The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (8 page)

“…don’t kid yourself…this is about sex.”
Again Cozie’s admonition rang in her head.
Sex.
She ex
haled in a long blast of breath that blew her bangs back off her forehead. How long had it been?

She dunked the plate into the dishwater and scrubbed the surface in hard, swirling motions. What did it matter how long she’d gone without sex? Not like she had much hope of breaking the streak anytime soon, Cozie’s earlier observation notwithstanding. After all, there was nothing to say Will would even be interested.

“Okay, y’all take care.” Will’s warm tone carried into the kitchen. “I won’t. I won’t. I
might
—but don’t expect I’d tell
you
about it.”

The front door fell shut, and the lock ticked into place.

Rita rinsed the last plate without checking to see if she’d actually cleaned it. She sensed as much as heard the muffled footsteps approach. She held her breath, and they stopped.

“Alone at last.”

Alone. With Will. Her stomach lurched like the first time she ever rode the Zippin Pippin at Libertyland over in Memphis. “Where’s Jillie?”

“She took off. Not much for her to do here. She’d only get in the way.”

Three
is
a crowd. Rita thought about saying something like that and wondered if she dared try using the low, sultry tone she heard in her head.

Will stepped fully into the kitchen. “What can I do to help you finish up in there so we can get back to work?”

Quit acting so stupid
. Work, that was his only objective, his only reason for being here at all.
Something in the man needed to perform a good deed, and she was his pitiable project. She wasn’t a carefree young girl on a wooden roller coaster anymore. She was over thirty, overweight, and overdue for a reality check.

“What more do you need to see around here before you make your recommendations?” She pulled the plug. The sink glugged, and the water began to drain. The only way to the other side of this situation was straight through it.

She shook the suds from her hands and tossed the dish towel over the edge of the drainer. She’d go along with Will’s planning sessions, send him on his way, then deal with Pernel and whatever fallout her choices might create. “If you’re almost done poking around, you could just tell me your ideas and we could have you on the road to Memphis in no time.”

“That anxious to get rid of me?”

“No, I—”

“Then come out here a minute. I want to talk to you.”

“About the renovation ideas?”

“Just come here.” He held out his hand.

She looked to the stairway that led to the safety of her apartment. Finally, she dried off the last of the soap and water, then slipped her hand into his.

His palms were rough. She had expected the soft, pampered hands of a man who gave orders and let others do the dirty work. His fingers
closed around hers, and her whole being felt enveloped in safety.

How could such an insignificant gesture do that? More importantly how could she protect against it? A lifetime of yearning for security and never finding it had taught her a thing or two. She had learned the hard way that false security was worse than none at all. And a man like Wild Billy?

His nickname told the tale. Wild, restless, adhering to no one else’s rules and belonging to no one. To put her faith in him was grabbing on to false security with both hands. She must never let herself forget that.

She tugged her fingers free and curled them into a fist against her chest. “Well?”

“Can we sit?” He pulled a chair out for her.

She hesitated.

He brushed the last bit of cake crumbs from the seat and offered it again.

She perched on the edge, one hand braced against the back.

He took the chair next to her, his broad shoulders relaxed, his legs open so that his foot touched the side of her tennis shoe. “So, is it always this…um, interesting around here?”

“Is that what you brought me out here to ask?”

“No. Just trying to lay some groundwork. Trying to understand what you’re up against.”

“Oh, please. Can we skip over the part where you play amateur social worker so you can earn your wings?”

“Wings?”

“Wings, halo, Scout badge, whatever lame thing it is you think you’re getting out of this project you’ve made of me.”

“I thought we were long past that.” He leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs.

She crossed her legs. “If you have something to ask me, Will, ask it outright.”

“Humor me.”

It was not a request. Anyone else came on with that kind of arrogance she’d have humored him right through the roof. She gritted her teeth. “You have eyes. Both times you’ve been here you’ve pretty much seen how it is. Jillie, Cozie, Pernel, folks around town like your mother, there’s always somebody handy with an opinion for me.”

“And?”

“And what? Some try to push me one direction. Some pull me in another. I just try to stay—”

“In the middle.”

Coming out of his mouth it sounded so sad. She bit her lip to keep from saying so out loud.

“Don’t you want more?”

“More? I have just about all I can handle as it is.”

“Don’t you have dreams and hopes? Ambitions? Aspirations beyond living alone above a greasy spoon, working your ass off to make everybody happy but yourself?”

She laughed. “Working my ass off? Anyone with eyes knows that’s not happening.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Run yourself down like that. I think you have a damn fine ass.”

“And so much of it, too.”

“You are a very attractive woman, Rita.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Me? Patronize anybody?” He laughed. A wonderful, throw-your-head-back-and-cut-loose laugh that startled her at first, then made her join in. “Did you totally forget who you were talking to?”

“Oh, don’t play that game with me. I know you are not the unredeemable jerk you want everyone to think you are.”

“How can you know that, Rita?”

She started to tell him exactly why, but somewhere between the thought and her open mouth the old fears welled up. It had been a full enough day without making a complete fool of herself in front of this man. She exhaled hard and shook back her hair. “Because.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s the kind of multifaceted million-dollar answer I was looking for.”

“Does that mean the question-and-answer period of the afternoon is over?”

He shrugged. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”

“What? What was a stupid idea?”

“I thought…well, if it’s always like this around here, I thought that my coming around for just a day or two probably only added to your headaches.”

“You had to put me through all this to come to
the same conclusion I came to the day you first suggested getting involved?”

“What can I say? I’m a thickheaded bastard.”

“I never said—”

“If you knew it would only make your life more crazy, why did you agree to take my help?”

“You asked. You said you needed to do it.”

“But still…”

She wet her lips and when she spoke, it came out in a heartfelt whisper. “Because of what I saw when you took your sunglasses off that day.”

He suddenly seemed fascinated by his hands in his lap. “What? Bloodshot from too much tequila the night before?”

“No.”

He looked up, his expression weary and his heart in his eyes.

“That.” She smiled, just barely.

“What?”

“That somewhere underneath all the bravado of Wild Billy West is a decent man who wants something different for his life.”

“I never said that.”

“You had the gall to talk to me about
my
hopes and dreams. Assuming, I guess, that a plain, plump girl like me would have plain, puny dreams.”

He dragged one bent knuckle along his lower lip.

“What did you think, Will?” Her voice came out more steady than she felt. “That you could come here for a day, flirt with me a little? Make me feel better about myself? Then show me how
to fix up this dive and go on your way hoping the effort moved you closer to realizing your own dreams?”

“You don’t know my dreams.”

“I’ll bet they’re the same dreams everyone else has, Will.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

She’d never learn, would she? This man tapped something inside her that she could not fully control. It scared her. And yet, she felt perfectly safe going on. “We all share some of the same hopes, you know. Whether we are handsome small-town heroes, successful big-city businessmen, or the girl who lives over the Pig Rib Palace with her books and music to keep her company.”

“If you know my hopes, Rita, I wish you’d tell them to me.”

“You want for your life to have meaning.”

He nodded.

“You want someone to miss you when you’re away and mourn you when you’ve passed on.”

His gaze fell to the floor for only a moment, then he looked to her again. “Go on.”

“You want to be really good at something, to hear praise for your work and know it’s earned.”

He huffed out the sort of hard laugh that told her that one had really hit the mark.

“You want…” She held her breath. She’d probably regret this just as she had regretted the last time she’d dared to tell this man the whole unvarnished truth about himself. That did not stop her. “You want to be loved.”

He bent his knees, putting his feet flat. His jaw tightened, and he dipped his chin just enough to really drive his dark gaze home. “You still don’t pull any punches, do you?”

She raised her chin. “Am I off base?”

“More like out of line.”

“Me?” She smiled her best innocent smile. “The girl who always keeps things in the middle?”

He smiled back. “Just goes to prove that you have what it takes to fly in the face of other people’s expectations.”

“It proves I’m foolish enough to spit into the wind.”

“I can’t walk away until I know you can do either one of those things, or both, but that you do them because you want to, not because it’s the path of least resistance.”

“Then grab those walking papers, pal, because this lady of quality won’t spit anywhere.”

“What about flying in the face of expectations?”

“I’m afraid to fly.”

“You’re afraid of too damn many things, Rita.”

“Right now I’m afraid this conversation is over.”

“You can stop talking to me, but that won’t change things.”

“What things?”

“That I can’t leave until I know you won’t let the people you care about pout, cajole, bully, or bad-mouth you into not going after your…not-so-plain dreams.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I have a debt to pay.”

Payback. Yes, it certainly felt like that was the principle at work. “What exactly are you saying, Will?”

“That I’m staying in town until we get these renovations under way and you have the foundation to move on with your life, wherever you want it to go, whatever you want to do with it.”

“Staying? At your mothers’?”

“I’m willing to make some sacrifice for all this, darling, but not
human
sacrifice.” He pushed away from the table and took a long, steady look around the room. “How ’bout I bring in a rollaway and bunk in the restaurant?”

“How ’bout I put a red light outside and open this up as Fat Rita’s Pleasure Palace?”

“If you don’t mind the gossip it would stir up, I sure don’t.”

“I don’t give a flying fig about gossip.”

“But you said…”

“I said I didn’t want the talk to start around town.”

“What
talk
?”

“Where all the people who have watched over and wagged their tongues about me for all these years start spreading the word that Rita has finally started acting like her mama.” She put her hand to her temple and shut her eyes. “I would rather not give them the satisfaction, if you don’t mind.”

“Then, if I promise to park in the church lot and come through the back door under cover of darkness, will you let me stay here?”

She could see how that could work. She still didn’t fully understand why he would want to go to such lengths on her behalf. But if he could do it without anyone knowing…

Of course
she’d
know. Will, sleeping under her roof. She’d know down to the very deepest fiber of her being. She could feel the sweet tension winding tighter and tighter in her even now. But she would never try to act on those feelings.

Cozette was wrong. This was not about sex. And Will was wrong. It was not about flying in the face of anyone’s expectations or standing up to people who meddled in her life. This was about showing herself she was not her mother. In a situation like this, in any situation that came along after that damned tornado, Tammy Stark wouldn’t have given a rip what the other person wanted or needed, would she?

Well, Rita did not go any way the wind carried her, and she would never abandon the people she cared about on a whim. Will had come to help her out of that personal sense of honor of his. Nothing more. There was no reason for him not to stay here if that’s what he needed to do.

“You can come and go without anyone seeing you?”

He grinned.

She felt his satisfaction down to the pit of her stomach. She folded her arms.
But this was not about sex.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to spend a single night in Hellon.”

“But I won’t be.” He stood.

She tipped her head back and wet her lips.
This was about her acting as the Anti-Tammy.
“You won’t?”

“No.”

Not about sex.
“You won’t be staying?”

“I won’t be single.” He moved in close enough that his breath tickled her ear as he whispered, “I’ll be with you.”

“Oh.” Okay, it
was
about sex.
Heart-stopping, mind-blowing, I-didn’t-know-my-body-could-still-do-that, sex
. Not between her and Will tonight under this roof, of course, but in her dreams night after night from now on…

“Great.” He straightened away from her and stepped back. “Meantime, we’ve got lots of daylight left. What do you think? Shall we get to it?”