The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love

by Luanne Jones

  He tensed and looked away from her.

  Her head told her to pull back, but the words rushed on. “For me it’s a commitment, a promise. You can’t just walk away from it when it doesn’t suit you any longer. You can’t turn it off when it’s no longer pleasant or convenient.”

  His mouth grim, Will sat silent, motionless, his gaze on the elaborate cake in front of them.

  She’d gone too far. The urge to pull things back into balance overtook her. “Not that I think you ever did that.”

  He straightened the forks, smoothed out a napkin with the back of his hand. He did not look at her. His very lack of response told her he had taken her words as an accusation.

  “I know I might have implied something like that in the past, but I don’t…” In trying to protect her own emotions she’d trod on Will’s feelings and reminded him how she had viewed his actions toward Norrie and the baby when they had needed him most. “Maybe we should change the subject.” He exhaled, loudly.

  “Blow on that nail so it will dry faster, and keep your shoulders straight but relaxed, that’s what’s making your girly-parts sag in the first place.” Jillie pushed here and prodded there until she had Pernel standing like a shop mannequin. As she turned to head to the rest room, she called out over her shoulder. “Mother always told me to think of your spine as a string of pearls and to picture pulling the pearls straight, but not taut.”

  “Straight but not taut,” Pernel echoed.

  “Oh, now there’s a motto for you if I ever heard one, Pernel,” Rita called out, glad for the distraction. “Maybe I’ll embroider it on a pillow or have you a bumper sticker made up. ‘Straight but not taut.’”

  “Stick to cooking and kindly leave the humorous commentary alone, Rita.” Pernel started toward them. Oddly he did not look effeminate even in that outfit, but more feminine in a masculine way. Like a woman with mannish features. When he spoke, he went for a soft, raspy whisper instead of trying to raise his voice a register. When he reached the table he tried to swipe some frosting off the perfect cake. “Tackiness does not become you.”

  “Best to leave that to the experts.” Will didn’t so much as flinch as he took the cake stand in one hand and lifted it up and away. “Pernel here takes tacky to new heights—or is that lows?”

  “I may dress like a lady, Mr. West. But I can still whip your ass man to man.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to lose another nail.” Will settled the cake back where it belonged and narrowed one eye at Pernel.

  “Don’t act all smug and coy with me.”

  Will grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “I know what you’re up to, both of you.” He lowered himself into the seat next to Rita, but he completely ignored her and fixed his false-eyelash-framed eyes on the man next to her. “I know why you’re here, West, and I am not happy about it.”

  “What could you possibly know about anything?” Rita bumped his elbow off the table and swept away the pool of magenta silk along with it. Heaven help them all if the man’s scarf, which she suspected cost more than her secondhand wedding dress had, should trail across her Princess cake. “And why do you have anything to say about who comes and goes in my life?”

  “I have something to say about what happens to the Palace. My name is still on the sign out front.”

  “But it’s not on the legal documents. I am now sole owner of this place. I can do whatever I please with it.”

  “Rita, you have never done whatever you please. I know you.” He licked the tip of his thumb and began cleaning up the tiniest fleck of white chocolate on the neckline of his dress. “Your entire life is about pleasing others, not yourself.”

  “Then maybe it’s time I changed.” Mercy! Did she say that? And without so much as a quiver in her voice?

  “I know you’ve brought him in to fix this place up to sell it.” Pernel stabbed a finger in Will’s direction, his silver charm bracelet almost knocking over a dipped strawberry on the edge of the cake’s crown. “Or worse yet to show me up. I won’t have it.”

  “That not your call, bud…uh, lady?” Will scratched his ear and grimaced. “Is there something particular that people call you?”

  “Is that a crack?” Pernel shifted in his seat so fast the cake stand wobbled. “Rita, your hired help is making a crack at my expense.”

  “He just wants to know how to refer to you,” she said.

  “And I’m not the hired help.”

  “Tell your handyman that I haven’t chosen my new name but do lean toward Starla.”

  Rita put her head in her hands.

  “Starla Stark. It has an air about it.” He raised his hand elegantly. “Don’t you think?”

  “All I can think about is keeping this cake nice until Miss Peggy arrives.”

  Pernel sat up straighter than an arrow. “Miss Peggy is coming here?”

  “Any minute.”

  “I like that Miss Peggy.” Pernel shook the hair off his face. “She has a lot of class. Person with that much class can hold her head up despite the occasional disappointment handed her.”

  Will grunted.

  “Style. Class.” Pernel sighed. “That’s something a person is born with. You wouldn’t understand, of course, Rita. You totally missed the boat on that count.”

  “I…I what?” She lifted her head, unable to believe her ears.

  “Face it. You’re middle-of-the-road, middle-class, fair-to-middling, muddling along through life.”

  Up until she’d heard it spill out of her ex-husband’s glossed-within-an-inch-of-an-oil-slick lips, she had thought those were totally acceptable traits. Admirable even. Not the way she dreamed of living her life, but nothing to feel ashamed of, either. Her cheeks grew hot.

  “And no amount of small-town social butt-kissing, no too-tacky-for-words tea party you stage, no meathead brought in from Memphis, can alter that simple fact.” Pernel said it so matter-of-factly, not haughty or mean.

  That only made it sound all the more scathing as a description in Rita’s ears.

  “You are what you are, Rita. Darling in your own way but deliberate and dull. Dull, dull, dull. And I forbid you to take on changing anything in my restaurant on your own.”

  Will’s chair creaked. Hostility rose from his body like steam from a pot about to bubble over.

  Rita beat him to the boiling point. “You forbid me? You forbid? Oh, that takes the cake, Pernel.”

  “No, Rita, he’s not worth it.” Will must have read her mind, or maybe in her anger she had telegraphed her intent a little too clearly. Either way, he got to the Princess cake a half second before she could grab the stand by the pedestal and dump all three layers down Pernel’s dress.

  “You’re right, of course, Will.” She threw back her shoulders. “My cake deserves better, and so do I.”

  “Yes, you do,” Will agreed.

  “So listen to me, Starla and/or Pernel Stark. You cannot forbid me to do anything.”

  Pernel crossed his legs like he’d grown bored with her attempted outburst already.

  Rita ground her back teeth together. “I will renovate the Palace.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” her ex muttered.

  She pulled her shoulders up and raised her chin. If she had her crown handy, she might have plunked that on her head to add the proper air to her pronouncements. “Maybe I’ll get myself a makeover while I’m at it.”

  Pernel scoffed.

  “I may even overhaul the way I live my very life if I damn well please.” Was that me talking? Rita recognized the voice, but the fire underneath the words was new and exciting in ways she couldn’t fully grasp. “Whatever I do, whenever I do it, and whomever I do it with, that’s my business, and you have nothing to say about it.”

  Pernel rose. “All I’m saying, sweetie, is that you will need some advice, some guidance.”

  “I have that.” She put her hand on Will’s shoulder. “From someone I trust and look up to.” She glanced down at Wi
ll. For one fleeting instant she wondered what emotion she saw glinting in those dark, deep eyes, then it disappeared.

  With a nod he urged her to go on.

  “And furthermore…” She faced Pernel again. “I will not take any more lectures in style and class from a man who doesn’t have any more taste than to wear red shoes with a magenta scarf and trowel on more makeup than a two-dollar whore on half-price night.”

  “Oh puhl-eese, Rita. You are never going to follow through on this. I know you. You can’t endure any upheaval in your life.”

  “I’ve already endured plenty of that. Now I find I can endure anything I have to in order to get what I want.”

  “What you want? I don’t think you know what that is!”

  Damn but it was hard to argue with the truth. She folded her arms. “Right now I want to stand up for myself and maybe just once in my life meet whatever is coming without fear for how it might throw everything off kilter.”

  “Careful what you wish for.” Will pushed back his chair and stood slowly.

  Pernel’s resentment softened, and he offered a genuinely warm glimpse of the kind man—person—he could be when not on the defensive. “Now, that’s the only sound piece of counsel you’re bound to get from your—”

  Outside the Palace, brakes squealed. A whumpa-whump-thud announced that a tank of a car had swerved too fast into the pitted parking lot, hitting every pothole and rut possible along the way.

  “She’s headed straight for the window!” Rita didn’t know whether to dive behind the counter or sacrifice herself to protect her cake.

  “Relax, she won’t—” Before Will could complete his assurance, the cruise ship of a Caddy came sailing up onto the sidewalk and glided to a halt just inches shy of the picture window.

  “Jillie!” Will called in the general direction of the powder room. “Get your skinny ass out here pronto! Mama has arrived.”

  Rita took a few steps toward the door.

  Will held her back with a touch. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  She pressed her hand to her heart and tried to force her breathing into some kind of normal rhythm. She had not asked for any of this. Not for Pernel’s intrusion, or for Miss Peggy and whatever turmoil she would most certainly bring. She had not even asked for Will’s help, had she? She hardly knew anymore. Hardly recognized her own life.

  Careful what you wish for? Up until now she’d been careful with everything. Now she was making speeches about letting things come into her life without fear? Maybe Pernel was right and she—

  “Miss Peggy’s in on this?” Pernel tucked his too-obviously synthetic hair behind one ear and bent over the table, inhaling the aroma of the perfect cake sitting there. “That’s some comfort. She’ll set things straight right away.”

  “I don’t need anyone to set things straight for me, Pernel.”

  “Oh, Rita, that’s cute.” He laughed, and though he did not seem to intend it to hurt, it did. “Admit it, you are in way over your head. I tell you, you are simply not equipped to handle the unexpected. You’re just too predict—”

  She never would have guessed how good it would feel to push anyone into one of her prized creations. But, oh, as Pernel went facefirst into the three layers of blood-red cake with creamy white frosting, sending the carefully dipped strawberries bouncing off the nasty Palace floor, she sighed in utter delight and relief.

  “Predictable, huh?” She wiped the last bits of boiled frosting onto Pernel’s skirt. “Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

  He pulled up and began wiping the mess away with both hands. “Rita, you are going to regret this.”

  She already did, she thought, as she heard the door open and Miss Peggy scold, “Great Caesar’s ghost! Honey, that is no way for a lady of quality to behave!”

  Chapter 6

  EVERY DIXIE BELLE SHOULD REMEMBER:

  A lady of good taste and breeding serves her guests first, then she pushes her ex-husband’s face into the cake.

  Will had planned to help his sixty-seven-year-old mother out of her six-month-old Cadillac, but she’d beat him to the punch—and to the Palace front door. Of course he had the excuse of getting distracted by Rita’s sudden burst of independence and her unexpected decision to help Pernel to some Princess cake.

  “Miss Peggy! I never intended for you to see…” Rita tucked her hands behind her back. “You caught me at my worst, I’m afraid.”

  “Worst my ass, I’d say she caught you at your very best.” Will laughed as he leaned in to kiss his mother on the cheek. “Afternoon, Mother. If you’ve come for cake, you’re too damn late.”

  Margaret Curtis Morgan West breezed right past him. She’d get to him later. He had no doubt of that. Right now she had her priorities. “Rita, I won’t pretend. I am disappointed to see so blatant a breakdown of those most gracious conventions that define us as people of good taste and breeding.”

  “I know, Miss Peggy.” Rita hung her head.

  Seeing her humbled like that, in the wake of her first real attempt at standing up for herself, just hit Will the wrong way. “Mother, you have no call to—”

  “A lady of good taste and breeding serves her guests first.” His mother hobbled by, aided by nothing but her brass-handled cane and more nerve than one tiny, pale-haired woman had a right to possess. “Then she pushes her ex-husband’s face into the cake. Good manners before bad temper always, Rita-sugar.”

  “I…” Rita blinked.

  “At all times, good manners, first and foremost.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”

  “I know you will, sugar.” She tipped her head ever-so-demurely to the right. “Unlike my own ungrateful offspring, you listen and pay heed when I try to share the benefit of my experience.”

  “That’s because, unlike your own undaunted offspring, she doesn’t realize that half of what comes out of your mouth skims the shady side of the truth.” It only took Will one stride to reach his mother. He tried to take her elbow to assist her, but she slipped it from his hand and tapped her cane as though she intended to use it for more than support. “The other half is pure orneriness for nothing but orneriness’s sake.”

  “Is there a window open in here, Rita-sugar?”

  “No, ma’am. Do you need some fresh air?”

  “No, darling, thank you for your concern. I just felt a draft of hot air a moment ago and heard a lot of senseless buzzing.” She pulled a hankie from inside her jacket sleeve and waved it around, shooing away invisible gnats.

  Will raised an eyebrow. “Comparing your only son to a pest, Mama?”

  She did not acknowledge his presence with so much as a bat of her eyelashes. “Well, it can’t be my son. My son is in Memphis. He would never come to town without telling his precious mother he was here. I raised him better than that.”

  “Me?” Will burst out laughing. “Mama, since when has how you raised me been an indicator of how I’d act?”

  She tipped her nose up and sniffed, waved her hankie about again. She took a few steps and handed the crisp white cloth to the man dripping bits of red cake onto his size-eleven pumps. “And how’re you doing, Pernel?”

  Pernel dabbed the handkerchief to his face, careful not to smear food on the delicate monogram. “I’m hurt, Miss Peggy. Hurt and beleaguered.”

  “That’s nice.” She smiled and gestured toward the door like she was scooting away a sulking child. “I think it’s best if you go on home now. This doesn’t concern you anymore.”

  “It never did concern him,” Will muttered, moving closer to Rita.

  “What did I miss?” Jillie emerged from the bathroom just in time to cut him off before he got to Rita’s side.

  “Nothing.” Rita had the composure to appear as if that were the Gospel truth.

  “Trouble mastering the complexities of silverware, Pernel?” Jillie took a spot between Will and Rita, leaning close to share a snicker with her old friend.

  His sister pushing her way in to take Rit
a’s side only pissed Will off. It shouldn’t have. He understood that. But ever since Pernel paraded into the Palace, Will had gone on primal-male-as-protector mode. It was the same kind of thus far untapped feeling in him that had led him to volunteer to help Rita entirely against her wishes, he supposed. Whatever it was, it sure as hell kicked in around that woman with her hopeful eyes, bountiful sexy body, fabulous dimples, and a life sorely in need of a rescuer.

  A rescuer? Him? Man, he got in deeper and deeper with every breath, didn’t he? He looked over Jillie’s head at Rita and had the odd but not unpleasant sensation of sinking in quicksand.

  Pernel folded the handkerchief and wiped his chin. “I just don’t know what to do about all this, Miss Peggy.”

  “I told you what to do, darling. Go home.”

  For a split second, it looked like Pernel might challenge the imp of a lady dressed in an impossibly unwrinkled pink-linen suit. Then he threw back his head and with the weight of the icing on one side of his wig causing it to slowly slide lopsided, he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Looks like your mama’s wishes even hold sway over men daring enough to wear rhinestones in the afternoon.”

  “Rhinestones?” Will dragged his knuckle over the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and chuckled. “That sure does explain a lot. Men with real stones are neither bullied nor beguiled by her, I assure you.”

  Rita leaned forward. Her hair swung against her cheek, and her shirt fell open to show as much of her magnificent breasts as a man dared see with his mother so nearby. She grinned at him, her voice soft, “You adore her, and I know it.”

  “You aren’t actually accusing me of giving a damn about someone besides myself, are you?”

  “Y’all pipe down, I’m trying to listen.” Jillie tipped her head toward the Peggy and Pernel floor show being served up a few feet away.

  Pernel offered to return her handkerchief, but the Dixiefied pixie of a woman shook her head. “Oh, and Pernel, darling, before I forget—did you pick yourself out a pretty new name yet?”