Leslie Kelly - She's No Angel

She sighed, then shook her head in resignation. “We went for a drive, then pulled up at a rest stop outside town. I, uh…made a suggestion they weren’t happy about and they demanded to leave. When we got to the car, one of them started screeching about her handkerchief blowing away and demanded that I chase after it.”

“Let me guess. You kicked off your shoes to run?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they got in the car and left without you?”

“Yep.”

“Where does the tire iron fit in?”

She made a sound of frustration. He glanced over, seeing a look on her face that matched it.

“Aunt Ivy waved it out the window as they drove away, yelling that she’d hit me over the head with it if I tried to force her to move out of her house. I picked it up along the way and was fantasizing about shoving it up the old witch’s nose.”

Bloodthirstiness obviously ran in the family. But he figured it wasn’t the time to point that out, particularly since she’d finally let go of the tire iron.

“She better not have scratched my car when she dropped it,” Jen muttered, sounding more disgruntled than genuinely angry.

Hmm. Tire iron flying out the window of a moving car. He somehow suspected she wasn’t going to get her wish for no scratches. She’d be lucky if there were no dents. But that was for her to work out with her aunt—and her insurance agent—so he kept his opinion to himself.

“Why would you try to force her out of her house?”

“I’m not trying to force them. But I suggested that they move somewhere more appropriate.”

Like a mental institution, from the sound of them. But he figured he’d better not say that, either. He’d been doing a lot of keeping his mouth shut since he’d met her, which really wasn’t surprising considering he genuinely liked to mind his own business and let other people mind theirs. However, they still had a few minutes to kill, and he was curious, so he asked, “Why do you think they should move?”

“Because they each live in ancient monstrosities that are held together by the beehives and termite nests hidden in their foundations, and the congealed dust and mildew on the walls.”

“Pleasant.”

Grunting, she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. Her nicely curved chest, which curved up even higher with the pressure from her arms. Not quite into stop-your-heart territory, but definitely beyond the wonder-if-they’re-real zone.

Real. Oh, yeah.

He cleared his throat and glanced away.

“They’re in their mid-seventies, one’s already had a hip replacement. Yet they insist on living in these two old mausoleums that could fall down under a strong spring breeze. Neither can drive—”

“They took your car,” he pointed out.

“Neither can drive legally,” she clarified. “Ida Mae had her license, but it was taken away because of her vision. Or the road-rage charges. I can’t remember which.”

Again, she startled a small chuckle out of him. Must be some kind of record. Or maybe it was simply because it was a bright, sunny day, he was far away from the city and he had a long weekend off. He’d probably be laughing at Mutt right about now if he hadn’t stopped to pick up his unexpected passenger…. It didn’t necessarily have to do with the woman herself.

“When they’re not refusing to let workmen in their house to fix things—unless they’re young and good-looking, of course—they’re calling me to bitch about each other.”

“Not exactly a pair of Red Riding Hood’s grannies, huh?”

“Only if Red Riding Hood’s granny owned a shotgun and wanted a wolfskin coat for the winter.”

He heard a note of something in her voice—maybe, though she’d probably hate to admit it, a tiny hint of admiration. As though she couldn’t help liking the ballsiness of the old ladies, even if they drove her crazy. This one didn’t like being thwarted, and her relatives were a big old thorn in her side, but something told him she admired them just the same.

“So, you tried to make them leave their homes?”

She sat up straighter. “I suggested that they move into an assisted-living facility where they could have each other for company and have medical help at the push of a button.”

Sounded reasonable. And while he would never expect such a thing of his grandfather, who had enough money to surround himself with staff and live anywhere he damn well chose, he certainly understood the concept of wanting an elderly relative taken care of. Especially taken care of somewhere other than in the crappy town they were entering. “They disliked the idea so much one of them threatened to kill you?”

“She threatens to kill everybody, including cookie-peddling little girls if they ring her doorbell during The Jerry Springer Show,” Jen muttered, waving an unconcerned hand. Then she glanced at her mangled feet. “I just didn’t expect they’d hate the idea enough to maim me over it.”

That soft, wistful tone in her voice told him a lot, hammering home the fact that despite her groaning about them, she cared about these aunts of hers. Cared about them a lot. And was hurt by what they’d done. “Are you giving up?”

Not answering for a moment, she leaned back in her seat, her chin tilting up and her eyes narrowing. From the other side of the Jeep, Mike could feel the temperature go up a degree or two as she got all hot under the collar, every bit of softness and hurt disappearing. Her muscles went tense, which merely emphasized the smoothness of the skin over those muscles, and the slenderness of her body.

“I never give up when there’s something I want, Mr. Taylor.” Her jaw stiff, she stared out the window. "Never."

ALTHOUGH SHE HAD NEVER BEEN married, Emily Baker liked to think of herself as an expert at love. After all, every expert had to start somewhere, most times by studying rather than doing. And though she’d never done it, heaven knew she’d studied it. Being in love, that is.

She’d been a student of love for years. Ever since she’d been a teenager growing up in the town of Trouble, longing to go see the big wide world but knowing she’d be here until the day she died.

That hadn’t stopped her from dreaming, of course, or from learning all there was to know about love. She’d been a bridesmaid to all her friends, watching their courtships with genuine happiness…and only a little bit of envy. She’d read all the romantic novels she could find and gone to the movie shows whenever a juicy love story was set to appear.

Studying. Never doing.

Fantasizing. Never living.

Longing. Never loving.

It had been a given that she’d never leave this place, not with her being the only daughter of an aging set of parents who’d always needed her. Her younger brother had moved away and built a life of his own, but Emily had stayed, month after month, year after year. Eventually, as she’d known she would, she had ended up alone. Her father had died in the late nineties, her mother following him two years ago. And she’d finally been free of all her responsibilities. Free to finally start to live her own life.

Free. In her seventies…when it was too late.

Somehow, through all the years of watching over others, her own life had slipped by. She’d grown old with the town until now she barely remembered the girl she’d been. The girl who’d daydreamed of winning the heart of Cary Grant. Or the young lady who’d longed to find a big-hearted man who’d want to settle down and share a normal, middle-class life with her. Or even the middle-aged woman who sometimes thought there might be a widower out there who needed someone to help him raise his children.

She was none of those anymore. Her dreams had sparkled like faraway stars in a night sky at different times in her life. And each had eventually flickered out, smothered by the reality of time and age. Those thoughts had long since been put away.

But it didn’t matter so much anymore. Because she didn’t need dreams of her own romance…not when she had so many others to enjoy. When she lost herself in the movies that had become her secret life, she lived every blissful moment, experienced all of the anguish and the joy of falling in love.

Whoever had invented those VCR machines had to be the greatest person on earth. Because ever since her brother had bought their parents one as a Christmas present way back in the eighties, she’d found a world of love and romance that were the closest thing to heaven she’d ever known.

She knew every line from Casablanca, every word to the songs in The Sound of Music. Could ask Rhett Butler where she would go and what she would do if he left her in a perfect Vivien Leigh accent. She had held her breath endless times through the ending of Titanic, praying that this time it would turn out differently.

Romance. Love. Fantasy. All at the flick of a switch.

She used to watch the daytime stories, in addition to her cherished movies, but these days they seemed comprised mostly of intrigue. Or just sex and cheating. Not the “you’re the only one for me, I can’t live without you” tales her soul craved.

Right now, her video collection took up an entire spare bedroom in the house she’d inherited from her mother. Alphabetized and organized by her very own cataloging system, the films were her special secret, always there, behind a closed door. Her private haven from the world.

It was only recently that she’d found reasons to come out of that haven. And the two main ones were, right at this moment, lying on the floor of her living room, sharing one of the most tender, lovely scenes she’d ever personally witnessed.

“He likes you,” said a young woman’s voice, so filled with happiness it made Emily’s heart ache to hear it.

“I like him, too,” was the laughing response as a dark-haired man bounced a sweet baby on his stomach. “He’s perfect, Allie.”

The three of them—man, woman and baby—were sprawled out on the carpet, the strange man having won little Hank over immediately with his warm voice and gentle tickling. They were laughing, touching, loving. Forming the new family Emily had prayed her young friend—and tenant—Allie Cavanaugh would find.

And now she’d found it. The handsome young drifter Allie had fallen so madly in love with earlier this summer had come back for her. He’d been waiting here for her when Allie had gotten home from working at Mr. Potts’s house this afternoon.

Emily had seen him outside, in his car, and had known immediately who he was. She’d been worried at first, knowing how hurt the girl had been by his rejection last month. But when Allie had brought him inside to meet both her and the baby, the gleam of love shining in the man’s startlingly violet eyes had been completely undeniable, especially to an expert like Emily.

Which both thrilled her…and broke her heart. Because it meant one thing: she was going to be alone again. The single mother and her one-year-old son, who’d become Emily’s family since moving into the small upstairs apartment last fall, were now going to be part of someone else’s family. This man’s.

“As it should be,” she murmured, watching from the dining room as she laid out plates for supper.

Before calling them in, she wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her dress. She wouldn’t want the blissfully happy young woman to think for a moment that Emily wasn’t thrilled that, once again, true love had conquered all.

If only it had, just once, done so for Emily.

“My husband died” is so much simpler to say than “My husband screwed our eighteen-year-old babysitter in the back seat of our Lexus and is now shacking up with her in Laguna Beach while I try to bleed the bastard dry for child support.”