Maggie, silent and morose up to this point, twisted her paper napkin until it fell apart in her fingers. “I didn’t think I needed to.”
“Tell me what?” Brax croaked. His voice probably hadn’t cracked like that since he was thirteen years old. He had to know what was coming. In fact, Simone could have sworn he ducked slightly as if to ward off the blow.
“Our Manor of the Ladies is a home for former ladies of the night,” Divine explained.
“Chloe built it for us,” Rowena added.
“Sadly, many of us aren’t terribly good at saving our money for old age,” Agnes admitted.
“We never thought we’d reach old age,” Divine scoffed. “What with AIDS and all that.”
“Speak for yourself.” Rowena tipped her head with a queenlike gesture in Divine’s direction. “I always insisted on protection even before it was fashionable.”
Brax made an odd sound, either horrified laughter or he was choking on the bit of scone he’d just popped in his mouth.
“But Chloe came to our rescue.” Nonnie acknowledged credit where credit was definitely due.
“Isn’t she the most wonderful person?” Agnes said on a grateful sigh. The others nodded their heads like bobbing apples.
Simone couldn’t agree more, but Chloe, flustered by the glowing compliments and admiration, busied herself with buttering a second scone.
That’s why Chloe was the only one in town who wanted Jason’s resort. Most thought it was because she wanted increased traffic through The Chicken Coop. Which was true, but Simone suspected she wanted the extra cash flow to support the Manor. Fifteen ladies now lived in the small rest home, but she constantly received new petitioners. Chloe had a hard time saying no.
Brax finally swallowed the scone. He raised his dainty teacup, looking ridiculously fragile in his big hand, and saluted each one. “Here’s to the most gracious quartet of ex-ladies of the night I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.” Then he inclined his head toward The Chicken Coop’s madam. “And to Chloe for her generosity.”
They all drank to his toast.
What a sweet guy. He could have run screaming from the room.
Agnes pointed to the hand still holding aloft his teacup and said, “So, don’t keep us in suspense. Eight inches? Or more?”
* * * * *
After numerous offers of aid, they’d left the Manor ladies to cleanup duty. Brax’s earlier shock had receded. A home for ex-prostitutes, only in Goldstone. Having made it through teatime, Brax wiped the proverbial sweat off his brow as he stepped out onto the Manor’s front porch, Simone a pace in front of him. She was close enough for him to draw in her fresh fruity scent. “All I can say is thank God I didn’t screw up and call Myrtle by the name of Divine.”
Simone snorted in disgust. “Her real name is Myrtle, and you were supposed to call her Divine.”
He did remember, but he’d wanted to see Simone’s smile. The feminine snort was the next best thing. “Thank God I managed not to call her anything at all.”
Simone glanced at him over her shoulder, her hair blowing into her eyes and sticking for a moment to her freshened lipstick before she pulled it free.
He had a sudden vision of lipstick prints all over his body.
“You were terribly sweet, you know.”
His turn to snort. “Remember what I said last night about nice? Goes the same for sweet. Men aren’t supposed to be sweet,” he finished, the last word rife with his disgust.
She patted his forearm in comfort. Damn, what the slightest touch from her did to him. He shouldn’t have played with her in the dining room, shouldn’t have touched her thigh, her silky hair, or laid her napkin across her lap, where he wanted to lay his head. Sheer torture, his actions had built the tension and anticipation she’d seduced him with last night. Her very proximity shot his testosterone level into the ozone.
“Aren’t you going to drive Maggie home?” Simone asked.
Thankfully, she found the perfect question to bring him back to earth, solid ground, and his sense of responsibility.
At the far end of the lot, Maggie fumbled with her car keys at the side of her clean, white four-door sedan. Last year’s model. Carl certainly didn’t skimp on the vehicles they drove. Brax wondered at their debt-to-equity ratio.
“She wanted to be alone.” He didn’t consider himself ineffectual in most cases. He had, however, been practicing quite a bit of ineffectual behavior lately.
“My mother says a gentleman should always see a distressed lady home.”
In this case, Brax had to agree with Simone’s mother whole-heartedly. He’d offered to drive Maggie home, but short of snatching the keys out of her hand, there hadn’t been much he could do about it. Maggie needed some alone time. The discourse with Della Montrose at the tea party had deteriorated almost to blows. He was sure witnessing that hadn’t helped Maggie.
Which made him extremely glad Della had been the first to leave, before the second pot of tea had been emptied or the last scone demolished.
“Perhaps you’ll let me make up for my lack of chivalry by walking you home.” It was only a mile. Everything was only a mile away in Goldstone.
“I wasn’t criticizing—”
“Any more than was deserved,” he finished for her.
She nodded as if in agreement. “And how do you know I didn’t drive myself over?”
He glanced around the near empty lot, now that Maggie had pulled onto the highway. “I didn’t find my favorite bumper sticker.” That and the fact that she wore flat sandals more conducive to walking than the platforms he’d admired. She’d painted her toenails a pale pink.
Her mouth lifted in a slight smile, not as dazzling as the usual, but enough to raise his pulse rate. “Of course, while we’re walking,” she said, “you intend to ask all about how you can help Maggie.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” That was his strategy behind accompanying her home. A secondary plus to that plan was its guarantee to keep his mind where it belonged instead of on Simone’s pretty pink toes, shapely ankles, and what she wore beneath that polka dot skirt fluttering in the breeze. “I think you’re a better choice than your friend, Della.”
Simone sighed and started across the parking lot to a path Brax now saw headed back into Goldstone proper.
“I don’t know what got into Della. She’s usually more...” Searching, Simone shook her head from side to side, her hair brushing her nape and shoulders, then she shrugged. “Diplomatic. Being a politician, she doesn’t usually go off like that.”
Brax had his doubts. There was a pinch to Della Montrose’s lips and a hardness in her cold blue eyes that said she went off on a regular basis. “Why doesn’t she like Carl?”
Simone flapped both hands, then dropped them to her sides. “It’s not that she doesn’t like him. She loves Maggie. Della came to Goldstone about the time Carl brought Maggie home as his wife, and both being new, well, I think they naturally became the best of friends. She’s very protective of her friends.”
An admirable trait, though somehow it did not make him appreciate Della. “How long has she been mayor?”
“Seems like forever, since she had the office when I got here. But I guess it’s been about six years. And she’s also been the county judge for almost the entire time she’s been in Goldstone.”
The path they followed widened to a gravel street. The old schoolhouse stood a block to the east, the stone facade crumbling, and a twelve-foot chain-link fence surrounding it. A dog barked off to the right, answered by another perhaps a block farther down, and cars whooshed by on the highway a few hundred feet away. Other than that, they could have been alone for all the activity not happening in Goldstone on a Tuesday afternoon.
Brax would dearly love to be alone with Simone, if not for the fact that he liked her too much in addition to wanting her. With liking came responsibility, commitment, relationship questions, and a woman’s desire for a man to share his emotions.
&nbs
p; He nipped that line of thinking in the bud. “So Della’s protective. Seems to me a better way of handling the rift between Carl and Maggie would be to talk it through with her. Isn’t that what women do best? Talk?”
Simone stopped in the middle of the road, put her hands on her hips—he really did wish she would stop touching her own body parts, it was driving him nuts—and cocked her head. “I get the sneaky suspicion there was something derogatory in that remark.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender, then took her arm and steered her down the street. “No, no. I meant that women seem to need to talk things out with someone else.”
“Like we can’t make our own decisions or need someone else to tell us what to do?”
“Hell, no. That is not what I meant.” He was glad he had his hand on her or she might have gone careening down the road. The militant female blaze in her eyes burrowed beneath his skin the same way as the thought of her finger poking his chest. She had spark. He wanted to ignite it. But not this way. “I admire the way women talk over a problem, come to a conclusion, and act.”
“Hah.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Men hate talking.”
He gave a shrug, letting his hand fall away. “Yeah. But we admire that women are able to do it.” At least when it was amongst themselves.
“And?”
“And, I’d like you to talk to Maggie. Because I’m inadequate at it.”
She dropped her gaze to her toes. Obviously his plea wasn’t what she wanted or expected. She wiggled the toes on her right foot, then her left, a mesmerizing performance.
“You know...I...” She bit her lip.
“What?” The only good thing was that he’d turned the tables on her by admitting his flaw.
She tipped her chin up to look at him through her lashes. “How about if I talk to Della and get her to let up about Carl?”
“Maggie needs more than that.” Something he should tell himself instead of palming his responsibilities off on Simone.
“They’ve known each other longer. I think Maggie will open up to Della more than me.”
He smiled wryly. “Della seems more concerned with getting Maggie to leave Carl.”
“She was just edgy today, that’s all.”
“I noticed.”
“She’s been edgy since Jason Lafoote came to town.”
“Because of the resort?”
Simone turned then and headed down the slight incline toward her street. Brax followed, catching up just as she mumbled, “Everyone hates that resort.”
“Except Chloe.”
“Chloe has her reasons, I’m sure.”
“To fund the Manor?”
Simone tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded. “I’m pretty sure that’s the reason. More business. But not to line her own pockets. She’s very selfless, you know.”
Hard to believe that a whorehouse madam could be selfless, but Brax had to agree Our Manor of the Ladies could be nothing but an altruistic endeavor. He couldn’t find the hitch in it anywhere. “The ladies certainly love her.”
“We all do.”
“I didn’t know Maggie knew her so well.”
She rolled her eyes, then gave him the dazzling smile he’d been waiting for with bated breath. “Everybody knows everybody in Goldstone. Really well.”
An exact repeat of Maggie’s words yesterday, and precisely as it was in Cottonmouth. Only difference was, Cottonmouth didn’t have a madam or a whorehouse, and the only chicken coops were the genuine articles.
One thing he still found puzzling. If Maggie knew Chloe so well, why did she send her brother down there to find out if Carl was a customer instead of asking Chloe herself? Not wanting to air dirty laundry came to mind. Even in a town the size of Goldstone, people wanted to keep their secrets.
He wondered how many secrets Simone was keeping.
Chapter Eight
“I’ll talk to Della. She’s the best one to help Maggie. I promise.” Simone felt like a traitor. Or maybe something else. A heel. Not quite right, either, too harsh. The person caught in the middle. Writing snippets for the Doodles to play with was fine. Giving Carl a fantasy when she knew he and Maggie were having problems was downright stupid.
Not that she’d thought of it that way until she figured out Carl hadn’t even used the story. At least not that she knew of.
“I’d rather you did it.”
Brax had walked her all the way home, hoping to change her mind, she was sure. Now he waited for her answer on her front walk, within touching distance, while she stood on the step trying to figure out how to get away with a fib.
She couldn’t risk talking to Maggie. What if she revealed something she shouldn’t? “I’d probably say the wrong thing.” She had a very big mouth sometimes, especially when she didn’t know how to bring up the subject. “My mother always says I speak before I think.”
“Your mother’s wrong.” A hard edge filtered through his voice. “You’re perfect the way you are. And you’ll say the perfect thing.”
A nice sentiment, but Simone knew her mother was right. “Della. She’ll do it. I’ll buy her a drink at Flood’s End and talk to her. I swear.”
“Why don’t you want to talk to Maggie?”
Darn. She’d forgotten he was a cop. They always asked why. Not that she’d had any real experience with cops, but that’s how they acted on TV. Now, if only she had a really good reason. Other than the fact that she was a big-mouthed coward. She looked over his head at the row of rusted barrels lining the side of her neighbor’s house. Thinking, thinking... She gave him a modified version of the truth. “I’m afraid of making things worse. A woman has to want to talk. You can’t butt in and tell them they need to talk. It gets their back up, then they won’t listen at all.”
He put his hand on the door frame, but didn’t interrupt. A good sign he was buying it.
“But she’s talked to Della. So Della’s the logical one to do it. And I’ll make sure Della doesn’t go off half-cocked again.”
“Following your logic, Della won’t like you butting in and telling her what to do, so she’ll ignore everything you say, and handle Maggie all wrong.”
“No, no, it’s okay to butt in if you’re asking a woman to help another woman. It’s only bad when you’re talking about a woman’s own problems.”
He opened his mouth, clapped it shut, looked around, then finally said, “I’ll never understand women.”
“That’s okay. We understand men and that makes everything work out.”
He laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. She should have told him that her mother always claimed she could talk a person in circles until his or her head exploded, but Simone didn’t want Brax to know he’d been had.
He tugged her hand. “Come down here.”
“Why?”
“Because I want your lips within two inches of mine when you feed me a line of crap like that.”
* * * * *
Brax hadn’t believed her. He might not understand women on a personal level, but he for damn sure knew when someone wasn’t telling the truth. It was all in the body language. Most people couldn’t tell a lie while they looked you in the eye. Simone had been no different. At least not in that respect.
Yet it was an absurd thing to lie about. Why not tell him the truth about why she didn’t want to talk to Maggie about this thing going on with Carl?
His calves strained as he climbed the steep hill to Maggie and Carl’s home. Their trailer sat on a plateau overlooking Goldstone, and the high desert elevation worked his lungs.
The thought of that email tore a hole in his belly. He’d been done with that suspicion last night, convincing himself the email meant nothing, that Simone wasn’t having an affair with Carl, she was true-blue, and all the rest of that rot.
So why didn’t she want to talk to Maggie? Guilt?
No one was home when he got to the top of the hill, though Maggie had left the back door unloc
ked for him. She’d been gone most of the morning, now she’d disappeared again. Carl’s truck was absent, too.
Brax got a bad feeling. He wished he’d told Carl burgers were okay. Anything. As long as he and Maggie went somewhere together and talked.
Three hours later, as Brax sat in the darkened living room, the lock clicked on the front door.
* * * * *
Maggie unlocked the door and dropped her purse and keys on the foyer table. Not that her trailer had a real foyer like a real house should have. Another burst of anger shot through her chest. No foyer, no real house, and no man in her bed wanting to slip his hands beneath her nightie in the dark.
He’d even forced her to send her brother down to The Chicken Coop to check up on him. She couldn’t ask Chloe herself. That would have been worse than the scene at the tea party.
Bastard. If Carl were standing right in front of her, she’d have kicked his butt. All the way back to Vegas and that stupid wedding in that stupid chapel with those stupid flamingos that Carl had insisted on.
A shadow shifted in the living room. She marched three paces forward before she realized it wasn’t him.
It was her brother. Tyler sat in the dark family room just as her father had done when she’d been late coming home from a date. Dad never said a word, but he was good at saying I’m so disappointed in you I can’t even speak with just a look. She couldn’t see Tyler’s expression, but she didn’t think it would be any more sympathetic.
Dammit, she had a right to her anger, her tummy-clenching, spine-wrenching, teeth-gritting anger. Carl was cheating. She knew it in her bones.
“Where ya been, Maggie?” Tyler said, soft as steel.
“Where do you think I’ve been? Out looking for that no-good, dirty rotten bastard husband of mine.” Life wasn’t fair. She’d been a good wife...Carl had been less than a dog.
She marched into the kitchen. The Elvis clock ticked on the wall, his pendulum legs swinging. The only other sound in the trailer was Tyler’s footsteps across the linoleum as he followed.
Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) Page 10