Heaven and Hell (42 page)

On the other hand, with Cooter, I’d chosen
the way wrong man for me, blinded by false glory and I didn’t want
to do that again. Sam was not Cooter, I knew this. And for years
I’d given a certain amount of headspace to what signs I might have
missed from Cooter, red flags that, if I’d been older, more mature,
I would have caught. There weren’t many but they were there. And
what had happened last night with Sam completely shutting me out, I
thought, was a red flag.

And my girls could confirm this. Or not. But
at the very least talking to them would mean letting it out and
getting different viewpoints because the one I had wasn’t so
fun.

I didn’t know what to do.

“You should be doing a happy jig,” Teri told
me. “But you look like someone ran over Memphis.”

This took me out of my thoughts and I gasped
at the very thought of my baby being run over. So did Paula. So did
Missy. My two girls loved Memphis. Teri was partial to bigger dogs
and ones Cooter hadn’t adored.

“Don’t say that!” Paula snapped.

“Jeez, don’t be so touchy. I’m just saying
what she looks like not that I want anyone to run over Memphis,”
Teri returned.

“Ohmigod! You just said it again!” Paula
cried.

“Seriously?” Teri fired back.

“Okay, I love your brother but oh… my…
God.
” This came from behind me, it came from Gitte and the
last word was breathy.

I looked over my shoulder to see she’d
approached. She and Kyle had left the day after they ascertained
Sam had my safety in hand. That said, I knew Kyle called Dad
and
Sam frequently to make sure everything was okay. They’d
driven up last night, arriving late, to help me with my yard sale
and to party with the gang after all that was my life with Cooter
was carted away.

Now, her blue eyes were big and they were
staring across the yard.

“Holy shit,” Teri whispered.

“Freaking, freakity, freak,
freak,
”
Paula breathed at the same time.

“Wow,” Missy murmured reverently.

I followed their eyes and blinked. But after
my blink, they didn’t disappear like the dreamlike visions their
utter perfection proclaimed them to be. They were still there,
walking across the yard toward Sam and Kyle.

Two men. Both tall. Both dark. Both
seriously freaking fit. And both
gorgeous.
One was maybe
five ten at the outside, years older than the other but this did
not detract from his absolutely lusciousness.

“Who are those freaking guys?” Paula asked
on a whisper.

“I have no idea,” I answered, with my girl
posse still gratefully drinking in the talent. In other words, I
had not torn my eyes away from the two men.

They made it to Sam, there were smiles, chin
jerks, head nods, handshakes and so much hot guy hormone floating
in the air around them it was a wonder every female in a two block
radius didn’t instantly become pregnant.

Kyle was introduced. Then Sam’s head turned,
his eyes flowed through me then to the street where he gave another
chin jerk. I followed his gaze and saw a man, short, bulky,
negative body fat seeing as he had so much muscle his muscle was
competing with his other muscle to control his frame, sandy blond
hair close-cropped to his head and wearing a jacket even though it
was eight-two degrees with seventy-five percent humidity got out of
his vehicle and leaned to the side.

Bodyguard.

Jeez, I’d been so busy selling my life with
Cooter and freaking out about what happened last night with Sam
that I hadn’t even noticed him.

I looked back Sam’s way to see him leading
the hot guy crew toward the front door.

“We’ll be a minute, honey,” he called to me
as he approached the door.

My eyes went from him to hot guy number one
then older hot guy number two, both of whom were looking at me with
small, polite (but hot) smiles on their (hot) faces then back to
Sam.

They were his hunters. I knew it.

I shifted to start toward him and began,
“I’ll –”

“No,” Sam cut me off, I stopped moving and
saw he had too, his eyes on me. “Later.”

I stared at him and that was it. Sam said
later, he meant later. And I knew this because he immediately
opened my front door and him and his crew (and Kyle) disappeared
behind it without another word.

That was when I stared at the closed door
unsure if I should stomp inside and demand to be let in on what was
happening in
my life.
Or whether I should burst into tears
because I was frustrated and further, it couldn’t be denied, Sam
had hurt me last night. He’d actually
hurt
me. Something I
never thought Sam would do. Or whether I should scream at the top
of my lungs to get rid of some of the tension that was bunching my
shoulders, up my neck and throbbing in my head

I was unable to come to a decision before
Teri, who clearly was so mesmerized she didn’t hear my earlier
answer, asked, “Do you know those guys?”

In the intervening days since my arrival
home I’d let my girls in on what Vanessa and Cooter did as well as
what Sam was doing about it so I answered, “I think they’re Sam’s
friends who are dealing with my hit man issue.”

Four sets of female eyes went to my front
door.

Then Teri muttered, “I wouldn’t mind my
life, or other parts of me, being in their hands. Either one of
them.”

“I bet neither of those guys would have a
problem with Sam’s cardboard cutout being in the room while he gave
you the business,” Paula noted.

“There you go. Finally, a solution to that
problem,” Missy put in. “You need a badass. That way you can keep
your cutout of Sam and still get yourself regular orgasms.”

Teri looked at Missy. “The only badass in
town was Milo and he’s not in town anymore because he’s at the
penitentiary and I didn’t know he was a badass until he blew half a
man’s head off.”

“I have to admit, Heartmeadow is kind of a
badass wasteland,” Missy muttered.

“Tell me about it,” Teri muttered back.

“Rudy’s a badass,” Paula threw out and we
all looked at her but said not a word. “He is!” she asserted,
correctly reading our looks. “He’d never let anything happen to
me.”

“Uh, girl, I don’t know if you were here
just now but those two dudes are like Sam. That is to say they
could disarm Milo on a rampage and then break him in two after
which they’d successfully lead a mission to dismantle a terrorist
sect intent on ending American society as we know it. You’re right,
Rudy would never let anything happen to you but we just were
introduced to visions of pure badass and, love him to bits, but for
the first time in my life seeing the real thing, Rudy is no
badass,” Teri stated.

“Uh… excuse me?” a female yard sale patron
joined our huddle, thankfully before Paula could attempt
(unsuccessfully) to defend Rudy’s badassness. “This box says five
dollars. Does that mean everything in it?”

I nodded. “Sure does.”

“Will you accept three?” the patron
asked.

I opened my mouth to answer in the
affirmative but Paula got there before me. “Woman, from what I can
see, what’s in that box is worth fifty dollars. You’re getting it
for five and you wanna pay three?”

“Paula,” I whispered.

“It’s a yard sale,” the patron retorted.
“You’re supposed to haggle.”

“It’s an everything must go because your
dead husband was a serious dickhead sale and that means you pay the
price my girl spent her time writing on the box and walk away happy
you got yourself one freaking huge-ass bargain,” Paula
returned.

“You don’t have to curse,” the patron shot
back.

“Honey, you just got here but it’s been
pandemonium seein’ as everything that’s been carted away was
the
definition
of huge-ass bargain. And her dead husband wanted
her
dead. There is no other word for a man like that but
dickhead,” Paula parried and the patron looked at me.

“Yeah, I read that. That’s just awful.
Though, you done real good for yourself, hooking up with Coop. And
you’re climbing the best dressed list. I saw you in your bikini on
that beach on that island and you looked real good.”

I stared. Then I breathed, “What?”

“You were on a beach in a white bikini and
you were tan, just like now. They had a special summer edition of
beach babes on youwearitwell.com and you landed the number four
slot,” the woman told me.

“You’re moving up,” Gitte muttered. “Told
you.”

Gitte sounded happy.

I was freaked.

The patron kept the information flowing,
“Same bikini, different picture, you were wearin’ like, a short,
see-through sarong, holding hands with Coop walking up the beach on
bodiesbygod.com and you got on last week’s edition, number six on
the Curvy Girls list.”

Oh. My.
God!

People were taking pictures of me. Of us!
And I was in a bikini! And I didn’t even know it!

Sure, it happened before but that was Tilda.
Tilda was rude and rabid. Tilda doing it wasn’t a surprise.

This was.

I had no idea.

The throb in my head became less dull and I
checked myself from glancing around frantically as paranoia set in
that right that very moment someone was taking a photo of me that
would eventually be posted somewhere I didn’t know it would be.

“I need an aspirin,” I muttered.

“I got aspirin in my purse in the house.
I’ll go get you one,” Missy offered then headed toward the
house.

“So, will you take three dollars for this
box?” the woman brought matters back in hand.

Again, before I could answer, Paula did.
“No.”

“But –” she started.

“Seriously? Not only is it a bargain, you’re
buying it from
Coop’s girlfriend.
You can tell all your
friends that
and
that you spoke to her too. That makes it a
serious bargain,” Paula returned.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” the woman
muttered.

“Five dollars,” Paula stated firmly, holding
out her hand palm up.

The woman glanced at the box then at me then
at the house where I was certain she’d seen Sam disappear. Then she
went for her purse.

I left Paula to it, wandered away and sat in
the grass. I was sipping my lemonade and still controlling the urge
to survey my surroundings to make certain no one was aiming a
camera (or other more deadly technology) at me when Gitte lithely
fell to the grass beside me.

Then she asked Paula’s question.

“You okay?”

I pulled in a breath then turned my head to
look at her.

“I have a headache.”

She nodded and looked across the yard at the
half a dozen people milling about and pawing through stuff.

“Kyle is…” she started quietly then trailed
off.

When she didn’t say more, I leaned into her,
bumping her with my shoulder and she looked at me.

“Kyle is what?”

“He cried when Cooter died.”

I blinked.

Whoa. Shocker.

Then I asked, “He did?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “A lot.”

I didn’t know what to make of this.

“I –” I started.

“Relieved,” she whispered, I then knew what
to make of it and I snapped my mouth shut. “If it had gone on much
longer, Kia, he would have been Milo Cloverfield. I know it.”

Oh God.

I closed my eyes.

What I had done to my family.

Oh God, what I had done.

“He likes Sam,” she said and I opened my
eyes. “He likes him very much. And not because he’s wealthy, not
because he’s famous but because he cares about you in a healthy
way.”

There it was, my opening to throw out what
was worrying me and pick it apart with Gitte. Gitte wasn’t only
strong, she was cool, she was smart and she had the ability to say
it like it was without hurting your feelings. She, too, had more
than once brought up the topic of Cooter and she, too, had been
shut down by me on said topic.

But she could and probably would talk to
Kyle about anything I shared with her. And Kyle had Sam on speed
dial. And further, Kyle could let something slip; it wouldn’t be
the first time. Heck, half the times I got in trouble when I was a
kid was because Kyle had a big mouth.

No.

Gitte was out.

“I’m glad,” I told her.

“He’s still relieved,” she told me. “We both
are.” She looked to the yard again and shared, “I think half of why
he was so intent on driving up was that he was concerned you were
with another man, even one like Sam who he admired.” Her eyes came
back to me. “But anyone can be something for the public and
something else privately. We were both very happy to know Sam is
who Sam really is.”

Yep. I had done a number on my family.

“He is,” I assured her even though I wasn’t
feeling so assured. Still, one thing I did know was that he was far
better than Cooter. Far,
far
better.

“You need to believe in this,” she told me
softly.

“Sorry?”

“In you. In Sam.” She smiled at me. “I see
good things.”

I did too.

Until last night.

She continued, “You don’t believe in it, do
you?”

“We’ve known each other a month.”

“You go to bed beside him; he goes to bed
beside you. How long has that been going on?”

I pressed my lips together and tried to
calculate it.

Then I gave up and admitted, “Well, most of
that month.”

Gitte smiled again. “I believe this.”

“Sam didn’t waste a lot of time,” I pointed
out the obvious.

Her smile got bigger. “I believe this too.
You, an American on vacation in Italy, he wouldn’t wish to let you
slip through his fingers.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Or,” she kept going, “it’s
clear
he
didn’t wish to let you slip through his fingers because here you
both are.”