by Luanne Jones
“Mind your manners, Jillie.”
“Ignore her bitterness, Rita. That’s just the voice of experience talking.” He’d never have sunk so low if his sister hadn’t started the low blows with that “get yourself a little more fixed up” crack to Rita. He shut the water off. “I don’t think you have a place telling anyone how to act, baby sister, or who they should meet with when, or how they should look when they do it.”
“Fine. Then I won’t bother to tell you to pull your swelled head out of your behind before Mama gets over here.”
“Mama?”
“She’s on her way, too.”
The plates crashing into the suds covered the worst of his low-from-the-gut cussing. He strode to the doorway between the dining area and kitchen and hit Jillie with a glare, his lips stiff. “How the hell did she find out I was here?”
His sister toyed with the empty napkin holder. “One of her ladies saw your car.”
“Round here we call them Miss Peggy’s Secret Service.” Rita put a hand to her hip. Her dark eyes lit up.
He suspected she felt some sort of affection or some such nonsense for his mother and the Retired Junior League gossip brigade. “They know all the secrets and consider it a service to let your mother in on them.”
He cursed again.
Rita laughed.
He gave her a look that made hardened workmen shut their mouths and drop their gazes from his.
“Smile, Will, company’s coming!” Her dimples betrayed how much she enjoyed seeing him in the same fix as her.
He clenched his jaw.
“I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes now.” Jillie cocked her head and aimed her gaze at his feet. “Or ever, for that matter.”
“Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes has never been your forte, little sister. Putting your scrawny ass in another woman’s marriage bed seems to be more your style now.”
“Bastard,” Jillie hissed.
“Got that right.” He braced himself for the slap he so deserved and felt all the more the big jerk when it did not come. “At least I can stand to hear the truth about myself. Can’t you?”
“You wouldn’t know the truth if…”
“Y’all stop it, right now!” Rita stepped between them.
Jillie turned her glaring gaze on her.
Will smiled, just a touch of his practiced wiseass smile.
“We are standing at ground zero of a couple of converging you’ve-plunged-a-knife-into-my-heart-for-not-telling-me-what-you-were-up-to, walleyed, claws-out hissy fits.” A commanding calm came over Rita. A new kind of power seemed to vibrate around her. “We have to decide how to handle this with a minimum of hurt feelings or hair-pulling and without any significant information exchanges, right?”
“Right.” Will focused on his sister, his tone threatening her to keep on arguing.
“Yeah, right.” Jillie brushed at her collar.
“So, any suggestions on how we go about accomplishing that?”
“Is gunplay absolutely out of the question?” Will narrowed his eyes and grinned.
“Will!”
“Just a couple of warning shots over their heads.” He tried to pull off looking innocent but had no illusions that it worked.
“Too bad you don’t have tea and cake to serve them.” Jillie’s wistful gaze made him wonder if she actually meant that ridiculous suggestion or if she had finally gone mad from years of starving herself to stay thin.
But Rita’s eyes twinkled like Christmas. “Who says I don’t have tea and cake?”
Jillie turned her head so fast her red curls trembled. “You do?”
“How long have you known me?”
“You do!” Jillie grinned. “I don’t dare hope that it’s…?”
“Yes, indeedy.”
“Mother and Pernel are bearing down on this place like two bad-weather fronts about to clash and y’all have started talking in shorthand or code or something.” Will leaned his shoulder against the doorframe but kept one eye on the front window.
“I made a Perfect Princess cake.” Rita held her hands together and raised her gaze heavenward, all childlike and waiting for a reward of high praise for her actions.
Jillie clapped. “Yes!”
“I was going to serve it to your brother later.”
“Oh, Rita, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? You and Billy sitting here waiting for them all cool and collected like a pair of spiders poised on a web—and with Princess cake to offer no less!”
“I don’t…” Damn he hated to say this aloud. He cleared his throat and folded his arms. “I don’t believe I understand.”
“Follow me.” Rita snagged his sleeve as she hurried past into the kitchen.
“I’ll pull a table and four chairs into the middle of the floor.”
“What is going on here, Rita?”
“You know that old song ‘If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake’?”
“Song?” He tagged along with her to the mammoth steel-doored refrigerator.
“Well, I knew you were coming, so I did bake a cake. My specialty.”
“Princess cake?”
“Three layer, red velvet cake with a seven-minute boiled frosting and a crown on top made of drizzled white chocolate and strawberries.” She brought out a large plastic container of tea. “Pour that into the nicest pitcher you can find, why don’t you? I’ll get the cake.”
He scanned the shelves until he found the one pitcher that was neither cracked nor stained nor ugly enough to send his mother into a fainting spell. He filled it with ice from the machine. “You were going to serve me something called Princess cake?”
“And you were going to ask for seconds, probably thirds, and a piece to take home for a midnight snack.”
Having tasted her cooking already, he did not doubt that. He poured the tea into the new container. “But Princess cake?”
“Don’t start with me, Will.” Both of her arms and most of her upper body disappeared inside the fridge. “I cannot deal with your mother, my ex, and your sexual-ambiguity-in-regard-to-snack-food identity crisis all at the same time.”
He didn’t even know where to start to address that. “Sexual ambiguity? Snack-food crisis? Me? I am not the one here with identity and self-esteem cri…Damn.”
She held the plate before her, peering at him over the peaks of lacy confection and strawberries dipped in white chocolate. “The Perfect Princess cake.”
“This will stop even my mama dead in her tracks.”
“Shh. Quick, say a prayer.”
“A what? Why?”
“Never say dead and mama in the same sentence if your mother is still living. Don’t you have any sense at all?”
“You’ve as much as told me I don’t.”
“Shut your eyes and say a prayer, I mean it.”
He closed his eyes and muttered under his breath. The message was far from heavenly. When he opened his eyes again Rita was gone, but the sweet aroma of that cake still lingered. So did the feeling that for all his bravado about coming here to help her realize her potential, he might well be the one who ended up learning a thing or two about life and himself in the bargain.
Chapter 5
EVERY DIXIE BELLE DISCOVERS:
What we tell ourselves we are, that’s what we become.
“I thought you said they were on their way.” Will raised his arm just enough to give Rita a view of his flexed muscles.
He was showing her his wristwatch, no doubt, but what she saw was muscle. Her pulse picked up. When Rita caught the subtle scent on Will’s skin and took a deep breath she swore she drew in some kind of electrical charge that sent a shiver through her whole body.
Careful not to jiggle the table where they both sat in wait, she moved closer and pretended to make a note of the time. “Well, you know how it is around here. A body dare not step a toe outside the house without proper attention to hair, clothes, and makeup. Or the next thing you know somebody down at the Belle
s and Beaux Beauty Salon will spread the word that you are definitely letting yourself go!”
“And Pernel can’t afford that kind of bad word of mouth.” Jillie never turned her gaze from the row of parking places out front. Still, her satisfaction at making a cutting remark about Rita’s ex showed in the faint reflection of her face on the glass door where she stood watch.
“Did anyone ever tell you what a bitch you are, Jillie?”
“About as often as folks tell you what they really think of your brother,” she said, not looking back to see how he took it.
“Then I guess you don’t hear it often enough.” He sat back and curved his hand around the top of Rita’s chair now so close to his. “Unless Rita here gets after you now and again.”
“Don’t involve me in this.” She could feel his hand there—right there—just a hairbreadth away from her back, and it made her jumpy.
He strummed his fingers once along the wood, so close she felt the vibrations on her back.
She would get up but what would she do? Pace? Pretend to polish the lunch counter? The one they planned to rip out and destroy as soon as they could? She might as well twist around in her seat and blurt out to the man, “You make me so nervous I can’t think straight.”
Great. Now that idea was in her head. What was it Cozette said about “self” talk? She rubbed her eyes. “What we tell ourselves we are, that’s what we become.”
“Hmm?”
She blinked, suddenly aware she’d spoken aloud. “Nothing, just an approach Cozie tries to get me to use.”
Wham. The door slamming at the back of the kitchen cut her off. An odd cadence of footsteps clack-a-clacking toward them rivaled the skipping beat of her heart.
Rita braced herself. “Cozie says that what we tell ourselves we are—”
“I am here, and I am fit to be tied,” Pernel’s cry echoed through the vacant building.
“That’s what we become.” She followed Will’s gaze to her ex-husband stopped in the doorway.
Pernel aimed his fiercest glare at her, then flung the scarf around his throat over one shoulder so that the end swirled downward to accent his backless sundress perfectly.
“I guess not every bit of gossip around Hellon is a gross exaggeration of the truth.” Will narrowed his eyes.
Pernel smoothed back his auburn pageboy wig. He anchored his substantial pumps shoulder width apart and proceeded to wrestle with something inside the top of his dress. Pernel shifted his shoulder and one of the lumps in his bodice slipped lower than the other. He set about correcting the problem.
“Of course that depends on your definition of gross.” Will shook his head.
“He hasn’t decided which is the best cup size for his frame, and I’m sure that halter bra is giving him fits.” Why Rita felt compelled to offer that tidbit was beyond her.
“Are they evened up now?” Pernel held his arms out and offered himself for their inspection.
“Not quite.” She motioned to him. “Come over here and let me help you out.”
“Wait. Hell’s hobnobs, one of my press-on nails has come off inside here.” He pulled the front of his dress out and began to shimmy and shake.
She thought of reminding him he might have some impediment that would keep the fake fingernail from falling clean through to the floor but stopped herself. She did not know how or if he had alleviated that problem and did not want to give him the opportunity to tell her. She might have come to accept the man’s eccentricities, but there are some things an ex-wife just doesn’t want to know. Whether the father of her child tucks or tapes to create a…streamlined silhouette falls in that category.
“Does he have to do that here?” Will winced.
“You don’t have to be afraid of him, you know.” Again she had no idea why she responded the way she did. That dang nerves thing, she suspected, or maybe her need to keep everything on an even keel. Whatever the reason, she went on trying to make lemonade out of…who was she kidding? Good old loyal Rita was actually trying to make lemonade out of those oversize grapefruits strapped to Pernel’s chest. “Dressing like that doesn’t mean he’s an unfit father.”
“Did I say I thought he was?”
“It obviously bothers you. And he’s not gay; even if he were, he won’t hit on you and as far as his taste in clothes—well, it’s not contagious.”
“That’s twice now you’ve made a reference to me having some kind of gender hang-up.” He held up two fingers, then raised his eyebrows at her. “It isn’t because you think I’m intimidated by my mama is it?”
“I never said anything about—”
“Because I’m not.”
“Not? Not what?”
“Intimidated by my mama or hung up about gender or sexual preferences.” He angled his shoulder down so that he could speak into her ear, the clear hint of mischief in his deep, glittering eyes. “I welcome an opportunity to prove as much to you.”
“You mean about your mother?”
“If you say so.” He jerked his head to the side and grinned.
“Oh.” Rita covered her mouth.
He chuckled, then glanced across the room at Pernel and scowled. “I know you don’t hold me in the highest regard, but I do want you to know I am not homophobic. And surely you realize after the life I’ve led, I could care less what other consenting adults get up to in private.”
After the life he’d led? Rita dared not speculate on that. “Then why does it bug you so much that Pernel is pursuing an alternative lifestyle?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Oh please, contempt for that man is written all over your face. How can you—”
“Because he hurt you.” His almost black eyes fixed so intensely on her that he honed the world down to just the two of them.
“Got it!” Pernel held his arm up over his head, brandishing the nail between his thumb and fore-finger. “I have to get this fixed before I lose it again. Do you have any acrylic glue, Rita?”
“I have some in my purse.” Jillie rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Pernel, if you insist on going around town like this, you owe it to whatever personal pride you have left to do it right, not half-assed liked everything else you’ve ever taken on.”
“Half-assed?” He gave her a look worthy of some silent-screen movie vamp and pulled it off stunningly. “Coming from a girl with no ass at all, I take that as a compliment.”
“At least what I do have did not come from a mail-order catalog.”
“You mean they don’t have catalogs at the plastic surgeon’s office? What do you do? Cut out pictures from magazines? Because if that’s the case, hon, let me recommend you get yourself some new subscriptions.”
“High-handed talk for a man with the world’s worst case of hooter-scoot I’ve ever seen. One of those is high enough to put an eye out and the other is about to slip down into your panty hose.”
“It is a bit like Big-Busted Bertha now.” Rita held her hands up chest high, then dipped one to waist level. “Big-Busted Bertha thirty years from now.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.” Despite chastising her, Will did laugh. It felt good to hear it.
“Jillie, fix Pernel’s nails and his boobies, please.” She turned to Will. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“You are either the nicest woman alive or a damn fool.”
“Some people act like those are one and the same.”
“I never said that.”
“I may not be the kind of sophisticated woman you run into in the ‘kind of life’ you’ve led,” She made quotation marks in the air. “But I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see what you think of me, of my life and what I’ve done with it.”
“I’m far more interested in what you can do with your life and your future, if you really want to.” He almost put his hand on hers, but at the last second he held back and laid it on the table between them.
She didn’t care that he hadn’t completed the gesture. It felt good
to have him beside her, on her team, as it were. It had been a very long time since she’d felt anyone was truly on her side for her sake alone. Though she knew the feeling existed mostly in her mind, she took a second to revel in it.
“Whatever you decide don’t let Pernel walk all over you.”
“I won’t.” She gave him a sinful smile. “Especially, not in those heels.”
“How can you make jokes about all this after…?”
“After what?” She sat back and watched Jillie work on Pernel. “After nearly fifteen years of him running our lives, me going along trying not to make waves, then him coming home one day and telling me it’s over?”
“For starters—”
“Or maybe you mean how can I take things so lightly after he decided to let the world in on his previously private indulgence by showing up at our daughter’s graduation in a cocktail dress, wig, and wedgies?”
“Why the bastard is still breathing is beyond me.”
“Or how about how can I keep smiling after he sold my home? Made me take him to court to get this dump so I could have something to rebuild with?”
“Take your pick.”
“I can be civil to him because…” She sighed. Having just recounted the short list of her ex’s transgressions, she found herself hard-pressed to explain it adequately. In fact, she had to force the words out through a clenched jaw. “Because he is an important part of my life.”
“Was an important part,” Will amended.
“He is my daughter’s daddy.” A far reach to justify a lifetime of shabby treatment, but still…She raised her shoulders and laced her arms over her chest. She could not meet Will’s unwavering gaze. “I can’t just discard him or the role he has played in my life simply because he had the poor taste to fall out of love with me.”
“Not even if you fell out of love with him right back?” He asked it so quietly she half wondered if she’d imagined it.
Had she fallen out of love with Pernel? Even looking at him now pressing his Plum Patina-glossed lips together while Jillie adjusted his fake bosom she could not go so far as to say she had fallen out of love with the man. That would mean she had been “in love” with him. She had never deluded herself, or him, into believing that. But she did love him in her own way. “I don’t think you and I have the same definition of love, Will.”