“We’re going out Saturday. They’re taking me to Waco. Dinner and a movie.”
“I guess it seems strange, dating two men instead of one,” Nancy said.
“It seems strange dating, period. They’re the first…and they will be my first.” Holly felt secure enough in her friendship with Nancy Jessop that she could make that confession. It occurred to her that for all her reading and her comprehension of the biology of making love, it might be nice to have another woman to go to with her questions, if the need arose.
Nancy tilted her head to the side. “I wondered.” Then she smiled and shrugged. “I don’t mean that in a negative way. When I first met you, there was just something about you. I thought that maybe you’d had your heart broken by some unfeeling cad.”
It was the first time that another woman had ever seen past her book-wormish persona to the woman beneath. Alan and Duncan both seemed to have that talent, too.
“No, no broken heart. Just a sense that I was missing out on an important part of life. I had begun to think that there might be something wrong with me, some reason that men looked right past me. Some reason why none of them ever piqued my interest. No matter how much help my mother gave to the cause.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“There is. There surely is.”
“Well then, maybe I was channeling my own emotions onto you. I guess, all things considered, that isn’t so strange.”
“It sounds as if there’s a story in there, too.”
“There is—but it can’t be told without a glass of wine or two to sip on.” Then Nancy sat bolt upright. “Do you have any plans tonight? Do you want to come over? We could have a sleepover, drink wine, and spill our guts.”
“I’d like that…but aren’t your guys waiting for you at home?”
“No, they flew back to Washington to have a meeting with their boss. They won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Uh-oh. That sounds ominous.”
“No.” Nancy smiled. “We’ve spent the last couple of weeks discussing what comes next for them. They headed off early this morning with a specific agenda and a list of options they would like to explore.”
“So you know what the outcome of this meeting is likely to be?”
“I know some of the options.” She spread her hands to indicate the floor plan of the soon-to-be-built bookstore. “I got to make my own decision about what came next, for me. They’re a part, but not all, of my future. They need to make the choice that is best for them, career wise. Being in love, planning to spend the rest of our lives together, doesn’t take away our individualism, or our responsibility to ourselves to be all we can be.”
“Yes! That’s what I have always envisioned marriage to be—individuals in love, yet still with lives, and responsibilities.” Her mother’s way—dovetailing her existence to help her husband, to be his hostess, the perfect corporate wife—that was good for her, and for her generation. But Holly had always believed that falling in love, committing to being a wife should not entail a woman handing over her right to be herself.
She grinned as she met Nancy’s gaze. “Well, in that case, when we’re done here, I just need to go home and grab my pajamas—and clothes for the morning.”
“I have the wine. Let’s call it a date.”
Holly grinned. “It’s a date.” She put her attention back on the floor plan of Nancy’s bookstore. “Instead of dividing the space between new and used, why don’t you mix them up, and have them sorted by genre?”
“That’s what I was thinking! I have one source for used books—Roman James, a friend of the families, is a dealer in DC. I could use a couple of other ones, though. You know anyone who scours estate sales, looking for bound treasures?”
“You don’t care about them being rare or limited edition books, do you?”
“No. I’m not about searching around for weeks to find one book for one client, or vice versa. Roman can do that. I’m more interested in quantity and variety—books for every reader. Nothing fancy—just fun.”
“In that case, I may know a woman. I’ll give you her contact info.”
* * * *
“No hot date tonight, either? That makes three nights in a row. What did you two wranglers do, piss the lady off?” Ricoh Stone stood with his arms akimbo, his sharp gaze focused on him and his best friend.
Alan grinned, met Duncan’s gaze, and then turned toward Ricoh. “No, we’re taking things slow with Holly. We didn’t want to rush her.”
“She’s too important,” Duncan said. “We want to do it right.”
“Then it’s serious, what you feel for her.” Ricoh nodded. “Well, good. Miss Holly’s a lady. Not that I think either of you would play fast or loose with her, because you don’t strike me as that kind. But I know she’s held in high regard by Mrs. Benedict.”
“Which Mrs. Benedict?” Alan asked.
“All of them.” Ricoh grinned. Then he said, “But I was thinking of Grandma Kate. By the way, you know that the bosses are working on that surprise for Carrie, right?”
Alan nodded. “Yeah. Chase told us that they promised her a honeymoon once the ranch was up and running.”
“Well, she doesn’t know anything about it, so don’t let your lips flap to anyone about it—at least not until the day after tomorrow, when they tell her.”
“They finally decided on a destination?”
“They did. They’ll be gone for two weeks. A cruise first, followed by a week at an exclusive Caribbean resort. They’ll be leaving next Monday.” Ricoh looked off to the distance and then focused on them. His expression conveyed discomfort. He shifted from one foot to the other. “I was thinking, once they’re gone, if you wanted to…entertain Miss Holly a night or two, I’d be happy to pitch my tent outside.”
“Thanks, Ricoh. We may take you up on that offer.” Alan shrugged. “We don’t feel right asking her to stay over with so many people here. Chase, Brian, hell, even Miss Carrie have each assured us that their home is our home, and we were perfectly free to do just that. But Holly’s…” Alan clamped his mouth shut. He’d nearly said too much.
“She’s shy,” Ricoh said, “and you don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable.” He nodded. “You may not know that before the two of you arrived, Cord and Jackson lived here while they worked here, until they started courting Miss Ari. Then they took a house in town. You might consider talking to Jake Kendall about that.”
Alan nodded. He and Duncan had discussed that possibility.
“I think we should look into that,” Duncan said. “We like Lusty. It feels like home to us. As long as we have work, we plan on staying.”
“The place grows on you,” Ricoh said. “I can tell you that after years of traveling all over hell’s half acre with one rodeo after another, when Julián Alvarez called me, I jumped at the chance to head up a new operation. I didn’t know at first how things were going to work out. But there’s just something about the community.”
“There is.” Alan noted that their foreman had spoken more in the last few minutes than he had in the last two weeks. He made the effort out of respect for our woman. Alan had already respected the laconic wrangler, and that respect had just gone up a notch.
Ricoh scanned the barn. They’d come out to finish up their chores, something they did every night after dinner and before dessert—a final check that the horses were good for the night, and that the building was secure. Then he nodded. “Let’s go get some of that pecan pie Miss Carrie made for us.”
“Unless Brian has eaten it all,” Duncan said.
Ricoh snickered. “Miss Carrie was so mad the last time he did that, I don’t reckon he’ll be dumb enough to do it again any time soon.”
Alan laughed. “It’s a good thing we work hard. Best food I ever had.”
Ricoh patted his stomach. “You can say that again.”
They all washed up in the mud room, and then took off their boots before entering the kitchen.
Carrie looked over her shoulder. “Just in time. I heated the pie. Alan? You had a phone call. Message is there.” She nodded toward the phone.
“Huh.” Friends and family had his cell phone. He pulled that out of his pocket, wondering if for some reason he’d missed a call. The device still had more than a thirty percent charge, and showed no missed calls, but he had been having trouble with the thing just lately.
He walked over and picked up the slip of paper. His brow furrowed as he read the short message.
“Trouble?” Duncan asked.
“It’s Ted. He wants me to give him a call.”
Duncan tilted his head to one side. Then he nodded. “Well, it’s been five years.”
His friend’s implication was plain. “Yeah. He’s probably just checking in to let us know that crazy bitch is out of jail.” Five years was a lifetime, in some respects. He and Duncan had moved on, and since they’d actually played a fairly minor role in that insurance case, he wasn’t really concerned.
“That sounds like a story we need to hear.” Chase had come into the kitchen. He strolled over, kissed his wife, and took the dessert plates from her hand.
Alan looked at Duncan, who nodded. “Sure. Just let me return this call, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
While Duncan lent a hand getting the kitchen table set, Alan stepped out into the mud room. He quickly dialed the number Ted had left—a number Alan recognized as being the investigator’s work number, the same number as all those years before.
“Investigations, Miller.”
“Hey, Suit, you still burning the midnight oil?”
“Wilson.” Ted Miller sighed. “What the hell kind of a place is Lusty, Texas?”
Alan chuckled. “It’s our place, now.”
“So Duncan is still with you? Good, I thought the two of you meant to stick together.”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Mrs. Potsy has been released from jail. She was staying at her dad’s place in Kentucky. But she’s left there, and no one seems to know where she is.”
“And you’re worried that she might follow through on her threat? You know we didn’t take any of that seriously. She’s what, fifty-two or three, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet?” He recalled that she’d been shocked to be arrested, and had shouted all kinds of invectives at him and Duncan at the time. Then at the trial, when they’d testified, she’d stared holes into them. But neither he nor his best friend had felt particularly threatened by the woman.
“It’s not her, especially, that we should all be concerned with. We never did find Doctor Death. And while the prosecution believed that if Mary Ellen Potsy had known who he was, she would have told them, I didn’t—and don’t—share that view.”
“I recall the DA said that she would have taken the deal to reduce her sentence, if she’d had anything to deal with. That she would have done anything to escape going to prison.”
“Not if going to prison wasn’t the thing she feared the most.” Ted sighed. “I’d like to come and meet with the two of you, sometime in the next week or so.”
Alan didn’t think there was much value to be had in that, but they’d liked Ted, and had been damn grateful for his generosity in the past. “Sure. I’ll send you directions. You tell us when, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“Good. In the meantime, keep your wits about you.” Ted ended the call.
Those were words that Alan generally lived by. As he tucked his phone away, he wondered, just in passing, if maybe he and Duncan hadn’t misread Mrs. Potsy’s demeanor.
He supposed only time would tell.
Chapter 8
“You know…this making what you know in your head travel down to live in your heart—that’s a hard thing to do.” Nancy nodded to underscore her statement. Her eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment, and Holly wondered if she was going to spill her wine.
Holly had already consumed three glasses of the beverage—far more than she usually drank in an entire month. She credited the chips and salsa they’d nibbled on for the fact that she didn’t feel even drunker than she did. She thought Nancy might have had a glass more than she—though she couldn’t be sure. And really, who cared?
It took her a moment to remember what her friend had just said. Then she nodded her agreement. They’d been talking about past challenges. Nancy had confessed to having been made to feel as if she was fat and unattractive when she’d gone to college. Holly secretly envied her friend her chic appearance, and her confidence. She’d never once thought of her as being fat. But she knew a lot of women struggled with body image issues. She herself wore a size twelve, and while she’d never considered herself overweight, there were many—her sister and her niece both included—who worried that being in a double digit dress size meant they didn’t fit in figuratively as well as literally.
For her own part, she’d told Nancy about the Unfortunate Incident. Her friend had been incensed on her behalf and ready to head to Georgia, find Tremayne, and kick him in this man parts herself.
And then she’d cheered and high-fived Holly when she confessed that she’d done just that.
Holly’s thoughts returned to her friend’s last comment. She met Nancy’s gaze. “There’s something in us, I think—we women—that seems predisposed to thinking negative thoughts about ourselves. I mean, sure, there are some women who have big egos and act like prima donnas, but mostly I think we’re a self-effacing bunch.”
“It’s because that first caveman thought the only thing we were good for was sex and having babies,” Nancy said.
“And cleaning and then cooking their dead mastodons.” Holly thought that women had probably gotten the short end of the stick right from the beginning—and that the attitude of not being good enough was bred into them, deep down in their genetic memories.
“We have to stick together, and pull each other up when we slide back to that way of thinking,” Nancy said. “Although, if a woman finds the right men, they will build her up and then she knows she’s not alone fighting that self-image bitch.”
“But how do you know if the men you’ve found are the right men?” Holly used her glass to help ask the question. She nearly slopped her wine—a fact that made her giggle. Nancy must have thought it was funny, too, because she laughed with her—and then handed her some tissues. She wondered if she’d have to explain herself better, but Nancy’s eyes had lit up.
“That was the very question I asked my mother.” Nancy nodded.
“Oh, your mother is so smart! I bet she knows everything. So what did she say? When you asked her?”
Nancy sighed and for a moment looked completely disappointed. “She said you don’t know. You just have to listen to your heart, and then take a chance.”
“Well, fuck.” Holly immediately slapped her hand over her mouth. I can’t believe I said that word out loud! She knew her eyes had gone wide, because she could feel her face stretching. She supposed she looked kind of funny. Nancy tried not to laugh, but clearly it was a losing battle.
Nancy leaned forward. “Was that your first time saying that word out loud?”
Holly didn’t answer. With her hand still covering her mouth, she just nodded her head. Then she looked at the wine, and took her hand away from her mouth. “I will lay the blame on Bacchus!”
“Oh, absolutely.” Nancy snickered. “But tell me—just between us girls—how did it feel?”
Holly leaned forward. “It felt kind of good, actually.”
“My word was cunt.” Nancy nodded. “I was in freshman English lit class in college, and one of the thin-as-a-stick girls who’d given me a hard time was yapping off about the book we had to read, because, she said, it had the ‘c’ word in it. Just before class she’d said something about how I must never push away from the feeding trough with the rest of the cows and that was why I was so fat, so I was already in a pissy mood.”
Holly’s temper exploded. “Why, that fucking bitch! You should have…hav
e…punched her in the nose!”
Into the silence that followed her outburst, she hiccupped. And then she giggled. “Oh my, I think I’ve opened my own personal Pandora’s Box.” She shook her head. “Please forgive the interruption, and the outburst, although I stand by my declaration. Please tell me that you put her in her place.”
“I looked all innocent, and asked her, ‘What c word? Conscience? Civility? Consideration?’ And stick-girl gave me a sour look and said, ‘No, the other c word.’ So then I said, ‘Oh, you mean cunt?’ The whole class snickered—including the teacher. So then stick-girl—I don’t even remember her name—said, ‘Oh my God, you said that word!’ So I shrugged and gave her the punch line.” Nancy paused and Holly knew it was for dramatic effect.
She also knew a cue when she heard one. “You have to tell me, Nancy. What was the punch line?”
“I gave her the sweetest little grin I could muster and said, ‘You know, there’s a huge difference between having a cunt, and being a cunt.’”
“Oh my. Oh, I wish I’d seen that. That was brilliant!” Holly nodded. “You’re so clever. I can never think of a clever comeback. Not that I’ve needed many. But still.”
“Thank you. I did get a bit of applause, in fact. I guess I wasn’t the only one stick-girl had pissed off.”
Holly yawned. Then she set her wine glass down. “I think maybe I’ve had enough of that for one night. It’s making me say naughty things and yawn.”
“Well the yawning is no good, but you haven’t said anything naughty.” Nancy grinned. “You have to have at least one girlfriend in your life with whom you can say whatever’s on your mind.”
“I never have before.”
“I haven’t either,” Nancy said. “Not for a very long time. But we’re both book nerds, and I think we’re the perfect match.”
“I think so, too.” Holly smiled. It was good to know that she had a friend to whom she could say anything. How drunk can I be if my thoughts are still grammatically correct?
“Perfect!” Nancy held up a bottle that was still more than half-full of the juice of the fruit of the vine. “May I fill your glass?”
Love Under Two Wranglers [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Ménage Everlasting) Page 7
