Natural Born Charmer (10 page)

They drove past a Greek Revival funeral home and a church. Most of the tan sandstone buildings in the three-block downtown area looked as though they’d been constructed early in the twentieth century. The wide main street had diagonal parking on both sides. Blue spotted a restaurant, a drugstore, a resale shop, and a bakery. A stuffed deer with an
OPEN
sign hanging from an antler stood guard near the door of an antique store named Aunt Myrtle’s Attic. Just across the street, old trees shaded a park with a four-sided clock and black iron lampposts topped with white globes. Dean pulled into a parking space in front of the pharmacy.

Blue didn’t have much faith in his comment about her being on his payroll, and she wondered if she could find a job in such a small town. “Do you notice anything strange?” she said as he flicked off the ignition.

“Other than you?”

“No fast food.” She took in the shabby but quaint main street. “I didn’t see any chain restaurants out on the highway, either. This place isn’t big, but it’s big enough for a NAPA Auto Parts store or a Blockbuster. Where are they? If you took away the cars and ignored peoples’ clothes, it would be hard to figure out what year it is.”

“Interesting you should mention clothes.” He studied her black bike shorts and camouflage T-shirt. “I guess you didn’t get the dress code memo that came with your new job.”

“That piece of crap? I tossed it out.”

A woman’s face popped up in the window of Barb’s Tresses and Day Spa next to the pharmacy. At the insurance agency on the other
side, a balding man peered out from behind a church rummage sale poster. She imagined similar heads popping up across the street. In a town this small, the news of their famous new neighbor’s arrival would spread quickly.

She followed Dean into the pharmacy, keeping a respectful three paces behind, which further annoyed him, even though he’d brought it on himself with his attitude. He disappeared to the back of the store while she talked to the cashier and discovered there were no job openings. Two women rushed in, one black and one white. The man from the insurance agency entered, followed by an older woman with wet hair. Next came a skinny guy with a plastic name tag that identified him as Steve.

“There he is,” insurance man said to the others.

They all craned their necks to stare at Dean. A woman in a bright pink business suit came charging in, her taupe pumps clicking on the tile floor. She looked as though she was around Blue’s age, too young for her hair to be so stiffly sprayed, although Blue had no room to criticize anyone’s hairstyle. She’d have gotten hers cut if she hadn’t left Seattle so abruptly. She edged toward the mascara display just as the woman called out to Dean, uttering his name on a long, adoring breath. “Dean…I just heard that you’d shown up at the farm. I was on my way out to welcome you.”

Blue peered around the mascara in time to watch Dean’s blank expression shift to recognition. “Monica. Nice to see you.” He held nail clippers, an Ace Bandage, and a package of what looked like gel shoe inserts. No condoms.

“Goodness, the town is buzzin’,” Monica said. “Everybody’s been waiting for you to show up. Isn’t Susan O’Hara amazing? Don’t you love what she’s done to the house?”

“Amazing, all right.”

Monica drank him in like a frosty glass of sweet tea. “I hope you’re staying for a while.”

“I’m not sure. Depends on a couple of things.”

“You can’t leave till you’ve had a chance to meet all of Garrison’s movers and shakers. I’ll be happy to throw a little cocktail party and introduce you to everybody.” She curled her fingers around his arm. “You are just going to love it here.”

He was used to having his personal space invaded, and he didn’t pull away but tilted his head toward the cosmetics instead. “I have someone I want you to meet. Blue, come over here so I can introduce you to my real estate agent.”

Blue checked her impulse to duck farther behind the mascara. Maybe this woman could help her find a job. She slapped on her friendliest smile and made her way over. Dean pulled away from his real estate agent’s overly possessive hand to wrap his arm around her. “Blue, this is Monica Doyle. Monica, my fiancée, Blue Bailey.”

Now he was just being lazy.

“We’re getting married in Hawaii,” he said. “On the beach at sunset. Blue wanted to go to Vegas, but I’m too well organized for that.”

He was perfectly capable of fending off women without resorting to an imaginary fiancée, but apparently he didn’t want the tedium of dealing with all those panties being thrown at him. She had to admit she was surprised.

Monica’s face had fallen, but she did her best to hide her disappointment behind some rapid eye blinks and a quick survey of Blue’s appearance. The real estate agent took in the camouflage T-shirt Blue had appropriated from her apartment building’s laundry room after it had been thumbtacked to the bulletin board for a month. “You are the cutest thang, now aren’t you?”

“Dean thinks so,” Blue said modestly. “I’m still not sure how he managed to overcome my aversion to aging frat boys.”

His warning squeeze pulled her into his armpit, which smelled deliciously of one of those expensive male deodorants that came packaged in phallic-shaped glass bottles stamped with designer logos. She stayed there a few beats too long before she poked her head back out. “I noticed the For Sale sign when we came into town. What’s that all about?”

Monica pursed her penciled and glossed lips. “Nita Garrison being her normal hateful self, that’s all. Some people aren’t worth talking about. We do our best not to pay her any mind.”

“Is it true?” Blue asked. “The town’s really up for sale?”

“I suppose it depends on how you define town.”

Blue started to ask how they defined this one, but Monica was already calling over the people lurking in the aisles so she could introduce them.

Ten minutes later, they finally escaped. “I’m breaking this engagement,” Blue grumbled as she followed Dean to the car. “You’re too much trouble.”

“Now, sweetheart, surely our love is strong enough to survive a few bumps in the road of life.” He stopped at a newspaper vending machine.

“Introducing me as your fiancée made you look ridiculous, not me,” she said. “Those people aren’t blind. We look bizarre together.”

“You have some serious self-esteem issues.” He dug in his pocket for change.

“Me? Try again. Nobody’s going to believe a brainiac like Blue Bailey would fall for a mental lightweight like you.” He ignored her and pulled out a paper. She stepped in front of him. “Before we head for the grocery, I need to make inquiries about a job. Why don’t you have some lunch while I look around?”

He tucked the paper under his arm. “I already told you. You’re working for me.”

“Doing what?” She squinted up at him. “And how much are you paying?”

“Don’t you worry about it.”

He’d been irritable with her all morning, and she didn’t like it. It wasn’t her fault his mother was dying. All right, so it
was
her fault, but he didn’t know that, and he shouldn’t punish her for April’s medical tragedy.

When they reached the grocery store, the introductions started all
over again as one person after another welcomed him to the town. He was cordial to everybody, from the pimple-faced produce clerk to a crippled old man in a VFW cap. The older kids were in school, but he rubbed bald baby heads, shook a slobbery fist, and engaged in an encouraging conversation with an adorable three-year-old named Reggie who didn’t want to use a potty. Dean was the weirdest combination of ego and decency she’d ever met in one person, although his decency seemed to stop with her.

While he handled PR, she slipped away to do the grocery shopping. The store didn’t carry a wide selection, but she found the basics. He met up with her at the checkout line, where she had to stand silently by as he whipped out his Visa card. This couldn’t go on. She had to make some money.

Dean unloaded the groceries and left Blue the job of deciding where to put them while he went back outside to move his car into the barn. Even Annabelle didn’t know the identity of his real father, but Blue had dug it up after spending only four days with him. She was the most intuitive person he’d ever met, not to mention the most devious, and he had to play a smarter game.

After he’d cleared out a space in the barn for his car, he poked around in the shed for a shovel and hoe and started attacking the weeds growing near the house’s foundation. As he breathed in the smell of honeysuckle, he remembered exactly why he’d bought this place instead of the Southern California beach house he’d always imagined. Because being here felt right. He loved the old buildings, the way the hills sheltered the farm. He loved knowing this land had been part of something more lasting than a football game. But most of all, he loved the privacy. No crowded Southern California beach could give him that, and when he needed his ocean fix, he could always fly to the coast.

He barely knew what privacy felt like. First, growing up in board
ing schools, then embarking on a college athletic career that had brought him instant recognition. After that, he’d turned pro. Finally, with those damned End Zone ads, even people who weren’t football fans recognized him. He stiffened as he heard the jingle of bracelets. Bitterness curdled his stomach. She was trying to ruin this like she’d tried to ruin everything else.

“I was planning to hire a landscape crew,” his mother said.

He jabbed the shovel into a clump of weeds. “I’ll deal with it when I’m ready.” He didn’t care how long she’d been sober. Every time he looked at her, he remembered tear-streaked makeup, slurred speech, and the weight of her arms dragging on his neck during her drunken, drugged-up pleas for his forgiveness.

“You’ve always been happiest outside.” She came closer. “I don’t know much about plants, but I think you’re trying to take out a peony bush.”

Considering the life she’d led, his mother should have looked like Keith Richards, but she didn’t. Her body was toned, her jawline a little too smooth to be entirely natural. Even her long hair offended him. She was fifty-two, for chrissake. Time to cut it off. As a teenager, he’d been forced into more than a few fights when one of his classmates gave a too detailed description of her ass or whatever other body part she’d chosen to show off on one of the rare days she condescended to visit him at school. With the toe of her shoe, she unearthed a flattened tin can. “I’m not dying.”

“Yeah, I figured that out last night.” And Blue was going to pay for her lie.

“Not even sick. There goes your big celebration.”

“Maybe next year.”

She didn’t flinch. “Blue has a big heart. She’s an interesting person. Different than I would have expected.”

She’d gone on a fishing expedition, but she wasn’t going to catch anything. “That’s why I asked her to marry me.”

“She has those big innocent eyes, but there’s something sexy about her, too.”

An X-rated nursery rhyme…

“She’s not beautiful,” April went on, “but she’s… something better. I don’t know. Whatever it is, she doesn’t seem to have a clue about it.”

“She’s a train wreck.” Too late, he remembered he was supposed to be smitten. “Just because I’m in love doesn’t mean I’m blind. It’s the fact that she’s her own person I’m attracted to.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

He grabbed the hoe and began hacking at some weeds around a rosebush. He knew it was a rosebush because it had a couple of flowers.

“You heard about Marli Moffatt,” she said.

The hoe struck a rock. “Hard to avoid. It’s all over the news.”

“I guess her daughter will go to Marli’s sister. God knows Jack won’t do anything but write a check.”

He tossed down the hoe and picked up the shovel again.

She toyed with one of her bracelets. “I hope you’ve figured out by now that kicking me out isn’t a good idea, not if you want to live here in any kind of comfort this summer. I’ll be out of your life permanently in three or four weeks.”

“That’s what you said in November when you showed up at the Chargers game.”

“It won’t happen again.”

He stabbed the shovel into the dirt, then worked it free. She’d been on top of everything today. It was hard to reconcile her efficiency with the drugged-out woman who’d regularly misplaced her kid. “Why should I believe you this time?”

“Because I’m sick of living with guilt. You’re never going to forgive me, and I’m not asking again. Once the house is done, I’m gone.”

“Why are you doing this? Why the fucking charade?”

She shrugged, looking bored—the last woman in the bar after the fun had ended. “I thought it would be a kick, that’s all.”

“Hey, Susan!” Mr. Horny Electrician poked his head around the corner. “Can you come here for a minute?”

Dean dug up another rock as she walked away. Now that he saw how many tasks she was juggling, he knew he’d be hurting himself more than her if he made her leave. He could always head back to Chicago, but the idea of letting her drive him away stuck in his craw. He didn’t run from anybody, especially not from his mother. But he also couldn’t stand the idea of being alone with her, even on a hundred acres of property, and that was why keeping Blue around had become a necessity, not just an impulse. She’d be his buffer.

He envisioned Blue’s head and guillotined a thistle with one clean blow. Her lie about April stepped over more boundaries than he could count. Although he’d met a lot of manipulative women, he’d never met one with more gall, but before he confronted her, he intended to let her swing in the breeze.

By the time the carpenters left for the day, he’d cleared the worst of the weeds from the foundation without doing too much damage to what he finally figured out were the peony bushes. His shoulder ached like a son of a bitch, but he’d been cooped up too long, and he didn’t care. It felt good using his body again.

As he emerged from the toolshed, the smell of something savory drifted his way from the open kitchen window. Blue had decided to cook, but he had no intention of sitting through a cozy dinner that included his mother, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that Blue would invite her.