Love Is All Around (12 page)

o0o

Taking a sip of the tea Patsy’s grandmother poured for him, Will had to twist his head to the side to hide a grimace. Geez, that was sweet. He could feel a cavity forming with each swallow.

After meeting Granny, Will could see where Patsy got her spunk. The woman had to be seventy-plus, carried an extra fifty pounds or so on her small frame, and, according to Dwayne, she had survived at least one stroke, but she seemed to rule the roost. Patsy’s mother flitted around the kitchen like a butterfly victimized by a shifting wind, but her grandmother chose a course and shoved forward in a direct line of attack.

There was no doubt who was the object of Granny’s current path. She looked at Will like he held the password to a lost file, an important file. The kind you spend months, if not years, trying to reconstruct after a crash.

Or maybe he should think of her in hunting terms. She was a hunter, a husband-hunter that is, and he was the prey. She looked at him with the same light in her eyes his dad had when he dragged home an elk from his annual hunting trip out west. If Granny had her way, he’d be gutted and hanging over Patsy’s fireplace before dark. He scratched Ralph behind the ear.

He’d been down that path before, been a trophy of sorts to Cindy. Of course that wasn’t all he was to her. No, he’d also been a bank account with money for a 6,000-square-foot house, private schools and a gas-guzzling SUV. A freaking fairy-tale romance, except Cindyrella’s prince had a platinum Visa instead of a missing slipper.

Was Patsy in on her grandmother’s plans? Was she looking for a prince or a bank account? Or neither? Glancing at the house, he saw Patsy watching him through the sliding glass door, her figure cast in silhouette by the kitchen light. Will picked up his glass and slammed back another jolt of sugary tea. Swallowing hard, he thought, playing prince might not be all bad, at least for a while.

 Patsy’s shadow was replaced by a rounder, shorter one, followed by the door edging open.

“Well, it’s about time. Where you been?” Granny stepped through the doorway, a middle-aged woman with foot-high, coal-black hair close behind. The woman’s face was powdery white, her lips glossy red. Black eyebrows that looked like they’d been drawn on with a Flair pen arched above brown eyes.

Like an aged Betty Boop drawn by a cartoonist just off a two-week bender.

“Son, this here’s Patsy’s Aunt Tilde.” Granny motioned from the newcomer to Will.

Trying not to stare, he stood to shake her hand. A firm grip quickly confined his hand. He tried to pull back, but the Betty wannabe gave it a squeeze while placing ruby-tipped fingers over the top of their clasped hands.

“Well, he’s a looker, isn’t he?” She grinned at Granny. Turning back to Will, she said, “What you do for a living, kid, to get those muscles?”

Her personality was just as subtle as her makeup. Eager for some distance, Will tugged his hand free. “I owned an Internet business, but I sold it recently.”

“I’m telling you what, I’d have never thought punching letters on a keyboard would build up a body like that.” She squeezed his bicep.

Before he could stutter out a response, she moved on in a whirl of lime-green polyester and lemony perfume. “Randy Jensen, you just get better looking every day. When you going to settle back down with some pretty girl and get that poor mother of yours some more grandchildren? I swear all that lovin’ is more than poor little Luke can handle all by hisself.”

Happy he’d been dismissed, Will didn’t listen to Randy’s reply. His own encounter had left him drained. He fell back onto his seat.
Wonder why Dwayne hasn’t pulled out any beer yet?
Will was going to need it to make it through this gauntlet of a family.

“So, Tilde, what’d you find down in Henning this week?” Patsy’s father had joined them on the patio.

“Not diddly. I liked to talk myself blue trying to worry an oak sideboard out of Billy Joe Blackwell. I’d have had better luck getting milk from a bull. That man wouldn’t let the red-hot end of a poker go.” Tilde shook her head.

 “I did hear some gossip though.” She grabbed a paper cup and poured herself some tea. “There’s a rumor going ‘round that someone’s looking to buy up land down that way. Billy Joe said he heard people were talking two to three times the going price.”

Will leaned forward. Could this be for the smelter? He hadn’t gotten back to Richard yet. Had he found someone else to bankroll his land deal?

“What do they think they’re going to do with the land?” Patsy’s father asked.

“Oh, they don’t know. It’s the usual rumors. Some say it’s a new airport, a couple claimed it was for a water park, and one old fool even swore he’d seen Merle Haggard tooling around in his limo. Said he was buying up land to start a game preserve.”

She took a sip of tea. “None of it sounds too likely to me, but I know one thing. If I owned land down there, I’d be trying to find out who was handing out the cash, and I’d dump my acres before they wised up.”

Will swirled his tea glass around, watching the liquid flow around the ice. Did others feel this way? Would people sell off their land and ask questions later? And if they did, was it his problem? He wasn’t the one ripping them off. He was going to turn Richard down. None of it was his business. So, why did he suddenly feel guilty?

There wasn’t anything he could do to save people from their own stupidity. In business, it was survival of the fittest.

Will winced. That was his father’s credo. Still, what could he do?

Chapter 7

Patsy watched from the safety of the kitchen as Granny introduced Tilde to Will. He seemed to take her unique sense of style in stride, though he did turn pale when she caressed his arm. Just as well their conversation was blocked by the glass door. Patsy was better off not knowing what her aunt said. Tilde was well known around Daisy Creek for a lot of things, but tact and diplomacy weren’t among them.

When it looked like everyone had settled into a civilized conversation, Patsy balanced the baked beans on top of a stack of paper plates and shoved the door open with her toe. Will looked up at her with a gaze so full of relief, she felt herself flush.

There was no reason she should feel bad that he’d been left to fend for himself. He wasn’t her responsibility. He was Dwayne’s guest. Plus, she couldn’t help it if he seemed to attract the women in her family like a trailer park did tornadoes. It was his own fault for being so tempting—clean-cut and fresh-smelling, but with an underlying masculinity that screamed a take-no-prisoners approach to life.

The short sleeve of his usual polo edged up over the bulge of his bicep as he reached down to pet his dog. Patsy felt a tightening in her stomach. Damn. He was a bad boy wrapped up in a take-home-to-momma package. No woman could resist that.

“Is the pork done?” She averted her gaze from the enticement of Will, instead opting to watch Dwayne give himself an uncouth scratch. Rolling her eyes, she deposited her burden on the table.

“Looks it to me, and it’s a good thing. I’m as hungry as a bear in the spring.” Dwayne forked the steaks onto a platter and handed them to Patsy.

Looking around for a place to set the plate, Patsy bumped into Will. Their encounter left a red smear of sauce on his previously pristine shirt.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, staring at the stain.

“No problem.” He reached for the plate. They stood for a moment, both of them gripping opposite ends of the platter. “Let me take it,” he said.

“No, I can do it.” Her hands tightened on the dish.

“Let me help.” He insisted, giving the plate a slight tug.

“I’m not the one who needs helping,” she replied, yanking back.

“What makes you the proper person to judge who needs help and who doesn’t?” Will asked. He held firm to his end.

She tilted her chin. “Upbringing. I know the difference between helping and interfering.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Will replied.

“You gonna serve that meat or just wrestle over it?” Granny eyed the platter poised between them. Patsy flushed. The party had gone quiet, everyone watching her and Will fight over a plate of pork steaks.

“Fine, you help.” She dropped her end, just as Will dropped his. Both of them stood open-mouthed as the platter flipped from their hands, landing face down on the concrete. A horrified silence cloaked the area.

o0o

Dinner was beans and more beans. Will offered to drive to town to pick up something from a restaurant, but Granny wouldn’t hear of it.

During the meal, Patsy had a hard time looking at him. It was like she’d been caught writing dirty words on the bathroom wall—juvenile and embarrassing. She should have just let him take the platter. Practiced her own preaching. Now he knew how much he got to her, and so did everybody else.

 “The boys are leaving. You going with them?” Granny elbowed Patsy in the side.

“Hunting? Why would I go hunting?” Patsy snorted. As far as Patsy was concerned, Will couldn’t take off into the woods fast enough.

Granny nodded toward him. “Hmph. If you don’t know, me telling you ain’t going to help you none.” After giving Patsy a disgusted look, she went inside.

Looking up, Patsy realized she was alone on the patio with Will. “Where’d everybody go?”

“Dwayne and Randy went to get their dogs, everybody else went inside. They walked right past you.”

She really had to work on her concentration.

“About dinner. I should have let you handle it.” He lowered himself onto the bench beside her.

Patsy moved over to leave space between them. “No, it was my fault. I was being...”

“Stubborn?” One eyebrow arched upward.

“Stubborn?” she objected.

“Stubborn,” he stated.

Patsy’s eyes narrowed. Try to be nice and take some of the heat for something that was obviously his fault, and he had the audacity to call her stubborn.

“So, you ever been coon hunting?” he asked.

“Once or twice,” she ground out.

He resettled himself on the bench, running his arm along the table behind her. “Did you like it?”

“What’s not to like?” she replied. She could feel the heat from his arm along the back of her neck. Not quite touching, but almost. As she tensed, waiting for contact, her annoyance melted away.

He moved again, this time sending a wave of masculine cologne over her. The need to curl in toward him, to nestle her nose against his chest and breathe the scent in, almost overwhelmed her.

She curled her fingers until her nails dug into the wooden bench. Life was so unfair. She didn’t want this attraction. Wrong person, wrong place, wrong time.

Feeling vengeful, she looked him right in his two-toned eyes. “What’s not to like?” she repeated. “You chase a cute little teddy bear of a creature up a tree with a pack of howling hounds, shine a bright light on it, and shoot it right between the eyes.”

Will blinked.

Ha, she was getting to him. “And if you’re real lucky, when he hits the ground there’s still enough fight left in him to give the dogs some sport before they rip his furry little throat out.”

Will’s skin tone slipped from medium beige to somewhere in the ivory family. Patsy grinned. Teach him to walk around smelling better than Hostess pie a la mode.

Relief washed over Will’s face. “You’re kidding.”

Patsy grinned wider. “No, I’m not. But don’t worry. You’ll have a blast.” She motioned to Dwayne, who was strutting around the corner of the house, his dogs on his heels. “You got the crocodile hunter of the Midwest leading this expedition. Too bad it’s not coon season. He could show you the classy way to skin and bleed out the poor little thing.”

Will’s color slipped another notch.

Standing up, she leaned close and whispered in his ear, “If I were less stubborn, I might be able to help you out of this jaunt, but then again I wouldn’t want to offer help where it isn’t wanted.” With one last grin, she picked up some plates and sauntered into the house.

“What’d you tell that boy, sis? His face is longer than Uncle Sam’s inseam.” Granny peered over Patsy’s shoulder at Will, who had stood up to follow Dwayne back toward the garage.

“Nothing. He just asked about coon hunting is all.” Patsy ambled over to the trash and dumped in her load.

“And you made it sound like a cross between bashing puppies in the skull with a crowbar and eating your own young.”

Patsy sniffed. He’d wanted a taste of southern Missouri life, and she’d obliged him. No reason for her to feel guilty. “I told him he’d have fun.”

Granny nodded. “Sure you did, and he’ll feel real good about it if he does.” Her nod shifted to a shake. “Sis, you have a mean streak a mile wide.”

Patsy dropped the paper plate she’d picked up. “I wasn’t being mean. I was just telling him the truth.”

“You know, some people really enjoy coon hunting. Fact is, I’ve seen you come back a time or two hauling a fat old coon behind you and a grin as big as sin plastered on your face.”

“I was eight.” Why did everybody assume she was still the same person she had been as a child?

“And I’ve known plenty of folks who made ends meet selling coon skins. Times aren’t as good for everybody as they are for you. Did you tell Will what Dwayne and Randy do with them coons when they do shoot ‘em? Did you tell him about the Cuffe family? About those kids who probably get meat once a week? You tell him that?”

Patsy was silent. Granny had a talent for making her feel smaller than a dried pea.

“I didn’t think so. Next time you start poking fun at something, you flip it over and look at the other side. There’s no telling what you’ll discover.”

Patsy watched her grandmother stomp back out onto the patio. Why did things have to have two sides? Life was a lot simpler when there was only one, hers.

She tossed a scrap of dirty pork into Pugnacious’ kennel. Patsy had shoved her in it after the steak-dropping incident. It also kept the pug from following the coon hounds when they took off through the woods.

The little dog was already looking suspicious. She knew when dark fell, the other dogs would get to hunt. She gulped down her pork and started scratching at the metal clasp of the cage.