Chapter Two

The following Monday, Della was working the early shift at The Credence Retirement Home For The Aged. Not that anybody called it by its proper name. It was just the old folks’ home. Or, if you were Bob Downey, Death View Manor, given its closeness to both the funeral home and the cemetery.

Della worked in the villa section. Ultimately, she wanted to work in the high-dependency facility, where residents needed full nursing care. But she had to go to college to become an RN, which was something she’d realized in recent months she wanted to pursue.

It was just a matter of plucking up the courage and taking that first step.

Like she’d done with Tinder.

Della smiled to herself as she smoothed out the duvet and straightened the pillows on Mrs. Forbes’s bed. “Ah…I know that look,” said a warm voice from somewhere behind.

Rosemary Forbes appeared in a pair of snug, burnt orange leggings, expensively fashionable hand-tooled boots, and an elegant cowl-necked sweater of muted browns and soft grays. She was a tall, handsome woman, and she crossed the room with her usual erectness of spine and sureness of gait.

“You thinking about your young man?” There was a faint trace of New York in the older woman’s voice, although it had been blunted by Midwestern living. Posh Yankee, she called it.

Della smiled at Rosemary’s meaningful eyebrow waggle and blushed a little. If it had been anyone else in the home, they’d have asked that question in hushed tones. Like she was some kind of skittish foal. They’d have been tentative, given her a gentle encouraging smile. Maybe even a hug.

Owing to her relative newness to the home, Rosemary, as far as Della knew, wasn’t up on the whole sorry saga of Della’s pre-Credence life and, not being the type to indulge in gossip, hadn’t bothered to inquire. Although, she suspected, the older woman wouldn’t have treated her any differently anyway.

Della smiled mysteriously as she plopped the pillow back on the bed. She didn’t have a young man, and she wasn’t doing this to settle for the first guy she met on this new journey of hers. She wasn’t interested in settling at all. She was doing it to get a life.

But she was going on a date!

“Here.” The older woman sat herself down on the newly made bed and patted the spot beside her. “Sit and tell me all about him.”

Della had several things that needed doing, but she could spare ten minutes. She sat on the bed, pushing the tail of her braid over her shoulder as she turned slightly to look into an elegantly lined face. “What would you like to know?”

“I bet you have a picture of him on your phone, don’t you? My grandkids carry their entire lives on those things.”

“Sure.” Della pulled her cell phone from her pocket and navigated to Tinder. “This is Cody. He lives in Denver, and he’s twenty-six. He works for the city. Something to do with potholes.”

“Oh my,” Rosemary said, the hand that had just pushed her glasses on her face fluttering over her chest. “He’s a looker.”

Della nodded. Cody had a cheeky kind of charisma. It wasn’t the laid-back, lived-in sexiness of Tucker’s features, but Tucker was thirty-six and out of her league, so it was a pointless comparison. “He is.”

Best of all, he was looking for a woman who didn’t just want to hook up, but who wanted to date a bit and have some fun.

“He told me I have pretty eyes.”

Rosemary glanced at her, peering into Della’s face. “You do.”

A long time ago, Della had liked her eyes, too. They were a pale, crystalline blue, with jade flecks and a dark circle ringing the iris, enhancing the color. Now all she saw when she looked at her eyes were her life experiences reflecting back at her, so she tried not to look too hard. Other people saw it, too, she knew. Like Arlo.

Her brother had taken the news of her joining Tinder much better than Della had expected. He’d been concerned about the kind of guy that she might find on the app and had given her the talk. The one she knew he always dreaded giving the local high school students about the perils and pitfalls of social media.

He’d clearly been uncomfortable with the subject matter, but he’d soldiered on, which she’d found adorable. Underneath his stern cop facade, Arlo really was a sweet guy. And she was so lucky he’d come into her life. She’d never had a male role model worth a damn until Arlo.

She just hoped he’d be as reasonable on Friday, because Cody had asked her to dine with him at his favorite Italian restaurant, and Della hadn’t hesitated in accepting.

Rosemary took the phone and swiped over the images, quite adept at the technology for someone in their eighties. “I like skiing, pasta, the Broncos, and the stars at night,” she read off his bio. She smiled at the screen, and then she frowned a little. “Is this Tinder?”

Della’s cheeks heated again. She knew a lot of the older generation didn’t understand this modern approach to dating. Didn’t approve of it, either. “It is,” Della confirmed tentatively.

“Oh goody,” she proclaimed with a little bounce on the mattress. “I’ve been dying to know how it works. Do you think you could show me? You have to swipe right, isn’t that it?”

Della blinked, and then she laughed. She should have known nothing would faze Rosemary Forbes. She’d apparently grown up in enormous wealth and privilege in New York but had been cut off from all of it when she’d had the audacity to fall in love with a strapping young ranch hand from Kansas. He’d been prepared to let her go, Rosemary said, but she’d been adamant he was the one and refused to give up her man.

It seemed Trace Adkins was right—ladies did indeed love country boys.

“Only if you want to make a match. Here.” She reached for the phone. “Let me show you.”

Navigating back to the main page, Della showed Rosemary the potential matches that came up on the screen. She showed her how to check out their profile and other pics they’d posted and how to either swipe left or right or use the cross or heart buttons on the bottom of the screen.

They swiped through seven half-naked bathroom selfies in a row, which had the older woman scrunching her brow a little. “Why are all these young men taking pictures of themselves in front of the mirror with hardly any clothes on? Do women these days actually find that kind of vanity attractive?”

Della didn’t particularly get it, but she could only talk for herself. Molly and Marley were all about the bathroom selfie. She tried to imagine Tucker taking a picture of himself in the bathroom mirror and just…couldn’t. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who spent an awful lot of time looking at himself.

“I mean, it seems so…narcissistic.”

A laugh escaped Della’s throat. “Yes.” It did rather. But then, there were plenty of young women obsessed with bathroom selfies, too, and she didn’t know what to think about that, either.

Sometimes she felt like an alien in this uncloistered world in which she now lived.

“Although, that one…” Rosemary pointed to the screen, at a beautifully bronzed guy with greeny-gold eyes who was pouting at the camera. She fluttered her hand again. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he? What does he have to say about himself?”

Della smothered a smile as she tapped on the screen and swiped up to read Ricky’s bio. “I’d like to smother you in peanut butter and lick it off.”

Rosemary sat back, her fluttering hand grounding against her breast. “Oh dear.” And then she barked out a laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “What a hoot. Are they all so…scandalous?”

“Not all, no.” Della also laughed.

“Ooh.” Rosemary pressed close to Della’s shoulder. “Can we find some more like that?”

Della grinned. “Sure.”

They spent the next ten minutes chuckling about some of the more out-there bios. Rosemary’s favorite was I’m really into pizzas and anal. In fact, Della was worried Rosemary was going to choke on her own spit, she’d snort-laughed so hard.

“So, what do you do if you make a match?”

“You message each other, see if you want to take it any further.”

“That seems nice.”

“It…can be.”

“But not always?”

“I’ve had a couple of guys volunteer their unwanted observations about the size of their penis. Including pictures.”

Rosemary gasped, her hand clapping back over her mouth again. “Men send you pictures of their penis?” she said from behind her hand.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Well.” She dropped her hand. “I’ll be…” She shook her head, obviously struggling to find a word to adequately describe her reaction. “I’m grateful I grew up in an age when some things were left to the imagination.” Her gaze drifted to somewhere over Della’s shoulder. “If my husband had ever sent me such a personal picture, I might have been too frightened to marry him. Winston had the most wonderful penis.”

Della blinked at the older woman’s candor. Some things came under too much information and couldn’t be unheard. Rosemary, however, was firmly stuck down memory lane. Or down her late husband’s boxers, anyway.

Winston had been gone for a year and a half when Rosemary had made the decision to move just over the border to Credence’s old folks’ home. Her sons, who ran the family ranch now, hadn’t wanted her to go, but Rosemary had been adamant. She missed company her own age, and she didn’t want to be a burden. Plus, it had made sense to be somewhere that would give her support to live independently as well as options for more structured care should it ever be required.

Della respected the grand old lady immensely. She had strength and guts and conviction. Her shrink had talked about her modeling herself on people she admired, and Rosemary was the perfect candidate.

“He was big, you know?” She turned questioning eyes on Della, who nodded.

She did now. Prior to Tinder, she hadn’t known that such a size variety existed; she’d just assumed that all men were about equal in that department.

“And—” Rosemary made a fist and looked down at her forearm. “Thick. And always so hard.” She glanced at Della. “He never suffered from age-related droop, like so many of my friends’ husbands. He was…rampant right till the end. Best of all…” She smiled and nudged Della’s shoulder. “That man liked to eat, if you know what I mean.”

Okaaaay. Nope. Della stood abruptly. She was very happy that Rosemary and Winston had indulged regularly, but she did not want to know the details. Not to mention how depressing it was to know an octogenarian boasted a better sex life.

Rosemary looked up at Della, clearly surprised at her sudden move. “I really should get going,” she said by way of explanation, finding it hard to meet the older woman’s eye.

“Sure.” Rosemary gave her a knowing smile. “You’ll understand one day. When you meet the one, everything else falls into place.”

Della returned the smile. She wished she had the older woman’s confidence. Unfortunately, her confidence was a work in progress that came with a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollars-per-hour price tag. She’d thought Todd was the one, and that had been a total disaster. She’d since learned, thanks to therapy, he’d been her escape route from a repressed home life, not the one.

She’d definitely gone out of the frying pan and into the fire with Todd, and the truth was, Della didn’t trust her instincts for one second. And she wasn’t sure she ever would again. Which was why she wasn’t looking for the one. Just a bunch of different ones to remind her she was a woman, damn it.

“If Cody doesn’t work, just say the word. I have a grandson about your age. He’s a bit of a daredevil. More looks than brains, but I think you two would make a nice couple.”

Della gave a short laugh. The thought of one date was about all she could handle at the moment. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. Now…is there anything else I can do for you before I leave?”

“Oh yes, could you grab my flashlight out of my top bedside drawer? My grandson put it right in the back yesterday when he visited with the great grandkids because they like to play with it, which drains the batteries. I think it’s stuck on something, and I can’t seem to jiggle it loose. The arthritis in my shoulders makes my arms weak as a kitten, and I can’t really kneel much these days without the old knees protesting.”

“Of course.” Della was pleased to be doing something else, talking about something else, other than Winston Forbes’s penis and future date potentials.

She skirted around the bed and opened the top drawer, leaning over and shoving her hand in, groping around the back, feeling for the thick cylindrical shape. Her fingers nudged the object in question, which didn’t appear to be obstructed. Grabbing it, Della pulled it out of the drawer without really looking. “Got it.”

Rosemary gasped, her hand covering her mouth, and Della glanced at the object, thinking maybe the flashlight had a tarantula riding shotgun. If only…

She wasn’t holding a flashlight. She was holding some kind of dildo.

Della’s first instinct to drop it was tempered by her utter fascination with the machine. It was a decent size and covered in a hot pink silicone. Some kind of protrusion sprouted from about an inch north of the base, and it had two smaller protrusions sprouting from the top of it that looked like…bunny ears?

“Oh, I am sorry, sweetie, I usually put my rabbit in the bottom drawer.”

Rabbit? Della turned stunned eyes to Rosemary, who looked more surprised than embarrassed. And not that Della had found her vibrator, but that she’d brandished it like a freaking sword!

“You…use this?” she asked, staring at it, in awe that a woman in her eighties wasn’t letting age and the death of her partner stop her from enjoying pleasure.

“Oh yes, sweetie. I used it last night.”

Della dropped the substitute penis on the bed as if it had suddenly become electrified, much to Rosemary’s delight.

“It’s okay.” She chuckled. “I washed it.”

Della flicked a glance at the bemused old woman. “Where did you get it?”

“I was going to buy it from Amazon, but then I thought I’d rather be able to hold it, you know? Check out what was on the market. So I went to Frieda’s Palace one day, and if that wasn’t the most entertaining hour of my life, I don’t know what was. Some of those dildos were really quite grotesque.”

As she stared at the object again, Della’s mind boggled.

“The way I figure it,” Rosemary continued, “if there’s no one around to take care of my needs, why not take care of it myself? You think your sex drive dies when your husband does or because you get old? It doesn’t. Gotta admit, it was MIA for a good while, but it came back.”

Considering Della’s sex drive had only just made itself known, she was fascinated by this insight. And…hopeful. If Rosemary Forbes was still a sexual being in her eighties, maybe Della had plenty of years left to make up for lost time.

“Well…good for you,” she said, nodding at the older woman.

A faint “Dellllaaaa?” drifted in from outside.

She gave Rosemary a quick smile. “Sorry, I’ve gotta go.” Remembering she still hadn’t retrieved the flashlight, Della reached into the drawer again and pulled it out, freeing it from the ledge at the back where it had been caught. She tossed it on the bed next to the rabbit.

“They look weirdly related, don’t they?” Rosemary mused.

Della laughed. In fact, Rosemary’s observation put a smile on her face all damn day.

Her smile dimmed gradually as she waited for Arlo to arrive home from work that night. He’d texted to let her know he was going to be late and to go ahead and eat without him, which she’d done, but it was after eight and she worried about the icy roads. Arlo was a cop. That wasn’t without its dangers. There wasn’t a lot of criminal action in Credence, Colorado, but she knew Arlo would protect this town and its citizens with his life if that’s what was required.

Not a lot of jobs asked for that kind of sacrifice. And she hadn’t had her brother for that long.

She was relieved when he finally walked through the door fifteen minutes later and mollified further by the two slices of Annie’s cobbler he’d brought home with him. Annie’s diner was an institution in Credence, and her cobbler had been known to make grown men weep.

Arlo sat in his recliner, which was positioned next to Della’s. They were black leather, separated by a small low table where the remotes usually lived, and faced a massive television screen currently on CNN. She wasn’t sure if she was Joey or Chandler in this scenario, but Arlo’s house was very single-male-apartment-circa-1990.

Handing Della her cobbler and a spoon, he said, “Something’s come up with work, and I won’t be able to take you to Denver on Friday.”

Normally, Arlo took her for her therapy sessions and they made a whole day of it. He’d take her to see Dr. Sanchez, and then they’d visit a gallery or a museum or take in a movie. A couple of times, they’d caught a football game or taken a drive into the mountains. Then they usually stayed the night at Wade Carter’s swanky apartment and came home the next morning.

On the occasions that Arlo couldn’t get away from work, Della caught the bus to Denver in the morning and home again in the afternoon. But this Friday, she was going on a date, and she’d decided to sit on that news until Friday morning. Arlo was being very circumspect about the whole Tinder thing, but she knew he was anxious about her taking her first baby steps toward independence, so she hadn’t seen the point in worrying him until absolutely necessary.

She’d abdicated her safety, protection, and well-being to Arlo three years ago, a responsibility that, thanks to his sense of duty, he’d taken seriously.

But now she was taking them back.

“That’s fine. I can get the bus.” She’d just catch it home Saturday morning.

“Actually, Tucker’s heading to Denver Friday morning. He said he can take you if you want?”

“Oh.” The spoon loaded with cobbler paused halfway to her mouth.

That was unexpected. She’d never ridden in a car with Tucker. Hell, she’d never ridden in a car with any man other than her father, her husband, or her brother. Della suppressed an eye roll—it sounded like she’d been raised in a cult.

She’d ridden with Molly and Marley, and occasionally she caught a ride with Ruth, one of her work friends, to the old folks’ home, but ugh. Depressed, she spooned in the cobbler.

Cobbler made everything better.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” Arlo asked. “You don’t have to. You can still take the bus. I just thought, since he was going…”

Of course. It made perfect sense. That’s what folks in small towns did—they helped each other out. But… “I think I will. Tucker doesn’t need a tagalong, and I was going to stay overnight. I’ve already checked with CC about using their apartment.”

It was Arlo’s turn to oh. “Oh. Is there a movie you wanted to see?”

“No.” Della drew in a steadying breath as her heart crawled up her chest and lodged in her throat. “I’m going on a date Friday night.”

Della gave her brother full marks for the effort it must have taken for him to gently ease the spoon into the bowl. It was only because she’d come to know him so well that she saw the telltale whitening at the angle of his jaw.

“You found a match?”

“His name’s Cody. He’s twenty-six, from Denver, and he works for the city, fixing potholes.” And because Arlo looked as if he was about to ask for Cody’s criminal history, she rushed to reassure him. “It’s fine, Arlo. We’ve been chatting, and he seems really nice.”

“And does this Cody have a last name?”

Della rolled her eyes and gave him a rueful smile. “So you can run him through a database or two?”

He shrugged. “Just a precaution.”

“Arlo.”

“Okay.” Her brother stood, placing the cobbler on the low table between their chairs. He ran a hand over his buzz cut—he did that a lot when he was thinking. “Let me make some calls, shuffle some things around. I’m sure I’ll be able to rearrange Friday so I can take you.”

“No, Arlo.” Della also stood and placed her cobbler down. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a date.”

“I know.” He nodded. “But…I can be moral support. Everyone needs some of that for a first date.”

Della somehow doubted big-tough-guy cops needed moral support, and the last thing she needed was Arlo lurking outside the windows in a full metal jacket, scaring the crap out of Cody.

“No.” She shook her head. “You have a job to do. You can’t keep rearranging your life because of me.”

“You know that’s not a problem. I told you when you first came to live with me that I’d make up for not being there for you.”

“Arlo…you didn’t even know I existed.”

“But I should have.”

The guilt in his voice slayed her every time. Did he really think she held him responsible for what had happened to her? A long-lost brother who hadn’t even heard of her until three years ago? How could she blame him for a life that was not of his—or her, for that matter—making? Arlo hadn’t known he had a sister until his father’s death, and he’d set out to find her right away. He’d had no way of knowing what he’d stumble across.

He had to stop with the guilt.

“Okay, I’ll go with Tucker.” It was a snap decision, not particularly well thought through, but she didn’t want things to fall on Arlo again. His shoulders were big, but even he must need a break from carrying all that responsibility. “He can be my moral support.”

Della had no idea if Tucker was staying overnight or doing a day trip, and she doubted he’d be thrilled by her volunteering him for this job, but if Arlo felt better about her going on a Tinder date with some kind of support person in place, then she’d happily comply.

He had an important job with big responsibilities—the least she could do was not add to his burden of stress. And Tucker was definitely the lesser of the two evils. Arlo going all RoboCop was a distinct possibility. Tucker would be far cooler. And if that meant she had to spend three hours in a confined space with a guy she had a secret crush on, then so be it.

The suggestion was met with instant obvious approval. “Yeah? Tucker’s a good choice, and I’d be less…”

Della knew he was going to say worried even though he didn’t finish his sentence, so she smiled at him reassuringly. He’d been patient with her for three long years. She could be patient with him. She was going on a date—a freaking date—with a guy. In a restaurant. In Denver. That’s all that mattered right now.

Not the inconvenience of having a…chaperone. A chaperone who looked at her like she was a particularly uninteresting piece of furniture.

“I’ll see what his plans are tomorrow and work something out for Friday,” Della said. “Now can we eat this cobbler already?”

Arlo grinned. “It’d be a sin against cobbler not to.”

…

Friday morning, with the scent of cupcakes—for fuck’s sake, why did she smell like cupcakes?—infusing the cab of his truck, Tucker wondered what he’d ever done to deserve this kind of sweet torture. Not only was he taking Della to Denver, but he was staying the night with her in Wade’s apartment.

He hadn’t been an angel, but he always remembered his momma’s birthday and called her every other week. He worked hard, had never been in trouble with the law, and was a good friend. He paid his taxes, and he voted. Granted, he had gone through a period of mild pyromania the summer he turned twelve, but it’d only been an apple box or two, and what guy hadn’t?

“I really am sorry about this,” Della apologized for the third time. “I don’t need a babysitter, but I don’t want Arlo to worry about me, either.”

Tucker forced a casual, careless shrug as his stomach growled. For cupcakes. “It’s fine. Your brother’s going to take a little time to adjust to Della two point oh.”

She turned her head and smiled at him. Her face lighting up kicked him straight in the center of his chest. “Two point oh,” she said, rolling it around her mouth as if savoring it. “I like that. Sounds like a woman who can do anything.”

He nodded. “I have zero doubts that you can do whatever you set your mind to.” A woman who’d come out the other side of what she’d been through could accomplish anything. “What do you want to do?”

She turned slightly in her seat to face him, and Tucker really wished she hadn’t. She’d been distracting enough in his peripheral vision, when she hadn’t been staring right at him, but with her eyes firmly trained on his profile, warmth flooded his body.

The good kind. Or not, in this particular case. Because this was Della.

“I want to become a nurse. And I want to travel. I want to go to Disneyland, and I want to see Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon and Washington. I want to go to Australia and London and Transylvania. I want to…invent something. I don’t know what or if that’s even possible, but I want to be known for something, you know? And I want a dog.”

Tucker’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel. Her hair was stuffed in a knitted cap, and she was wearing no makeup, jeans two sizes too big, and the most bulky, unfashionable sweater in the history of crappy sweaters that should be consigned to the trash. But to hear her talk so passionately was like a shot of testosterone direct to his testicles.

“And I want to go there.”

She pointed out his window, and Tucker glanced in the direction of her finger. It was Frieda’s Palace. Of course. Because the universe was deciding now to punish him for those apple boxes. As if the heady distraction of cupcakes wasn’t dire enough.

The shop in question was hard to miss, what with the giant revolving condom gyrating on the roof. At night, it was lit in neon. Many a complaint had been filed about the offending item over the years, but, thus far, none had been successful in getting it removed.

“Frieda’s?”

“Yeah. You ever been there?”

Tucker shook his head. “Nope.”

She laughed sweet and low. “Oh, come on, I heard it was some kind of rite of passage for every teen boy in Credence to go to Frieda’s and buy condoms.”

It was. Or it had been, anyway. But there was no way he was getting into a conversation with Della about condoms or sex shops. “I wouldn’t know. I was too busy reading my Bible like a good Christian boy.”

Her laughter this time was more like a hoot—big and full—and Tucker couldn’t help but smile in response. “Good Christian boy, huh?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him, a smile still playing on the corners of her mouth. “So…you’ve never been in a sex shop?”

Tucker sighed, resigning himself to the topic. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah…that’s what I figured, Bible boy.” She grinned. “So, you’re familiar with the layout of this kind of shop, then?”

Familiar with the layout? “Jesus, Della. I don’t exactly go all the time.”

“But you know the kind of things they sell.”

To say Tucker was uncomfortable with this conversation was putting it mildly. He’d rather be zipped in a tent with a skunk. “Well, yeah…” He wouldn’t say he was a goddamn connoisseur, though.

“Good. You can give me a tour.”

Tucker turned, gaping at her. “What?” He stared at her for a second or two longer than he should have and had to swerve abruptly back into his lane when he finally returned his attention to the road.

“Take the exit. Let’s go in. My shrink appointment’s not till one.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. Hell no.

“Relax, I just want to look. I’m not going to buy anything.”

Oh well, sure thing, then… He could just imagine that conversation with Arlo. So I took your sister into Frieda’s and helped her pick out a vibrator for those needs of hers.

Never going to happen.

“Please, Tuck.”

Tucker’s hands tightened around the wheel. As a kid, he’d often been called Tuck, but he’d outgrown it in adulthood. Della was about the only person now who occasionally shortened his name, and there was something about the ease with which it slid off her tongue that got to him every time. There was an intimacy about it that slugged him right in the belly.

“How about we take one step at a time?” he suggested. “Tinder dating first. Sex shops a little further down the track. And oh…look,” he said as he blew past the exit, “too late.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Chicken.”

The accusation, no matter how playful, didn’t sit well. Ordinarily, he’d have been totally up for a woman wanting a private tour of a sex shop and more than willing to help her test out her purchases afterward. But this was Della.

And he did not think about Della like that.