Vegas Two-Step (19 page)

Dawn’s eyes glazed over as she stared out at the swaying branches. Long shadows reached for the porch and gloom descended as if it were lending itself to her tale.

“I remember his little face. And the feeling that shot through me. The emptiness, the sheer acceptance that I was about to kill my little brother. It was weird, you know, that kind of disconnect. But I swerved at the last minute. That big wheel came about a half inch of crushing the tricycle and pulling Jack underneath.”

Nellie shivered despite the suffocating humidity.

“I don’t remember much else. How I turned off the tractor, how I climbed down. How Frannie came out screaming at me at the top of her lungs. But I remember Jack. I sprinted over to him. He just sat there on that dumb tricycle. He looked up at me and gave the biggest grin.”

Dawn’s wistful eyes were chocolate soft in the waning light.

“You know what he said?”

Nellie shook her head.

“He said, ‘Hey, Dondee, you can drive a tractor.’ That sweet little boy I sometimes hated was proud of me because I could drive a tractor.”

Poignant silence fell around the two women who were strangers yet had one simple thing in common: they loved Jack.

Dawn shot her a small, sad smile, but her voice held an edge. “So you see, it’s very hard for me to sit here and comfort you, give you tea and sympathy.”

“Why?” Nellie squirmed, a bit uncomfortable at the change in Dawn’s tone.

“Because that day as I held that squirming little boy, bawling my eyes out, I swore I wouldn’t let anyone hurt him. And you have.”

She pierced Nellie with eyes that were no longer velvety and welcoming, but hard as the nails sticking up out of the loose porch boards. “That man gave up his life for you, bought this dump and moved halfway across the country. You need to think long and hard about that, about what he did, and what it says about the way he feels about you.”

Nellie couldn’t stop her own anger from rising. Dawn wanted to lecture her, make her think about Jack? She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Couldn’t get anything about their relationship out of her mind. And his sister wanted to preach to her? “So what are you going to do if I hurt him more?”

Dawn shrugged and flashed a quasi-grin. “Whatever it takes.”

Nellie struggled up from the camping chair, setting her half-full glass of tea on the rickety porch rail. “Look, Dawn, I admire your sisterly concern, but I didn’t ask Jack to show up here. Besides, surely you realize you can’t control what happens to another person’s heart.

“And what about what I feel? What I want?” Nellie was far from finished. “You’d rather I lie to Jack so he could be happy? Don’t you know how those relationships end?”

Dawn flinched at her words. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

Nellie shook her head and walked down the stairs. Off in the distance she could see Bubba and Jack stacking random pieces of wood in a pile. Bubba was laughing. She waved.

She opened the door to her Buick and looked back at Dawn. Jack’s sister sat, stony and silent. Nellie felt a bit sorry for her. She had been trying to protect Jack.

“Thanks for the tea, Dawn,” Nellie called, sliding behind the wheel. Dawn managed a small wave. She seemed lost in thought.

Nellie cranked the car. It purred to life. Fifteen years old and only 25,632 miles on the odometer. Grandmother Tucker had hardly ever gone any farther than the town square. Nellie had sold her small convertible just after her Grandmother had died. Driving it had seemed impractical. Now she wished she’d kept it.

As she set off down the lane, she glanced back at Jack. He stood in the field watching her drive away.

He looked lonely. Hopeful. Sexy.

She wanted him. And she loved him.

But he’d been right. First, she needed to do some hard thinking. She loved her job, loved her town, loved the fact she could cook up a pot of butter beans and batch of corn bread without dragging out a recipe. But she also despised much about her life. Okay,
despised
was a strong word, but she had to face a few issues about herself.

Jack’s words held truth. She needed to figure out who she was.

Was she Elle or Nellie? But maybe they weren’t separate entities? Sure, playing the part of Elle in Vegas had been liberating, but Nellie had still been herself. Nothing about Elle had been forced. Nellie had allowed herself to be what she sometimes longed to be. She wasn’t two people in one body. Elle was just another facet of herself.

Jack hadn’t fallen in love with Elle, he’d fallen in love with Nellie.

Changing her name hadn’t changed who she really was.

Nor had highlighting her hair, or buying new clothes or wearing a fake tattoo on her shoulder.

By the time she’d pulled out of the bumpy driveway, Nellie knew what she wanted. It was time to show Jack he’d come to Oak Stand for all the right reasons.

Not that he hadn’t met his neighbors. They’d come out of the woodwork trying to catch a bite or two of gossip. After seeing him follow Nellie out of church, everyone had suspicions. He was from Vegas. Nellie had just been to Vegas. Small-town people were a lot smarter than all the big-city people portrayed them to be. To them, “if it smells dead, it mostly likely is dead.”

So he got lots of information on Miss Nellie Hughes, along with a watermelon, a lemon pound cake and a fruit basket.

He had to give them credit for lacking big-city bluntness. The conversation seemed to go something like this.

“Welcome to our little town, Mr. Darby.”

“You can call me Jack.”

“Oh, Jack then. We hope you like living in Oak Stand. It’s a fine town. Did you know our town was founded by Rufus Tucker? His great-great-granddaughter still lives here, can you believe? Her name is Nellie. Have you met her by chance?” Eyes slide to his, gauging a reaction, studying him, waiting for his answer like a spider waits on the hapless mosquito.

Or sometimes like this.

“From Vegas, huh? I sure would like to go there. Do a little gambling, see that big dam, and those topless show-girls. You know who just went out to Vegas? Nellie Hughes. You know her? Meet her in Vegas? That’d be a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would.”

“So…”

Silence.

“So you gonna raise horses, huh? What kind? I know a man over in Marshall that raises them paints for show.”

Or sometimes there were no questions. Just a rundown on Nellie’s life.

“You know someone else who makes good pound cake? Nellie Hughes. Why, her grandmother made the lightest cake. Gotta sift the flour three times. That’s the key. Well, Nellie was raised by her grandmother. Nellie’s momma went plumb crazy, strung out on drugs, you know. And her daddy… Well, if you ask me, that’s a man who was just lookin’ for a meal ticket. Went off to work on oil rigs and didn’t come back. Left that baby with her crazy mother and took up with a piece of trash down in Mississippi. He divorced Grace—that’s Nellie’s momma—as soon as the poor woman was committed. He’s remarried now, but Nellie’s momma is over in Longview in a home. She don’t know nobody. Shame, ain’t it? But of course, I’m not a gossip. By the way, who’s doing your painting?”

That particular conversation had been a doozy. It took Jack a good thirty minutes before he could make an excuse to get back to work.

And he had worked. Hard. And his sister and Andrew had helped him. Which was why, as he sat slurping his cereal, he dreaded having to tell Dawn and Andrew goodbye. They were leaving the next day. But his dad would be in town the following week. Tom was wrapping things up in California and still trying to placate Lila.

“Hey, here’s the mail from yesterday. You worked so late I went to bed and forgot to give it to you.” Dawn padded across the kitchen in her bare feet and tossed the bundle on the table. “I need to go over the schedule with you before I leave.”

“Schedule?” he said, popping the rubber band and separating the junk mail from the bills. His forwarded mail had finally caught up with him.

Dawn plopped a calendar agenda in front of him. “I have all your appointments for the house highlighted in blue. All appointments pertaining to the buildings and property are in pink. Meetings with local officials for permits and licenses are yellow. Over to the side, you will see a list of numbers. Those are the invoice numbers for the furniture companies along with contact info.”

He felt as though he’d climbed on a Tilt-A-Whirl “Whoa. Wait a sec. I have all these people coming out today?”

“I’ll handle everything today. After that, you’re on your own.” Dawn stole a frosted bran flake from the side of his bowl and popped it in her mouth. Her eyes sparked mischievously. “Flooring people will be here in half an hour. I need to shower and get coffee. Don’t forget to call Dad. Something about the horse trailer registration and bringing Dutch down when he comes.”

Dawn left and Drew walked in.

He shuffled about the kitchen banging cabinets and rattling drawers. Finally he parked himself at the table with a salad bowl and a gallon of milk. He poured half the box of sugar snappies into the massive bowl and added a good portion of the milk. Then he started slurping away.

Jack shoved back from the table, pulling Dawn’s “calendar from hell” away from the fray. He didn’t want his blues mixing with his yellows or he’d have too many greens. Drew kept right on attacking the cereal.

“I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes. We’re pouring cement today and then going to town for fencing.”

“Mmmfff…” was all he heard. He’d just reached the door to the back porch when Drew called out, “You missed one.”

Jack spun around and snatched the vellum envelope from his nephew’s outstretched hand. He stomped onto the screened back porch and plunked down on an ancient rocking chair. He’d be damned if he sat and listened to Drew smack his way through a second bowl of cereal.

He squinted at the envelope he held. It was addressed to him in fine, clear strokes. No return address, but an Oak Stand postmark.

He slid a finger under the flap and pulled out…an invitation? The front was monogrammed with the initials NRH. He opened it.

Please come to dinner so we may continue our discussion. Friday night, 7:30 at 401 Fort Street. Thong optional.

Nellie

He stared at the back end of his property as he thought about the implications. The fig tree had been picked clean by the birds. Two pear trees bore spotted fruit. Some clumpy purple flowers grew unchecked at the base of several trees and pampas grass puffed against a dilapidated shed. At one time, the place had been well loved, carefully tended, not sad and scraggly.

Yet Jack could feel nothing but satisfaction. Friday he would know one way or the other. He leaned toward a happy ending, but did he really know Nellie the way he thought he did?

A mockingbird landed in the fig tree and warbled a joyful tune. She was a spot of beauty in the jumble of the overgrown, yellowed yard, and her song gave him faith. Faith that everything would fall into place. Everything would be right.

He hoped.

So she offered Brent a bribe of an extra five percent profit on the project if he could finish the kitchen in a few days, not the expected week or two. Lacking a mind for math and anything better to do, he agreed. By Friday morning, the kitchen was complete. For just a thousand dollars extra.

Nellie had nearly tripped over the plumber on his way out the front door. As she turned to watch him go, she realized her house was quiet. Very quiet.

For the past several weeks, she’d heard saws buzzing, hammers banging, tiles crashing and lots of colorful phrasing. She’d grown so used to having other people in the house, moving, toting, painting and repairing, it felt odd for it to be silent.

She dropped her purse on the dining room table, rounded the corner and stared at her completed kitchen.

Wow. It was awesome. Stone floors, newly stained cabinets with pewter hardware, gleaming appliances, granite countertops and caramel walls. Lovely, beautiful, magnificent—all three. She swore she could feel a lump in her throat.

Before she could stop herself, she was fast at work restoring order. She pulled out pots and hung them on the rack hanging above the farmhouse table that served as the kitchen island. New canisters went on the gleaming counters, her grandmother’s cheerful red kettle on the stove, and her ivy planter in the corner. As Nellie set her kitchen right, she stopped to marvel at the new stainless-steel microwave, the built-in desk for bill paying, and the clever corner panel that hid her small TV. By the time she’d hung her hand-embroidered towels on the small bar by the sink, several hours had passed.

Cripes! She had to get to the store. She’d shelled the peas last night, so she poured them in the sink to rinse once more. She placed freshly picked big boy tomatoes in the window for the sun to warm and then scooped up her new Prada bag and headed out to the car.

By the time she’d shopped, then stopped for fresh flowers and some vanilla candles from the Enchanted Garden Gift Shop, it was nearly two o’clock.

By five, she’d fried the chicken crisp and set it in the warming drawer, and the potatoes were peeled and ready to boil. The peas had a good scald on them, and the corn bread was baking. Nellie pulled the sheet cake out to cool. She’d frost it just before Jack got there. Everything turned out beautifully. Nellie sent up a prayer of thanks and then headed upstairs for a much needed shower.

By six-thirty, she had butterflies in her stomach and chocolate icing all over her. She’d inserted the damn beaters incorrectly and gotten a huge surprise when she’d turned on the mixer. Chocolate splattered the front of her shirt and face. Nellie grabbed a paper towel just as the doorbell rang.

Crap. She swiped the paper towel across her face and scrambled to find the matches. She tapped her way across the kitchen to the dining room in her new Manolos and lit the candles on the table, blowing the flame out just as it singed her fingers.

“Damn!” She waved her hand as if she could shake off the pain. She had to stop cursing; she sounded like the workmen who’d traipsed through her house daily.

The doorbell sounded again. Her plan to greet Jack at the door, cool and calm and unruffled, disintegrated. She hit the button on the new satellite radio, filling the dining room with traditional jazz, and ducked into the kitchen.

Time for a backup plan. She shrugged off her shirt, unhooked her lacy bra and reached for the old-fashioned frilly apron in her cupboard. Jack had wanted her to meld her two personalities. Well, tonight he would meet the woman she’d always been.