Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) (7 page)

She then glared at not only one, but at the both of
them.

“That’s bullshit, Debra! And you know it,” the foolish
man said.

Liddy’s first thought was ‘
you stupid, stupid moron!
’
She could’ve told him allowing his temper to rise, just to get his way, would
get them into far more trouble than already in.
Could not normally smart
men read warning thoughts sent their way, especially when those thoughts were silently
screamed at the top of one’s lungs through a heated glare?

She was telling him to shut the hell up. Mentally, of
course. Verbally would have gained her another sneer, and she’d more than enough
of those to last her a lifetime from this man.

“No, Jake. You’ve got it all wrong. Bullshit is what’s
coming to town the early part of next week.” Debra was reminding her
half-brother of the rodeo about to hit Preacher’s Bend. Four hundred men
looking for a good ole` time could have their small jail filled to capacity
within a fortnight, and have one very lonely woman hating the male species, all
the more.

“Bullshit is what comes out of an animal that has no
mammary glands, and very little useful brains inside its head.”

Okay!
Now there
was the real Debra Wesley they all knew and love. Calling bulls brain-dead and
not much else was funny. But Debra added more—a lot more. And both she and Jake
had to wait it out until the deputy done with her tirade.

“Bullshit is what gets stuck to the bottom of my boots
whenever I’m around you. But my checking out a domestic disturbance in a public
parking lot, with gun drawn, is
not
bullshit. It is official police
business. And you know I take police business very seriously.”

He flared his nostrils, and to Liddy’s utter surprise
slowly let his half-sister win this war. After all, Debra was right. They’d been
arguing inside Rachel’s. And technically, were still married to each other. So,
technically,
what they’d been having all along was a domestic
disturbance—of sorts.

“So? Are the two of you useless deviants coming with
me over to the police station, peacefully, or do I have to take the both of you
over there in handcuffs? Believe you me, I will. It would give me the greatest
pleasure in life to slap handcuffs on the either one of you at this point.”

Liddy was biting her lower lip, so much so, she was now
drawing blood; tasted the sticky sweetness on her tongue as she licked her lips
for the umpteenth-thousandth time in less than a half hour.

This was not going to be good for either of them.
Steam was now coming out of Jake’s eyes. Most of this steam was aimed directly at
Liddy. Very little of it was headed toward Debra.

“Oh, and because the two of you have somehow decided,
for all intents and purposes, to hash out your old business
and
your
dirty laundry right out in the open, in broad daylight . . . I am putting the
both of you in the same holding cell just to cool off.”

“What the hell for?” became Liddy’s first slipped out,
slightly foolish comment; of which she regrettably spoke aloud.

Her second thought was inwardly kept to save her soul
from continued damnation.

She knew she would not be able to breathe while locked
in a tiny holding cell with Jake Giotti. And Jake looked as though he actually
wanted to kill her: for being here, for being her. Hell! Just for being alive, she
supposed. She might not have live out the rest of her day to see what Theodora
Rosebud was intending on calling herself come Monday morning, if locked inside
a concrete and steel room with a man she wanted to get rid of.

“What the hell for?” Debra wasn’t one to mince words.
“What the hell for? How about we start with for disturbing the peace and for
making my day longer than is necessary? We could certainly add more to it, if that’s
not enough for you, Liddy. Let’s see. . . . How about for coming back to Preacher’s
Bend? For being . . .
you
. It’s your choice. I am quite certain I can
think of a few more if you give me a bit more time . . .”

Liddy’s sigh came out heavy and burdening. “No. Old
business and dirty laundry is more than enough to deal with. Thank you very
much! You don’t need to tax your brain thinking up anything else, just to be
mean.” Her need to sass a bitter sister-in-law was getting way ahead of itself.

Jake cleared his throat and stepped between the two of
them—quickly, before any shots were fired. Or before Liddy did something far
stupider by telling Debra to ‘go to Hell’.

Yet, this wasn’t going to save the day either. The man
was simply trying his best to stop her from saying anything more that could be
used against her in a court of law. Or, more precisely, used against him, once
she gone from here and out of his life, and he then left to do the necessary
explanations.

All Jake needed doing was say her name. It became enough.
 Shit! The way he’d said it shut her up right quick.

“Lid-de-a!”

Yep.
Lid-de-a
always did the trick. When pissed,
he’d always draw out each letter.

Liddy’s mouth closed quickly. ‘
Lid-de-a’
sure
as hell beat ‘
Darlin
’. Or ‘
Honey’
. Or,
gasp, sputter,
should
she even repeat what her ears did not want to hear
?
. . .
Mr
s.
Giotti!

The tone and the color of his mercury drowning eyes told
her all there was to know about life—Jake Giotti thought her as little more
than low-bottom, pond sucking, scum of the earth.

Well, good for him
!
At the moment, Liddy did not like him very much either.

Unfortunately, Debra then hauled the both of them
right over to the police station by gripping not only Jake’s upper arm but Liddy’s,
as well. And she wasn’t being very nice about doing it, either.

Jake winced. Liddy was near the tear stage again. A
few people passed them by. None she would actually say recognized her with any real
certainty. At least it wasn’t many to have witnessed her ultimate humiliation
in front of Jake.

Most of Preacher’s Bend were still in church, or at
least headed that way. And not one of them walking across the parking lot
toward the police station had ever been church going folks. They’d been rather
ruined believing in God through circumstances of their births.

“And once I have the both of you locked inside a
padded cell with impenetrable bars, of which I am quite certain neither of you
can escape from, you,
Mrs. Giotti
, can then explain to me, in great
detail, and for the record, why there is an APB out for your arrest for Grand
Theft Auto. For a car you removed without permission from one Mack C. Wells,
Attorney at Law, down in Miami, Florida. Said car spotted twelve miles away,
stuck in a ditch, and smashed to smithereens against the trunk of old man
Peabody’s hickory tree. You seem to be okay. Therefore, I would venture to say
it was not you driving said car into the tree. But it was you who took it from
Mr. Well’s property. That’s the one thing I’ve got damn straight.”

Liddy tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. Truly! It
was a very large crack. It just popped right out at her. The cement physically
grabbed the heel of her shoe. Her slight miscalculation as to where she’d been
putting her left foot had nothing whatsoever to do with her complete and utter
shock Mack would turn on her so quickly. Or, that his car was now totaled
against a hickory tree.

Oh, God! She was in so much shit! It was this wretched
town. Everything and everyone inside its very walls was out to get her.

Let them try! She’d grown a thick hide over the last
ten years.

“Before I do any explaining to you or for any police record,
can you at least give me five minutes alone with this man?”

Liddy turned her head toward Jake and glared at a now
grinning, highly amused, equally in as much trouble as she was, Mr. Giotti.
“Without a witnesses?”

“Why?” Debra supplied. “So you can kill him with your
bare hands, while under my watch?”

“Yes!”

Jake started to chuckle, ending up with a full-out
roaring belly laugh that had tears in his eyes.

Milliseconds later, Debra was fuming mad, at not only
Jake, but at Liddy as well.

And what was Liddy doing? She was suddenly in tears,
too. Because not only was she minus one perfectly wonderful man who’d suddenly
turned on her, and she was supposed to be marrying in less than three weeks:
bridesmaids, groomsmen, and oodles of expensive gifts to open and accept. Thanks
to lowlife Jake Giotti she was now minus a custom made, fifty-thousand-dollar
wedding dress, trapped in the trunk of a stolen car. A dress stuck in a ditch
and smashed against a fucking hickory tree!

And, she was
minus
at least another forty-two thousand dollars, funds already spent on a wedding
that was not going to take place until she could get the laughing baboon’s
signature on a lousy piece of notarized paper.

Oh, and she’d lost her dignity along the way.

Her future? In limbo, clamped firmly in her
sister-in-law’s wretched grip.

And, what looked to be the beginning of a full
confession of her plentiful sins, her sanity had certainly flown the coop. No
one could remain sane through all this.

Liddy killing Jake with her bare hands would’ve been
far too good for the man. He needed to be dealt with in a more appropriate way,
a more painful way. Castration! He was the wretched womanizer and she would enjoy
killing him in any other way available to her.
The bastard!
He was ruining
her life—for a second time. What was she stuck in? The twilight zone? A
ten-year curse cast upon her soul? A curse she would never be able to escape
from, no matter what the distance traveled to avoid this very thing?

The living ghost of Jake Giotti was ruining her life,
and a miserable town was letting him get away with this—again.

Chapter Eight

“You, in there, now!” Debra pointed at the holding
cell, and when Liddy didn’t move, the deputy shoved Liddy into the cell,
locking the door.

“And you!” she barked, setting the right stage to her
fury. “You are to sit right here.” Her beefy finger pointed at a chair.

Jake grudgingly moved toward the wooden chair aside her
desk as Debra quickly walked to the other side of the desk. He sat down,
slumping forward—still hungry, still pissed, and now with a huge problem he’s
not likely to get out of.

“And neither of you is to say another word to the
other. Am I clear on this?” Debra looked from one to the other, picking up a
ringing telephone and just about ripping the caller’s head off. Saying, “No,
Ceril isn’t here. Is he ever here? Oh, yeah, well just call back later when
someone’s here who cares.”

Debra slammed the receiver down, then turned to Jake
and ordered him not to move a single muscle else she would shoot him between
the eyes—with glee.

Jake didn’t dare blink. He lowered his gaze in case of
any involuntary action mistaken as ammunition to that proverbial gun.

Debra then pulled out her chair and sat opposite him.
“Okay. Now explain to me what the hell you were doing in Sparta last night. Why
I got a phone call this morning about a bar fight you were somehow involved in?
And what, in God’s name, am I allowed to do to you, that I can actually get
away with doing? Because, for the love of God, Giotti! I can’t even fathom why it
is you simply refuse to believe anything is ever your fault!”

Jake rubbed his hand over his face and leaned back in
the hard wooden chair, sighing heavily. He was thanking his lucky stars there were
only two other occupants inside the police station who did not know him, locked
in separate cells, but could overhear the confession.

He lowered his voice, mumbling out his answer.

Debra leaned forward, straining to hear him.

When it must have fully registered, she laughed,
adding, “You did what?” Two seconds later she hit the top of her desk with her
beefy hand. “Ain’t this just priceless! Oh my God, Jake. I’ve heard some stupid
shit over the years, but this one tops the cake.”

He trapped Debra’s gaze as the heat crept
exponentially into his cheeks, most likely his face beet red. “And you will not
say a single word about it, Debra,” he warned her.

“Why ever the hell won’t I?” She even snickered. None
too sweetly, just to set him on edge.

“You won’t, because I am politely asking you not to
say a word about it, to anyone.” His tone turned soft and regretful. “Don’t you
think I’ve been through enough already? Do you really need to make this all the
more miserable because of something I can’t change for you?”

Debra simmered down, turned her head toward Liddy, who
was now seated on a hard metal bench inside one of Preacher’s Bend’s holding
cells with her head buried in her hands, and she then sighed.

Debra would have her hands full for weeks to come—if not
those hands full for months because of the foolish actions of
Mrs
.
Giotti. Unless a miracle happened and the charges were dropped against her,
Liddy was looking at a good twenty years behind bars. This would surely make his
two years in the slammer seem like child’s play.

“Yeah, Jake, I guess you have,” she agreed, frowning.

No matter what else Preacher’s Bend thought of Debra, Jake
knew she had a bit of compassion for her fellow man. But usually not his
half-sister sharing any of it with him, and certainly none shared so early on a
Sunday morning.

Jake was paying a huge price for being tardy with his
sibling’s Sunday visit. Now he had to deal with a wife he hadn’t seen in ten
long years. If that wasn’t punishment enough to a man, nothing ever would be.

“I’m not letting you off the hook on your very late
check in, Jake. I can’t. It’s the fourth time in less than two months. I’m a dedicated
police officer, first and foremost. I have to follow the law to the best of my
abilities. If I break the rules for you, then I have to bend those rules for
everyone else who lives in Preacher’s Bend. I won’t write this down on your
permanent record. You don’t need that, any more than you need a hole put in
your head, although it would be fun to put one there. However, by sight alone,
you have to at least sit it out inside a cell, or my ass is grass, and I just
bet Ceril would love getting out his Bossknowsall lawnmower just to cut it down
to size.”

“I know, Debra.”

His half-sister turned her head toward Liddy again,
then back at him. “Do I need to get Doc to come over here and take a look at
you?” she whispered.

Jake shook his head, answering slowly. “No.”

“You sure? You do look a little peaked in the face.”
She giggled under her breath, mocking his shame.

“I’ll be fine, Debra. Maybe some ice?”

Peaked? Shit
!
He felt like he was going to puke on his good shoes at any given moment. The
wave of nausea rising quickly sustained only by a man’s misguided pride to hold
it back.

Debra rose and went to the back room, Jake watching
her grab an ice pack from the tiny freezer he knew she and Ceril used for
storing evidence. She carried the ice pack out to him and handed it over,
tsking him.

Jake held it in his hands, deciding where to put it
first. Head? Guts? Upper arm? All three hurt like a bitch, none more than the
other.

Liddy had moved her gaze up and was now watching his
actions with sudden interest.

“I still have to lock you up,” Debra told him.

“I know.”

“And it still has to be inside there, with her.” The
rest of Debra’s cells held some pretty rough characters inside their walls and
Jake was almost glad she didn’t intend to put him into a cell with another guy.

Sharing a cell with a man who’d been drinking too
much, brawling most of his night away with another man, over likely very
little, was not something Jake deemed as necessary punishment for an hour delay
to his parole check-in. What he needed was his head examined. Not incarcerated
torture.

“I know,” he groaned, closing his eyes.

But trapped inside a holding cell with his missing,
now found wife was the very last place on Earth he wanted to be. Momentarily,
his life sucked.

“And you’ll not kill each other while my back is turned?”
Debra asked.

Jake raised his head, smiling at this. “Not on your
watch, Debra. I’ll only try my hand at killing her when it becomes Ceril’s
watch.” He then crossed his fingers over his heart, promising the deputy more
than he could afford.

If the pain in his arm wasn’t so damn excruciating, he
would’ve liked the offer of enough time allowance to kill Liddy with his bare
hands
before
shoved behind bars. It was all her fault he was hurting as
badly as he was. If not for her, he would have never borrowed Theodora’s car, driven
down to Sparta late last night, and then tempted fate’s hand by an inevitable
tardy return to Preacher’s Bend.

If not for her, he wouldn’t have tried removing her
name from his upper arm, of which she knew absolutely nothing about.

Jake chickened out at the very last second, then made
up for his lack of courage by drinking away the next two hours of his life
inside a dirt bar filled with lowlife bikers.

There’d been a time, way back when, when he would have
easily fit in with the rowdy crowd. Low rider, leather, bad attitude, and
equally bad temper had been his mottos. But not anymore. He was a changed man.

Yet, even changed men did stupid things now and again.

Shit! If not for Liddy, he wouldn’t have tried to hook
up with the wrong woman inside that very same bar late last night, just to
forget the last ten years of his existence. Nor would he have come face to face
with the woman’s slightly angered husband ten minutes later and a very large
fist to his gut.

Jake no longer fought back when punched in the gut. It
wasn’t worth another trip to the county jail, another mug shot, or another
explanation and recorded detail of his personal life in a police data base.

Hell! If not for Liddy Humphrey-Giotti, her
husband
would be a very happy man right about now. Jake would be at home. He would be
with his bees. He would be taking care of Theodora’s ripening peach trees. The
fruit so damn close to perfection, he could swear he smelled them even inside
the police station.

He most assuredly would have his sanity intact . . .

So, if Debra did not kill him with confusing kindness,
or he died of suffocation while locked inside a tiny holding cell with Liddy
sucking up all the air, Theodora was likely to come after him and just plain
finish him off. Jake’s maintaining of happy bees was all the old woman lived
for. And it was what he was being paid a lot of good money for. What he was
supposed
to be doing at this very moment.

He decided to put the ice pack where it hurt the most,
directly on his wounded heart. Both women looked at him curiously, as a deep
groan inadvertently slipped out of his throat.

Oh, yeah? Well, karma was a real bitch.

****

As Debra shut the large grated door and clicked the
lock, Liddy could see Jake’s world come crashing to a sudden halt by the frown
on his face. She raised her sight to his, nothing else. Her anger was at an all-time
high.

She watched with interest Jake clutch an ice pack to
his arm as if it had become an actual life raft that could save him on this
sinking ship.

Unfortunately, Liddy felt Jake’s boat had sunk to the
bottom of the deep long before now. Any such life raft was not going to save
him from harm. Her first balled near her thighs, her nails biting into the
flesh of her palms, convinced of this.

“Don’t either of you do anything stupid in there. You
got that?” Debra warned.

Liddy turned her head the other away. Jake took a seat
opposite her on one of the low metal benches; one on the farthest side of their
shared cell.

What? Too chicken to sit next to her?

“I have to go and check on what Ceril has been up to.
I don’t want to come back here to find this place covered in blood. I don’t
like blood. My desire to clean any of it up is right up there with liking
either of you. And I don’t want to have to say this again. Is this understood?”

Debra moved from the bars and left them be. “And you
two—” she warned harshly to the other two occupants of the police station, “—are
to be released just as soon as I get back. I sure as hell don’t want to see
either of you for the rest of this week. Even for the rest of my life, if I lucky
enough to get this wish.” She rolled her eyes as they nodded in unison. Perhaps
the first thing they’d agreed upon since being locked up.

The men had been placed only four feet apart; neither
man capable of reaching the other through the steel bars. This looked to be exactly
how Debra had planned it. She now had Jake and Liddy to deal with. Too many
criminals and the deputy’s brain might be taxed.

She grabbed her hat, her gun, her badge, and started
heading for the door.

“Hey! What about us?” Liddy blurted, moving quickly to
the bars while watching her sister-in-law getting ready to leave.

“What about you?” Debra slammed her hat on her head. She’d
holstered her gun.

“You can’t just leave us in here!”

“Wanna bet?”

“This is not legal, Debra, and you know it.”

“Legal? Says who?” Debra’s questions came back to Liddy
as a near growl.

“Says . . .” Liddy paused. She had to give it some real
thought. Debra had her over a barrel. She was supposedly wanted for Grand Theft
Auto. Jake still hated her. The whole of Preacher’s Bend wanted her gone.

“Says me. You have to charge me with something. You
can’t just lock me up like this. I have my rights! There are laws against the
use of improper restraint.”

She’d been quiet while seated inside the cell and all
by herself. But the very minute Jake got pushed inside it, she figured remaining
mute was literally for the birds. She had an awful lot to say. By the looked of
things, very little time in which to say any of them. Debra was about to leave she
and Jake alone—together.  Not good.

Jesus! Not good at all!

Liddy could barely breathe, let alone contemplate the
idea of being left inside a holding cell with this man.

Debra merely laughed at her face. “Rights?”

“Yes, Debra. Rights.”

Liddy watched the deputy place her hands on her hips,
and then glare. She knew any glare was only because Debra hadn’t seen her in
over ten years. They’d never gotten along back then, and the dislike was coming
back at full tilt.

“Mrs. Giotti, you have about as many rights as that
husband of yours. He’s sitting in there because his parole appointment was,
shall we say, slightly delayed on the account of you just showing up here unannounced.
He gets to sit it out for seventy-two hours, thanks to this lofty legal system
you deem as grand.” Her sneer matched the fury in her eyes. “You, on the other
hand, get to stay inside there until Mr. Wells either drops the charges against
you or you get a court date set, whichever comes first.”