“Yes, I am.” Catherine smiled sweetly. But she didn’t feel lucky, not with her fiancé sitting beside another woman.
Anna Ruth blinked her big blue eyes until tears formed on the ends of her eyelashes, thick with layers upon layers of black mascara, and ran in muddy-looking streaks down her cheeks. “I wish I could be so lucky.”
Good grief, what was Ethan to do with a crying woman arousing him and an angry one close enough to scratch his eyes out?
Catherine jerked a paper napkin from the dispenser in the middle of the table and handed it to Anna Ruth. “So you’ve moved out of the house? That was fast.”
“Oh, well, off with the old and on with the new.” She sniffled as she moved her hand up an inch more and squeezed Ethan’s thigh. “That’s the way I see it. I’m not letting him hold me back another minute. I was only living with him because I couldn’t have the one I truly loved.” Another squeeze.
Ethan slapped a hand over his mouth and coughed to cover the groan.
“Are you getting sick?” Catherine asked.
“No, just got a whiff of smoke from the smoker’s section.” He reached under the table and removed Anna Ruth’s hand.
When his phone rang, he grabbed it from his pocket and said, “Excuse me, ladies. It’s Clayton and we are discussing more yard signs tonight, so I’d better take it.”
Anna Ruth slipped out of the booth first, but when he stepped a few feet away, she sat back down.
“Is it done?” Clayton asked bluntly.
Ethan smiled at Catherine. “Not yet, but we’re working on it.”
“Damn! Do I need to come down there?”
“I’m on my way right now. Be there in ten minutes.” He put the phone back in his pocket.
Anna Ruth was out of the booth instantly. “I’m going to see why my sundae isn’t here. I just bet that girl forgot all about me. She was flirting with her boyfriend at the window. I don’t blame her. If I had a chance to flirt with the man I was interested in, I’d take it no matter what.”
Ethan couldn’t keep his eyes off the way her waist nipped in above a well-rounded butt as she headed back to the counter. Anna Ruth had been flirting with him, there was no doubt about it, but he couldn’t think about that with his mother’s fretting, his campaign manager’s demands, and that damned folder.
Catherine tapped the folder. “So back to this.”
“I’m not trashing it,” he said. “I’ll talk to Clayton about your issues, and we’ll discuss them Saturday evening when you come to dinner.”
He started toward the door. Catherine did the same but sped up so she was a step ahead so he could see her shove the folder into the trash can with her coffee cup.
* * *
Courage to do the right thing was supposed to give her a big surge of self-confidence. It didn’t. Cathy’s hands trembled as she gripped the steering wheel. It was over. She’d stood her ground and delivered what she promised. The folder with its contents would be covered with cold, greasy french fries, leftover last bites of hamburger or chicken nuggets, and empty packets of picante sauce for tacos. But had she just thrown out her future marriage with it?
She looked down at her engagement ring, sparkling in the last rays of the setting sun. Her phone rang and she answered without even looking, hoping it was Ethan telling her that he regretted not throwing the thing in the trash. That he was on his way home to tell both his mother and Clayton that they were buying the little house in Cadillac and she could work at the café as long as she liked.
“I can’t believe you did that right in front of the whole world,” Ethan said.
“I can’t believe you didn’t,” she said.
“I’ll have Clayton draft another one for you to sign Saturday night. I’ll make it plain that you can keep your mother’s car. There’s plenty of room to park it in the garage and you won’t be driving it all that much anyway,” he said.
“And working?” She held her breath.
“I’m not budging on that. Your sister…”
Cathy snapped the phone shut.
It rang again immediately but she didn’t answer. She drove through town to the house she’d imagined living in with Ethan and parked on the front curb under a big pecan tree. Her son was supposed to ride his tricycle up and down that sidewalk. She was supposed to sit on the porch and laugh at his antics after a long day at work she loved.
A car pulled up behind her and she looked up in the rearview mirror, hoping to see Ethan. But Jack Landry got out, lit a cigarette, and leaned against his back fender, staring at the place.
Cathy rolled down the window. “Hey, Jack, what are you doing here?”
He rounded the back of her car, put his cigarette out, braced his hands on the car door, and leaned down to talk to her. “Hey, yourself. I’m waiting on the real estate agent. I’m a little early but she should be here soon. Get out and come with me to check out the place.”
“You buyin’ it?” Cathy asked.
“Thinkin’ about it. Price is right and it’s time I get out of Mamma’s place before one of us shoots the other one. Never thought I’d live there as long as I have, but it worked, what with me working nights. But there’s a day shift open that I’m going to take and I need my own place. Why don’t you come on in with me and give me a woman’s point of view?”
“I’d be glad to,” she said.
They were sitting on the porch when the agent arrived with the keys. It was just like Cathy imagined. Small foyer, a living room to the left with a kitchen/dining area on past that, and a hallway with doors leading into a linen closet, a coat closet, a bathroom, and three bedrooms. The master bedroom had a big closet and a really nice master bathroom.
“So from a woman’s point of view, what do you think?” Jack asked.
“I would love to live here,” Cathy said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. It’s cozy, just the right size for a family. The backyard does need to be fenced. I’d put up a wood privacy fence and maybe later a deck. The trees are wonderful. They’d provide shade in the summertime,” she said.
“Okay, that settles it. Ten percent for escrow?” he asked the agent.
“That’s more than enough. We can have the papers ready to sign in a week. The owners are really ready to close a deal,” she said.
Jack wrote a check.
Cathy waited for him on the porch.
“You got a good deal, and it’s far past time for you to have your own place, but Beulah isn’t going to like it,” she said.
“I know, but it’s time I owned a house.” He chuckled. “Thanks for helping me out, Cathy.”
“Hey, that’s what friends are for. When are you telling your mamma?” she asked.
“Guess it had better be soon. You want to do it for me?”
Cathy shook her head. “Not me. She’s going to pout and cry.”
“Think Marty will go talk to her?”
“No, but we could send Darla Jean. She could calm down a suicide bomber, I swear she could.”
“Well, then tell Darla Jean to bring her Bible and get ready to work some magic tomorrow morning.”
* * *
When Marty was worried, she cussed.
She started pacing the floor when Cathy left, and if cuss words could have peeled the flesh off Ethan’s bones, nothing but a skeleton would have left the Dairy Queen that night.
When Trixie was worried, she joked. Her attempts to stop Marty’s pacing and cussing failed. Marty didn’t even laugh at her “ain’t that nice” joke.
When Agnes was worried, she ate and gave advice. Within thirty minutes of the time Cathy left, both Marty and Trixie could have yanked all of Agnes’s curly red hair out of her scalp and glued her lips shut with superglue.
The back door opened. Trixie stopped in the middle of a joke. The swearing ceased. And Agnes looked up from an enormous wedge of banana nut cake.
And Darla Jean came into the house instead of Cathy.
“Well, shit!” A
gnes forked a bite of cake into her mouth.
Marty resumed her pacing. “Dammit! Where is she? They said she left the Dairy Queen half an hour ago, and she isn’t answering her phone.”
“Maybe she’s driving out to the Prescott place to shoot Violet,” Trixie said.
“I take it that Cathy isn’t back yet?” Darla Jean said.
“Yes, I am.” She breezed into the kitchen, opened the cabinet door, and took out the Jack Daniels.
“Is Ethan alive?” Trixie asked.
Cathy poured two fingers in the glass. “Oh, yes, and so is Anna Ruth.”
Marty took the whiskey bottle from her and downed two big gulps straight from the bottle. “What in the hell has she got to do with this?”
“She was in the Dairy Queen.”
“And?”
Cathy told the rest of the story.
Agnes slapped the table hard enough to rattle the lid on the sugar bowl. “That hussy came in there on purpose. I bet that Violet was whining to Annabel about the pre-dump and she sent Anna Ruth there just to cause trouble.”
“Prenup, not pre-dump,” Cathy said.
“I didn’t stutter. I can damn well hope it’s a pre-dump and you get rid of that man. Marry Jack if you’ve got to have a man in your life. He’s buying the very house that you wanted to live in with Ethan.”
“Jack is my friend,” Cathy said. “And Ethan and I will work this out. It might take a couple of weeks. And how did you know about that house?”
“I know everything that goes on in Cadillac,” Agnes said.
“Where is that folder?” Marty asked. There were a couple of things Agnes didn’t know. If she did, she’d be in jail eating beans and bologna rather than banana nut cake.
“In the trash can at the Dairy Queen under a bunch of leftover food and soaked through with coffee and Coke,” Cathy said. “I told him he could throw it away or I would. Ethan loves me. He’ll forget about it.”
Darla Jean patted her hand. “He might love you, but his mamma isn’t going to let him marry you without your signature on those papers. You hold out for what you want, darlin’. And remember, whether you like it or not, you are marrying Violet as well as Ethan.”
Agnes raised her voice. “Run, Cathy! Run away and don’t ever look back. God sent Jesus in human form to save our souls, right, Darla Jean?”
“Basically,” Darla said.
“The devil sent Violet in human form to drag you down to hell by your ankles. Living in hell would be a picnic compared to living with her,” Agnes said.
“Sitting here, it doesn’t look as formidable as it did with Anna Ruth over there pressed up so close to him that they looked like Siamese twins.” Cathy tipped up the whiskey bottle and took a drink.
“Pray for her, Darla Jean. My poor little Cathy has done sold her soul to the bottle.” Agnes shook her head and shoved more cake in her mouth.
“I’ve been telling you a little shot of Jack will put a new perspective on the whole world,” Trixie said. “Whiskey has kept me from killing Andy.”
Cathy held up the glass. “To new perspectives. Now, can we talk about something else? Jack is buying a house, and Darla Jean, you’ve got to go talk to Beulah tomorrow and make her understand it’s time for him to have his own place. Take your Bible and quote all kinds of scripture to comfort her.”
“For real?” Trixie asked.
“For real. He’s got to tell his mamma first, but that’ll be done by tomorrow morning. You will go over there and talk to her, won’t you, Darla Jean? I know she’s not a member of your church, but she does live right down the street from you,” Cathy asked.
“Of course I will, but right now I’ve got a story to tell y’all,” Darla Jean said.
Chapter 10
Cathy felt like Daniel from the Bible story and the lion’s den lay on the other side of the Prescott doors. She took a deep breath and pushed the doorbell. No one answered, so after a full minute she hit it again. Had the devil come to collect Clayton’s soul? Were Violet and Ethan in so much shock that they couldn’t come to the door? Or maybe the three of them were getting the hungry lions ready to devour her.
The door opened and Clayton stood there, smug as Lucifer. Violet and Ethan probably weren’t weeping in shock after all if he was still alive.
“Catherine, please come with me into the den. Ethan is waiting,” he said formally.
Den?
He walked fast enough that he kept at least two steps ahead of her all the way across the foyer and into the office. Ethan was sitting in one of the two burgundy leather chairs facing the desk. He didn’t even look at her. Clayton sat down behind the desk and pushed one single sheet of paper toward her.
Where were the lions?
“Sign this, please,” he said.
Please did not make it any less of a barked out order.
She stared at Ethan long enough to force him to look at her. When he did, he barely shrugged and looked at the bookcases behind Clayton.
She hoped that the twenty-page legal jargon had been replaced by a few sentences stating that she could not sue him for his family estate in case of an estrangement.
Not so. It didn’t say anything except that she agreed with all the aforementioned conditions and she would abide according to those agreements, yada, yada, yada. Sign. Date. Get screwed without even a kiss or foreplay.
“And what is on those aforementioned pages?”
“The very same thing except for that hideous car,” Clayton said.
Ethan stood up. “I’m not a hard man, sweetheart. I gave you the car. Work with us.”
It was the word us that did it. She was marrying Ethan. She was not marrying us. Before she married us, she’d die a virgin and be content with her e-reader and raunchy stories that she read in the back booth of the Rib Joint.
“Now!” Clayton barked. “This has gone far enough.”
Ethan handed her a pen. “Annabel and Anna Ruth are in the parlor with Mother. They’ll be waiting on dinner.”
“What are they doing here?” she asked.
Ethan frowned. “Mother invited them. Poor Anna Ruth is disgraced by the way your friend’s husband has treated her.”
“Ex-husband,” Cathy said.
Ethan smiled. “Let’s not keep our guests waiting.”
She could spend the evening with Anna Ruth gushing over Ethan and Violet, with Clayton’s evil glares on the side, or go to the Rib Joint and read. The e-reader looked better by the minute.
“What if I told you that I read erotic romance on my e-reader and I’m not going to stop reading the stories? Would you make me get rid of that too?” Cathy asked.
Ethan’s eyes popped wide open. “Do you?”
Clayton held up a hand. “What you do in private is your own business, but you cannot have that thing in public. A politician’s wife can’t be caught delving into pornography.”
Ethan stood up. “Let’s not discuss something like that right now. Our guests are probably hungry and dinner is getting cold. Sign the paper and let’s go, sweetheart.”
She took a step forward and got so close to Ethan that he had to look at her. “I want you to tell me that you love me.”
“Good grief, Catherine. I asked you to marry me, didn’t I?”
“That’s not what I want to hear.”
Ethan’s face turned scarlet.
“It’s three words, but when you say them I want to hear that you mean them,” she said.
He opened his mouth and nothing came out. He didn’t even look embarrassed, just frustrated.
Cathy carefully put the sheet of paper down on the table and laid the pen on top of it. Then she pulled off her engagement ring and put it right beside the pen.
“What are you doing?” Clayton blanched.
She looked at Ethan. “If I’d known about the prenup, I would have never accepted this ring. And besides, if you can’t tell me you love me in this room, how are you going to promise to love me in a church full of people with G
od watching over the ceremony?”
“But…” Ethan sputtered.
“Good-bye. I wish you well on your campaign, but I’m not going to marry you.”
She let herself out the door.
* * *
The Rib Joint had a neon sign out front but it was not a new building. Made of rough, weathered wood, it resembled an old feed store. Country music floated out the doors, right along with laughter and loud talking.
She marched across the parking lot and stopped in her tracks when she reached the porch. The cook was standing right in front of her. He had a thick mop of blond curly hair, a cute little brown soul patch under his sexy mouth, wire-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, and a barbecue-sauce-stained bibbed apron with his logo on the top.
“Are you my new waitress and beer girl?”
She shook her head. “No, I just come here to read.”
But you have been playing the part of the sexy hero who knows how to put out the fires in a woman’s body.
“That’s a new one! Reading in that noise? You interested in drawing beer and hollerin’ out order numbers? I can’t cook and run the front too. By the way, I’m John. I own this place.”
“Yes, I am interested.” She heard the words come out of her mouth but couldn’t believe that she’d said them.
“What’s your name?” John asked.
“Cathy. It’s Catherine, but I really like Cathy better,” she said.
“Me too. It fits you. Come on in. You got any experience runnin’ a cash register and drawin’ beer?”
She nodded again. What could be the difference between putting money in the drawer for plate lunches or for ribs, or drawing beer or Cokes?
The place was as rough inside as out. Décor was old car and truck license plates from every state and year, funny sayings painted on rough boards and hung with baling wire, and rusty tools that she couldn’t even identify. Buckets of peanuts were in the middle of the tables, and the shells crunched under her feet as she walked across the wood floor. Booths lined the north and south walls and were full of people laughing, talking, and eating barbecue or tossing shells as they waited on their orders. Bright lights flashed from a jukebox, and country music echoed off the walls.
What Happens in Texas Page 14
