The Dixie Belle's Guide to Love (6 page)

She held the plate before her, peering at him over the peaks of lacy confection and strawberries dipped in white chocolate. “The Perfect Princess cake.”

“This will stop even my mama dead in her tracks.”

“Shh. Quick, say a prayer.”

“A
what
? Why?”

“Never say
dead
and
mama
in the same sentence if your mother is still living. Don’t you have any sense at all?”

“You’ve as much as told me I don’t.”

“Shut your eyes and say a prayer, I mean it.”

He closed his eyes and muttered under his breath. The message was far from heavenly. When he opened his eyes again Rita was gone, but the sweet aroma of that cake still lingered. So did the feeling that for all his bravado about coming here to help her realize her potential, he might well be the one who ended up learning a thing or two about life and himself in the bargain.

“I thought you said they were on their way.” Will raised his arm just enough to give Rita a view of his flexed muscles.

He was showing her his wristwatch, no doubt, but what she saw was muscle. Her pulse picked up. When Rita caught the subtle scent on Will’s skin and took a deep breath she swore she drew in some kind of electrical charge that sent a shiver through her whole body.

Careful not to jiggle the table where they both sat in wait, she moved closer and pretended to make a note of the time. “Well, you know how it is around here. A body dare not step a toe outside the house without proper attention to hair, clothes, and makeup. Or the next thing you know somebody down at the Belles and Beaux Beauty
Salon will spread the word that you are definitely letting yourself
go
!”

“And Pernel can’t afford that kind of bad word of mouth.” Jillie never turned her gaze from the row of parking places out front. Still, her satisfaction at making a cutting remark about Rita’s ex showed in the faint reflection of her face on the glass door where she stood watch.

“Did anyone ever tell you what a bitch you are, Jillie?”

“About as often as folks tell you what they really think of your brother,” she said, not looking back to see how he took it.

“Then I guess you don’t hear it often enough.” He sat back and curved his hand around the top of Rita’s chair now so close to his. “Unless Rita here gets after you now and again.”

“Don’t involve me in this.” She could feel his hand there—
right there
—just a hairbreadth away from her back, and it made her jumpy.

He strummed his fingers once along the wood, so close she felt the vibrations on her back.

She would get up but what would she do? Pace? Pretend to polish the lunch counter? The one they planned to rip out and destroy as soon as they could? She might as well twist around in her seat and blurt out to the man, “You make me so nervous I can’t think straight.”

Great. Now
that
idea was in her head. What was it Cozette said about “self” talk? She rubbed her eyes. “What we tell ourselves we are, that’s what we become.”

“Hmm?”

She blinked, suddenly aware she’d spoken aloud. “Nothing, just an approach Cozie tries to get me to use.”

Wham
. The door slamming at the back of the kitchen cut her off. An odd cadence of footsteps
clack-a-clacking
toward them rivaled the skipping beat of her heart.

Rita braced herself. “Cozie says that what we tell ourselves we are—”

“I am here, and I am fit to be tied,” Pernel’s cry echoed through the vacant building.

“That’s what we become.” She followed Will’s gaze to her ex-husband stopped in the doorway.

Pernel aimed his fiercest glare at her, then flung the scarf around his throat over one shoulder so that the end swirled downward to accent his backless sundress perfectly.

“I guess not every bit of gossip around Hellon is a gross exaggeration of the truth.” Will narrowed his eyes.

Pernel smoothed back his auburn pageboy wig. He anchored his substantial pumps shoulder width apart and proceeded to wrestle with something inside the top of his dress. Pernel shifted his shoulder and one of the lumps in his bodice slipped lower than the other. He set about correcting the problem.

“Of course that depends on your definition of gross.” Will shook his head.

“He hasn’t decided which is the best cup size for his frame, and I’m sure that halter bra is giv
ing him fits.” Why Rita felt compelled to offer that tidbit was beyond her.

“Are they evened up now?” Pernel held his arms out and offered himself for their inspection.

“Not quite.” She motioned to him. “Come over here and let me help you out.”

“Wait. Hell’s hobnobs, one of my press-on nails has come off inside here.” He pulled the front of his dress out and began to shimmy and shake.

She thought of reminding him he might have some impediment that would keep the fake fingernail from falling clean through to the floor but stopped herself. She did not know how or if he had alleviated that problem and did not want to give him the opportunity to tell her. She might have come to accept the man’s eccentricities, but there are some things an ex-wife just doesn’t want to know. Whether the father of her child tucks or tapes to create a…streamlined silhouette falls in that category.

“Does he have to do that here?” Will winced.

“You don’t have to be afraid of him, you know.” Again she had no idea why she responded the way she did. That dang nerves thing, she suspected, or maybe her need to keep everything on an even keel. Whatever the reason, she went on trying to make lemonade out of…who was she kidding? Good old loyal Rita was actually trying to make lemonade out of those oversize grapefruits strapped to Pernel’s chest. “Dressing like that doesn’t mean he’s an unfit father.”

“Did I say I thought he was?”

“It obviously bothers you. And he’s not gay; even if he were, he won’t hit on you and as far as his taste in clothes—well, it’s not contagious.”

“That’s twice now you’ve made a reference to me having some kind of gender hang-up.” He held up two fingers, then raised his eyebrows at her. “It isn’t because you think I’m intimidated by my mama is it?”

“I never said anything about—”

“Because I’m not.”

“Not? Not what?”

“Intimidated by my mama
or
hung up about gender or sexual preferences.” He angled his shoulder down so that he could speak into her ear, the clear hint of mischief in his deep, glittering eyes. “I welcome an opportunity to prove as much to you.”

“You mean about your mother?”

“If you say so.” He jerked his head to the side and grinned.

“Oh.” Rita covered her mouth.

He chuckled, then glanced across the room at Pernel and scowled. “I know you don’t hold me in the highest regard, but I do want you to know I am not homophobic. And surely you realize after the life I’ve led, I could care less what other consenting adults get up to in private.”

After the life he’d led? Rita dared not speculate on that. “Then why does it bug you so much that Pernel is pursuing an alternative lifestyle?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Oh please, contempt for that man is written all over your face. How can you—”

“Because he hurt you.” His almost black eyes fixed so intensely on her that he honed the world down to just the two of them.

“Got it!” Pernel held his arm up over his head, brandishing the nail between his thumb and fore-finger. “I have to get this fixed before I lose it again. Do you have any acrylic glue, Rita?”

“I have some in my purse.” Jillie rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Pernel, if you insist on going around town like this, you owe it to whatever personal pride you have left to do it right, not half-assed liked everything else you’ve ever taken on.”

“Half-assed?” He gave her a look worthy of some silent-screen movie vamp and pulled it off stunningly. “Coming from a girl with no ass at all, I take that as a compliment.”

“At least what I do have did not come from a mail-order catalog.”

“You mean they don’t have catalogs at the plastic surgeon’s office? What do you do? Cut out pictures from magazines? Because if that’s the case, hon, let me recommend you get yourself some new subscriptions.”

“High-handed talk for a man with the world’s worst case of hooter-scoot I’ve ever seen. One of those is high enough to put an eye out and the other is about to slip down into your panty hose.”

“It is a bit like Big-Busted Bertha now.” Rita
held her hands up chest high, then dipped one to waist level. “Big-Busted Bertha thirty years from now.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.” Despite chastising her, Will did laugh. It felt good to hear it.

“Jillie, fix Pernel’s nails and his boobies, please.” She turned to Will. “I can’t believe I just said
that
.”

“You are either the nicest woman alive or a damn fool.”

“Some people act like those are one and the same.”

“I never said that.”

“I may not be the kind of sophisticated woman you run into in the ‘kind of life’ you’ve led,” She made quotation marks in the air. “But I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see what you think of me, of my life and what I’ve done with it.”

“I’m far more interested in what you can do with your life and your future, if you really want to.” He almost put his hand on hers, but at the last second he held back and laid it on the table between them.

She didn’t care that he hadn’t completed the gesture. It felt good to have him beside her, on her team, as it were. It had been a very long time since she’d felt anyone was truly on her side for her sake alone. Though she knew the feeling existed mostly in her mind, she took a second to revel in it.

“Whatever you decide don’t let Pernel walk all over you.”

“I won’t.” She gave him a sinful smile. “Especially, not in those heels.”

“How can you make jokes about all this after…?”

“After what?” She sat back and watched Jillie work on Pernel. “After nearly fifteen years of him running our lives, me going along trying not to make waves, then him coming home one day and telling me it’s over?”

“For starters—”

“Or maybe you mean how can I take things so lightly after he decided to let the world in on his previously private indulgence by showing up at our daughter’s graduation in a cocktail dress, wig, and wedgies?”

“Why the bastard is still breathing is beyond me.”

“Or how about how can I keep smiling after he sold my home? Made me take him to court to get this dump so I could have something to rebuild with?”

“Take your pick.”

“I can be civil to him because…” She sighed. Having just recounted the short list of her ex’s transgressions, she found herself hard-pressed to explain it adequately. In fact, she had to force the words out through a clenched jaw. “Because he is an important part of my life.”

“
Was
an important part,” Will amended.

“He is my daughter’s daddy.” A far reach to justify a lifetime of shabby treatment, but still…She raised her shoulders and laced her arms over
her chest. She could not meet Will’s unwavering gaze. “I can’t just discard him or the role he has played in my life simply because he had the poor taste to fall out of love with me.”

“Not even if you fell out of love with him right back?” He asked it so quietly she half wondered if she’d imagined it.

Had she fallen out of love with Pernel? Even looking at him now pressing his Plum Patina-glossed lips together while Jillie adjusted his fake bosom she could not go so far as to say she had fallen out of love with the man. That would mean she had been “in love” with him. She had never deluded herself, or him, into believing that. But she did love him in her own way. “I don’t think you and I have the same definition of love, Will.”

He tensed and looked away from her.

Her head told her to pull back, but the words rushed on. “For me it’s a commitment, a promise. You can’t just walk away from it when it doesn’t suit you any longer. You can’t turn it off when it’s no longer pleasant or convenient.”

His mouth grim, Will sat silent, motionless, his gaze on the elaborate cake in front of them.

She’d gone too far. The urge to pull things back into balance overtook her. “Not that I think you ever did that.”

He straightened the forks, smoothed out a napkin with the back of his hand. He did not look at her. His very lack of response told her he had taken her words as an accusation.

“I know I might have implied something like
that in the past, but I don’t…” In trying to protect her own emotions she’d trod on Will’s feelings and reminded him how she had viewed his actions toward Norrie and the baby when they had needed him most. “Maybe we should change the subject.” He exhaled, loudly.

“Blow on that nail so it will dry faster, and keep your shoulders straight but relaxed, that’s what’s making your girly-parts sag in the first place.” Jillie pushed here and prodded there until she had Pernel standing like a shop mannequin. As she turned to head to the rest room, she called out over her shoulder. “Mother always told me to think of your spine as a string of pearls and to picture pulling the pearls straight, but not taut.”

“Straight but not taut,” Pernel echoed.

“Oh, now there’s a motto for you if I ever heard one, Pernel,” Rita called out, glad for the distraction. “Maybe I’ll embroider it on a pillow or have you a bumper sticker made up. ‘Straight but not taut.’”

“Stick to cooking and kindly leave the humorous commentary alone, Rita.” Pernel started toward them. Oddly he did not look effeminate even in that outfit, but more feminine in a masculine way. Like a woman with mannish features. When he spoke, he went for a soft, raspy whisper instead of trying to raise his voice a register. When he reached the table he tried to swipe some frosting off the perfect cake. “Tackiness does not become you.”

“Best to leave that to the experts.” Will didn’t so much as flinch as he took the cake stand in one hand and lifted it up and away. “Pernel here takes tacky to new heights—or is that lows?”

“I may dress like a lady, Mr. West. But I can still whip your ass man to man.”

“I wouldn’t want you to lose another nail.” Will settled the cake back where it belonged and narrowed one eye at Pernel.

“Don’t act all smug and coy with me.”

Will grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I know what you’re up to, both of you.” He lowered himself into the seat next to Rita, but he completely ignored her and fixed his false-eyelash-framed eyes on the man next to her. “I know why you’re here, West, and I am not happy about it.”

“What could you possibly know about anything?” Rita bumped his elbow off the table and swept away the pool of magenta silk along with it. Heaven help them all if the man’s scarf, which she suspected cost more than her secondhand wedding dress had, should trail across her Princess cake. “And why do you have anything to say about who comes and goes in my life?”

“I have something to say about what happens to the Palace. My name is still on the sign out front.”

“But it’s not on the legal documents. I am now sole owner of this place. I can do whatever I please with it.”