My Give a Damn's Busted (14 page)

Larissa was working on the west side when Hank parked his pickup in the driveway the next morning. If her mother was really as wealthy as the picture Larissa had painted the last time she talked about her, the woman was going to have a cardiac arrest when she removed her fancy sunglasses and the color blinded her.

“I’m around here,” Larissa called. “Your brush and paint bucket are on the front porch.”

“Coffee?” He rounded the end of the porch and stopped. She had a bandana around her forehead and wore paint splotched cut-off jeans and a bright pink tank top. She was barefoot and sweat glistened on her lightly toasted skin. She was a hippy, born forty years too late, and desire flooded his body.

“In the pot. Heat it in the microwave.” She didn’t look at him. Didn’t need to. He still looked like the devil in tight blue jeans, still smelled like him with Stetson shaving lotion, and his voice hadn’t changed a bit. She hadn’t found out a thing about Hank Wells except that he was Henry’s son by a woman named Victoria. That’s all her investigators could find out. Hank was thirty-two years old and had been born in Dallas.

Her mother might seduce him and play with him like a cat with a mouse for a few weeks, but she’d die if she thought Larissa was really falling for the guy. When Larissa got ready for a permanent commitment and a trip down the aisle wearing the traditional white dress, it had better be with someone other than a cowboy, no matter how sexy he was. She continued to slap paint on the house, liking it better with each section.

“I stole one of Linda’s cookies too,” Hank said.

“Help yourself,” she said.

He sipped the coffee and waited until she finished spreading out the brush load of paint. He’d wrestled with his conscience all night and was ready to cowboy-up and do the right thing. He’d tell her exactly what he’d been up to from day one. That would end his painting days as well as any relationship they had or ever could have had. It just flat out wasn’t right for her to walk into the Honky Tonk on Saturday and find out he was working for the other side.

“I’d like to…” He had to come clean or his heart was going to explode with guilt.

A blaring car horn stopped him from saying anything more. Larissa leaned out around the house and Hank frowned.

Sharlene crawled out of a hot pink Volkswagen bug. “Hey, y’all need another hand? I’m damn good at paintin’. I love the color. It’s gorgeous. Reminds me of pictures of an exotic island.”

“I don’t turn down help,” Larissa called back. “You got any old clothes? If not, you can wear some of mine.”

“I brought old cut-offs and shirts to clean the apartment this weekend. Mind if I change in your house?”

Hank sighed. Maybe he’d have time to tell her while Sharlene changed.

“Not a bit. Here, Hank, take this brush and I’ll show her where things are. I need to take a bathroom break anyway,” Larissa said.

Sharlene grabbed a duffle bag from the backseat of her car and followed Larissa into the house. “Nice place you got here. It’s about the size of the house I grew up in up outside of Corn.”

“Your house was this small and you had four brothers?” Larissa’s eyes widened.

“Yep, two sets of bunk beds in the bedroom off the kitchen. Momma and Daddy had the bedroom off the living room. By the time I came along they’d enclosed the back porch into a laundry room so when I outgrew the crib in their room, they put a twin-size bed out by the washer and dryer. That was my room. It worked and we weren’t inside kids anyway,” Sharlene explained.

“My bedroom is off the kitchen. You can change in there,” Larissa said.

“I got a favor to ask,” Sharlene yelled through the door as she peeled her miniskirt down over her legs and kicked off her boots.

“And that would be?” Larissa poured half a cup of coffee and dipped a snicker doodle in it.

“They cut back my hours at the newspaper. Last to arrive; first to get the pink slip boot and all. Anyway, I’m only working three days a week. Mind if I use the apartment more than two nights a week?”

“Honey, you can live there and I’ll pay you to help me in the bar. Can you do your work from the apartment and send it in?”

She opened the door and stepped out into the kitchen in shorts that had dried paint on them and a shirt that was two sizes too big.

“Probably,” she said.

Larissa pointed at the cookies and coffee.

“Thanks. I
am
hungry. Didn’t take time for breakfast. When I got the news I just went back to my place and drove straight up here.”

“Is your placed rented through tomorrow?”

“Yep, rent is due on Monday.”

“Move into the Honky Tonk. We’ll talk about wages later. Right now we’ve got a house to paint and I’ll pay you for that too. Hank is going back to his Dallas job after the meeting tomorrow and he can only help today and tomorrow. With another paintbrush we might get it finished.”

“Can I paint the Honky Tonk like this?” Sharlene asked.

“Hell, no!” Larissa laughed. “Where did you get that shirt and what did you paint last?”

“It’s my brother’s cast off. I figured it would be good and floppy to wear for cleaning the place. I got a friend who’ll help me move on Sunday. My living room stuff is early redneck attic, so I’ll leave it behind. My bedroom furniture doesn’t have two pieces that match but they’ll fit in the apartment right fine. And the last thing I painted was an old VW bug for a friend. He wanted it to look like an old hippy wagon. Daisies, peace symbols, and the whole nine yards. Then he took it to a body shop and had a shiny clear finish put on it. Damn, it was pretty. Let’s go get this house done. What color is the trim going to be? I’ve got a right steady hand. Want me to start on it while y’all do the flat work?”

Larissa smiled and started out the front door.

Sharlene grabbed two cookies and followed her. “I know I talk too much but it’s me. I tried to stop it in the army but I either talk or bust. I get mean when I hold everything in.”

“I like a person who’s upfront and honest. Talk all you want. What did you do in the army?”

Sharlene suddenly clammed up. “I have to use an old line if I tell you. It goes like this, ‘I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.’”

Larissa laughed. “Someday you’ll tell me because we are best friends and you are an honest soul.”

That comment shot a hole through Hank’s already guilty heart but he couldn’t blurt out what was on his mind with Sharlene there. She’d probably stay all day. At least he still had one more day before the meeting. And he vowed he’d do what was right before that meeting started.

“What color is the trim?” Sharlene asked.

Larissa pointed. “Hot pink. That can right there.”

“Ah, man, you sure I can’t do the Honky Tonk up like this? It would stand out like a beacon in the night to every hotheaded, lusty cowboy and good-time cowgirl in the whole state,” Sharlene said.

“How much did you pay her to be on your side?” Hank drawled.

Sharlene opened the can and dipped a small brush into it. “She didn’t pay me anything. I like these colors.”

“You wouldn’t really paint the Honky Tonk like this, would you? It’s got an old-time ambience that is its trademark.” Hank kept painting but stole glances at Larissa working beside him. Why couldn’t he have met her in different circumstances?

His mother’s voice came to haunt him as continued to work. “Life is not fair.”

But this time I want it to be fair more than anything else in the world. I’d give anything to be able to stay on the ranch and have a long lasting relationship with Larissa. I would like to be Hank Wells, the cowboy, forever. I don’t want to go home to Dallas. My heart aches to stay in Palo Pinto or even in this Bahama-style house. Hell, I’d even put a thatch roof on it if I could wake up with Larissa by my side every morning.

“What are you thinking about?” Larissa asked.

“Why?”

“Your forehead was all wrinkled up in a frown.”

“I’m not ready to go back to Dallas,” he said.

“Then don’t. Henry would be tickled for you to come to the ranch permanently.”

“I know. It’s been his dream since I was a little boy.”

“Then stay.” Her heart floated somewhere up around the wispy white clouds drifting over a blue summer sky.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

She nodded. “You’re talking to the poster child for complicated. I understand.” But she didn’t understand at all. She wanted to grab him by the hand and take him to the bedroom. But lust wasn’t reason enough to change a person’s lifestyle.

“You won’t be that far away. You can always drop by the Honky Tonk,” Sharlene said from the front porch where she painted window frames. “Are the porch posts going to be pink too?”

“No, yellow,” Larissa said.

“Man, it’s just not fair. If you ever sell it can I buy it? I’ll hock my twenty-year-old bug and my tomcat. Oh, I forgot, can I bring a cat to the apartment? I promise he’s litter trained and he’s a good boy.”

“No problem,” Larissa said.

“What’s his name?” Hank asked.

“I found him when he was a little kitten last year. Someone threw him in the dumpster. He barely had his eyes open and I couldn’t leave him there even if I wasn’t supposed to have him in my apartment. So I snuck him up in my purse and bottle fed him for a month before he was ready for real food. He’s been to the vet and he’s a good boy. Oh, you asked about his name, not how I came about having a cat, didn’t you? I couldn’t decide on whether to name him Willie, Waylon, or Merle, so I just named him all three. I call him Waylon most of the time, though.”

Hank rolled his eyes at Larissa.

She grinned.

“I’m glad I don’t call him Merle now that I’m going to be staying in Mingus because it might offend Merle Avery and she’s so sweet.”

“Merle?” Larissa chuckled.

“She’s a barracuda,” Hank said.

“Well, she’s been sweet to me. I’ll bring Waylon on Sunday when I officially move in. Damn, I’m so excited I could dance a jig in a fresh filled pig trough,” Sharlene said.

Hank grimaced. She might not be so excited come Saturday when her boss was throwing things and cussing a royal blue streak. He wasn’t sure Texas was big enough to house him and Larissa both after that meeting. If not, she could sell her crazy house to Sharlene and move on back to Perry, Oklahoma, or wherever her imagination took her on her next lark.

He worked up a mad spell as he painted. She’d lied to him about her mother living in Tennessee and that sent him on a wild goose chase for information. She’d lied to him about being from Perry, Oklahoma. There wasn’t a Larissa Morley on any records up there. Not pictured in a high school annual, not a single newspaper article about a Larissa Morley winning an award at school, and not on the rolls at Oklahoma State University, either.

She probably was affiliated with the witness protection program and made up stories to suit her fancy on a day-to-day basis. Today she was the daughter of a woman who worked at a dude ranch. Tomorrow she was the daughter of a wealthy socialite who had a craving for young men. Next week her father might be an ambassador to a foreign country.

He fed the anger but couldn’t hold on to it. Not with her standing right beside him looking like Daisy Duke in those cute little cut-offs showing off shapely legs. Besides, what right did he have to be mad at her for subterfuge?

I haven’t been honest. If I had from the time I hit the deer, then today wouldn’t even be happening and I wouldn’t have a nagging conscience eating at my heart like an acid bath. So what right do I have to be angry with her?

“You’re frowning again,” Larissa said.

“You sure about hiring someone who thinks this place is pretty?”

Larissa nodded. “Definitely. She’s a gift.”

“What’s a gift?” Sharlene asked. “This house? You got a sugar daddy hiding in the wings? Did Amos buy this place?”

What began as a faint giggle grew into a full-fledged infectious guffaw that had both Larissa and Hank roaring. When they got control, Larissa wiped her eyes with the tail of her tank top, giving Hank a shot of her flat stomach, belly button, and the rim of her bra.

His mouth went dry at the memories at the lake. Could that have been less than a week before? It felt more like a month or a year.

“Amos is my friend, not my sugar daddy,” Larissa said.

“Well, what was so damn funny?” Sharlene asked.

“My mother likes very young men. It just hit me that I
should
take Amos to the charity benefit in a couple of weeks. The visual was so funny…” She got another case of giggles.

Sharlene looked at Hank. “Why was it funny to you?”

“I love to hear Larissa laugh like that. It’s like a baby’s belly laugh. Uninhibited and with I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude,” he said honestly.

Larissa stopped laughing and patted him on the arm with her free hand. “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had. Mother says my laugh sounds like a ruptured hippo.”

One touch of her paint smeared hand and he was ready to put down the brushes and take her back to the lake. He could wash all those paint splotches away in the lake water and enjoy every minute of it.

“Daddy always says my laugh is like screeching hyenas,” Sharlene said. “Guess us Honky Tonk women aren’t so feminine, are we? Tell me about Cathy and Daisy. Were they wilting flowers or wild women?”

“You ought to write a book,” Larissa said.

“I’d like to write a book. It’s been my dream my whole life. I might forget all about the article for the newspaper and write a real novel. Now tell me about Daisy while we work. Maybe I’ll call the character based after her Rose or another flower name,” she said.

“And what will you call Cathy?” Hank asked.

“I’ll think of something. Damn, that’s a good idea, Larissa. I think I’ll call the character I build on you something like… I’ll have to do some research and see what name means ‘wild and free,’” she said.

“So you see her as wild and free?” Hank asked. He and Larissa both reached the corner at the same time.

“Of course,” Sharlene said. “Mind if I put on some music? I’ve got my portable CD player in the car.”