The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (3 page)

Will would have cursed, but he couldn’t think of any word hard enough to convey his thoughts about Pernel at that moment.

“See, I’m not asking anything for myself, Will. I’m asking for Rita.”

He shut his eyes.

“Rita is my friend, and there is no reason for her to be. She never lets me skate by on my family name or money or looks because she sees something more in me. And that gives me a kind of hope I can be more. Do you…do you have any idea how dear that makes her to me?”

He knew. Damn it, he knew better than anyone alive how precious that kind of friend would be. Not the first time today, it felt like he had a fist stuck high in his throat.

“Please, Will. Do it? Help fix up this place…for Rita?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m guessing she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend.”

“She has a little nest egg, but it’s hardly the kind that came out of the golden goose.”

“She’ll need what’s called sweat equity, too. She does have friends she can rely on to help?”

His sister’s face went absolutely ashen. “With money or sweat?”

“Either. Both.”

Her cheeks pinked up again, and she nodded. “She has friends.”

“I’d waive my fees, of course. Maybe call on a few business associates who owe me favors.” Everyone everywhere owed Will a favor. In his drive never to be asked to do for others, he made a practice of finding every opportunity to give to others freely. To be the first to volunteer, the hardest worker, and the man everyone trusted to have the deepest pockets when he learned of a need. “I could get her the work and materials at cost.”

“Does this mean you’re going to take the job?”

“It’s not the best use of my time and talent.”

She laughed and clapped her hands, claiming a triumph he had not actually granted her. “Don’t underestimate yourself. This project is exactly how you should be using your time and talent.”

He inched his sunglasses down on his nose and shook his head.

“You won’t regret a minute of this.”

“I never committed to sinking as long as a minute into this dive and its renovation.”

“Don’t think of it as renovation, brother, think of it as…” She raised her open palms in the beam of sunlight streaming in the front window and laughed before concluding, “…redemption.”

“Redemption? Mine or Rita’s?”

“Does it matter?”

Redemption
. Him? He ran his hand along the
lunch counter then rubbed the gritty dust between his thumb and fingers. Naw. Renovation, nothing more. But still…

His gaze strayed to the front window. Even with the torn curtain hanging down over one corner it gave him a wide-open view of the intersection half a block away. Winter Road cut a lopsided semicircle around the edges of Hellon. From this intersection a right turn sent you toward the highway and on to Memphis. A smart man would be on that route right now. Will’s gaze, however, fixed on the other direction. The way he had just come.

He tugged at his jacket collar. He wiped the dirt of the place off his hands and onto his faded jeans. His heart ached.

“Damn it.” He had thought after all this time he would have made peace with his life and his choices, but it had not come.

He’d all but given up on finding his way back. Then Jillie talked of redemption and gave him a way to help Rita find the same, if she needed it. And it did seem clear that she needed help.

Some tiny spark of longing for that very thing still burned deep, deep inside of him. He did not know whether to curse or thank his sister for wrenching that up after all these years.

Six years.
In the small, silent cemetery a few miles down Winter, he had buried the baby boy who bore his name six years ago today. That was a long time to wait to feel whole again.

Charging blindly on with life had not done it.
Hard work had not done it. Recommitting himself to the things he hoped to be true and right had not done it. Seeing his child’s mother make a new life and find happiness with another man had not eased his guilt or diminished his pain. Why on earth did Jillie think remodeling this dump would make one bit of difference for him or for Rita?

“Pig Rib Palace.” The name caught in his throat like the low growl of a fight-scarred dog. He looked around. The place reeked of age and artery-plugging food. It had probably waited as long as he had—longer maybe—for its redemption.

And Rita. If she needed his help, how could he refuse? He owed her more than anyone—perhaps even Rita herself—could comprehend. “Tell Rita I’ll do it.”

“Tell her yourself.” She motioned for him to follow her through the kitchen, pausing at a half-open door to say, “I think she’s had enough time to get used to the idea by now.”

“I hate the smell of raw eggs.” Cozie picked up the soaked and battered egg carton by one corner and pitched it into the trash.

“It’s not the eggs that stink around here.” Rita wiped a sponge through some shell-speckled gunk. What didn’t smear seeped off the edge of the table and splattered on her shoe. “It’s the advice.”

“Who are you to judge advice? It’s not like you ever take any.” She took Rita’s sponge and tossed it in the sink. “Go fix yourself up a little. You may be able to take on the world in a pair of comfy house shoes but you cannot think straight if your hair’s a mess. Go on, do as I say.”

“I never take advice, but go on and do as you say?”

“What?” She shrugged, and the layers of her
outfit shrugged with her. “I’m a mom. I’m allowed to say stuff like that.”

“Don’t give me that. Your kids have been out of the house for years now.”

“Doesn’t matter. You never lose the ability to apply mom-logic to any situation because once you’re a mama, the job never ends.”

“I know. I know. I’m that way with Lacey Marie. Rinse off that bowl for me will you, sugar?”

“Does it take a long time for the water to get hot?” Cozie turned taps on the chipped enamel sink.

“No, but it does take a couple minutes to let the rust wash out of the pipes.” Realizing she had just left an opening for her friend to tell her again why she needed to renovate this dump, she scrubbed at the table with her egg-slimed paper towel—and changed the subject. “Sometimes I think of my little girl off at that big old college and…”

“And you get so jealous you could pop.”

“No!”

“Admit it.” Cozie swished water over the bowl and took a few swipes at its underside with the sponge.

“I
miss
my child!”

“Of course you do. One thing has nothing to do with the other. You love her and miss her, but that doesn’t mean you don’t harbor some secret longing to be
like
her, out having new experiences.” She leaned back against the counter, tipped her
head toward the stairway door, then, seemingly satisfied no one was coming up yet, grinned slowly. “You could be having new experiences, of course, like for instance with Jillie’s brother.”

“If Lacey Marie is having the kind of new experiences that you expect me to have with Jillie’s brother, jealousy would not be my first reaction.”

“Why are you fighting this so? Nobody is forcing you to do anything? Just to consider working with the man and getting a fresh start.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for Billy West and me to have a fresh start.”

“You two have history?”

“In the sense that history is just riddled with unresolved conflict, then yes, we have history.”

“Oh?”

“It’s nothing! It’s…”
Stupid
. She sighed. “It goes back to when he came back to Memphis seven or eight years ago and moved in with—oh, you know, that woman who tried to be a country singer for a while.”

“Norrie Walker.”

Rita remembered but nodded like she’d just heard it after years of never thinking of it.

“Honey, you should hear Miss Peggy go on about that girl. Apparently one of the reasons Norrie never became Mrs. West was that she had a rather relaxed approach to fidelity.”

“Really?” All the gossip that went around this town and Rita had missed that one. Rita looked at the table, now dull with dried egg and then at her sticky hands, then at her awful mess of a house
shoe. The crown tangled in her hair had started to make her head ache, and adding that poignant little tidbit of fact about Wild Billy to the mix did not help things one bit.

“So, what went on between you and Jillie’s brother?”

“It goes back to the time when Norrie was pregnant. The last time Billy spent more time in Hellon than at home in Memphis, drinking with his old buddies, living off past glories that weren’t really all that glorious if you ask me.”

“I’m not one to be judgmental.” Cozie shook her head. “But he acted a first-class asshole back then.”

Rita had to laugh at her friend’s
nonjudgmental
assessment.

“Everybody said so. Nobody to his face.”

Rita shut her eyes. “Almost nobody.”

“What did you do?”

She wet her lips and wriggled her foot out of her soggy shoe. “I told him his place was with Norrie. That he was thirty-two, a grown man with responsibilities,
and
I told him what I thought of his behavior.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Well, I didn’t give him the sweetened condensed version, nor did I wait until he was alone.”

“Rita! I’m shocked at you.”

No more shocked than Rita had been. But something about that man brought out the fire in her. “And you wonder why I resist my mother’s impulsive streak?”

“It couldn’t have been
that
bad, honey.”

“I tried to tell myself I did him a favor because then when his baby was born so early and the poor thing only lived a few weeks, well, he
was
there for Norrie and the child.”

“So some good did come of it.”

“I had hoped that was the case, but after I tore into him, that’s when he stopped coming to town at all. When does he come here, now? Three or four times a year? And then he doesn’t stay long enough to play any kind of role in his family.”

“What?” Cozie pulled Rita into a sidelong hug, laughing. “You think he stays out of Hellon ’cause he’s scared of you?”

“I think he stays out of Hellon because he’s all the things I accused him of being that night.
I’m
no more significant to the likes of him than—” She bent down and took up her yoke-matted slipper. “Than a discarded eggshell.”

“You’re creating your own reality again, Rita. You should speak your wants, not your fears.”

“Fine. I want waffles.”

Cozie stepped away, listening again at the doorway. “Rita…”

“I want another carton of eggs.” Rita lifted her chin and held out her hands. “I’m speaking them into reality even as we stand here.”

“Go change. I can hear them coming right now.”

“Where are my eggs, Cozie?” She tipped her head up. The crown slid back. Quietly she beseeched the heavens, her slimy house shoe held aloft, “Eggs. Where are my eggs?”

“Where is your mind? I can hear them on the steps. Any second now Wild Billy West will be…”

“Wild Billy West can kiss my red-hot…”

“Yes?” The man braced his arm against the doorframe and put one boot over the threshold. And yet he seemed to fill up the whole room and suck most of the air out of Rita’s lungs.

“Waffle iron,” she whimpered.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
. All he had to do was show up and that became her self-fulfilling prophecy. But she’d be damned if she’d let
him
know it.

“Hello again, Rita. Hope I haven’t caught you at a…” He took the long route to give her the once-over head to toe—or should she say tiara to toe?

Even from behind the cool dark shades, she felt the heat of his gaze.

Finally, he smiled, dipped his head just enough to peer over the top of his glasses and nail her with a smirk. “…bad time.”

She tossed her house shoe to the floor and squared her shoulders. He could look askance at her, but she would not let him look down on her. “Not at all, Mr. West.”

“Good to hear it.” He stepped forward, hand outstretched.

She never let her smile waver as she fit her hand in his and pressed a glob of gooey egg yoke into his warm, callused palm.

“Oops, I forgot! Had a little accident with a raw egg a minute ago.” With a gleam in her eyes and her dimples flashing, Rita cranked that killer smile of hers up a notch.

She might as well have handed him his ego in that handshake. No one else in Hellon would dare do such a thing. Damn, but Will admired this woman.

She withdrew her hand and cleaned it off on what looked like an old hospital gown that she had thrown on over her nightclothes. “I am
so
sorry about that.”

“No, you’re not.” He didn’t remove his sunglasses or even so much as glance at the mess covering his palm. He simply took the gown’s hem from Rita’s grasp.

She let out a little gasp that left her full lips pursed.

He edged in close to her and wiped his hand on the soft fabric.

She didn’t pull away.

“You’re not one bit sorry. Are you?”

“Well, I…” Her gaze dipped to his hands on her clothing. She started to touch her temple but froze the instant her fingers hit a crown knotted up in her hair.

He kept on cleaning his hands and tried not to decide if he was alarmed or impressed with the sight of so much sparkle this early in the morning.

“You’re not sorry.” No woman wearing a damn pageant tiara in her kitchen would feel the least bit of regret over an action like that. “You’ve got nothing to feel sorry about. Your little playmates there cooked up my coming by today without telling you what they had in mind, didn’t they?”

“I had no part in asking you here.”

“I understand that. You didn’t ask for my help at all.” She damn sure needed his help, but she didn’t ask. She wouldn’t. Not Rita. He dropped the hem of her gown. “Do you know what I have to say about that?”

“Why should I care what you have to say about anything, Mr….”

“I say you’ve just sealed a deal to get your Pig Rib Pigsty a bargain-rate makeover.”

“Wh-what?”

He had a vague awareness of some feminine squeals and laugher in the background, but his focus remained with Rita. “I’m not a man to weigh every pro and con before making up my mind. I decide what I want to do, and I do it. I want to help you fix up your place, Rita.”

She blinked and somehow her big brown eyes grew bigger, deeper, more compelling. “If you said that to impress me, you’ve wasted your breath.”

“I know.”

“You…you
know
?”

“I know you’re not impressed with me.”

“I didn’t exactly say…”

“You’ve gone out of your way more than once to make sure I know it.” He held his open hand up. He tried not to grin at her, but he couldn’t hold it back.

She pressed her lips together and looked away.

“That’s the reason I can’t say no to this project. I wanted to say no, believe me. I tried to say no.” He reached toward her.

She flinched.

He raised his hands to show his innocent intentions.

Her face clouded but she didn’t stop him.

Reaching behind her head, he began to unwind Rita’s hair slowly, meticulously from the gold and rhinestones. “For anyone else I would say no.”

She shifted to keep some space between their bodies. “You don’t have to—”

“But I
do
have to, Rita.” He freed the crown. For a minute, he turned it this way and that, studying how it glittered in the light of the cramped kitchen’s window.

“My Dixie Belle Duchess crown. I only put it on my head because…” She took it from him and shot Jillie and Cozette a scathing glare.

“I think I understand.” He didn’t. Not really. But then, he didn’t really give a damn about the crown or why she had it on. “So, when can we talk about my suggestions for redoing the restaurant?”

“When pigs fly.”

“I…I beg your pardon?”

She set the crown on the table and cocked her head. Her rat’s nest of a hairdo fell forward. Then, seemingly oblivious of the fact that she looked like a walking laundry pile, she gave him a look so sweet he wouldn’t need sugar in his tea for a month. “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer. I mean a man of your repute and your obvious”—she cleared her throat— “talent, willing to fritter away a few hours—”

“Days. In fact, it will probably take a few days
just to come up with the rough ideas for what needs doing.”

“…of your precious time on a person like me—”

“You mean a person I respect and want to help?”

“…and place like mine, well, I should certainly feel grateful, right?”

“I don’t know about grateful, Rita. I feel like mostly we make our own way in this life. If we see an opportunity to make that way better, we should grab it.”

“So, you think I’d be foolish not to grab this opportunity?”

“Actually, I was thinking about me.”

Her deep brown eyes opened wide. “You think I should grab
you
?”

Jillie and Cozette hooted like frat boys at a kegger.

Rita shot them a look that neither shut them up nor left any question that they would pay later for their part in this. Her newly cooled gaze targeted him again. “Maybe this would work better if you simply explained your thinking, Mr. West.”

“What’s to explain, Rita?” He used her given name to try to shame her into dropping the mister business. “I was thinking of myself.”

“Yourself?”

“Some people believe I am always thinking of myself. You know like the self-involved bastard I can be.”

She had the decency to wince at that, but just fleetingly.

“That is what you called me that day you told me off, right? A self-involved bastard?”

She folded her arms. “An immature, irresponsible, self-loving donkey-headed bastard.”

He nodded. “How kind of you to have remembered.”

“No bother.”

“So, didn’t it ever occur to you that an ‘immature’ and so on bastard would not be so quick to give his time away if he didn’t think he’d get something out of it?”

“I see.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Oh?” Her lips remained rounded after the whispered syllable faded away.

“No.” He adjusted his sunglasses at the temple. “This is something I just have to do, Rita.”

“Remodeling
my
place is just something
you
have to do?”

“Yes.”

“
Have
to do?” Her voice came out soft as a shared confidence. “The only thing you have to do, Wild Billy—”

“Will.”

“Is get the hell out of my apartment.”

He glanced behind him, then leaned just one shoulder against the fridge, careful not to bother the photos and school papers stuck on it. “But you invited me so cordially to stay for breakfast.”

“Now, I’m inviting you, cordially, to eat dirt and die.”

“Eat
dirt
and die?” He stroked his chin like he
had to contemplate her G-rated version. “Now see, you didn’t tell me Jillie would be cooking.”