The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (22 page)

He watched her go, unsure of how he felt. Stirring and twitching just below the surface—Rita’s simple interpretation had been so apt.

His mother had spoken of love. But Rita had spoken of trust, of letting him lean on her. He had come to Memphis because he missed Rita. But despite her kind words and sweet flirtations tonight, she had come to make a break from him.

“Rita’s picked a hard one this time,” the woman working the machine said. “She’s going to need all the support y’all can conjure up.”

Even if he did love her, which he just could not make himself admit, if she did not return the feeling, what would his coming here accomplish? And if she
did
love him?

He held his hand up to signal a passing waitress so he could order a drink.

“What can I get you?” The redhead held her tray on her hip between them and turned so he could speak into her ear.

“Just a beer.”

The small but exuberant crowd let up a cheer.

“You going to sit?” The woman blocking his view of the stage flung her arm out toward the many empty tables.

“Rather stand, thanks. Not sure if I’m staying.”

She looked him up and down once, probably trying to decide if he just needed to get his nerve up before hopping on that stage and cutting loose with a song.

He stuffed his hand in his pocket and did his damnedest to look like the anti-Elvis. “My beer?”

“Back in a jiff.”

“Welcome Rita back on our stage tonight!”

“This is going to be my last song this evening.”

The redhead pivoted and joined the rest of the room in a collective protest.

Will pressed his back to the wall and waited. His pulse hammered out the seconds before the waitress moved on and Rita came into full view.

“You’ve all been so kind and so patient.”

Rita—in red. Patience was not the attribute the sight inspired in him.

“Well, not
all
of you.” Rita pointed out into the room.

How could she have seen him all the way back here? How could she have known…

A whole table of women jabbed and pointed at the lanky fellow who sat right in Rita’s line of vision.

Even from where Will stood he could see the
man blush straight to his hairline—which ended just above the back of his neck.

Everything isn’t always about you
. Hadn’t his mother just reminded him of that?

“This has been such a positive experience for me,” Rita said into the microphone, looking like an old pro at handling the spotlight.

It
had
been positive. Will could see that. Her eyes sparkled, her skin glowed. He wasn’t crazy about the new hairstyle and sensed Jillie’s hand in that. Still, the overall effect of that red dress caressing Rita’s breasts, clinging to her hips had its own positive effect—positively uplifting, in fact. He managed a tight grin at that and flexed his hands at his sides.

Rita pulled her shoulders straight. “I came here tonight to see if I could even do this.”

“You can do it all right, Rita, honey.” The man in a tan-and-black coat waved his arm. “If you’d just stop yakking an’ get around to it!”

“Oh, Clive!” Rita laughed.

Was it Will’s imagination, or was there a certain sadness beneath her smile? If he had ever done anything to cause her sadness…

The ladies at Clive’s table crossed their arms and aimed an angry wave of killer looks in the man’s direction.

Clive half rose from his seat in a bow toward the stage as he said, “I know. Shut up, you old poop.”

Everyone laughed.

Even walking in so late and standing in the
very back, he could feel Rita’s influence on the mood of the crowd.

The waitress brought his beer, and he paid for it.

“The point is that y’all may not know it, but I learned so much on this stage tonight. Everything from the real words to ‘Mack the Knife’ to the truth about myself and the relationships that are important to me.”

Will lowered his drink without taking a sip.

“After this I can go back to my hometown and do what I have to do.”

“Like what?” Will asked himself quietly.

“Starting with putting a karaoke stage in my restaurant.”

While his brain immediately set about calculating how to make that a reality, his heart sank at her intentions. He might act a fool sometimes, but he did have his flashes of insight. Renovating the restaurant to the basic standards was his idea of a smart move. Anything less, and it would trap Rita there, unable to sell or to increase revenue enough to free her from worrying over every nickel and dime. Anything more and she’d have to hang on to it longer to repay incurred debt and start showing a profit. Add in promoting even an amateur floor show—she’d never leave.

Not that she had to leave Hellon to be happy. That much he could admit. It was not the hell on earth he had remembered it being. It had grown and changed, letting much of the old ways that held it back fall by the wayside. Could he say the
same of himself? Who was he to judge a whole town, then?

“And not stopping until I put my heart and all I’ve got into…all that I go after.” She looked to the back of the room.

If she saw him there, he did not know. He did nothing to draw her attention or reassure her that he was there and he had heard her plans.

“And so if you’ll indulge me one last time.”

“If only I could.” He set his untouched beer on the nearest unoccupied table. He had not come there to talk. Or to find out if Rita loved him or if he loved her. Those were pointless endeavors. He had come to say good-bye.

What else could he do? He could profess his love for her, but to what end? Who would that benefit but himself? He would find in Rita a loyal, loving, unquestioning woman with yet another weight on her shoulders, another person depending on her to be his anchor.

“I want to do now the song I came here tonight all the way from Hellon, Tennessee, to sing.”

The familiar opening of Patsy Cline’s classic “Crazy” swelled from the machine by the stage.

Rita bowed her head.

Will gritted his teeth, trying not to swear. He blindly made his way to the door. He had to get out. If he heard her sing, he knew he would never leave. And he had to leave for Rita’s sake.

He pushed into the lighted hallway outside the lounge just as Rita began the heart-wrenching
song about being loved and cast aside. He rubbed his eyes as her voice sank deeper and deeper into his soul.

Tomorrow he would make a few last calls. He’d set her up with the best people in the business to finish the job at the Palace—and put in that stage or anything else she wanted.

What Rita wanted was the thing. Letting Rita move on and rebuild a life without him weighing her down was the first totally unselfish act he’d done in a very long time and his last hope at finding the redemption he’d needed for so long.

He would not stay now and fail her.

She knew he wouldn’t stay. Why
would
he stay?

Rita stepped into the elevator, pushed the button, and slipped out of her shoes. The elevator lurched upward, and the sway of her red dress drew her eyes to her distorted reflection in the polished chrome doors. Poor, pitiful, plain Rita. The girl who thought putting a karaoke machine and a few new booths in Pernel’s Pig Rib Palace would change everything.

No wonder Will didn’t stick around. He probably had to leave to keep from laughing out loud at her.

Safe, sane, and secure outcomes, that’s what she wanted for her life. Those, she had thought, promised the key to stability. They were her plan for self-sufficiency, her protection against loneliness, and her path to happiness.

Ding.
The elevator stopped two floors below hers.

She had clung to her standpoints with a single-mindedness that had pushed aside all other options. And look at what it had gotten her. Did she feel powerful? Had she staved off loneliness? Was she happy?

“No, no, and no,” she whispered, as the door slid open.

The woman waiting to get on waved her not to hold the doors as she retreated from the elevator’s threshold.

Manners dictated that Rita explain she wasn’t shooing the woman off with her stream of negatives.
Good manners before bad temper.
Well, to hell with that. She jabbed the
CLOSE DOOR
button, and the elevator pitched upward again.

Moving on.
How many people had tried to tell her
that
was the key? She eyed her blurred image again. “Work with Wild Billy. Go to college. Sell the Palace. Do something with your hair.”

She leaned in closer. That last one she could have done without.

Ding.
The doors whooshed apart again.

Ignoring the startled faces of the people waiting, who found her bending forward with her nose just inches from the opening, Rita stood up. Taking a shoe in each hand, she held one up like a royal wave and strode off toward her room.

Will hadn’t stuck around. Well, he was intended to be the tornado, the thing to get her life
going again. No one can live in the eye of the storm. Rita knew that too well because she had done it too long.

She had let her friends’ lives circulate around her, taking far too much comfort from their chaos. She needed her own chaos, and Wild Billy West had brought that to her. It was right he should go. The work of putting her life back together, of finally following in her mama’s wobbling footsteps, was Rita’s alone to make.

Yes, her mama’s footsteps. Following her mother’s example by standing on her own two feet, not by walking away from the people she loved. She would always be there for her friends and family, but she would no longer put her own life on hold for them.

She unlocked her door, went inside, and threw her high heels on the bed. There, all on her own in a big, strange town where no one needed her to hold the world together, she vowed that the next set of footwear she’d put on would be her walking shoes.

“You’re no fun anymore.” Dina, an ex-Miss Arkansas, a constant fixture on the beauty-pageant circuit and a sometime dinner date of Will’s pushed her food away practically untouched.

“What do you expect out of a selfish, donkey-headed bastard?” He considered pushing the plate right back under her upturned nose. How
he ever put up with her ordering the most expensive thing on a menu so she could take one bite and groan over how much she’d have to diet to make up for it, he’d never understand.

“Don’t talk that way about yourself.” She reached across the candlelit table and put her hand on his.

Okay, so he had to pay a fortune for her not to eat, at least he could count on the woman to feed his ego.

“When you call yourself things like that, it doesn’t reflect well on me.” Her hesitation before she laughed made him realize she was only partly joking.

“Thanks for the support.” He pulled away from her touch, picked up his fork, then set it down again and rubbed his forehead.

“You used to be a lot more fun.” She put her hands in her lap.

This was her “I’m pouting at you and you better
say
or
do
or
buy
something to rectify that immediately if you want to get lucky tonight” look.

“Yeah, well.” He tossed his napkin onto the table. “I used to be a lot of things.” Like satisfied with meaningless sex with women so skinny they don’t make a dent in my mattress and so self-involved they don’t leave an impression on my heart. “You ready to go?”

“So soon?” She ran her finger along the rim of the wineglass. “What do you have in mind?”

“Making an early night of it.” He signaled for the check.

“Oh?” She leaned over the table, her breasts falling forward in her scrap of a dress. “Maybe you are still fun after all.”

“Maybe you were right the first time.” He handed a credit card to the waiter without looking at the check. “Listen, Dina, this…”

A tiny tremor from his pager interrupted his train of thought.

“What is it?”

“Hang on.” He held his hand up as he pressed the light to better read the message. “It’s my sister. She wants me to call her. Do you mind?”

“Go ahead, call her back.” She turned in her chair and pulled a small silver object from her beaded handbag. “Here, use my phone even. Make the call right from the table. Don’t mind me. It’s not like you’re actually all here participating with me on this date anyway.”

The guilt trap. It set his teeth on edge. Was there any woman in his life who did not employ it to get her way with him?

Rita.
The answer sprang into his mind so fast he had no time to counteract the effect of her memory on his emotions. That happened all too often, but he had decided he could learn to live with it. What other choice did he have?

“If you don’t mind, then.” He took her phone, oozing charm like he had no clue she had only offered it to try to manipulate him. “I really need
to call her back. It might be about my mother.”

“You and your family.” Dina rolled her eyes. “You are so tied to them. It’s really not becoming in a man your age.”

“You calling me a mama’s boy?” He flipped the phone open, laughing at the very notion.

“Worse. I’m saying you’re a family man.”

“Me?” He laughed again, only this time the humor wasn’t so heartfelt. “I guess it may seem like that since I spent so much time home this summer.”

“Home? Since when did you start calling Hooterville home?”

Good question. When had Hellon become home again to him? He wasn’t sure. Still, sitting here in this overpriced, soulless restaurant with a woman who cared only about the level of fun he could provide her, it sounded so right. “The town’s name is Hellon. It’s where I was raised and where my family still lives. Why shouldn’t I think of it as my home?”

“I don’t care if it’s Mayberry and Andy, Aunt Bea, Opie, and the gang are all your next of kin. You’ve never thought of anyplace but Memphis as home as long as I’ve known you.”

Memphis? Home? He punched in Jillie’s private number. “Look, maybe I just reconnected with my roots a little more lately. What’s so bad about that?”

“Lately?” She rolled her glass in her hand so that the wine glowed in the candlelight. “When we first met you led me to believe any ties you
had with your family were…tenuous at best.”

The phone rang in his ear. “So?”

“So? It’s hard enough for a girl to compete for a man’s attention with all the other beautiful women around.”

“It’s not a competition.” If it was, it would be one competition where a woman like Dina couldn’t even place as runner-up. Not against his family and certainly not compared to…

“Hello?” Jillie picked up on the third ring.

He knew she would. Will smiled. Mama had a rule that no lady ever answered the phone sooner than the third or later than the fifth ring. Something about perception and manners. “Hey, girl. What’s up?”

“You
have
to check on your mother tonight,” Dina grumbled.

“Will? Wow, that was fast.”

“I thought something might be wrong with Mama.”

“Just now coming to
that
conclusion?” Jillie sighed. “No, Mama’s right as rain.”

“Would that be acid rain?” They shared a laugh.

“A week ago you had to cancel a date because your sister rolled into town
uninvited,
” Dina droned on, making sure she hit the highlights loud enough for even Jillie to hear. “Insisting you meet some man named Paul.”

“Who are you with? Where are you? Are you doing something important?”

“I often ask myself those same questions.”
What he’d intended as a quip rang quietly poignant in his own ears. He cleared his throat. “That’s nothing. Go on, why did you call?”

“Nothing? Are you referring to me as
nothing
?” Dina slapped her napkin down.

“Would you hang on just a sec, Jillie?” He covered the mouthpiece. “Can we have this conversation later—like when I’m not already having
another
conversation?”

His date bristled the way that only a gorgeous, pampered Southern belle can. It was an art form in itself and often left lesser men trembling and bewildered. Will skewered one of her broiled shrimp with his fork and took a bite, saying as he ate, “I won’t be long.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You are not the same man I remember having such a good time with last spring.”

He started to argue that point, then stopped and looked at the phone. He looked at the food that last spring he thought was the finest in the city but which he now found bland and pretentious. Then he looked at the woman across from him who looked like she’d just fallen out of the pages of a magazine and would just as easily fall into bed with him, expecting nothing more than a good time from it. All he could really see, all he had been able to focus on these last six weeks since he’d returned to Memphis, was Rita.

“You know, you’re right, Dina. I am not the same man.”

The waiter placed the receipt in front of Will.

Dina gave the young man a sly once-over before he got away. “What do they say? The first step in getting help is admitting you need it?” She beamed him an aren’t-I-clever smile.

Still holding the phone, he grunted and pulled a pen from the pocket inside his jacket. “The man you remember from last summer would have hung up on his sister and spent the rest of the evening trying to get back in your good graces—not to mention your bed.”

“That’s still not an impossibility, provided you’re willing to spoil me with a lot of—”

“Bullshit.”

“I heard that,” Jillie said, even though she was still waiting for him to talk to her again. “What’s going on there, Will?”

“Sorry, Jillie, hang on just a second longer. I was having a…moment of clarity.”

“That’s not boy-code for something I don’t want to know about, is it?”

“No. Just bear with me a little bit longer.” He lowered the mouthpiece.

Dina flipped her hair back so fast he marveled it didn’t give her whiplash. “What did you just say to me?”

“You heard me. This game between us. It’s nothing more than a big steaming pile of—”

“Wasn’t everything to your liking, sir?” The waiter, who had come back for the signed receipt looked very concerned that Will might use the word again.

Will smiled. “Everything was fine. Or will be when you call the lady a taxi.”

“A taxi? You can’t just send me home in a taxi.”

“If you prefer the bus…”

She stood and held her hand out. “That’s my phone.”

“I’ll wrap this up before you leave.”

“A gentleman would drive me home.”

Will stood, too. “Good. If you find a gentleman hanging around, that’ll save me the cab fare.”

She yanked her arm away when he tried to take it to escort her out of the dining room.

“Don’t act all high-and-mighty with me now. You’ve taken your fair share of late-night cab rides both to and from my house; you’re just mad because this one was my idea.”

She gave him an icy glare over her shoulder. “You really aren’t the same man.”

“No, I’m not. And I do apologize for not taking you home, but you see I’m heading in the other direction.”

“Your house is not in the opposite direction of mine.”

“No, but my home is.”

“Your…?”

“Jillie?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I’m guessing at this point you didn’t page me for anything urgent.”

Dina whisked past him to the ladies’ room.

“No, I…I…well, I shouldn’t have even
bothered you really. Knowing how you left things here and all.”

“Is this about Rita?”

“Given that you told me not to bring up ‘that name’ I was going to say it’s about the Palace.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just…well, what with the grand opening tomorrow and Rita…”

The taxi pulled up front. “Okay, hon, I have to go. Whatever you have to tell me, I hope it can wait.”

“How long?”

“Say, ninety minutes, give or take?”

“You’re coming to Hellon?”

“Should I come out to the house first or—”

“Go straight to Rita’s, you might still catch her there.”

“Catch her? What are you—”

“Bye-bye, Billygoat. I can’t stand here blabbing. I need to go make sure Rita doesn’t run for cover.”

“Run for cover?”

“Yeah, sounds like her very own tornado is blowing back into town.”

“Have I done the right thing?” Rita asked.

“I
have
done the right thing.” Cozie’s voice seemed to boom in the bare-walled kitchenette. “Remember, you are what you say you are.”

“Then I am…” Rita stared at the few boxes of things she planned to take with her from her old apartment. “Out of here.”

“Good for you.” Cozie came up from behind and wrapped both long arms around her in a welcome hug. She laid her cheek against the side of Rita’s head. “Did you make one last sweep of the place to make sure you’re not leaving anything you want to keep?”

What could she have left here? The idea of walking through this room, dredging up the memories of the summer gone by, did not sit well. It was never a home to her. She had left most of her things in storage when Pernel’s hasty sale of their old house had forced her into this cramped place.