Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) (4 page)

Liddy was always good at getting the upper hand on
him. Nevertheless, ten years of absence—h
er absence—
had finally given him
the time to gain the upper hand on his walkabout wife.

There was always a first for everything, he suspected;
a first time, and a last that could pull the rug out from under him.

“I need you to sign something, Jake. I will leave town
just as soon as you do. You will never have to see me again. And you can go
back to doing whatever it is you are doing,” she started, then paused.

Her mind looked set as she sat opposite him, wringing
her hands together. Liddy then glanced at her hands as if they’d somehow
changed right in front of her eyes. It took her a few seconds to raise her
sight back to his.

There shouldn’t have been anything stopping either
from getting what he or she wanted from this morning, but Jake Giotti never liked
doing what was expected of him. He enjoyed going against the grain of life. He
liked making people squirm. Most of all, he had to set the pace to this
unexpected horror. Stopping Liddy in mid-stride by simply holding up his hand, he
got his one and only chance, thus far, to get in a word edgewise.

“Whoa! Hold on there, Little Darlin`. We’ve not seen
each other in ten long years. Can’t a man catch his breath in between you
running him over with a truck?” He picked up his glass and quickly set it back down
with a thud. Some of the water spilled over the top. To dare drink any would
have been foolish.

“Where the hell have you been, Liddy?” He couldn’t help
but hiss his words through his clenched teeth, shaming a viper’s tongue.
“Forget how to use a telephone? Perhaps finally remember where it was you’d
lived most of your life? Stuff like that?”

“There wasn’t time,” she admitted—ruefully.

She suddenly looked sad and confused.

Tough shit! He didn’t care if she burst into a flaming
waterfall of tears, blew a fuse, or killed someone. He was pissed.

“Hell and damnation, Woman! There is always time. Damn
plenty of it, as a matter of fact.”

Jake could feel the heat in his face; the shift in the
universe; a cosmic fluctuation he’d been unprepared for. This meant his anger
was surfacing faster than he expected.

His eyes turned to hers, narrowing. “Ten years is a
whole helluva lot of time, Liddy. A two year stint in the county jail is
a
lot
of
time
!” He ground his teeth harder on that particular. “A man
trapped inside a personal hell, while said wife off running about the globe
with not a care in the world . . . is a lot of time, Liddy! Not seeing my wife
for years and then having her coming back here, today, with no good reason
other than she wants me to
sign
something? Fuck, Liddy! I would say time
is being quite cruel to me. For you to think otherwise is, was, and will always
be bloody damn selfish.”

His jaw clamped together to hold the rest of what he
truly desired to speak to her in for as long as was possible. “And while we’re
at it, it’s a hell of stint for a man not to being having sex!”

Jake rolled his eyes at what he’d suddenly admitted, unwittingly—aloud.
He then pinned his gaze to his estranged wife and held fast.

“There was always time, Liddy. Yet not much of it had you
ever spent wisely.”

She was about to speak but he wasn’t done.

“And if anyone cares to ask, I’d say you’re the one
who wasted the most of it while we’d been together.”

Liddy’s gasp ricocheted off the café walls.

Chapter Four

Liddy had nearly spat out her quickly taken sip of
coffee right in his face. Inwardly she wondered when Jake Giotti had gotten so
all-fired philosophical.
Time spent wisely? This, coming from a man with
a snake tattoo on his friggin` arm, and who’d slept with another woman—
many
women?

Liddy was trying to separate the good from the bad, and
getting nowhere but on the path to an enormous headache.

Jake leaned forward, whispered his next and fatal
thought in her face. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“What? Know that you spent time in jail?”

Sharpening the blade to better cut him with, she
purposefully brought up his jail time, knowing it was mean, but she couldn’t
help doing it. Yeah! She knew. It ate at her soul. But she knew.

Liddy knew all about the DUI charges against Jake.
What happened to him afterwards, and wasn’t a pretty picture to look at, even
in recall. If not, Theodora Rosebud had been more than willing to fill in the
blanks.
Bitch day
.
Remember
?

Jake smiled across the table, almost devilishly. Then
he frowned as if to do so was paining him. His liquid mercury gaze drilled
straight into the depths of her eyes—right through her soul, plowing her over
at ninety miles an hour.

“No Liddy. That I have not had sex for ten very
long
years.”

Her eyes widened even more so, perhaps in utter
surprise to him lying to her face.

Shocked he would bring up his sex-life wasn’t the
exact word she’d been searching for, or would have ever used to describe her feelings
about the still painful hurt, but it was relatively close. Actually suspended in
time, she’d momentarily been set to speechlessness.

The bases at explaining the actual moment this man told
her about his lack of sex was pretty much covered. Jesus! Jack and sex were
hand in hand—two peas in the pod. Neither left the other.

He then shoved the jagged knife he’d been hiding under
the table
oh so well
directly into her back; just to make certain she
got the full picture.

“’Course, when a man’s wife runs out on him in the
dead of night, didn’t tell anyone where the hell it was she was going, when, or
if
she was coming back, he doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot of choice
in the matter. Does he? Unless he
wanted
to be called a womanizer, said
man had to abstain at all costs, Liddy.”

The dangerous grin he made set these words in stone. “Preacher’s
Bend doesn’t forget betrayal, Lidia. I don’t either. And once betrayed it does curb
the desire toward wanting a woman in a real big hurry.”

“But you
are
a womanizer!” she blurted out.
“You can’t live without one in your life.”

Liddy clamped her hand over her mouth, once she
realized how loudly she said this, and the fact they now had an audience. At
least three ten gallon hats had turned their way to listen in on a private
conversation taking place right inside Rachel’s diner. Not to mention, Rachel’s
ear had perked up a bit at the far end of the counter and she was frowning.

“No, Liddy, you’ve got it all wrong.” Jake leaned back
in his seat, crossing his hands behind his head, shaking his head. “I haven’t
been with another woman since the night you left me and that is God’s honest
truth. You can even ask Sister Bets if you don’t believe me. She’ll be the
first to attest to my very reputable behavior, as would the rest of this town. I’m
a changed man Liddy. I’ve been a perfect angel. Damn, Liddy, I am probably much
closer to character of a celibate Priest, than any Priest could claim around
these parts. No wife. No sex. And it hasn’t made me a happy man.”

He wanted happiness?
He should’ve thought about that before diving into
Eliza Porter. The name Giotti was the purest definition to the word womanizer—written
in capital letters
with pictures
! Those pictures still fresh in her
mind.

Jake wouldn’t be able to live with himself for much
longer than a day—let alone ten years . . . without sex. It wasn’t plausible
and it wasn’t possible.

The man of her past then yanked the proverbial knife
out of her back without so much as trying to numb the wound. “I would say you
want me to sign something detrimental toward the rest of your life if I don’t,
right?” He looked self-satisfied all of a sudden.

And smug.

Liddy nodded. She hated smug. She hated Jake. But she
hated smug more.

“And, if I do not, your future is literally on hold?” He
eyed her up and down, stalling on her chest.

Again, only a nod made as answer.

Jake took a deep breath, looking to be gathering
momentum. Liddy could see the oncoming tidal wave headed her way, about to hit
faster than a raging Tsunami. She flinched, expecting the impact to hurt.

Jake let her have it; all of it, all at once. There
was no sidestepping their situation. The gloves had come off. Ten years of incredible
hardship, deep unrelenting pain right in the middle of her chest, and
mind-numbing anger bottled up inside this man.

With fear in her gaze, she knew this was going to be a
whole hell of a lot of fun for him. The bastard was going to dish out what he
could in heaping platefuls; done hard, fast, and most likely with a vengeance
never before seen.

Liddy wouldn’t have wanted the fury from him in any
other way.

She’d never asked anything of Jake in any other way.

“Too damn bad!” he offered.

“But, Jake,” she started, then paused. They still had
an audience. And this was a public place. She was mightily surprised he’d
lowered his tone.

A wobble of her chin started up and it was a sure sign
she was about to lose control; and that her womanizing husband had easily
stopped the rest of her rehearsed sentences by stating the obvious. In fact, she
was choking on obviousness.

“You’re the one who walked away, from me, from Preacher’s
Bend.” He shoved his plate forward, looking as if only to do something with
hands. “I don’t have to sign a goddamn thing if I don’t want to just to make
your life easier.”

“Jake!” Her voice had turned into a near plea.

Jake had always been a sucker for a pretty face, and hers’
was about to fall apart within matter of mere seconds. There would be nothing
pretty about it after that. She wouldn’t get her way. The checked fury in his
tone of voice told her so.

“No, Little Darlin’. End of story. I don’t think I can
make it any clearer.”

With deliberate arrogance he reached for another fry
off his plate and acted as if his world hadn’t suddenly crashed in around him,
as hers had done.

“But you don’t understand,” she sped out. Her eyes
filled with unshed tears.

“Oh, I understand perfectly, Liddy. I’ve always
understood you. You’re easy to read.” He tossed the uneaten fry back onto his
plate, looking to have lost his appetite. “You want an annulment from me. But
you’re not getting one today. Not from me, not today. And unless I’m brain-dead
. . . not ever!” He slammed his fist in futile anger onto the table, causing Liddy
to jump in her seat.

“H—ho
w
did you know?” Again, she chewed on her bottom
lip to hold back the tears.

“This is Preacher’s Bend, Liddy. Not some Goddamn far
off distant planet, in some far off distant galaxy within no-man’s land. We do
get the newspapers here.” Jake shifted his body to lean over their shared table,
resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his knuckles. “Contrary to
popular belief, and to what you have always thought as my rather low
intelligence level, I do read the papers. All you ever wanted from me was what I
could give you between the silk sheets. I knew this from the very beginning. That
particular
talent
of mine, along with the many others you’d tried to
gain from me, I very easily put two and two together.”

Jake once again leaned back in the booth. “From the
moment I set eyes upon you across this restaurant I knew you were here for one
thing, and one thing only. You’re here to get your way.”

Mr. Giotti took a moment all to himself to let this
sink in. Perhaps to let the fact of her being here, only to get something out
of him, was not, in some way, shape, or form, eating at his soul. Once it could
seep down to the heels of his feet, he continued as if it did not matter a hill
of beans anymore; as if what they’d shared was little more than a mistake.

“Little Darlin’ I would say for the first time in your
terribly spoiled life . . . you won’t be getting your way.”

Liddy’s fury turned mutinous. “How dare you?” Her life
hadn’t been spoiling. Rotten maybe. Okay, yes, incredibly rotten. But certainly
not spoilt? She was from the other side of the tracks, for Pete’s sake! You
know? The place where all the married men wandered to late at night, the place
where a good name became a bad one in the blink of an eye, and by the drop of
the pants.

Yet, so was he. Jake knew exactly what her life had
been like before now. And what she’d done to change this fact. It wasn’t a
pretty picture to look at. In fact, her life in Preacher’s Bend had been downright
ugly. A little domestic abuse; stuck home, with no way out, until she turned
eighteen. A few too many fists to the side of the head while her father far too
intoxicated to notice exactly what he was doing. Or, to whom he’d been doing it
to.

Now she could claim two dead parents because of her
father’s drinking.
Lucky her! 

He
was fully
aware her life had been anything but good. Why would he even say otherwise?

This was why they’d been so good together. Why she’d
wanted him so badly ten years ago. She finally escaped from the only life she’d
ever known. Liddy became a survivor, dissecting herself from what most would
call pure living hell.

Then, in the end, she’d thrown it all away by marrying
a womanizer; and came full circle to what she’d wanted left behind.

At least Jake didn’t drink himself to death; as her father
had in a roundabout way. No. He only ripped out her heart with his bare hands,
crushed it under a heavy boat, then kicked the remainder to the curb.

“How dare me?” he sputtered. “How dare . . .
me
?”
His gaze turned equally mutinous. “I dare because I can. I am not signing a
single one of your goddamn annulment papers,
Mrs
.
Giotti.
” He was
sharpening his sword of words between thrusts, slipping in her name just to
make it sting so much more. “And that should be the end of it!”

“Why?” she pleaded. “You and I weren’t meant for each
other. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck with me for some time to come. You might
find someone else, then you’ll have to come crawling to me . . .”

The urgent look in his eyes clearly told her Jake
Giotti crawls for no one.

“Why?” he sputtered. “Hell, Liddy! Because I want to
see you sweat it out, Sweetheart. You do know how to sweat, don’t you? And
meant for each other? Stingers were meant for bees. Politicians for Washington
. . .but you and me? Fuck, Liddy. We weren’t meant for each other. You and I
were an accident waiting for explosion.” He then looked her over, crown to heel,
his brows arching high.

Liddy had to take a deep breath, heaving a full chest
right in his face.

“You know what, Jake?” she told him, placing both
hands flat on the diner’s table.

“No. I don’t know what, so tell me.” He suddenly
smiled over the distance separating them, goading her.

“I hate you!”

His smile fell. “That makes two of us, Sweetheart, because
I certainly hate myself, too.”

Oh, this stupid, stupid man!
Wasn’t he aware locking horns with a woman he hadn’t
seen in ten long years was a fool’s move to make?

“I really,
really
hate you!” Liddy spat out.

She could feel her face paling; felt the blood flow
cut off, since most of it had scrambled to her heart as a defensive mechanism.

They stared at each other for another ten seconds. The
first to pull away was going to be the loser in a war neither of them ever
wanted. Whoever blinked, whoever backed down from the ensuing argument would
not be getting their way. Not this morning.

Perhaps not at all.

Yet they both knew this was bound to happen—the moment
they married.

Liddy wrenched her gaze from his. She couldn’t stand
looking at her soon-to-be ex-husband longer than necessary. Jake was too smug,
too arrogant, too disastrous to her well-being.

He’d always been too smug, too arrogant, and too
disastrous to her well-being. Why ever did she consciously think things would
change after a few years of absence?

Mr. Giotti sat back in the booth, accepting his victory;
but he conceded to winning the war. Their sudden sparring looked to be leaving
a very bitter taste within his mouth.

Liddy knew she’d lost, so she stood and was about to
walk away as the heavy tears fell down her cheeks. She also knew he needed a
good swift kick to the side of his head, her foot itching to do just that.