by Liliana Hart
Of course, it was her own mother who kept the gossip mill going. People got their hair cut at the Clip n’ Curl because Theodora was better than Channel 8 when it came to reporting the news. Whether the news was true or not didn’t seem to matter so much. Theodora Sherman wasn’t known for her honesty.
Or for her scruples. After all, it was also Tess’s mother who’d run off with her savings and her car.
She’d flitted in and out of her daughter’s life since she was a child, leaving her with her grandmother when it suited her and popping back into town when she needed money or a new man. Her grandmother liked to say that Theodora would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. Tess hated to break it to her, but a few nails wouldn’t stop Theodora if she had her mind set on having it.
When Tess had moved back home to Last Stop after college, she’d had a mountain of student loan debt, and she couldn’t impose on her grandmother by staying with her. Her grandmother had sacrificed enough over the years, and it was time she got to live her own life without having to worry about anyone else.
So for the past seven years, Tess had lived at the funeral home because she didn’t have to pay rent, and because the funeral home had given her exactly what she’d needed: privacy. After growing up in a house where her mother riffled through her drawers looking for cash or mementos to pawn, it was a relief to know she could buy nice things and not worry about keeping them in a box buried in the rosebushes.
Living at the funeral home should’ve been the perfect solution for her “life plan.” Once she’d paid off her student loans, she’d started setting aside money for a home of her own and for the day when she could either buy the funeral home from George Jessup or move on and open her own place. She wanted something that would last. Something that would be only hers.
About two years ago, Theodora had pretty much sent her life plan spiraling down the toilet. Tess had made the mistake of leaving her online bank account open when someone buzzed at the door. Theodora had been doing hair and makeup on Cleo Clancy in the embalming room, but she must’ve gotten curious when the buzzer had rung and wandered out to see if she could pick up any new gossip.
The open office door and bank information had stopped her in her tracks. Theodora could smell money a mile away, and it hadn’t taken long for her to transfer funds out of Tess’s savings account and into her own. By the time Tess had consoled Cleo’s grieving husband and made it back to her office, her computer was closed and she’d forgotten all about paying her bills, which was why it had been open in the first place.
Theodora hadn’t finished Cleo’s makeover. She’d hightailed it out of Last Stop, straight across the Oklahoma border, until she saw the flashing lights of the casino beckoning her. It had taken just a smidgen longer to lose the ten thousand dollars than it had to steal it. She’d come home three days later without a by-your-leave, asking if Tess had managed to do anything with Cleo’s hair.
That had been the norm in Tess’s life for as long as she could remember. Her irresponsible, scatterbrained, childlike mother was what she was. There’d been no point in filing a police report or sending her mother to jail. Even if her conscience had allowed it, seeing the heartbreak in her grandmother’s eyes would’ve changed her mind. There’d been nothing more she could do than to start over and take more care with hiding her money.
Theodora had a sickness. The thrill of flashing lights and the clang of the machine as dollar signs lined up had always had more of an appeal than choosing to do what was right. Or her only daughter.
Now Tess was finally at a place where she could financially stand on her own, and her savings was growing little by little every month. But her “life plan” had certainly veered off course. And though she hated to admit it, because she took pride in the fact that she was a planner, she was starting to think that Last Stop might not be in her plans after all.
She was the director of the funeral home, but she wasn’t the owner. And as much time and personal investment as she’d given to the place, it would likely never be hers. Even if the new owner wanted to sell, she couldn’t afford to buy her out. The last two years had been the strangest of her life. And it had all started when Eve Winter had purchased the funeral home.
What Tess needed was to pick up and start over—maybe—she thought, biting her lip. The only time she’d lived away from Last Stop was the five years she’d spent at the University of Texas—three for her mortuary science degree and another two for her MBA. Her plan had been to run a funeral home after all, so she figured she needed to know as much about the business side of things as she did about the death side of things. She could go anywhere or do anything, but she didn’t want to be someone’s employee forever. That she knew for certain.
She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure how she’d ended up in the mortuary science program. She’d gone to college with most of her basics already taken, so she’d had a semester to experiment and try to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. Because she’d had no clue what she wanted to do with her life.
The pottery class had been an utter failure since she had zero artistic talent, and her accounting professor had gotten arrested by the FBI and had his computers confiscated the week before finals, so she figured the life of a CPA probably wasn’t for her either. She loved to read, so she thought an English degree might work out, but then she realized she’d eventually need to be able to find a job, so she discarded that idea.
The class that had stuck with her had been intro to pathology. Maybe it was because the professor had looked like he’d come off the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Or maybe it was because she’d found a quiet peace in that class she’d never experienced before. Lord knows her mother had never given her much peace.
Tess found the dead fascinating. What had happened to them? Were they young or old? What kind of life had they lived? Did anyone miss them? She’d almost gone pre-med to become a medical examiner, but she realized that would only answer some of the questions she had about the people who would end up on a slab in front of her.
The other questions could only be answered by the living—by a spouse or parent or child. Tess wanted to know what made the person worth remembering in death. It seemed a question that was more important than it should’ve been. Maybe because she constantly wondered who would remember her when it was her time to lie on someone’s slab.
A crack of thunder shook the panes in the windows on the third floor of the old Queen Anne house. Rain pelted against the roof as Tess lay on top of the covers in nothing but her underwear. But it didn’t do much to help cool her off. She propped her hands behind her head and stared at the cracks in the plaster on the ornamental ceiling. The fan in the corner was working overtime, and she’d opened the two windows as wide as she dared. The edges of the white curtains were damp, and she’d put a towel on the floor in front of each window to keep the wood from getting wet.
She glanced at the big red numbers on the clock sitting on the bedside table, just like she had for the last two hours. It was five-thirty, which in her mind was at least a somewhat acceptable time to be up and about, and she did have work to do.
Delores Schriever was in the cooler and ready to be dressed and made up, so she could be laid out in slumber room one. Delores had been the first customer she’d had in weeks. Business wasn’t exactly booming at the Last Stop Funeral Home. Which was a good thing for the citizens of Last Stop. Not so great for her.
Tess knew the funeral home should have been operating in the red. But her paycheck showed up like clockwork every two weeks in her bank account—and it was more than a decent paycheck—almost double what George had paid her. And when she went to pay the home’s bills, there was always money in the checking account. Eve Winter had no interest in running a funeral home, but she had a lot of interest in keeping it afloat. Tess had no idea what those reasons were, but for the time being she had a paycheck and health insurance, so she couldn’t complain too much.
The Last Stop Funeral Home h
ad been in the Jessup family for three generations. And since George’s son Jesse was a no-good son of a bitch, there’d been no chance of it being passed on to the fourth generation of Jessups. Which was why George had hired Tess when she’d moved back home after college. He’d shown her the ropes and she’d learned under his tutelage. The funeral home was supposed to be hers, and in another ten years or so, when George was ready to retire, it would’ve been.
Except Eve Winter had ridden into town like one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, with her floor-length white coat and cherry-red Porsche Carrera, and made George an offer he couldn’t refuse. George had no chance against a woman like Eve. Apparently George had ignored weeks of phone calls from the woman and wouldn’t entertain the offer of selling the funeral home over the phone. So she’d made the trip personally and brought cash. A lot of cash.
Fortunately, George had the wits about him to remember that he’d promised Tess the funeral home. And though he could no longer keep that promise, he at least had the wherewithal to put it in the contract that she’d be in charge of the funeral home until she chose to leave or until Eve decided to sell, in which case she had to give the first option to Tess to buy her out.
George had signed the papers, taken the exorbitant amount of money, and packed up his wife of thirty years so they could live on a Carnival Cruise ship. They’d left their no-good, son-of-a-bitch son behind.
The people in Last Stop weren’t fond of change, so word spread like wildfire about the fancy city woman who’d bought out George Jessup lock, stock, and barrel. But since no one but George, Tess, and the attorneys had actually seen Eve Winter, the exaggerations of her physical appearance had grown by leaps and bounds.
They’d gossiped for months about the rich woman and the extensive renovations on the funeral home and outbuildings. Tess had been living there on the third floor the entire time, and even she wasn’t quite sure what was happening with all the construction work. They’d set up partitions and giant drop cloths to keep the curious from seeing what was being done. In a place like Last Stop, hiding the progress only made people more curious, so there’d been a few late-night instances of people sneaking onto the grounds and peeking between the partitions.
The work had been completed in record time. Tess had woken up in the middle of the night more than once, hearing the distant sound of some kind of heavy piece of machinery. She’d worked around the chaos and clutter, but in reality, the construction crew had done a great job staying out of her way.
The unveiling hadn’t been a big to-do. There’d been no ribbon cutting from the Chamber of Commerce or open house. One morning Tess had woken up and gone down to the kitchen to start her morning coffee. It had taken her a moment to realize that something was different. There were no partitions. No drapes or curtains covering certain areas. Everything was finished and looked as if it had been there forever.
She’d stared in shock out the back windows of the kitchen. A full-fledged English rose garden had been planted at some point. And the carriage house, which the Jessups had originally used to park the hearses in the bays on the first floor and storage on the second floor, had been gutted completely and doubled in size.
It now looked like a miniature version of the main house, which wasn’t all that miniature if she thought about it. The carriage house had been painted solid white, and the bottom story still had the original carriage bays where buggies had once been stowed. The three bays were no longer used for parking, and large glass windows had been installed into each of them. The carriage house had been turned into a home gym of sorts, though she’d seen gyms that required a paying membership not have equipment as nice as that in the carriage house.
She didn’t know how much square footage had been added to the carriage house, she just knew that when she looked at it from the side, it took up twice as much space as it previously had. And then there was the casket warehouse. She also knew there had to be a hidden passageway somewhere on the property. She’d never seen a group of large men able to move in and out of space so quietly. One minute she was alone, and then the next . . . pffft . . . they just appeared out of nowhere and scared the ever-living hell out of her.
All funeral homes were required by law to have an area designated as a casket showroom and to provide caskets at different ends of the price spectrum. Mr. Jessup and his family had run a successful business for generations, but they also knew the scope of the clientele and the infrequency. Nothing was wasted and everything possible conserved.
The old casket warehouse had been not much more than a shed with metal siding. It was large enough to fit the six different caskets people could choose from and that was about it. The small metal building was no longer there. In its place was a warehouse that looked like it had been made out of concrete. There were several large windows with casket displays in them, and there was a large garage door on the opposite side to get the caskets in and out.
Tess had wondered if maybe she should have a talk with Eve. They weren’t the kind of funeral home to do the volume of business that the woman seemed to be preparing for. Half the people in town would have to drop dead for them to do that much business. But maybe Eve didn’t realize how inconvenient Last Stop was to get to from the city and that the only candidates who might use the funeral home were the 3,047 people who lived there.
Ultimately, Tess had decided it wasn’t her business. She wasn’t the owner, and it wasn’t her problem. Only, it kind of was her problem because if they went bankrupt it would mean she was out of a job.
While people had certainly talked, taken pictures, and gawked from Main Street at the Last Stop Funeral Home, it wasn’t the only thing getting attention.
What really had tongues wagging was the men. Five men, to be exact.
Eve had chosen Tess’s staff for her. Tess had been appreciative, but considering there was barely enough work to keep her occupied each day, she couldn’t imagine what she was supposed to do with the five men—the overbearing, larger-than-life, sexy-as-hell men. But Eve had told her they’d be busy enough, and she’d left it at that.
They certainly didn’t fit in with Last Stop, and there was something about each of them that made her a little bit wary and a whole lot cautious. Maybe it was the way they were always watching their surroundings, as if they expected the worst to happen. Or maybe it was the way they seemed to distrust everyone on sight. Tess couldn’t really blame them for that one. She always figured just about everyone had an ulterior motive when they showed interest in a person. But maybe she was just cynical.
What she didn’t like was all the talk around town about her and her merry band of death men, which was the name her friend Miller was passing around town, the traitor. Over at the Clip n’ Curl, they apparently filled hours of conversation with whether or not Tess knew the men intimately. And if she didn’t, would she be willing to make an introduction? Since her mother was the owner of the Clip n’ Curl, she liked gossip almost as much as money and men, so she didn’t bother trying to defend her only daughter’s reputation.
All of the ladies at the Clip n’ Curl were in unanimous agreement that Tess’s men were about as close to male perfection as they’d ever seen. There was Deacon Tucker and Axel Tate. They’d been her first two employees to show up out of the blue. One look at Deacon had made her briefly wish she was the kind of woman to grab the attention of a man like that, but looks were fleeting and she’d always have a brain, so she didn’t let it faze her too much.
No, Deacon had definitely given her a few of those breathless moments. The ones she remembered from her youth where her heart fluttered and her words stumbled over themselves every time she tried to speak to a guy. It had been a long time since she’d had feelings like that. She’d certainly never had them with Henry, the man she’d been engaged to. But she’d always assumed that flutter and anticipation would fade with age.
There was a reason there was a saying about people who made assumptions, because boy, had she been wrong. The
flutters were more like jackhammers in her belly, and her fantasies were a lot more explicit than they’d been when she was fifteen. She’d once seen Deacon mowing the yard without his shirt on and the primal urge to pounce on him and stake her claim had been so strong she’d called her friend Miller for an emergency wine intervention.
She hadn’t had the same reaction to Axel. There was something about him that reminded her of a wounded lion. He had a great deal of pride, but he’d been flayed open by the enemy. He didn’t want to show weakness. And then there was the wedding ring he wore, even though he appeared to be flying solo. She’d never seen him without it, and he never looked twice at any other woman.
Less than a month after Deacon and Axel arrived in Last Stop, Elias Cole had joined them. He was different from the other two. He was more relaxed and even prone to making jokes from time to time. Of all of them, he was the one who’d stop and talk with her or see if she needed anything if he was going to the store. He was also the only one who’d ever shared anything personal about himself. She knew he was from Texas originally, and that he’d been in the military, though he’d never mentioned what branch of the service.
It had taken another six months for Dante Malcolm to join the group. She’d liked him immediately, though Miller said he was a little “too” suave for her liking, and that she thought his English accent might be fake. But he had manners and at least acknowledged that Tess was in charge of running the funeral home, whereas the others pretty much did as they pleased and showed up only when needed.
It had been a few months after Dante came that Colin Moreau had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, just like Elias and Dante before him. There was an anger to Colin that made her steer clear of the Frenchman. He was handsome enough, and he was always very polite. But she could see the rage bubbling just below the surface, and she wanted to be nowhere in the vicinity if he ever blew.