The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (20 page)

“Because you like the attention and the status it brings you.”

“Well, there is that.” Her fingers flitted lovingly over each piece of her cherished silver service. “But I also do it for your sister.”

“For Jillie?” He started to reach for his cup again, just to keep his hands occupied. “How does that help her?”

“It helps because I can’t seem to be consistently emotionally supportive of her.”

His hand froze halfway to the cup handle.

“I said it.” She nodded as if lending a steely-eyed reassurance that he had not heard wrong. “I know you and half the town have thought it. Now I’ve said it, and we all know it’s true. I’m not the kind of mother your sister has most needed. That’s why I try to keep people in our lives who can set a better example.”

“Example?” He dropped his hand to his leg again. “Like Pernel?”

“The man who spit in the eye of local convention and the entire Hellon social structure? You can damn well bet I like his influence on your sister.”

“Why are you talking to me like this, Mama?”

“How am I talking?”

“Honestly.”

“It’s probably my frailties acting up.” She fanned herself and coughed none too convincingly.

“You’re fine, and we both know it. Just like we both know that I came here for Rita’s and Jillie’s sakes, not because I’m bowing to your royal command and phony illness.”

She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Maybe I am fine now, but I won’t always be, you know. I simply wanted to know that you would come should I sincerely need you.”

“What a treacherous ploy to use on your own son, Mama. Treacherous and mean-spirited.”

“I never intended…” Her eyes became suddenly bright with the threat of tears. “How so?”

“Testing me. Insulting enough on its own, but using a means that would serve as a reminder of how I failed the baby and so close to the anniversary of his death…”

“Oh, Will. Darling, no!” Her hand went to her throat, then to cover her mouth, when she finally closed her fingers over her small cameo necklace,
they were trembling. “No, I never thought of that. Oh, sweetheart, can you forgive me?”

Forgive her? She’d asked it so many times of him over everything from forgetting to pick him up after ball practice to speaking unkindly of the baby’s mother. Not once had it altered her behavior or soothed his aching heart. This time, though, felt different. “You mean that, don’t you? You really do see the hurt your antics caused.”

“I always see it, William.” She lowered her head. Her narrow shoulders rose and fell in a sigh almost as big as she was. “I may not often admit it, but I never lose sight of what a truly flawed individual I am.”

It was not the kind of thing that Margaret—“Call me Peggy, just like Margaret Mitchell”—Curtis Morgan West would admit just to gain a dollop of sympathy. She’d have marched into hell with her lips sealed and her head high rather than say a thing like that if she didn’t mean it with her whole heart.

He moved from the chair to kneel at her side. He covered her hand with his. “Aw, Mama, you’re too hard on yourself.”

“I’m too hard on everyone, darling.” She laid her forehead against his and worked up a watery smile. “Too hard, too much, and too dang old to change my ways now.”

“You’re not
that
old. You could change if you wanted to, at least a little bit.”

“I might give you the same advice.”

“Me? Why would I have to change? I’m perfect, remember? Wild Billy West? Local legend?”

“You aren’t any more that than I am what this town has me pegged as—the poor pitiful mother of two wayward, ungrateful children.”

He took both her hands in his, chuckling.

“I have not been an ideal parent, Will. Some people aren’t. But I did the best I could. Some people aren’t cut out to be parents, I suppose, but in my day it was simply expected.”

“Since when have you done what’s simply expected?”

“I didn’t. That’s why I became a mother a scant six months after marrying your father.” She looked heavenward as if asking forgiveness.

Will looked up, too, but only noticed that the ceiling needed painting. “If you knew you didn’t have the temperament for parenting, why have Jillie?”

She pressed her lips together.

He pushed up from where he knelt and walked across the room to the fireplace. “Oh, wait I know this one—because you thought Father deserved to have his
own
child, one with his blood to make up for having to raise some other man’s bastard.”

“Your father loved you.”

“And some days that makes me feel worse, Mama, not better.”

“Then that’s your choice.”

“My
choice
?”

“Will, you are adult enough to understand that feelings are often as much about choices as ac
tions are. When you think of the baby, do you care for him less today because he wasn’t your blood? Or do you choose to remember him with the same abiding love any father would have for his son?”

Will spread his open hands across the mantel and clenched his jaw.

“William?”

He knocked the toe of his boot against the heavy black andiron. “When did you turn into the tribal wisewoman, Mama?”

“Since I already had a pair of wiseass children, it just wasn’t much of a leap.”

“You are a card, I tell you.” He chuckled and stood straight. “I don’t suppose telling Rita to be more careless with her heart was your handiwork, was it?”

“What did she tell you about that?”

“Passing reference.” He shrugged.

“That girl.” She clasped her hands in her lap and shook her head.

“Don’t start on Rita, Mama. I won’t abide it.”

“I wasn’t about to start on anyone, unless it would be to chide myself again.”

“You?”

“I said a lot of things to the girls that I hoped would resonate with them, encourage them to realize what wonderful young women they are.” Her chair creaked as she sat back in it and rolled her head to the side to look out the window. “But in light of Miss Rita not sleeping in her guest bed last night, I don’t think I made myself very clear.”

“I thought we were through playing games.” He moved from the mantel to block the light streaming in from the long, narrow window. “I don’t need your high drama or the lecture on morals. And I won’t warn you again I won’t stomach your faulting Rita for anything.”

“I’m saying it’s me. My fault, not Rita’s.” She picked up her napkin, set it down, reached for her teacup, but hesitated and placed her hand to her temple instead. “Perhaps
carefree. Carefree
with her heart, not careless. That would have been a better way to phrase it. Careless is so…I did warn her not to be careless with her body. I should have added not to be too careless with her future as well.”

“I’m not having a discussion about mine and Rita’s personal business, but if it eases your mind any, we were not…careless.”

“Oh, grow up, Will.” She snapped her fingers. “I am not talking about birth control here, I am talking about Rita taking control of her future.”

What a day of surprises. He and his mother both concerned about the same thing for Rita. Of course, they did have one fairly drastic difference of opinion. “Are you saying I’m bad for Rita?”

“Can you tell me you’re not?”

He parted the sheers with one hand and stared out into the courtyard without focusing on any one feature.

“I thought you had matured enough to see that not everything is about you, son.”

“Not everything, but this is…”

“I worry for Rita. I worry that she sold herself short.”

“By coming to me last night?”

“By settling for sex when she could have had love.”

He dug his fingers into the back of his neck and groaned softly. “Suddenly all this honesty and motherly wisdom is giving me a headache.”

“That’s not the kind of carelessness I would ever encourage, most especially in a remarkable woman like Rita.”

“She is remarkable, isn’t she?”

“You just now noticing?”

“No.”

“Then why the hell are you here arguing with a woman you are never going to get the best of when you could be in Memphis with her?”

“You just said—”

“I said she shouldn’t sell herself short. She shouldn’t have settled for an affair when she has enough love to give for a lifetime.”

Let’s see, he had spent a lot of years misjudging his mother and battling with his baby sister. Now he realized that the one person he had come to help—his big shot at redemption and finally getting to be a real hero—he had, in fact, treated her like a dog. She had a lifetime full of love to offer, and he had convinced her that giving of herself for more than the moment was a waste of time.

“You’re right, Mama.”

“Of course I’m right, and I might give you the same advice.”

“Me? Advice?”

“It pains me to inform you of this, son, but you are not so perfect you could not benefit from a whomp upside the head. Why are you enduring a rootless existence filled with people who barter and trade their friendship for your goodwill but who don’t love you?”

“I’d rather those hairy, tool belts pulling their pants down below the equator contractors and suppliers that I work with keep things platonic, Mama, if you don’t mind.” He gave her his most disarming smile.

Her gaze did not lighten one iota. “I’d rather you had people in your life besides just the ones you work with.”

“But love, Mama?” He shook his head.
Love?
No. He would never say it to his mother, but he was too damn selfish for that emotion. Hadn’t he proven that already with his child? Hadn’t he proven it again with Rita? “Remember when I told you Rita spoke the truth to me about the baby?”

“Yes.”

“She called me an ‘immature, irresponsible, self-loving donkey-headed bastard.’”

“Isn’t that amazing?’

“What?”

“That she could know you so well and still love you so much?”

“Rita does not love me.”

“Maybe you don’t know she does yet. Hell, maybe even she doesn’t know it. But if she didn’t
love you, why would a woman like Rita have been so careless with her heart around a self-loving donkey head like you?”

“Neither of us mentioned love, Mama.”

“So you’re a pair of fools. At least you’ll have that in common to keep things interesting.”

How could one small woman tie him up in knots like this? He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I know where they are staying. I even know where they will be tonight. Jillie called just before you came over to complain to high heaven about it.”

“Don’t tell me Rita is finally asserting herself with Jillie?”

“Maybe you should go see for yourself.”

“I can’t. Somebody needs to stay with poor, sickly Mother.”

She shook her napkin out into her lap. “Oh, I’m all right.”

“I knew it.”

“Don’t gloat, son, it’s rude.” She took one of the chunky cookies, broke it in half, and held it up as if it were the missing piece of evidence in a murder mystery. “Besides, I am never more than a phone call away from mobilizing a network of people that would be the envy of one of those master criminals in those English spy movies.”

He did not know about love, but he did know he wanted to see Rita. Half a day apart, and he already missed her. “Okay, I’ll go.”

“Good.” She raised her chin to encourage a
quick all-purpose good-bye, thank you, and “yes mother” kiss.

He went to her chair, put her cookie aside, and helped her to her feet. Then he wrapped her in the most heartfelt hug he had given her since childhood. “Thank you, Mama.”

“You’re welcome, son.” She hugged him back.

He shut his eyes and smiled, then pulled away and helped her to sit again.

She sniffled. He retrieved her napkin, which had fallen to the floor, and handed her one of the cookie halves, taking one for himself. “If your advice works out, I’ll thank you with a much higher quality of cookies.”

On his way out the door he heard the woman supposedly on death’s door with lingering, debilitating ailments bellow like a construction worker on a noisy site. “To hell with the cookies! If my advice works out—give me grandchildren!”

She had lost her ever-lovin’ mind. That’s the only way she could explain it.

A spattering of strangers gaped at her.

Her head spun. She raised her gaze to counteract the dizzying effect of the flashing light from under the plastic panels of the stage in the hotel lounge. Karaoke music blared behind her.

“She gonna sing or what?” A bald man in a tan-and-black sports coat asked the circle of ladies at his table.

“Shh. She’s working up to it.” The woman next to him slapped his hand. The glitter on her Graceland T-shirt flashed as she moved closer to the candlelight on her table. “Don’t mind him, honey, he’s an old poop. Go on with your song.”

The smell of stale cigarette smoke stung Rita’s
nose. Every eye in the room homed in on her. Despite her brand-new, fit-like-spun-magic-from-a-fairy-godmother red dress, she felt positively naked.

“Go, girl!” Another of the older ladies from the nearby table shouted. A smattering of applause rose to urge Rita on.

“Two, three, four.” Under her breath she counted the beats until the crescendo of the chorus. When the music swelled she could swing into the spirit of things with full force.

“Careful now,” the waitress cautioned a patron as she handed over a frozen margarita.

“Five, six, seven eight.” The chorus came. And went. She bowed her head forward and a strand of her freshly highlighted hair fell across her eyes.

Out in the darkened lounge she heard Jillie whisper, “Do it, Rita.”

The only thing Rita wanted to do was run away. Lacey Marie was right. She couldn’t do this. She was a stick in the mud. She’d never change and she was stupid to try.

The rhythm of the music came up through Rita’s new shoes, but she could not move.

What had she thought? Because she slept with the sexiest man she’d ever met, because a man who could have anyone had wanted her, that made her something special? If she was so special, where was he now?

Her mouth went dry as a desert. Her focus grew bleary. Only her thoughts raced on, keeping
pace with the driving beat of the music and her raging pulse.

Will hadn’t wanted her for the long term. And even though she had always known and accepted that she didn’t need a man to make her complete, damned if she didn’t wish the man she loved was standing there now to give her courage.

Loved? Will? As if her pulse hadn’t gone hay-wire enough already, she had to think of
him
, then go and admit to herself how she really felt! Of course she loved him, but she couldn’t have him. She had always known that.

Still, she had convinced herself she could take her taste of heaven once and be forever satisfied. Now, having acknowledged her love for Will, she wondered how she would ever be satisfied with any man, with her old life, again?

“You okay, sugar?” Tressie Lynn, the waitress who moments ago had jumped on the stage and dubbed herself the “Miss Tress of Ceremonies” for the evening asked from the side of the stage.

Rita blinked at her, trying to recall the instructions Tressie had given earlier.

“Start with something upbeat that everybody recognizes,” she’d suggested. “Set a fun tone for the evening, and that way you won’t have to worry about forgetting the words. People will just get carried along no matter what comes out of your mouth.”

The only thing Rita feared would come out of her mouth right then was her dinner.

“Jump in anytime, honey.” Tressie fiddled with the knobs on the machine. “The words are on the screen if you need them.”

“Thanks, I…” She tapped one finger to her throat and shot her most pathetic puppy-in-distress look at the woman.

“Got a tickle?”

She tapped harder and bugged her eyes out, hoping to convey that she had suddenly lost her voice entirely.

“Who is gonna tickle her?” the bald man wanted to know.

“Not you,” one of the ladies shot back.

“She’s got something stuck in her throat,” another explained.

“Shut up, you old poop,” the Graceland T-shirt lady commanded.

Spontaneous laryngitis
, she wanted to shout out. “I have spontaneous laryngitis!” Instead she improvised a dry, feeble cough. She had not taken into account how the microphone would carry the sound.

“I’ll say she got something stuck in her throat. It’s like a cat with a hairball,” baldy announced before tossing back his drink.

The tour-group ladies hushed and shushed and tsk-tsk-tsked his outburst.

So far in her singing debut she had her very own heckler, had become the object of pity to strangers, and had yet to croon a single note! Stupid, stupid. She wanted to get out of there and back to the safety of her dull, take-no-chances life.

“You poor thing.” The waitress cut the music.

Rita let out a sigh of thanks for her answered prayer and took a step toward the edge of the stage.

“Here, take a drink of this.” The waitress met her with a glass of ice water. “And when you’re ready, I’ll start the song over again. Remember, relax and enjoy yourself.”

Enjoy? She had not come here to enjoy herself. She had come to
prove
herself.

“What she up to now?” the bald man demanded of his table mates.

“Show a little respect,” a maternal voice said.

“Shut up, you old poop.”
Graceland
took his drink away.

As the cold water flooded her mouth and throat, Rita reviewed her predicament. She had come through so much, and this was her graduation ceremony. If she walked off this stage without squeaking out at least a couple songs, she would walk off a failure. She would be looking at the aftermath of the twister that her friends had unleashed on her—that masculine sexual force named Wild Billy West—and choosing to live in the rubble.

“Don’t you dare have put me through everything up till this, then chicken out.” Jillie’s whisper penetrated the fog in her mind.

However, if she stood her ground and poured her heart into the music, she could go back to Hellon a survivor. She would be safe on the other side of the storm, stronger and with something
new to build upon. She put the glass down on the table where Jillie sat at the side of the stage.

Her friend gave her a thumbs-up.

Rita wet her lips and raised the mike in a white-knuckled grip. The opening chords of the perkiest pop tune on the play list vibrated through the plastic panels of the stage floor. She took a deep breath.

The first word came out softer than a baby’s sigh. The next wasn’t quite that audible. She cleared her throat and wheezed out the last phrase of the opening stanza.

“Louder. I can’t hear a damned thing. What is wrong with her anywa—”

“Shut up, you old poop!” the whole crowd chimed in unison.

Shut up. What good advice, Rita couldn’t help thinking. Four beats before the next line. That gave just enough time to make a break for it. She looked both ways, saw the perfect spot to lay the microphone down, fixed her gaze on the doors and…

A hand took her elbow. Jillie stepped up beside her and belted—nothing else described it better though Rita had heard better noises out of an electric-sander belt—out the next line.

“What are you doing?” Rita whispered.

“Helping a friend.”

Her first impulse was to protest. Rita was the solid, dependable one. Rita was the one who stepped up to help. Rita was the one who could be counted upon to hang on and ride out any foolish endeavor on behalf of friendship.

Jillie launched into the chorus with reckless abandon.

This was what Miss Peggy had meant about being careless with your heart. Not hasty and irresponsible, but if the cause is worthwhile, fearlessly throw yourself into the fray even if you knew it could tear you apart.

That’s what Rita had done the first time she confronted Will. And what she had failed to do every time since, when she held back just a little because she did not want him to think of her as stupid. Distance and differences were not what had kept her and Will from pursuing anything more meaningful, caution and self-consciousness were.

That and the fact that he did not love her.

He had been her taste of heaven, not meant to last. And though she felt like hell, she would do what she had come to do and deal with her heartache later.

She took Jillie’s hand and bent forward so they could share the microphone.

The muggy Memphis summer air got under Will’s collar. He yanked his tie loose before he hit the hotel doors. Why he’d gone the suit-and-tie route for this place was beyond him, anyway. Of course he hadn’t done it for any
place
. He’d done it for Rita.

What the hell did he hope to accomplish by showing up, anyway? To announce to Rita that his mama thought they loved each other? If he
couldn’t say it for certain himself, wasn’t it just cruel to show up and…

And what?
he wondered to himself.

Rita had gone to great lengths on more than one occasion to point out his basic flaws. He was selfish and unsettled, the kind of man more available to strangers than to people who cared about him. He thought of all the people in Memphis willing to do him favors, knowing they could count on him in work and socially, but never asking or demanding anything more. He stayed away from Hellon because no one there saw the real man or spoke the hard truth to him, but if he examined his closely crafted life here in Memphis, was it any better?

He looked at the glass door with the starlit parking lot beyond.

“Hey! What are you doing here, big brother?”

His mama would have had his hide if he’d said out loud what he thought just then. Instead he forced his gritted teeth into a big old grin and turned to greet the women he’d come from Hellon to see. Only she wasn’t with his sister. “Where’s Rita?”

“Still back there.” Jillie jerked her thumb over her shoulder, paused then flung her arm out and pointed again.

He stretched out to peer around the corner and down the short corridor.
RIVER REVUE LOUNGE
glared back at him in gold-painted letters on glossy black doors.

“If you came for the performance of a lifetime, you missed your chance.”

“Is Rita done singing already?”

“Once she got started, I couldn’t get her to shut up for nothing. You should see her, Will.”

“Should I?” He asked it of himself more than to get an opinion.

“Well, you will. She’ll be out here in a minute to catch her breath. Between the lights and the stuffiness, you pretty much have to get out for a few minutes before you sing again.”

“Since when did you become an expert on lounge singing?”

“Since tonight.” Jillie had a lightness about her he hadn’t seen in years. “That great performance you missed was me!”

“You? Sang karaoke?”

“And the earth did not open up and swallow me alive! Can you believe it?”

“It’s the age of miracles, truly it is. First Mother gave me what seemed at the time to be sound advice, now this.”

“Mother! That’s why you showed up here tonight?”

“I’m losing my grip on reality, aren’t I?” He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the check-in desk. Tie hanging loose, hair still wet and looking unkempt from his pushing his fingers through it—he looked the part. “It all started when you talked me into working on the Palace.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Jillie started straightening his tie. “Mama and her nutty talk about following your heart is why I’m on my way right now to try to reconcile things with Paul.”

“He finally call you back?”

She nodded. “He admitted he was stupid. I admitted I was stupid.”

“Ahh, a match made in heaven.” He took over adjusting his attire.

“I reckon.” She laughed. “We decided that we were too pathetic to turn loose on other unsuspecting people and ought to be together. Besides, having already seen the worst about each other, we still want to be together.”

“Good for you.” He kissed her forehead. “I mean that.”

“Thanks. I have to run. You going to stick around a while and hear Rita sing?”

“I
was
.”

“Second thoughts?”

“You’re her best friend. What do you think I should do?”

“Do you care about her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love her?”

He clenched his jaw.

“I don’t know, then, Will.” She lifted her shoulders, then eased them down again. “If you want to hear her sing, she’s on the list to do another number. She’s right after Skippy and Daphne, the fun girls of the senior citizens’ Tennessee bus tour, doing their tribute to disco.”

“Hard act to follow.”

“Rita can do it. She can do anything if she gets the right encouragement and lets herself try.”

“I know.” He shut his eyes. “She’s amazing.”

“She’s been through a lot.”

“That a warning?”

“That’s…something to keep in mind.” She smoothed his jacket sleeve, fit her hand into his, and gave it a squeeze. When she moved away, she glanced over her shoulder. “This is a warning—she just came out of the lounge.”

He stiffened, his gut in knots.

“I’m headed that-a-way.” She motioned toward the hotel parking lot. “You?”

“Are you kidding? Wild Billy run from a confrontation?”

“Wild Billy?”
She arched her sketched-in-place eyebrow.

He had said that, hadn’t he? Funny, after the talk with his mother, the nickname no longer wounded him, even if it did still sting a little. “Go see Paul.”

“I know whatever you decide about Rita will be the right thing.”

He gave her a quick hug and sent her on her way wondering if she understood how her faith in him had both humbled him and made him want to beat his head against a brick wall?

With that in his mind and his chest gripped with conflicting emotions, he turned to greet Rita.