Whiskey and Gumdrops: A Blueberry Springs Chick Lit Contemporary Romance (2 page)

"Don't tell anyone, okay?"

He paused, his hand on the doorknob. "If anyone asks why all the juice, I'll tell them Heart got loose and found a skunk."

Mandy gave him a grateful smile and turned the red-soaked cloth over in her hands. "Thanks."

He returned her smile and she felt a whoosh in her gut. He was always so good to her and half the time, she felt as though she didn't even deserve him as a friend. Sure, she was a good friend, too, but sometimes she wondered why he put up with her chasing another man when he'd made it clear over the years that he was willing to pick up where their first—and only—date had left off.

He stepped closer. A look in his eyes made her tense up. "Why can't you see it?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"See what?" she asked cautiously.

"How strong you are." He came closer again. "And that you could have anything you wanted."

Mandy stood and crossed her arms. Not this again. "Frankie, what
you
want and what you need are two different things."

"You've got to start giving yourself some credit." He cupped her chin and leaned closer, intense. "You are more than you know, woman."

"Frankie," she sighed, a raw edge to her voice.

She tried to ignore how his proximity was making her body go extra tingly. "You know any woman would be lucky to have a good man like you." Her eyes prickled with emotion and she tugged herself out of his grip. She crouched and busied herself with washing her hands.

Glancing up, she caught him shooting her that goofy, crooked grin that always made her want to comply with whatever kooky idea he had. More than once she'd found herself racing across the meadow track in her 4x4, trying to outdo one of his muscle cars after he'd shot that grin in her direction. Such a challenge lay behind those lips, and he knew perfectly well how it usually worked.

He crouched beside her. "The same could be said about you," he whispered. He slowly leaned in and, when she didn't move away, placed his lips gently over hers. He gave her a deep kiss that awakened parts of her that had been dormant for a very long time. And for a very good reason.

She shoved him away and stood up. "Dammit, Frankie!"

She blinked back tears and moved to the other side of the car, where she'd be out of reach, leaving them both safe. The Charger stood between them, its cold frame protecting her. Frankie placed his hands on the hood and stared at her. She panicked. Panicked the way she had when her truck had lost its brakes on Bear's Pass. Except now there was no runaway lane to save her from flying over the edge. Her voice crept up a few octaves as she said, "I can't do this with you, Frankie. I can't. Okay? Please." She shook her head. "Our friendship—"

"Stop worrying about me. I'm a grown man."

He turned on his heel and strode outside, slamming the door in his wake.

Mandy drew in a long breath, the familiar scent of oil and gas barely making it past the choking smell wafting off her in great waves. Only Frankie would kiss her like that when she smelled like this. And only Frankie would think she could give him something she couldn't.

She plunked herself down and began dabbing her face and hair with the tomato-stained rag.
Don't think. Don't feel. This will pass and everything will go on as it always has.

But if that was what she truly wanted, why did she feel as though she was losing out on something really great?

Chapter
2

Mandy inhaled deeply, on guard for a whiff of skunk, and, doffing her fleece jacket, straightened her uniform. Polyester. Could there be anything worse? She twisted back and forth on Frankie's porch, checking her reflection in the side window.

The door swung open and Heart bounded out, ball in mouth. He nudged Mandy's hand, releasing the damp toy so she could throw it across the yard. He raced after it when she threw it, his black tail whipping the air as he skidded around the ball. After picking it up, he tore back to the step.

Frankie rubbed his eyes and blinked. She waved her arm at him. "Do I still smell?"

He paused and shrugged.

"Does that mean I'm fine?" After five days of not passing the sniff test, today had to be the day. She couldn't afford more days off work.

"I'm sick," he said, covering his mouth as he let out a wracking cough. "Thanks for noticing."

Heart nudged her hand with the wet tennis ball and she took it with her fingertips, tossing it over the tiny house so Heart would have to run all the way around, giving her more time before he came back with the slobbery ball.

Frankie groaned. "I hate it when you do that. You know he runs straight through the mud."

"Sorry." She eyed his pajama pants. In all the years she'd known Frankie, she couldn't recall ever seeing him in pajama pants with his hair all mussed up—it was actually kind of cute. "Want me to ask Leif to send you some soup from the restaurant?"

Frankie shook his head. "I'm going back to bed. Shut Heart in the garage when you're done." He began closing the door on her.

"Wait! I always send soup. Have you lost your appetite? Maybe I should take you to the doctor."

"I'm fine," he snapped.

She held the door, studying him. He didn't look
that
sick. What was his problem?

"Oh!" She brightened as she dug around in her pocket. "I have money for all that tomato juice."

He pushed away her hand. "Don't worry about it."

She tucked the bill in the neck of his shirt and stepped back. Instead of him looking pleased, he looked even more miffed. He started to close the door and she desperately thrust her chilled arm at him so he couldn't shut the door. The short sleeves of her hideous uniform exposed her goose-bumped flesh in the April mountain air.

"Do I smell? The skunk burned out my olfactory system and I can't smell anything anymore and I don't want my uniform to take on the smell if I do still smell because polyester never lets go of smells and then it would smell like this forever but I have to go back to work today. I can't stay off sick any longer." She gave him her best please-help-me-look. "Please? Will you smell me? Please?"

Frankie gripped her arm with both hands, holding it in the air. Meeting her eye, he narrowed his eyes in a way that left her feeling spooked. He slowly inhaled his way up her arm, tearing her nerves apart, making her body tremble.

Shit.

That was way too intense.

"Frankie..." She caught herself leaning in, reaching out to touch him. She shook her head at herself and took a large step back.

"You should get to bed. You don't look well." She zipped herself back into her fleece jacket and asked, "Can you even smell anything with your cold?"

Frankie turned away to cough. "You smell fine. Vanilla." He turned to look at her as though there were other things he wanted to say.

She directed Heart's momentum in a half-circle as he bounded onto the step, his paws dropping clumps of mud. As she re-aimed him toward the garage she called over her shoulder, "Thanks! I'll bring you soup later."

"A thousand tomatoes lost their lives for a good cause," he said. "I declare you cured."

She smiled, relieved he'd gone back to joking with her, the look gone.

The tension she'd felt with him over the past few days would melt away as it always did and they'd bounce back to being friends. He wouldn't tell her how she could have any man and to get over her ex and she'd stop projecting her needs and desires onto Frankie. Holy hell, it had been a long time since she'd been laid and it was messing with her head. He was her best friend. Fantasizing about him was wrong. So wrong. Just because a door had shut with her ex, it didn't mean she had to go looking for another one to open.

She locked Heart in the garage and headed to work, slipping in the back door. In the tiny staff room, she cringed as she shrugged off her jacket, the skin on her arms tender after days of obsessive exfoliating.

She quickly checked herself over in the staff room mirror before reapplying lip gloss. These pants. She
hated
these pants. What on earth had Benny been thinking, giving them uniforms? This wasn't some awful fast food chain, it was a real restaurant and the wait staff should be wearing black pants and white shirts. Not a mandated fashion atrocity. She unbuttoned the top few buttons on her shirt, exposing a hint of cleavage. She adjusted her push-up bra and smoothed her shirt. She had lost wages to make up for and a little cleavage guaranteed at least an extra five bucks an hour in tips from the middle-aged coffee crowd, due to arrive within the hour.

Gloria bustled into the room, bringing a blast of cool, fresh air with her.

"Well, howdy do! Look at you. Feeling all better, are you?" she asked, yanking her bulky coat down on a hook. "'Cause whatever you had, I don't want it."

Mandy dabbed at some wayward gloss with the tip of her index finger. "Did I miss anything?"
Other than the opportunity, of course, to loll around at home for days on end, replaying all the ways my life's gone wrong since graduating high school.

"Did you?" Gloria flopped onto a chair, which Mandy was certain would give out from the abuse someday soon and send Gloria sprawling. The woman, using both hands, heaved off her boots, plunking them onto the floor before snatching her stretched-out shoes from under a broken table. "You missed Mary Alice's birthday bash!"

"Damn." Mary Alice's parties usually led to enough in tips that she could come away with at least one item from her favorite designer's sample sale in the city. Last year, she'd come away with a lovely calfskin handbag
and
the leather jacket—which she'd had to throw away after last week's skunk incident.

"Mary Alice got in the rum."

Damn, damn and double damn.

Gloria nudged Mandy out from in front of the mirror so she could begin the daily process of fluffing up her hair and tsking at it as if the sounds would somehow transform her bad haircut into something better. "Don't worry, there's always next year. Besides, it's not like you don't have enough clothes, anyway."

Mandy sat down and sighed. Next year. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the same-old same-old. She'd end up here forever like Gloria, or even worse, like her mom who had nothing but a brain-dead job and her soaps.

Mandy watched Gloria fuss with her hair and tried not to stare at how the pinched uniform stretched over the woman's serious junk in the trunk.

"Gloria, is that the same uniform Benny gave you when you first started?"

Gloria smoothed her hands over her hips. "Still fits, fifteen years after the fact!"

"What do you think about black pants with a white shirt instead of the uniform?"

"And why would we want to wear that?" Gloria turned to face Mandy.

"Because, um, well, we could wear whatever we wanted and mix it up a bit. Aren't you tired of the same old uniform?" She stood and rubbed the material of Gloria's sleeve.

Gloria let out a laugh and began her ritual of applying way too much lipstick. "Can you smell that? Smells like skunk. Can still smell it in the square, too."

Mandy slowly tucked her arms at her sides and eased away. Evidently, even Frankie had lost the ability to smell skunk. He probably smelled it everywhere, as she did, and here she was, out in public, and stinking up the place.

Gloria reached into her shirt and adjusted her bra's strap before going back to stabbing at her lips with bright red. She met Mandy's eye in the mirror. "You know, wearing our own clothes to work is a bad idea, Mandy. I fought for these uniforms. When you have young kids of your own, you'll be thanking me." A pause for another couple of jabs and stabs with the lipstick. "Polyester cleans up nice and easy and dries fast. White shirts are awful. You go through five of 'em a month because of stains. Plus, cotton's a bitch to iron and never looks as crisp as these." She shot Mandy a warning look and capped her lipstick. "It's a single mother's blessing, that's what a uniform is. Free clothes to wear forty hours a week."

She pointed her lipstick at Mandy. "I know you have Benny's ear, but don't try and sway him on this one or you'll have me on your ass." She waited, eyebrows raised, until Mandy sighed and tossed up her arms.

"Fine. Maybe we can update the mismatched décor instead." Realizing that she'd likely released skunk scent by moving her body, she quickly lowered her arms and stalked out of the room. How was it that this life, which had seemed perfectly fine a week ago, now felt stifling, unfulfilling and boringly predictable?

She flicked on the dining room's lights and cruised the large, mismatched room, eyes peeled for sticky fingerprints on chairs, spilled salt, and the like. Gritting her teeth, she noted all the sugar and salt shakers were low. Napkin holders—ditto. Why was she the only one who made sure those kinds of details were taken care of? No wonder Benny paid her a little extra per hour. He'd be lost without her.

And where was Gloria's pride? How could she act so complacent? So
satisfied
with being some small town waitress and nothing more?

Mandy plucked three sticky menus from the pile and smacked them on the counter. She bent over and sucked in a couple of deep breaths, wondering where her sudden, body-shaking anger had come from.

She would
never
allow herself to become like Gloria.

And she would never, ever become her mother. It was a knockdown fight worth the energy and struggle.

She would do more with her job. Just as she had when Oz dumped her the first time.

Oz.

That son of a bitch.

Eight years.

Eight bloody freaking years of leading her on and then dumping her. How had she let herself get sucked into thinking it was real?

She took another angry breath.

What kind of son of a bitch did that to the woman he said he loved?

And why the hell was she thinking and wishing about Frankie right now?

Why?

Why?

Why?

* * *

Mandy splashed cool water on her face and pushed through a few slow, deep cleansing breaths. Much better.

Okay, not at all. She was a blink away from slipping down the slope into Gloria's life or her mom's and she didn't have a clue what to do about it.