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

by Willow, Jevenna

  Cheaper, still. But hey! When the chips were down . . .

  “Then stop looking at it,” he demanded.

  “You stop first.”

  Jake closed his eyes. “There. I stopped. Now leave me the hell alone for the next sixty-eight or so hours. And please try to stop talking so damn much.”

  “Fine, I’ll stop talking altogether. How’s that sound?”

  “You’re talking again,” he determined.

  “And you’re still an ass!”

  “At least being an ass beats the hell out being considered a bastard any day of the week, hussy.”

  Liddy rolled her eyes. “Oh, please! You wouldn’t know the difference between what an ass could be or do to what a bastard truly is, even if both hit you smack in the middle of that pretty boy face of yours’.”

  Did she not already say he was pushing her just a little too far?

  “Well said, Hussy,” the bastard retorted.

  Jake then grinned with eyes closed. An ice pack held tightly to his upper arm.

  Liddy took a deep breath and tried to settle down her thoughts. But this was a very hard thing to do, when a husband she hadn’t seen in ten years and seated only four feet away from her—and driving her so completely crazy, she was contemplating murder—was baiting her into argument.

  “And stop doing that, too,” he warned.

  “Doing what?” Now what the hell was she doing now?

  “Taking so many deep breaths. You’re using up my oxygen.”

  Liddy let out a chuckle, then a real giggle. Then she started laughing right at his face. Her emotions were quite unstoppable all of a sudden.

  Nothing about any of this was funny. Yet, everything within her world was. Her life was literally falling apart at the seams. Mack’s car was totaled against some godforsaken hickory tree, along some godforsaken redneck beaten path of a road. There was a fifty-thousand-dollar wedding dress stuck inside its trunk, likely never to be seen again, or damaged beyond use. Jake’s not signed the annulment papers. Theo threatened her with burning in Hell if Jake so much as even thinks to sign them.

  If none of this was funny, then nothing in life could be.

  Oh! And Jake’s refusal to sign the annulment papers so she could get married to Mack burned her to the bitter end. Though Mack not speaking to her for the moment was a moot point she wanted to overlook for as long as she could.

  Jake’s eyes opened and he stared directly at her face. “Now what’s your problem?”

  “Nothing,” Liddy sputtered between great gasps of belly-bending laughter.

  “Something is,” he ruled.

  He never liked being left out of a good joke, especially if he was the butt of it.

  “Nope. Nothing.” Her teary eyes filled quickly. She’d done more than enough shedding of waterworks thus far. What was the difference of a little more, under very different circumstances?

  It didn’t take long to get a reaction out of him. Jake dropped his ice pack, crossed the four feet separating them, and had her within an unrelenting grip and hauled to her feet before her next taken breath. His hard mouth crushed hers into submission.

  The moan coming out . . . it wasn’t from her. That’s for damn sure. It was a moan from a man who was being pushed to his limits, and unwittingly discovered he’d finally met his match.

  ****

  Jake wondered swiftly, what the hell am I doing? Better yet, why hadn’t I thought of doing this before now? Kissing Liddy surely shut her up.

  Yet it had been a very long time since he’d kissed this woman; kissed any woman, in fact. Last night’s endeavor didn’t count. And somehow she still tasted as sweet as he remembered; still used the same toothpaste to brush her teeth with, the same heavenly soap to wash her warm, supple body with.

  Jake took a deep breath as he thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth and moaned once more. Grinding his lips against his walkabout wife, he pushed himself, and his body, to the limits. He was actually surprised she did not attempt to bite off his tongue while it was inside her mouth.

  Instead, Liddy was returning the kiss. Her hands had wound their way around his neck. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was enjoying this.

  Mrs. Giotti even entwined her slender fingers at the base of his nape, as Jake pulled her body closer to his. They were touching thigh to thigh when it looked as if her brain finally started to function; and with surprise written all over her face, she tried to push him away.

  Jake wouldn’t let her go. Not yet anyway.

  “What . . . the hell . . . was that for?” she sputtered out, licking her swollen lips. Her hand slid down to his bared chest, stilling.

  He knew she could feel his unsteady heartbeat through her fingertips, tempting fate all over again.

  He whispered out, “I’m not at all sure,” trying desperately to settle down the overzealous heartbeat.

  Liddy shoved at his chest. “Please don’t do it again!”

  He allowed her the space, but asked, “Why not? You were always such a willing partner before now. And you’d always been a great kisser. At least I had always thought so.”

  His tone light and teasing; he was destroying what little resolve she likely had left.

  “Damnit, Jake! Please stop this!” she fumed.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “No. I don’t.” He stared right through her, his thoughts moved toward their shared past. “Please enlighten me, Mrs. Giotti, as to why I should stop kissing you? You are, after all, my wife. And as you have already pointed this dire fact out to Rachel, I do have the legal right to kiss you.”

  He was about to add more to this but she made a wry face, backed away, then sat down on the hard metal bench.

  Getting a kiss out of his system, Jake moved to sit down next to her. He’d left his ice pack on the opposite bench.

  “Why did you do this to me now?” she asked.

  He leaned forward, took a deep breath, and folded his hands between his knees. “Damned if I know the answer to that one, Mrs. Giotti.”

  They remained speechless for a few more minutes, then Liddy started up once again. “This is really bad, isn’t it? I stole a car, for Pete’s sake. I’m about to marry a lawyer . . . and I stole his fucking car!” She seemed to be momentarily stunned by this fact.

  Jake, however, was more stunned she’d forgotten she was already married—to him!

  “Was it a really expensive car?” He asked, checking the fury toward her selective memory recall.

  Liddy groaned. “A really expensive car, Jake. Perhaps it the most expensive car in the world: a cherry red Porsche Carrera GT, loaded, and worth at least five hundred thousand big G’s.”

  Jake hadn’t known the make until now. Its value shocked him, but not as much as her caring about a car over her arrest for said car.

  “Debra said it’s now wrapped around a hickory tree twelve miles away.”

  “I know, Jake.” Her groan reached deep inside him. “You don’t need to point this fact out to me, yet again.”

  This time he snickered, but only a little; sobered quickly once the tears welled in her eyes.

  Likely, whoever unwisely took the vehicle hadn’t been able to handle its power.

  “I doubt Billy will be able to fix a really expensive car. What are you going to do?”

  Okay. Stupid deduction—and even dumber question. Of course Billy wasn’t going to be able to repair a car like that. It would need tender loving care from a reputable dealership, and precision mechanics. A grease monkey shouldn’t work on Porsches, for a damn good reason.

  “I don’t know,” she bemoaned softly, burying her face in her hands. “I just don’t know. Do you?”

  Was she confused on what she thought she was going to do about the car, or the grand theft auto charge? He didn’t have an answer for either one.

  Liddy tipped her head back and leaned against the wall of the holding cell. Jake moved one of his hands to place it gently on her kn
ee. She quickly shoved his hand off.

  “Don’t touch me. I can’t think when you touch me. Right now, Jake, I really need to think.”

  He put his hand to where it had been; between his knees. He lowered his head, then started thinking himself. “You do have one phone call at your disposal. Why not try asking Debra for it when she comes back?”

  Liddy’s head snapped up. “And who the devil should I call, Jake? Mack? Mack is going to kill me. His car was . . . it was everything to him! Because of you, Mack and I are not speaking to each other, temporarily of course. And, there is not a single person in this wretchedly, highly-depressing town even caring I’m still alive. I’ve got no one to call.”

  Jake cared Liddy was still alive. Yet he surely was not going to tell this to her face. Not when it could be used against him in some form, or while he was in her immediate reach.

  “What about Julia? Her step-mom knows people who might be able to get you out of this jam. Maybe Julia could help?”

  Julia’s step-mom, Brittany Hillard had surely helped him out a time or two. She’d found Jake a good lawyer to get him through his DUI charge. Without the guy, Jake would’ve tried his hand at defending himself and would’ve likely ended up in much worse trouble than he had.

  “Julia? Julia Hillard? She still lives here?”

  “Yep. She became the high school mathematics teacher, if you can believe that?”

  He and Julia had gone out briefly a few years after Liddy split the scene. The red-haired temptress had a thing for men with tattoos. But nothing had ever come of it; simply because Jake could not let anything come of it. He’d been a married man.

  At the time, Julia had been too much of a fire-breathing wild child to handle . . . without someone hurt in the process. She’d liked things fast, tattooed, and dangerous.

  Jake spent only a few summers working for her father, Gill. Gill and Jake now had a binding agreement. Jake was to keep away from Julia and he’d be able to live. Easy enough—because Gill said he would protect his only daughter to the death, and at the time Gill told him this Jake did have a great will to live.

  Or, at least he had until Liddy suddenly showed up in Preacher’s Bend unbalancing the universe. Now he wished he’d smacked his head on the police station window and ended it once and for all, than have dealt with any of this now.

  While he was thinking on what could have been, and Liddy mulled his suggestion in her head, he knew the women had hung around together; each technically motherless, at the time; each befriending the other when they’d needed a friend the most.

  “Do you think she’ll really help me? I mean . . . we haven’t talked in years.”

  “It’s worth a shot. And just between us . . . we haven’t talked in years either, and yet you just kissed me. Surely time stood still?”

  Liddy groaned. “You really are something, Jake. Why I ever thought to have . . .,” she stalled upon.

  “What?” His eyes widened. “Why did you ever think to have what?” He knew he was grilling her, yet did not care. “Finish that, if you please?”

  “No, Jake. You would get far too much personal satisfaction out of its conclusion.”

  He smiled; as Liddy turned her head. Calling Julia Hillard was her only option.

  “Why did you steal his car? If he, your um, fiancé` . . . why didn’t you just ask him for it?” Jake tripped over the word fiancé`, musing, How the hell can she have a fiancé, if she still has a husband? “Or, is he one of those guys?”

  Liddy looked stunned. “What do you mean one of those guys?”

  “The non-sharing type,” he replied, tilting his head to watch her face. He wouldn’t put it past her to pull the wool over his eyes, making up a lame excuse of another man in her life.

  “Mack shares! We share everything. We just don’t share the Porsche.”

  He clenched his jaw. “I’m sure you do share,” he said. “Yet, the problem is you’re sharing with this Mack guy something of mine. And I don’t like to share what’s mine, Liddy.”

  “Good God! A boldface lie if ever heard. You like to share plenty, you son of a bitch.”

  “Are you referring to something in particular, Mrs. Giotti?”

  She balked considerably at his calling her Mrs. Giotti, but compensated over it with, “Yes, you . . . with Eliza Porter.”

  Jake closed his eyes. “Christ, Liddy! Now we’re finally getting to the real meat and potatoes as to why you’re so bitter and angry at life.”

  And it was about fucking time!

  “For starters, Eliza Porter was a onetime thing. It shouldn’t have happened, and it certainly never happened again. After you left me, I guess you could say the kick to the gut had a wounded man mending his ways in a real big hurry.”

  Liddy snorted, but he continued undaunted. “I did something stupid. I let the woman into my life just to hear her plead her case, tell me a bunch of lies, and all hell broke loose. I never meant to hurt you. Or lie to you. Or ruin us. But she had some pretty hard evidence against you. Said you were cheating on me, who with and the exact times, and the detailing in her stories added up. And I sort of believed her and went a little ballistic. What can I say? I’d made a tremendous error in judgment.”

  Liddy looked at him, but held her tongue. She had the look or real hurt in her eyes.

  Okay. So perhaps just now he realized she wouldn’t have cheated on him. He knew he’d been more than enough man to handle in the ‘talented in bed’ department. She’d even told him a time or two he was more man than any woman had the right to claim as her own.

  “It wasn’t supposed to have happened. But it did. I told myself our minor problems at the time were slightly bigger than they were; I deserved a break from you. It was a meaningless romp done only to change your attitude, and have you crawling back to me on hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. I’m sorry for even thinking that, Liddy. Once Eliza coming clean about her lies, I regretted that moment . . . God! You don’t know how badly I regretted that moment . . .”

  Jake took a deep breath to cleanse his soul, adding more before he lost the nerve. “Our problems were minor, Liddy. We could have fixed them. I guess I was just being stubborn and pigheaded, and stupid, and threw away the only real tools that would have fixed us when there’d been a chance. Ten years is a lot of time to repent for a very minor sin, babe.”

  This time it was Liddy who closed her eyes. Instead of getting angry, and snapping off his head, as she should’ve been doing and as he’d thought she would, she softly let slip out, “Sleeping with Eliza Porter was not something I would’ve ever considered as a minor sin, Jake.”

  Her eyes reopened to look his way.

  Jake let the remark slide off his back. “Besides, you sort of moved on. I got one really stupid night out of it all, and not a very good night. And you got the next ten years hopping in the sack with some hotshot lawyer down in Miami. So who’s the one sinning now, Liddy? It sure as hell hasn’t been me these last ten years.”

  “And I am just supposed to believe this?” she said.

  “You could try,” he mused.

  She looked him over; head to toe her gaze stung his pride. She then snorted. “Jake Giotti, you are a born and bred liar. In my book, no red-blooded female could ever look at you and not want, with dire consequences, to jump your bones six ways to Sunday. Don’t you dare think to sit here and tell me you’ve not had sex in ten years? Because I can’t . . . I won’t . . . believe you.”

  He smiled devilishly. “No red-blooded female, huh?” He then nudged her with his shoulder.

  This time she did punch him—hard. Lucky for him it wasn’t on the arm smarting so much.

  “I do remember a time when you were the only woman who could ever look at me and then be allowed to jump my bones,” he teased. “Wanna look at me now, Liddy?”

  She stuck out her tongue at his face instead, her eyes closed.

  “What? The dare a bit too challenging for you?”

  “You’re an arroga
nt jerk!”

  “Maybe so, but I am the only arrogant jerk who is sitting here with you. Mack, hotshot lawyer what’s-his-name sure as hell isn’t sitting in a holding cell with you.”

  “This can be arranged,” she warned quickly.

  Jake suddenly played with Liddy’s fragile state of mind and well-being. “What you gonna do, Liddy? Use your one phone call to call him? A guy who you just mentioned is not speaking to you? So he can drive all the way up to Preacher’s Bend in another of his really expensive man toys and do his damnedest to defend your honor? Do you really expect him to come all this way just to beat me up? If so, I’m pretty certain he’s not man enough to actually pull it off. But I’ll let him have his fun, and allow the creep at least one try; only for the hell of it, and only because I’ve been a little bored lately. And only two punches. But none to the face.”

  When she did not sass back, he added, “Then it will be my turn. And believe me, Liddy, Lover Boy will not be able to stand upright to take a piss after I get my turn at him. He took something from me not his to take.” His teeth ground together due to this fact. “And I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but I don’t share what is mine.”

  Liddy’s eyes locked with his and didn’t let go.

  Chapter Eleven

  Liddy jumped from the bench, stormed over to the door of the cell, and started to bang her forehead against the bars. It hurt. But she really didn’t care what hurt her anymore. It was better than sitting here listening to her husband belittling her hopefully soon-to-be new husband.

  She worked too damn hard at gaining an intern partnership in Wells, Namsley, and Sherwood through the definitive route of marriage. Then, to lose it all now, over one terribly lousy, done-in-haste marriage she wanted out of?

  Hell no!

  An annulment would’ve been easy for all parties involved. There were no kids to divvy up custody, no home that needed a fifty-fifty value placement. Just him and her and a separation of vows that needed to be annulled.

  Jake followed her to the bars and pulled her from them, keeping Liddy from hurting herself any further. She turned to him and started to cry all over again.