by Lori Wilde
PRAISE FOR LORI WILDE
“Ms. Wilde pens tales with plenty of sass.”
—The Best Reviews
“Wilde’s mesmerizing style
easily sweeps readers into her…world…”
—Wordweaving
“Excellent writing…”
—Romantic Times
LORI WILDE
Saving Allegheny Green
To all the hardworking nurses at Campbell Memorial Hospital
in Weatherford, Texas. You know who you are. Because of
your loving hearts and expert care the world is a better place.
Acknowledgments:
A shout out to my online pals, Trish, Spike, Candy and Sarah, some of the funniest women I’ve had the pleasure to know.
I appreciate the brainstorming.
And a special thanks to my editor, Kathryn Lye, who loved the book of my heart as much as I did.
Thanks for taking a chance on Allegheny.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BONUS FEATURES
CHAPTER ONE
AT TEN MINUTES after midnight on a muggy Saturday morning in late July, my kid sister, Sistine, shot her rat-bastard boyfriend, Rockerfeller Hughes, with a twenty-two caliber pistol.
Rocky and Sissy had been drinking, which was not an unusual occurrence. Particularly in Rocky’s case. His favorite beverage of choice being a shot of Jack Daniel’s dropped into a mug of A&W root beer.
Sistine didn’t hurt him. Well, not much. There was blood, sure, and he was howling loud enough to rouse corpses, but in truth she shot him in the foot, and he was wearing steel-toed Doc Martens boots so it wasn’t quite as awful as it sounds.
Still, it was a mess and some neighbor ended up calling the sheriff.
That’s one bad thing about living in a rural river community like Cloverleaf, Texas. Everyone’s got their nose in your business, 24-7.
Like any sensible person with a day job, I was in bed. Sleeping. Or rather trying to sleep. Between Rocky and his ragtag band of wanna-be musicians playing a miserable riff of “My Mama Didn’t Raise No Ho” in the garage and Sissy screaming at a decibel far above top-of-the-lungs, I was finding it difficult to achieve theta state.
I had been struggling to restrain myself from intervening in their argument, having learned from experience meddling in Sissy and Rocky’s battles was a fool’s mission. But Aunt Tessa, dressed in a gauzy white flowing robe, à la Aimee McPherson, came running into my bedroom, her healing crystal charm bracelet jangling as she jumped around.
“Ally,” she cried. “Get up. We need you. Rocky’s been shot.”
“Huh?” Pushing hair from my face, I sat up. The room was dark save for a shaft of moonlight spilling through the Home Depot miniblinds I had installed myself.
“Sissy shot Rocky. With your granddaddy’s pistol. You better come quick. Someone’s called the cops. Probably that sanctimonious televangelist next door, because I can feel the sirens.”
Reverend Ray Don Swiggly, the latest Sunday-morning television huckster to make millions from spreading the supposed gospel, had recently built a palatial summer home on the edge of the Brazos River not far from our house. Being of the new-age persuasion, Aunt Tessa had vast theological differences of opinion with the good reverend and expounded on her convictions whenever anyone would listen.
I cocked my head, not wanting to get into a long-winded discussion about the Reverend Swiggly when there were more urgent matters at hand. “I don’t hear any sirens.”
“You will.”
I let it go. With Aunt Tessa sometimes you just had to trust. It was easier than trying to figure her out. I threw back the covers, hopped out of bed and grabbed my practical terry cloth robe with the frayed hem. Okay, so I looked like a neglected housewife. Not everyone could pull off “flaky chic” like Aunt Tessa.
“Where’s Mama?” I asked. “And Denny?”
“Your mother’s in the pottery shack, I don’t think she knows what’s going on.”
“Good. Keep her there. You know how she gets in a crisis.” I gave Aunt Tessa the assignment not only to keep Mama from freaking out, but to give my aunt something to do. “What about Denny?”
“He’s still sleeping.”
“Are you sure?” Sissy’s eight-year-old son had witnessed far too many of his mother’s escapades.
“I’m certain. Come on.” Aunt Tessa hustled me down the hallway.
We took the stairs two at a time then flew through the back door and out onto the stone walkway leading to the free-standing garage built years after the house was constructed. A million lights blazed and a knot of Sissy and Rocky’s drunken friends—scraggly-haired young men and scantily clad women—clotted around the garage door.
I recognized Tim Kehaul. He was one of Sissy’s many ex-boyfriends and the only guy to ever dump her. Tim had discovered rather late in life that he preferred strong, hard masculine muscles wrapped around him in the night to soft, feminine limbs.
Tim possessed a cherubic face, sensational cheekbones and thick bronze hair that curled tightly against his head like a cap.
“Ally.” Tim shyly smiled. “Strange doings.”
“Hey, Tim,” I said, too distracted to really carry on a conversation or wonder what he was doing there.
Tim rarely came around since he didn’t like Rocky, and Sissy hadn’t forgiven him for taking up with his own sex. The fact that Tim and Rocky lived so close to each other in the same trailer park two miles upriver must have caused friction between the three of them. But I gave up asking questions about Sissy’s tangled sexual history. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
I elbowed my way through the crowd and hollered at Aunt Tessa over my shoulder to take care of Mama before I plunged farther inside the garage.
Rocky lay on the floor, baying like a hound caught in a bear trap. His too-tight, blood-flecked Grateful Dead T-shirt had the neck slashed out in a deep V exposing an old scar crisscrossing his throat and more of his chest than I cared to see. For reasons that escaped me, Rocky always cut the neck out of his shirts.
Sissy sat with his head cradled in her lap, tears pouring down her face. “I’m sorry, Rocky. I didn’t mean to shoot you,” she wailed.
“Yes, you did. I’m having you arrested,” he said through gritted teeth.
Thank God, maybe she’ll break up with him.
I flicked my gaze over his body, searching for the wound and stopped at his feet. Blood oozed from the toe of his boot and pooled on the cement. Or rather, what was left of his boot. Bits of leather had gone flying and were stuck to guitars and drums. What a mess.
“Ally! Thank heavens!” Sissy exclaimed when she realized I was in the room.
“Your crazy sister shot me,” Rocky whined. “Can you believe that?”
“Shut up. Both of you.” I sank to my knees beside Rocky.
“Don’t touch it!” He howled even though my fingers were nowhere near his blasted foot.
“You know I’m a nurse,” I soothed. “Hold still s
o I can examine you.”
“You might be a nurse but you’re her sister and you hate my guts.” He jabbed a finger at Sissy. “For all I know you’ll make it worse on purpose.”
“I admit it’s a tempting thought,” I said dryly. “If you’d rather bleed to death…” I shrugged and started to get up.
His face paled. “No. Wait. Don’t go. Is it really bleeding that bad?”
“I can’t tell until I take your boot off.”
“It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Like a son of a bitch,” I said cheerfully and loosened his laces.
“The cops are comin’!” Tim yelled from the yard and the next thing I knew engines were revving and the police sirens Aunt Tessa had predicted several minutes earlier screamed in the distance.
“Oh jeez, Sissy.” Rocky gazed balefully at my sister. “Run your hand in my back pocket and get out those joints. I can’t get busted for possession again. They’ll revoke my parole.”
“You brought marijuana into my house after I distinctly told you not to?” I shouted.
“It’s not your house, it’s your garage,” Rocky quibbled.
I jostled his foot. On purpose.
“Yow!”
“Sorry. My hand slipped.”
Rocky glared then turned his attention back to Sissy. “Come on, babe, get the joints.”
“Not if you’re going to have me arrested. You know I had every right to shoot you,” my sister told him.
“Sissy.” I frowned at her. “No one has the right to shoot anyone, no matter what that person might have done.”
“He’s got a wife,” Sissy muttered.
“What?” I glared at Rocky.
He looked sheepish. “It’s no big deal. I haven’t seen her in a year.”
“He’s lucky,” Sissy said. “I was aiming somewhere a bit higher but I missed and the bullet ricocheted off the clothes dryer and got him in the boot.”
Rocky rested a protective hand over his genitals. “Okay, sweetie, baby. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I shoulda told you I was married when we started dating.”
“Damn straight.”
She’s gonna dump him, once and for all. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo.
The sirens were getting louder. The crowd once assembled in my yard had vaporized.
“So get the joints out of my pocket, please.” Rocky rolled calf eyes at Sistine and I knew she was falling for it. “I’ll tell the cops it was an accident. I promise.”
“Do you want me to flush ’em?” Sissy asked, rooting around behind him, frisking his bony butt. She came up with a crumpled baggy containing six fat hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes.
“Hell no, hide ’em in here somewhere.”
My gaze caught Sissy’s. “Don’t you dare.”
“Sheriff’s Department.” A commanding voice spoke from the open doorway. “Nobody move.”
Law enforcement officials poured into my garage, guns drawn. They surrounded the three of us, locking us into some surreal, redneck militia melodrama.
We were screwed.
I caught my breath and glanced toward the door.
A tall, muscular man trod across the garage toward us. He looked like a Rambo-Terminator cross—hard gray eyes, jar-head haircut, service revolver strapped to him more snugly than a spare body part. The twinkling star on his chest revealed his identity.
Sheriff.
The famed former Marine MP, Sheriff Samuel J. Conahegg, as highly lauded in the Cloverleaf Gazette.
He’d been elected on the strength of his promise to scour the local government of corruption. His predecessor had run off with the county clerk, buck-toothed, knock-kneed Mavis Higgins—who was reportedly a real hottie in bed despite her uncanny resemblance to Olive Oyl—and two hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer funds.
Conahegg was known not only for his tendency to go for ride alongs with his deputies at any time without notice, but for his utter lack of mercy. Zero Tolerance was his middle name and from his ramrod-straight stance, I could believe it.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice a strange mixture of barbed wire and honey.
My heart did a crazy, swoony dance.
Why? I had no explanation. I’m not given to instant attraction to strangers. And most certainly not to domineering, uncompromising types.
His gaze took in Rocky with the shot toe and Sissy holding the bag of illicit weed. Then he looked at me. I shrugged and lifted my eyebrows.
Nobody said a word.
The sheriff turned to one of his men. “Call for an ambulance, please, Jefferson.”
“Will do, sir.” Jefferson sprinted from the garage.
“The rest of you can put away your weapons.” Conahegg waved at the four remaining deputies. They obeyed his command, sliding their guns into their holsters while sending us malevolent stares.
“You.” The sheriff flicked a finger at me. “What’s your name?”
“Al…er…” My throat was as dry as a crusty gym sock. I tried to swallow. Twice. And finally got out, “Allegheny Allison Green.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t pick it.” I might be attracted to him but damn if I’d let him know it.
“What happened here?” He jerked his dimpled chin in the direction of Rocky’s toe.
How to explain?
Rocky and Sissy were no help. Rocky had closed his eyes, feigning unconsciousness. Sissy peered assiduously at the floor, staring as if she did so long enough, that it would open up and suck her right down.
“He got shot,” I finally answered.
“So it appears.” Conahegg squatted beside Rocky. “Hurts pretty badly, does it?”
Rocky didn’t move.
“Hmm,” Conahegg mused, stroking his chin with two fingers and a thumb.
None of the stalwart deputies had spoken, or even moved. They stayed positioned at the ready, their faces expressionless.
“What I don’t know,” the sheriff continued in his oddly engaging tone, “is how he came to find himself toeless.”
“A gun went off?” I ventured.
The sheriff jerked his head around and drilled me with eyes gone deadly sharp. “You’re not that stupid.”
Ulp!
He both complimented me and scared me in one breath. I had to give him a high mark for perceptiveness but a low score on charm. Still, something about him magnetized me in a way no man had in a very long time. Just my luck. I finally get the hots for someone and it’s the kind of guy I could never get along with.
The sheriff shifted his body away from Rocky and toward me. Instant sweat popped out on my skin. I could feel it trickling down my neck.
“Let’s start again, shall we?” Conahegg asked.
I nodded.
“All right.” He paused to glance at his watch. “At exactly ten minutes after zero hundred hours we received a report that someone was shooting off a gun at your residence.”
He’d brought his military precision with him to his job as sheriff. You could see it in his posture, read it in his face. He was probably not an easy man to work for. He would demand perfection from his employees, and mete out just punishment if his orders weren’t followed to the letter. He possessed an enigmatic power gleaned from years of hard self-discipline.
I shivered.
“We’re outside the city limits,” I pointed out, forcing myself to stop thinking about the strange pull I felt toward him. “It’s not illegal to shoot a gun here.”
“To discharge a weapon, no. But to shoot a person, yes.”
“It was an accident,” Rocky said.
Conahegg and I stared at each other again, our eyes striking like two flint rocks sparking off each other, before we glanced over at Rocky.
“Sh…sh…she didn’t mean to do it,” Rocky stammered.
“You shot him?” the sheriff asked me, a bemused smile flitting over his lips. It almost looked as if he admired me and for one short second I wished I
had shot my sister’s boyfriend.
“No.” Rocky shook his head. “Her.” He pointed at Sissy. “She was showing me her granddaddy’s gun when she dropped it and the thing went off.”
The sheriff reached over and gently pried the baggy of marijuana from Sistine’s fingers. His gentleness with her surprised me. He touched her chin, lifted her face. “Is that true?”
Tears glistened in my sister’s eyes. She shook like a kitten abandoned on the roadside.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You can tell me anything.”
Oh, he was good. Too good. Sissy loved male attention and she’d go to the ends of the earth to get it. Although how he had sensed that about her I had no idea.
“Uh-huh,” Sissy whispered. “It was an accident.”
“What about this?” Sheriff Conahegg crushed the baggy of joints in his fist. “How did a nice girl like you get possession of a nasty weed like this?”
Sissy’s gaze flicked from the sheriff to Rocky.
Come on. Tell him the truth. Rocky’s the biggest pot hound in three counties.
Sissy took a deep breath.
We waited.
“I found it,” she replied.
“You found it?” Conahegg shook his head, disappointed in her answer.
“Yes.”
“Where did you find it?”
In Rockerfeller Hughes’s back pocket!
“I don’t remember.” Sissy was studying a guitar lying on one side of the garage as if her life depended on memorizing every fret.
“Are you aware of the penalty for marijuana possession?”
“No.” Her voice was barely audible. Sissy might talk tough and act tougher, but when she’s in trouble she reverts to kid mode.
Silence ensued. You could even hear the frogs croaking down by the water. Conahegg rose to his feet and swept his gaze around the room.
The garage was unbearably hot. From where I sat crouched over Rocky’s foot, the smell of fresh blood kept assaulting my nostrils and my knees ached from the cement floor.
