LOVE in a Small Town (Ladies of Legend Boxed Set)

by Janet Eaves

  After that night she’d plotted and she’d planned, all the while forced to endure the various positions he demanded, and the variety of sex toys he’d purchased with deprivation and pain infliction as his primary goals. He’d even branded her with a hot metal ring on her inner thigh, awaking her from an exhausted sleep, returning her to the nightmare of reality.

  She’d hated him. Everything about him.

  Though she’d been careful not to let her feelings show, Jack must have sensed something. Somehow he’d known that she was looking for a way out, because he did the one thing he thought would trap her forever.

  The pictures were disgusting, and if publicized would humiliate her. Ruin her. He’d taken them after chaining her to their bed post, setting a timer, and joining her there where he’d positioned and repositioned her repeatedly as snapshot after snapshot went off. He’d developed them immediately out in the barn, and had taken delight in showing her his work before releasing her from her chains.

  That she’d found the guts to snatch them from him and tear them up hadn’t mattered. He’d laughed at her and she’d known then that he had more, and that she was powerless unless she was willing to commit the unthinkable. The pictures were the last straw. Or so she’d thought.

  “Mrs. Butler?”

  Winifred blinked, startled to realize the service was over and everyone was waiting for her to rise, place the rose in her hand on his casket, and head back to the limo that would drop her back at the church. She stood and stared at the extra-large pine box that would be lowered into the ground as soon as all those present departed, then glanced at the priest, who knew more than any other how terribly unhappy she’d been—though even he never knew the full extent of her shame. With one nod to Father Murphy, she relaxed her fingers and allowed the rose to fall to the ground as she turned to make her way to the awaiting car.

  That pig of a man wouldn’t get anything from her anymore. Not a flower. Not a widow’s respect. In fact, she hoped he rotted in eternal Hell.

  Chapter Two

  Tom Green watched Winifred Butler walk away, a little surprised that she showed no distress at the passing of her husband, nor any interest in speaking with the friends and neighbors who had come to pay their respects. He’d been afraid his presence at the service would be questioned since he was obviously an outsider, but no one seemed the least bit interested in him, nor, more strangely, in the man about to be lowered into the ground. Discretely, he glanced through the large crowd, trying to find anyone upset by the farmer’s demise, but there wasn’t a tear or sniffle to be found.

  Perplexed, he eavesdropped on the multitude of conversations around him as he made his way back to his sleek little car. Then one in particular caught his attention.

  “She has to be relieved he’s gone.”

  “I know. It’s a shame she didn’t get out more all those years she was taking care of her dad, or she would have heard the rumors about Jack’s… you know. I seriously doubt she would have married him then.”

  “I know.”

  Tom wanted to ask the two women just what they meant in case it had to do with the investigation he was conducting, but they walked past him, absorbed in their gossip, and to chase them down and start asking questions would bring undue attention to himself. For now he would just listen and learn as much as he could, so he strolled behind them toward the parked cars, hoping they’d reveal more without noticing him.

  “There was some talk of abuse, but she never associated with anyone after they got married so no one really knows. I remember Miss Betty did the same thing after she married him, poor thing. I never understood that union either. Miss Betty was almost twenty years older than him.”

  “Oh, you can bet he was only after her farm. I figure she needed someone to take care of it, and her after Old Man Casey died. That sweet woman had no idea how to be alone. Jack Butler proposed to her really soon afterwards, and she took him up on it. My mom thought it all completely disgusting.”

  “My mother, too. She was telling me she went to see Dr. Clayton a week or so ago with her hip problem and Winifred was there, walking like she’d hurt her back, but Mom couldn’t get her to engage in a conversation. Said Jack was there, too, and looked at Momma mean when she spoke to his wife.”

  “Whatever happened to his first wife?”

  Tom raised a brow. This was new information. He’d had no idea Jack Butler was married three times–the original report on him only revealed a Mrs. Betty Casey who married Jack around five years ago, and he’d added Winifred Miller himself only the year before. The first wife, whoever she was, was something he’d have to look into, he decided as he awaited the other woman’s answer. But he didn’t get to hear it as a young man Tom figured to be in his early twenties bumped into him, causing him to spin around and miss the women walking off. The kid mumbled a quick, “Sorry,” before racing towards the line of cars.

  A feminine voice addressed him from behind. “Excuse me? Don’t I know you?”

  Tom turned back, and schooled his expression to reflect delighted surprise. “Yes. We met at the Bed and Breakfast out on Lake Road some time ago, as I recall. I believe you threw me out.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember now. I thought you were the health inspector but you were looking for a job working on a farm.”

  She looked him up and down, her pretty blue eyes expressing the same doubt and suspicion as the first time they’d met, though this time he didn’t sense the fear she’d first displayed.

  “So, what brings you back to Legend? Do you know the Butlers? Are you still looking for that job, because I sure Mrs. Butler will need some help now. Although you still don’t look to me like a man who gets his hands dirty.”

  Tom smiled easily, though he knew he’d have to watch this woman closely. He could tell she didn’t trust him, and he didn’t need her making trouble when he finally had an opportunity to move forward on the case he’d been working for the past two years. If she was the first lion at Legend’s gate, he’d just have to win her over with charm and the information he’d already committed to giving. “Actually, I am interested in working for her. I may even be interested in purchasing the farm from her if I like it and she’s willing to sell.”

  “Oh. Well then, I guess I should say welcome to Legend. I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”

  “Tom Green.” He held out his hand and she took it.

  “Lilly Hood.”

  Tom looked over her head at the large man joining them. He already knew who he was. James Hood was the husband of the woman standing before him, and head football coach of the incredibly successful local high school’s football team. Called Jim, he was a local, and fast becoming a national living sports legend. Tom held out his hand. “Great victory there, coach.”

  A slow but powerful grin lit Jim’s face, as they shook hands. “Thanks. I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Tom Green. I was just telling your wife I’m interested in talking to Mrs. Butler about her farm.”

  The smile stayed in place but the eyes lost some of their welcome. Tom absorbed that information for later.

  “This may not be the best time.”

  Tom nodded, conceding the point. “I understand, but, as I was telling your wife, before I’d consider making an offer, I’d like to work the farm and see if it is really a life I might be interested in pursuing. In the meantime, I may be of assistance to her, if she needs the help.”

  Jim studied him for a moment, and then turned to his wife. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. She probably will need extra help.”

  “Excuse me,” Tom frowned at them both. “But what would this have to do with you? Are you related to her?”

  A crack of a smile and a glimmer of amusement lit Lilly Hood’s eyes. “Around here, Mr. Green, we look after our own. Mrs. Butler just lost her husband and no one in this town will tolerate some stranger coming in and taking advantage of her.”

  Mrs. Butler, not Winifred, or Winni
e. Interesting. “Don’t worry. I think Mrs. Butler will be more than happy with my offer if everything works out. You two take care, and congratulations on the baby,” he said, glancing at her burgeoning belly.

  Lilly placed her hand on her stomach as love lit her eyes. “Thanks. I’m two days past due. And I’m more than ready for her to arrive!”

  Tom nodded and made his way to his car. Since nearly everyone else was already gone, he took a few minutes to study the Hoods as Jim helped his wife into a new model SUV. They were an interesting couple, and had already been on his radar since he’d encountered Lilly at the Legend’s Landing Bed & Breakfast on his first trip to Legend, Tennessee.

  Then, he’d barely begun looking into the Legend connection to the ongoing investigation the agency opened in Chicago. Now, he knew so much more about the dynamics of the small, southern town, and many of the people in it. Including the fact that the man he’d come to investigate had died suddenly and was being buried without so much as an autopsy, nor had there been the customary visitation and viewing before today’s finale.

  Yes, he’d learned a lot about many of Legend’s inhabitants, except when it came to Lilly Peach—now Lilly Hood. The woman had intrigued him enough that he’d checked her out, or attempted to. What he hadn’t found was so much more interesting than what he had, as she had virtually no traceable past before arriving in Legend. It was as if her existence started the day she arrived. But he hadn’t had time to delve further since she wasn’t his assignment.

  Jack Butler was.

  And now that the man was dead there was a chance to move forward with an investigation that had stalled for too long. All he had to do was charm Winifred Butler into letting him work on the farm until he found the evidence he needed. True, it was too late to nail Jack Butler to the wall. But if his wife had been in cahoots with him, and continued to be a part of the drug and tobacco-for-guns trading businesses which supplied money and weapons to the same terrorist the government was fighting, he’d still get his arrest, not to mention the ATF would get to seize the farm.

  Once it was sold, the proceeds would go to support other ATF operations. It was the best he could do in his fight to rid the world of terrorism.

  Secure in his convictions, Tom pulled out of the cemetery and headed out of town.

  Chapter Three

  Winifred grabbed the kitchen’s thirteen-gallon garbage can and box of liners and headed straight up to the room she and Jack had shared since their wedding. She undressed quickly, removing the outdated black dress that had belonged to Jack’s previous wife and threw it and the matching “widow’s” hat in the garbage.

  She pulled the old kitchen chair Jack used to sit on to take off his boots from the corner and carried it to her closet, then used it to reach the cotton shirt and jeans she’d hidden on the top shelf before Jack burned all the clothes she’d arrived with.

  She dressed quickly before returning to the closet Jack designated as hers the day she became imprisoned in his house. Energized, she pulled as many hangers of clothing as she could handle off the rod and stuffed them, hangers and all, into the trash. She repeated the process until all the old clothes Jack had forced her to wear were disposed of. Then she turned to the heavy four-poster bed.

  With one clean, quick motion she tore top and bottom sheets off and threw them away, before tugging the mattress off the boxed springs. The sight that met her eyes nearly knocked the breath from her. Pile after pile of banded money was distributed evenly over the boxed springs. She lifted the first pile and flipped through it, before she giggled with delight.

  It wasn’t what she’d been looking for, but she’d be lying to herself if she acted like she wasn’t thrilled. Jack had taken all the money she’d saved over the years and now she knew what he’d done with it. And it looked like he’d added even more, which was just fine with her. Well, it was hers now, and she wasn’t going to apologize for the thrill the discovery brought. She pulled her pillowcase off her pillow and stuffed the piles inside before continuing with her chore.

  Huffing and puffing, she pulled the mattress across the room and down the hall, then pushed it down the stairwell, kicking it when it lodged itself three stairs short of the landing. She repeated the process with the boxed springs, delighted when it practically flew down, landing with a crash.

  That accomplished, she marched back to the room and pulled the first filled trashcan liner out, tied it, and slid another one in. After a quick but thorough search for the horrible pictures Jack took of her, all five drawers of his dresser were emptied in record time, filling another of the trash bags. Methodically she began cleaning all traces of her late husband from the room, searching everywhere for those pictures, knowing she had to search now, as she had no intention of entering the room ever again after today, much less spending another night sleeping there.

  Once all the obvious signs of him were gone, she carried the bags down the stairs and took them straight out to the back of the house where Jack kept his burn pile. When she returned to the house, she snatched a long barreled lighter and wrestled the mattress out of the house. Nearly exhausted with her efforts, she refused to stop until she got the mattress and then the box springs to the back yard, ready to burn with the rest of that monster’s belongings.

  The sound of a car approaching made her pause seconds before touching the flaming lighter to the mountain she’d created. Curious and more than a little annoyed by the intrusion, she rounded the house.

  Chills rolled up the back of her neck when she saw him. Randy Rudd, her husband’s right hand man on the farm, had always scared her. And he did so even more now that she was completely alone. She crossed the yard towards him, closing and latching the white picket gate between them since she reached it before he did.

  “I’m not up to company today, Mr. Rudd,” she said, as soon as he stepped from his truck.

  Randy Rudd considered himself a fine looking man and was a self-professed playboy. She might have considered the first to be true if she hadn’t already experienced his degenerate personality. He’d never made a secret of his affairs, most of them with married women, both in Legend and out of town, when her husband had invited him to dine with them. Something that starting increasing in frequency over the past month, until Jack’s death three days earlier.

  Although he’d had nothing to do with anyone else in Legend, Jack always looked forward to Randy’s evening visits since he relished the stories of where and when Randy met his women, and got a kick out of the disgusting details Randy was more than happy to impart. The lack of respect their dinner conversations revealed chewed on her for weeks but she’d kept silent, as always, knowing better than to speak her mind.

  During dinner the week prior to Jack’s death, when Randy expounded with explicit details about his partner’s pierced genitalia, outrage overtook her and she told both Jack and Randy that the conversation was inappropriate with a lady present. Before the last word had left her mouth Jack smacked her, and told her to get them some dessert.

  Cheek stinging, and eyes flooded, she’d been too humiliated and ashamed to do anything but what he’d instructed. But that had only been a preamble to his real punishment for her insolence. She’d known something was coming, as anything she did that he considered an infraction resulted in punishment. That night had been no different. As soon as Randy left, Jack dragged her to their bedroom, stripped her naked, pushed her down on her knees and raped her anally for the second time since she’d married him.

  He’d hurt her so badly she’d had to go to see the doctor the next morning, endure a horrendous examination, and to her further humiliation, Jack told the doctor that her injuries were from her demands for anal sex. That it was the only way she got sexual satisfaction.

  Dr. Clayton knew. She knew he knew as he’d asked Jack to leave the room, then asked her if there was anything she needed to tell him. She hadn’t had the guts. She was dying of shame, but had known better than to tell the truth. Jack would have just hurt h
er even more once they’d gotten home.

  She never said a word to Jack after that. Not one word. And now, blessedly, he was dead.

  For Randy to be standing before her now not only scared her and made her sick with the memory, it made her mad that, although she was now free of Jack Butler, she still felt vulnerable. “Please go home, Mr. Rudd.”

  Randy approached as if she’d never spoken. “That ain’t no way to talk to the new man in your life. You know you need help around here. Looks like I’m all you got. And I’ve heard there is no better sex than grief sex.”

  Heat flushed her cheeks but Winifred kept her head high. “Mr. Rudd. Please don’t come any closer. If I have to, I will call the sheriff.”

  Ignoring her, he met her at the gate and snatched her shoulders before she could back away. Smiling, he leaned towards her, and lifted her chin, placing his lips only inches from hers. “You call the police and I’m gonna finish what that husband of yours started and rip you a new one. And I know how much you like to get your picture taken. I’ve seen them, even got me a copy. You want to make more?” He grinned viciously. “Maybe I can accommodate you there, too.”

  Nauseated, and as humiliated as frightened, Winifred struggled, and was surprised to find herself freed. Seconds later she realized why as another vehicle, a small silver sports car, came up the long drive to the house. This time she was thrilled with the interruption—giddy with it, to the point her legs nearly gave. Randy sauntered back to his truck, winked and finger shot her, and then slid into his seat. He mouthed, “I’ll be back,” as the sports car came to a stop, then he backed out, turned around, and drove off.

  Chapter Four

  Tom stepped from his car, curious about the man who sped away with such haste, almost certain it was the same one who’d bumped him at the cemetery. But he was even more intrigued by the woman who stood waiting for him as if he’d come to execute her. She seemed to be shaking, and was extremely pale, but she’d just buried her husband, so it stood to reason she wasn’t at her best.