by Luanne Jones
“Billy!” She wedged her bony shoulder against the door opening.
“Step aside, Jillie. Clearly you’ve called the wrong man for the job.”
“That’s not true.” She stood up straight, not a trace of deception or pride in her eyes. “I called you. I called the only person I know who could come into this town and get done what needs doing without anyone throwing up roadblocks or making trouble. Wild Billy, you are the only man for the job.”
“The only man for the job?” She made him sound like freaking Superman. Worse yet, she reminded him that he was and would always be Wild Billy West, with all the unashamed intrusions into his life, the damnable obligations, and the unrealistic expectations that went with the title of small-town hero. He wondered if his little sister knew how much he hated that feeling—or how powerless he felt to walk away from it?
Jillie’s brow wrinkled enough to undo a month’s worth of creams and treatments.
He stepped back from the door, but just one step.
“Billy…Will…please.” She looked back over her shoulder. “You came this far. I didn’t really think you’d come, but you did, and I…”
He followed her line of vision. Across the narrow road the morning sun glinted off the cars coming and going from the gas station. A faded metal sign pointing directions to a bank that went belly-up twenty years ago still swung from a post by the road.
Above the treetops he could make out the steeple of the Second Street Baptist Church. Time and the realities of a dwindling population had caused the two Baptist churches in town to merge a few years back. The racially divided congregations had voiced reservations about that solution, but somehow, in time, they made it work. Now they even had a sign out front in Spanish to welcome the migrants and new immigrants.
Some things did change here, Will conceded, but so many things never would. He would always be Wild Billy here. Football legend and only son of the town’s most respected family. A handful, but basically a good kid, they would always say of him. Always forgiven by the town, his family, and even the local law for things other boys caught hell for.
He sighed. “I’ve come this far and what, Jillie?”
“And I just wanted to thank you.”
“So help me, Jillie, if this is some big show to butter me up to get your way…” He had no threat to finish that sentence.
“It means more than I can tell you that you’re here, Will.” He could only nod to acknowledge her words.
“Because the person we’re doing this for means more to me than I can ever say.”
“Pernel Stark?” He couldn’t even muster a believable laugh at that.
“No, Rita.”
Rita. Just her name made his chest seize up and his breathing grow shallow. Rita Butcher Stark, Lord have mercy. “I thought this place belonged to…”
Jillie shook her head. “The house was in Pernel’s name—he inherited it from his mama, you know, and she never did like Rita. But they always had joint ownership of this place, though Rita never set foot in it if she didn’t have to.”
“A woman of uncommonly wise judgment.”
“Attested to by her choice in friends, no doubt.” Jillie smiled. “Long story short, Pernel wanted money. He sold the house out from under Rita and gave her his share of…this.”
Will would have cursed, but he couldn’t think of any word hard enough to convey his thoughts about Pernel at that moment.
“See, I’m not asking anything for myself, Will. I’m asking for Rita.”
He shut his eyes.
“Rita is my friend, and there is no reason for her to be. She never lets me skate by on my family name or money or looks because she sees something more in me. And that gives me a kind of hope I can be more. Do you…do you have any idea how dear that makes her to me?”
He knew. Damn it, he knew better than anyone alive how precious that kind of friend would be. Not the first time today, it felt like he had a fist stuck high in his throat.
“Please, Will. Do it? Help fix up this place…for Rita?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m guessing she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend.”
“She has a little nest egg, but it’s hardly the kind that came out of the golden goose.”
“She’ll need what’s called sweat equity, too. She does have friends she can rely on to help?”
His sister’s face went absolutely ashen. “With money or sweat?”
“Either. Both.”
Her cheeks pinked up again, and she nodded. “She has friends.”
“I’d waive my fees, of course. Maybe call on a few business associates who owe me favors.” Everyone everywhere owed Will a favor. In his drive never to be asked to do for others, he made a practice of finding every opportunity to give to others freely. To be the first to volunteer, the hardest worker, and the man everyone trusted to have the deepest pockets when he learned of a need. “I could get her the work and materials at cost.”
“Does this mean you’re going to take the job?”
“It’s not the best use of my time and talent.”
She laughed and clapped her hands, claiming a triumph he had not actually granted her. “Don’t underestimate yourself. This project is exactly how you should be using your time and talent.”
He inched his sunglasses down on his nose and shook his head.
“You won’t regret a minute of this.”
“I never committed to sinking as long as a minute into this dive and its renovation.”
“Don’t think of it as renovation, brother, think of it as…” She raised her open palms in the beam of sunlight streaming in the front window and laughed before concluding, “…redemption.”
“Redemption? Mine or Rita’s?”
“Does it matter?”
Redemption. Him? He ran his hand along the lunch counter then rubbed the gritty dust between his thumb and fingers. Naw. Renovation, nothing more. But still…
His gaze strayed to the front window. Even with the torn curtain hanging down over one corner it gave him a wide-open view of the intersection half a block away. Winter Road cut a lopsided semicircle around the edges of Hellon. From this intersection a right turn sent you toward the highway and on to Memphis. A smart man would be on that route right now. Will’s gaze, however, fixed on the other direction. The way he had just come.
He tugged at his jacket collar. He wiped the dirt of the place off his hands and onto his faded jeans. His heart ached.
“Damn it.” He had thought after all this time he would have made peace with his life and his choices, but it had not come.
He’d all but given up on finding his way back. Then Jillie talked of redemption and gave him a way to help Rita find the same, if she needed it. And it did seem clear that she needed help.
Some tiny spark of longing for that very thing still burned deep, deep inside of him. He did not know whether to curse or thank his sister for wrenching that up after all these years.
Six years. In the small, silent cemetery a few miles down Winter, he had buried the baby boy who bore his name six years ago today. That was a long time to wait to feel whole again.
Charging blindly on with life had not done it. Hard work had not done it. Recommitting himself to the things he hoped to be true and right had not done it. Seeing his child’s mother make a new life and find happiness with another man had not eased his guilt or diminished his pain. Why on earth did Jillie think remodeling this dump would make one bit of difference for him or for Rita?
“Pig Rib Palace.” The name caught in his throat like the low growl of a fight-scarred dog. He looked around. The place reeked of age and artery-plugging food. It had probably waited as long as he had—longer maybe—for its redemption.
And Rita. If she needed his help, how could he refuse? He owed her more than anyone—perhaps even Rita herself—could comprehend. “Tell Rita I’ll do it.”
“Tell her yourself.” She motioned for him to follow her through the kitchen,
pausing at a half-open door to say, “I think she’s had enough time to get used to the idea by now.”
Chapter 2
EVERY DIXIE BELLE WILL TELL YOU:
You may be able to take on the world in a pair of comfy house shoes but you cannot think straight if your hair’s a mess.
“I hate the smell of raw eggs.” Cozie picked up the soaked and battered egg carton by one corner and pitched it into the trash.
“It’s not the eggs that stink around here.” Rita wiped a sponge through some shell-speckled gunk. What didn’t smear seeped off the edge of the table and splattered on her shoe. “It’s the advice.”
“Who are you to judge advice? It’s not like you ever take any.” She took Rita’s sponge and tossed it in the sink. “Go fix yourself up a little. You may be able to take on the world in a pair of comfy house shoes but you cannot think straight if your hair’s a mess. Go on, do as I say.”
“I never take advice, but go on and do as you say?”
“What?” She shrugged, and the layers of her outfit shrugged with her. “I’m a mom. I’m allowed to say stuff like that.”
“Don’t give me that. Your kids have been out of the house for years now.”
“Doesn’t matter. You never lose the ability to apply mom-logic to any situation because once you’re a mama, the job never ends.”
“I know. I know. I’m that way with Lacey Marie. Rinse off that bowl for me will you, sugar?”
“Does it take a long time for the water to get hot?” Cozie turned taps on the chipped enamel sink.
“No, but it does take a couple minutes to let the rust wash out of the pipes.” Realizing she had just left an opening for her friend to tell her again why she needed to renovate this dump, she scrubbed at the table with her egg-slimed paper towel—and changed the subject. “Sometimes I think of my little girl off at that big old college and…”
“And you get so jealous you could pop.”
“No!”
“Admit it.” Cozie swished water over the bowl and took a few swipes at its underside with the sponge.
“I miss my child!”
“Of course you do. One thing has nothing to do with the other. You love her and miss her, but that doesn’t mean you don’t harbor some secret longing to be like her, out having new experiences.” She leaned back against the counter, tipped her head toward the stairway door, then, seemingly satisfied no one was coming up yet, grinned slowly. “You could be having new experiences, of course, like for instance with Jillie’s brother.”
“If Lacey Marie is having the kind of new experiences that you expect me to have with Jillie’s brother, jealousy would not be my first reaction.”
“Why are you fighting this so? Nobody is forcing you to do anything? Just to consider working with the man and getting a fresh start.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for Billy West and me to have a fresh start.”
“You two have history?”
“In the sense that history is just riddled with unresolved conflict, then yes, we have history.”
“Oh?”
“It’s nothing! It’s…” Stupid. She sighed. “It goes back to when he came back to Memphis seven or eight years ago and moved in with—oh, you know, that woman who tried to be a country singer for a while.”
“Norrie Walker.”
Rita remembered but nodded like she’d just heard it after years of never thinking of it.
“Honey, you should hear Miss Peggy go on about that girl. Apparently one of the reasons Norrie never became Mrs. West was that she had a rather relaxed approach to fidelity.”
“Really?” All the gossip that went around this town and Rita had missed that one. Rita looked at the table, now dull with dried egg and then at her sticky hands, then at her awful mess of a house shoe. The crown tangled in her hair had started to make her head ache, and adding that poignant little tidbit of fact about Wild Billy to the mix did not help things one bit.
“So, what went on between you and Jillie’s brother?”
“It goes back to the time when Norrie was pregnant. The last time Billy spent more time in Hellon than at home in Memphis, drinking with his old buddies, living off past glories that weren’t really all that glorious if you ask me.”
“I’m not one to be judgmental.” Cozie shook her head. “But he acted a first-class asshole back then.”
Rita had to laugh at her friend’s nonjudgmental assessment.
“Everybody said so. Nobody to his face.”
Rita shut her eyes. “Almost nobody.”
“What did you do?”
She wet her lips and wriggled her foot out of her soggy shoe. “I told him his place was with Norrie. That he was thirty-two, a grown man with responsibilities, and I told him what I thought of his behavior.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Well, I didn’t give him the sweetened condensed version, nor did I wait until he was alone.”
“Rita! I’m shocked at you.”
No more shocked than Rita had been. But something about that man brought out the fire in her. “And you wonder why I resist my mother’s impulsive streak?”
“It couldn’t have been that bad, honey.”
“I tried to tell myself I did him a favor because then when his baby was born so early and the poor thing only lived a few weeks, well, he was there for Norrie and the child.”
“So some good did come of it.”
“I had hoped that was the case, but after I tore into him, that’s when he stopped coming to town at all. When does he come here, now? Three or four times a year? And then he doesn’t stay long enough to play any kind of role in his family.”
“What?” Cozie pulled Rita into a sidelong hug, laughing. “You think he stays out of Hellon ’cause he’s scared of you?”
“I think he stays out of Hellon because he’s all the things I accused him of being that night. I’m no more significant to the likes of him than—” She bent down and took up her yoke-matted slipper. “Than a discarded eggshell.”
“You’re creating your own reality again, Rita. You should speak your wants, not your fears.”
“Fine. I want waffles.”
Cozie stepped away, listening again at the doorway. “Rita…”
“I want another carton of eggs.” Rita lifted her chin and held out her hands. “I’m speaking them into reality even as we stand here.”
“Go change. I can hear them coming right now.”
“Where are my eggs, Cozie?” She tipped her head up. The crown slid back. Quietly she beseeched the heavens, her slimy house shoe held aloft, “Eggs. Where are my eggs?”
“Where is your mind? I can hear them on the steps. Any second now Wild Billy West will be…”
“Wild Billy West can kiss my red-hot…”
“Yes?” The man braced his arm against the doorframe and put one boot over the threshold. And yet he seemed to fill up the whole room and suck most of the air out of Rita’s lungs.
“Waffle iron,” she whimpered. Stupid, stupid, stupid. All he had to do was show up and that became her self-fulfilling prophecy. But she’d be damned if she’d let him know it.
“Hello again, Rita. Hope I haven’t caught you at a…” He took the long route to give her the once-over head to toe—or should she say tiara to toe?
Even from behind the cool dark shades, she felt the heat of his gaze.
Finally, he smiled, dipped his head just enough to peer over the top of his glasses and nail her with a smirk. “…bad time.”
She tossed her house shoe to the floor and squared her shoulders. He could look askance at her, but she would not let him look down on her. “Not at all, Mr. West.”
“Good to hear it.” He stepped forward, hand outstretched.
She never let her smile waver as she fit her hand in his and pressed a glob of gooey egg yoke into his warm, callused palm.
“Oops, I forgot! Had a little accident with a raw egg a minute ago.” With a gleam in her eye
s and her dimples flashing, Rita cranked that killer smile of hers up a notch.
She might as well have handed him his ego in that handshake. No one else in Hellon would dare do such a thing. Damn, but Will admired this woman.
She withdrew her hand and cleaned it off on what looked like an old hospital gown that she had thrown on over her nightclothes. “I am so sorry about that.”
“No, you’re not.” He didn’t remove his sunglasses or even so much as glance at the mess covering his palm. He simply took the gown’s hem from Rita’s grasp.
She let out a little gasp that left her full lips pursed.
He edged in close to her and wiped his hand on the soft fabric.
She didn’t pull away.
“You’re not one bit sorry. Are you?”
“Well, I…” Her gaze dipped to his hands on her clothing. She started to touch her temple but froze the instant her fingers hit a crown knotted up in her hair.
He kept on cleaning his hands and tried not to decide if he was alarmed or impressed with the sight of so much sparkle this early in the morning.
“You’re not sorry.” No woman wearing a damn pageant tiara in her kitchen would feel the least bit of regret over an action like that. “You’ve got nothing to feel sorry about. Your little playmates there cooked up my coming by today without telling you what they had in mind, didn’t they?”
“I had no part in asking you here.”
“I understand that. You didn’t ask for my help at all.” She damn sure needed his help, but she didn’t ask. She wouldn’t. Not Rita. He dropped the hem of her gown. “Do you know what I have to say about that?”
“Why should I care what you have to say about anything, Mr….”
“I say you’ve just sealed a deal to get your Pig Rib Pigsty a bargain-rate makeover.”
“Wh-what?”
He had a vague awareness of some feminine squeals and laugher in the background, but his focus remained with Rita. “I’m not a man to weigh every pro and con before making up my mind. I decide what I want to do, and I do it. I want to help you fix up your place, Rita.”
She blinked and somehow her big brown eyes grew bigger, deeper, more compelling. “If you said that to impress me, you’ve wasted your breath.”
