Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2)

by Willow, Jevenna

  Liddy’s gasp ricocheted off the café walls.

  Chapter Four

  Liddy had nearly spat out her quickly taken sip of coffee right in his face. Inwardly she wondered when Jake Giotti had gotten so all-fired philosophical. Time spent wisely? This, coming from a man with a snake tattoo on his friggin` arm, and who’d slept with another woman—many women?

  Liddy was trying to separate the good from the bad, and getting nowhere but on the path to an enormous headache.

  Jake leaned forward, whispered his next and fatal thought in her face. “You didn’t know, did you?”

  “What? Know that you spent time in jail?”

  Sharpening the blade to better cut him with, she purposefully brought up his jail time, knowing it was mean, but she couldn’t help doing it. Yeah! She knew. It ate at her soul. But she knew.

  Liddy knew all about the DUI charges against Jake. What happened to him afterwards, and wasn’t a pretty picture to look at, even in recall. If not, Theodora Rosebud had been more than willing to fill in the blanks. Bitch day. Remember?

  Jake smiled across the table, almost devilishly. Then he frowned as if to do so was paining him. His liquid mercury gaze drilled straight into the depths of her eyes—right through her soul, plowing her over at ninety miles an hour.

  “No Liddy. That I have not had sex for ten very long years.”

  Her eyes widened even more so, perhaps in utter surprise to him lying to her face.

  Shocked he would bring up his sex-life wasn’t the exact word she’d been searching for, or would have ever used to describe her feelings about the still painful hurt, but it was relatively close. Actually suspended in time, she’d momentarily been set to speechlessness.

  The bases at explaining the actual moment this man told her about his lack of sex was pretty much covered. Jesus! Jack and sex were hand in hand—two peas in the pod. Neither left the other.

  He then shoved the jagged knife he’d been hiding under the table oh so well directly into her back; just to make certain she got the full picture.

  “’Course, when a man’s wife runs out on him in the dead of night, didn’t tell anyone where the hell it was she was going, when, or if she was coming back, he doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot of choice in the matter. Does he? Unless he wanted to be called a womanizer, said man had to abstain at all costs, Liddy.”

  The dangerous grin he made set these words in stone. “Preacher’s Bend doesn’t forget betrayal, Lidia. I don’t either. And once betrayed it does curb the desire toward wanting a woman in a real big hurry.”

  “But you are a womanizer!” she blurted out. “You can’t live without one in your life.”

  Liddy clamped her hand over her mouth, once she realized how loudly she said this, and the fact they now had an audience. At least three ten gallon hats had turned their way to listen in on a private conversation taking place right inside Rachel’s diner. Not to mention, Rachel’s ear had perked up a bit at the far end of the counter and she was frowning.

  “No, Liddy, you’ve got it all wrong.” Jake leaned back in his seat, crossing his hands behind his head, shaking his head. “I haven’t been with another woman since the night you left me and that is God’s honest truth. You can even ask Sister Bets if you don’t believe me. She’ll be the first to attest to my very reputable behavior, as would the rest of this town. I’m a changed man Liddy. I’ve been a perfect angel. Damn, Liddy, I am probably much closer to character of a celibate Priest, than any Priest could claim around these parts. No wife. No sex. And it hasn’t made me a happy man.”

  He wanted happiness? He should’ve thought about that before diving into Eliza Porter. The name Giotti was the purest definition to the word womanizer—written in capital letters with pictures! Those pictures still fresh in her mind.

  Jake wouldn’t be able to live with himself for much longer than a day—let alone ten years . . . without sex. It wasn’t plausible and it wasn’t possible.

  The man of her past then yanked the proverbial knife out of her back without so much as trying to numb the wound. “I would say you want me to sign something detrimental toward the rest of your life if I don’t, right?” He looked self-satisfied all of a sudden.

  And smug.

  Liddy nodded. She hated smug. She hated Jake. But she hated smug more.

  “And, if I do not, your future is literally on hold?” He eyed her up and down, stalling on her chest.

  Again, only a nod made as answer.

  Jake took a deep breath, looking to be gathering momentum. Liddy could see the oncoming tidal wave headed her way, about to hit faster than a raging Tsunami. She flinched, expecting the impact to hurt.

  Jake let her have it; all of it, all at once. There was no sidestepping their situation. The gloves had come off. Ten years of incredible hardship, deep unrelenting pain right in the middle of her chest, and mind-numbing anger bottled up inside this man.

  With fear in her gaze, she knew this was going to be a whole hell of a lot of fun for him. The bastard was going to dish out what he could in heaping platefuls; done hard, fast, and most likely with a vengeance never before seen.

  Liddy wouldn’t have wanted the fury from him in any other way.

  She’d never asked anything of Jake in any other way.

  “Too damn bad!” he offered.

  “But, Jake,” she started, then paused. They still had an audience. And this was a public place. She was mightily surprised he’d lowered his tone.

  A wobble of her chin started up and it was a sure sign she was about to lose control; and that her womanizing husband had easily stopped the rest of her rehearsed sentences by stating the obvious. In fact, she was choking on obviousness.

  “You’re the one who walked away, from me, from Preacher’s Bend.” He shoved his plate forward, looking as if only to do something with hands. “I don’t have to sign a goddamn thing if I don’t want to just to make your life easier.”

  “Jake!” Her voice had turned into a near plea.

  Jake had always been a sucker for a pretty face, and hers’ was about to fall apart within matter of mere seconds. There would be nothing pretty about it after that. She wouldn’t get her way. The checked fury in his tone of voice told her so.

  “No, Little Darlin’. End of story. I don’t think I can make it any clearer.”

  With deliberate arrogance he reached for another fry off his plate and acted as if his world hadn’t suddenly crashed in around him, as hers had done.

  “But you don’t understand,” she sped out. Her eyes filled with unshed tears.

  “Oh, I understand perfectly, Liddy. I’ve always understood you. You’re easy to read.” He tossed the uneaten fry back onto his plate, looking to have lost his appetite. “You want an annulment from me. But you’re not getting one today. Not from me, not today. And unless I’m brain-dead . . . not ever!” He slammed his fist in futile anger onto the table, causing Liddy to jump in her seat.

  “H—how did you know?” Again, she chewed on her bottom lip to hold back the tears.

  “This is Preacher’s Bend, Liddy. Not some Goddamn far off distant planet, in some far off distant galaxy within no-man’s land. We do get the newspapers here.” Jake shifted his body to lean over their shared table, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his knuckles. “Contrary to popular belief, and to what you have always thought as my rather low intelligence level, I do read the papers. All you ever wanted from me was what I could give you between the silk sheets. I knew this from the very beginning. That particular talent of mine, along with the many others you’d tried to gain from me, I very easily put two and two together.”

  Jake once again leaned back in the booth. “From the moment I set eyes upon you across this restaurant I knew you were here for one thing, and one thing only. You’re here to get your way.”

  Mr. Giotti took a moment all to himself to let this sink in. Perhaps to let the fact of her being here, only to get something out of him, was not, in some way, shape
, or form, eating at his soul. Once it could seep down to the heels of his feet, he continued as if it did not matter a hill of beans anymore; as if what they’d shared was little more than a mistake.

  “Little Darlin’ I would say for the first time in your terribly spoiled life . . . you won’t be getting your way.”

  Liddy’s fury turned mutinous. “How dare you?” Her life hadn’t been spoiling. Rotten maybe. Okay, yes, incredibly rotten. But certainly not spoilt? She was from the other side of the tracks, for Pete’s sake! You know? The place where all the married men wandered to late at night, the place where a good name became a bad one in the blink of an eye, and by the drop of the pants.

  Yet, so was he. Jake knew exactly what her life had been like before now. And what she’d done to change this fact. It wasn’t a pretty picture to look at. In fact, her life in Preacher’s Bend had been downright ugly. A little domestic abuse; stuck home, with no way out, until she turned eighteen. A few too many fists to the side of the head while her father far too intoxicated to notice exactly what he was doing. Or, to whom he’d been doing it to.

  Now she could claim two dead parents because of her father’s drinking. Lucky her!

  He was fully aware her life had been anything but good. Why would he even say otherwise?

  This was why they’d been so good together. Why she’d wanted him so badly ten years ago. She finally escaped from the only life she’d ever known. Liddy became a survivor, dissecting herself from what most would call pure living hell.

  Then, in the end, she’d thrown it all away by marrying a womanizer; and came full circle to what she’d wanted left behind.

  At least Jake didn’t drink himself to death; as her father had in a roundabout way. No. He only ripped out her heart with his bare hands, crushed it under a heavy boat, then kicked the remainder to the curb.

  “How dare me?” he sputtered. “How dare . . . me?” His gaze turned equally mutinous. “I dare because I can. I am not signing a single one of your goddamn annulment papers, Mrs. Giotti.” He was sharpening his sword of words between thrusts, slipping in her name just to make it sting so much more. “And that should be the end of it!”

  “Why?” she pleaded. “You and I weren’t meant for each other. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck with me for some time to come. You might find someone else, then you’ll have to come crawling to me . . .”

  The urgent look in his eyes clearly told her Jake Giotti crawls for no one.

  “Why?” he sputtered. “Hell, Liddy! Because I want to see you sweat it out, Sweetheart. You do know how to sweat, don’t you? And meant for each other? Stingers were meant for bees. Politicians for Washington . . .but you and me? Fuck, Liddy. We weren’t meant for each other. You and I were an accident waiting for explosion.” He then looked her over, crown to heel, his brows arching high.

  Liddy had to take a deep breath, heaving a full chest right in his face.

  “You know what, Jake?” she told him, placing both hands flat on the diner’s table.

  “No. I don’t know what, so tell me.” He suddenly smiled over the distance separating them, goading her.

  “I hate you!”

  His smile fell. “That makes two of us, Sweetheart, because I certainly hate myself, too.”

  Oh, this stupid, stupid man! Wasn’t he aware locking horns with a woman he hadn’t seen in ten long years was a fool’s move to make?

  “I really, really hate you!” Liddy spat out.

  She could feel her face paling; felt the blood flow cut off, since most of it had scrambled to her heart as a defensive mechanism.

  They stared at each other for another ten seconds. The first to pull away was going to be the loser in a war neither of them ever wanted. Whoever blinked, whoever backed down from the ensuing argument would not be getting their way. Not this morning.

  Perhaps not at all.

  Yet they both knew this was bound to happen—the moment they married.

  Liddy wrenched her gaze from his. She couldn’t stand looking at her soon-to-be ex-husband longer than necessary. Jake was too smug, too arrogant, too disastrous to her well-being.

  He’d always been too smug, too arrogant, and too disastrous to her well-being. Why ever did she consciously think things would change after a few years of absence?

  Mr. Giotti sat back in the booth, accepting his victory; but he conceded to winning the war. Their sudden sparring looked to be leaving a very bitter taste within his mouth.

  Liddy knew she’d lost, so she stood and was about to walk away as the heavy tears fell down her cheeks. She also knew he needed a good swift kick to the side of his head, her foot itching to do just that.

  “God, I hate you!” she repeated, mumbling the words.

  With any hope, she could make her escape as a clean getaway before unable to do so; unscathed and slightly intact. At least any further humiliation added to an already perfectly ruined day couldn’t happen.

  However, his next words stopped her cold. They stopped her hasty exit, too.

  “Darlin’, you should not be putting thought to hating God right now. You should be asking for His help, and doing some bloody hard thinking on bruised knees to how it is you’re going to file for divorce. I figure it should take a good long time . . . if I choose to drag my feet on the matter. Or, choose to disappear for ten years without fucking telling anyone of my whereabouts!” He pounded his fist on the table then glared at her. “By then, I am quite certain lover boy will have found himself someone else to cuddle up to—and you, my dear, will be out on your sweet, tight ass. Or, as we still like to say in Preacher’s Bend . . . you’ll be the virgin left inside the church, while holding the bottle to her sinfully naughty lips. And damn, if you don’t have a pair of very sinful lips.”

  His eyes darted to her jeans.

  Liddy’s gasp audible, her spine stiffened while trying very hard to hold herself ramrod straight, and her emotions in check. She swiftly informed him, “You’re a horrible, wretched man. Do you know this, Jake Giotti? I should’ve known you would turn out like this. Turn out to be such a bloody damn idiot!”

  He smiled at her rather narrow-minded description to his character. “No, Liddy, I would say I am an incredibly smart man.”

  “You’re not smart, Jake. Not at all. You never were smart. You’ll never be smart. A smart man would’ve realized I could’ve made this easy on him,” she warned, swiping at stubborn stinging tears with the back of her hand.

  “Easy?” he suddenly choked out.

  Liddy watched Jake’s spine stiffen as well, his temper rising to a certain degree. “Hell, Woman! You should have tried doing easy for me a good ten years ago! I wouldn’t have spent two goddamn years inside a jail cell, rotting in my own piss, if you’d done your job at making life easy for me.”

  “My job?”

  “Yeah, babe. It’s what a devoted wife is supposed to do.”

  “Devoted wife?” she choked on.

  “Okay, I’ll back off on that one. How about a woman who cares about someone other than herself?”

  “Ohhhh . . .I’m not the one who drove a forty-five thousand dollar, custom-built motorcycle, while intoxicated, through the front window of the police station! Now am I?”

  “No. You just drove me to drink,” he threw back, knowing he’d screwed up his own life. Not her.

  She had nothing to do with his stupidity levels.

  Liddy couldn’t gather anymore words together, so she openly glared at him, huffed out her anger, stormed over to her table, made a mad grab for the expensive briefcase and matching large leather purse off the vinyl seat; as Jake sat in his booth, watching her every move.

  With any hope, he was doing so with trepidation because there were certain times in a man’s life he shouldn’t try angering his wife. And this was one of those times.

  She already paid Rachel for her untouched meal. There was no use in her sticking around only to be deeply insulted by a man she hadn’t seen in years. And Jake could certainly pay fo
r the half-drank cup of coffee and strange breakfast, or not. Liddy really didn’t care. She had to go back to Miami with her tail between her legs, file for a quickie divorce from the wretched man, then wait.

  Divorces weren’t quickie things. Nor, were they easy to get these days; more often than not, there’d be the required counseling and the usual dragging of feet.

  Damnit. She was so screwed. It would probably take at least a good six months or more to secure a reasonably partial judge to get theirs finalized. Mack Wells wasn’t likely to wait around until a divorce came through the chain of command. Good heavens! Not by a long shot. Mack liked things done to his precise calculations and with very precise timing: trials, acquittals. Fuck! Wedding plans.

  Even . . .Well, the man did have a ticking clock on when sex would happen.

  This would kill Mack. First, he was a bit more likely to kill her for doing this to him. Then he’d probably let it kill him, slowly, so the agony of watching him die would be far worse than it should be.

  Mack loved to be a bit theatric about life.

  He had six-hundred people invited to a wedding that could not take place. Not until one very stubborn Jake Giotti gave her what she’d come back to Preacher’s Bend for. And, by the look of things, this wasn’t about to happen—today, or any day within the next fifty years.

  Storming out of the restaurant and directly into the wretched heat of a mid-summer morning, Liddy stopped dead in her tracks. Right in the middle of the parking lot to Rachel’s Café she looked both ways, then slowly hung her head. Her shoulders followed suit.

  A woman with no luck at all? Shit. That was her.

  She couldn’t even begin to put a cost to how screwed she was, because it was far more than she’d thought she could afford, and certainly more than she’d be willing to pay from this point on. Even a mouse down a rat hole wasn’t as screwed as she was.

  Chapter Five

  Jake, without catching on to what he was doing, watched with fascination his walkabout wife. She seemed to be waiting for something, but what? More importantly why? Hadn’t they said all that was going to be said to each other, without involving lawyers?