On Stella’s wedding day, while her mother was helping her into the gown the two of them had sewn together, she suddenly gripped her daughter’s hands hard. She’d fastened only half of the thirty silk-covered buttons that trailed up the back of the dress, but there was an urgent look in her eyes.
“Sweetheart,” Pat said, taking a deep breath. “If… I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but I just want you to know—your father and I want you to know—that if there is any part of you that isn’t sure, any part of you that doesn’t want to go through with this—even a little part—why, we wouldn’t judge you in the least, even if you just want to take a little more time to think.”
Stella, whose ribs were being crushed under the rubberized girdle that was supposed to make her waist look tiny, could only gape. Her parents had never said one ill word against Ollie, welcoming him into their home during his six-month courtship, including him in holiday dinners and family outings.
Ollie was always on his best behavior when others were around, even if, when they were alone, some disturbing things had begun happening. He’d been accusing Stella of flirting with other men, or making him look foolish with their friends; he sometimes made fun of her ideas or pretended not to remember things he’d promised to do. Worst of all, one night a few weeks earlier, after an argument about the best way to get to a party over in Harrisonville, he’d squeezed her arm so hard she still had the mark of his fingers the next day.
But her mother didn’t know any of that, and all Stella could do was shake her head, mystified. “No, Mama,” she’d said, “everything is fine.” And a few hours later she was married.
In the years that followed, when Ollie’s taunts and harsh words turned much worse, when the marks on Stella’s body became harder to hide, she never said a word to her parents. She was too ashamed, too embarrassed to have made such a poor choice, and too entrenched in her marriage to realize she had any choice. But she always wondered if her mother suspected. Pat always hugged Stella extra hard after every visit, and her demeanor with Ollie cooled until, by the time she died, she was speaking to him only when necessary.
But Goat… Stella had seen Goat with elderly women before. He’d jump-started Novella Glazer’s old Skylark twice before driving her down to get a new battery himself. He’d climbed up onto Francie Cage’s roof to clear branches that fell on it during twister season a few years back. And Stella had seen him at the Freshway any number of times, carrying ladies’ groceries to their cars.
Whenever he was caught bare-handed in that brand of kindness, Goat always blushed furiously and pretended not to notice Stella, which was somehow… sweet.
Sweet. Yes. But if Stella had to choose just one word to describe the man she pined for, that wouldn’t be the one she’d choose.
Only she couldn’t think of any others that were big enough or special enough, either.
* * *
It was the best wedding reception ever, even if no actual wedding had taken place.
For one thing, Stella didn’t think she’d ever seen a happier bride. At the last minute, Dotty decided to go ahead and wear her gown—“there’s no law says I can’t, and I want everyone to see me in it since I took the trouble to lose six pounds”—and Stella wore her pink bridesmaid gown, which, she had to admit, wasn’t entirely dreadful once Novella and Gracie finished with it. In fact, it was downright slimming, and if the skirt was a little froufrou, the clever seaming in the bodice more than made up for it, making her look like a fifties pinup girl. Noelle went with the theme, giving Stella Marilyn-style eyeliner and penciled brows and red lips.
“Damn, Mama,” she said when she was done. “Either I’m just better than good—”
“—or I am,” Stella finished.
“I think you both are,” Cinnamon said sweetly.
Stella and the girls kept Dotty company in a little sitting room off the ballroom, sipping champagne cocktails while Noelle touched up Dotty’s bridal makeup and glued rhinestones into her hair. They could hear the happy sounds of the guests enjoying the cocktail hour next door, a medley of Broadway favorites playing in the background. Irene popped in to update them on the gossip, including a bit of news regarding BJ, who had been given strict orders to spend the evening in bed. The hotel staff—probably fearing a lawsuit over the dustup in the bar—had put him and Jorge up in a VIP room, which, in a cruel twist, came with its own pool table. Stella tried to keep any signs of relief off her face, but Irene gave her a sly and searching look before wondering out loud if the sheriff would be forced to spend another night with Leif and then taking her leave before anyone could respond.
Just as Noelle was giving Dotty’s hair a final setting spray, the DJ announced the wedding party. “And now it’s my pleasure to introduce to you—the new—er, actually, the old—what I mean to say is, the future Mr. and Mrs. Kamran Rangarajan!”
Stella opened the door with a flourish, accompanied by the introduction to “If I Loved You” from Carousel. Waiting in a tuxedo and a red bow tie was Kam, and seeing his jaw drop at the sheer loveliness of his bride was only the first of the moments Stella would carry with her for the rest of her days.
She followed the happy couple out into the cheering crowd waiting in the ballroom, Noelle and Cinnamon slipping off to find their table. Stella slunk along the wall, trying to stay out of the spotlight focused on Kam and Dotty, searching the crowd for Chrissy and Ian, who had promised to save her a place—and to make sure Goat sat with them too.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice growled into her ear. Goat, wearing a dark navy suit Stella had no idea he owned, stepped out from behind the bar, where he’d apparently been holding up the wall.
“I was… going…”
Suddenly, Stella couldn’t exactly remember, but luckily it didn’t seem to matter much after that. There was dancing, and fancy little snacks, and more champagne, all set to one romantic tune after another. Noelle and Cinnamon twirled around the dance floor, as graceful as a pair of music-box ballerinas, and Chrissy and Ian gave up any attempt at discretion and made out right in front of everyone. Mrs. Rangarajan was coaxed onto the dance floor by one of Dotty’s uncles from Sedalia, and Soorat and Rashita showed off some moves that were just shy of scandalous.
As the party began to wind down, Stella found herself on the dance floor, swaying gently to the tune of “So in Love” from Kiss Me, Kate, with Goat’s arms around her, his splinted hand resting gently on her hip. As she laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, she said the thing that had been simmering in her mind all day.
“My mom would have liked you.”
For a moment Goat just held her, his good hand making small circles on her back. Then he steered her rather forcefully toward the darkest corner of the dance floor.
“I bet I would have liked her, too,” he said softly. “A lady who raises a daughter like you—well, she must have been pretty special. But I got to say…”
He tugged Stella a little closer, his face only inches away, and Stella could make out the glint in his deep blue eyes even in the faint glow of candlelight.
“What?” she whispered breathlessly.
“She might not have liked me as much if she knew what I was thinking right now.”
Stella’s heart was pounding so hard that she was afraid Goat could hear it. “What’s that?” Then she had another thought. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Not here.”
She looked over his shoulder at the dance floor, lit up with candlelight and decorated with flowers. She saw Dotty dancing with Kam, looking every bit as beautiful as any bride Stella had ever seen. She saw her daughter laughing at something her girlfriend said, looking happier than she’d ever been. She saw Chrissy perched on Ian’s knee, the deputy gazing into her eyes as though they held all the secrets of the universe.
She saw love, in all of its glorious variations, and she remembered what Noelle had said. She w
as brave, wasn’t she? She did deserve to be happy. She deserved to love the man of her dreams. And she wasn’t going to wait any longer for fate to drag him over and drop him at her feet.
“Goat Jones… will you please walk me to my room?”
Goat’s smile widened into a big grin. “Hell yes I will. It’s about damn time.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was nearly three thirty in the morning when nature summoned Stella from her delicious slumber nestled in the crook of Goat’s arm. Goat’s leg was thrown over hers and his chin rested on top of her head. He sighed in his sleep occasionally, and once in a while muttered about a half a syllable in his deep, gruff voice, but mostly he just slept like a man at peace.
Which was a funny notion, Stella thought as she eased herself out from under Goat’s arm, since the last few hours had been anything but peaceful. They’d been passionate and amazing and—and, well, the word thunderous came to mind, and every time Stella thought that Goat couldn’t possibly come up with yet another new way to make her glad to be a woman, he showed just how much manly ingenuity he’d been keeping under wraps all this time.
It wasn’t perfect—there were a few bumped foreheads and limbs that had to be untangled and at one point, during a particularly daring attempt to re-create a pose Stella had seen on the Internet during afternoons when she’d gotten distracted by the naughty videos available from the same purveyors from whom she bought the bondage gear that kept her parolees in line, there was a sudden collapse that ended up with Stella falling off the edge of the bed and Goat almost landing on her. They’d managed to bump his splint often enough that his fingers were probably going to have to be reset. And there was that unfortunate banging of the headboard against the wall that neither of them noticed until their neighbor pounded back, though Goat picked up the bed and moved it a few inches into the room as though it was no heavier than a flat of petunias, which solved that problem.
Actually, every obstacle they encountered was instantly solved by a wonderful combination of laughter and delight and acceptance and just plain fitting together that Stella knew, without ever having experienced it before, was how it was supposed to work. She wasn’t entirely inexperienced—Goat may have been only her second lover, after Ollie’s entirely forgettable performance, but Stella had rounded most of the bases any number of times and liked to think she knew a little bit about what went where and what to do with it when you got it there. But with Goat, something as simple as a caress on the cheek or a subtle shift to give her more of the covers was weighted with… well, everything. This was love. This was what she should have held out for, what she was glad her daughter had found, what she hoped Chrissy experienced with Ian or whoever she gave her heart to. This was what Lola Brennan felt when her husband Pete drove her to the Popeye’s every weekday to have lunch with the other Green Hat Ladies and got out of the truck and came around and opened her door, like he’d been doing for nearly sixty years. This was what the little slip of a girl who tossed the newspaper onto Stella’s porch from a basket on the front of her bike had been feeling for the last eight months since the skinny redheaded boy had started riding around on the back of it, getting himself out of bed two hours before school just so she wouldn’t have to ride around alone.
This was what her parents had felt about each other, and as Stella finished up in the bathroom and washed up and checked for mascara smudges and quickly brushed her teeth so that Goat would wake to find her delightfully fresh, she gave up a quick little prayer to the Big Guy, thanking him for coming through spectacularly for her. If Stella had ever been able to bring herself to pray for Him to deliver a boyfriend, a request that even on the loneliest day seemed like ill use of His time given the shit going on around the globe that required His attention, Goat would have been exactly what she would have prayed for.
Stella slipped back under the covers with a contented sigh, wrapping her arms around Goat and pressing her cheek against his naked, muscular shoulder. He murmured something that sounded—could she have imagined it?—like her name, and wrapped his big hand around her small one, and slept on.
* * *
When Stella woke again, the sun was streaming through the windows and Goat was buckling his belt, his bare torso gleaming and his muscles rippling while he stared down at her with a funny little smile.
Stella couldn’t help a pang of disappointment, even though watching Goat Jones dress might be one of the finest entertainments to be had, second perhaps to watching him undress and, of course, watching him grab one’s ankles and drag one down the bed to where he had better access to—well, never mind any of that.
“You got somewhere to be?” she asked.
“ ’Fraid so,” Goat said. “Daphne called. Hard to hear her over your snoring, but the gist of it seemed to be that she wants me to come in for some sort of ballistic consult on some shooting back in Fayette.”
“I just bet she did,” Stella grumbled, propping herself up on her elbows, allowing the sheet to slip down and reveal a good portion of her bosom. Judging from the way Goat’s hands froze on the buckle, the ploy seemed to be having the effect she was hoping for, so Stella slowly stretched her arms over her head, faking a dainty little yawn. “Not to criticize a woman in blue, but don’t they got any of their own folks ever took the ballistics tech class? Seems like that would be the sort of thing even Sheriff Stanislas might notice.”
“Well, I am considered to be the county expert,” Goat said modestly. “I know you thought I was avoiding you last December when I went down to Springfield for that advanced course, but in between thinking about you in those tight jeans you wore to the tree lighting downtown I did manage to pay attention to one or two things the instructor said.”
“You remember what I wore to the tree lighting?” Stella asked, impressed. “I didn’t even know you saw me that night.”
“Stella Hardesty, I bet I could lay out for you every damn thing you wore since the first day I ever saw you. Which was in April 2007, by the way, and you were in your driveway washing the Jeep, and you had on a Missouri Tigers sweatshirt. I seen you in a green dress at church that spring, and I figured out when you went to the Freshway so I could run into you there. I know you like to wear your lucky shorts for races and when you don’t get around to wash day you wear them old Wranglers with the hole nearly wore through the knee. I like those, by the way, they fit you real snug and I’ll be hoping you’ll wear them for me a little more often.”
“Wow,” Stella whispered. “I didn’t think you… uh, noticed me.”
“Didn’t think I noticed you?” Goat’s eyes, faded to cornflower in the morning light, sparked dangerously. “Damn it, woman, you’ve been a torment to me since the moment we met. You’ve kept me from sleeping on summer nights and nearly run me off the road a few times when I got to daydreaming. I’ve wanted to strangle you just about as often as I wanted to drag you to bed, but you can bet a day hasn’t gone by that I didn’t notice you and what you do to me.
“And one more thing,” he said, his voice now scraping down along the smoky raw register, the one that sent little trills of gotta-have-that along Stella’s spine, “if you think I got anything left in me for Daphne, even if I wanted to, why I don’t think you realize how you wring a man out. You’ve used me up, Stella, and all I can say is it was a pleasure to be used.”
With that he closed one big warm hand around Stella’s bare foot and did something with his thumb along the sole that suggested that, despite what he said, he might have held a little something back.
“Oh,” Stella said. “You, um, you think you might recover a little by the time you get back here?”
“By the next time I see you, I plan to be fully charged again,” Goat said in a voice that was more threat than promise. “I got to get Daphne calmed down, and then I promised Kam and Ian and the crime-scene boys I’d have lunch with them. Kam wants to thank us law enforcement gents for helping
out with getting Divinity sprung so he can get hitched.”
He paused and glared at Stella for a long moment, and suddenly Stella couldn’t seem to find anywhere to direct her gaze. She knew what Goat was thinking, and it was a conversation she definitely did not want to get involved in.
But Goat was not so easily dissuaded. “Let’s pretend for a second that I didn’t find a propane-tank bomb in your Jeep,” he said. “Let’s pretend I don’t know that you and trouble could find each other in the middle of a North Pole snowstorm. I’m gonna say something here and I’m just going to count on this new, ah, phase in our relationship carrying a little more weight with you than it has in the past. Are you with me here, girl?”
Stella had almost stopped breathing, but she managed a tiny nod.
“This. Is. Not. Your. Case.” Goat bent over the bed and cupped Stella’s chin gently in his hand, forcing her to look up at him. “Divinity Flycock ain’t some downtrodden woman needs saving, you hear? She ain’t no shy bloom, and she’s got an entire crew of uniforms and family keeping her safe. Whoever killed Bryant seems to agree with me that you might want to just let the professionals handle it from here. Now you and me, we got some hard conversations ahead, I know that, ’cause there ain’t gonna be two of us in charge in this relationship, and I’m pretty sure we’re both gonna have to figure out how to give a little, no matter how hardheaded you are. But way I see it, let’s just get through this weekend first, and we’ll tackle the rest when we get back to town. For now, for the love of God, woman, I’m just asking you to—to—go get your hair fixed or get a massage or whatever the hell it is that regular women do, and we’ll have us a nice time tonight and let the Quail Valley folks keep an eye on things so you can get your friend married off tomorrow without anyone else getting shot. Can you do that, Stella? Please? Just that?”
Goat had worked himself into such a state that the little muscle along his jaw was jumping the way it sometimes did. Stella, fascinated like always, said the first thing that came into her head. “We’re in a relationship?”
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