by Kristi Rose
“Hey,” she screamed at the store manager and Mrs. McAdams. “Thanks for all your kindness. I appreciate it,” she said in a biting tone. “For what it’s worth, I am not my father but y'all refuse to see that so y'all can suck it! I quit. I quit this job and I quit this town.” She shot everyone the bird, thrusting her finger high and shaking it madly. She spun slowly on the counter to make sure everyone got an eyeful. Then she tapped the front pocket of her jeans, felt her keys, and jumped from the counter. She'd long stopped bringing in a purse or using her store locker since it was constantly getting broken into. All she ever carried were her keys, driver’s license, money, and her phone. She strode from the store, her cowboy boots clumping loudly on the linoleum.
Cripes. She forgot how far back the photo booth was from the front doors. She kept her head high while swallowing several times to control what she knew would soon be following. She even managed to get into her piece of crap car and drive a block away before pulling over onto a side street and completely losing it.
Bent over her steering wheel, Cori cried what felt like a thousand tears. She'd tried so hard. It's not like she didn't understand why. They were hurt, too. But that didn't mean they could be so ugly to her.
Cori wiped her palms across her cheeks. Staying had been stupid, stupid, stupid. Momma had said exactly that, and for once she should have listened to her. But leaving had seemed like quitting, or worse, admitting she had been culpable, too. She sucked in several ragged breaths, but found it useless. Almost a decade of pent-up emotions wouldn't be released after one short cry. She rested her head against the steering wheel and looked out the window. Brewster was all she knew. It was home. Beyond the few houses lay pastureland that used to feed hundreds of cattle. Now only handfuls of herds dotted the horizon.
It was time to let go.
She would move. Not that she knew where she would go, but it was time. A person could only engage in self-flagellation for so long before they became a martyr, and Cori was well past that mark.
Her phone chimed, and she grabbed it from the passenger seat where she'd tossed it. A reminder. Tonight was Sabrina's book club. She thought about canceling, but darn if Sabrina didn't always have the best food, and now that she was unemployed, the free meal would come in handy. Never mind she'd have to drive over an hour to get there since Sabrina lived on the north side of Dallas while Cori lived south of the large city. She glanced at the clock, and when she saw the time, turned the key in the ignition. If she was going to cry, she could at least do it purposefully while moving toward something instead of hanging in limbo.
6
Sabrina Holloway was in the love business—making serious connections between two people so they could have the fulfilling life they wanted. She was not in the business of arranging marriages that weren't intended to last or, for heaven’s sake, were “pretend,” and she would never entertain such a notion.
Yet, here she was, ankles deep in a quagmire to help Fort Besingame find a pretend bride, and she was sinking fast. Though she tried to keep her business and personal life separate, she reluctantly acknowledged that she sucked at doing so. She wanted to help him. He'd been good to her all those years ago when she was a scrawny kid, stuck in the middle of Nowhere, Texas because her father was trying his hand at the poker tables at a new casino nearby. She wanted to help Fort out, really she did. But a pretend bride? How could she make that happen? Hire an actress?
“I know what I'm asking is unconventional and not really your thing, but I have few options. Placing an ad on Craigslist or some website is more public than I want this to be.” He rubbed a hand down his face, sighed wearily, then sat back in the large overstuffed chair in her living room. Once he was situated, he lifted his legs and rested his feet on her reclaimed barn door coffee table, crossing one ankle over the other. His dark brown cowboy boots weren't new and shiny, but worn, soft leather. Dirt clung to the soles. Dirt and who knew what else, considering he'd just come from the Stock Exchange.
“Get your feet off my table,” she said and kicked at his boots with her own, only hers were a fashionable red with a decent heel.
Fort swung his legs off the table then shifted in the seat so he could rest them over the arms of the chair. He then sunk back into the corner and pulled his straw cowboy hat over his face. She heard him yawn.
“I can't make any guarantees. The women I'm currently working with are looking for love matches. A happily ever after.” She shook her head. This was a dumb idea.
“I can give them a happily ever after for now,” Fort said through his hat. He sounded plum worn out, and her heart went out to him. She'd been there when his daddy had lost everything in that fateful poker game. Her own father had warned Fort's dad, Karl, about the stakes of the game. About how dirty Charlie Walters played. But Karl had been desperate, and there was no reasoning with the illogical mind of desperation.
“No, Fort. You're asking for someone to give up their life to pretend for an extended period of time to be your fiancée. It's not a simple task, and this person would not be getting a cushy life with a maid. No, she'd have to befriend the good folks of your town, pretend you're God's gift, likely help on the ranch.” Sabrina frowned at him, not that he could see her with the hat over his face. “I'm not sure where I can find someone like that.”
“I have faith in your skills, Sabrina,” he said in a lazy, careless tone. As if he was asking her to tie her shoe with her eyes closed or something easily as simple. “So much that I filed my papers to run yesterday.”
She tossed up her hands in frustration and stood before she reached across the chair and whipped the hat from his face. Sure enough, his eyes were closed and his mouth slack. His eyes snapped open.
Sabrina leaned toward him and said, “You're crazy. I'm really good at what I do, but this...this feels darn near impossible. You get that, right? Don't you dare try and guilt me by saying you have faith in my skills. What do you know about what I do?” Still holding his hat, she swat his leg. “Get up, you need to get out.”
Fort sat up straight. “Wait? You're kicking me out?”
“Have you even tried any other way of solving this problem? Like maybe going online and actually meeting people? Or did you come straight to me?”
Fort had the decency to look remorseful. “Does it count if I thought about it? But honestly, there's not a whole lot of time.” He clasped his hands together in prayer. “Please help me, Sabrina.” He blinked those blue-gray eyes at her, and she smiled sardonically.
“Don't even try that look with me, mister. I've known you far too long to be wooed by those eyes.” She didn't point out she'd seen those eyes damp with tears when Charlie Walters took possession of Fort's home after his father's ginormous loss in the devastating poker game. Or the anger that turned those blues into a steely gray when he realized his dad had disappeared, leaving eighteen-year-old Fort to bear the burden of his father's actions. She'd also seen the fear in them when she'd gone with his mother to drop him off at the recruiter's station following his enlistment.
“I'm begging here, Sabrina. Help a desperate man out.” He reached for his hat, but she stepped back and held it out of range.
She softened her voice, “I already said I would, and I keep my word." She swiped at his legs again, only this time haphazardly. “Now you have to leave. I have my book club coming, and no men are allowed.” She tossed his hat onto his chest.
Fort groaned and covered his face again with the straw Stetson. “Just pretend I'm not here. I'm not so sure I can get up from this chair. It’s very comfortable.”
Sabrina laughed, went behind the chair, and proceeded to give him a good shove forward. “Out,” she said.
Fort slid from the chair, then rose slowly. He followed it with a long stretch, arms over his head. “This book club of yours? Any potential pretend brides?”
She came behind him and pushed him toward the door, his hat in her hand. “Have you given any thought to what will happen should you get electe
d and then your fiancée and you break up? There are bound to be some people who'll suspect they've been played.”
Fort turned and stepped to the side, ceasing her pushing. He took his hat from her, brushed back his hair, and then situated the Stetson on his head, angled slightly lower over one eye. “They'll just be glad I saved them from the likes of Deke Sutton,” he said.
“Answer me this. If they know what this Deke Sutton is like, why do you even need a pretend fiancée?”
Fort narrowed his eyes. “Stop with all this logic, Sabrina. Help me out. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Besides, these things have a tendency to work out.” He shrugged, nonchalantly.
“I dunno, Fort. It's got the potential to be a hot mess.” When she held the door open for him, she glimpsed a car coming up her long drive.
“It'll be the price I pay for keeping Deke out of office. The more I think about him getting his hands on the town, the angrier I become. If you don't help me, I'll find someone who will.” He arched a brow, likely testing how his threat was going over.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. “Mm, yes. And who might that be? I'm all you've got, so show some respect.” She arched a brow of her own.
Fort chuckled. “I'm not above begging. Want me to beg?”
“Right now, I want you to get out. My book club friends are coming, and you must go.”
He glanced over his shoulder and nodded. The car was drawing closer. “Fine. I'll call you in a few days to see where we are. Time's ticking.” He turned to leave.
“Not if I call you first,” she said and shoved at his shoulder, hoping to hurry him along, but he kept to his slow, lazy walk back to his rental truck. Nearly drove her mad. Correction, she was quite possibly mad already for even considering his idea. Where in the world was she going to find a woman who could uproot her life to go pretend to be someone's beloved? Only to walk away from it and possibly endure ugliness because of it? Sabrina chewed her lip.
Fort was getting in the large truck while her friend, Cori Walters, was parking her piece of crap convertible. Fort backed out, turned the truck around and, like his walk, cruised slowly down her drive.
“Hey,” Cori said, coming up onto the porch, swinging her keys around one finger. “I hope you have some good food today because I've had a no-good, very bad day. And this book? I'll be honest. I got three chapters into it and chucked it across the room. Hated it. All that gooey romance and forever crap.” She rolled her eyes and stopped in front of Sabrina.
She noticed Cori's eyes were rimmed in red as if she'd spent a fair amount of time crying recently.
She asked, “Do you want to talk about it?” Had to be something big to reduce her tough friend to tears. Sabrina gave Fort's fading truck one last look. She would have to put his problem on hold until after her book club was over.
Cori glanced over her shoulder. “Who was that guy? You know who he reminded me of? Fort Be-so-lame. Remember him?”
Sabrina jerked her attention to Cori and stared, blinking several times as an onslaught of thoughts infiltrated her brain. “Besingame.”
“I like my version better.” Cori winked.
“That's right, you went to high school with Fort,” Sabrina said, mostly to herself.
Cori nodded. “He was a few years ahead of me, but yeah, we went to the same school.”
“He was so cute back then, don't you think?”
Cori looked back at the fading truck. “Well, it’s not like there were a ton of guys. Brewster is stupid small, but yeah, he was cute.”
Cori had Sabrina's full attention now. “He was so easy to flirt with, too. Fun guy. Which is probably why we've stayed friends all these years.”
Cori stared at the keys spinning around her finger. “I wouldn't know. We were never really friends. Kinda hard to be when there was so much bad blood between our families. I mean, it was my dad, after all, who conned his dad out of their ranch.” Cori’s smile resembled more of a grimace, her ragged expression etched with the years of weariness from carrying her family's burden.
Ah yeah, there is that.
7
Cori stuffed two profiteroles in her mouth and moaned with pleasure. Who didn't love the little balls of creamy goodness? Nobody, that's who. Show her that person, and she'd show you someone who was crazy and found little pleasure in life. Yes, occasionally the books discussed at Sabrina Holloway's book club were mind-numbingly boring, but the food never disappointed.
“You want to talk about your day?” Sabrina asked and set out a plate of éclairs. She'd commented on Cori's puffy eyes earlier, and like a dog with a squeaky toy, Sabrina could be just as tenacious. She'd keep at it until the squeaker no longer worked, or in this case, until Cori spilled her guts.
Cori waved her hand dismissively as if to say it wasn't a big deal. “Not much to talk about. I lost my temper and told everyone within shouting distance to suck it.”
“Oh, my,” Sabrina said.
Cori scanned the room. All the book club members were staring at her. She groaned, knowing they would want the details. “Remember that co-worker I mentioned?” She tossed her head to the side in an impersonation of Mitzi. “You know, like the one that, like, never works.”
The others nodded and groaned. Conversations about Mitzi had been a must at every meeting.
“Yeah, well, she got promoted to assistant manager of the department.”
“Over you?” Sabrina asked.
Cori laughed wryly. “Come on, Sabrina. We all know I wasn't going to get a fair shake there, or I suppose y'all knew, and I just figured it out today.”
“Or admitted it,” Ronna, a psychologist said. She was always going Freudian or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders on them.
Cori was not in the mood. Profiteroles or not, she was still one on-point comment away from crying. “Can we talk about something else, please? Maybe the book and the douchey main guy?” Cori knew that would get at least half the room's focus redirected.
“You didn't like our main man?” Deb, Sabrina's horse trainer, asked Cori. It never failed that when it was Deb's turn to pick a book, she picked a steamy romance, apparently liking her sex out in the open and hot. Or a murder mystery, preferring the macabre. Often Cori wondered about the older woman. She was mostly quiet and easy-going, but Cori believed outward appearances were all smokescreens anyway. Cori was willing to bet that if she needed to off someone or wanted advice on her sex life, Deb would be her go-to person.
“I liked him okay,” Cori said. Maybe not as much as this food, though. “It’s just that sometimes I want the girl to rescue herself. Why does a man have to do it?” Cori moved away from the veggies and dip toward the éclairs.
“I'm just gonna point something out here and let you ponder it a bit,” Ronna said.
Cori braced herself and grabbed a second éclair to help.
“Every time we read a romance or a book with a love story in it, on some level—”
“Which has been almost every book,” Cori pointed out. She had a feeling she knew where Ronna was going with this.
“True, regardless, these are not your favorite books, and you always are disappointed in the female lead and the...hero, as Deb calls him,” Ronna said.
“Yeah, and?” Cori hovered by the pastries, her stomach tightening in apprehension. She hated having the spotlight on her and, even more, anything that smacked of confrontation where she would have to dissect her emotions or behavior. She worked from one premise: do no harm and mind your own beeswax (okay, that's two), but so far, that attitude had served her well and kept her nose clean. No one could hold any current grievances against her. She couldn't ask for more.
“Only, it makes me curious as to why these things bother you.” Ronna, a good foot taller than Cori, stared down her nose, a julienne carrot pinched between her fingers.
Cori decided a quick answer might deflect the discussion and move it on to something else. “I like my fiction a bit more realistic. I mean, seriously, what
woman shaves her legs every day? You don't read about that in these books. Him sliding his hand up her prickly leg? Nope. And they're so helpless, these girls. Waiting for Mr. Six-Pack-Abs to solve the problem.”
“Hey,” Deb exclaimed. “I pick books with strong females.” She sounded offended, but she winked at Cori, which managed to help loosen the knot in her stomach. “But I admit, I do try and pick books with hunky men. I do like me an alpha.”
Cori shifted uncomfortably and pushed her glasses up her nose. That was the other thing she hated about the books. Show her a man with a six-pack and sculpted muscles, and she'd show you a man who sat on the couch and farted while scratching his belly, demanding his dinner. Yeah, she was being shortsighted, but men were all alike. Dragging their knuckles was an inherent behavior. No thank you, she was not interested.
“What books do you prefer? If I remember correctly, you had picked that one about Hemingway's wife, right?” Ronna asked.
Cori nodded. There was a realistic book about love, life, and all the bullshit that came with it.
“Cori likes nonfiction,” Sabrina said and patted her arm.
“Not many surprises with those books,” Cori said.
Ronna smiled and nodded. “I see,” she said, as if she'd been let in on some great secret.
“You see what?” Cori wondered if she could make an excuse to leave. All the profiteroles were tumbling around in her stomach.
Ronna sighed and placed her water glass she was holding on the table. “One day, Cori, you are going to be faced with an opportunity that will require you to take a chance. Your instinct will be to run, but I hope you pause and consider staying. See it out. You might be pleasantly surprised on the other side.”