Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) (6 page)

 

Chapter Six

 

Okay? So what if perhaps this day was not going so
well for her?  And it was becoming eerily similar to yesterday? Life in general
was not going good for her. Yet she could get through this. She’d gotten into
far worse jams in her life, then, gotten out of those jams without anyone’s help.
She couldn’t exactly recall any of them now, but given time she’d be able to.

But the car?

A
nd now Jake
daring to stand before her—judge, jury and executioner—exactly as he was?

A stolen car she could. . .
Damnit!
She would
have dealt with it, in time. She knew the legal system of this great country
like the back of her hand,
Thank you very much!
She had rather intimate
knowledge of what could, and usually did happen to those labeled as car
thieves. And now she was going to be considered as one. A loophole here or
there could’ve surely gotten her off, with good behavior.

But Jake Giotti judging her?
Mr
.
All around
Criminal
himself?

Liddy knew for fact he was judging her. She could see
it in his face. One upturned eyebrow was mocking her very existence. The other,
bending down just to tell her she’s a damn fool. He was perfecting his
distancing act whenever he didn’t want to deal with something he couldn’t
comprehend.

His rigid stance, Jake bunching up the beefy muscles
he was oddly trying to hide under a suit coat . .  hell, he was the damn fool
who’d taught her how to steal a car in the first place! Though they’d never
done the deed for real, and only practiced on a few old beaters behind the used
car lot whenever Billy’s dad too inebriated to care, and whenever they had
nothing better to do besides having great, mind-numbing sex.

Hey! She already said the sex with Jake had been great.
During what little time they’d had together sex had been indescribably awesome
with this man.

She just wanted . . . Liddy just wanted the day to end.
Was this too much to ask out of life? Too much to want out of her life, when
most everything else she’d ever wanted before never gave to her?

A girl wanted normal parents. She wanted a decent
house to grow up in. She did not want to be looked at as though she had the
plague, or being born on the wrong side of the tracks meant others were to look
away.

Was it simply too much to ask to be able to close her eyes,
look the other way. . . and have all of today—a
ll of this
—go away?
Certainly not!

The facts were this wasn’t about to be swept under a
rug as easily as she would’ve wanted it. And Jake’s snake tattoo was not a
cute, cuddly, or at all what a respectable person adorns their body with.

Liddy’s groan pulled at her insides. Damnit. She would
give anything, even her eyeteeth, just to see his tattoo one more time. Savor
the image of it until her dying day.

Debra would have a field day with this news. That fat
ass deputy would eat Liddy alive . . . whole.

Oh, this was bad. This was very,
very
bad. Mack
Wells’ car stolen . . . technically stolen twice,
and in the same bloody
damn week, was bad.

Even though not exactly stolen from the same city or
even on the same day, nor by the same bloody damn car thief . . .nevertheless,
twice was twice no matter how an individual looked at it.

Surely there was a loophole she could figure using for
her defense just to get her out of this mess. Right?

Mack wasn’t an easy man to deal with when something of
his, or should she more loosely said
something having tremendous value to
him,
was taken from him. If anyone could attest to this fact it was her. He
about crucified one of his maids who’d pilfered a small, insignificant candy
dish from the kitchen. The woman said Mack wasn’t paying her as much as all the
others were being paid, and the crystal dish considered as compensation toward
her undeniable efforts of serving the man and his relentless demands of her, both
day and night. Not sexual, just physical.

For a lousy dime store dish, his maid was now looking
at ten to fifteen with time off for good behavior. Liddy chuckled at the thought
of good behavior. It was not as if the maid hadn’t been right. Mack didn’t pay
his employees well. The men were getting far more than the women were.

Liddy found she would have done the very same thing
had the shoe been on the other foot. Mack could truly get a person angry over
very little. It was the very reason he was so damn good at what he chose as his
profession. And why she hadn’t been able to tell him about her actually taking
the car, nor said a word to her betrothed about Jake.

Her opinion might be a bit slated; because though he
had three other cars to choose from, the one she’d borrowed from the mansion’s
garage was the only one he’d considered his priceless baby.

Jesus! A fucking car was more important to him than his
fiancés pride.

Mack had a private chauffeur to drive him most places.
A large sixty-foot yacht moored down at the Miami Marina for use on the
weekends. He had eight live-in household staff, within a thirteen thousand
square foot mega-mansion, who atoned to his every demand. Six men and two women
catered to him night and day. He had his very own personal shopper. He didn’t
need the car.

She did.

Well . . . had.

Now, with said car stolen right here in barely
noticeable, little ole` Preacher’s Bend, the very place Mack did not want to
hear about . . .
ever
?

There really was no way she could tell Mack about the
car without ending up in jail.
Good God!
She couldn’t end in jail or be
hated by Mack!  They’re getting married to each other in less than three weeks,
technicalities aside.

And now she had to deal with Jake, on top of
everything else?

Good grief!
This
just kept getting better and better.

And why in God’s name did her soon-to-be ex-husband
have to be so damn good looking, smell so great, and look so unbearably sexy
dressed in a suit and brown loafers, her lower half heating up far faster than
ever before with this man. Why did she foolishly turn her head in that miserable
restaurant and find him today, of all days?

Jake did not calculate his life as efficiently as Mack
Wells did. He grabbed life by the horns and with both hands held on for dear
life, for the full eight-second ride. Darling Mack could barely make it through
three seconds on a bull, mechanical or otherwise. Not that Liddy would’ve held any
less than physical skills against him . . .

Jesus! Why on Earth was she even comparing the two?
Doing so was not a smart thing; Mack was so much more
compared to Jake.

The Jake she remembered would’ve shrugged off a stolen
car. He would’ve had a cold beer down at local watering hole with his best
friend Gill. A hearty laugh, much later on, about the distasteful episode. He
would’ve simply waited for his car to be brought back to him.

Arrogant bastard
!

She, on the other hand, did not have the time to wait
for its return. She had places to go, people to meet, and a wedding to
finalize.

Time was always on Jake’s side. Liddy was running out
of it.

And if anyone dared get her started on what arguing
inside Rachel’s with this man had felt like . . .

A good pair of white socks, bleached and put through
the wringer—repeatedly, until stripped to the bare threads—was feeling far less
pain than she. Most of her shed tears had been made because he’d caught her
completely off guard. The rest were quite unexpected from what she could only
guess to be ten years of missing this arrogant jerk, so terribly; at times it’d
been all she could do not to have coming running back to Preacher’s Bend with her
tail tucked between her legs, and just forgive the egotistical bastard for
being such a complete and utter jackass.

Mack benefited her greatly. When she needed him the
most, when she needed answers and comfort from someone who did not know her, or
knew of what she’d done, Mack had been there. He’d held her head up high, kept
her in check and on track; especially when she’d about thrown in the towel
those first years.

Mack had done everything he was supposed to do. He was
a good guy. Doing what he was supposed to have done led him to consider having
her walking down the aisle toward him.

Nevertheless, Mack wasn’t here. Jake was; stood right
in front of her. Judging her!

This brought back a lifetime of memories at full tilt,
and all of those memories collided inside her to produce one hell of a
heartache beneath the breastbone. It staggered her to acknowledge Jake could do
this to her; make it hurt as much as it was hurting.
Then, get away with it!

Liddy did not come to this point in her life, or all
this way, for Jake Giotti to get away with judging her so unfairly. Or, for him
to hand her ultimatums she couldn’t accept. There was a fifty-thousand-dollar
wedding dress in the back of a stolen car, for Pete’s sake!

This should have spoken volumes to her mental
stability.

“I need your help,” she pleaded.

Jake looked at her as if she’d lost her ever lovin’ mind.

“No way, no how. You got yourself into this mess. You can
get yourself out of it. I don’t have time for this, Liddy.” He even held up his
hand as if to ward off the idea.

“This is your fault, Jake. If you’d been smart enough
. . . Damnit, Jake, you have to help me,” she finished with instead, slapping
down his hand and using her best, ‘
But, It was your fault to begin with’
stare down.

She even stomped her foot on the hard pavement for good
measure. Failing miserably on all accounts, she watched in horror Jake balling
his fists on his hips.

Liddy suspected he was about to give her what she was
due, posthaste.

He must have decided his fists placed on his hips were
not the best place for them to be; instead, he shoved them into the deep
pockets of his suit coat, quite frantically. The action pulled the material of
his suit coat taut over the large wall of steel, and had her groaning inwardly
out of pure and utter frustration.

Warm? No. She wasn’t warm. Liddy had suddenly turned
into a towering inferno on a poorly maintained parking lot. There was sweat
rolling down her back, for Pete’s sake! Sweat never rolled down her back unless
she was in the throes of doing a full workout at the gym.

“Just how the bloody hell do you figure on this being
my fault?” he asked.

There was a glimmer of mutiny within his silver eyes, which
translated into this was not going to turn out good for her. Or should she have
said it was not going to be any better than their little
lopsided
conversation back inside the café.

“If you didn’t have an affair with that . . . that
sex-starved hussy!
. . . I would not be standing here, discussing our past,
wanting an annulment, both of us hating each other, and you ripping what was left
of my courage to shreds! And I wouldn’t have had my car stolen!”

Okay. Round one was about to go to her. It certainly looked
this way. Jake flinched.

However, it was hard to tell with the man. He could
easily be winning this hand and not show any outward sign of doing so until his
opponent felt the stinging pain of loss.

And if winning, or he just faking it, Liddy felt fate
could be generous just this once; allow her to win a small round against an
arrogant jackass of a man.

“Good God, Woman! You’ve got a ton of nerve.” His
words were harsh. Crisp. Ice cold, truth told. “Did you not just tell me it was
you
who stole it in the first place?”

So what if she had?
Surely the supplied information was not somehow useable against her in
a court of law. She had her rights toward this. Jake was still her husband. He
could plead the fifth. In fact, he could keep his big fat mouth shut for a
change. Case closed. Problem solved.

Good God! She could only hope he’d go along with this
plan
. By the gleam in his eyes, however, it
looked a million to one shot.

 

Chapter Seven

 

Million to one or not, there wasn’t much Liddy could do
about her betraying body language. As her lower lip started its revolt, out of
the corner of her eye she could see a rather large and endearing Debra Wesley
crossing the street. She was moving at a clip, and there was a dangerous
looking gun at the hip. Her hat was tipped down and she looked meaner than
ever.

Jake must have seen her too, because he groaned as
loudly as Liddy would have, had she not been so distraught over Mack’s missing
car and what next to do about it.

But Jake hadn’t groaned the kind of groan saying he
was somehow frustrated with life, in general, but the kind of groan that said
he was very much aware he was now in deeper shit with his mean half-sister than
ever before. Right up to his eyeballs and sinking fast.

“Jake Giotti! Just who the
hell
do you think
you are?” Debra’s voice carried clear across the parking lot. Perhaps she was the
only officer within the county who could forego the use of a blow horn and
still get her point made.

Jake groaned again. He raised his eyes and looked straight
through Liddy, ignoring Debra.

Liddy could read his thoughts quite clearly. Jake in
trouble with his parole officer was going to be her fault. In his mind, he’d most
likely figured out she should and would . . .
God, would have she ever . . .
pay dearly for the consequences about to happen to him over his untimely tardiness.

He turned his head toward his half-sister’s hasty
approach and smiled sweetly. “Debra.”

“Don’t you dare Debra me, you lowlife son of a bastard!”

Debra Wesley never cared one way or the other if she
had an audience to her anger. Three ten gallon hats were making their way out
of the café, and in the process of getting into their very expensive SUV held their
smiles on their faces.

This was surely not a deterrent to her yelling at the
either of them. Debra liked to have others hear whatever it was she had to say,
and simply said it like it was, no matter what.

This was a bad trait for a woman to have.

Liddy thoughts moved quickly to
why the hell whoever
took her car did not take theirs?
It was certainly worth more—at least
fifteen thousand dollars more, and bigger, and cleaner. Hers was filled with
the remnants of too many drive-thru meals half-eaten, tossed on the floor, and
completely forgotten about until now. She didn’t like others to think of her as
a slob. But, her mind had been on other things while driving here. Like, getting
to Preacher’s Bend in once piece, finding Jake as quickly as possible, then
getting the hell out of Preacher’s Bend as soon as humanly capable.

She hadn’t been able to finish a single one of her
hurriedly purchased meals because her stomach had been tied up in knots the entire
trip here.

She wasn’t exactly a messy person. But when time was not
on her side, Liddy did not waste any cleaning a car of its trash. Especially a
car she’d
borrowed
for a few lousy days . . . of which, the owner did
not know as even borrowed, but would have—eventually.

Jake cleared his throat. This pulled her attention
swiftly to the here and now.

“I was just . . . ,” he started with, only to be cut
off at the knees by the stinging whip of his half-sister’s tongue.

“No, you were not!” Debra bit out. “Don’t you dare
start lying to me today, Jake Giotti? You’ve been doing nothing, whatsoever, but
standing here lollygagging and preening your arrogant feathers. I was watching
you from the police station’s window. You do remember that window, don’t you
Jake? The same window you decided to attack with your motorcycle a few years
back. You’re over an hour late with your parole appointment, and by all rights
your tardiness should earn you another six months incarceration. I’d be doing
the world a favor by putting you back in there.”

Liddy gasped, unable to control her reaction.
Six
months?
Jesus A. Christ!

Somehow, the idea of six months for being late for a
parole appointment seemed a bit harsh. Yet still in plain sight of the fat,
overbearing, genetically flawed officer? This was Preacher’s Bend, however, and
Debra Wesley they were dealing with. As his parole officer and sworn keeper of
the law, if she felt like being mean about this, then Debra could be as mean as
she wanted to be. It was simply her nature.

Liddy very foolishly added words to her gasp. “You
wouldn’t dare!” Was she actually standing up for a man she hadn’t seen in ten
years?

Unfortunately, her thoughts had slipped out before her
brain had the time to stop them; or, time to avoid the inevitable consequences headed
her way.

Jake groaned again, closing his eyes. Even a deaf mute
could’ve seen he did not want her here, and was simply vocalizing this.

Debra turned her head toward Liddy and lost her cool.
“And just who the hell do you think you are, you uptight hussy?”

Boy! When Debra’s hackles rose, they rose quickly.

Somehow, snorting in Debra’s face was not the best
thing to do at the moment, because this time Jake did not groan. He gasped. Same
as Liddy had.

The man was in enough trouble. She surely did not need
to add more to it. Yet Liddy was adding to the pot anyway. Why? Hell!
This
should be self-explanatory.
Debra called her a hussy! That’s why! A fat,
nasty, bitch called
her . . .
a
hussy
! What else was she supposed
to do? Let the woman get away with it?

Hussy around these parts was the patented name for the
very woman who’d completely ruined her life, Ms.
Fuckanotherwoman’s
husband
Porter. Gun or no gun on the deputy’s hip, Liddy had her pride to protect, her
name, and her reputation. She had to defend ten years of getting as far from
this place as possible. Ten years of becoming someone others now looked up to,
and respected.

Most of all . . . she had her misplaced Humphrey pride
to protect from the likes of one Debra Wesley calling
her
a
hussy.

Jake stepped between she and Debra; protecting one,
but not the other, with his large and muscular body. His doing so had Liddy’s
thoughts headed to which one of them he’d meant to protect, using his body as a
shield. Debra? Or her? Somehow, she had her doubts he was coming to the rescue of
a soon-to-be ex-wife.

“Debra,” he said, while looking not at his half-sister,
but directly at Liddy’s face. “Do you not recognize this particular hussy?” His
shameless grin was caustic and full of pure vengeful attitude.

Liddy would’ve kicked him in the nuts, not only for
his thoughtlessness and for an equally thoughtless repeat of Debra’s nasty
definition to her character—would it not have landed her in jail instead of
his
arrogant ass.

She was already walking a very thin line within their
judicial system with Mack’s car taken without permission. Okay! Stolen. She
most certainly did not need to add any more.

Debra pulled up short. She stared Liddy right in the
face. And Liddy had no idea how she did it, but Jesus, Debra did it, so bloody damn
great.

Deputy Wesley made Liddy feel one inch tall under her
tight scrutiny. One inch tall, in four-inch heels! She turned on Jake. “Yes.
So?”

Debra completely ignored Liddy’s presence.

 Fuck!
That’s all I get? A yes? A mere so?

She hadn’t been gone that long, had she?
The
very least Debra could’ve done was tell Mr. Giotti they’d already talked, and
she hadn’t been any friendlier to Liddy then, than Debra was being to her right
now.

Jake kept his eyes locked on her face and he started
to laugh.

Her expression to a much-clipped personal association
must have been priceless to him, because she sure as the hell was in no mood to
chuckle. It would have been at her expense.

“Debra! You don’t recognize Preacher’s Bend’s very own
two-timing, walkabout wife?” he asked his half-sister.

Jail or no jail cell, Liddy kicked the bastard in the
shin. She’d been intending to aim a bit higher and missed only because he
anticipated her action and moved. The wretched man!

She
was not the
one who had an affair.
He was
! And not a tiny, inconsequential affair.
Plural!

Jake flinched to the sudden pain in his leg but he surprised
her by not doing anything toward retaliation.
Yet
.

Besides, Debra was watching his every move very
carefully. If he so much as even moved a muscle to hurt her, Liddy was sure his
half-sister would’ve had him in handcuffs. Perhaps on his knees seconds later,
begging for mercy. Debra loved to get her highs off hurting Jake.

“Liddy?” Debra suddenly asked, startling Liddy’s
thoughts to the here and now.

Liddy could do nothing more than nod at the woman.
Debra was a very scary person. Liddy’s mind was still reeling, so forming real
words would have been near to impossible.

“You haven’t left Preacher’s Bend?”

A statement, more than a question from the deputy,
which held tremendous innuendos.

Liddy stood a little taller knowing Jake’s shin was hurting.
He looked to be in great pain. Surely, she hadn’t broken an artery or two?
No such luck
! Nevertheless, there was telltale moisture forming on his
upper lip and an icy glare in his eyes. This meant he indeed was in some sort
of pain, somewhere. And she’d been lucky enough to give it to him.

Wow! She’d finally scored a point against this man.

“Was I supposed to have left?” she answered, dragging her
eyes away from Jake’s paling face.

“Damn, Liddy! A good ten years and you come back to start
sassing me?” Debra was slightly taken aback she even dared.

Okay.
Maybe
it was not the reaction anyone expected from a woman packing heat. And Debra’s
eyes did widen just a bit more to Liddy’s refusal to back down. But Liddy was a
grown woman. She could handle the likes of one very large, very mean Debra
Wesley. Perhaps if handed a bit more than this she might have caved.

“I’m not sassing you, Debra.” And she wasn’t, at least
not in her mind.

If Debra really wanted her to start sassing, it wouldn’t
have taken too much of an effort on her part.

“No. You’re simply not listening to me. And that is about
the same thing as sassing, in my book.” She moved a bit closer to Liddy.

Liddy could see the sugar from a doughnut still stuck
to Debra’s bottom lip and a few crumbs stuck on her usually pristine Preacher’s
Bend police uniform. Debra must have been partaking in a bit of Ceril’s
doughnut stash while the man called away to the quarry. Shame on her!

Licking her own suddenly dry lips toward whatever was
to come next, Liddy waited with baited breath. Debra was dangerous; when mad at
Jake she was volatile.

Put the both of them together, and a town had on its
hands one very mean, very troubled sister-in-law.

“I listened to you,” Liddy repeated. She tried looking
sheepish. And humble. She must have failed miserably on both accounts, since
both thought her anything but either of these.

“Then why are you still here?” Debra asked, eyeing her
up and down—heels to crown. There was disgust at what she saw written all over
her face. Disgust and something else Liddy dared not put thought to.

“I had to find Jake. I already told you this.”
Hadn’t
she?
Because she surely thought she mentioned this; and more than once when
she’d run into Debra last night. Wasn’t Debra listening to her during those
lousy ten seconds she’d allotted Liddy yesterday?

“Now that you’ve found him, you can leave again.” Debra’s
hand moved to the butt of her gun. “Today.” She even pulled the wretched thing
out of its leather holster, checking the chamber.

Good God!
Was
sassing this bitch actually pushing Debra into wanting to shoot her?
Debra had taken the gun out of the holster while
grinning.

Jake held up his hand in his half-sister’s face to
stall the hefty woman’s movements. “Now hold on there just a dang minute, Debra.
Liddy wasn’t hurting anyone. She’s simply being . . . Liddy.” Jake gave her the
evil eye. “She can’t help her distinct lack of manners. Surely you don’t have
the need to draw your gun on her?”

 He backed up a bit to the look suddenly filling the
depths of Debra’s eyes.

Liddy supposed he never thought he would see the day
where he had to make an actual choice of protecting someone from the likes of a
police officer.

But Liddy’s head was screaming ‘
Lack of manners?’
What the hell . . .

“Who said it was only she I was drawing my gun on?” Debra
warned Jake, purposely playing with the safety on the weapon just to scare them
a bit. “Besides, I got a very legitimate call to check out a domestic
disturbance right here in this parking lot. And this is exactly what I am doing,
Mr. Giotti. I’m checking out a domestic disturbance.”

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