The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (17 page)

“Dang it!” She snapped her fingers. “I could have gotten away with just talking.”

“Not
just
talking.” He nodded his head toward the lights and the karaoke machine by the brick wall. “I kind of hoped the night might involve some singing, too.”

“I saw that when I came in and wondered what you’d gotten up to all alone in this gutted place.”

“Think I was setting a trap for the ghost of Elvis?”

“Hmmm. No, maybe more like practicing your act so you could take it on the road.”

On the road. That was how she saw him. How she would always see him. A man on the move, always with an eye on the clock and mindful of never overstaying his welcome. It was not an unfair characterization. He was not going to stay in Hellon.

The bed creaked as he maneuvered around to sit beside her. “Truth is, I heard a rumor about you.”

“Only
one
?”

“Only one that mattered to me.” He laid his head against hers and angled his face so he could whisper in her ear. “I heard from a reliable source—well, a source—that you have an incredible singing voice. I’d love to hear it for myself.”

“I couldn’t.” She gnawed at her thumbnail.

“Of course you can. I have it all set up.”

“I’m not warmed up.”

“After what we did? I’d think cooling down would be the issue.”

“Vocally.”

“How long would it take to get warmed up?”

Her gaze shifted to the stage. She wet her lips. She looked down. “I…I’m not dressed for it.”

“Okay. I got it. You’re making excuses.” He had no right to feel as bad as he did at her refusal. “You don’t want to sing for me.”

“I don’t want to sing
for
anyone, Will.”

“You sang for Pernel.”

“I sang, and Pernel heard me. Seventeen years under the same roof he was bound to overhear me now and again. Lullabies and the occasional return engagement to the World-famous Shower a Go-go.”

“Hey, I could be persuaded to share a shower with you.” Though it galled him to the pit of his gut to think that any other man ever had or would do the same. “If that’s what it takes to hear you sing.”

“Not a bad idea.” She pursed her lips. “Except that—dang—wouldn’t you know it? We don’t have any water here tonight.”

“Who needs water?”

“For a shower? I do.”

“For singing. C’mon, Rita. There are people who have heard you sing. I know it.”

“Okay, I confess, I will sing in front of Pernel. Him and Lacey Marie. Because I know they won’t ever think I’m foolish.”

He ran the back of his hand along her cheek. “I won’t ever think you’re foolish, Rita.”

“Really?”

“I promise.”

“I sing a short solo in the church choir every Christmas and Easter. Maybe you could come around and hear me then. If you’re not afraid that your presence would shake the walls to their very foundations.”

“I’m not afraid.” He kept his face close to hers.

“No?”

“It’s not the kind of thing I usually discuss in such a casual state.” He made a show of checking that both of them had all the right parts covered by the shared sheet, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But it so happens I attend church regularly in Memphis.”

“You do?”

“I’m not Wild Billy West anymore, Rita. I haven’t been…” He looked at his hands. He bowed his head and rubbed the pad of his thumb above the bridge of his nose. “I never was. I
never
was. I did some crazy shit. Hell, yes, all us boys on the team did. But everyone had their eyes on me, so I got the nickname. I hated that nickname.”

“But all this time you said you didn’t care about gossip or what people said.”

“I don’t. I didn’t. But it’s the name…
Wild
Billy.” He clenched his fist. “Wild like I didn’t belong to anyone, like I was some kind of mutt they took in and had to tame to make acceptable.”

“As I recall all the girls thought it was a very sexy nickname.”

“Not for a pretender to the throne of the oldest family in Hellon.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Not for a bastard boy expected to play the part of the only son, the only hope to carry on his father’s name.”

“What are you saying, Will?”

“Don’t think worse of my mama.” He laid it down like a command, not a plea. He would not beg for anyone to show respect to the woman who had earned more than her share of it over her lifetime.

“I don’t think anything, better or worse, Will. I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying…” When had this gotten to be about him and his lame-ass problems? Tonight was about Rita. He turned to her and his heart just felt lighter again. “I’m saying I want you to sing to me, Rita.”

She never could have planned that the way she tipped her head then sent the moonlight spilling over her cheeks. Or that her parted lips made him ache to draw her to him again.

He put his hands on either side of her neck like he could capture that look, that feeling, that mo
ment forever. “You said we’d just think about this night. If it’s all we have, let’s not waste it. Sing for me, Rita. Please?”

And she did.

They lay in the bed looking into each other’s eyes and she crooned a languid, bluesy ballad just for him. He did not hear every word but somehow every note and nuance penetrated his being. When Rita sang, it was like she was inside of him and it felt…like home.

If that thought had wormed its way into his consciousness with any other women, he’d have been gone before the last note stopped vibrating in the air. With Rita? He was safe, wasn’t he? She would not twist his deepest hurts or fears to manipulate him. She would not make demands he could never fulfill.

“Wonderful.” He swept back her hair as she ended the serenade.

“Going to ask for an encore?”

“Sing as much as you like. I could listen to you all night.”

“Okay, but I wasn’t talking about singing.” She slicked the tip of her tongue over her lower lip.

“All right.” He rose up on his elbow to coax her onto her back beneath him. “But this time, I’m in charge of the frosting.”

The world had not caved in. She had acted carelessly, recklessly, joyfully with her heart, and the world had not come screeching to a halt. As far as Rita could tell, giving in to the whirlwind choice to go for that once-in-a-lifetime event—twice—had not left everything she cared about in a shambles.

For only a second, not even a full second, she thought of how her mother must have felt the day after the tornado.
Freedom.
Awesome, overwhelming, elation-inducing and terrifying all at once freedom, that’s what good old Tammy must have known.

For the first time ever Rita understood. Judgment fell away. She even managed a pang of sympathy for Tammy Butcher Stark waking up one day having faced her fears and survived. To real
ize she could keep right on surviving and facing anything that came her way.

“Wow,” she whispered. That morning Rita had had a taste of that power, that wonder, that hopefulness that had moved her mother to action at last. It humbled her as much as it gave her strength.

But she was not her mama. People said Rita had her mother’s blood, and so she must have her mother’s courage and spirit. She had fought against any comparison or tendency, fearing that if she ever acted like her mother in one way, she might do it in others. She might have it in her to walk away not just from the hard, ugly parts of her life, but from the good ones as well.

After all this time she felt the deep, yearning, lonely ache of wishing her mother would just come to her again. That she hadn’t forgotten to include Rita when she fashioned herself a bold new life. No, Rita could never be like a woman who would do that to a child, even a grown child. If she were a clever girl, maybe, she could find a way to draw on her mother’s strengths without succumbing to her shortcomings. But what if she failed? The people that meant the world to Rita would pay the price.

She had taken her wild ride and come out no worse for wear. That was enough. She had no intention of uprooting her comfortable existence or abandoning any relationships—save one.

“Mmeenda,” Will mumbled, rolling his head to one side.

She sat up in bed and gently worked enough of the sheet out from under him to cover herself. She looked down at the man sprawled out in the most contented sleep she’d ever had the occasion to observe in another human. She feathered her fingers through the black waves of hair tumbling against his temple.

He rolled onto his side, mumbling again, and his lips curved into just a hint of a smile.

She thought of rousing him from his sleep, but on the very real chance that would actually
rouse
him, she decided against it. In less than an hour the work crew would arrive, and while finding her and Wild Billy in bed together would provide more of a jolt than strong-brewed coffee, she opted not to risk it.

The sheet rustled as she eased toward the edge of the bed. From the corner of her eye she caught the flicker of a light. Seeing the stage he had set up for her so he could hear her sing gave her a warmth that stretched way down to her toes.

What a decent guy. More decent than most folks, including himself, gave him credit for being. That decency had brought out things in her she had long forgotten she possessed. And he had helped her see that she did not have to hold the world together all by herself, that she could let go a little sometimes, and life would go on.

Shutting her eyes, she memorized the smell of his hair, the weight of his body on one side of the bed, the sound of his breathing. He would go, and she’d probably rarely, if ever, see him again.
Her memories were all she would have left, so she wanted to get them right down to the smallest detail. She leaned down to place the softest possible kiss on his head. “Thank you.”

“Hmmm,” he shifted toward her.

She opened her eyes, slid from the bed, kissed her fingertips, and touched them to his cheek. “Thank you, for being my tornado, Wild Billy.”

And she was gone.

Wild Billy
. Even in his sleep the name struck a raw nerve. His shoulders knotted. His back teeth ground together. He turned his face toward the lump of a pillow to keep from letting the hated specter pull him from a truly wonderful dream. A dream that only built upon an already amazing reality the night before.

The thought of Rita banished all tension. He groaned, a feral, lusty sound made bigger by the bareness of the room, and reached for her. His fingers grasped only rumpled sheets.

“Rita?” He sat up, rubbing his eyes.

No answer.

“Rita, you in the kitchen?” He took a deep breath, sure he’d catch a whiff of coffee just beginning to brew. His nose twitched to fight off a sneeze from the smell of dust and dankness churned up in yesterday’s work.

He was alone. He studied the sparse string of lights sagging against the nicked brick wall. Alone in a place where he had expected at least companionship.

The bed creaked as he shifted his body slowly
to face the dirty window with the first light of day breaking in. Pink-and-orange clouds streaked across the gray sky. Will exhaled and put his head in his hands.

Rita had come to him, and now she had left him. She had learned well this business of not getting too attached, of not hanging on to anything long enough to let it become important, much less cherished.

“You there?” He would have cherished one last morning waking up next to her. “Rita?”

For that reason he should be glad she’d gone. But sitting there with the cool sheets pooled in his lap and the harsh light of day creeping slowly into his consciousness, he was not glad. Was this, he wondered, how women felt after a night of no-future-in-this sex with him?

No. To feel as empty as he did right then the women he had bedded would first have to have had the fulfillment he experienced with Rita. He would have had to have created a place in their lives for his going to leave a void. He never allowed any of them close enough really to care about him. And he had never let himself care deeply enough about them to make their partings anything more than a fond good-bye. Only two women had ever left a hole in his heart—the one who had betrayed him and Rita, who had befriended him.

Friendship was at the root of this emotion. He liked and admired Rita. If letting go of that didn’t come harder to him, then he really was beyond all
hope. He had passed beyond the precious redemption his sister had promised he’d find in the Pig Rib Palace. He put his feet to the icy floor. He looked around and huffed out a dismal laugh.

He had not found there what he needed most to move his life forward, but maybe somewhere along the way, Rita had. That gave him more satisfaction than anything he’d done in a very long time.

“Mom? I tried to reach you all day yesterday! When I couldn’t get you I called Daddy, and he didn’t answer, either. What’s going on? Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story, honey.” Rita tried to hold the impossibly small cell phone she’d borrowed from Jillie against her shoulder. “That’s why I called you.”

“Are you at home now?”

“No, I’m in the basement of the Baptist church.”

“Oh? That does sound like a long story.”

The cell phone slipped, and she had only her chin to grab it. She let out a curse.

“You sure you’re in the Baptist church?”

“It’s this stupid phone. I borrowed the thing to keep from tying up the church phone if I needed anything. Jillie insists everyone needs one as a matter of personal convenience.” Rita found it anything but convenient as she tried to talk and stir corn-bread batter at the same time.

“Mom? You’re scaring me. Why are you cussing on a cell in the basement of the Baptist church?”

“I’m not cussing in the basement. I’m cooking. Making up a lunch for the folks working over at the Palace.”

“Cooking? For the people working at the Palace? Has the food gotten so bad that even the staff won’t eat it?”

“One thing you could say for the people your daddy hired for his place. They were not stupid, nor did they have a death wish.” All of Pernel’s employees had been bright enough to find new jobs weeks before Rita even knew her ex was fixing to abdicate his pig rib throneship “The cook and waitresses brown-bagged it for a year or so until they shamed your daddy into putting in that new kitchen.”

“Don’t be silly, Mom. Daddy didn’t change the kitchen for the staff.”

“Well, he certainly didn’t do it for the customers.” She mashed a lump of corn-bread batter against the side of the big stainless-steel bowl on the table before her. “I don’t think a one of them noticed they no longer had to skim a layer of grease off the barbeque sauce or that their onion rings actually took on the almost perceptible taste of onions.”

“Mama, what does the world look like from where you are?”

“What, honey?”

“Is it all rose-colored and rainbows, happy bunnies hopping by and, I don’t know, marshmallow toadstools? Or do you sometimes, just
every now and again, catch a glimpse of reality?” The soft-humored tenderness in her baby girl’s tone took the hard edge off the sarcasm.

“Lacey Marie…”

“Daddy redoing that kitchen was just his first step toward redoing himself.”

“Was it?” Of course it was. How stupid of her not to have seen it then—not to understand it until someone shoved it in her face.

“And it didn’t hurt that the new kitchen set you in good stead for taking over if it came to that. Didn’t you see that? Can’t you see it now?”

“Well,
now
, yes. Now that you spell it out for me more than two years after the fact.” Rita put her hand to the phone to hold it in place. “But then I’ve never been especially good at seeing things that I don’t want to see.”

“Oh, Mom.”

“I know. I’m such a mess.”

“You’re anything but a mess, and you know it.”

“Really? You think so?”

“I know so. That’s the problem.” She sighed.

Rita could imagine the expert level of eye-rolling going on at the other end of the conversation.

“Everything in your life has to stay just so, Mom. You don’t take chances. You never step out of line.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rita gripped the edge of the mixing bowl. Corn-bread batter sloshed up onto her fingers. She’d
have cussed if she didn’t have her child on the other end. “That is to say, I’m not as predictable as you think I am.”

“Oh, yeah? So you say you’ve got people working at the Palace? Let me guess. A cleaning crew so you can reopen the dump?”

“We happen to be remodeling.” So there, she might have added if her tone hadn’t made that point on its own.

“Remodeling? Isn’t that like trying to make a silk purse out of a pig-rib eatery?”

“Not
just
remodeling.”

“Oh?”

“Replacing old things that need to go, too.”

“And?”

“Refitting. Refining.”

“And?”

And rendezvousing with my lover—nyah nyah
. If Jillie or Cozie had been on the line, she just might have said it. She adored her daughter more than she could possibly describe. But no other person on earth could make her feel like such a mousy old stick in the mud as that smart, gorgeous child. It was a mother/daughter thing that Rita prayed they would someday both grow out of, but for now…

“Listen to yourself, Mom. Remodeling? Refitting? How is that new and challenging?”

She stammered but that hardly qualified as an answer.

“I’ll tell you how—it’s not. It’s exactly what everyone expects you to do.”

“Not
exactly
what everyone expects.”
Especially the taking Wild Billy as a lover part.

“And when the remodeling is finished, what then?”

Then Will would leave, and her nights would take on a haunting stillness deeper than she had ever known before. “Then this will be a whole new restaurant.”

“New how? New menu?”

“Oh…no…no, honey.” Rita tipped her head to hold the phone in place again as she lifted the bowl and began pouring the batter into the first of three cast-iron skillets. “It wouldn’t be smart to start monkeying around with the menu just now.”

“A new name then?”

“A new name…yes, eventually. Perhaps. When there’s enough money to pay for new signs and advertising and all that.”

“Then nothing will actually be new about the place but the furnishings?”

“No. No, not really.” She chewed at her lower lip, trying to come up with some silver lining to the dark cloud her daughter had unleashed. Finally, she forced out the best thing she could, “But there will be a new owner.”

“You’re selling? Oh, Mom, that’s so…”

“
I’ll
be the new owner!” She set the bowl aside, then lifted one of the skillets an inch off the counter and let it drop.

“That you pounding your head against a brick wall?”

“I’m getting the air bubbles out of the corn bread.”

“I wish it were that easy to get the air bubbles out of your thinking, Mom.”

“My thinking is sound as ever.”

“Of course it is. Everything about you is as sound and as near to totally unchanged as ever. And where has that gotten you?”

She dropped the second skillet with a deadweight
clunk
.

“You could do so much, Mom. You could go to college.”

“College? At my age?”

“Are you kidding? Something like half of all college students are nontraditional these days.”

“That let’s me out. I’m about as traditional as they get.”

Lacey giggled. “Oh, Mom, nontraditional is PC-speak for
old.
”

“I’m not
old
either.”

“You love to learn, and you know it.” She said it the way you’d talk to a kitten while dangling a catnip-filled toy in front of it. “You could move to Memphis and…”

Memphis? Where Will lived? Where nobody else knew her and she’d have to start over from nothing? The thought of it took her very breath away. “I can’t, baby. Not Memphis.”

“Why not?”

For starters because she’d look a big-ass fool, like she’d trotted off after a man whose main goal in life was to keep his distance. “I think for
now I should just work on making things better here.”