The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (2 page)

If looks could kill, Jillie and Rita would be arguing over where to hide the corpse of the only woman in the room with a bona fide love life.

“Besides, don’t kid yourself, ladies, this
is
about sex.” Standing up, Cozette dominated the room.

Jillie leaned in.

Rita swallowed, hard. She held her breath and waited.

“This is about
passion
. It’s about tension and longing and looking for something more.” Cozie spread her arms out.

“Yes,” Jillie whispered.

The older woman drew her fingers into fists and shut her eyes, smiling. “It’s about tearing everything down that doesn’t work any longer, about getting tired and sweaty and when it’s done, about producing something worthwhile.”

Rita had to admit it sounded promising whether they were talking fornication or construction.

“This is about rebirth and bursting through to the next level.”

“Bursting?” The only bursting Rita understood was bursting her bubble, and she didn’t need that. “Look, ladies, I don’t want…”

Cozie raised her hands like an artist describing a mystic vision. “It’s about a six-foot-one shot of testosterone poured into a pair of butt-grabbing jeans.”

Okay, maybe she’d let her friend finish that thought.

“About having a tightly muscled but loosely moraled man, capable of building you a house or rocking your world, standing by to inspire you while you do the work of putting your life back together.”

“You almost had me up until my world rocked.” Rita sighed. “That and putting my life back together…no.”

“Ah, Rita, you’re as stubborn as Billy himself, and that is
not
a compliment.” Jillie jiggled her foot.

“Rita, it’s time.” Cozie reached out. “I know how much it smarts that Pernel swapped your home and security for a few low-cut sequined gowns, a second-rate Dolly Parton wig, and way too much flashy makeup, but you have got to move on now.”

Rita planted her feet firmly.

“C’mon, Rita.” Cozette snapped her fingers like a pinched-cheeked schoolmarm. “Don’t you see how a summer in the presence of a certain wild man could refurbish the Palace
and
mend your battered ego?”

“Why do you always have to be the one helping people, Rita? Why can’t you just let someone else do the helping for a change?” Jillie stood up to steal a glance at the stairway door. “If it matters, this will be good for Billy, too. Did you ever think of that?”

“Yeah, sure. Like he needs yet another woman lusting after him.”

“Oh, please!” She rolled her eyes and fluffed her red curls. “If this had just been about lust, I’d have gone and hired a rippled twentysomething blond Adonis with sawdust for brains. Then I could have ogled him right alongside you all summer long.”

“This isn’t about you getting laid, Rita. It’s about you laying down your defenses and feeling alive again.” Cozie motioned toward the door.

Still clutching her mixing bowl, Rita lifted her face heavenward. “Why me, Lord?”

“Because we care about you, Rita. And we believe that somewhere in that woman who has become so careful that she has practically ceased to exist, somewhere under the heartache and the disappointment and the longing to inch her way along the edges of life, is your mother’s daughter.”

“Oh, no. No-ooo,” Rita groaned, her eyes closed. “I am not my mother. I have worked all my life to not
be
like my mother. Why does everybody keep insisting that somewhere, someway, somehow, someday I am suddenly going find my inner Tammy and transform everything in my life?”

“Because we know you can,” Cozie said softly.

“Damn it, y’all,” Rita murmured. Suddenly the mixing bowl felt like it carried the weight of her lifelong frustration in it. Sighing, she plunked it down—right on top of the carton of eggs.

“Go get your brother.” Cozie snapped her fingers, and Jillie headed off down the stairway. “I’ll try to get Rita into some outfit that looks a little less like she got it from the escaped-lunatic collection.”

First one and then a second broken egg oozed from the carton under the bowl, then began the slow, inevitable slide toward the short-legged side of the table. Sunny yellow goo dripped onto Rita’s fuzzy pink house shoe while she fixed her
eyes on her remaining friend. “I am so glad you two have worked out your differences enough to talk this over.”

“Why is that, hon?”

“Because I’m no longer speaking to
either
of you.”

“Good.” Cozie folded her arms, tipped her head until her silver-laced black bangs swept to one side, and grinned. “Because if we can get you to shut up long enough, it will be much easier to pull this whole thing off.”

“Okay, you’ve had time to look around the place.” Jillie breezed in from the kitchen, not looking one bit guilty over abandoning him in this deserted diner for the last fifteen minutes. “Be honest. Got any ideas about brightening up the place?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“A gallon of gas and a lighted match.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not all
that
bad.” Jillie threw open the curtains on the front window. A piece of the fabric tore loose in her hand.

Will tried to take in all of the old barbecue restaurant with one broad, unrelenting look. Instead, he found himself squinting, trying not to look too closely at the splotches on the yellow-papered walls. He really didn’t want to know if they were cheap beer and barbecue or bug guts and bloodstains.

“Okay, it’s bad. But
you
can fix it, can’t you, Billy?”

“Will.” He slipped his dark glasses back on. A callus on his thumb snagged on the lapel of his black jacket as he dipped two fingers into his breast pocket. He tugged free one of his business cards and flicked it at his baby sister.

She let it fall to the floor. The gray paper blended with the pocked linoleum, making the embossed message stand out all the more:
WILLIAM WEST
,
CUSTOM CARPENTER
.

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I’ll use the name most of Hellon knows you by…”

“Don’t. I mean it.”

“Wild Billy.” She narrowed her eyes at him like a cat perched just out of reach while licking the last bit of stolen cream off her paws.

He swore but kept his jaw tight enough to deprive her of the satisfaction of hearing just how foul a word she’d provoked from him.
Wild Billy West.
The name dredged up more bad feelings in him than this place had greasy spoons. “You wanted my opinion of this place, and I gave it. Torch the sucker.”

Jillie stepped between him and the front door. “Don’t be so mean about this…” Her lips went thin “…Will.”

Then she did one of those damn prissy woman things, flipping back her gaudy red curls like a princess who’d just ordered some poor jerk’s head—or worse—cut off.

“How’d you get your hair that color?” He tugged on a strand just like they were nine and five years old again. “I recall you being born with
a head full of coal black hair, just like everyone on Mama’s side of the family.”

“So I was born with Mama’s family coloring and the West family nose.” She touched her made-to-order features and gave him a going-over that she clearly thought as scathing.

Will adjusted his sunglasses. He turned his head, knowing it put both his nose—which by West family standards was unimpressive—and the waves of black, shaggy hair in unashamed profile.

Jillie folded her arms. “I was also born naked and shoeless but I certainly didn’t see any reason to stay that way either, not when God created so many avenues to correct it.”

“Yeah, Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue. Aren’t you so proud to have
something
to show for tearing through your trust fund?”

“There’s plenty left.” She gave that same backhanded wave their mother gave when she wanted them to leave her alone.

“What are you doing with your life, girl? Don’t you have any goals, ambitions, a desire to make something more of yourself?” He would not attest to it in court, but he thought he saw her lower lip tremble.

Then she jerked her shoulders up straight and went full-blown bored-with-the-likes-of-you debutante on him. “I
do
things with my life. I support my charities. I travel. Just this spring I took a college extension course. One night a week over in the church basement.”

“It boggles the mind. A course in what?”

“Art appreciation.”

“Ah, yes. Now it makes sense. Something practical you can apply in your day-to-day life here in Hellon.” He looked out the door, not seeing anything in particular. “Where you have the chance to appreciate such fine works of art as the advertising mural on the Feed and Seed Store or the concrete slab where the cannon used to stand in front of the VFW. Let me see, what else could you appreciate around here?”

“Paul says…”

“Paul?”

“My…” Her hesitation said more than any words ever could. “Professor.”

“I see. So it was Paul appreciation got you into that church basement.”

“He’s a married man, and I don’t have to tell you another thing. I brought you here to discuss you, not me.”

“Looking around here I’d say you’ve done your job. I’m about as disgusted as I can get this early in the morning.”

“Would you for one minute stop being such a
Billygoat
and shut up and listen to me?”

“Why should I listen to you, Jillie? What could you possibly have learned in that class, or in your travels? What could you have bought in some overpriced store or learned by living far too long in our mother’s house that applies to
me
?”

“I’m not here to tell you a damn thing, you big jerk. I’m here to ask you for a big favor.”

“Then you’ve wasted your breath.” The greasy floor eased the way for him to turn on his heel without so much as ruffling his hair or his jacket. “Nobody
asks
me for anything, baby sister.”

“Will, you don’t…”

“I do not let myself be held hostage to owing favors or put myself in a situation where I have to produce what is asked of me in order to win anyone’s approval or satisfy someone else’s idea of what I should be, do, say, or give.”

“Don’t you do that in your work all the time?”

“My work is precise. There are standards. There is an objective result. Things can be measured, and if they are not up to snuff, there is a clear, understandable reason why. Favors, little sister, are never like that. Favors always come with some deeper expectation than most people are able to meet.”

“Honestly, Will. You are making a bigger deal of this than needs be. If you would just let me explain what I want from you and why I’m asking
now
…”

“I know why you’re asking
now
.” He touched his dark glasses and looked out at the road. “You saw the opportunity to use my annual guilt trip to Hellon to twist me around your finger until you got your way. Mama would be so proud.”

“Billy!” She wedged her bony shoulder against the door opening.

“Step aside, Jillie. Clearly you’ve called the wrong man for the job.”

“That’s not true.” She stood up straight, not a
trace of deception or pride in her eyes. “I called
you
. I called the only person I know who could come into this town and get done what needs doing without anyone throwing up roadblocks or making trouble. Wild Billy, you are the
only
man for the job.”

“The only man for the job?” She made him sound like freaking Superman. Worse yet, she reminded him that he was and would always be Wild Billy West, with all the unashamed intrusions into his life, the damnable obligations, and the unrealistic expectations that went with the title of small-town hero. He wondered if his little sister knew how much he hated that feeling—or how powerless he felt to walk away from it?

Jillie’s brow wrinkled enough to undo a month’s worth of creams and treatments.

He stepped back from the door, but just one step.

“Billy…
Will
…please.” She looked back over her shoulder. “You came this far. I didn’t really think you’d come, but you did, and I…”

He followed her line of vision. Across the narrow road the morning sun glinted off the cars coming and going from the gas station. A faded metal sign pointing directions to a bank that went belly-up twenty years ago still swung from a post by the road.

Above the treetops he could make out the steeple of the Second Street Baptist Church. Time and the realities of a dwindling population had caused the two Baptist churches in town to merge
a few years back. The racially divided congregations had voiced reservations about that solution, but somehow, in time, they made it work. Now they even had a sign out front in Spanish to welcome the migrants and new immigrants.

Some things did change here, Will conceded, but so many things never would. He would always be Wild Billy here. Football legend and only son of the town’s most respected family. A handful, but basically a good kid, they would always say of him. Always forgiven by the town, his family, and even the local law for things other boys caught hell for.

He sighed. “I’ve come this far and what, Jillie?”

“And I just wanted to thank you.”

“So help me, Jillie, if this is some big show to butter me up to get your way…” He had no threat to finish that sentence.

“It means more than I can tell you that you’re here, Will.” He could only nod to acknowledge her words.

“Because the person we’re doing this for means more to me than I can ever say.”

“Pernel Stark?” He couldn’t even muster a believable laugh at that.

“No, Rita.”

Rita.
Just her name made his chest seize up and his breathing grow shallow. Rita Butcher Stark, Lord have mercy. “I thought this place belonged to…”

Jillie shook her head. “The house was in Pernel’s name—he inherited it from his mama, you
know, and she never did like Rita. But they always had joint ownership of this place, though Rita never set foot in it if she didn’t have to.”

“A woman of uncommonly wise judgment.”

“Attested to by her choice in friends, no doubt.” Jillie smiled. “Long story short, Pernel wanted money. He sold the house out from under Rita and gave her his share of…
this
.”