C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel (18 page)

“Why don’t you tell me what exactly you’re embarrassed about?” There was always the hope that this had nothing to do with C. She slowed as the first light turned red.

“You and that man, that C-something that always has Mandy in such a dither! Lyla Lee’s brother-in-law. If you want to claim kin to such trash!”

“Who’s trash, Mother? Lyla or Eddie C?” The light went green and long line or no, Jemma scooted through as it turned yellow. There had to be a way to shorten this trip.

“Don’t get me off the subject. Lyla got no better than she deserved. That grandfather of hers was the most trifling man ever walked around here. If he did an honest day’s labor, the next week of drinking made up for it!”

She had a shot at getting through the second light, would have gone through it yellow, except the car in front of her stopped. “Okay, so how does that embarrass you?”

“You are deliberately sidetracking this conversation. May Williams called me.” She hushed and Jemma sought all the connections she could make between May Williams and her situation. The retired nurse shouldn’t know a thing about her, except, Jemma concluded as the light went green, her husband was equally retired, and one of the more faithful members of the DamSite’s coffee club.

“And May Williams said what?” The law-abiding car turned into the Lily Pond parking lot and Jemma pressed the advantage, taking the next light as a full green and maneuvering to turn left into Lake Country.

“May said Clifton came home from the DamSite this afternoon with just loads of information. All of it about you.” They stopped in the parking lot, but neither made an attempt to move, not Jessie to take the wheel, nor Jemma to relinquish it, even as she put the car in park.

“Go on, Mother, I’m all ears.” She stared straight ahead and sought control of her emotions. Just exactly what had he done after he left her? After he kissed her as she’d never been kissed?

“Seems that SOB Norm Hudson has taken him in as a boarder. You knew that?” Jemma nodded, although Jessie didn’t wait for an answer. “And he told Norm that he was here to, and I quote, court you. How did that come about? I swear! You have never been anything but a trial your whole adult life! Are you so desperate for a man that you’ll whore with anything?”

Jemma shut her eyes and tasted the blood from where she bit her tongue. “Mother.” She swallowed the taste, opened her eyes, but didn’t look at the older woman. “I don’t believe I owe you an explanation.” A wave of anger washed over her. “If you think I whore around, you should have said so years ago.” She bit off each word, chose each carefully, didn’t want to say anything she’d regret later, although that possibility was getting slimmer with each breath.

“You still live under my roof, Jemma Lovelace. You know the rules.”

“Yes, Mother, I do. And I’d have moved out years ago if Daddy hadn’t had a stroke and I thought you needed me. I must have been mistaken.” She turned and looked at her mother. Jessie’s lips were set in a stern line and her color was high. They were both angry and Jemma felt they were going to stay that way.

“You know what I meant. This man has a reputation for debauchery and vice.”

Years of acquiescence rolled to the top of Jemma’s mind and she let them rule her tongue. “Well, maybe I like debauchery and vice. Maybe I should have tried it years ago. Maybe I wouldn’t be thirty seven years old and living in my mother’s house.” She tripped the door handle and swung her body out. “I’ll start looking for my own place immediately. In fact, I already have one in mind.”

Jemma left her mother sitting in the passenger seat of Doree’s car, the engine purring, the driver’s door open. She strode into her office and locked the door behind her. For good measure, she locked her personal office door also. But only after she’d slammed it.

***

C stood in the middle of the new house’s living room and stared at the circular staircase that rose out of the entry hall and into oblivion on the second floor. “Win, did you steal this from the Brady place?”

T walked with deliberation through the framed opening where the living room’s patio French doors would be. He stood at his brother’s side and surveyed the staircase. “Now how do you know about that?”

“Jemma said someone stole it.” He looked to T and at some unspoken brotherly signal, they embraced. “Win, I’m in trouble.” They pushed slightly apart.

“With the law?”

“With my big mouth.”

T laughed. “So what’s new?”

“I’m afraid I’m taking Jemma down with me and she’s done nothing—nothing!—to deserve it. Like Grandmother always said, it’s the company you keep and she’s getting tarred with my brush.”

“You getting a conscience?”

“Don’t flatter your own influence.” C looked over at the stairs. “Are they anchored so we can sit on them?”

“Sure.” T put his arm around C’s shoulders and led them over. They climbed halfway up so they could command a view of the lake and settled down to watch the last rays of the sun. “DamSite rough you up a bit? I can’t believe you couldn’t handle those good ol’ boys.”

“Oh, I could handle them all right. If it had just been me.” He leaned back, stretching his form over eight steps. “I’ve not had to defend anyone else’s reputation in, in,” he stared off into the distance as if calculating. “With the exception of you, I’ve never defended anyone else’s reputation.”

“Do you want to know what I’ve heard, C-C?”

He shrugged. “It would give us a place to start, I suppose.”

“Shall I start with Lyla?”

“Don’t you usually?”

“For the purposes of this discussion, you leave Lyla alone.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. After all, she’s eating supper without you. So you could come be with me.” He looked at T from the corner of his eyes. “I don’t suppose you broke the bonds of brotherhood and told her about C-C and Win?”

“I love Lyla more than I love my own life. But a brother is a brother.” T leaned his head back on the banister spokes. “Lyla and Bertie were somewhat thrown off guard by your phone call with Norm.” He gave a deep chuckle. “That ol’ man’s as slippery as they come.”

“Amen.”

“You could take lessons.”

“Well, he’s giving them, trust me.”

“Word on the street is, you told Norm this morning that you’d come back to court Jemma Lovelace and wouldn’t be leaving without her maidenhead.”

“What?” C sat up and felt the anger rise. “She’s a—where did—I don’t know what to ask first!”

“Try ‘is she a virgin?’”

“Is she? Oh, surely not!”

T pointed a finger at him. “Two weeks ago you were convinced she was the most frigid bitch you’d ever met. What changed your mind?”

“How should I know? And I never mentioned maidenhead. Where did that archaic term come from? Do these people still have chastity belts and locks on their daughters’ rooms? Come to think of it, she does live at home. What am I saying?”

“The subject of virginity—”

“Never came up at the DamSite. I swear, T, it didn’t.” He balanced a hand on either side of himself and nodded his head as he spoke. “We had that conversation with Lyla and Bertie and that was fun enough, even with Tib standing there. I swear, it was as bad as having you looking over my shoulder. But it was fun and the guys got a kick out of getting a drop on your beloved wife and her beloved mentor.”

“I enjoy that myself every once in a while.”

“Uh-huh. Well, just keep that sense of humor. Because when that phone call was over, ol’ Norm there says we need to discuss my courting Jemma. That’s when I realized I’d done far more talking that morning than I should have. And I was sober, too. I don’t have any excuses.”

“Here,” T fumbled to get an imaginary object out of his jacket pocket, “let me record you repeating that last sentence. The part about not having any excuses. Fletch will want a copy for his vault.”

“Yeah, right.” The sun dipped below the horizon and the security light in the front yard hummed into action. “I guess I thought if I made my intentions known, she’d have to go along with them. She’d have to rise to the occasion. Let me court her. But it seemed that inside that little office, which just got smaller and smokier as time went on, inside that little office, everyone had an opinion about Jemma and her family and her iron maiden reputation. She doesn’t ever date and I swear, T, half of them think she’s never been kissed! Except ol’ Wiley, he swore he’d kissed her and the conversation went to Wiley’s wives and loves for a while and then back to Jemma and then on to her brother and his wife, who, by the way, is not the most popular woman in town for whatever reason. Jemma’s father’s business practices were sullied, but I think that was professional jealousy.

“Somewhere in there, Tib left. You’d have thought he’d have taken me with him since he rescued me from sleeping in her parking lot last time I was here. But, no, he slips out the back door and has the audacity to wave at me as he goes.” C stopped to take a breath and the pain inside twisted up through his words. “Somewhere in all that conversation, I realized I was on autopilot, saying what was expected of me, making crass remarks and painful digs without thinking about them, and I didn’t really mean them.” He shook his head.

“By the time someone’s wife had called to give them a grocery list, I don’t think there was a single woman in town—divorced, widowed, or old maid—that wasn’t included in the discussion. But there’s none that group is any more curious about than Jemma. She’s held herself away from all of them—their brothers, sons, out of town business associates, the whole lot.” He finally turned to stare at T, only to find him open-mouthed at C’s tirade. “But she let me kiss her this afternoon and she knew what she was doing. Either that, or she’s got one helluva instinct.”

“Which do you want it to be? Experience or instinct?”

“I don’t care. I just want to kiss her again. But big-mouth-me I went and told her that that wasn’t going to happen until she asked me.” He shook his head. “Have I just gotten more stupid all of a sudden?”

“You’ve always been pretty stupid where women were concerned. Did far more thinking with your little head than your big one.” He laughed. “Come to think of it, between us, we’ve been a complete stupid person.”

“Like you always thought the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming freight.”

“And you always thought it was a come-on.”

“Damn, T, what am I going to do? Jemma’s reputation’s in shreds right now. And why? Because I bragged to an old man that I was going to court her. What was wrong with that?” He stared at his hands as of they held the answer.”What should I do? You think she’s heard all this?”

“I’ll guarantee she’s heard a version of it. Or two. Lyla was trying to find her and warn her, but she was out of pocket. As to what you should do? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned apology and an offer to leave town? Who knows? Maybe she’ll ask for a kiss good-bye.”

“That’s a cheap shot.” They rose together and C gave the stairs a once over. “Tell me you haven’t taken on any more of your neighbors’ white trash ways with the acquisition of this staircase.”

“No, sir. Bought it outright from the bank. Cost a small fortune.” They reached the bottom of the stairs and looked back to where they’d been sitting. “Did I help you any at all, C-C?’

“Yeah, Win.” He traced the graceful lines of the newel post. “Did you ever figure out what you did right to be so happy now?”

“Nah. Just figured it was my turn.”

“Figure it’s mine, yet?”

“Don’t know, C. Figure you have to work on making your own happiness and it looks like all you’re doing is a fine job of sabotage.”

“I guess if I’d have wanted it any straighter, I could have asked Lyla, right?”

“She wouldn’t have minced words.”

They walked through the house to their cars. “So what should I do now?”

“Follow your heart.”

“Sounds like a song title.”

“Let me know how it works, so I can get the last verse just right.”

Chapter Seventeen

J
emma’s frustration and anger gradually ebbed, and she noticed the blinking lights of the answering machine.

There were six new Caller-ID numbers, all made within a thirty minute span. She punched through them and found the first two were from the Quik-Lee, the last two from Lyla’s house, number three from Bertie, and number four from Norm’s number. She hit the play button and crossed her arms to listen.

Lyla started with a brief message to call her at the store or home, followed five minutes later with the same plea. Bertie’s wasn’t any more illuminating, just a warning to remember the course of true love was never smooth. Norm’s was a hang-up, and the last two a continued plea for Jemma to call Lyla, but now at home. Her good and faithful friends trying to warn her about the ambush that awaited her from her own hometown and the scoundrel who had wandered in? Pity no one could have warned her about her mother. And was that C from Norm’s or the old man’s conscience? Funny, she hadn’t realized either of them possessed one.

Lyla had been the more persistent. Jemma dialed. Harrison answered.

“Harrison, this is Miss Jemma, may I speak to your mother?”

“She’s down at the dock. Bertie brought her houseboat over cause Mama and Sam are going to spend the night on it when there’s a full moon tomorrow but I don’t know why. Do you? You want me to get her?”

“No, Harrison, that’s okay. Just tell her I called. Is Bertie still there?”

“Yeah, cause Mama has to take her back to the marina but she’ll probably wait till Sam gets back from talking to Uncle C. They didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“Some things are grown up things, Harrison.”

“Yeah, that’s all I ever hear. Someday I’m gonna’ be grown up. Then they’d better watch out!”

“I know I will. Tell your mama I called. Good-bye.”

She keyed the phone off but held onto the receiver. Did she want to call Norm’s and see who had called? And if C were with Sam, where were they? Where was safe for those two to talk? She closed her eyes. What was she thinking? Where was safe for her? She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t spend the night at the office. Where was she going to go?