A Bad Day for Romance (26 page)

Stella handed her the gun, and Chrissy pushed it into Marty’s doughy neck. “You feel this? Huh? You feel it?”

“I think he gets it, honey,” Stella whispered. Tears were forming in Marty’s eyes, and he was trembling like a lamb.

More knocking. “Miss Hardesty? Are you all right in there? People heard sounds.”

“I’m fine,” Stella called. “Just, uh, I… tripped. On a thing. I fell down.”

There was a pause, and then an entirely different voice chimed in.

“Stella, you open this damn door right now.”

Goat
.

He hadn’t stormed back to Prosper in disgust. Not yet, anyway.

The heaviness in Stella’s heart lifted just a little, enough for a sly breath of hope to slip inside. “Um…” She went to the door and looked through the peephole. Outside in the hall were an anxious looking bellman with a sprinkling of acne along his hairline… and Goat, his unbandaged hand clenched in a fist.

“Sheriff Jones?” Stella said, causing the bellman’s face to screw up in confusion. “Can I, um, talk to you alone please?”

“If you don’t open up that door in ten seconds flat, I’m shooting it open,” Goat snapped. And Stella realized something. He wasn’t just angry—he was worried. About
her
.

“I’ll come out,” she said quickly. “But I wonder… could you ask your friend to, um, go?”

Goat’s eyes narrowed, and then he turned to the bellman. “Safer for you if you go on back to the desk,” he said. “I’ll keep you apprised.”

“Yes, sir. My manager’s going to want me to check—”

“I said I’ll keep you apprised.” Goat didn’t bother to inject any warmth into his voice.

“Um.” The bellman retreated, looking back over his shoulder a couple of times. The minute she heard the elevator door ding, Stella opened the door and slipped into the hall.

“What happened?” Goat said, grabbing her hard by the shoulder with his good hand. Stella winced.

“Are you hurt? Where? What happened?” Goat’s voice grew more and more agitated as he turned Stella around, examining her from every angle. “What’s this?”

He lifted the torn sweater. Underneath, her skin was beginning to turn purple and yellow. It was going to be a world-class bruise.

“I was. Um. I’m fine,” Stella said. “I mean, I will be.”

From inside her room came a muffled exclamation. Stella stiffened, then relaxed as she heard a familiar sound—the bolts on her portable spreader bar being snapped into place. Once Chrissy got Marty’s wrists bolted down, he wouldn’t be able to so much as pick his nose.

“Who’s in that room, Stella?”

Gently, Stella pushed Goat’s hands away from her body. She couldn’t afford the distraction, not with what she was about to say. Not even when Goat flinched and she realized that she’d wounded him—again.

“Nobody,” she said. “Nobody you need to worry about, anyway. I, um, I told you I was going to make it right. Earlier today, when I, when I… made that terrible mistake. And I did. I made it right. Only, you can’t know about it. Because you’re the law and I’m, well, it looks like I ain’t got any choice but to keep being me, no matter what comes of it. Oh, Goat, if I could change, I would do it for you. I’d do anything for you, actually, I’d saw off an arm if I thought it would fix things between us, but… how did you know to come up here, anyway?”

One of Goat’s eyebrows slowly crept up. “I just drove Kam’s mom all the way to Kansas City. Waited around in some restaurant where nobody spoke a lick of English, and carried about eight hundred pounds of food out to my truck. On the way back, I heard all about how long it took Kam to learn to use a potty. I heard about his first haircut and the first time he lost a tooth and every rank he earned in the scouts and the name of his high school algebra teacher. And the whole damn time Mrs. Rangarajan was talking, all I could think was,
I wonder if she’ll be there when I get back. I wonder if I lost her for good this time
. And then we’re walking through the lobby and Mrs. Rangarajan’s got me weighed down with all those boxes and trays, and I hear this—”

He stopped and shook his head, as though trying to shake loose a bad memory. “I heard this man at the desk saying he thought he heard a gunshot from room 202.
Your
room, Stella.”

“Oh,” Stella said carefully.

“I want to tell you don’t ever do that to me again.” His good hand was back on her shoulder, squeezing, but Stella didn’t dare flinch, afraid he might stop. “I want to, I don’t know, lock you up so you can’t ever scare me like that. But I can’t. Damn it, woman, I can’t make you mind me and I can’t keep you out of trouble. I can’t even keep you safe. So I’m going to have to settle for trying to pick up the pieces when you get in a scrape.”

“You mean…”

“I guess I don’t need to know what’s behind that door. In fact I’m going to go get in my truck and head back to Prosper in a minute. And I’d consider it a courtesy if you’d keep whatever you got in there to yourself until I’ve had a chance to let folks know I’m back in town, where I couldn’t have had anything to do with… whatever you done.”

“I can do that,” Stella said quickly. “I can definitely do that.”

“And when the news breaks, I’m not going to take any interest in it at all. The Quail Valley crew’s going to handle it—hell, Daphne can handle it for all I care—and I never want to discuss it again. Ever. You hear?”

“I hear,” Stella whispered. She tried to ease out of his grasp, but he slid his good hand down her arm until he was gripping her bicep, keeping her both immobilized and with nowhere to look but directly in his eyes.

“You’re not going anywhere, Dusty, I got a few more things to say to you.” He sounded even angrier, if such a thing were possible, as if might just snap her arm in half and use it for a toothpick. She swallowed hard.

“I can accept your off-hours activities, as long you never put me in a position of having any firsthand knowledge of exactly what’s going on. And you will never use anything you might accidentally learn from me for your own… purposes. And for God’s sake, woman, I never ever want to see an unregistered firearm anywhere near our house.”

His voice had gone so low and growly that Stella figured soon only dogs would be able to understand him, and she wondered if she’d misheard that last part.

“Our?”

“Huh?”

“You said ‘our house.’ ”

“Damn right I did. I’m moving you in with me, where I can keep an eye on you. And what’s more, we’re doing it legal.”

“Doing… what?” Stella wondered if she was hallucinating. Because this was starting to sound like a proposal. Either that, or he was putting her under citizen’s arrest.

“I mean to make this official, Dusty. You and me. Just as soon as things calm down around here. So for the love of everything holy, could you maybe not get yourself kidnapped again until I have a chance to buy you a ring? I’ll engrave my address inside it so the bad guys know where to drop you off when they get tired of your sass.”

Goat barely paused for breath before barreling on. “The thing is, I’ve learned something since I met you. Try as I might, I can’t keep everyone in line… not even everyone in one little podunk town. And stubborn as you are…” His hand slid down her back to rest tantalizingly on her hip. “As crazy as your methods might be…” He tugged her a little tighter, and Stella melted against him, feeling his heart beating through the soft cotton of his shirt. “I can’t help but notice you do some good around here. And I can’t stop thinking about you for one damn minute, and it’s interfering with my ability to do my job. So, yes, I want to marry you, just the way you are, so you can drive me crazy for the rest of my life. What do you say, Dusty, will you have me?”

Stella had barely got out a “hell yeah” when Goat Jones took her breath away with a kiss for the record books. She wriggled closer, yelping when her gunshot wound came in contact with his splint. Goat immediately pulled away, gently lifting her sweater and taking another look underneath. “Aw, hell,” he said, tracing the outline of the bruise tenderly. “
Hell
.”

And then he kissed her, once more, very softly. “Call me the minute you get back,” he said, and then he stomped down the hall like he meant to hit something with his hand that wasn’t already broken.

EPILOGUE

November

“EVERYBODY PAY ATTENTION!” STELLA SAID. “THE
show’s about to start!”

She set the tray of mugs of Irish coffee down on the coffee table, stepping over Tucker, who was sprawled on his stomach coloring on a stack of scrap paper Ian had brought over from the office. Some folks might consider Prosper Municipal Annex booking sheets and budget reports fodder for the shredder, but Ian must have figured that at four years old, Tucker didn’t pose much of a security threat. Chrissy was still protesting that she wasn’t sure where her romance with Ian was going, but he and her son, and everyone else in town, had it figured out pretty well.

Stella looked around for a seat, and came up short. Chrissy and Ian were tucked in next to Tilly on the couch. Irene Dorsey and the Green Hat Ladies were lined up in Stella’s kitchen chairs, which Goat had dragged in and arranged to give them a clear view of the TV. Noelle and Cinnamon were snuggled up in the love seat, and Taffy—who had been in a bit of a funk since starting divorce proceedings against her husband, whose defense team was having a hell of a time figuring out how to deal with the taped confession they’d found in his pocket when the grounds crew found him tied up on the Ozark Shores golf course—balanced a cup of tea on her lap in the upholstered chair.

As for Goat, he’d stretched out with his back to the love seat and his long legs taking up the only clear patch of the carpet next to the coffee table.

“Get that shapely ass down here, woman,” he growled, just loud enough for Stella to hear. Before she could even blush, he’d grabbed her hand and pulled her down onto his lap.

“Oh my,” she breathed happily as he wrapped his arms around her and she nestled her head against his chest. She joined her hands with his, mostly so she could admire—for the millionth time—the ring he’d given her on Halloween night, after the final trick-or-treater had come and gone. The little diamond sparkled mightily and Goat nuzzled against the back of her neck, his hot breath doing the sort of thing to her insides that usually resulted in them staying up until the wee hours.

On the TV, Jack Mackenzie—host of
Hollywood Edition
—gave the camera his trademark salute. “And we’re back, with several of the ladies from the much-anticipated second season of
My Side Of the Mountain
, which is going to be filming in…” He made a show of looking at the little card he held. “Peabody, Arkansas. People, I don’t think I could even find Arkansas on the map!”

“Dumbass,” Irene Dorsey observed. “Don’t they teach geography out there in California?”

“Hush up now,” Novella scolded. Then the room erupted in shrieks as the camera panned down a row of three young women sitting on a couch—with Divinity in the middle. She was wearing a low-cut fuchsia blouse and short skirt, her hair teased in a giant mass of blonde curls.

“These ladies will be battling for a half-million-dollar purse,” Jack said. “It’ll take strength, daring, and endurance, not to mention forging alliances with other members of the cast. There will be six men and six women to start—let’s hear how these young ladies are planning to deal with those odds!”

The camera zoomed in on the first contestant, a tall, athletic-looking girl with bleached hair. Jack introduced her as a Florida State volleyball player who had a shot at the 2016 Olympics.

“Just
look
at how damaged her hair is,” Noelle exclaimed. “The cuticle’s completely wrecked. I can’t believe they let her go TV on looking like that!”

“You’re known as The Club around the locker room,” Jack said. “Why is that, and how will that help you on the show?”

“Well, Jack, part of it is from my playing style. A reporter from the
Sun-Times
said I ‘club’ the ball when I spike. But I also like to think it’s because, even though we may face each other across the nets, all the players in the ACC are like a big club. It’s like we’re all pulling together, you know?”

“Sounds like you’ll be looking to win by forming alliances,” Jack said, while The Club beamed and the audience clapped their approval.

Divinity made a most unladylike snort. The other two girls glanced at her with expressions that suggested they were staring at dog excrement stuck to the soles of their shoes.

“We’ll get to
you
in a minute,” Jack said hastily.

“He’s got
her
number!” Chrissy crowed. Stella stole a glance at Taffy; she’d started to feel a little sorry for the woman since her fortunes took a turn for the single. Taffy’s face hadn’t changed; it was a mask of stiff propriety. Still, there were clues to her unraveling—her blouse hadn’t been pressed, and her lipstick was a bit askew.

Stella tugged at Tilly’s pant leg to get her attention. “Is Taffy okay, do you suppose?”

Tilly bent down to whisper back, grabbing a pizza roll while she was at it. “Aw, don’t worry about her. She’s tough as nails. Besides, she’s gonna have to get used to the mouthing off if Divinity makes it through the first round.”

Jack had moved down to the girl at the end of the row. “Bernadette helped found a shelter for abandoned pit bulls in her home city of Detroit,” he read off his card. “She has been shooting competitively since—wow, you were only thirteen when you won your first marksmanship award!”

While the crowd cheered, Chrissy practically spit up her guacamole. “Time
I
was thirteen I could shoot a tick off my brother’s ear from a hundred yards.”

“So what’s your strategy, Bernadette?” Jack asked. The Club leaned in front of Divinity to get a better look at her competitor—Noelle sucked in an appalled breath as she flipped her damaged hair out of the way—and Divinity, not to be outdone, pretended to adjust her high-heeled shoe, effectively cutting her out of the camera’s angle.

Bernadette, a skinny, plain girl with tribal tattoos around both arms, ignored them both. “I think it all comes down to discipline. I follow a vegan diet and I don’t drink, smoke, take any kind of drugs, or eat processed food. I meditate every morning and practice Tai Chi, which I plan to continue on the mountain. I think this will bring me the clarity I need to focus on my goal.”