by Eden Connor
I burst out laughing. After all these years, Dale could still mock the sing-song chant the old man used in the pulpit. Dale raised his hands high, barking with laughter as Bobby scuttled into the house.
“Was it somethin’ I said?” Dale flipped the cap onto his head again and turned to leave. “And I sure could use a homemade banana puddin’ tonight. Shelby’s like me. Can’t abide that crap they sell at the grocery store deli,” he tossed over his shoulder. “We’re celebratin’ her graduation and her world record.”
“Gonna have to pass on that offer, Hannah. I got me a hot date with a motorcycle man.” That remark might not have drawn blood, but it drew Dale up short.
I knew better than to think that glint in his eye was jealousy, but I still hastened to add, “Sons of Anarchy on Netflix,” because some tiny part of me was still Dale Hannah’s girl.
Dammit.
“Show up about seven, will ya? You’re my gift to Colt, and to Shelby. I wanna surprise ‘em both, so if you don’t mind, wait on the deck till you hear me knock.”
“Looks to me like you been tokin’ on Bobby’s stash.” I had my shields up now. If the bastard thought he could just waltz up and tell me to bring him a banana pudding, and oh, by the way, I want you shifting from foot to foot on the porch like some carnival act waiting to take center stage, he—
My mouth fell open when he went right down on his knees in the grass beside the open door of that jacked-up truck. My nursing training kicked in. I leaped off the porch. The man had been in ICU when I called over to Sammy Owens Trauma Center yesterday, for God’s sake. I skidded to a halt in front of him, trying to think what symptoms I should look for after a patient experienced a traumatic brain injury.
Dale wrapped his arms around my thighs and held on like a man going down for the last time.
“Please, Robyn. My little girl went on national television, tellin’ the whole world I was her hero. Bet you got a good laugh about that. I know goddamn well you can tell her I ain’t one. But, I ain’t dead yet, so there’s still hope I can fix my mistakes.”
Bingo.
I hated the way the man’s deep rumble stirred things better left dead.
The only time I’d seen Dale on his knees was right before he crawled between my thighs, or the thighs of Jill Shalvis, the adopted daughter of the crazy preacher man next door. The redhead we’d both fallen in love with. Shelby Hannah, the stepdaughter Dale was about to adopt, was the spittin’ image of Jill.
I reckoned that likeness was only possible because the God I’d grown up fearing—Bobby’s God—was the Old Testament variety. The One who taught men to throw rocks at women like me. Sure as hell not the one described in the New Testament, who hung out with harlots.
That’s not true.
And because of that hideous night—the night Dale had passed from boy to man and me from girl to woman—and not the nights we’d spent racing and fucking—I asked, “With or without marshmallow cream?” I swiped the tear off his cheek and cursed the new goatee for all it was worth, because it made him so gorgeous.
Like Lucifer.
I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes, so I raised my head to stare at the angel with the broken wing. I battled with my heart while I wondered for the millionth time if that Old Testament God had been laughing when He prompted Bebe Hickman to spend more money on his wife’s marker than the cheapskate had ever spent on that good soul the whole fifty years they’d been married.
Only a certain kind of man would buy a broken angel.
But it took a different kind of man to try and mend an angel with broken wings. Should we hold them to account for their failure, or give credit for trying? Two decades with my best fellas, Bud, Jose, and Jack, hadn’t helped me decide.
Why don’t men do a woman the favor of being all bad or all good? How many women like me had gone down in the crossfire between the tug of war between money and love that raged in the souls of ambitious men like Dale Hannah? He’d taken the money, of course, but, even I gave him credit for the struggle he put up before he succumbed.
I was done with gods of any kind. Done with the one who supposedly lived in the country church across the road, and doubly done with the clay-footed god at my feet. His name was on the lips of every NASCAR fan in the country right now. That meant more to him than hearing me whisper his name in the dark.
But my son. I might save Colt from following in every miserable step his daddy ever took. And my daughter? With a bit of luck, I could stop her from taking one more step in my footprints, too.
He tightened his hands around the backs of my thighs and buried his face just below my breasts. The bitter taste of Bud and booze hardened my resolve. I’d put the bottle down for the last time. Now, I had to find courage inside what was left of my soul.
“Seven it is. Let me go, Hannah. We both know how easy that is for you to do.”
The wail of a siren drew my attention. The county car screamed over the hill, slowing at the top to make the turn into the parsonage driveway.
“Old bugger called the cops on me?” Dale dropped his hands. I took a hasty step backward. He used the arm rest on the inside of the truck door to pull to his feet. Beads of sweat gleamed on his forehead.
I had no idea how Sherriff Mack Brown wedged his fat ass behind the wheel of his Crown Vic. Much less how he got out of the car so fast.
“I think the sheriff’s got cancer, Hannah. Caught his ass red-handed on the front porch, droppin’ off a toy for—oh, shit.”
Spinning, I dashed across the yard and leaped onto the porch. I jerked the door open and ran into the house. My daughter’s baby girl squatted in the kitchen floor beside the ripped plastic bag.
The child raised sad eyes to mine. “I broked ‘em. They’re bleedin’.” A clear line of slime streaked the uneven floor. Egg yolk pooled like sunshine in the low spot in front of the sink, but I had to blink twice before my mind stopped seeing the sticky liquid as blood.
“It’s okay, precious.” I scooped her into my arms. My eyes strayed to the cabinet that held my mama’s little collection of Autumn Leaf dinnerware.
Mack Brown’s bark floated through the open window, making my knees knock together.
“You’re under arrest.” The flash of handcuffs blinded me.
Moving closer to the sink, I stared as Mack pushed the preacher over the hood of his car and wrenched his arms behind his back.
“Dusty.” Mack spoke to a deputy I hadn’t seen arrive. “When you take Bobby here down to the jail, be sure you let the officer of the watch know you picked him up along with them gay boys in the back of your car, you hear?”
“But, sheriff—”
“I can do it myself, while you’re fillin’ out your unemployment papers, if you’d rather.”
Mack tightened his hold on the preacher’s arm. Bobby howled. “Robert Ray Shalvis, you’re under arrest. You have the right to an attorney. If them good, misguided folk across the way can’t raise the money for your lawyer, one will be appointed for you, and the rest of the taxpayers will pay for it. Maybe livin’ off the fat of your congregation’s hard work made you stupid, but it’s against the law to take money twice for the rent on the same house in the same damn month.”
Mack clipped the bracelet around one wrist, then reached for the other. “We got a lot of names for that, but I’m goin’ with Theft by False Pretense. I’ll have time to read up on which statute fits your crime before my clerk remembers where she’s about to hide your paperwork till Sunday mornin’.”
He clipped the bracelet shut around the other arm. Burying his hand down the back of Shalvis’s shirt, Mack yanked the preacher upright.
The stout arm of the law shoved the taller man toward the squinting deputy. “Enjoy your stay at the Cabarrus County Detention Center, Bobby. And be ye of good cheer. You’re about to reap the reward of all that fiery preachin’ you done done about the evils of one man lovin’ another.”
Mack swung one fat thigh onto the fender of his car. Dusty
Farr led the old man across the grass toward the waiting cruiser. I had no trouble seeing the pair of occupants in the back seat.
“Yep.” Mack continued, while the preacher stumbled across his front yard. “I’d rather hang you for the wolf you are than use this white collar bullshit to hang you for a sheep.”
Mack tugged a long cylinder from the breast pocket of his uniform and ran it under his nose. “Funny, ain’t it, how we come to be standin’ here? See, a little girl had no reason a’tall to trust me, but she left somethin’ important in my hands. Second chances will sure ‘nuff change a damn man. I realized, this was my second chance at hangin’ you for the wolf, Bobby.”
Mack tugged a butane lighter out of his pocket and lit the cigar. I could not figure out who the hell the sheriff was talking to, but after a few puffs, he continued.
“Few days takin’ some homophobe’s dick in your mouth and you might just talk to me to save your sorry ass. Because it just never sit right with me that I couldn’t get Jill to tell me what happened that day she ran out of your office like the devil was on her tail.”
I turned to meet Dale’s stunned eyes. He stood inside the front door. “You might be right about him havin’ cancer.”
“Can’t neither one of ‘em die soon enough for me.”
Dale smiled and knelt. Extending his arms. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s your name?”
Shelby began to squirm. Little girls with no daddy can’t resist any man with his arms open.
***
Author’s Note
Whenever Slick Reads asks me to do a thing, I always say yes. This time, she didn’t ask me to my face, but mentioned her desire to see Dale and Robyn and Jill’s story written when she reviewed Turn and Burn for Guilty Pleasures Book Blog.
Gotta write this story for her, then. She’s the person who read the rough draft of Gas or Ass and gave me the courage to publish it.
I saw the obstacle right away. See, if Jill Shalvis was seventeen when Caine was born, then she couldn’t have been much past sixteen when Caine was conceived. She and Robyn were closer in age than Robyn and Dale...meaning I have to go where angels fear to tread to write their story.
Yep, to tell the tale of how it all came to be, that’s me writing... wait for it... Young Adult erotica. Young girls that age have sex all the time. I know I did.
But, the complications build when we realize that Dale would’ve turned eighteen during their ménage relationship. Back in my day, not many worried about a man coming of age while his long-time girlfriend was still a minor, but now?
Despite the fact that Robyn’s daddy would’ve signed for her to marry Dale—making everything kosher and thanks so much for the clarity, NC State legislators—we know that’s not what happened.
So, Dale becomes a man who should, by today’s standard, be on the sex offender registry. And that’s where I see an endless fight with Amazon taking shape. Oh, I can write it and upload it, but some folks just live to start trouble.
So, I cannot say when this story will be written, but I’m pretty sure it’ll have to be obtained directly from me. Thus, I call Book 4 ‘the secret book’.
Now that I’ve launched Pedal to the Metal into the world, I’ll get to work completing www.edenconnor.com
My new website site will be the new place to find all things Eden.
Such as the T-shirts, totes, and mugs I plan to offer from the De Marco and Cuda Confessions series. I’ve already made a mock up of the T-shirt featuring the feather graphic Shelby drew for the ‘Cuda at eighteen. (Oh, yeah. Sweet.)
As I edit the files another time before I upload them for print editions, I plan to pull quotes and make shirts, mugs, etc. So, if you have a favorite quote you wanna see in lights, so to speak, give me a shout at: [email protected]
Subscribers to my newsletter will know first when the site launches, just as they received the only advance excerpt I published for Pedal to the Metal. See, Facebook and Twitter are fine, but a hella time suck, so ‘round here, newsletter subscribers get the goodies—the free books, first looks, and contests held just for them.
Upcoming Events: Gas or Ass will be available as an audio book on Audible by the end of January, 2016. The talented narrator, Patty Mo, has already agreed to begin production of Turn and Burn for Audible as soon as we get Gas or Ass uploaded. And the good Lord willing, she won’t run for the hills when she sees the monster that is Pedal to the Metal.
While I listen to her audio files, I’ll be formatting The ‘Cuda Confessions series for print, building the website, and merrily making T-shirt designs.
And of course, writing the long-promised fourth book of Those Devilish De Marco Men, Intentional Walk. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Colton drag Lila down the aisle? I know I do, even if it doesn’t seem that way.
~E
Acknowledgments
Slick Reads—for shoring up my courage to take this plunge into the world of the Hannahs, you have my undying gratitude.
Di Covey—Most people don’t like hearing their choice in titles suck. You told me mine did and made me like the way you said it. But, you’ve read the series with an open mind, and more than that, the debate we had on the matter was one of the best I’ve had in a while. Intelligent debate is sadly lacking in this world. It was a pleasure to meet someone who can hold her own and not let it get personal. Keep it dark, babe. One of these days...Imma have a little somethin’ dark, (okay, way dark) just for you.
Kim Faulks—my unflagging cheerleader and writing partner. If not for you, I’d never have written Gas or Ass. If not for you, I sure as hell wouldn’t have finished Pedal to the Metal. Much love.
Let me see...what else? The Audi plant doesn’t exist in Spratanburg County, but the BMW plant and headquarters there made a fine foundation to spin that part of my tale upon. If you’re a NASCAR fan, you know I played fast and loose with the schedule, but I appreciate y’all rollin’ with it.
And I appreciate the way you have taken the Hannahs into your heart. This book took me six months to ship into shape. I sure hope you think it was worth the wait.
If you reviewed these stories as they’ve come into your hands, God bless you. See, ‘Gas or Ass’ may or may not have raised your eyebrows when you saw the title. The stepbrother taboo theme might be right up your alley.
But that is not the case in the competitive world of email list publishers. Those good folks are up their eyebrows in money and authors who throw it at them, in return for advertising on their lists, to get us those all-important downloads that let us eat. Yeah, I know, it’s easy to turn a jaundiced eye at a title that has a skanky title and a taboo theme.
That’s why, if you loved these stories enough to review them on Amazon, you are my she-ro. Amazon will give the books some advertising money cannot buy if the review count keeps climbing. Otherwise, a few months from now, this series will fall to the bottom of the great big barrel that is Amazon, never to be seen again.
~Much love,
E
