by Sharon Sala
“You are one sorry piece of shit,” he said, and even as blood was spurting, Jake punched him again.
“What? Stop! What’s the matter with you?” Truman yelled, and spit blood and teeth off to the side of his foot.
“You have two choices,” Jake said. “You can stand here while I beat the breath from your body, or you can get your crap out of that house and leave Blessings and never come back. If I see you here again, I will kill you on sight. You scared a little girl within an inch of her life today. You have no idea how tempted I am to just kill you anyway and throw your sorry ass in the swamps.”
Truman began to freak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve made a mistake. I didn’t—”
“She identified your picture. A picture a concerned citizen of Blessings took after overhearing you and your buddy trying to figure out how to pay me back for testifying against you. You threatened that little girl with murder.”
“I did not. I only said I would kill her damn chicken, that’s not—” The moment Truman said it, he groaned. He’d just admitted his guilt. “Uh, I—”
Jake doubled up his fist and hit him again. “You lie. You told her you would kill her mother.”
He hit him again, then again, and then again, until Truman was so bruised and bloody he could barely see. “Don’t hit me again. I’ll leave, I swear it,” Truman cried.
Jake’s pulse was ragged and the rage to destroy was almost overwhelming. “You have twenty minutes to get everything you want out of that house, or I’m dragging your body to the swamp.”
Truman turned and ran into the house, crying for mercy with Jake right behind him. He grabbed a pillowcase and gathered up his meager assortment of pans and dishes from the kitchen, and then began stuffing his clothes in a suitcase and took it to his truck. Then he began carrying stuff out in his arms until everything he owned in the world was in the back, blowing in the wind. And then he remembered.
“My TV,” Truman cried.
“You have three minutes,” Jake said.
Truman rushed into the house and came out staggering under the weight of the old-style set. It was all he could do to get it into the pickup and then close the tailgate. The only good thing about its weight was that now the loose clothing wasn’t so likely to blow out.
“Time’s up, and you’re still here,” Jake said, and started toward him.
“I’m leaving now. I’m driving away,” Truman screamed. “You have to move. It’s your fault I can’t leave.”
Jake pointed in Truman’s face. “I have lived through the Devil’s own war. I have been blown into pieces, and I didn’t die. You can’t kill me, you sorry bastard. God doesn’t want me dead, so you better run. You run and you don’t stop and you don’t look back. If I ever catch you again, one of us will die, and you know it won’t be me.”
Truman was crying and screaming as Jake got in his truck and backed up, giving Truman just enough room to get away. As soon as he had the space, Truman shot out of the yard as fast as his old truck would take him, heading back to the main road. He didn’t know Jake Lorde was still behind him until he looked in the rearview mirror and saw sunshine reflecting off the hood of that big, red truck.
“No, no, no.” Truman sobbed. “He said he would let me go. What’s happening? What’s he doing? Oh my God, he lied! He’s still gonna kill me.”
Truman stomped the accelerator and hit his top speed of sixty-five, driving for hours with only one stop for gas, all the way to the Florida-Georgia line with that red truck right behind him all the way.
It was almost sundown when he crossed into Florida. He looked up just as the red truck pulled over on the other side of the border and stopped.
Truman started crying. Jake Lorde had kept his word. He’d let him leave in one piece. He looked down the highway at the cars speeding along beside him and kept driving. The farther he got from Georgia and Jacob Lorde, the safer he would be.
The next time he glanced in the rearview mirror, it was dark, and all he saw were headlights. In a weird kind of way, it was comforting to know they were all going the same way.
* * *
It was almost midnight when Jake pulled into the driveway at Benny Joyner’s farm and killed the engine. Lights were on all over the house, and before he could get out of the truck, the front door opened and Laurel was running out to meet him.
A sweet feeling of belonging swept over him as he got out. A few more steps, and she was in his arms. “Are you alright? I was so worried. Why didn’t you call?”
“I’m fine. It’s all good. I didn’t think about it,” he said. “All I wanted was to get home to you.”
“Come inside out of the cold.”
Jake walked in with her. He just wanted to get his girls and go home, but he would tell the story now, so he wouldn’t have to repeat it again.
“Jake, good to see you’re okay,” Benny said, and shook Jake’s hand as he led him to the sofa in the living room.
Laurel quickly sat down beside him, leaving her parents to their matching recliners.
“What happened? Did you find Truman Slade? Did he admit—?”
“Yes, I found him. Yes, he admitted it, after some persuasion on my part, and I gave him a choice. I could drop his sorry ass, excuse my language, Mrs. Joyner, in the Georgia swamps, or he could get out of Georgia and never come back.”
Laurel saw the bloody knuckles on Jake’s hands. “Oh, Jake, your poor hands.”
“I was so mad that I didn’t feel a thing,” he said. “They’ll heal.”
“So what took you so long?” Laurel asked.
“I followed him to the Florida-Georgia state line.”
Benny’s eyes widened, and then he started to grin. “I’ll bet he drove puckered up all the way, knowing you were right behind him.”
Jake shrugged. “It will be a while, if ever, before he sleeps sound again.”
Pansy kept eyeing her daughter’s new man with a mixture of concern and respect. He had a way about him of seeming scary without saying much. Then she let it go. Maybe she was just used to Benny. She’d pretty much ruled the roost under this roof their whole married life. Maybe Jacob Lorde was what most men were like who tended to their own. Maybe Laurel had done fine by choosing this man after all. Lord knows her girl deserved a long and happy life.
“Well then,” Pansy said. “I hear we’re having Thanksgiving at your place.”
“Won’t be called my place much longer,” Jake said, and gave Laurel’s hands a quick squeeze. “The girls and I are working on an us.”
Benny leaned back in his recliner, absently rubbing his round belly. “Considering the short time you’ve been home in Blessings, you sure didn’t waste any time settling in,” Benny said.
Jake heard a tiny hint of criticism and ended it before it went any further. “I guess I was ready for some loving. I had a lot of years of fighting to put behind me,” Jake said.
Then they heard the sound of running footsteps as Bonnie dashed into the room with Brave Bear under her arm. “You’re back!” she said, and ran straight for Jake.
He sat her in his lap, at which point she settled against the breadth of his chest as if she’d been doing it all her life, and then noticed the bloody bruising on Jake’s hands.
“Are you ready to go home, Bonnie Bee?” Jake asked.
She was running a fingertip close to the scrapes without touching them. “Are we going to my home or your home?”
“Wherever Mommy says,” he answered.
“We’re going back to our house tonight, honey. We have stuff to do, and we need to be up early. Only a couple more days of school, and then you’re out for Thanksgiving.”
Bonnie sat up and shifted so she was looked straight at Jake’s face. “Did you find the bad man?”
He nodded.
“Did you fight with him?”
; Jake frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“You got hurt here,” she said, pointing to his hands.
“They’re okay. I’m okay,” Jake said.
Bonnie looked at her mother. “He was brave for us, wasn’t he, Mommy?”
Laurel sighed. Bonnie obviously knew more about what had been going on than she’d thought. “Yes, he was very brave for us.”
“And he got hurt doing it,” Bonnie said, pointing to Jake’s hands.
Laurel nodded. “Yes, he did hurt himself.”
Bonnie looked down at Brave Bear and then up at Jake, then back down at the little bear with the Purple Heart medal pinned upon his chest. “Mommy, I need you to take this off for me,” Bonnie said, pointing to the medal.
“But why?” Laurel asked. “If you take it off, you could lose it, and—”
“I think we should pin it on Jake’s coat. He was brave for us, so he should be wearing it now.”
Tears came to Jake so fast they startled him. His heart was beginning a stutter-step that made it hard to catch his breath.
Laurel unfastened the medal with shaking hands and then turned and pinned it onto Jake’s coat.
Bonnie smiled, then reached out and patted it, as if to settle it into place. “Look, everyone. Jake is a hero.”
Jake wrapped his arms around Bonnie and buried his face against her hair.
Laurel heard her mother blow her nose and her daddy start muttering beneath his breath. He was counting to twenty, which is what he always did when he didn’t want to lose his cool.
She wrapped her arms around her baby and her man and hugged them so tight that she made Bonnie squeal. “You’re a’squeezin’ my breaf,” Bonnie cried.
“You’re a’squeezin’ my breaf, too,” Jake said, and wiped his eyes and kissed his girls. “Go gather up your stuff. I have a hankering for a warm bed and a quiet night.”
“Don’t we all,” Benny said.
A few minutes later, they were in the truck and heading home. Bonnie fell asleep in the backseat with Brave Bear tucked beneath her chin.
Laurel rode up front with Jake, and every time she glanced at him, she saw lights from the dashboard reflecting off the medal on his coat. He seemed so at peace with it now. That was good. She kept thinking—God knows he’d earned it the first time, but it was always how a man feels about himself that makes it right.
Jake had saved Bonnie, and tonight Bonnie saved Jake.
Her granny used to say, “Everything in life always comes full circle, because that was how life worked—life without end, Amen.”
Epilogue
Thanksgiving came and went, and it was a rousing success.
The turkey was cooked to perfection. Jake showed Bonnie how to make a wish on the big wishbone and proposed to Laurel and Bonnie in front of her parents.
Laurel got an engagement ring.
Bonnie got another necklace. This time it was a tiny little diamond in a tiny little heart.
Jake was officially engaged to his girls.
He began his new job on the first day of December and scored his first kudos from Ron Fitz for creating a marketing catchphrase for a client who manufactured lingerie.
When they signed the client, a large box of Silky brand lingerie promptly arrived in Laurel’s size, compliments of Fitz Advertising, Inc. Inside was an embossed card with Jake’s phrase: Wearing a Silky Bra? Indulgent foreplay for the man who wants you to take it off.
Jake and Laurel were married at 2:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve at the First Baptist Church in Blessings. Bonnie Carol was the flower girl and flung flowers about with such wild abandon that they weren’t just in the aisle, but in everyone’s hair and in the laps of those closest to the aisle. She was a hit.
Laurel’s sister-in-law, Beverly, was her matron of honor.
Jake asked David Payne to be his best man, and when the wedding was over and the bride and groom cut the cake and then toasted each other, they were drinking Joaquin DeSosa’s bottle of tequila instead of champagne.
The marriage healed hearts, ended a feud, and sealed the past and the present in vows of holy matrimony. It was the wedding of the year.
The next morning, while Jake and Laurel were settling into their new lives and opening presents, and Bonnie Carol was standing at the kitchen window admiring the fancy new chicken coop Jake had built for Lavonne, Ruby Dye found a fancy-wrapped gift at her front door.
It had To Ruby on the card, but not who it was from.
While she was standing in the doorway trying to figure out who her secret admirer might be, she began hearing what sounded like a motorcycle running at high speed.
She walked all the way to the steps of her front porch to see it coming down her street, when all of a sudden it shot out of the alley just to the left of her house and went straight up the alley across the street and disappeared. She only had a glimpse of the rider—black leather, long legs, and a swath of hair flying out from under that silver helmet like a cape, before she began hearing sirens.
Either that rider had crashed and it was an ambulance, or he was going fast because he was being chased. In a fit of good cheer and because it was Christmas Day, Ruby shouted aloud, “Ride safe and ride fast, whoever you are. God is in His heaven and the Devil’s on your tail.”
Then she clutched her present against her robe and hurried inside out of the cold.
She’d surely find out what was going on before the day was over. That’s how things went when you lived in Blessings. Nothing stayed a secret for long.
Order Sharon Sala’s next book
in the Blessings, Georgia series
A Piece of My Heart
On sale May 2017
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Sharon Sala is a member of RWA as well as OKRWA. She has more than ninety-five books in print, published in five genres: romance, young adult, Western, general fiction, and women’s fiction. First published in 1991, she is an eight-time RITA finalist, winner of the Janet Dailey Award, four-time Career Achievement winner from RT Magazine, five-time winner of the National Reader’s Choice Award, five-time winner of the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, and winner of the Heart of Excellence, as well as the Booksellers Best Award. Writing changed her life, her world, and her fate. She lives in Oklahoma, the state where she was born.
The Blessings, Georgia series
Touching, funny stories that will break your heart on one page and heal it on the next.
by Sharon Sala
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author
Mercy Dane has trouble fitting in when she moves to Blessings to get reacquainted with her long-lost sister. Her hard-knock life has made her tough and a little wild. But when tragedy strikes, she learns Police Chief Lon Pittman might be the man to break through her barriers of mistrust and loneliness.
Watch for the next book in the series:
A Piece of My Heart
Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca
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