Just a Little Bit Guilty

by Deborah Smith

  “Jake,” she said ardently. “Dude. Baby. Wow.”

  He walked gracefully past her, grinning.

  “Turn around,” she ordered breathlessly. “Slowly.”

  “Seen enough?” he grumbled good-naturedly. “I want a kiss.”

  “I’m not through ogling you yet.”

  He wore a black coat over camel-colored slacks. His feet were cased in new cowboy boots. A crisp dress shirt of palest blue provided background for a black tie with tiny, angled gold and white stripes. Shirt cuffs peeked perfectly from the edge of the jacket sleeves.

  “You like it, lady?” he asked softly

  “I love it. I think I’ll pack my Taser tonight. I may have to zap a few delirious women.”

  He laughed and held out his hands. Vivian crossed the floor quickly and slipped into his arms. Jake smiled down at her, still as capable of stopping her heart as he was on the night they’d met two months ago. They kissed tenderly.

  “I TOLD YOU she’d melt if you wore a jacket and tie,” Rylan whispered, leaning closed to Jake’s ear over their elegant restaurant table.

  “Ssssh!” Jake glanced up furtively. Vivian would be back from the ladies’ room any second. “You were right. She was bowled over.” Jake tugged at the tie and grimaced.

  Rylan smiled. “I know you hate it. But you made Vivian happy, and that’s what counts.”

  “Yeah, and just wait’ll I finish. That deal I just clinched is goin’ to make her sit up and take notice.”

  Rylan’s smile faded. “Cousin, did it ever occur to you that she might not want you to arrange her life for her?”

  Jake shot him a disgruntled look. “I don’t have your pretty way of sayin’ things. I have to depend on actions. She’ll like this surprise.”

  “No, you’re the one who likes surprises. If she hears what you’re planning from someone else and misunderstands . . .”

  “It’s all taken care of. She won’t find out too soon.” Jake leaned forward, propped his chin on one fist, and sighed happily. “Ry, you just don’t know what it’s like to have a woman like Viv . . .”

  “Do I hear my name?” the object of their conversation wanted to know. Both men stood as she settled into a chair beside them.

  “All I do is talk about you, you know that,” Jake said innocently.

  “Right.” She gave his shoulder a teasing shove, and he smiled as if she’d kissed him. Vivian turned to Rylan. “How did you like the music?” The three of them glanced toward a pianist playing soft jazz riffs at a baby grand.

  “I wish he’d surprise me with some hip-hop,” Rylan joked. He caught Jake’s eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly toward Vivian. “Do you like surprises, Vivian?”

  “Not at all,” Vivian replied distractedly. “I like to know what to expect.”

  She slid a hand over Jake’s as she lost herself in the music. She didn’t see the brooding expression that lined his eyes or the warning look Rylan pressed on him.

  “HOW MUCH FOOD are you gonna give me, Viv? It’s only a few hours’ drive from here to Nashville. I won’t starve.”

  Vivian put the last paper sack in the front seat of Jake’s old red truck. Then she put her hands on her denimed hips and squinted tartly up at him in the Saturday sunshine.

  “You won’t take any more of my money. So take my ravioli,” she ordered. “It’ll keep for almost a week if you put it in Rylan’s refrigerator.”

  “I’ll only be gone till Tuesday.” He grasped her by the waist and set her on the truck’s hood, then kissed her. They nuzzled each other like two friendly horses.

  Vivian hugged his neck, inhaling good soap and wood smoke. “Tell Rylan I said hello. Then you hurry back.”

  “Viv,” he asked seriously. “Will you always love me?”

  “What kind of question is that? Of course.”

  “Even if . . . what if I did somethin’ you didn’t understand at first?”

  “You already do things I don’t understand,” she joked. “Like putting sweet pickle relish on peanut-butter crackers.”

  “No, I mean . . . innocent ’til proved guilty, right?”

  Her joking attitude faded, and concern dawned in her expression. “What are you trying to tell me, Jake?”

  He retreated quickly. “I just want you to feel you can trust me about everything in the world. That’s real important to me.”

  “I do trust you,” she said, smiling again.

  “Good.” He lifted her off the hood and swung her around. When he stopped, he kissed her repeatedly before he set her down.

  She nuzzled her head against his chest. Jake caressed her black hair and stared down the long street awaiting him. His face was grim.

  MONDAY STARTED WITH bad news. Cal walked calmly into Vivian’s office during lunch and told her she’d just resigned.

  “You what?” Vivian exclaimed. Cal pointed to the chair across from Vivian’s desk. “Mind if I use the therapy seat one more time?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Good.” She lowered herself into its creaking vinyl and looked Vivian straight in the eye. “Paul has a new girlfriend.” Vivian grimaced in regret. “If you can call a wealthy, fifty-year-old married woman a girlfriend.”

  “I can think of a lot of other terms. What now, sweetie?”

  “Now I get a divorce and move back to San Diego. My sister is going to let me stay with her for a while.”

  Vivian wasn’t unhappy to hear about the divorce, only that Callender was leaving. Another thought occurred to her. She broached it carefully. “Whatever you do, try to believe there’s someone out there waiting to love you again. Someone who may love you better than you’ve ever been loved before.”

  “I . . . hope so. I guess. I don’t know, anymore.” Cal got up and hugged her. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “You’re leaving right now?”

  “Taking a few vacation days while I pack. I’ll see you later this week.” Before Vivian could say anything else, Cal turned and strode out the door.

  THAT AFTERNOON a secretary slipped into the courtroom and placed a note on Vivian’s desk. Vivian scanned it quickly and rapped her gavel.

  “Ten-minute recess,” she said bluntly, and rushed out.

  Andy, Roberto, Ray, and Fayra were all crowded into her office when she got there, their faces pinched with worry. Andy cried softly.

  “Tell me what it is,” Vivian said softly. “If something’s happened to Jake, don’t sweeten the words.”

  “No, nothing like that!” Roberto gasped. His hand shaking, he produced a folded letter from his faded jacket and handed it to her. “But read this.”

  Vivian took the letter. She swayed. She read it twice and still didn’t believe it. When she looked up at the others, her distraught expression matched theirs. “He wouldn’t have sold the apartments without telling us,” she said hoarsely. “This must be a mistake.”

  “I didn’t mean to open Jake’s private mail,” Andy whimpered, as she fumbled her way to her desk and sat down. “It was from a real-estate company, and I thought it was about one of those vacation places. Jake said I could open those letters, ’cause they give things away and he knows I want a ticket to Disney World.”

  “Where are we goin’ to go?” Ray asked her bitterly. “Jake promised us a place to live in return for all our work. You know we’ve worked hard—long hours, six, seven days a week. And all the time he couldn’t pay much, but we didn’t care, because we had a roof over our heads and plenty to eat and friends.”

  “Jake wouldn’t do this to you,” Vivian insisted. “He wouldn’t do this to me.”

  “Call him,” Fayra urged. “Call up to Nashville and let’s ask him right now.”

  She tried his cell phone. He didn’t answer. Next she called Rylan’s office. There ha
d to be a reason. Jake probably had a whole, cute, homespun little explanation that would have them all laughing. And Rylan would know.

  But Rylan didn’t know, because Rylan was in Canada, and had been in Canada for a week.

  Vivian felt the blood draining from her face. Jake had lied to her about visiting his cousin.

  As she stared wordlessly at her phone, Tom looked in the door. “You’re needed back in court.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said automatically, her heart thudding.

  “What now, Vivian?” Fayra asked in a tiny voice.

  “Now we wait for Jake to call, or to come home. And we don’t worry, because we all trust him, right?”

  They brightened, buoyed by her enthusiasm. She guided them out the door with more words of encouragement. Then, after they disappeared around a corner, Vivian went in the women’s restroom and sobbed her heart out.

  “DAMMIT, dammit, open up.”

  Vivian heard her own voice asking the caller to leave a message while she frantically unlocked her condo’s door. She rammed the key into place, shoved the door open—and the phone beeped good-bye. The caller left no message. Vivian slammed the door behind her with a mighty swing of her arm and cursed. She had tried Jake’s cell phone twenty times with no luck.

  For the rest of the night she listened in vain for the phone to ring again. She finally dozed, dreaming about Jake until she jerked awake, covered in sweat from just having seen him push Ray and Fayra and Roberto and Andy out an apartment window, one at a time—just before he tossed her out behind them.

  Chapter Twelve

  SHE DIDN’T WANT to alarm Aunt Vanny, so that morning Vivian called the feed store in Tuna Creek. It was a long shot, but the only shot she had left.

  Emma Burley answered.

  Vivian asked her if she’d seen Jake.

  “Why, yes, late yesterday. He just about bought me out. Ordered a huge delivery of cattle feed. I know he’s proud to get some of the Coltrane milk stock back. He had to sell and lease his cows out when his business went bust.”

  “Did he say where he’s going to put these cows?”

  “Nope. Just roared outta here on some kind of mission.”

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw something. She wanted to get her hands on Jacob Needham Coltrane and call him two dozen choice names. And then beg him to make her believe she hadn’t been a fool for the past two months.

  With only a few minutes to spare before court convened, Vivian wandered around the halls of the municipal building, looking at nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed in memories. A loud voice poured out of an office.

  “And so this redneck just says to me, says, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and leaves his freakin’ truck and this huge contraption it’s pulling right across about ten parking spaces. He’s gonna be towed in about five minutes, and he don’t even care.”

  “Man, you get all kinds around here,” a chuckling voice commiserated.

  “What?” Vivian asked breathlessly. She approached two punkish undercover cops who lounged against a wall. “Who? When?”

  “Just now,” one said. “This cracker pulled in and left his rig in the main lot.”

  “Reddish-blond hair, tall man, driving an old red pickup truck?” Vivian asked eagerly.

  “You got it, Your Honor. He disappeared up the street like he was goin’ to a party or something. Got a cab and zoom! He’s gone. I already called Traffic to write him a ticket and get his crap carted away.”

  “No! This one is mine. A personal problem. Can you guys do me a favor?”

  They grinned at each other, then at her.

  IT WAS HELL to sit in court and wait. Vivian forced herself to pay attention to the case in front of her, though her eyes kept straying to the double doors at the back of the room. A half hour passed. Then an hour. Finally, her head splitting with tension, she made herself stop wondering when they’d bring Jake to her.

  “Detective Griswald, look at this report,” she told the slack-faced man who’d testified in the case they’d just completed. She and Tom and Griswald hunched over the corner of her desk. “This isn’t how you spell ‘indecent.’ This looks like ‘indigent.’ The man owns two hamburger franchises, so I doubt he’s indigent.”

  The doors banged open. Vivian looked up quickly. The undercover cops shoved Jake into her courtroom with his hands cuffed behind him.

  “Vivian, is this some kinda joke?” Jake demanded loudly, as they pushed him down the aisle.

  They jerked him to a stop in front of her desk, and Vivian fought to control a wince. This wasn’t nearly as satisfying as she’d hoped it would be. Jake looked disheveled and upset and completely innocent. He was supposed to look guilty.

  She stared down at him. “You parked illegally.”

  “This isn’t funny, Viv.”

  “That’s tellin’ her!” a spectator shouted.

  She brought the gavel down with a fierce whap. “You have a lot of explaining to do,” she told Jake calmly.

  “He ain’t got an attorney!” a man dressed in glittering drag complained from a back row. “He don’t have to say nothing!”

  She looked down at Jake impatiently. “Do you want an attorney?”

  “I just want a chance to explain.”

  For the first time, Vivian noticed how tired he looked, how lines scarred the corners of his eyes and imprinted his forehead. And his hair, she thought suddenly, his hair looks as if he hasn’t had time to brush it for two days.

  “Take those handcuffs off him,” she said abruptly. The undercovers mumbled and shuffled their feet and unlatched Jake’s hand with obvious regret. Vivian nodded to them. “Good-bye, gentlemen, and thank you.”

  They ambled over to the side benches to sit down for the rest of the show.

  “Viv,” Jake said beseechingly. “What do you think I’ve done?”

  Vivian looked down at him with just as much torment. “We’ll talk later, if you’d like. Take your load of cow feed and your cows and go . . . wherever it is you’re going to go.”

  She had to get him out of her courtroom before she burst into un-judgelike tears. “Let’s have the next case,” Vivian ordered gruffly. She rearranged papers with deceptive calm.

  “You think you can haul me up here, embarrass me, act like I’m lower than slime on a snake’s belly and then kick me out?” Jake asked.

  “Good day, Mr. Coltrane, the court has nothing else to say to you at this time.”

  “Well, I have somethin’ else to say to the court!”

  Vivian glanced to her right as a coterie of detectives, attorneys and uniformed officers tensed for a confrontation. They looked at her for guidance, and she settled them with a gesture of one hand.

  “You have five minutes, Mr. Coltrane.” She checked her wristwatch. “Starting now.”

  He pivoted on the heels of his work boots and strode over to face the grinning spectators. He braced his blue-jeaned legs and clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m not right sure what Her Honor is accusin’ me of, but as best I can tell, she thinks I’ve done less than I promised her.”

  “You promised to keep the apartment building,” Vivian said.

  “How’d you find out I sold it?” he asked, twisting around to stare at her.

  “That’s not important. And you’re here to answer questions, not ask them.”

  Jake faced the crowd again, his back squared and his voice somber. “Ladies and gentlemen, can you blame a man for wantin’ to make some money?”

  “No!” they all chorused back.

  “Well, then.” He straightened proudly. “When I inherited a run-down old apartment house here in town from my Uncle Needham, I thought I’d be lucky to make beer money off it. But then I begin to hear how the places on my street are bein’ bought up by folks who wan
t to live close to the city—folks with more money than they got sense.”

  “You tell ’em, man!” a drunk-and-disorderly case shouted.

  “And I said to myself, ‘Maybe I can make some money after all.’” Jake paused to glance back over his shoulder at her. “That maybe,” Jake continued, “I could make a lot of money, enough money to buy nice things for my lady, enough money to give us a nice home. Now, there isn’t enough money in the world to pay her back for all the happiness and hope she’s brought into my life, but I thought it’d be a start.” He held his hands out in supplication. “And a million dollars ain’t chicken feed.”

  A wave of audible gasps crested in the audience.

  “I wanted it all to be a surprise,” Jake continued, now pacing back and forth with his head down thoughtfully. “I planned to start puttin’ a new life together, and then present it to my lady. I didn’t know ’til the other day whether the deal was set on the apartments. I didn’t want her to be disappointed if it fell through. I tried my best to come up with somethin’ that would make her happy.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me you’re moving back to Tuna Creek?” Vivian asked numbly.

  Jake stopped and looked at her silently, his face registering surprise. Then he raised his eyebrows, nodded pensively to himself, and turned to the informal jury without answering her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I went to Tuna Creek to get my cows back. And to lease out my land there.” He swung around and faced Vivian, his arms open and hands palms up. “With the lease income and the money from selling the apartments, I can afford to buy a little farm just north of here.” Jake looked at her closely. “If Her Honor thinks she wouldn’t mind makin’ the drive into Atlanta every day.”

  Vivian took a deep breath. “What about Roberto and the others?”

  “They go where we go,” Jake replied gently, “if they want to. There’s plenty of work on a dairy farm, and I’ll pay good wages. But if they want to stay here in the city, I’ll help them find work and give them the money to get settled somewhere else. So what’s your verdict, Viv?”

  Blinking back tears, Vivian looked at him tenderly. “You’re guilty of stealing my heart.” Everyone in the courtroom groaned. She rapped her gavel. “I’m afraid I have to place you in the custody of this court. For life.”