Trouble on Tap (18 page)

“Where is she?” Miranda asked, worry making her voice hard.

“She’s not answering her phone,” Natalie said.

His stomach dropped to his knees and his chest tightened. “How long?”

“How long what?” Miranda snapped.

“How long since anyone has heard from her?” She was alright. She
had
to be alright.

“Two days.” Natalie twisted her fingers around the gold chain circling her neck. “Not since you were arrested.”

“She was here when I got home. We had…words. She drove off.” Then he’d called in sick and opened the bottle he’d crawled out of this morning. “I’ll alert the sheriff’s department and the highway patrol to be on the lookout for her car, just in case there was a wreck.”

Just the image of her trapped in that ridiculous yellow Fiat at the bottom of a ditch was enough to liquefy his insides.

“You don’t think Larry…” Miranda’s voice trailed off.

“He left town after the paramedics cleared him.” That’s why it had taken him so long to get home that night. He’d insisted on following the asshole’s car until he crossed the county line. “The deputies, highway patrol and my officers had a BOLO on his car just in case he decided to make a reappearance. He hasn’t.” He started to close the door. He had to get them out of here, then he’d spend the day combing the back roads looking for any sign of Olivia. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“So that brings us back to you.” Natalie slapped her hand against the door, stopping him from closing it, and narrowed her gaze. “What did you say to make her leave?”

“The right thing.” He shut the door.

It
had
been the right thing. If it hadn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

The chipper sound of the bells tinkling as he pushed open The Kitchen Sink’s door the next day stepped on Mateo’s very last nerve. The sun shining so brightly when he’d woken up this morning had stomped on the first. The dog’s cheerful, greeting followed by his fruitless search for Olivia in the house for the second day in a row and corresponding whimpers, had obliterated several more. The sight of her strawberry body wash in the shower next to his bottle of plain old no-smell shampoo had snapped more than a handful of nerves right in half.

He’d grabbed the bottle, her shampoo, her conditioner, her pink razor and some fluffy spongy thing hanging from a rope and dumped them all in the trash. It hadn’t done a damn thing to make him feel better. He still felt as if a tank had driven over his balls, backed up, and repeated the process until he had pancakes hanging between his legs.

“Well, look who decided to drag his sorry carcass in for lunch,” Ruby Sue said from her stool behind the cash register.

He just barely swallowed a snarly comeback. Biting her head off wouldn’t fix the FUBAR he’d made of his life by falling in love with Olivia, just like spending twelve hours driving every back-road, highway and country lane in a one-hour radius of Salvation yesterday hadn’t turned up even a flash of Olivia’s yellow Fiat. “I’ll just grab a table in back. I’m meeting Luciana.”

She grabbed two menus and led him through the crowded tables toward the booth in the back corner. “So you know half the town figures you have her tied up in some sort of sex dungeon. Personally, I think Olivia skedaddled after you flashed her your ugly.”

“Like anyone could miss it,” he said, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice as his slid into the booth.

Ruby Sue smacked him on the head with the laminated menu before slapping it down on the table. “I’m talking about the ugly on the inside.”

“Look, Ruby Sue.” He picked up his menu as if he didn’t know every item listed on it and peered over the top at the woman determined to give him a what-for. “I love you, but I’m just not in the mood right now.”

“What, to hear that you’re acting like a moron? Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your big grumpy-man feelings, but you need to suck it up.” She slid into the booth opposite him, her narrow-eyed gaze pinning him in place and burning a hole right through the menu he was pretending to read. “I’ve been watching you with Olivia. I know what’s going on here. Life hurts and love breaks your heart nine times out of ten but when it’s that one, then it’s a whole other ballgame.”

“None of that matters to someone like me.” It couldn’t. He wouldn’t let it.

“What kind of someone is that?”

“One who manages to hurt everyone around him.” There. That was the ugly truth of it. He couldn’t be depended on because he always failed them in the end.

Ruby Sue reached an arthritic hand across the table and yanked the menu out of his grasp, forcing him to look at her. “Well my goodness, let me go get the bandages with all the cartoon characters on them so I’m prepared for the worst.”

All he’d wanted since he got out of the VA hospital was to be left alone, and he’d mostly accomplished that goal until Olivia rolled into town. Now he was trapped in a booth with the Sweet triplets’ self-appointed fairy godmother reading him a homespun riot act. There’d be no stopping her until she’d said her piece, so he settled back against the booth. “Just spit out whatever it is you think you need to tell me and then leave me alone.”

“Like I need an invitation to tell you what I think.” Ruby Sue waved off the approaching waitress. She fiddled with the gold band she always wore around her thumb. A bittersweet look came over her face, as if the ring were both a good luck charm and a curse. “A long time ago, I was engaged to Julian Sweet’s eldest brother, Josiah. Oh Lord, that man.” She looked up and smiled. It wasn’t her usual snarky grin, but a soft smile that gave a glimpse of the woman she’d been decades before. “Tall, dark and handsome didn’t begin to do him justice. He was the one who inspired my pecan pie recipe. I was making a pie one day when he stopped by to visit and spilled some apple moonshine in the pecan goo before it had gone in the oven. It was the best pie I’d ever tasted in my life, and I’ve never made it any other way.”

Great. An old-time love story. That was exactly what he needed right now. “Is there a point to this?”

In a heartbeat, her smile transformed into a glare. “I always have a point to make to those who aren’t too thick-headed to understand it.” She paused, took in a deep breath and clasped her hands together tight enough that her bony knuckles turned white. “One day, not too long after the pie discovery, Josiah’s moonshine still blew up. The explosion took him and everything in the area straight up to Kingdom Come. One moment he was here and then he was gone.” Her voice broke on the last word and she blinked ferociously until the tears threatening to fall surrendered to Ruby Sue’s overwhelming iron will. “I think of him every time I bake a new batch of pies. I remember his smile and his laugh and the way his hand felt on the small of my back when we danced. The memories are a comfort but it doesn’t change the fact that the one man I ever loved is gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it—but
you
can do something about Olivia.”

The ache he’d tried to drink out of existence hit him with full force, battering his ribs and squeezing his chest tight. “She made the right choice to leave.”

“Why, because your face is all scarred up? Do you really think she’s that shallow or are you that dumb?”

That was part of it but there was more. He’d hurt her in the end, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. It was better this way. She’d find someone who deserved her. “I’m not someone people should depend on.”

Ruby Sue rolled her eyes. “And yet this whole town does.”

“It’s Salvation, the crime rate is pretty much zilch. I’m more figurehead than police chief.”

“So your sister and the rest of your family, they don’t depend on you?” Exasperation increased her volume and turned her words sharp. “I’ve seen you with that little munchkin niece of yours. Only a fool would say she couldn’t depend on you. Same with others in this town. I know you helped Marna Simons when she broke her hip and needed to get back and forth to physical therapy. Then there’s than mangy mutt who thinks you’re the best thing since Meaty Bones. All sorts of people depend on you. God knows Olivia depended on you, from the time she was a little one. Your parents were some of the few in town who’d let their kids play with the Sweet triplets. That girl fell in love with you back before she even knew what it meant.”

“It’s too late.” The ache spread through his body until even his bones hurt. “She’s gone and if she’s smart, she won’t come back.”

“Then pull your head out of your rump and find a way to get her back to Salvation.” Ruby Sue scooted out of the booth and stood at the end of the table staring down at him as if she’d had just about all of his stupid she could take. “Life doesn’t give you anything. You have to fight for it. So go fight for that girl.”

Without waiting for a response, not that he had any clue what to say, she turned on her heel and marched over to one of the waitresses. Mateo picked up the menu again. He didn’t need it, but he needed to do something with his hands because his grasp on what he thought was right was slipping.

It had only ever been sex—amazing sex, the kind of sex that tore him apart and then rebuilt him—but it was just sex. He’d told himself that lie year after year, hotel room after hotel room, pretending that Olivia was just his pre-deployment good-luck charm.

In reality, she was his last wish. If he didn’t make it back, he wanted her to be his last good memory, the one that would get him through the darkness and over to the other side.

And he still did.

He may not be the man she deserved, but he could learn to be—he could fight to be.

The waitress stopped at his table, but instead of holding an order pad, she held out a single piece of pecan pie. “Compliments of the house.”

Ruby Sue was about as subtle as a Mardi Gras float in the arctic tundra, but she wasn’t wrong. He dropped the menu, pulled out his phone and texted his sister.

CHANGE OF PLANS. MEET ME AT THE VETERANS’ CENTER.

He had one shot at getting Olivia back—and he needed the whole town’s help to make it happen.

Sitting in the middle of the king-size hotel bed, Olivia picked at the remains of the store-bought pecan pie while Handsome shot her death glares from across the room.

“I know you miss swatting at the dog, but we don’t belong there.” She half-heartedly pushed around the stray pecans in the aluminum pie plate, too tired out from her seventy-two hour crying jag to do more than that. “I don’t know where we belong.”

Her phone vibrated on the bedside table. Miranda’s picture flashed on the screen, not for the first time in the past two days. She didn’t want to pick it up. Answering the call meant putting a bright face so no one would know how broken she was.

No. Not broken. Empty, as if someone had taken a giant spoon and scooped out her insides, leaving her nothing more than an aching shell. She’d sold out her family to save the man she loved and he’d shoved her away. How did she explain that to her sisters—to her unborn niece or nephew—when she couldn’t explain it to herself? She was an idiot; a flaky idiot with more boobs than brains.

Miranda’s photo disappeared off the screen and the vibrations ended. Then it started again, this time with Natalie’s picture. If she didn’t answer it, they’d have the National Guard searching for her soon. Surrendering to the inevitable, she hit the talk button.

“Oh my God. Where are you?” Natalie asked, worry pushing her voice to a ten on the shrill-o-meter, even with the audible distance added by being on speakerphone.

“I’m at a hotel in Gulch City.”

“Are you okay?” Miranda asked.

She glanced up at the mirror on the opposite wall. Her eyes were balloon puffy. Her hair was a greasy mess. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she drove away from Mateo’s house. She was most definitely not okay. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re worried about that asshole Larry, he’s not in Salvation anymore. Matteo said he followed him to the county line and that every cop in the county is on the lookout for him just in case he comes back.”

Her mutinous heart sped up at the mention of Mateo’s name. “When did you talk to him?”