“It’s about damn time.” Clara Bell Sawyer took the white bakery bag that Hunter handed her and pulled out the jumbo peanut butter cookie he’d picked up at Sweet Somethings Bakery on his way over. “What’s this?” She gave the cookie a sniff. “You know I hate peanuts.”
“That’s because the cookie isn’t for you. It’s for your friend. The one interested in your fella.” He winked. “I figured you could kill her with kindness.”
“I’d rather do it with a slingshot.” She set the bag to the side and held up her arms. “Come on and give your old Mimi some sugar. The good kind. Not this processed stuff.”
He hugged the frail old woman and ignored the sudden tightening in his chest. Her hugs had always been so strong and solid, but now she was just a slip of the woman she’d once been. Her arms barely tightened and then she was shrinking away, back into the wheelchair. He noted the hollows beneath her eyes a split second before her face crinkled into a smile. “Sit down and tell me all about your week.”
“You mean fill you in on all the gossip?”
She shrugged. “An old woman needs some excitement in her life.”
“I take it you haven’t been sweet-talking the guy with the teeth.”
“Oh, I’ve been talking. It just turns out that he has a hearing aid which none of us knew about. He’s been tuning out everyone except Louise Aldridge Tucker. Seems he’s sweet on her. Can’t say as I blame him. She’s got all of her teeth and she can still eat a chili dog.”
“Sounds like quite a catch.”
“If you’re into chili dogs. But it’s better this way I s’pose. Now I can turn my attention to finding someone who won’t aggravate my gastroenteritis every time we make out.”
A grin tugged at his lips. He wanted to reach out and tell her there were plenty more fish in the sea, but she was stuck in a very small pond, so he decided to distract her instead.
That and this was his great-grandmother. The last thing he wanted was to be giving her advice on her love life.
Instead he spent the next half hour telling her about the various happenings around town, complete with Gerald and Haywood’s latest disagreement and the big toe incident.
Disappointment crinkled her worn face. “Are you shitting me?”
“Jesus, Mimi.” He glanced around at the old women clustered nearby, all hunched over their needlepoint. “Language.”
“Trust me. There’s nothing I can say that these old biddies haven’t heard before even if they won’t admit it. His big toe? That’s it? ’Cause Merline Evangeline said that Haywood blew Gerald’s arm off and then went after him Bobbitt style with his pocketknife.”
“He’s still got both arms and I’m sure he and Lorelei can repopulate if the mood strikes them.”
She made a pshhh sound. “The old fools around here. Why, none of ’em could keep a story straight if their lives depended on it.”
“Hazards of a small town.” He repeated Jenna’s words and tried to ignore the image that rushed at him. Of Jenna arched against the wall, her lips parted and full, her breaths coming fast and furious as she stared up at him with passion-glazed eyes.
She wanted him but she didn’t want to want him, and damned if that didn’t bother him.
It’s for the best, a voice whispered. If she hadn’t put the brakes on, he might not have had the will to do it and then he’d be right where he started.
Back to making poor decisions, acting on impulse, living rather than thinking.
It didn’t matter that she was attempting to change her image. Jenna was still every bit the bad girl he’d given up and he didn’t intend to fall right back into old habits.
He’d promised himself.
He’d promised his Mimi.
“Lookee what we have here,” a familiar voice sounded just as Pam Tucker Laraby walked up. She was in her midthirties with the signature Tucker blond hair and green eyes. She wore the usual pink scrubs with the familiar Royal Rebel Arms logo on the front pocket and a warm smile. A vase filled with gardenias overflowed her arms. “It’s your weekly flower delivery, Miss Clara.”
A smile touched his Mimi’s face as she leaned forward to smell the vase full that Pam set on the table in front of her.
“I don’t know what you did to make a man fall hard enough to send you flowers once a week for practically ever, but if you could share, I’d be eternally grateful.”
“It’s all in the hips,” Mimi said, giving the girl a wink despite the fact that Pam was a hated Tucker.
A fact that should have dug in his Mimi’s craw like it did every other person from her generation. They’d been the ones on the front lines for all the years since the feud began. The ones holding tight to the hate, perpetuating the war.
Everyone except for his Mimi.
She’d never had a bad word to say about the Tuckers. Quite the opposite, she’d always been kind and good to everyone around her, even the Tuckers.
Especially the Tuckers.
He watched as she caught Pam’s hand and held tight for a second. “Put them in my room, will you, sugar?”
“Sure thing,” Pam murmured before giving Hunter a nod and turning to head down the hall.
“So who’s the secret admirer?” He asked the same question every week when the flowers arrived. As usual, she waved him off the way she always did.
“It’s no secret. Jimmy over at the florist knows I like gardenias, that’s all. He used to order extra and send them to his mother. Now that she’s gone, he sends them to me. So where were we? Oh, yeah. Gerald and his missing penis.”
“I already told you. Haywood didn’t cut anything off.”
“No, but he wanted to and that’s enough to fuel the gossip here for at least another week until you get back over here to set me straight on the comings and goings of this boring-as-hell town.” She grinned and a devilish light touched her eyes. “Any streakers this week?”
“That was last month and it was only because Cory Wellborn got locked out of his house while picking up the newspaper.”
“I heard he mooned the paperboy.”
“Not intentionally. He was picking up the sports section.”
“In his birthday suit.”
Hunter shrugged. “A man can do what he wants in his own house.”
“Until his wife locks him out because he forgot to take out the garbage and she wants to teach him a lesson. Then it becomes your problem.”
“There was no problem. He called it in himself—thankfully he’d left his cell phone in his car. He hid in the front seat until we got there with a blanket. No streaking.”
“Except that Isabel Jeffries saw him from across the street and told her mother who runs the bunko table here on Wednesday nights. She told all of us and gave us quite the description. You wouldn’t happen to have any pictures?” She wiggled her silver eyebrows. “You know, some leftover evidence so I can see if my mental image is close to the real thing?”
“You are ninety-two, right? Because you act like you just hit puberty.” She chuckled and he added, “You ought to behave yourself.”
“There’s plenty of time for that when they put me in the grave.” She grabbed the bakery bag and glanced inside. “Kindness, huh?”
“I’m sure if you talk to her woman-to-woman and explain that you’re interested in this Paul whatshisname, she’ll respect that.”
“Or she might keel over, straight into a sugar coma. She’s diabetic, too, you know.”
He didn’t or he never would have brought her a cookie. “Maybe I ought to take that back…”
“Keep your paws off. I’ve got plans for this cookie.” She stuffed it down beside her and motioned for Pam who had returned to the common area and was straightening magazines on a nearby rack. “Can you be a dear and help me back to my room?”
“I can do it—” Hunter started, but Mimi waved him silent.
“I won’t have you fussing over me. I’m not an invalid. I can damn well do it myself.”
Only she couldn’t. He watched as she tried to undo the brakes on her chair, but her strength was failing her and it was Pam who finally hit the lever.
He noted the hollows beneath her eyes then as if she wasn’t sleeping as well as she usually did and something twisted inside of him. “Hey.” He caught her hand. “Are you okay?”
A strange gleam lit her gaze and she opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but then her lips pursed and she shook her head.
“I’m as mean as ever and twice as spry,” she snapped, “and don’t you forget it.” He grinned then and she waved him off. “Go out and have some fun once in a while. You look old.”
But she was the one looking old all of a sudden.
The image followed him out the front door of the senior living facility and stayed with him as he folded himself into his SUV and keyed the engine.
Old? Of course she was old. She was one of the town’s oldest citizens, second only to Shorty Tucker who beat her out by a few weeks.
It made sense she would look her age even if he was just noticing it.
Looks aside, she was still every bit as outlandish as ever. He held tight to the thought and turned his attention to the name and address blazing on his cell phone.
The latest in a list of dead ends courtesy of Gator and his so-called contacts.
But Hunter was through chasing shadows.
He floored the gas and hit the interstate. It was time Gator gave him a viable lead.