Kitabı oku: «Marrying Molly», sayfa 3

A thought came to her. She would stall him. Maybe if she stalled long enough, he would give up and go away. She tugged neatly—for emphasis—on her latex gloves and then picked up her bowl of solution again. “I can’t speak to you right this minute. A perm simply can’t wait. Have a seat in the reception area—enjoy a cup of coffee or some cold tea if you’d like. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

He looked at her sideways, those fine, sculpted lips curling in obvious suspicion. “Molly.” He muttered her name, making a warning of it.

“I’m sorry, Tate. You’ll just have to wait.” She pointed at the one free chair—right next to Donetta. “Go on. Sit over there.”

It worked. He wasn’t happy about it, but he strode over to that chair and dropped into it.

Donetta kind of craned back away from him, gulped and tried weakly, “Well, hi there, Tate. How’ve you been?”

“Hello, Donetta,” he growled. He picked up a magazine, looked at the cover of it and tossed it right back down.

“How is that brother of yours?” asked Donetta. “I haven’t seen him in years. He’s been missing longer than the Bravo Baby, and that’s a fact.” She was grinning by then, as if she’d said something really clever.

Tate didn’t seem to see the humor. The Bravo Baby—no relation to Tate or his brother—had been kidnapped years and years ago. Coast to coast, everyone knew the story of how he’d vanished from his crib in his wealthy parents’ Bel Air mansion. A huge ransom had been paid, but the baby was never returned. He’d been found, a grown man, alive and well, a few years back, after going missing for three decades.

Tucker hadn’t been gone nearly that long.

Tate, however, had sense enough not to point that out. He probably knew it would only encourage Donetta. Instead he replied stiffly, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Tucker, myself.”

Donetta tried again to get a little more information out of him. “Loves to travel, doesn’t he?” she asked brightly. “I hear he’s been all over the world.”

Tate looked at her, dead on. “That’s right,” he said. The set of his shoulders and the icy look in his eyes clearly indicated that the conversation was concluded.

Donetta took the hint. She raised her magazine and pretended to read it with all her might.

Tate gave up looking for reading material. He sat in the red chair and stared straight ahead. For a while, the Cut was way too quiet. In time, though, the women did begin talking again—but furtive and soft, the way people whisper at funerals or in church.

Molly finished putting the solution on Emmie, set the timer and moved her to another chair. She took off her plastic gloves. “Donetta, let’s have Charlee get you shampooed.”

Donetta eagerly put down her magazine and headed for the sinks where Charlee, the shampoo girl, would take good care of her.

Tate stood. The place went dead silent again.

Molly shook her head. “Sorry. No can do right yet.” She beamed him a big, fake smile.

Tate glared—but he did sit back down. Molly went over and made a show of checking on Emmie, though really there was nothing to check on as yet. Then, since it would be a few minutes until Charlee was done with Donetta, Molly headed for the back door. Out in the alley, she crouched behind the big shop Dumpster and waited for enough time to pass that she could start on Donetta.

Five minutes later, she reentered the shop. Tate was right there waiting by the door. “Where did you get off to?” he demanded.

She edged around him. “Excuse me. I’m working, here.”

Charlee had already led Donetta to the chair and put the cape on her. Molly set to work on Donetta’s hair. Tate, who had followed behind her from the back door, hovered a few feet away, looking dangerous. But after a few minutes of that, he gave up and went back to sit down.

Molly cut and blew Donetta dry. By then, Emmie was ready for the setting solution and the rinse. Molly put her gloves back on and took care of it. Then Emmie had to be dried and combed out.

By the time she whipped the cape off of Emmie—about an hour and a quarter after Tate had first entered the shop—he was getting pretty edgy. Molly kept sending him careful sideways glances.

Uh-uh. Not good. He wasn’t giving up and going away as she’d secretly hoped he might—and he wasn’t sitting still for this waiting game much longer.

Just as she’d expected, two or three minutes later, he stood. “Molly, I’ve had it. Either you talk to me in private—now—or we will have our little conversation right here with all these lovely, interested ladies listening in.”

Molly looked in his eyes and knew she couldn’t stall him another minute longer. So all right, she thought. She would take him into her office and tell him all over again what she’d told him last night.

How many times was she going to have to tell him? Judging by his mulish expression, too many.

Or maybe he actually had something new to say. It could happen. After all, anything was possible.

“Emmie, you can settle up with Darlene and she’ll get you scheduled for that color—next week?”

Emmie nodded and moved to the reception desk. The place had gone deathly quiet again. And though Donetta had already had her cut, she hadn’t left. Oh, no. She’d plunked herself right back down in that red chair and picked up the same magazine she’d already read at least twice.

A feeling of equal parts bottomless dread and glum resignation dragged on Molly. Those two scandal-free months she’d been anticipating were starting to look more and more unlikely.

She turned to Leslie Swankstad, her next customer. “Sorry, Leslie. I’ll be a few minutes.”

“Oh, no problem,” Leslie said, sounding breathless. “No problem at all.”

“This way,” Molly told Tate and turned for the hall at the back of the shop.

She led him through the last door on the right before the exit door at the end. Inside she had her desk and computer, a couple of four-drawer file cabinets, some display shelves with various hair-care products on them and two red plastic guest chairs. She signaled Tate toward the guest chairs and shut the door, closing them into the small space together, instantly feeling that there wasn’t enough room.

In an effort to get as far away from him as possible, she went around behind the desk and dropped into her swivel chair. “All right. What?”

“You know what. Marry me.”

Oh, wonderful. Of course. More of the same. “Tate. We’ve been through this.”

“Marry me.”

Just great, she thought. He had one tune on this subject and by golly, he was going to play it until he drove her out of her mind. “Listen. Please.” She really was trying to be gentle, to be reasonable. “Be realistic.”

“I am. You’re having my baby. The way I see it, that means you and me are getting married.”

“No, Tate. We’re not.”

“Oh, yeah, we are.”

Calm, she thought. Stay calm. Be reasonable. “I want you to just think this over a little. Think about how poorly suited we are to each other, how marriage could never work for us. Tate, I’m an independent woman from the wrong side of town and you’re a domineering rich man raised to think you own the world.”

He looked at her from under the heavy ridge of his brow, his lip curled in a sneer. “So now you’re insulting me…”

Molly sighed deeply and shook her head. She leaned back in her chair. “No. I promise you. I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just trying to make you see.”

“What’s there to see? You’re pregnant and it’s my kid and we need to get married immediately.”

“Tate. We’re a match made by the devil himself. You used to know that.”

“Everything’s different now. There’s a baby on the way.”

“No. No, really, nothing is different. Nothing has changed. You’re still you and I’m still me and for us to get married would be a disaster. The baby would only suffer for it if we did.”

Tate stood. He didn’t look encouraging. He looked…about to start shouting. “I know what’s right, and damn it, right is what I intend to do.”

Molly stared up at him in despair. So much for my month or two, scandal-free, she thought. “Oh, Tate…”

“Molly,” he said way too loudly, “you are going to marry me.”

“No, I am not,” she replied, her voice soft and low and steady as a rock. She stood. They confronted each other across her desk. “And I want you to leave now.”

“You’re not keeping this a secret,” he said. “Don’t think that you will. This isn’t going to be like it was when we started in together, something only you and me will know about. And you can’t end this the way you did when you dumped me, moaning about how you’re tired of sneaking around and lying to the people who trust you. You are having my baby and by God, I’ll shout it to the rooftops.”

It was a challenge. What could she do but accept it? She felt a deep sadness then—for him. For herself. For the innocent baby who would have them for parents. Were there ever two people in the world so poorly suited to the state of matrimony? She didn’t think so. And why couldn’t he see that? Why did he have to be the kind of man who got something in his head and wouldn’t let go of it?

“No way I can hide it in the end, Tate,” she told him flatly. “So you go ahead. You shout it as loud as you want to. It won’t change a thing. I’m not marrying you.”

“Oh, but you will.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

Calmly, he went over and opened the door. Out in the shop, it was quiet—very, very quiet. Molly could just picture them all out there—Donetta and Emmie and the rest of them—straining their ears in hopes of hearing just a few words of what was going on in Molly’s office.

Tate made sure they got an earful. “Molly,” he said, aiming the words out the door and speaking loudly enough to be heard all the way out past the shop’s front door and onto Center Street, “you are having my baby and by God, if it’s the last thing I do, I will see to it that you marry me.”

He turned and looked at Molly, square chin up, hard jaw set. She said nothing. Really, Tate had pretty much said it all.

Out in the salon, it was so quiet, if she hadn’t known better, Molly would have guessed that everyone had left.

Tate said, his voice soft now, but thick with suppressed anger, “Satisfied?”

“Get out of my shop,” she replied, her tone every bit as soft and full of fury as his. “And do me a big favor. Never come back.”

With a final curt nod, Tate turned and went out—and not through the back door either, which was two feet from her office door and would have been the quickest way.

Oh, no. Not Tate Bravo. He marched right through the shop and out the front door. She heard the bell tinkle when he pulled the door open. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said.

The bell jingled cheerily again as the door shut behind him.

Chapter Five

B y the next morning, the news was all over town.

Tate Bravo had gotten Molly O’Dare pregnant. He wanted to marry her. And she was having none of it.

The men shook their heads. The women took sides. All through the breakfast shift at Jim-Denny’s Diner on Center Street, where Dixie had been waiting tables for fifteen years, there was lively debate.

“What is her problem?” Lena Lou, who’d dropped in for her usual decaf and English muffin, wanted to know. “Tate Bravo is studly and rich as they come.” Lena paused to admire the way her engagement diamond glittered in the glare from the overhead florescent lights. Then she got back on topic. “When’s Molly O’Dare gonna do better? She should snap that man up while she’s got the chance.”

“Oh, never,” argued Emmie Lusk, fluffing her new perm. “Never in this life. Our Molly has guts and gumption. She’s not marrying anyone just ’cause she’s pregnant. So what if he’s handsome and rolling in dough? There’s more to life than money, a good-looking husband and legitimate children, after all.”

“Well, now, Emmie,” Donetta said, “don’t go discounting a fat bank account. It is a proven fact that the older a woman gets, the more she needs a rich husband—or at the very least, a viable retirement plan.”

“If she marries him, what about her position as mayor of our town?” demanded Rosie Potts, whose mother was a shut-in and likely to benefit greatly from some of Molly’s programs. “You know he’ll corrupt her. Just see if he doesn’t. I’m inclined to wonder if he hasn’t already. Y’all have to admit, it’s a shock. In bed with the enemy, that’s where she’s been.”

“More coffee?” asked Dixie, pot poised over Donetta’s cup. Donetta nodded and Dixie poured.

“Dixie,” said Rosie. “She’s your daughter. What do you think?”

Dixie smiled her secret smile at Ray, who sat sipping coffee in his favorite spot at the end of the counter. Ray gave her a wink. “Molly said she wouldn’t marry him, didn’t she?”

“Well, yeah, so?” Lena rattled her own cup.

Dixie filled it. “If Molly says she’s not marrying him, then it doesn’t matter a bit what Tate Bravo does or anybody says. She won’t be marrying him. It’s as simple as that.”

“But that is plain stupid,” Lena declared, rising and laying her money on the counter. “Why have a baby without a husband if you don’t have to?” Lena bit her pretty lip. Everyone knew she had to be thinking about her twin sister, Lori Lee. But then she covered her own discomfort with, “No offense, Dixie.”

Dixie’s beatific smile only widened. “None taken. And it just may be that I, personally, agree with you. But like I said, what I think or you think isn’t what matters. It’s Molly’s decision and so far anyway, she has said no.”

Molly had just climbed into bed and turned out the light when the tap came at the window that faced the front walk. Her first thought was Tate, and she scowled into the darkness. If he kept this up, she would be looking into getting a restraining order on him. Just because he thought he had to marry her wasn’t any excuse for the man to turn stalker.

But then there was another tap—as soft and cautious as the first.

Hmm. Soft and cautious. Not Tate’s style. More like…

Molly slid from her bed and went to pull back the curtain. Dixie stood on the other side, smiling. She held up a brown bag with the neck of a liquor bottle sticking out of it and smiled wider.

Molly pushed up the window. “You know, you could have just—” Dixie cut her short by putting a finger to her lips. Molly finished in a whisper, “—come to the door.”

Dixie shook her big platinum-blond head of hair and whispered back, “Hon, I don’t need to hear your granny go on about my sweet Ray-boy and me getting married. She wears me out, and I’m just not up for it tonight, you know?” She waved the bottle some more, causing her chunky charm bracelet—silver balls dripping with pink plastic hearts—to rattle in a cheerful kind of way. The scent of White Diamonds, Dixie’s favorite perfume, wafted in through the screen. “Can I come in?”

“What’s in the bottle?”

“Jack Black, baby girl—and I don’t mean the movie star.”

“Didn’t you hear? I’m pregnant.”

Dixie made a big show of rolling her eyes. “Oh, I heard. All day long, I heard.”

Though Molly had never been much of a drinker, getting blotto right then did hold some appeal. But no. She had to think of the baby. “No liquor for me.”

“Well, that’s fine.” Dixie leaned a little closer to the screen. “I pretty much figured you’d say that. But you know how I am. Never had a problem with being the only one drinkin’.”

Molly unhitched the screen and held it up. Dixie handed Molly the bottle and swung a leg over the sill, and Molly thought fondly about all the times she’d watched her mother climb through the window in the middle of the night.

Once she’d slithered inside, Dixie straightened her short, tight skirt, tugged on her tank top and then held out her hand. Molly gave her back her bottle. Dixie grabbed it by the neck, still in the bag. She screwed off the top and took a swig. Scrunching up her face tight, she swallowed. “Ungh!” she exclaimed, pounding her chest with a fist. “Ooo-wa!” And then she put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Oops. Too loud,” she whispered. “Mustn’t forget your granny.”

“Good thinking,” Molly said dryly.

“Jack Black,” Dixie murmured contentedly as she recapped the bottle, “really hits the spot.” Bracelet rattling, she grabbed Molly’s hand. “Come on. Let’s sit.” They both perched on the edge of the bed. “So, now. How’re you holding up?”

“I’m getting by.”

Dixie smoothed Molly’s hair and gently cupped her chin. “You look kinda tired, baby.”

“Yeah. Guess I am. It’s all starting to get to me. Endless advice from any and everyone who comes in the shop. And some of the women in town are disappointed in me for sleeping with Tate in the first place, when he’s the main one standing in the way of all the good things I want to do as mayor. Those women have let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they consider my having had sex with Tate to be nothing short of a betrayal of all I’m supposed to be standing for.”

“Oh, pooh on them. They are just jealous. Tate Bravo is untamed and all man. Just let him crook a finger at any one of them. You’d better believe the chosen one would be naked and flat on her back faster than chain lightning with a link snapped.” Dixie snapped her fingers high and sharp, just to show how fast that might be.

“Tate.” Molly was shaking her head. “He’s most of my problem. He keeps popping up out of nowhere to order me to marry him. He didn’t show up today, but he might as well have. I stayed on edge every minute just worrying he might.”

“So you’re saying you don’t—” Dixie paused to take another belt from her bottle, screw up her face and swallow “—want to marry him, right?” Molly looked away. “Well, do you or don’t you?”

“It would never work.”

Dixie took her face and guided it back around. Molly pushed her hand away. Dixie sighed. “You planning on answering my question? Sometime soon would be nice.”

“I can’t answer it.”

“Because…?”

“Since it’s not gonna work, it doesn’t matter what I want.”

Dixie looked kind of thoughtful. “So,” she said, and paused for yet another big gulp. “You do care for him, then. Am I right?”

Molly hung her head and nodded.

Dixie’s whisper got softer. “But the way he’s been acting, he’s not reassuring you that he would make a decent husband?”

Molly shrugged. “I guess. And then there’s me. You know how I am. I do like to run things. And I have no idea at all about how to try to be a wife.”

“Well, baby, some things you just do, you know? You learn as you go.”

Molly looked straight at her mother. “It isn’t going to work. Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

Dixie giggled—but softly, ever-mindful that Granny shouldn’t know she was there. She leaned close to Molly and whispered in her ear. “I know! I’ve been meaning to ask you. Be my maid of honor?”

Molly grunted out a scoffing sound and put her hand on her stomach. “Some maid.”

Dixie grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Oh, silly girl. Who’s a virgin at thirty, anyway?”

“I was…for a month or so.”

Dixie let go of Molly’s hand—and then wrapped her arm around Molly’s shoulders. She gave a squeeze. “Say you will.”

Molly looked up at her mother, smelling White Diamonds again—and the heady scent of Tennessee whiskey, as well. “You know I will.”

“That’s my baby.” Dixie gave Molly’s shoulder another squeeze. “And I might not have been much use to you while you were growing up, but maybe I can help now. I think I will have a little talk with that man of yours.”

Molly pulled out of her mother’s embrace. “He’s not my man—and you better not.”

“Is that a ‘please don’t’?”

“It’s a ‘why waste your breath!”’

Pink plastic hearts clattered together as Dixie raised her bottle of Jack Black high. “Baby, give your mama just a little bit of credit.”

It was after eleven at night when the doorbell rang. Tate was in his study going over some of the accounts. Miranda had long since retired to the apartment over the garages that she shared with Jesse.

So Tate got up, turned off the alarm and answered the door himself. It was Molly’s mother, Dixie O’Dare.

“Tate Bravo, I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

Since his study was right off the entry, he ushered her in there. “Sit down.” He gestured to the sitting area.

“Thank you.” Dixie smiled that pretty smile of hers, but didn’t move beyond the doorway. In her mid-forties, she was still a woman who turned heads. She had that fine, sweet smile and the kind of figure that got men thinking things they shouldn’t. “Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’ll stand.”

Tate went over to the liquor cart in the corner. “Drink?”

Molly’s mother licked her full pink lips. She had a woozy look. Tate guessed she’d already had a few. “Better not,” she said. “But thank you.”

“Well, then. What can I do for you…?” Uncertain about how to address her, he let the question trail off.

“Dixie,” she helpfully provided. “You just go ahead and call me Dixie.”

“Dixie,” he repeated, returning her smile, wishing that Molly could be half as agreeable as her mother.

“So, Tate…”

“Yeah?”

“I heard you want to marry my Molly.”

He went around and dropped into his studded leather swivel chair. “That’s right. Molly’s having my child, and I’m going to marry her.”

“Molly says you’re not.”

He sat forward. “Molly is wrong.”

“See?” said Dixie. “See there, that’s your problem. You’re a man used to giving orders and having everyone say yes, sir. Right away, sir. Now, with a lot of women, that kind of he-man approach will work just fine. A lot of women go all weak in the knees when a real man starts bossing them around. But in case maybe you didn’t notice, Molly’s not like a lot of women.”

Good-looking as Dixie was, she was starting to get on his nerves. “Your point?”

“Well, maybe you could try cozying up to her a little.”

He grunted. “Since she’s not letting me near her, cozying up is not looking real likely.”

“Well, and see? That’s just what I meant. How you gonna marry my baby if she won’t let you near her?”

It was a problem. He realized that. “So?” he demanded gruffly.

“So, maybe you oughtta start by making sure you’ll be welcome when you come calling at her house.”

He thought of Molly’s grandmother—on the porch with the shotgun. “I could get killed trying that.”

Dixie giggled. “Well, Tate. That’s why I’m here. I aim to help you out.”

He regarded her with frank suspicion. “How do you plan to do that?”

“You know that expression, ‘salt the old cow to get to the calf’?”

“Dixie, you’re hardly an old cow.”

Dixie glowed with pleasure at the compliment. “Why, thank you, Tate. But I wasn’t referring to myself.”

Tate understood then. He made a sour face. “Dusty? You want me to suck up to Dusty?”

“Sucking up isn’t exactly what I would have called it.”

“But it is what you meant.”

“Oh, now, Tate. It’s not going to kill you.”

“Sucking up? Maybe not. But that crazy mother of yours just might.”

“You only need to know how to make up to her. You need to know her likes and dislikes. Her secret yearnings…”

“Dusty O’Dare has got secret yearnings?” The idea kind of scared him.

“My mother’s tough as a roll of barbed wire, but she is still a woman in her heart.”

“Oh, yeah?” Could have fooled Tate.

“Now, Tate. That there’s a big part of your problem. You need to get yourself in courting mode. And courting mode means you are always polite and respectful when referring to or addressing your darlin’ one or any member of her family.”

Tate wasn’t sure he liked the idea of sucking up to Dusty. But he was getting the picture. “And that’s why you’re here? To help me make nice?”

Dixie got a kind of wistful look. “I could never have another child after Molly. It was a tough birth and…well, as a result, she is my one and only. I have been somewhat…distracted, when it came to being a mother. But like all mothers, I do want to see my only child happy, with a good man who’ll love her till she pleads for mercy and provide her with a platinum no-limit credit card. I think you just might be that man. And I do believe that deep in her heart, Molly would prefer to be married to her baby’s daddy. You say you want that, too.”

“I do want that, Dixie,” Tate said quietly.

The sad look vanished as Dixie smiled her dazzling smile. “Then grab a pen and a full-size piece of paper. This will be a long list….”

The next day, which just happened to be Friday the thirteenth, Molly got a lot more advice at work—and couple of expressions of deep disappointment that she’d gone and crawled into bed with Tate Bravo, of all people.

And like the day before, she kept waiting for Tate to come barreling through the door, demanding that she marry him on the spot. Also like the day before, he never appeared. Maybe, she thought philosophically, as time went by and he didn’t come busting through the door, she would learn to relax a little again—if her customers would ever shut the heck up about him.

“Molly, love, you know you really owe it to your baby to let Tate do right by you, don’t you think? You have to see he’s only trying to do what’s best. And once you’re married to him, well, you won’t have to work a lick if you’re not of a mind to. You can stay home with your baby. Now, won’t that be nice? And you’re not that old, really. You might even be able to have two or three more.”

“Molly, you hold firm, honey. Don’t let him railroad you. Remember his poor mama, Penelope? Slinkin’ around, scared of her own shadow? That’s what comes of being raised and run by a Tate. And those awful paintings of hers… And then, how she died…” Penelope Tate Bravo had been broadsided by a semitruck while trying to pull out of the local ice-cream shop parking lot, after stopping in to get herself a double dip after church. “So very sad. And Tucker? Where did he come from? Now, think about that. Wasn’t that mysterious husband of Penelope’s supposed to have been long dead when Tucker came along? Not that I blame the poor woman, I tell you. If Tucker Tate the fourth was my daddy, I’d probably run off and get me something going with a stranger now and then, too. It was a pitiful life poor Penelope had. Don’t let yourself or your baby fall into that trap….”

“Molly, Molly. I have to say it. You really have let us down, and I think you know it. I hope Tate Bravo has no hold on you other than the obvious one of having fathered your child. I hope when the next town council meeting comes, you’re not turning wishy-washy when it comes to the programs we have all been counting on you to put through.”

Listening to everyone go on and on wasn’t easy. Molly feared she was reaching the boiling point, that the day would come—and soon—when she would yell at them all to shut up with their criticisms and endless advice, or get the hell out of her salon.

It would be bad for business to do that—not to mention completely unfair. Molly had always encouraged her customers to consider themselves right at home when they came to the Cut. It had been part of her business plan from the first, to make a place where women could come and let it all hang out. No subject was—or ever had been—off-limits. It was because of the talk that went on at the Cut that Molly had decided to run for mayor. And it was due to the support of the very women who wouldn’t shut up about her and Tate that she had won the election. Uhuh. She refused to go changing her own rules just because she was the one on the hot seat now.

So she exerted great effort to keep her mouth shut and her expression agreeable. It wasn’t any walk in the park. It wore her down.

She got home at seven to find Granny in her big royal-blue La-Z-Boy chair, a tray in her lap and a paring knife in her hand. She was eating slices of Wisconsin cheddar on saltine crackers. The box the cheese had come out of sat open on the sofa.

“Granny, where did you get the cheese?”

Granny muttered something under her breath and set another slice of cheese on a cracker. Molly picked up the box. It was addressed to Granny, all right. And there was a card.

Best Regards, Tate.

“Oh, Granny. How could you?”

Granny did have the grace to look somewhat contrite—as she popped the snack into her mouth. “Baby hon,” she said, after she’d chewed and swallowed, “you know I never could resist a good cheddar. It came at four. I didn’t know it was from him. So I opened it. I saw the card at the same time that I saw it was cheese. Well, sweetie, I cannot bring myself to throw away a fine big block of cheese. It’s just not in me. I’m sorry, but it’s not.” Granny cut herself a fresh slice and set it neatly on another cracker.

Molly stood there, watching her granny chew. It occurred to her that Dixie must have had that talk with Tate—and that she should have told her mother more firmly not to do that.

But then again, well, Granny did look so contented, sitting there chomping away, with bits of cracker stuck to her lip. Granny rarely got gifts—especially this kind of gift, appearing out of the blue and obviously chosen for her and her alone.

“You mad at me?” asked Granny sheepishly after she’d swallowed.

“Oh, Granny. It’s only that I thought you hated that man.”

“Well, sure I do. I hate all men.”

“But then what are you doing eating something he sent you?”

Granny shrugged. “Angel heart, if you’ll just give me back my shotgun, I’ll blow that Tate’s head off. But you really can’t ask me to say no to cheese.”