each other. Anyway, since we were doing it so often, we thought the movies might add a little spice. Might make it more interesting.”

  Joanna’s head began to pound with a vengeance. The lettuce pieces on her plate seemed to blur into a blob of pastel green. “Hm. They obviously didn’t work.”

  “Actually, they were kind of boring. And kind of disgusting. I mean, the acting is so awful. And it doesn’t look real.”

  “Shari, you’re dripping salad dressing on the table.”

  Shari stuffed her salad bite into her mouth. “Nothing ever happened,” she said, undaunted and chewing. “You know, I never have gotten back on the pill. It’s been three years and still nothing’s ever happened. Dr. Jones says it’s just harder after you get older.” Another frown creased her brow. “I probably should get back on those pills. With this stuff going on between Cody and that little Nicole, I’m sort of out of the mood for more kids.” She speared another forkful of salad. “Just watch. Now, I’ll get pregnant.”

  “Hunh,” Joanna said. “Well, all of this is more information than I need to know.”

  “Joanna, do you realize you’re more experienced at sex than I am?”

  An unexpected laugh burst from Joanna’s throat. “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it now. You’ve been with more than one guy. I’m sure they’re all different, aren’t they? I mean, they gotta be built different, some big, some little. They gotta act different, don’t they?”

  Now Joanna really did want to break into tears. One thing she did not need today was a comparative conversation about the few men with whom she’d had sex. It could only remind her of her rotten social life and her more rotten relationship history. “Take my word, Shari, variety isn’t the answer to anything.”

  “So who’re you sleeping with?”

  “Don’t nag me. I said I’m not discussing it.”

  “But you must be worried or you wouldn’t have asked me about getting pregnant. I know you’re not on the pill. Whoever it is, I can’t believe you didn’t make him use something.”

  Me neither. The memory of her own role in what had happened in Dalton’s bed flew back into Joanna’s mind. And so did the same battering emotions that had almost overwhelmed her earlier in the shower. “It was, uh, we didn’t have anything.”

  “Wow. And you were that hot? How cool is that?”

  “Shari—”

  “Can I tell Jay?”

  “No! Don’t tell anyone. And I mean it. No one. It’s nobody’s business, Shari.”

  “Okay, okay. I won’t say a word. But only if you promise to tell me all about it before you tell anyone else.”

  Joanna rolled her eyes. She didn’t intend to tell one single person. Her greatest fear was that her mom or Clova might find out. “I promise. Just don’t mention it. You know how it is around here. I don’t want everyone in town to know every intimate detail of my life. I’m in business here. And most of my customers are women. I don’t want one of them thinking Jezebel is running the beauty shop. Suzy Martinez would have a ball telling it everywhere.”

  Shari sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. She might even go up to Lubbock and talk about it. Or down to Denver City.”

  Her demeanor changed abruptly. “Well, I’ve got to get home and fix supper for that mob that lives at my house.” She scooted out of the booth, grabbing the check. “Since I’m feeding them pizza tomorrow night before we go out, I have to fix a decent meal tonight.”

  Joanna walked with her pal all the way to her pickup in the parking lot beside Joanna’s Salon & Supplies. The lunch she had just consumed weighed a hundred pounds in her stomach.

  “Now, don’t forget,” Shari said, climbing behind the wheel. “We’ll come by and pick you up around six. Since it’s my birthday, I’m going to drink champagne. You might have to be the designated driver.” Shari laughed. “I mean, what are friends for? Oh, and I’m wearing my new boots and my fringe jacket.”

  Joanna had little interest in spending an evening in a honky-tonk and even less in being the designated driver. But a friend was a friend. “Okay,” she said ruefully.

  Shari started the engine, giving Joanna a long look. “Dammit, Joanna, I’m going to be going crazy, not able to tell Jay you got back with Scott Goodman.”

  Good, Joanna thought.

  Chapter 21

  Back in her store, armed with facts from Shari, Joanna marched directly to her desk and calendar. She counted the days as Shari had instructed. If Shari was correct—and Joanna had no reason to doubt her—Dalton’s little soldiers had missed their window of opportunity.

  A monumental gush of relief flooded Joanna, to the point where she actually felt better than she had all day.

  The relief came from believing she had escaped what could have been an onerous result of stupid behavior. But that sentiment conflicted with a sense of loss that had set up a dull, deep ache in her midsection. It was so disappointing that sleeping with Dalton had been nothing more than…well, call it what it was—a reckless, meaningless romp with a man she scarcely knew.

  What makes
you think it doesn’t have any meaning? There’s damn near nothing that happens that has no meaning.

  Not a direct lie, but a lie by implication. From a man who only wanted sex, a man who would soon be leaving town.

  Even as that thought passed through her mind, she reminded herself that he wouldn’t be leaving tomorrow. He would still be at the ranch for some unknown number of days when she went to tend the hens and gather the eggs. Crap.

  Unable to imagine how the next meeting with him might go, she chewed on the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t up to facing him. Not yet. He was too strong, too aggressive. She couldn’t avoid going to the ranch forever, but, she calculated, after a day or two, her pride and ego would be healed enough and her strength restored enough to do combat with him. The passage of time lessened the sting of a lot of prickly things, she had learned. She was nothing if not resilient.

  Meanwhile, Joanna intended to enjoy a respite from minding the hens and eggs. When Alicia came in to work, she arranged for the teenager to gather the eggs and feed the hens that evening and twice again tomorrow and to ask her boyfriend to accompany her in case she ran into a varmint.

  Dalton stood at the fence that surrounded Joanna’s chickens. He no longer hated them quite as badly as he had the first time he saw them.

  Still, a more tolerant attitude about the chickens did not prevent his sinking into his worst mood in years. His complicated, but organized, life had suddenly become cluttered with a bunch of emotional crap. Crap like feelings for his little brother, his mother and now Joanna Walsh. Complications he routinely dealt with daily. Clutter was more difficult.

  Ah, Joanna. Her angry departure and its cause had troubled him all day. Sometimes events came together in such an ironic way a man couldn’t keep from wondering if some damn jokester somewhere was pulling strings and chortling at the result. This was a level of thinking with which he rarely bothered, but Candace calling on this particular morning about the friggin’ swimming pool was stunning. Here in Texas, at nine o’clock in the morning, the time in LA had been seven. Candace hadn’t been out of bed at seven a.m. since he’d known her.

  Now he wasn’t sure what to do about Joanna. Wait for her to cool off? That seemed like a good plan. When she was less angry, he could talk to her in a reasonable conversation.

  He didn’t want her to think him a liar and a selfish asshole. He had to try to make her understand that Candace lived in his house temporarily.

  Second, he and Joanna had to finish the more personal conversation of this morning. The phone had interrupted before he had been able to learn if there was a danger she could have gotten pregnant. What the fuck would they do if she did?

  They? Hell, there was no they.

  The question was what would she do? More to the point, what the fuck would he do?

  As far as he knew, he had never even come close to being a father, even when he was married. His ex-wife had been a dedicated career woman. She hadn’t wanted kids. And he hadn’t to this day considered whether he did. His life was busy, full of excitement and adventure and short notices. Kids wouldn’t fit. But he knew one thing for sure—the bastard Dalton Parker would not relish being responsible for bringing another bastard into the world.

  He veered to another subject he was wary to bring up with Joanna. Beside him on the ground lay a metal detector he had bought today while in Lubbock. He had used it a short time ago to search for the old oil well.

  And he believed he had found it…directly under Joe and Jill’s shed, damn near in the middle of Joanna’s chicken yard. Fuck. The chickens would have to go.

  He felt guilty about that and he intended to level with Joanna. That is, if he could ever get back in her good graces. Of course she would be upset. That bothered him, though he wasn’t sure why it should. Jesus Christ, she had been using the land for free for more than two years. Did she expect such an arrangement to go on forever?

  He was also taking heat over the oil-well venture from his business manager in LA. The guy had yelled at him on the phone for thirty minutes, outlining how easily and quickly he could lose a hundred thousand dollars or more in an industry known for its charlatans.

  …that’s the nature of wildcattin’ for oil. It’s a high-stakes gamble if there ever was one.

  Skeeter Vance’s words had stuck in Dalton’s mind. Even so, Dalton Parker was no stranger to a high-stakes gamble. Up to this point, he had sometimes gambled his very life on nothing more than snapping a picture. When he went into primitive, hostile countries on a photography mission, he knew every time that for one off-the-wall reason or other, he might not survive. Hell, a weird bug bite could kill him even if a bunch of armed combatants who thought they had a cause didn’t. He had been willing to take the risk, though as an intelligent man, he had always done everything possible to protect himself.

  Compared to what he had already survived, what was risking a little money on a project that had the potential to hugely benefit the ranch and his mother and even himself?

  Oilman. Wildcatter. Titles Dalton had never once expected or desired to wear. But what was the alternative? Risk even more by handing his mother the money to save the ranch, then not know how it would be used? He couldn’t stay in Hatlow forever and oversee his investment. If Mom and Lane couldn’t pull the ranch out of debt and make it work again, his conscience would never let him demand that she pay the money back. What assurance would he ever have that the place—and his money—wouldn’t end up in the hands of the bastards at the Hatlow Farmers Bank?

  At least with a drilling venture, he could file legal documents as the “independent operator” and hope for the best. And if Vance hit oil, there could be enough cash to pay the ranch’s debts and repay the drilling costs.

  A pragmatic side of him told him he should have stayed in California and ignored what was going on in Texas, as he had done for most of his adult life. But an emotion he couldn’t name had overridden practical sense and he knew he was on the brink of something. He felt as if he was coming to terms with his very core. At this moment, that challenge was more compelling than worrying over his checkbook.

  In his head, he had made a tentative decision about the well, but he wouldn’t firm up details until he could talk at greater length to his mother. This morning before going to Lubbock, he had gone by the hospital and visited her. To his surprise, she was upbeat and planning on being released tomorrow or the next day.

  Beyond all of those issues roiling in his mind, though his trip to Lubbock had gone well on one level, it had not gone so well on another.

  He had told Lane of meeting Mandy. Lane broke into tears. Nothing could be resolved with him flat of his back in a hospital bed in another town, but Lane admitting his feeling for Mandy and his child was a start. Dalton resolved to persuade Mandy to accompany him to visit Lane in the hospital. If he weren’t in such a bad mood, he would feel proud of himself for the Good Samaritan role he was playing in solving that problem.

  The part of the visit that had gone less well was the meeting he’d had with Lane’s doctors and practically everybody in Lubbock Memorial Hospital. The only people he had missed were the board members. Lane was headed for lengthy rehabilitation. And without a penny’s worth of insurance.

  Dalton had listened to some damn social worker drone on about how without ownership of a single fuckin’ thing, Lane was eligible for some government assistance for his treatment. Welfare. Jesus. A member of his family taking welfare. That had never happened. But desirable choices didn’t abound. The bill Lane had accumulated already could push the teetering ranch over the edge. With the government willing to pick up the tab, Dalton hadn’t stepped forward and offered to pay. Yet.

  He felt guilty about that, too. But, hell, he wasn’t a bottomless pit. He was already committed to paying for his mother’s treatment. And who knew how much that would be? Besides that, he had handed the government enough in service and taxes over the years to more than cover Lane’s rehabilitation. Selfish? Maybe. But factual.
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  There were plenty of other places around this damn ranch to spend money, too. He had started to consider a few things he could do to improve the place, like replace the plumbing in the old house. Maybe turn some of the overgrazed areas into crops of some kind. No matter what his business manager said, Dalton couldn’t deny the affection he had for the Lazy P and the possessive feeling that had popped up once he had learned it was in trouble.

  He had just glanced at his watch, wondering why Joanna hadn’t already shown up, when he heard a growling engine slow at the turnoff from the highway. He hadn’t noticed her truck making such a noise last night. He waited for it to come into view.

  The thing that appeared was a rusted-out old Pontiac, its undercarriage not six inches off the ground. Inside rode a Hispanic couple. The rolling wreck stopped in front of the egg-washing room and a young woman got out. He recognized her as being Joanna’s teenage helper.

  “Hola, Señor Cherry,” the girl called, waving and smiling broadly, showing bright white teeth.

  Dalton winced at being called Mr. Cherry. He walked over to the egg-processing room. “Hi. Let’s see, your name’s Alicia, right?”

  “Sí.”

  She turned to the scrawny kid with her. He had tattoos from his hairline to his fingertips and assorted metal objects stuck in several places on his face. Dalton had a tattoo himself, an American eagle on his left shoulder. He had done that to mark himself an American patriot. He didn’t understand a kid mutilating his body with piercings.

  “This is my boyfriend, Pablo. We come to take Joanna’s eggs.”

  “She isn’t coming?”

  “She feel very bad. I say to her, ‘I take the eggs.’ And she say, ‘Okay.’”

  Disappointment settled in Dalton’s chest.

  Alicia disappeared into the egg-washing room and came out a minute later carrying the baskets and blue buckets, which she handed to the boy as she spoke to him in a stream of Spanish.

  “Is she, uh, sick?” Dalton asked.

  Alicia nodded, her brow knit with concern. “I thing so. She go home to her big bed.”