A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel)

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Aw, cher, we’ve got plenty of time. The rest of our lives. Just you, me, and three little monsters.”

  “And we’ll all live happily ever after?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The pronouncement was suitably profound, he thought, until she slanted him an amused look.

  “You’ve been reading Mariah’s fairy tales, haven’t you?”

  He settled her snugly against him and replied, “I don’t need fairy tales, darlin’. I have you.”

  About the Author

  Known for her intensely emotional stories, Marilyn Pappano is the USA Today bestselling author of nearly eighty books. She has made regular appearances on bestseller lists and has received recognition for her work in the form of numerous awards. Though her husband’s navy career took her across the United States with him, Ms. Pappano now lives in Oklahoma high on a hill that overlooks her hometown. They have one son and daughter-in-law, an adorable grandson, and a pack of mischievous dogs.

  You can learn more at:

  MarilynPappano.com

  Twitter @MarilynPappano

  Facebook.com/Marilyn.Pappano

  Since she lost her husband, Jessy Lawrence

  struggled with her own guilt over his death.

  After his wife’s passing, Dalton Smith

  became alienated from his family and friends.

  When these two wounded souls meet,

  they spark a fiery passion. But can love heal

  old scars—or will the demons of the past

  pull them apart forever?

  Please turn this page for a preview of

  A Love to Call Her Own.

  Chapter 1

  Monday mornings came too damn soon.

  Jessy Lawrence rolled onto her back and opened her eyes just enough to stare at the shadows the sun cast across the bedroom ceiling. It was high in the sky. Ten o’clock, maybe eleven. In the four weeks since she’d lost her job, she’d been sleeping in late. Why not, with no more annoying alarm clock beeping at six forty-five? No more dressing up, putting on makeup, smiling for customers who annoyed her so much that she wanted to smack them. No more caring whether she was late or if she looked more ragged than she should or if anyone noticed—like that nosy hag, Mrs. Dauterive—she was having a tough day.

  It should have been heaven.

  If possible, she was more miserable than before.

  After her eyes became accustomed to the sun’s glare, or what there was of it peeping around the edges of the blinds, she turned her head carefully to the nightstand and bit back a groan. It was 12:21. Officially afternoon. She’d slept away the whole morning.

  She should shower. Brush that god-awful taste from her mouth. Put some drops in her eyes so they didn’t feel so puffy. Get something to eat—proteins, vegetables, carbs, fruit. She’d been subsisting on junk food and booze so long that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real meal.

  She should get dressed, too, walk down the street, buy a copy of the Tallgrass newspaper, and check out the help-wanted section. She needed a job. A sense of purpose. A reason to get out of bed in the morning…or afternoon, as the case may be. She didn’t need the money. Bless Aaron and the United States Army, his life insurance would cover her expenses for the next few decades even if she did nothing but loll on the couch.

  What she did need was a reason for living. It was two years and eight months too late to crawl into Aaron’s grave with him, and she didn’t deserve to be there anyway. He could have done so much better than her if he’d survived his last two weeks in Afghanistan.

  But he hadn’t survived, and she had, and here she was, wasting her life. It was shameful.

  She sat up, her head pounding, and slowly eased to her feet. The shuffle to the bathroom jarred every pain sensor in her head and made her stomach do a queasy tumble. Once inside, she peed, turned the shower to hot, then faced herself in the mirror. She wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Her red hair stood straight up on top, a counter to the flattened frizz that cradled the sides of her head. At some point in the last day or two, she’d put on makeup, then failed to remove it before crawling into bed. Shadow smeared and mascara smudged, giving her eyes a hollow, exaggerated look. Deep circles underneath emphasized their emptiness. Indentations from the pillow marked her cheek and forehead, and her usual healthy glow had gone gray and pasty.

  It was a wonder small children didn’t run away at the sight of her.

  Only because small children didn’t frequent the places she did.

  Steam was forming on the mirror when she sighed, turned away, and stripped off her tank and shorts. She took a long shower, scrubbing herself once, twice, closing her eyes, and letting the stinging water pound into her face. By the time she was ready to get out, it had turned cold, bringing shivers and making her teeth chatter.

  Nearly four weeks since she’d been fired—all because some snotty teenage brat with a sense of entitlement could dish it out but couldn’t take it—and she hadn’t told anyone yet. Not that there were many people to tell, just the margarita girls, her best friends. None of them banked at Tallgrass National. Like her, they were all Army widows, and like her, they kept their accounts at the Fort Murphy Federal Credit Union.

  She should have told them at their first Tuesday-night dinner after it happened. She liked to think she would have, except they were all preoccupied with other, mostly happier stuff. Carly was planning her wedding to Dane Clark, scheduled for the first weekend of June, and Therese was in the early throes of mad love and lust with Keegan Logan, who made the long drive up from Fort Polk, Louisiana, with his daughter, Mariah, to spend weekends with Therese and her kids, Abby and Jacob.

  Ilena was thirty-some weeks pregnant, due to deliver Hector Junior the week after Carly’s wedding, and Fia…Poor Fia was…off. That was the only way Jessy could describe their youngest friend lately. She wasn’t drinking. Jessy could recognize another drunk from a mile away. She didn’t believe it was drugs, either. Fia worked too hard as a personal trainer. She wouldn’t poison herself. Something was wrong, but like Jessy, Fia wasn’t sharing.

  That left Lucy and Marti, the last two who formed the core of the Tuesday Night Margarita Club, also known as the Fort Murphy Widows’ Club. Nothing earthshaking was happening in their lives. They were as everyday normal as any of them could be. Jessy didn’t want either of them—any of them—to know what a colossal loser she was. If they knew all her failings, they would lose respect for her, and she would lose the six most important people in her life. Better that she keep her secrets.

  God, how she wished she could talk to someone who wouldn’t hold them against her.

  For the first time in years, she wanted—needed—a closer relationship with her family. They lived in Atlanta: mother, father, two sisters with husbands and children who got regular gifts from their aunt Jessy but wouldn’t recognize her if she break-danced in front of them. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d gotten an affectionate hug from her mom or a word of advice from her father. She’d been such a disappointment that she was pretty sure, if asked, Prescott and Nathalie Wilkes didn’t even acknowledge the existence of their middle daughter.

  She got dressed, finger-combed her hair, then wandered through the empty apartment with its high ceilings and tall windows to the kitchen. A quick look in the refrigerator and freezer showed nothing but a few bottles of water, condiments, and some frozen dinners, age unknown. The pantry held staples: rice, pasta, flour, sugar, plus a lonely can of pinto beans and some packets of instant mashed potatoes. The cabinets were empty, as well, except for a box of oatmeal and another of instant pudding. As in the childhood poem, her cupboards were bare.

  Except for the one below and to the left of the sink. Out of sight, out of mind, the old saying went, but the bottles in that cabinet were never far from her mind. That was her problem.

  She needed food, real food, healthy food. Though she wasn’t much of a cook, she could learn. She could fill a few of her emp
ty days with taking care of herself: eating properly, exercising, cleaning, detoxing herself. It was a momentous project, but she was worth the effort, right? And what else did she have to do?

  She would start with shopping, she decided, grabbing her purse and keys and heading toward the door before she could talk herself out of it. She was a champion shopper, though she preferred to look for killer heels and cute outfits and Bobbi Brown makeup. She could handle a sweep through Walmart, maybe even grab a burger at the McDonald’s just inside the door, and at this time of day, she wouldn’t risk running into any of her margarita sisters.

  After locking up, she took the stairs to the street level, stepped out into the warm May afternoon, and stopped immediately to rummage in her purse for a pair of dark glasses. Cars passed on Main Street, a few steps ahead, and a few shoppers moved past, running errands on their lunch breaks or grabbing a meal at one of the nearby restaurants. Jessy loved living right in the heart of downtown Tallgrass, on the second floor of a sandstone building that dated back to Oklahoma’s statehood. She loved the busyness of the area during the day and the quiet at night, her only neighbors few and far between in other converted spaces.

  Her car was parked down the alley in a tiny lot shared by the owners of Serena’s Sweets next door and a couple other businesses. She drove to First Street, then headed south to Walmart, stoically ignoring the bank at the intersection of First and Main as she passed. They’d replaced her with ease—people with the skills to be customer account reps weren’t hard to come by, else Jessy couldn’t have done the job—and after electronically sending her final paycheck, they were done with her. Not even Julia, the account rep she’d known best, had bothered to contact her.

  Walmart was always busy, even in a military town where service members and their families had the option of the post exchange and the commissary. She parked at the far west end of the lot, figuring she could use the exercise and a little fresh air, since among the many things she couldn’t remember was the last time she’d seen daylight. She felt a tad like a vampire. Had looked like one, too, in the mirror before her shower.

  Determination got her into the store and all the way to the back, where she started with bottled water. Municipal water in Tallgrass tasted like it came from one of those shallow ponds that the cattle stood in on hot summer days. She added milk, two percent, though she wasn’t sure for what. But healthy diets included dairy products, right? She tossed in a twelve-pack of Greek yogurt and added fake egg blend, turkey bacon, whole-grain bread—whatever caught her attention as she trolled the aisles.

  She was standing in front of the jarred pasta sauces, remembering the spaghetti sauce Aaron had taught her to make—ground beef, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and just a bit of sugar—when a crash jerked her attention to a woman fifteen feet away. A jar of pizza sauce lay splattered on the floor around her, its bright red spotting her jeans like blood, and she was clenching her cell phone tightly to her ear.

  Such a look on her face.

  Jessy went hot inside, then a chill spread through her. She knew that look. Dear God, she’d lived that look. She still wore it in her nightmares, still saw it at times in her mirror. That awful, heart-stopping, can’t-breathe, can’t-bear-it look of shock and pain and anger and grief and pure, bitter sorrow.

  The nearest shopper edged her cart away from the woman while sneaking looks. Other customers and a few stock boys barely old enough to shave stared at her outright as she sank, as if in slow motion, to the floor, a wail rising out of her, growing with anguish until it scraped Jessy’s skin, uncovering her own barely scabbed-over anguish.

  This shouldn’t be happening here, and it damn well shouldn’t be happening with Jessy. Therese—she was motherly, loving, kind. Carly, too. Ilena could empathize and offer comfort with the best of them. Marti, Lucy, Fia—any of them could handle something like this better than Jessy. Jessy didn’t comfort. She didn’t reach out. She didn’t get involved in strangers’ emotional messes.

  But no one was helping the woman. No one was trying to move her off the glass-shard-littered floor, giving her any assistance or, barring that, any privacy. Jessy knew too well what it was like to grieve alone. She’d done it for eighteen months before she’d met her margarita sisters.

  She knew in her heart that this woman had just found out she could be a margarita sister, too.

  Her first step was tentative, her stomach knotted, her chest struggling for air. Too soon she was beside the woman, though, sobbing amid the broken glass and splattered sauce as if she, too, were broken. She was older, probably in her fifties, gray roots just starting to show in her brown hair. Her clothes were casual but well made: faded jeans in the hundred-dollar price range, a cotton shirt whose quality shone in its very simplicity, stylish leather sandals. Dior clouded the air around her, mixing with the scent of tomatoes and basil, and the gems on the fingers that still clenched the cell phone were tastefully impressive.

  Jessy noticed all those things to delay that first touch, that first word. What did you say to a person whose world had just shifted so dramatically that it might never be normal again?

  Trying to channel Therese, Carly, or Ilena, Jessy crouched beside the woman, touched her, and said, “I’m so sorry.” Three totally inadequate words that made her feel almost as low as the jerks gawking from both ends of the aisles.

  “Patricia? Patricia, are you there?” The tinny question came from the cell phone.

  Gently Jessy pried the phone free and raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Who is this?”

  “A friend of Patricia’s. What did you tell her?”

  “Oh. I thought she was alone. At least, she was when she left her house.” The voice belonged to a man, old, smug, with a touch of whine. It brought back long-ago memories of visits from Nathalie’s parents, a hateful old woman and a spiteful old man. “I told her there’s two Army officers all dressed up in their finest lookin’ for her. I bet it’s about her husband, George. He’s in the war, you know. Over in—”

  Jessy disconnected and pocketed the phone. Despite the Army’s best intentions, things sometimes went wrong with casualty notification calls: no one home but kids who called their parent in a panic; nosy neighbors who couldn’t resist being the first to pass on bad news. She’d received her call at work, just about this time of day on a Wednesday, back from lunch and summoned into the bank president’s office to face a weary chaplain and a solemn notification officer. We regret to inform you…

  Army wives knew that soldiers on their doorsteps never brought good news, especially during wartime. Just the sight of that official government-tagged vehicle in the driveway, those dress uniforms, those somber expressions, was enough to break their hearts before they started beating again, slowly, dully, barely enough to sustain life, or pounding madly until it felt like they might explode.

  Everyone in the margarita club had been through their own notification, and every one remembered two things about it: the unbearable grief and those five words. We regret to inform you…

  “Come on, Patricia,” she said quietly, wrapping her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Let’s get you off the floor. Let’s find someplace quiet.”

  Unexpected help came from one of the young stockers. “The manager’s office,” he volunteered, taking hold of Patricia’s arm and lifting her to her feet. “It’s up at the front of the store.”

  Jessy paused to take the woman’s purse from her cart—her own bag hung messenger-style over her head and shoulder—then the three of them moved haltingly down the aisle. By the time they reached the end, a heavyset guy in a shirt and tie was hurrying toward them, a dark-haired woman on his heels. The manager, she presumed, and likely an assistant. Maybe she could turn Patricia over into their care and get back to her shopping. Get those awful memories back into the darkest corners of her mind.

  But Patricia was holding on to her like they were best friends, turning a stricken look on her. “Please don’t go…You know…don’t yo
u?”

  She could recognize a drunk from a mile away, Jessy had thought an hour earlier. Could a newly widowed woman recognize someone who’d been through it before?

  Her smile was a grimace, really, but she patted Patricia’s hand, feeling like the biggest fraud that ever lived. “I know,” she admitted. “I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  Benjamin Noble was dictating notes in the small workspace outside the exam rooms that made up his pod of the clinic when the office manager came around the corner. He paused, wasting a moment trying to decipher the look on her face. Luann was competent, capable, and faced crises on a regular basis without so much as a frown, but this afternoon the smallest frown narrowed the space between her eyes.

  “Dr. Noble, you got a call from a Jessy Lawrence. She asked you to call your mother. Said it’s urgent.”

  She offered him a pink message that he hesitated to take. His cell phone was on vibrate, as it always was while he saw patients, but he’d felt it go off three times in the last half hour. Jessy Lawrence’s name had shown up on caller ID, but since he didn’t know anyone by that name and she’d left no voice mails, he’d ignored it.

  “Urgent” messages from Patricia were common enough, given their relationship, that this one didn’t concern him. It could mean she wanted a diagnosis of her cough over the phone or information about hormone replacement therapy, despite his polite reminders that he was an orthopedic surgeon. It could mean she’d made the acquaintance of a friend’s children or grandchildren and wondered about her own or that she’d had a little too much wine and was feeling a rare moment of remorse.

  Remorse that had come way too late to mean anything to him.

  “Thanks, Luann. I’ll take care of it when I get a chance.” He pocketed the number, breathed deeply to clear his head, then picked up the dictation where he’d left off. He had a patient in room one awaiting an injection in her knee, another in two for a post-op follow-up, one in three with a fractured wrist, and one in four with a fractured ankle, and he could only guess how many were still in the waiting room. Clinic days were never good days for dealing with his mother.