Ginger frowned. “Don’t you think Luke needs to know these things in case Carl decides to show up uninvited?”
We both looked at Tiffany. If a man would hit his daughter, who could predict what else he might do?
“Fine. I’ll tell Luke. Then the next time Carl comes into The Fountain I’ll let him know his services are no longer needed.”
Ginger stared through me. “You should probably ask Luke to be there with you for that, too.”
The next morning I drove over to County Line Methodist to give Luke one of our old box fans and to tell him what had happened. I wondered how his impromptu Bible study had gone. Knowing The Fountain regulars, they’d converted him to a life of beer and laziness instead.
And I should probably apologize for that “you’re not Jesus” comment, but I wasn’t going to. Nope. I needed to say my piece and get away from him as soon as possible.
I rolled into the parking lot blasting classic rock with the windows rolled down because my air-conditioning had long ago ceased to function. Turning off the engine and stepping into the parking lot during morning hours was like stepping into a different world. Birds chirped to one another as crickets and frogs sang their last songs of the morning. Sunlight caught each spiderweb and every sprinkle of dew, and the air around me sparkled with a haze that promised a hot day ahead. Even the cemetery looked cheerful with the bright sunlight and the sound track of the birds. And it was fortunate I looked over at the cemetery because Luke was there with a sketch pad, sitting on someone’s tombstone.
I took a deep breath. Time to tell him about the sordid exploits of the Happy Hour Choir and hope he didn’t give me too much grief for being an ass a few days before. I crunched across the gravel, then hiked through the dewy grass of the cemetery, my nose crinkling at the distasteful sensation of wet grass clippings clinging to my feet and ankles.
“Hey, Luke, whatcha doing there?”
He jerked around. “Beulah, I didn’t expect you this morning, but I’m glad you’re here because there’s something I need to tell you.”
“That makes two of us.” I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my cutoffs. “I need to talk to you, too.”
“All right, you first.” His eyes opened wide and bright, a complement to the sky above him. He thought I was coming to share my secrets, but that wasn’t going to happen. I wrestled with the desire to talk to him about Hunter, but I pinned down that unruly urge and brought up the real reason I was there. “I’m going to need to ask Carl to leave the choir, and Ginger seems to think this is something I should discuss with you.”
He put down the sketch pad and slid around on the marker to face me. I took a seat on the nearby Smith memorial. I didn’t figure they’d mind that much.
“You like to express your opinions in the framework of what Miss Ginger likes, but, as I recall, she is quite good at expressing her own opinions.”
A lump of coal formed in my stomach and started to glow. “You don’t know the first thing about Ginger Belmont, so you can take that tone back.”
We glared at each other for a moment. “I’m sorry. That was out of line, but I do wonder why someone as headstrong as you kowtows to an elderly lady.”
That lump of coal cooled but moved up to my throat. “She was there for me when no one else was. The least I can do is return the favor.”
Luke leaned back and studied me. He picked up the sketch pad and turned a sheet over to a new page before taking up his pencil. “She took you in when you had nowhere else to go?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, and I don’t need a shrink.” I crossed my arms and stared through him with my best mean look, but it didn’t faze him.
“Did she help you the way you’re helping Tiffany?” He looked up from the sketch pad, one eyebrow raised as if he already knew the answer.
No matter how many times I swallowed I couldn’t get rid of that lump. There was no reason in this world I should have been ashamed to tell Luke my story. After all, Daddy always said a minister is certain to have heard worse. But I couldn’t form the words to explain it all, so I settled on a simple, “Yes.”
He nodded and looked down at his drawing. His lips pursed as his hand flew over the page in a flurry of strokes. I cursed him for his intuition. And for being so darn handsome there in the morning light with his sketch pad.
“So, how does all this add up to Carl leaving the choir?”
I exhaled with relief, more than happy to be back in familiar territory. “Carl smacked Tiffany around. As far as I’m concerned, he can go to . . . He can move all the way to Timbuktu for all I care.”
“I’m assuming she’s in good hands, though, since I saw her leave with you and Miss Ginger.”
“Define ‘good hands.’ ”
He chuckled and looked up at me with a half smile and his eyes twinkling in a way that made me melt. “I think your hands are better than you think they are.”
“I’m sorry for what I said the other night. I didn’t mean it.”
Dammit. Where had that come from?
He looked back at the pad where he was sketching. “No need to apologize for speaking the truth.”
“Even if I spoke the truth with a smart-alecky tone of voice?”
“Even then.”
He continued drawing, and I thought of the sketch of the beautiful woman in his office. She was probably his girlfriend, and I’d do well to remember it. “So the sketch in your office is yours?”
“Sure is.”
“Who is she?”
“My ex-wife.”
I swallowed hard. Of course he was still in love with his ex-wife. He would do what was right even if she didn’t hold up her end of the bargain. “Still in love with her, huh?”
He looked up from his book again to study my face. “No, I keep her there to remind me I can’t fix everything and everyone. Some people don’t want to be rescued. Apparently, some people want to marry carpet salesmen and move to Georgia.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. It’s for the best, let me assure you.”
“Well, she’s an idiot.”
“Thanks. I think that might be your first compliment to me.” He studied me with such intensity I was glad to have a row of graves between us.
I shifted around on the top of the granite marker. Those rough, rounded edges were definitely not made for sitting. “So which church is this for you?”
“It’s my third church and second denomination. I’m hoping for that ‘charm’ adage to come true because the first two didn’t end well.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “Because you couldn’t pick out an invitation to save your soul.”
“Very funny.”
“Wait, your second denomination?” I fidgeted as he repeatedly looked up at me and down at the paper while his hand flew over the page.
“The Southern Baptists frown upon divorced pastors. Even if divorce wasn’t the pastor’s idea.”
He was still in love with her.
“Dad did for me what he could, but, in the end, the rules are the rules. Besides, I needed to go in a different direction.” He shrugged, but I could see an inner war there, an admiration for his father combined with the overwhelming desire to do certain things in a completely different way. No matter what he might tell himself or others, Luke secretly wanted to be like his father, and, based on his pained expression, he felt as though he wasn’t even close. I could understand that.
“When did you start preaching?”
“Twenty-two,” he said. “I was going to be a star.”
Twenty-two? I was still busy doing really stupid things at twenty-two, making up for lost teenaged years, I suppose. I tried to imagine being married and in charge of an entire congregation at such a young age. Nothing I had ever experienced could possibly compare with that kind of pressure.
“A bit young, weren’t you?”
He looked up. “Ever heard of the Reverend Barnabas Daniels?”
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I frowned as I racked my brain on that one. “No . . . Oh, Reverend Daniels, who used to have the show on Sunday mornings out of Nashville?”
Luke nodded solemnly. “That’s my dad. I was a bit of a prodigy, they said. I settled down in the outskirts of Nashville and prepared to take over my father’s empire.”
“But it didn’t happen that way, did it?”
“Of course not,” he said with a bitter smile. “But it all turned out for the best. Quid pro quo, Miss Land,” he said before looking back to his sketch pad.
Having a minister quote Hannibal Lecter was disturbing on many levels, so I felt it best to change the subject. “I guess I’ll tell Carl tonight we won’t be needing his services.”
Luke’s head snapped up. “Nice try. My turn for questions.”
Oh, he’d told me all sorts of things about himself so he could find out more about me. Sneaky bastard. “I don’t want to play your game.”
“I’m not playing games, and I still don’t take you for a coward.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “I’ve lived here my entire life. My parents sheltered me. I made some mistakes. I live with Ginger, my old piano teacher. That’s all there is to know.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“A Tiffany mistake.” Among others that I won’t tell you even if you start prying off my fingernails with pliers.
“And that’s who you lost, isn’t it? The baby?”
“Yeah.” And my father. And my mother’s love. And I’m going to lose Ginger someday, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me too. And on that cheery note, I have some errands to run for Ginger. Just wanted to let you know about Carl before I told him to get lost tonight.”
Luke frowned. “Maybe I ought to be there, too.”
“I think I can handle a drunken redneck, Preacher Man.”
He straightened. “I’ll come anyway.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Free country, as you’ve so eloquently pointed out. Besides, I’m feeling a little thirsty.”
I stood and looked over the edge of his pad. The sketch was still rough, but it was me. Only, I was beautiful in that sketch, so beautiful I sucked in a breath. “Wow, you’re really good. Or really bad, since you drew me to look like a mischievous fairy.”
“Just draw ’em like I see ’em, Beulah. The question is, how do you see yourself?”
“Not like this.” And thank God he couldn’t see the way I pictured him. I’d rather learn how to play handbells from Lottie Miller than admit how often I’d thought about his lopsided smile.
He ripped the page out of the book and handed it to me. “I have to get to work, but I’ll be there tonight when you talk to Carl.”
He got four steps away before I remembered something important. “You might want to wear jeans tonight,” I hollered across the cemetery. “The Fountain isn’t exactly a khakis-and-polo sort of crowd.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he muttered drily.
“Oh, and we don’t want you to keel over from heatstroke so I brought you a fan we had lying around. You can get it out of the backseat.”
“Thank you,” he said with a flash of dimples.
I watched him get the fan out of the car then walk around the church to the back door. I believed him when he said he would be there that night, and it was an unfamiliar feeling. For the longest time I’d only been able to count on Ginger. I looked at the church then back to his drawing of me and back to the church again. How could he so easily make something beautiful out of someone who was not?
At first I wanted to crumple the page and leave it behind with the Smiths, but I couldn’t bring myself to fold it, much less crinkle it. Instead, I held it against my chest to shield it from the breeze while I walked back to the car.
No two ways about it, I had a serious crush on the preacher man.
Chapter 10
I should have seen it coming. You can’t let someone live with you and expect to keep all of your secrets. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the afternoon when Tiffany asked me, “Beulah, why don’t you ever go into the nursery?”
“Do you see a baby?” I asked her in a tone far harsher than I should have. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing my tone to soften. “No baby, no need to go into the nursery.”
And she had to know that. Everyone knew about the preacher’s daughter who got knocked up and then lost the baby. Or they thought they did. One asshole had even preached an entire sermon on “God’s will” and used me and Hunter as his example. I quit going to church after that, and the preacher moved a few months later. I always suspected Ginger had a hand in his not being reappointed to County Line.
“But everything is ready for a baby. Well, except for the wipes that have dried up and the diaper rash cream that’s expired,” Tiffany said. “Don’t you think that’s a bit creepy?”
I stood and pushed my chair away from the table. “No, I think it’s convenient for you because you have a nursery ready and waiting for you.”
That might have been a bit harsh, Beulah.
I got all the way to the doorway before Tiffany spoke. “That’s kinda what I wanted to ask you about. Miss Ginger told me to make myself at home and think about what I want to do in the nursery. Do you think I could decorate the nursery with different colors? Kinda do some things myself?”
Buttercream. That was the color I painted the nursery. I had thrown open all of the windows and painted the walls myself because we didn’t know to worry about paint fumes and whatnot. Ginger and I had laughed at the huge smudge of beige paint on my belly, but I hadn’t realized I was brushing the wall until I pressed hard enough for Hunter to kick me.
I willed my lungs to keep bringing in air and sending it back out. “Tiffany, you do whatever you want to do with the nursery. You can paint it black and go for a goth theme with bats hanging from the ceiling, but pigs will fly before I set foot in that nursery.”
“Could you take a look at it, please?”
Her need for my approval took my breath away. I climbed the stairs slow and steady, but tears stung my eyes long before I reached the top. The nursery door was cracked, and broken spiderwebs hung from that corner where the door hadn’t been opened in so long. I took one step down the hall and then another.
Ginger had survived losing both husband and child. Luke had lost his mother.
I can do this.
I pushed open the door. Sunlight poured into the room and lingered, thanks to the buttery walls. In one corner the airplane border had come loose, showing the pink gingham I’d originally put there because I’d been convinced I was having a girl. Leave it to me to make a snap decision and then get my comeuppance in the form of an ultrasound. Finally, I forced myself to look at the hand-me-down crib in the opposite corner. I’d been humming “Hush little baby, don’t say a word” when I walked across the room and looked over the edge of the crib.
The world spun at the memory of his too-still body, and I grabbed the door facing. I ran down the hall and slammed my door behind me. I shook worse than Ginger, and the words came to mind before I could stop them:
Lord, please take better care of Tiffany’s baby than You took care of mine.
I was spoiling for a fight by the time I made it to The Fountain. I scanned the small room looking for Carl Davis, but he had yet to arrive. I couldn’t know for certain he would come, but it was a safe bet. He couldn’t have missed more than two nights since Tiffany had started waitressing.
After four songs, Luke walked through the door. My first thought was, Thank goodness he took my advice about the khakis. After studying Luke’s jeans a little too closely, my second thought was, Good heavens, I was better off when he was wearing the khakis.
His jeans looked good on him—too good—as did his cowboy boots, an unexpected twist. His button-down shirt, a subdued blue plaid, almost fit in with the western shirts the Gates brothers wore. Luke Daniels was learni
ng how to fit in and, as such, was a dangerous combination of the best of Yessum County along with the best of being from just about anywhere else.
He bought a beer and listened as I played. First, I played a rag as an inside Joplin joke for the two of us, then a little “Yellow Submarine” for him. He grinned at me then joined in on the chorus with the rest of The Fountain’s patrons. By that time, I had to play a little Patsy Cline to keep the natives from getting restless. As I wrapped up “Crazy,” the cuckoo clock signaled the nine o’clock hour. Luke stood, his lips pressed thinly together. He looked at me, obviously wavering between his desire to not be in the bar when I got all sacrilegious and his desire to stay and keep an eye on me. He checked the room for Carl then stepped outside, probably to go back to the parsonage, shove his fingers in his ears, and say, “La-la-la” as loudly as he could.
As luck would have it, Carl Davis walked in not long after Luke walked out. I played every verse of “Dwelling in Beulah Land” that I could think of, then added an instrumental solo to give Luke time to come back in, but he didn’t show.
Finally, I decided I would handle the situation myself. After all, I’d been dealing with half-drunk men without Luke for years. I hopped down from the risers and made a beeline for Carl. He sat at the little bar against the wall, nursing a Bud Light.
“Carl, I need to have a word with you,” I said.
He glared at me over the top of his beer bottle. It appeared he was itching for a fight as well.
“I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say, so I think we might oughta step outside.” He eased off the stool.
“Fine by me.” He might not know it, but I had no objections to a groin shot should the situation call for it.
He pushed past me to the door and let the screen door fly behind him—so much for ladies first. I stepped back and blinked as it almost hit me in the face.
Outside, he stood around the corner where Tiffany had been tossing her cookies a few days before. He cradled the brown beer bottle in the crook of his arm as he lit a cigarette. Once he’d put the lighter back in his pocket, he transferred the beer to one hand and the cigarette to the other. I felt better that both of his hands were busy.
The Happy Hour Choir Page 9
