I Can't Make You Love Me, but I Can Make You Leave

by Dixie Cash

  “I know the kind of stimulation you need,” the voice said, growing deep and husky.

  “I know you do,” Roxie purred, “and that’s another area you’ve neglected of late.”

  “I promise to make it all up to you soon as you get back.”

  “You’d better,” she snapped. “Because if I have the looks and talent like you said, there’ll be someone besides you who’ll take notice. And don’t think for a minute I won’t move on another offer if you don’t come through.”

  Roxie snapped the phone shut and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. She had stood in the wings for as long as she intended to. Her time was coming and she would arrive.

  The window of opportunity was open for only a short time and she had no problem slamming it shut on fingers that tried to stop her. If the dude in Nashville with all of his big-shot claims couldn’t do it for her, someone else could. She didn’t care how many bodies she had to walk over to get there. She was tough enough, talented enough and good-looking enough to get what she wanted.

  Belle Meade. Bull shit. She was going for the world.

  Chapter Six

  As the day waned, Debbie Sue and Edwina finished their chores at the Styling Station. They had been cleaning and mopping and straightening in silence, as if each of them had found her purpose in life and was going for it. Debbie Sue was worried. She couldn’t believe she had allowed crazy people the use of her and Buddy’s little house rent free. Or at all. “I was just thinking,” she said to Edwina. “With Koweba Sanders living right across the street from our little house, I could call her and ask her to keep an eye on things.”

  “Why? Koweba’s blind and deaf. If that whole bunch stripped naked and had a brawl in the front yard, she most likely wouldn’t see them. And if they fired up a band with electric guitars she couldn’t hear them.”

  “But I think I’ll call her anyway.” Debbie Sue set her broom aside and made the call. Of course Koweba was happy to help out a former neighbor. She even mentioned that she might have a frozen casserole she could deliver to the temporary occupants.

  After Debbie Sue hung up and picked up her broom again, Edwina said, “I was just thinking too. Wanna know what?”

  “Tell me, Old School. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m thinking Darla and Bob have still got the hots for each other. That’s one reason why there’s so much friction in that bunch. Lord, you could cut the tension with a knife. Their marriage was cut short by her fame and it wouldn’t take a helluva lot to get them back in the sack again.”

  Debbie Sue stopped sweeping, grabbed Edwina’s elbow and turned her to face her. “Jeez Louise, Ed. Don’t you ever get tired of matchmaking? Bob is a married man. You dare interfere with that and the next time you have an encounter with that little banty-rooster bitch of a wife of his, she might claw your eyes out before you can get to a ketchup bottle. Then I’ll have to whip her ass.” As the thought jelled in Debbie Sue’s mind, a devilish grin played at her lips. “Second thought, I might like a good excuse to teach her some manners.”

  “My eyes and I both thank you,” Edwina said. “But I’m serious, Dippity-do. Darla and Bob even look like they belong together. They’re probably too stubborn to admit it to themselves and certainly not to each other.”

  “I know a little about that,” Debbie Sue said wistfully. “When I think of the five years of pure-dee, hardheaded pride that kept Buddy and me apart I could cry. Thank God I didn’t go off with Quint. Where would I be today if I had?”

  Edwina let out a cackle. “I can tell you exactly where you’d be and it isn’t better off.”

  Edwina couldn’t be more right and Debbie Sue had no trouble giving her kudos for that. Leaving Salt Lick to work for her old boyfriend, Quint Matthews, would have been a disaster, even if he was sexier than all get-out. Unfortunately, he was as ornery as a sack of mad cats. “It would be fun to fix Roxie up with Quint. That might be the worse thing we could do to her.”

  “Or him.”

  “I think that does it with the cleaning. Let’s just call it a day and go on home.”

  “Good idea,” Edwina said. “I’m ready.”

  Before trekking to the storeroom to put away the broom, Debbie Sue dug in her pocket, pulled out her set of keys and offered them to Edwina. “Here, go start my pickup and turn the air conditioner on high. I’ll lock up and be right behind you. You want to ride to Midland with me tomorrow morning? No point in us taking two rigs.”

  “You bet. Wish Vic was going to be here for this. We should ask the TV station if they can provide us a tape so he can see it. He’d get a kick out of the whole thing.”

  “I’m sure he would,” Debbie Sue agreed, “but I’m a long way from being sure about Buddy Overstreet’s reaction.”

  “Are you gonna tell him about what happened in Hogg’s?”

  “I probably should. Hell, he’ll hear it eventually.”

  “He might not. Nobody knows about it but us and the cooks and Julie Rogers.”

  “You think Julie won’t tell her folks and everyone else she knows? Shit. A free-for-all in Hogg’s is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in Salt Lick this month.”

  Edwina giggled wickedly. “Well, it’s only the second day of the month.”

  “Are you going to tell Vic?”

  “Oh, hell, yes. He’ll think it’s funny, but he’s not as tight-assed as Buddy.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Debbie Sue said. “First things first. I’m going to tell him about the telethon first and see how that goes down.”

  As soon as Edwina was out the door, Debbie Sue walked to the front door, thinking of the acrimonious altercation she and Edwina had walked in on in Hogg’s. Those people hadn’t been kidding; they didn’t like each other.

  As she pushed the lock and pulled down the shade, she wished she could ignore the nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. Buddy teased her about her hunches, calling them more a matter of luck than extrasensory. But she was a true believer in female intuition and something about this whole situation wasn’t right. It went beyond her stage fright, beyond anything she could put her finger on.

  Oh, well, she accepted in her mind. She had made a commitment, bought a ticket for the ride, so to speak. She might as well sit back and enjoy it.

  After Roxie stormed out of the café, Bob had gone looking for her. He found her in the parking lot, just as she was putting away her cell phone. “What do you want?” she said quickly, a deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes.

  Guilt, was his first thought. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m okay. A bunch of rubes in some hick town don’t affect me. They are dirt under my feet.”

  “I meant the ketchup,” Bob said.

  “Hah. I’ll tell you this. That scrawny old sow just better not let me catch her alone on a dark night.”

  Bob sighed. “Okay, Roxie, I get it. I’m going to walk over to the beauty shop and pick up our ride. I’ll be right back. Tell the others.”

  The beauty shop was dark when he arrived, so he climbed into the only pickup parked behind it. He drove the black behemoth back to the café to pick up everyone. Before all of them had a chance to even get organized, Roxie claimed the shotgun seat. Darla, along with Eddie, Mike and Valetta Rose, scooted into the backseat, and they set out for 210 Scenic View.

  The group was quiet. Even Roxie was subdued. It was possible that the altercation in the café had quelled her meanness, but Bob doubted the change was permanent. A rattlesnake with no venom was only a temporary situation. The poison always came back. Nature was like that. And to his great dismay, he had learned the hard way that Roxie was like that, too.

  “Them’s good people,” Eddie said of the two women who had become not only their backup singers, but also their temporary benefactors. “Salt o’ the earth. It’s hard to find people that’ll give you the shirt off their back, more or less.”

  Typical country people, Bob thought. He knew Darla ha
d grown up among them, knew she loved them to their bones. They had made her singing career what it had once been. He hadn’t grown up in a rural area himself, but he knew many in country music who had.

  “I hope we can repay them one day,” Darla said from the backseat.

  “That’ll be my number-one priority when we get back to Nashville,” Bob replied, catching her gaze in the rearview mirror. “I plan on sending both of those ladies payment for the use of this truck and the lodging. I know they said they don’t expect it, but I’m doing it all the same.”

  “Good,” Darla said.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Roxie snapped. “How can you be so damn dumb? If you think they did it without expecting something in return you’d better think again. Anyone who makes an offer like this expects something in return and they got it. My God, Darla promised them a fuckin’ part in her great comeback show.”

  A few beats of silence passed while Bob wondered how long Darla would be able to control her temper. He didn’t have long to wonder.

  “Who in the hell raised you, Roxie?” she said. “You act like you’ve had to scratch and scrape for everything you’ve got.”

  A tight knot formed in Bob’s stomach. To his relief, Darla refrained from calling his wife profane names.

  “You damned sure didn’t get here by scratching and scraping,” she went on. “You got here by—”

  “Darla—” Bob stopped her. He didn’t want to hear her say, You got here by screwing Bob Denman.

  “I know your past, little girl,” Darla said. “You might’ve hoed a tough row, but it wasn’t any harder than what the rest of us had to do. Lord, when I was little, we didn’t even have running water.”

  “I grew up that way too,” Eddie said. “My mama raised six kids and hauled buckets of water out of the creek every day to do the cooking and the washing. If I hadn’t been able to pick a little guitar and play the piano, I guess I’d still be living like that. Or working in a coal mine.”

  Bob knew some of Eddie’s history as well as his ability and reputation as a musician. Indeed he had come from an impoverished coal-mining family, but he could pick more than a little guitar and was unequaled on the keyboard. Bob saw him as an inspiring, self-taught musical phenomenon.

  Just then, the white frame house they would be calling home for a couple of days came into view. Bob was sure it was the right one. By following Debbie Sue’s directions, he had been able to drive straight to it. “I still can’t believe anyone would be this generous,” he said, slowing and steering into the driveway. He shoved the gear shift into park. Eddie and Mike and Valetta Rose scrambled out of the backseat as if they couldn’t wait to escape the company inside the truck.

  “Assuming this country villa has running water,” Roxie said, pulling on the door latch, “I am going inside where I am going to take a shower and wash the fuckin’ ketchup out of my hair. Then I’m going straight to bed.”

  “Fine,” Bob said.

  She leveled a drop-dead look at him. “I’ve got a headache and I do not want to be disturbed.”

  He restrained himself from saying, Don’t worry. He saw no point in making the situation worse.

  She slid out and slammed the door so hard the glass rattled.

  Mike and Eddie had found the door key under the flowerpot on the porch and unlocked the front door. Roxie pushed past them, causing Eddie to have to step off the porch. Without so much as an “excuse me,” she disappeared into the house. Valetta Rose followed her, then Mike and Eddie.

  In the silence left behind, Darla looked at him in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, Bob,” she said softly. “Looks like I ruined any plans you might have had for tonight with the little woman.”

  If only she knew, his plans of a sexual nature with Roxie had been ruined many months back. They might have been married only a couple of years, but it felt like a hundred.

  “Honestly, Bob, I’d love to get along with her. But everything she says ruffles my feathers. On top of that she’s flitting around like some damn diva. I’m trying to understand what you see in her, but I just don’t get it.”

  His memory spun backward, to when Darla had been one of the hottest young talents in Nashville. She had been a diva herself. And she had mesmerized him. “You don’t? Good Lord, Darla, she’s so much like you were when you were . . . uh—”

  “When I was younger? Go ahead and say it. I know I was stubborn and ambitious. But Bob, I was never mean.”

  “I know, I know. Look, I’m not asking that the two of you be best friends. Just try to peaceably share a little space on this ol’ planet for a short time is all I ask. I’ll tell you like I’ve already told her. You’ve got to learn to live together for the next few days. She’s my wife, Darla. And as your manager and friend, I’m asking you to show her some respect. Can’t you do that for me? . . . For just a little while?”

  He knew he was asking a lot.

  From the backseat, Darla held her ex-husband’s gaze in the rearview mirror for long seconds. How could she refuse to make the effort? She knew there wasn’t an unchivalrous bone in Bob Denman’s body. When they were married, he had always come to her defense, just as he was doing now for Roxie. He had been unwavering in his support of her career, just as he now supported Roxie’s.

  Beyond that, when they were married, as far as Darla knew, he had never failed to honor their wedding vows. She only wished she could say the same. A great surge of sentimentality rose from somewhere. She was torn between what she wanted, what she expected and what he expected of her. She looked down and studied her hand as she rubbed one finger of her left against the lacquered talon nail on the right, fearing that if she looked directly at him again she would do or say something very foolish. And today had already been full of enough foolishness. Hell. She had thought age brought wisdom. All it had brought her was conflict and indecision, both of which she could live without.

  “So how about it?” he said, and she glanced up. He was still looking at her through the rearview mirror. “Can we agree?”

  He was waiting for her answer, but she hesitated. Finally, with a flip of her hand, she said, “Yes, yes. Of course, I agree. Let’s go inside. It’s hotter ’n hell sitting out here. What’s left of my spackling, otherwise known as makeup, is starting to melt.” She opened the door and slid to the ground, hanging onto the edge of the door to keep from twisting her ankle. Damn these spike heels.

  She rounded the back of the pickup and almost ran into Bob, who was waiting for her on the other side. Together they started for the front door. “This looks like a cute little place,” she said. “Let’s hope it has a good air conditioner.”

  She had tried to make that comment sound upbeat, but all she could think about was that she and her ex-husband were walking into a house that looked like the honeymoon home they had shared decades ago, a place that had been heaven on earth for them. She had blown that, and at this moment, that fact hurt more than the thought of losing her career.

  Bob walked ahead of her, stepped up on the porch, reached for the screen door and pulled it open for her. Darla stepped up onto the porch too, to his level. “This reminds me of our first house after we married.” She laughed softly and looked into his face. “Remember when we moved in? When we sat the sofa down and it fell through the floor?”

  Bob smiled down at her. “I was just thinking of that very thing. When we called the landlord, he blamed us for buying furniture that was too heavy.”

  Darla laughed as the memory came to her. “That’s right. He did. I forgot that part.”

  Now Bob chuckled, a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “As I recall, we stayed in bed for an entire week, afraid to get out.”

  Darla laughed more. “And when we did, we walked around tiptoeing so we didn’t end up like that sofa.”

  “Man, I haven’t thought of that in years,” he said.

  Darla’s laugh faded to a weak smile. What the hell was she laughing about? That remark was like a spike driven
into her heart. She didn’t know what pained the most—the memory of that week in bed that was gone forever or the fact that he hadn’t thought of it in years. She brushed past him abruptly and entered the cottage.

  They found everyone except Roxie in the small kitchen. Bob came up behind her and looked around. “Hey, not bad,” he said. “I think we’ll all get along just fine here.” This would be the first time they had all slept in one place.

  “I ain’t so sure about that,” Eddie mumbled.

  Bob, Mike and Eddie went outside to bring back everyone’s suitcases and duffels.

  “Well,” Darla said to Valetta Rose. “Come on, let’s see what we’ve got here.” She walked up the hallway. One door was closed, so Darla assumed that was a bedroom that had already been claimed by Roxie. She peeked inside another bedroom, saw a neat, clean room with a sofa that probably made into a bed. The third room was a small bedroom with a double bed. A bathroom was located between the two bedrooms and she peeked inside that, too. Valetta Rose walked with her. Just then, Roxie opened her bedroom door, strode from behind them and passed them as if they weren’t there.

  “Small place,” Darla said to Valetta Rose. “Looks like it’s you and me sharing a room.”

  “That’s okay, Miz Denman,” the girl said shyly. “But you don’t have to. I don’t mind sleeping on the couch . . . or wherever. Or I can sleep on the floor or with the guys. It doesn’t matter.”

  Darla gave Valetta Rose a look, wondering what the strange girl’s life in Nashville might have been like and observing that she looked young enough to be her granddaughter. Just then, to her relief, voices from the kitchen distracted her. “Well, looks like they’re back. Let’s go back in there and see what’s going on.”

  They entered the kitchen again to see Roxie rummaging through the empty cupboards and grousing. “Wish to hell Dale Evans had left some food behind. If she’s going to give us a house, she ought to feed us too.”

  “Oh, shut up, Roxie,” Mike said. “Stop being such a pain in everybody’s ass. We’re damn lucky Darla found them and made friends with them or we wouldn’t even have a place to sleep.”