"We'll have a fifteen-minute break while we grab something to drink." Allie pulled her microphone close to her face. "See y'all in a quarter of an hour."
Before Clancy could make sense of his thoughts, Angel had gone out the side door, surrounded by her band. He stretched out his long limbs, amazed that he'd sat still for an hour and a half while memories and her presence tormented him. He smiled and nodded at several of his old friends as he made his way to the doors leading out to the balcony, where he could see the bus parked in the lot behind the ballroom. It was black with gold metallic lettering, that sparkled in the light from the streetlamps. The word "Angel" had a crooked halo slung over the capital "A," and "The Honky Tonk Band" had little gold devils with pitchforks sitting on each of the "o" letters.
He remembered the nights when she'd sung along with the radio in his new red Camaro, and he hadn't been able to tell which was the real singer and which was Angela. Who would have ever thought she'd be running around in her own bus with a band of women who looked like candidates for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders?
When he'd sent in the questionnaire saying he would attend the reunion, he hadn't even thought about Angela showing up. She was almost the one voted most likely not to succeed. Although hardly a day had gone by in the past ten years that something didn't make him think of Angela Conrad, but he'd long since learned to disassociate himself from what had really happened that summer. It was as if it happened to someone in a book and he'd just read about it. He hadn't really sat on the creek bank with her late into the nights and let the minnows nibble their toes, He hadn't actually walked away that last night, knowing she was crying. No, it couldn't have been him. It was someone else in a novel, or a movie and he just remembered the details too well.
"Whew." Allie dabbed her face with a tissue. "Pretty lively crowd for a bunch of has-beens."
"Hey," Angel giggled nervously. "They're mostly my age. I belong to that crowd."
"Yeah, like I belong at the pearly gates of heaven," Susan laughed, her blue eyes twinkling. "You outgrew them years ago. Don't let these hicks make you think you still belong to their world."
"Thanks." Angel pretended to slap her cheek. "I needed that."
"Well, I can see why you were so stuck on that Clancy. He fills out them Wranglers pretty damned good," Patty sighed. "And those big, wide shoulders about gave me the vapors." She fluttered her long eyelashes. "Maybe you oughta give him another chance, Angel. Lord, handsome as he is, I'd give him a chance if he wasn't already wearin' your brand."
"Hell," Angel snorted. "He never wore my brand. He's free for the taking if you're interested. Least I think he isn't married. But stand assured, he's about as trustworthy as those two little devils painted on the side of this bus."
"No, thanks," Patty said, putting on fresh lipstick. "You can keep him. Then tame him or kill him but don't give him to me."
"Me neither," Mindy giggled and pushed the bus door open. She gulped in the hot night air, and looked up at the starlit sky to see if there might be a stray cloud with a few raindrops to spare. "Hey, look up on the balcony when you come outside, Angel. Clancy's up there staring down here like he can't believe his little eyeballs."
"Yeah? That's nothing new. He always did look down on me." Angel was suddenly tired. Her bones ached like they'd never ached before during a performance . . . and so did her stupid heart. "Another hour and a half and we'll take this bus home and park it. Then I'll forget about Clancy Morgan and get on with life."
"Sure," Bonnie said, "You'll forget Clancy when you're stone-cold dead and planted six feet down. Women don't forget first loves, and they never forget a first love who did them dirty."
Two
Angel flipped the light switch just inside the massive doors of her office and slipped off her shoes. She padded across the thick ivory carpet and plopped down in an oversize blue velvet chair behind an antique French provincial desk. She tossed the alumni newsletter on the desk, laced her hands behind her head and tried to calm down.
She hadn't meant for Clancy to affect her this way. She'd gone there to give her former classmates their comeuppance. She'd planned to leave with a smile on her face and never think about any of them ever again. Several former acquaintances had made a point of stopping by the stage between songs and saying hello to her, but Clancy left just after the last song without a word. But then, what could he say? He'd made his choice ten years ago and it hadn't left any room for a change of heart.
Angel noticed Patty's car, the last to leave the garage on the bottom floor of the company, drive down the street. The other girls had already disappeared in their own vehicles into the early-morning darkness. Next Friday they would be playing the Arbuckle Ballroom in Davis, Oklahoma, and then a new band called The Gamblers would pick up the bus and have it repainted with their logo. It was high time for the Honky Tonk Band to go out with a flourish and retire. The girls enjoyed performing, but they needed their weekends these days. Allie was married and her husband Tyler complained that he never saw her on weekends. Susan lived with her boyfriend Richie, and they needed more quality time together. Bonnie was engaged and planning an October wedding, and Mindy was in the middle of a divorce. Besides, none of them were getting any younger. Angel sighed, thinking about how she could catch up on all the work at the farm when she stopped touring. And she had this oil business to run as well.
She thought about Tishomingo again. Main Street had changed a little in the past ten years. The courthouse was new and the cafe had a different name these days, and there was a new pharmacy standing where the Nazarene church used to be. There was only one grocery store instead of two, but Chuck's Grocery, where her granny used to buy the best jalapeño cheese in the whole world, was still doing business. She'd looked up Pennington Creek when they'd crossed the bridge over it into town, and noticed that it hadn't changed at all. The same trees still shaded the sandbar below the dam, and the memories of what had happened night after night on a blanket in the privacy of those trees were so real she could almost smell Clancy's aftershave again.
Angel picked up the newsletter and began to read. Each page had a classmate's name at the top and a brief summary of their accomplishments in the past ten years. Apparently almost everyone had sent in the questionnaire whether or not they had attended the alumni banquet and the dance. She found her own bio and reread it. Because of previous engagements, I'm not able to attend the banquet. However, my band and I—Angel and the Honky Tonk Band—will play for the dance free of charge if you would like. Let me know at the following address. Angela Conrad. She'd added a box number in Denison, Texas. But no one knew that she had rented the box for one month just for the return answer to her letter.
She found Clancy's reply. Since leaving high school, he'd graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor's degree in geology and chemistry and a minor in education. Then he'd enlisted in the Air Force, and had been stationed in Virginia for most of his four-year career, and had gone to graduate school for a master's in education. Just recently he'd come back to Oklahoma and started teaching in an Oklahoma City high school. Under Marital Status, he had marked an X beside Divorced.
So he probably had married Melissa after all. But what had happened? By small town society's rules, Mr. and Mrs. Clancy Morgan were supposed to be living happily ever after. Suddenly Angel wished she had subscribed to the Tishomingo weekly newspaper. Then at least she would have known who'd married whom, who had children, and so forth. She knew very little about her former classmates.
When her granny had driven their old green pickup truck out of Tishomingo that long-ago fall day, Angel hadn't even looked back in the rearview mirror for one last glimpse of the place where she'd lived since she was three years old. She hadn't left anything behind but heartaches and she didn't need to look back at the fading lights of town to recapture them. They would be with her forever.
She looked through the newsletter to see what Billy Joe Summers was doing these days. She hadn't seen him
at the dance even though she'd scanned the ballroom several times to see if there was a six-foot, five-inch gangly man standing shyly on the sidelines. Billy Joe had always been nice to her and that awful night on the sandbar when she'd sat with her feet in the warm water, it had been Billy Joe's name that Clancy had mentioned so scornfully.
"Hello again, Mr. Henry." Angel picked up a worn teddy bear sitting on top of her filing cabinet, and held him, just for old times' sakes. Mr. Henry had listened sympathetically to all her tales of woe in the years since she'd been given him for her fifth birthday . . . and here she was, still feeling sorry for herself.
She wondered how her memories of Tishomingo could still be so vivid. After all, she hadn't ever wanted to go back, even though she and her granny had lived there for fifteen years, since the day she'd turned three years old. Angel had spent her babyhood in nearby Kemp, and although they visited her great-grandpa at the farm there a couple of times a year, she couldn't recollect anything about it.
When Angel had turned eighteen, her great-grandpa Poppa John had died, and left his twenty acres to his only child—Angel's grandmother. After his estate had been settled, she and her granny had left Tishomingo and gone back to Kemp. And it hadn't happened a minute too soon, in anyone's opinion. Angel remembered the day all too well. . .
"Don't stay out late, Angela. We've got to pack in the morning," her granny reminded her. "Got to be out of the house before midnight or pay more rent, you know."
"I know." Angela went out the front door and walked west toward the dam. All summer she'd gone swimming every evening in Pennington Creek, and it was a good thing August had arrived, because her bikini was beginning to look as worn-out as her jeans. Most times it seemed like just a hop, skip, and jump from her house to the swimming hole, but that evening the walk took forever.
Angel shimmied out of her shorts and shirt and sat in her bikini on the sandbar, soaking her feet in the lukewarm water while she waited. Clancy wouldn't be there for another half-hour so she could think about what she had to say. She'd known the first time they'd accidentally met each other in this very place that she was flirting with big trouble, but she'd been in love with Clancy Morgan since kindergarten. If he would just touch her hand or kiss her one time before she moved away, she could survive forever on the memories.
Clancy plopped down on the sandbar. "I've got something to tell you, Angela."
"I've got something to tell you, Clancy." She sat up and drew her knees to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.
And when she told him, he said, "Why don't you just marry Billy Joe? He's been in love with you since the first grade."
"Go to hell, Clancy," she found enough courage to say. "I don't need you anyway. I can take care of myself. Just leave me alone."
Without another word, Clancy turned and walked up the bank to his pretty red car. She watched the car back up to the dirt road, then turn left to cross the bridge, and when it was out of sight, Angela buried her face in her hands and sobbed, heartbroken and alone . . .
Angel sighed deeply and pulled her thoughts back to the present. She turned to the newsletter page with Billy Joe's bio. He was living in San Francisco where he was working as a computer technician. Under Comments he had written: I want to tell Angela Conrad hello wherever she is. She was the only person who treated me like an equal, and I have often thought of her. She was the one who told me to stop drinking years ago and got me on the road to recovery. Since then, I have come out of the closet and have a wonderful companion, Stephen. We are both very active in the gay rights movement and have had articles published in several papers and magazines.
Her amused response started as a weak giggle, grew into a chuckle, and then a full-fledged roar. So Billy Joe was gay. Now wasn't that just the frosting on the cake tonight? She hoped Clancy Morgan had read Billy Joe's contribution to the alumni newsletter. Perhaps it would help him remember his asinine remark to her that long-ago night beside Pennington Creek.
Clancy let himself into the house where he had grown up. His father had died while he was in Virginia with the Air Force and now his mother lived there alone. She was sleeping already and he tiptoed to the dining room where he turned on the light above the table and set his newsletter down. He brewed a pot of strong coffee, since he had a feeling he wasn't going to sleep much tonight anyway.
He poured himself a mug of black coffee, sat down at the table, and turned to Angela Conrad's brief bio. His heart fluttered softly, then dropped to a dull ache when he read what she'd written. He still didn't know anything, except that she probably lived in Denison, since she gave a box number there. She'd given no personal information and Clancy wondered if she was married, single, or divorced. She didn't mention it if she had a child or children, and she was still using her maiden name.
Clancy burned his lip on the hot coffee and swore softly. "Damn it all," he muttered, but he was angry with more than the coffee. He was mad at himself all over again as he remembered that hot August night when he'd gone to see her to break it off. . .
His girlfriend Melissa had begun to suspect there was someone else in his life, and she would have a first-rate hissy fit if she found out he was sneaking around with Angela Conrad every night after he left her.
Angela had been waiting for him in her usual place, with her feet in the water, wearing only a bikini. Her jean shorts and that orange T-shirt that was too big for her were tossed up on the creek bank. Her brown curls were pulled back into a ponytail and she looked like a little girl. But then she was only five feet three inches tall and barely weighed a hundred and ten pounds.
He remembered telling her to marry Billy Joe Summers and her telling him to go to hell. And he'd never seen her again, from that night until now . . .
Clancy and Melissa had gone to Oklahoma University, just as they'd planned since their sophomore year. At the end of the first semester, he had casually asked a former classmate about Billy Joe and Angela and learned that both of them had left Tishomingo at about the same time, and that was all anyone knew. He'd heaved a sigh of relief.
He and Melissa had married right after their college graduation and she'd taught school while he was in the Air Force. Until the year she'd come home and told Clancy she wanted out. She'd fallen in love with the principal of her school and they were planning to marry as soon as the divorce was final. That had ended what he'd thought would be a military career. Clancy had come back to Oklahoma then, and landed his present job teaching chemistry at an Oklahoma City high school.
He turned the pages until he found Billy Joe Summers' name. Maybe Billy Joe lived in Denison, too . . . and maybe he'd married Angela after all, and they had had that pack of kids and she and her band played border town dives just to pay the bills.
But when Clancy read Billy Joe's page, he felt just plain foolish. So Billy Joe was gay . . . and Angela sure hadn't looked poor. Two-bit bands that played for border town dives didn't have customized buses, and none of them had smoke machines and their own knockdown stages, and none of them played at the Arbuckle Ballroom, either. Angela and her band had done well, but evidently hadn't hit the big time, either. And now her name was Angel. . .
He'd called her that sometimes, he realized.
So just what in the hell was she up to? None of your damn business, his conscience told him. You gave up any rights to know what she was doing with her life that August night down by the creek when you were eighteen years old.
He turned out the light and went to the living room where he leaned back in his father's recliner and thought about Angela Conrad. His angel—once upon a time.
Angel turned off her office lights and pulled the door shut. She carried a burgundy leather briefcase in one hand and her laptop in the other. She pushed the button for the elevator to take her down to the ground-floor garage where her black Jaguar was parked. It was time to go home. The two-story Conrad Oil Enterprises, Inc., building disappeared in her rearview mirror as she drove to Main Street in Denison and then eas
t on a farm road.
She thought about the first days when she and the girls had formed the band and played the border town dives in Cartwright, Colbert, Yuba, and Willis. They didn't even have a name then, just a few instruments and a need to make a couple of dollars on the weekends to keep them in college. That was before Conrad Oil Enterprises had been even a glimmer of an idea.
One night they'd unloaded their equipment at the Dixie Pixie club in Yuba while an old man wearing faded overalls watched. He swilled his liquor from a Mason jar and said to his wife, a big woman in red stretch pants, "Well, looky here, Momma. There's a pretty little angel with her honky tonk band. Guess we died and went to heaven."
The old man had named their band right then and Angel wondered if he was even around anymore to know how far she and the Honky Tonk Band had come in the past years.
She crossed the river bridge and turned left into Hendrix, Oklahoma, then drove several miles more to her farm. It was only twenty acres, but it was home, and home was where her heart was this morning.
The sun was an orange ball on the horizon when she pulled the car into the oval driveway. When she opened the door, she could smell the welcoming fragrance of roses. Jimmy's gardening skills kept the rosebushes in the pink, even if the Oklahoma winds and hot, blistering sun tried to rob him of the blooms at this time of year. But as she'd told him so many times, his thumbs were greener than spring grass, and he could make silk plants reproduce if he wanted to. The house was dark, but then she hadn't expected Hilda to be there yet. The housekeeper, Hilda, didn't usually arrive until midmorning and then she left in the middle of the afternoon, unless Angel was there and needed her longer.
Small Town Romance Collection: Four Complete Romances & A New Novella Page 2