She Drives Me Crazy

by Leslie Kelly

  Hell, he could barely meet the guy’s eye this morning. He couldn’t stop wondering what Tim could do that would have made him such prime marriage material, according to that magazine Claire and Emma had read back in high school. It could be anything from knowing how to give a woman an orgasm in public when she was fully clothed—which, to be honest, Johnny did—to knowing how to sit through a chick flick without falling asleep—which Johnny did not. Some day, when they’d downed a few beers too many at the Junctionville Tavern, Johnny was going to ask the man.

  “Hey, I thought this was guys’ morning,” someone called when a cell phone began to ring from the gym bags piled on the bench. “Phones, pagers, you guys wimping out?”

  “Always on call,” Johnny explained, reaching for his beeper.

  Tim’s was the phone ringing. “Just want to make sure Claire can reach me in case there’s any problem with the baby.”

  Johnny hid a laugh. No question about it, belligerent little Eve was the apple of her daddy’s eye.

  After scanning the message on his alphanumeric pager, his jaw dropped. “Assault with a deadly weapon?” he mumbled, not sure he was reading right. Usually when he was called down to the police station for an arrest, the message read something like, “Mooned old ladies outside Bingo Hall,” or “D&D tipping cows at Able farm,” the D&D standing for drunk and disorderly. There were a lot of those types of calls, quite often involving a Walker.

  Johnny would show up, do his tap dance around Chief Brady, work out a plea involving an apology and compensation to the cow owner…or the scandalized—but secretly titillated—old ladies. Close book, end of case.

  But in the eighteen months he’d been back in Joyful, he’d never seen an assault case that didn’t involve two drunks armed only with their fists and too much liquid courage. “Assault with a deadly weapon,” he mused again, shaking his head in disbelief. “What’s good old Joyless coming to?”

  “Did you say assault with a deadly weapon?”

  Hearing the note of concern in Tim Deveaux’s voice, Johnny dropped his pager into his gym bag and turned around. “Sorry, talking out loud. I just got paged to go down to the police station.”

  Tim’s expression was as worried as his tone. “Claire just called. She needs me to come to the police station right away, too. She and the baby are there. She wouldn’t say why.”

  “I’m sure she’s okay….”

  “What if this assault was some sicko attacking her or Evie? What if they’re hurt?”

  Johnny watched the worry on Tim’s face segue into near panic. Before the man could go any further visualizing horrendous scenarios involving his family, Johnny put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down. I’m sure they’re fine.”

  Tim didn’t look convinced. “But…”

  “If they were hurt, she would be calling from the clinic, or the hospital down in Bradenton.” He forced a dry laugh. “Deputy Fred probably got a little bossy with his ticket book. And knowing your Claire, she’s down there at the police station raising a ruckus about it.”

  Tim’s stiff stance eased a bit. The explanation made sense, and they both knew it. Given Claire’s reputation as a fighter—who’d once, as a teenager, publicly called the members of the town council a bunch of Nazis because they were considering a teen curfew—Johnny could easily picture her complaining to Sheriff Brady about one of his deputies.

  “Listen, why don’t you hitch a ride with me down to the station. The last thing you need is to get into an accident because you’re driving like a maniac. Or to get another speeding ticket from Deputy Fred.”

  Tim frowned. “Will you drive like a maniac?”

  Johnny chuckled and led the way to his car. “Yeah. I get to do that whenever I’m paged by the police.”

  Johnny didn’t drive recklessly during the three-mile trip from the park to the station. But he did move fast enough to satisfy Tim, who leaned forward in his seat, a sheen of sweat on his brow as he mumbled under his breath. Johnny thought he caught the words “please be okay.”

  That got him thinking. About Tim and Claire. Other couples he knew. Even, just a little, himself.

  Tim and his wife seemed to epitomize everything the textbooks said marriage ought to be. They were crazy in love, anyone could see that. But it seemed to Johnny that they were a rare breed. Like Virg and Minnie. The exceptions, not the rule.

  Most marriages seemed to be more like carefully balanced monogamy zones, where each partner tried to keep cool and faithful, figuring stability was better than being single again. And some…some were worse. His own parents’ marriage had been a battlefield. His brother’s attempt at matrimony had lasted less than a year and had ended in a ton of anger.

  All in all, marriage seemed like one risky proposition. Especially for a Walker. Good thing he wasn’t interested in it. And he hadn’t been, not for a long time.

  Oh, sure, he’d thought about it once. About ten years ago. With the girl who’d ripped his heart and his guts out on the very same night he’d finally been sure they’d started something perfect. The night he’d made love to her under the stars. Heard her whispering his name. Watched her beautiful face bathed in moonlight as she looked at him with an emotion he’d incorrectly interpreted as love.

  Not love. How could she love him when she’d obviously been in love with Nick? Not only in love, but planning to marry him.

  “Hell,” he muttered, unwilling to even consider the thought of Emma as his sister-in-law. The idea had given him nightmares for months after she’d skipped town. He’d never have been able to survive. Not given the way he’d felt about Emma Jean Frasier from the first time he’d sat in her car with her, smelling her fruity perfume and hearing the husky, sexy note in her voice that all her golden-haired sweetness could never fully hide.

  Unfortunately for him, she’d only looked at him as a savior. Someone to lean on. Someone to take care of her.

  Seemed like things hadn’t changed too much.

  “You okay?” Tim asked.

  Startled, Johnny yanked his attention away from the painful past and back to the confusing present. At least, it had been confusing since yesterday, when she’d waltzed back into town with her short skirt, short hair and riding a wave of porn rumors.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Tim’s frown eased for the first time since he’d answered his cell phone back at the field. “Woman.”

  Johnny just grunted. Guys always knew. He sure as hell always did, whenever one of his buddies was wearing that sappy, stupid, “who am I and how did I get here?” look that always accompanied a fascination with a new woman.

  Of course, Emma Jean wasn’t new. She’d owned a chunk of his heart for going on eleven years now.

  “If you need to talk…”

  Johnny briefly thought about asking Tim about the whole eyebrow licking thing, but figured it wasn’t the time. Actually, he wasn’t sure there was ever a good time to ask a guy that kind of question. At least not while they were both sober.

  They arrived at the police station, and Tim was opening the car door before Johnny’d even had a chance to put the SUV into Park. Once inside the station, Deputy Fred Willis—who was Johnny’s main contact here at the sheriff’s office since Johnny and the sheriff loathed each other—nodded from behind the desk. Handing Johnny a police report, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the holding cells. “I don’t know any of the details. Sheriff brought ’em in himself.”

  Typical. No details, probably no proof, just Sheriff Brady throwing his weight around and sticking somebody in a cell for one of his infamous “cooling off” periods. Same old routine.

  “My wife is here,” Tim said, placing his hands flat on the front desk. “She called me. Is she all right? Where is my daughter?”

  Willis merely nodded impassively, and jerked his thumb in the same direction. Johnny didn’t quite understand. At least not until he pushed open the door and walked toward the holding area.

  Inside a locked cell were Claire
and Eve Deveaux.

  And a fired-up-looking Emma Jean.

  ARRESTED. Emma Jean Frasier, arrested, hauled off to the police station in handcuffs, and locked inside a cell.

  God, wouldn’t Ginger Devane, president of the Junior League in Manhattan, just rock in her Emil Leblanc’s and fall flat onto her twice-lifted-by-the-hottest-doctor-on-Madison-Avenue butt if she heard about this one?

  Not that Emma had ever much cared for the Junior League set. When she’d first moved to New York and had lived for a while on her trust fund, she’d dabbled in that lifestyle. It had quickly bored her. That’s why she’d started exploring a bunch of different interests—cooking classes, archeology lectures, art appreciation. It had led her to fund the art show for the erotic artist.

  But her fund-raiser and art show days quickly grew stale, too. Once she’d decided to work for her money, using her natural talent with numbers and her accounting degree to get in with an investment firm, Ginger and her cronies had turned up their collective noses at the stench of the blue collar they thought she’d embraced. That hadn’t, of course, stopped them from asking for free investment advice on occasion.

  Yes, her Junior League days had been long behind her even before she lost all her trust fund money—and her own hard-earned savings—when the company went bust.

  Don’t even go there. She couldn’t think about the troubled times then, not when she was facing quite a horrendous time now.

  Arrested was bad. Arrested and penniless was too pathetic for words.

  Another day like this and it was straight to Jerry Springer’ville for Emma Jean Frasier. Life in a trailer park with a next-door neighbor pregnant by her mother’s ex-husband’s son-in-law’s brother. That was where she was headed. And, of course, there’d be a transvestite around somewhere. The Jerry Springer Show seemed to love transvestites.

  Yep. One little penniless, jobless, futureless, jailed, former princess dressed in rags would fit right in.

  She couldn’t prevent a tiny hitch in her throat as her eyes grew hot. Having an urge to throw herself down on a flat surface and pitch a first-class fit or just bawl her eyes out, she willingly refrained. The cot in the cell was filthy and probably loaded with lice or worse. The floor looked the same. She remained standing, leaning against the bars to take some of the stress off her sprained ankle, which had begun to ache again.

  “It’s not bad enough to get arrested. But did I have to do it looking like this?” she muttered in disgust. “I slept in these clothes last night.”

  “Your Grandma Emmajean is likely rolling over in her grave,” Claire added mournfully.

  “If I had to be hauled off by the police and locked in this tiny cell, I ought to at least be dressed like I frankly don’t give a damn. Not like I belong here!”

  “I don’t think the clothes are the main problem, sweetie,” Claire said as she sat on the far outermost edge of the bunk, daring because she, at least, was wearing pants. “The fat lip looks downright disreputable.”

  “That daughter of yours has some hard head.”

  “Not to mention your cheek is all red and swollen.”

  “And her mama’s still got one heck of a punch.”

  The two of them stared at each other for a second then burst into laughter. The lip had been an accidental gift from Eve. The cheek from a wild swing by Claire.

  The pain in her wrist, though, had been all hers. But ooh, remembering the way that foul-mouthed construction foreman had gone down for the count made it all worthwhile.

  She couldn’t believe that he’d pressed charges. She was the wronged party! She was the one whose property had been stolen and desecrated. Every minute she spent in this jail cell was another minute for those bastards to ruin another piece of the grove.

  “I gotta go potty.”

  Emma and Claire exchanged one horrified look at the thought of little Eve using the facilities in the cell. Joyful might not have much of a criminal element. But those they did have obviously had never heard of things like keeping the seat down for a lady. Not to mention the fact that Chief Brady and his crew had apparently never heard of things like scrub brushes, 409 or even clean water.

  Terrorist camps probably had cleaner facilities.

  “We’ll be out of here soon, honey, then Mama will take you to the potty. And we’ll get you some ice cream with sprinkles.”

  Their jailer—a mile-mannered guy they’d gone to high school with—had offered to keep Eve out in the front of the station with him, but the little girl had refused to be separated from her mother. She’d relished the chance to inspect every square inch of the cell, asking an endless stream of questions about what people had to do—other than hitting bad men on construction sites—to get arrested.

  By the end of Claire’s explanation, Eve had been muttering under her breath about Courtney Foster. Courtney, Emma decided, had better never let Eve Deveaux catch her anywhere near the police station. Or in a dark alley.

  Eve also took great delight in showing them how easily she could slip through the bars. Emma just wished Fred Willis, who she’d had homeroom with in senior year, had left the keys nearby. Escape would have been startlingly easy.

  “But I have to go now, Mama. Why can’t I use this potty?”

  “Over my dead body!”

  Emma didn’t recognize the voice, but she recognized the tone. Worried Daddy.

  “Tim. Thank heaven,” Claire said. Though, to be honest, combined with her thankfulness, Emma detected a note of genuine trepidation in her friend’s face.

  Definitely the husband.

  “I, uh, guess you’re wondering what’s going on.”

  Claire sounded like Lucy greeting Ricky after he’d caught her doing something really stupid. Emma almost laughed, wondering if Tim was going to tell Claire she had some ’splaining to do when she realized that he wasn’t alone. Seeing the person who’d accompanied Tim, her laughter died on her lips. Johnny.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered, unable to help it.

  “I suppose the language is appropriate, given your current address, but maybe you should watch it in front of the kid.”

  Emma winced at the rebuke. Then winced again at the realization that her first lover was standing there, watching her, when she looked like the poster girl for Blondes Gone Bad.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. “Fancy running into you here.”

  “Oh, I love spending my Saturdays at the police station. After all, it’s my job.”

  His job. Oh, good lord, his job. As prosecutor. “Those charges are bogus.”

  Claire, who’d been talking to her husband as he held their daughter protectively in his arms, nodded. “Entirely bogus.”

  “Yep. Bogus,” Eve echoed with a vehement nod.

  Claire’s husband’s frown deepened. “Johnny, what do I have to do to get Claire out of here?”

  “Go right now,” Johnny murmured, not even hesitating. “I’ll get the story from Ms. Frasier here.” He gave her a look that said she was the one who had a lot of ’splaining to do. “I know where to find you if I need to talk to Claire.”

  Then Claire and her family left, but not before her friend gave Emma a weak little nod of encouragement.

  Once they were gone, Johnny met her stare, shaking his head and tsking under his breath. She’d swear a sparkle of amusement shone in those wicked blue eyes of his. If he laughed at her, she was gonna launch at him. She was already in jail. What else could they do to her if she assaulted the D.A.?

  “Sit down.”

  She pointed to the cot. “Not on that thing I’m not.”

  Johnny followed her stare and frowned. “You’re right. Let’s get out of here.”

  Hope rose in her chest.

  “We can use the sheriff’s office.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t just letting her go as he had Claire. Funny, she’d have expected him to assume Claire was the one who’d caused all the fuss, given the other woman’s, umh, renowned temper
. But he hadn’t. He’d zeroed in on Emma. Correctly so. She wished she knew how. “I don’t suppose you could just let me go home?”

  He shook his head. “Come on.”

  But Johnny seemed to have forgotten her ankle, which was positively screaming because she’d been standing in the cell for so long. They’d confiscated her cane. Deadly weapon my ass.

  He turned to leave, expecting her to follow. She could, if she wanted to hop after him like a deranged, one-legged Easter bunny. But her dignity, already in shreds, couldn’t handle it. So she stayed still.

  “Am I going to have to have Deputy Willis come in here with handcuffs to move you?” Then he lowered his voice. “Or do you expect to be carried out of here like some high-flung princess too good for your surroundings?”

  The disgusted tone got to her. Got to her like nothing else had since the minute she’d been handcuffed and stuck in the back of a squad car with a sputtering Claire and a chattery Eve.

  She tried to stick out her chin and blinked quickly. She’d sooner shave her head bald again than let Johnny Walker see her in tears. Those she’d save for later.

  “It so happens,” she replied, wishing her voice sounded lofty, as she’d intended it to, rather than quivery with emotion choking her throat, “that the officer confiscated my cane. I am not able to walk very well, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  The sudden flash of remorse on his face told her he had forgotten. He instantly dropped his gaze to her bandaged ankle.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Then he strode over and slid an arm around her waist. “Lean into me.”

  Lean into him. Into his strong, hard body that had once made her feel cherished and adored. How tempting the thought was, in more ways than he could possibly know.

  She hadn’t had anyone to lean on in a long time. Not through the loss of her job, her apartment, her home or her savings. No one to help her deal with coming back to Joyful, not to mention what had happened since she’d arrived. She’d been alone. Completely alone, relying on false bravado and her hot pink wardrobe to get her through the nightmare of the past few weeks.