Behind the Altar: Behind the Love Trilogy (2 page)

“Good to see you, too,
Mom,” Dean said.

He stood and came
around the table to stand in front of his brother. Geraldine stayed behind
Jacob. Dean cracked his knuckles, and Leah noticed for the first time the
tattoo of a snake curling around his right arm from his wrist all the way up to
his shoulder. His left arm was bare, but muscles on both rippled as he cracked
his knuckles one at a time.

“You need to turn
around and walk back out of here,” Geraldine said. She remained rooted near the
door and looked as if she wanted to turn right around and go through the
swinging door to the kitchen. She held her cell phone up in her hand. “I’ll
call the police, if you don’t leave now.”

“You’ve already said
that, and just what are you going to tell them, Geraldine? That a grieving
son’s come home after hearing about his father’s death? Go ahead and make that
call,” Dean said. “How can you deny a loving son the right to mourn his father?”

Leah noticed
Geraldine backing up toward the door instead of coming forward.

 “You’re Dean?” Leah asked
when she found her voice. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“I’m no Mark Twain,
but it appears the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”

Leah stood and came
toward Jacob who reached for her hand and pulled her close to him. Leah moved
away slightly. She needed an explanation of why Jacob and Geraldine had lied to
her for the past five years.

“Why did you tell me
he died, Jacob?” Leah asked. When her fiancé didn’t answer, she turned around
to look at Geraldine. “Geraldine?”

“To us, he was dead,”
Geraldine said.

“Why?” Leah asked.
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s it to you,
Miss Savior of the World?” Dean asked. “This is a family matter; it doesn’t
concern the woman who’s been kicked out of the church hall for feeding the
homeless.”

“You haven’t changed
one bit,” Jacob said. “You’re still as nasty and spiteful as you were from the
time you could throw your first mud ball. You can talk to me anyway you want,
but please show my future wife respect. She’s done nothing to you.”

“Your future wife?”
Dean stared at Leah, but the sparkle in the eyes flashed anger now. “You’re
going to marry my brother?”

Leah hesitated before
nodding her head. “Jacob and I plan to be married one day, but nothing’s going
to happen if I don’t get an explanation about what’s going on here.”

“I’ll leave you to
your little fairy tale,” Dean said. “You’ll find out soon enough that all is
not what it seems here in Sunshine land. Beware of the serpents.”

Dean turned and
walked out the same door he’d entered a few minutes earlier when he’d
captivated Leah so thoroughly. No wonder he looked familiar, Leah thought. He
and Jacob were brothers. She ran to the door, ignoring her fiance’s plea to
stay there. She needed to know more about Dean.

She found him sitting
on a motorcycle on the side lawn of the church used for Sunday morning parking
overflow.

“Where are you
going?” Leah asked as she approached the bike where he straddled the engine. He
was sitting back with his arms crossed over his chest. He rolled his eyes at
her approach.

“What do you care?”
he asked. “You almost accepted my invitation for dinner back there. Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe
I was being tested.”

“For what?”

“For my love for
Jacob. I wouldn’t have gone on a date with you.”

“But you wanted to go
with me.”

“For a few seconds,
yes, I did.”

She walked closer to him.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her close until his knee rested on her hip. He
placed one arm around her shoulders and put the other around her waist. He leaned
so close to her, their lips almost touched as they stared into each other’s
eyes. It happened so quickly that Leah didn’t have time to react. Now that they
were touching, she couldn’t even think, let alone pull away from him.

“It won’t take you
long to find out what I learned at a very early age,” he said softly, his
breath caressing her lips. “When you do find out, you’ll come running to me for
more of this.”

He leaned down until
his lips touched hers, gently at first, but then he pushed with a hardness that
made their teeth clink. Leah parted her lips further, allowing his tongue to
enter. Their tongues acted as serpents slithering in and around their mouths.
Leah put her arms on his chest and felt the hardness of his pecs. She started
to push him away, but then she lost herself in the sensations of the kiss. They
both kept their eyes open, as they stared deep into one another. The kiss
lasted forever as they made love with their lips and tongues.

She heard the sound
of a horn from the street only yards away. It was enough to draw her back to
reality. She pushed against his chest with the palms of her hand and pulled her
head away from his.

“I have to go back
inside,” she said. “I can’t do this. I don’t know what happened.”

“Have it your way,”
Dean said. “I’m done with those people. But you go back to them. They lied to
you about me; what else have they lied about?”

“They’re good people.
They took me in when I didn’t have any place else to go. Jacob will be a good
husband and father to our children,” she said.

“Sounds like you’ve
got it all figured out,” Dean said before he started the bike. “I’ll be sure to
be a loving uncle to your brats.”

The bike roared to
life, and without even a wave, he was off and headed down the street away from
her. She rubbed the back of her hand over her lips still tingling with the feel
of his lips. What had gotten into her, she wondered as she turned and walked
back to the hall. How could she have kissed someone she’d only met an hour
earlier? She touched her lips again. Jacob never made her feel like she’d felt
with Dean.

As she attempted to
wipe the memory of the kiss from her mind, she concentrated on what she must do
next. She had to find out why the family felt it so important to kill Dean off,
even though he lived just a few hours from the Sunshine Church.

Dean roared down State
Road 25 toward the center of Victory, Florida, where he’d been born and raised
until the age of seventeen. Nothing much had changed. As Dean traveled down the
main drag in the center of town, he wondered how a place as downtrodden as this
one could hold onto the name of Victory.

He pulled into the
diagonal parking spot in front of Victory Tavern and put the bike on its stand.
He stood on Main Street and looked around at the businesses. Miss Emma’s dress
shop still catered to the matronly set of Victory with Maiden Form bras, girdles,
and polyester suits like the one Geraldine wore. Dean shuddered to think of
Geraldine as he looked down the street.

The old sports store
where his dad bought his and Jacob’s baseball cleats and basketball sneakers
looked closed and forgotten, probably abandoned by Victory years ago. The old
ice cream parlor on the corner looked like the only place with activity on this
warm afternoon in May. He could see the sign for Dew Drops down at the end of
the drag, but he couldn’t tell if it was still open for breakfast and lunch.

The tavern’s red open
sign glowed from the dark front window, even though it didn’t look very lively.
His buddy Reggie still ran the place. At least he did the last time they’d
talked. Dean walked toward the front door. It opened with the rush of
air-conditioned wind as someone smelling of too sweet gardenia perfume breezed
by him. He’d know that smell anywhere.

“Sally Jean, where
you going in such a hurry?” he asked.

“Dean? Is that really
you?” said a woman oozing blue eye shadow and pink blush. Her permed blonde
hair looked as if the eighties took up residence in a nest of sprayed moss on
top and stretched down to her shoulders. “I can’t believe you’re finally back.”

“You haven’t changed
one single bit, you sexy lady,” Dean said as he accepted her hug. He grinned at
her and gave her tight red jeans a slap on the butt.

She pushed her ample
breasts into his chest. The loose and low-cut ruffled neck of red-striped
blouse threatened to dump her boobs right onto the sidewalk.

“And you’re still one
big hunk of a man,” Sally Jean said. “But you need a haircut. Don’t they have
barbers down in Miami?”

“It’s a look I cultivate,”
Dean said. “I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

“I bet you do. Are
you coming into the Tavern? My Avon ladies can wait a little longer for their
deliveries, if you’d like to have a drink.”

“That’s the best
offer all day. Nothing I’d rather do than have a drink with you,” he said.
“Maybe a few drinks, if you’re willing.”

“You know I’d do
anything with you, Dean. It’s you ran away, leaving me with a broken heart.”

“You seemed to have
survived,” Dean said. “Now let’s get inside before the heat melts us right down
to the sidewalk.”

Several men turned
from their beers at the bar, and when they recognized who’d joined them, shouts
and high fives met Dean as he walked down the line of bar stools. Most of the
guys sitting there on a Friday afternoon once played football with Dean,
Victory’s star quarterback.

The wooden and
scarred bar ran the length of the room. A spattering of tables filled the rest
of the space. Reggie Barker came out from behind the bar and gave him a hug.

“Damn, Dean, I didn’t
know you were coming to town,” Reggie said. “You should’ve called or
something.”

“It was a last minute
decision; I need to take care of some business. Speaking of business, how’s the
bar doing these days?”

“Steady, thanks to
these guys,” Reggie gestured to the filled bar stools. “I’ve been doing some
dinner business.”

“That’s great to
hear. What you got for a tired homeless guy to eat?”

“Spaghetti and
meatballs coming right up.” Reggie slapped him on the back and headed to the
kitchen.

“You’re homeless?”
Sally Jean asked as they found two empty stools at the end of the bar.

“For tonight, I am.
Got any place I can stay?”

“You know I do,”
Sally said, as Reggie placed a plate heaping with garlic bread, meatballs, and
spaghetti in front of Dean.

“Beers all around,” Dean
said. “I’m feeling pretty lucky today now that I’ve found Sally Jean here.”

“I always knew I
liked you, Dean Davis,” Charlie said from the other end of the bar. He lifted
his mug in a salute.

“You always liked
beer, Charlie,” Dean said. “You’d eat my shit, if I bought you beer every day.”

After Dean finished
his lunch, he drank his beer and kept his arm around Sally Jean’s waist,
letting his hand wander wherever it wanted. Reggie poured him another beer. He
drank to forget about his encounter with Geraldine; he fondled Sally Jean to
forget the woman engaged to his brother.

“Have you seen your
mother yet?” Charlie asked.

“Just came from
there,” Dean said. “What’s with Jacob and the waif he’s going to marry?”

“Her,” Sally Jean
said with almost a snort. “She’s a do-gooder that Geraldine took in a few years
ago. I hear she was homeless, but now she acts as if she’s better than everyone
else except those fellows who camp down by the river.”

“Who are they?” Dean
asked.

“It’s a group of men
and women who camp on the banks of Deer River,” Reggie said. “Most of them are
homeless vets.”

“They came here after
Leah set up that kitchen,” Charlie said. “As long as she keeps feeding them,
they’ll be like the Canada geese that forget to migrate out of Florida during
the summers.”

They all laughed and
lifted their mugs to toast Charlie’s joke. Dean remained quiet and drank his
beer. He removed his arm from around Sally Jean’s waist.

“Seems like that
would be a good thing to do,” he said. “I mean, no one else’s taking care of
them, are they?”

“She’s a good person,
who’s doing a good thing,” Reggie said. “I feel sorry for her in a way. She’s
become Geraldine’s pet project, and you know what that means.”

“How’s life in the
big city?” Charlie asked. “Still work in the tattoo shop?”

“Sure do,” Dean said.
“You wouldn’t believe how many drunks I’ve tatted over the past few years.”

Reggie let out a
grunt. “He doesn’t just work in a shop, you moron. He owns the best tattoo
parlor in South Beach.”

“That right?” Joe sat
next to Charlie, and he got up and walked toward Dean. “What’s the name of the
shop?”

“Harold Grant Tats,”
Reggie said, as Dean continued to drink his beer.

“Harold Grant?” Joe
said. “That’s the famous guy who does all the sports guys down in Miami, like
Lebron.”

“You know Harold?”
Charlie asked.

“I might,” Dean said.

“I’d like a tattoo,”
Sally Jean said. “Right on my behind here.” She turned around and bent over so
her rear end was nearly resting on Dean’s chest.

“What kind of tat do
you want?” Dean asked.

“I want it to say
‘the seat of authority’ on a paddle.”

“Sally Jean, if
anyone could have that many words on their ass, it’s you,” Charlie said as
Sally Jean stood and flashed him the finger.

“Can you do that?”
Sally Jean asked.

“It could be
arranged,” Dean said. “But we’d have to go back to your place to get it
outlined.”

The entire bar broke
into laughter as comments flew around the mugs of beer. Sally Jean looked Dean
in the eye as she sidled up to him.

“Let’s go, cowboy,”
Sally Jean said. “You’ve kept me waiting far too long.”

Dean paid Reggie for
the beers and meal, and then left the bar with Sally Jean. The hoots of his old
friends followed them out into the sunshine. Dean got onto his motorcycle, and
Sally Jean hopped on the back pushing herself as close to his back as she
possibly could.

“Here’s a helmet, if
you want one,” Dean said as he slipped a black helmet off the handlebars.

“You kidding? That’d
ruin my hair.”

“What about the
wind?”

Sally Jean laughed. “Honey,
I got enough hair spray on this mop to go through a hurricane without moving a
hair. I live out past the church at the old Collier place. They’re renting the
farmhouse to me, but they’re still growing tobacco in the fields.”

They started down
Main Street, and as they reached the turn for the state road, Leah stepped out
of a white Dodge van emblazoned with the words “Sunshine Church.” Dean nodded
at her, and Sally Jean smiled as she squeezed Dean even tighter. Leah stared at
the duo, but did not give Dean any sign of recognition.

Dean smiled to think
about how it looked to Leah. He hoped the image haunted her when she went to
sleep that night in his former home with her fiancé. Too bad he couldn’t get
the feel of her lips as he kissed her off his mind. But if anyone could wipe
away the memory, it would be Sally Jean, he thought as her breasts pressed into
his back.