Ain't She Sweet? (34 page)

“What do you think—”

She plastered her hand across Winnie’s mouth. “Don’t try to talk, honey. It’ll make you cough again.” She waved the fireman toward the stairs. “She’s fine. I’ll get her outside.”

One of them began to break away to come to her aid, so she took her hand off Winnie’s mouth just long enough for her to start to sputter again. “See! She’s breathing fine. But it’s a mess up there.”

He joined the others, and as they stormed past, Sugar Beth dragged Winnie out onto the sidewalk, not an easy task, since Winnie was fighting mad. “You’re going to be okay now, honey,” Sugar Beth announced just loudly enough for the small group of onlookers to hear. “I’d have died myself before I left you up there to burn. And I’m no heroine, so don’t you dare thank me again.”

The EMTs rushed up and grabbed Winnie, which was a good thing, because she was starting to bite. Sugar Beth hurriedly backed away. Dulane Cowie, who looked a lot better in a cop’s uniform than he’d looked picking his nose in fourth-period study hall, rushed up to her.

“Sugar Beth? Did you carry Winnie out by yourself?”

“It’s amazing what you can do when a person’s life is at stake,” she said modestly.

Winnie had begun arguing with the EMTs, and a woman Sugar Beth recognized as an older, chubbier version of Laverne Renke waved from just behind the police line. “Hey, Sugar Beth, what happened in there?”

“Hey, Laverne. I saw smoke when I was leaving the bookstore and ran over to see if I could help. Winnie was being so brave trying to fight the fire by herself. I’m just glad I was around to help.”

“I’ll say,” Laverne replied. “It looked like she was unconscious when you carried her out.”

Winnie heard that, and she stuck her head around the EMT to shoot Sugar Beth a furious glare.

“Probably just breathed a little too much smoke,” Sugar Beth said quickly.

Dulane gazed toward the second story. “She was lucky you were there.”

“Anybody would have done the same thing.”

The EMTs still had Winnie, and the smoke had begun to clear from the upstairs window.

Sugar Beth watched along with the crowd. Before long, one of the firemen emerged and headed toward Winnie. Sugar Beth decided this was an excellent time to make herself scarce, but just as she began to head to her car, a tan BMW screeched to a stop behind the fire trucks and Ryan leaped out, barefoot and dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt.

He ran for Winnie and pulled her to his chest. Since they were barely eight feet away, Sugar Beth could hear every word. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes, I—I was frying chicken—Charise has been sick, and . . . The phone distracted me.

The oil got too hot. It was stupid.”

“I’m so sorry.” The emotion in his voice made Sugar Beth suspect he might be talking about something more than the fire. She’d seen a lot of men in love, and Ryan fit right in.

She lost the thread of conversation for a few minutes as she convinced another EMT that she hadn’t suffered any harm. When she finally got rid of him, she saw Ryan push a lock of hair from Winnie’s grimy cheek and search her face. “What I said yesterday . . . I didn’t mean any of it.”

Winnie gave a wobbly nod.

A young fireman Sugar Beth didn’t recognize came forward. “You’ve got a lot of smoke damage, Mrs. Galantine, but it could have been worse.” He turned to Ryan and indicated Sugar Beth with his thumb. “It’s a good thing the lady over there showed up. She carried Mrs. Galantine downstairs. Your wife could have been seriously hurt.”

Winnie had temporarily forgotten about Sugar Beth, but the fireman’s praise brought it all back, and her eyebrows slammed together. Ryan spun around. “Sugar Beth?”

Winnie opened her mouth, all ready to blast her, only to have Ryan pull her to his chest again. “My God . . . Are you sure you’re all right?” He seemed to be having a hard time breathing. “You have to come home now. It’s over, Winnie. You don’t have any choice.”

He didn’t gloat, and he wasn’t even the tiniest bit smug, but Sugar Beth could see Winnie withdrawing. Looking deeply unhappy, she took a small step backward and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with sooty fingers. “Not yet. Not until we’re both sure.”

“I’m sure,” Ryan said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

“I’m glad for you.” Winnie reached out and touched his cheek tenderly. “A little longer.”

Even from where she was standing, Sugar Beth could feel Winnie’s love for him, but Ryan didn’t seem as perceptive. Instead of relaxing and giving her the room she needed like any person with half a brain would do, he continued to press. “You have to come home. You don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Winnie got all starchy, and Sugar Beth found herself thinking that even the best of men could be stupider than dirt.

“I’ll stay at the Inn,” she said.

“Aaron’s hosting the chamber of commerce conference right now, remember?

Everything’s been booked for weeks.”

“I’d forgotten.” Winnie began to look cornered. “I’ll—I’ll work something out.”

“You can work it out later. In the meantime, I want you to come home.”

“Ryan, please . . .”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“If I come home now, we’ll never get fixed!” she cried.

“We aren’t broken,” he insisted. “Not anymore.”

“We’re still damaged,” she said more quietly. “And we need to make it right.”

But he wouldn’t back down. “Just for tonight, then.”

Winnie looked like an animal caught in a trap, and the same impulse that had made Sugar Beth trip her now suggested she do something else entirely, something not nearly as much fun. Something not fun at all.

She ordered herself to walk away, but instead, she heard herself speak. “You could . . .”

Shut up, you dummy.
“You could . . . you know . . .” She started to cough and patted her chest. “Smoke.”

Don’t say another word. Not one more word. Just walk away.

Their impatient expressions made her feel like a child who’d interrupted the grown-ups’

important business. She pressed her hand to her throat. “You could . . . uh . . . stay with me, Winnie. Just for tonight . . . Tomorrow, maybe, if you have to, but . . . Not more than . . . Whatever, damn it!”

“With
you
!” Ryan laughed. “That’s a good one. Save your breath. Winnie is
not
going to stay with you.”

The bigger they were, the dumber they were.

“All right,” Winnie said slowly, her expression remote. “Yes, thank you. I will.”

Ryan looked as though somebody’d knocked him in the head with a two-by-four. “Are you out of your mind? That’s Sugar Beth!”

“I’m well aware of who it is.” And then, with a completely straight face: “She did save my life.”

Sugar Beth tried her best to look humble. “It was nothing.”

“Believe me, I’m the best judge of that,” Winnie said, tight-lipped.

Ryan gazed at them both, as if they’d lost their minds. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“You can come by as soon as you’re done here,” Sugar Beth said to Winnie. “I’m going home to hide the knives.”

An hour later, after Ryan had checked on Gigi to make sure she was still asleep, then downed a stiff drink, he called Colin and told him what had happened. “You’re sure they’re both safe?” Colin asked for the third time.

“From the fire, yes, but who knows about tonight. Go over and check on them, will you?

I’m so upset with Winnie right now, I don’t trust myself to get near her.”

“Forget it. I’d do anything else for you, but as long as I know they’re safe, I’m not going near that house. They’ll have to work this out for themselves.”

“Sugar Beth doesn’t want to work anything out. This was pure spite on her part. She’s scheming to keep Winnie from coming home.”

Colin sincerely doubted that. At the same time, who knew what was going through her mind. “You say Sugar Beth saved Winnie’s life?”

“That’s what they’re telling me. God knows, I’m grateful, but— Why did it have to be her? Everything’s so screwed up. One minute I had life by the balls, and now it’s got me.”

“Things’ll look better in the morning, no doubt.”

“I’d like to believe that.”

After they hung up, Colin had to keep reminding himself that Sugar Beth wasn’t hurt, so he didn’t rush over to the carriage house. His presence would make her feel as if she had two battles to fight instead of one. As he gazed out the window, he saw Winnie’s Benz parked by the house. He turned away only to be greeted with the sight of his unmade bed.

He wanted Sugar Beth there—naked, legs twined through rumpled sheets, arms reaching out for him.

Now that he knew about Delilah, all the parts of her that wouldn’t fit together had snapped into place. She was a woman of strong principles and sterling character, the kind of woman who, in days of yore, had driven ordinary men to scale castle walls or sent a prince door-to-door with a glass slipper in his pocket.

Who could have imagined a hardheaded realist like himself would have fallen under the spell of Sugar Beth Carey? But fall he had, and now he needed to figure out exactly what he intended to do about it.

Sugar Beth was fairly certain Winnie wouldn’t go home to pack a suitcase, so she set out a toothbrush, along with a change of clothes, in the small bedroom. She was in no shape to deal with her natural-born enemy tonight, so after a quick bath, she went to bed.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t avoid her the next morning. A little after eight, she heard Winnie coming downstairs. Sugar Beth shut off the kitchen faucet and spoke to her without turning around. “I’ve got Fruity Pebbles or Doritos. Take your pick.”

“I’ll get something on my way to the store.”

“Good choice.” Sugar Beth glanced at her over her shoulder, then snorted. She’d known Cy’s old
Matrix
T-shirt and her own ratty gray sweatpants wouldn’t look good on Winnie, but she hadn’t been prepared for quite how oversize they’d be. “Nice outfit.”

Winnie, as usual, was the better person and didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s fine,” she said stiffly. Gordon slithered from under the table to check out the new houseguest, bared his teeth at her, and headed for the living room. “I appreciate your letting me sleep here last night.”

“It was the least I could do. After saving your life and everything.”

That set Winnie off. “You could have
hurt
me when you tripped me like that.”

“No risk, no reward.”

“It was
my
risk.”

“Exactly what made it irresistible.”

“You always have to be the center of attention, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say I seize my opportunities.”

“And everybody else’s while you’re at it.”

“Has anybody mentioned that you have no sense of humor?”

“Everything isn’t a joke.”

“Is
anything
a joke to you? Or do you look like you’re sucking on prunes all the time.”

“Lemons. The expression is ‘sucking on
lemons.
’”

“You should know.” Gordon started barking in the living room.
“Quiet!”
And then Sugar Beth realized he was barking because somebody was banging on the front door. With a hiss of exasperation, she stalked off to answer it and found Gigi wearing a sweater and jeans that actually fit. Even with her mangled hair, she looked pretty cute.

“Were you guys yelling?”

“Hey, kiddo.”

Winnie shot out of the kitchen. The teenager rushed over and gave her an awkward hug.

For a moment Winnie closed her eyes and simply held her. When she finally let her go, Gigi looked embarrassed and knelt to greet Gordon. “Hey, boy. Missed me?”

Gordon rolled on his back to let her scratch his stomach. As she rubbed, the dog cast a hostile eye toward Winnie. Gigi took in her mother’s outfit and wrinkled her nose.

“Gross.”

“Not mine. You’re up awfully early for a Saturday.”

“I think I might have had a premonition that something was wrong.” She gave Gordon a last pat and rose. “Dad told me what happened. He said I could come here.”

“Want some cinnamon French toast?” Sugar Beth asked, moving back into the kitchen.

“Sure.”

Winnie immediately got pissy. “You offered me Doritos.”

“Dang, I must have forgotten about the French toast.”

Hope flickered in Gigi’s eyes. “Are you guys friends now?”

Sugar Beth occupied herself with the eggs and let Winnie answer that one. “Not friends.

No.”

Gigi’s forehead crumpled. “You still hate each other, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate anyone,” Mother Teresa replied, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Sugar Beth hid another snort by cracking an egg.

“If I ever had a sister, I wouldn’t hate her.” Gigi sat on the floor by the door so Gordon could snuggle up to her.

“We aren’t regular sisters,” Winnie replied, taking a seat at the table.

“Half sisters. You had the same father.”

“But we weren’t raised together.”

“If I found out I had a half sister, even if we weren’t raised together, it would make me happy. I hate being an only child.”

“As you’ve mentioned at least a hundred times.”

Gigi gave her mother a reproachful look. “I don’t understand why you have to hate her so much.”

“Gigi, this isn’t any of your business.”

The temporary truce between mother and teenager came to an end, and silence fell over the kitchen, broken only by the soft, contented moans of a basset having his ears rubbed.

Sugar Beth tapped the whisk against the sides of Tallulah’s old spongeware bowl. Gigi intended to cast her mother as the bad guy, with Sugar Beth as the injured party, which meant it was time to come clean. She consoled herself with the reminder that she owed Winnie one after the trick she’d pulled last night. All right. She owed Winnie more than one.

“The truth is, cupcake, I pretty much made your mother’s life miserable.”

Gigi abandoned Gordon’s ears to gaze up at Sugar Beth. “What did you do?”

“Everything I could think of.” Sugar Beth concentrated on dredging the bread so she didn’t have to look at either one of them. “Your mother was shy, and I used that to my advantage to make her look bad in front of the other kids. Whenever somebody wanted to be her friend, I found a way to break it up. I made fun of her behind her back. I even found this diary she kept and read it out loud to everybody.”