Our Red Hot Romance Is Leaving Me Blue (7 page)

The room fell silent. Debbie Sue swung her gaze to Buddy, her eyes boring deep. Vic cleared his throat.

“Well, it’s been lovely, kids,” Edwina said breezily. “We
should do it again sometime.” She picked up her purse and started for the door. “Vic, you ready to go, sugar buns?”

“You don’t have to leave,” Debbie Sue said, not veering her eyes from Buddy’s.

“I’m tired,” Edwina said, “and Vic’s been on the road for a week. We’re going home. Y’all have a good time. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Backing away from the argument momentarily, Debbie Sue and Buddy walked their guests to the door.

“Y’all drive careful going back into town,” Buddy called out as Edwina and Vic reached Vic’s pickup.

“Drive careful,” Debbie Sue echoed. “Enjoyed y’all having supper with us.”

As soon as the door closed, Debbie Sue turned to her husband, one hand on her hip. “Now, where was I?”

“You were on your way to bed.” Buddy scooped her into his arms and carried her toward the bedroom.

She clung to his shoulders. “No fair,” she wailed. “You’re bigger and stronger. You’re taking advantage.”

“I know,” he replied. “But I promise this conversation will have a better outcome if we’re naked.”

T
he next morning, Justin walked out of his house, into the cool pleasance of the early hour. The rising sun showed as a bright orange ball hovering just above the horizon. Layers of mauve, lavender and gold swept the sky like brush strokes. He liked rising early and enjoying the quiet beauty as well as a brief respite from the unyielding heat that would come later in the day.

He ambled toward the barn, a place he had largely avoided for a year. Debbie Sue had been wrong, accusing him of keeping Rachel’s horses penned up and
never
letting them graze. Sometimes he had done the perfunctory chores—feeding, watering and turning them out to pasture and returning them to their stalls at night. He had hired a farrier
to come by periodically and check their feet. But most of the time, he had hired the teenager up the road to do the chores. He knew he should do more. Rachel had spent hours with the two horses.

All this talk about the animals and Debbie Sue scolding him for neglecting them had made him feel guilty. He chastised himself for not paying more attention to them. Rachel had loved them so much and Debbie Sue was right. They too had lost someone they loved. What if he and Rachel had had a child? Would he have avoided it and neglected it in the same way just to avoid his own personal pain?

A sliding bar secured the gate to the corral. Slipping it to the left, he opened the gate just wide enough to squeeze through, crossed to the barn and the two horse stalls. He filled a bucket with oats and dumped them into feeding troughs in the corner of each stall. The horses watched him with bored detachment, obviously understanding the routine and their roles better than he did. He couldn’t even remember their names. He had to admit he had never bothered to learn. His firefighting career and horse ownership didn’t complement each other.

Inside the eight-by-eight tack room, a bucket of grooming tools sat on a shelf to the side of the door. Justin didn’t know the purpose of each tool, but he did know what do with the one he had seen Rachel use most frequently. He carried the curry comb back to a stall and started on one of the reddish-colored mares, talking in low, comforting tones. The mare’s ears pricked forward, her eyes wary. Rachel had said the ears and eyes of a horse were their most effective means of com
munication. He couldn’t keep from wondering what these animals would say to him if they could talk.

He brushed the mare in earnest, dislodging weeks of dirt and debris. Her muscles rippled and twitched and she looked at him with huge, soft brown eyes. As he brushed, he began to feel better, doing something Rachel would want him to do. He didn’t know what had come over him. He had never been unkind to animals. From the time he was a small boy, he had always been the first to jump to the aid of a helpless creature. His mother had delighted family and friends with tales of how he saved a kitten that had fallen into an irrigation ditch and how once he had taped an entire box of Band-Aids on a scratch on his grandparents’ milk cow, that had promptly slobbered them off. He remembered lying in bed when storm clouds rolled through and crying for all of the animals left out in the open with no shelter.

He labored vigorously, brushing the mare and concentrating only on the task at hand. When he finished one horse, he moved to the second. Debbie Sue had been right about one thing. He should have done this long ago. Not just for the benefit of the horses, but also for the release of his own pent-up emotions.

Not until he finished the grooming did he realize that the tightness in his neck and shoulders with which he had lived for months was gone. Stopping to wipe his brow and catch his breath, he stepped back to admire his work. The horses weren’t exactly ready for a show ring, but they looked 100 percent better. He wondered if regularly taking care of them could actually be therapeutic for him.

“I promise to do this more often, girls,” he said. “I won’t ignore you anymore.”

He had barely uttered the words when he heard the distinctive sound of an approaching car. He recognized the engine sound immediately. John Patrick.

Glancing at his watch, Justin was stunned to see that two hours had slipped past and it was mid-morning. Early by John Patrick’s clock.

As the Cayenne neared, Justin stepped up on the bottom rail of the fence and let out a loud whistle, waving his arm to draw his brother-in-law’s attention. John Patrick looked in his direction. He braked his high-powered SUV into a caliche-grinding halt and sent up a cloud of dust that hung over the corral like a film.

John Patrick was laughing when he opened the door. He turned in the driver’s seat and planted his feet on the ground. “Man, I almost didn’t see you. I was haulin’ ass. What’re you doing in the corral? Thought you’d hired somebody to take care of these horses.”

Justin couldn’t help but notice that the rotund man, balding despite the fact he had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday, was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The surprise at seeing him so early gave way to understanding. John Patrick was out and about at this hour because he hadn’t been home yet and was most likely killing time before going.

Justin didn’t understand this behavior. John Patrick’s marriage was more like having a roommate who shared all your
stuff and your money, except in John Patrick’s case, he had been the one who married for money. He had come from a wealthy family, but his father had believed in a man earning his own way. John Patrick’s solution to that dilemma had been to marry rich.

“You got any coffee on?” John Patrick asked.

“Sure,” Justin answered, shaking his head but laughing.

“Go on up to the house. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Justin watched his brother-in-law park and enter the house. It was pure irony that a marriage like John Patrick’s would probably last forever, while his own, as perfect a union as there ever was, had ended suddenly and tragically.

John Patrick Daly parked his SUV and strode into his brother-in-law’s house, salivating for a cup of hot black coffee. After a night of partying hard, he dreaded the icy stare and caustic comments from his wife when he went home, so he had detoured by Justin’s place. He supposed one day he would push Felicia too far and she would kick him out, but he was willing to take the gamble. Life as a kept eunuch wasn’t his long-term plan.

And if things progressed as he hoped, he would be escaping sooner than he had expected. He believed Justin was at a breaking point, and selling this house and land to his departed wife’s brother at a good price would be the most Christian thing he could do. After all, he was John Patrick Daly, Rachel’s brother and Justin’s “best friend.”

Setting up mysterious happenings inside Justin’s home
hadn’t been his plan this morning, but hell, the opportunity was too blatant, thus tempting, to resist. And Justin was so naive. John Patrick walked to the sofa and as he had done many times previously, mussed the neatly folded throw on one end, as someone lying in repose might do. He tossed the stupid horse magazine casually on the floor as someone might do if dropping off for a nap. Today, the roses would have to wait until another time when he was more prepared and had more than a few minutes. Justin could walk in at any time.

Moving to the kitchen, he found the coffeepot, dragged a mug off a cabinet shelf and poured it full. As he sipped, he scanned the room for something he could move, something that he hadn’t relocated before. Or perhaps something he could break. The clatter of ice cubes falling from their tray into the ice receptacle inside the refrigerator’s freezer took his eyes to the white appliance’s door. Magnetic letters were scattered on it in no particular pattern. He pondered using the letters to make a message that would scare Justin shitless.

He turned back to the coffeepot and warmed up his coffee, then swung his attention back to the refrigerator door. Stunned at what he now saw, he gasped and the coffee mug slipped from his fingers to the floor.

Justin started for the house, but he had taken only a few steps when the front door flew open. Turnup, sleeping on the porch, jumped to his feet and scatted, tail between his legs. John Patrick came out the door, scurried to his SUV and climbed in. He cranked the engine, backed in an arc with
the door still open and roared down the driveway toward the county road.

Justin felt his brow tug into a frown. What the hell was going on now?

He jogged to his house, but stopped at the front door and took a few seconds to gather himself. Finally, he drew a deep breath and entered. In the living room, Rachel’s afghan was spread haphazardly across the couch. Her magazine lay on the floor.
Whoa!
That afghan was neatly folded this morning. That magazine was neatly placed on top of a stack of others on the side table. Justin’s heartbeat picked up. Had J. P. seen someone or some
thing
move them? Was that what had sent him racing from the house as if chased by demons?

Moving to the kitchen Justin saw a mug on the floor, coffee spilled over the vinyl flooring. Nothing else was amiss, nothing out of place. He looked around again. And his gaze froze on the refrigerator door.

Nearing the junction with the county road, John Patrick let his foot relax on the accelerator. The Cayenne purred in gratitude. Its air conditioner was cranking at full blast and icy air filled the interior of the rig, yet sweat covered John Patrick’s brow, trickled down the sides of his face to his collar. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he noticed that the few hairs remaining on his head were visibly spiked. He took his pudgy hand from the steering wheel and smoothed them down. “Fuck!”

What in the hell had happened back there? He ran through his memory bank again, replaying what he had seen on the
refrigerator door, spelled out with kids’ magnetic letters. It was a message that had to be meant only for him:

While Debbie Sue waited for Edwina, though she was low on energy, she vigorously swept a mound of gritty sand toward the Styling Station’s back door. The business day had yet to begin and the floor was sandy already. Sweeping it was a never-ending job. The unpaved road that ran beside the beauty shop was the source of this annoyance and she couldn’t count the number of dirty names she had labeled that road over the years.

She had plenty to get off her chest this morning. Last night, thanks to Edwina taking Buddy’s side, he had spent hours trying to persuade her to abandon Justin Sadler’s case. Midnight had come and gone before the two of them fell asleep exhausted.

Just then the back door opened, letting a gust of wind blow the swept-up sand back into the shop and bring with it a new supply. Behind it, Edwina appeared, rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses covering half her face, Dr Pepper and a package of animal crackers in hand. She looked over the top of her sunglasses. “Oops, sorry.”

“Ed, we need to talk,” Debbie Sue said firmly.

“Well good morning to you, too.” Wearing her typical platform shoes, Edwina clomped to her workstation, set her drink and animal crackers on the counter and dropped her
purse onto her hydraulic chair seat. “Chilly this morning, isn’t it?” She peeled off her sunglasses and stuffed them into her purse. “Damn, girl, I’m guessing you and Buddy didn’t settle your differences last night.”

“It isn’t Buddy I need to talk about.”

“Don’t tell me Quint Matthews is back in town.” Edwina tore open the package of animal crackers and popped one into her mouth.

Edwina bringing up Debbie Sue’s former boyfriend and fiancé, world champion bull rider Quint Matthews, was a low blow. Debbie Sue thrust the broom out to her side at arm’s length and planted the opposite fist on her hip. “You are changing the subject, Edwina Perkins-Martin. You know damn well I’m talking about you siding against me last night over taking Justin’s case.”

“Debbie Sue, I love you like you’re one of my own kids, but I’m entitled to have an opinion. That’s what being partners is all about.”

“But you took Buddy’s side.”

“I gave my
opinion
,” Edwina said, punctuating her sentence with an animal cracker. “And my
opinion
hasn’t changed, Debbie Sue. Vic agrees with me too. He thinks this could get crazy.”

“So what if it does? It couldn’t get any crazier than things got in New York. And if you felt so strong about it, why didn’t you say something to me privately, when Buddy wasn’t present?”

“I think I did.”

“Him knowing you agreed with him just made him torment me that much more. You should’ve seen him last night. Here I was trying to put up a good argument and every time I opened my mouth he kissed me in a ticklish spot. I ended up with two big hickeys on my stomach.” She resumed her sweeping, not wanting to look Edwina in the eye. “And one on my thigh.”

From the corner of her eye, Debbie Sue caught a grin starting to sneak across Edwina’s bright red lips. “Inside or outside?”

Shit!
Edwina thought sex was more important than anything and after last night with Buddy and this morning in the shower, Debbie Sue thought she might have a point. But Debbie Sue would never admit it aloud. “Cut it out, Ed. I’m serious.”

“Inside, I’m guessing,” Edwina said, now cackling like a witch. “And I’m guessing he won the argument.”

Debbie Sue stopped her sweeping and glared at Edwina. “Don’t you dare laugh, Ed. That’s one of the problems with being married all these years and sleeping with the same guy every night. He gets to where he knows all of your ticklish spots and he isn’t afraid to strip off your clothes and go for them just to win an argument.”

Edwina’s head slowly shook. “You know what, sweetie? Probably most of the woman in Cabell County would just love to have Buddy Overstreet strip off their clothes and look for their ticklish spots. Lord, why you continue to battle what you’ve got at home beats me. So did you and Buddy settle things or not?”

“Oh, they’re settled all right. The Domestic Equalizers are helping Justin, Ed. Just like I promised. And if you’re scared, you need to just cowboy up and be my partner. And Buddy will just have to get over it. I told him if he doesn’t, we’re never again playing that kissing-each-other-all-over game. And I told him I would never again let him…well, you know.”