Chapter Eight

CC couldn’t decide if she was amused or horrified. The last person on earth she would marry was Wade. Hell, she wouldn’t even date him. And one sex dream did not alter that conviction one little bit. The man went through women like he was trying to be with every single female on the surface of the planet before he died. But Bob cracking himself up was funny as hell.

“Okay then.” Wade rolled his eyes. “How about you take a seat, Mr. Downey, and we’ll get started.”

Bob nodded, still laughing as he sat his ass down in the circle of chairs that CC had quickly thrown together.

“He’s a sweetie,” CC murmured in an effort to quash the awkwardness Bob’s warning had produced.

Wade snorted. “Don’t be taken in by the silly-old-fool act he’s got going on. He’s a bloody shark, he owns half of the buildings and businesses in this town.”

CC’s admiration for Bob grew. “Why’s he in an old folks’ home, then?” she asked. “He’s pretty spritely still.”

He shrugged. “Mom says he got lonely after his wife died. Likes the company, apparently. So now he terrorizes the town from behind these walls instead.”

“Oh, don’t say that.” CC half laughed at the image. “He looks like he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” She remembered his potent backslap and mentally revised it to horse-fly.

Another snort told CC exactly what Wade thought of that statement. “I do like his description of you, though,” Wade added, a smile playing on his mouth. A distracting enough mouth without the addition of that smile.

CC shot him a stern look, folding her arms. “You ever call me your girl Friday, I’ll kill you and bury your body where no one will find it.” It was one thing for an eighty-year-old to say it, something entirely different for a thirty-eight-year-old to say it.

He chuckled, and all the hairs on CC’s arms prickled. “How are you going to get paid if I’m dead?”

“I know the combination to your safe, as well as all the passwords to your bank accounts.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but Bob, still in fine form, jumped in ahead of him. “Well come on then, Wade, don’t keep us in suspense. None of us are getting any younger around here, you know.”

Another gale of laughter, this time added to by a dozen other seniors.

“Thank you, Mr. Downey,” Wade cut into the laughter, and everyone hushed. “And thanks to everyone for coming and listening to what I have to say.”

There were general murmurs of “Of course” and “Anything for you, Wade.” Clearly, they’d have turned up to listen to Wade read the dictionary.

“This is CC. She’s my PA.”

CC gave a little wave, and the assembled oldies murmured their greetings, except for an old guy at the far side of the circle with wild hair and coke-bottle glasses. “His what?” He cupped his ear and turned to the woman beside him. “What did he say?”

“His PA,” the woman said. She was wearing a cardigan and a Broncos cap perched on top of her springy permed hair.

“What in tarnation is a PA?” Glasses asked.

“It’s a girl Friday,” she clarified, and CC pressed her lips together to stop from laughing.

“Ah.” He nodded sagely and turned his attention back to Wade.

Wade waited until everyone’s attention was back on him. Not a process he was used to, given his celebrity, but one that seemed fairly typical of Credence.

“I don’t know if any of you heard what happened at the town meeting last night, but—”

“The mayor wants to bring in some women,” somebody called out.

“Did he say we’re getting women?” Glasses asked the woman beside him again.

“That’s right, Harry. For Pete’s sake, turn up your damn hearing aid.”

Harry fiddled with the external controls, grinning the whole time. “Women,” he beamed as he sat forward in his seat. “Now we’re cooking with gas.”

Wade recapped the essence of last night’s meeting, stopping every now and then as people asked questions or decided to throw in a comment or two.

“Now, I’m sure you’ll all agree this would be a terrible thing to happen to Credence.”

Nobody in the circle said anything. They all just sat blinking owllike back at Wade as if waiting for him to explain why it was a bad idea. CC rubbed her hand over her mouth, covering her smile.

Finally Harry spoke again. “Why?”

“Yeah,” Bob repeated. “Why?”

“Think how disruptive it’d be to have busloads of women, invading all our peace and quiet, Bob.”

A slight murmur rippled around the circle as people looked at one another. “Been too damn quiet around here lately, anyway,” the woman with the Broncos cap said.

“But there’ll also be a problem with media. It’ll add to the big red target already on Credence.”

He didn’t say it, but everyone in the room, including CC, knew what he meant. Credence was already a huge media draw because of it being Wade’s hometown. There had been incidents in the past.

“This kind of thing goes viral, and suddenly everyone in the country will be talking about Credence,” Wade continued. “And not in the usual way. It won’t just be sports journalists. Tabloids will come here. And they won’t stick to the sidewalks and be polite. They’ll be running all over town trying to find the human interest stories. They’ll be trampling over flower beds to stick a microphone and camera in people’s faces.”

Quite a few members of the circle perked up at the thought. Hair was patted, outfits were straightened. Even Bob ran a finger over each of his eyebrows.

Wade could obviously also sense the sudden flush of vanity in the circle. “I gotta tell you, some of those media outlets won’t care much about the truth if they have an angle they want to prosecute. They might not be so flattering to Credence and its residents.”

“I remember when the town was jumpin’,” Harry said, a wistful note shrouding his voice. “When we used to have dances every week and once every two months we’d shut down the main street to have a big ol’ hoedown and everyone in the county came. Old Ed Jones played his fiddle, and there’d be babies everywhere and little kids running in and out between legs.”

“I remember that, too,” said a man with a bad dye job.

“Yes. But don’t you think the peace and quiet around here is part of the charm of the town?” Wade pushed. “I don’t know about any of you, but I like being able to come home and know that I could walk down the street naked and nobody’s going to mind or take a picture of me.”

A flash of Wade hard and naked between her thighs sucker punched CC out of the blue, and she spluttered and half choked on the water she’d been sipping. She desperately tried to drag in air that felt as if it had bones in it.

Everyone’s attention turned to her, their eyebrows raised, including Wade’s. “Oh come on, Wade,” she said to cover for her weirdness. “I’m sure these ladies here would mind if you walked down the street in the buff.”

Just because the man had a beautiful body didn’t mean everybody in the damn world wanted to get a look.

75 percent of the women in the circle clearly disagreed, shaking their heads. The other 25 percent were either deaf or asleep. “Oh hush now,” one said, “none of us mind at all if Wade wants to get about in his altogether.”

There were general nods and a lot of very frank eyeing up, which was making CC uncomfortable even as it caused Wade to grin in triumph. “This is what I mean,” Wade said, seeing an opportunity to press his point. “I can’t do that kind of thing with cameras around everywhere.”

“So maybe keep your clothes on while the women are in town,” Broncos cap suggested.

CC bit back a snort. Wade keeping his clothes on while women were around seemed highly unlikely.

Harry laughed, slapping his thigh. “She got you there, sonny.”

“Thanks,” Wade said, smiling despite the exasperation in his voice. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

“I reckon…” Bob spoke slowly, tapping his lips with his index finger as he paused. Every head in the circle turned to face him. Bob was, after all, their unofficial leader. “I reckon we could put up with the inconvenience of a few trampled flower beds if it meant we were going to get some new blood injected into the town.”

There were general noises of consensus. “Haven’t been to a wedding here in about a decade,” said a short, stout woman whose feet didn’t quite touch the floor.

“The kids leave and they don’t come back,” said the woman beside her.

“I can offer up the old boardinghouse,” Bob said, his finger still in place against his mouth. “There are six rooms in there that can provide temporary accommodation to any woman who wants to make the move permanently. Lick of paint and some community donations of beds and sheets, maybe some curtains and kitchen stuff, and it’ll be good as new.” His finger tap, tap, tapped against his lips. “Ray here used to work for the electric company, he can check on all that.”

Ray Carmody was sitting next to Bob. He was a tall, elegant black man with snowy white hair who looked like he’d be more at home playing classical piano than tinkering with electrics. He seemed about the same age as Bob, and CC would bet any electrical license he may have possessed had expired a long time ago.

“Sure can.”

“It’ll be basic, but…” Bob shrugged. “Reckon we could make it a bit homey as well.”

“Got all those quilts I made years ago still tucked up in a trunk,” Broncos cap said. She sniffed. “Too old-fashioned for the grandkids, apparently.”

There were a dozen suggestions all tossed around then as Wade looked on in dismay. “That went well,” CC said out the side of her mouth. Poor Wade, he came from a world where everyone said yes to him and all the doors opened.

Not so in Credence.

“I’m not sure you fully understand how intrusive it’ll be to—”

“Wade,” Bob interrupted. “We’re old, not stupid. We get it.”

CC stifled laughter as Wade threw up his hands in surrender. He’d fought the good fight, but every career sportsman knew to quit while you were ahead.

“I don’t want ’em too skinny,” Bob said, returning his attention to his fellow inmates, who all nodded in assent. “Women these days are all bones and fancy fingernails.”

Harry nodded. “Whatever happened to buxom?”

“And freckles,” Ray threw in. “Freckles are cute.”

“Oh for the love of…” Wade muttered under his breath. “They’ll be specifying measurements next.”

CC laughed this time, she couldn’t stop herself.

“You think we can put that in the advert, Wade?” Bob asked, consulting Wade suddenly.

Wade sighed. “You’re going to have to speak to my mother about the content of the ad, but I can tell you now, you’re not allowed to specify physical attributes like that.”

“Well, why not?” Bob frowned.

“Because—” Wade rubbed a hand over his face. “It’s discrimination, Bob.”

Bob’s bushy eyebrows beetled together. “No such thing in my day.”

Harry shook his head in solidarity with Bob. “World’s gone crazy.”

“Man can’t even appreciate a woman with freckles anymore,” Ray added.

CC laughed some more. She knew that probably made her a lousy feminist, but these guys were the living end. They were like the Rat Pack of the old folks’ home—Sammy, Dean, and Frank all sitting around reminiscing about the good old days in Vegas.

“You say your mother is in charge?” Bob clarified.

“Yep.” Wade nodded and narrowed his eyes a little at CC, who was trying to stifle her laughter behind her hand. “And CC’s helping her.”

CC stopped laughing pretty damn quick as the old-timers zeroed their attention in on her. She glanced at Wade with a raised eyebrow. He just smiled at her and said, “Why don’t you guys talk over your ideas for the ad with CC, and she can take them to Mom.”

The Rat Pack greeted the idea with enthusiasm, and Wade grinned at her, flashing his white teeth, laughter dancing in his eyes, and damn if it didn’t make her a little swoony.

“How about we all adjourn to the dining room with CC?” Bob suggested.

Wade grinned harder, and CC swooned a little more. Three months could not come soon enough!

Ten minutes later, Wade was strolling into Jack’s, still grinning over the look on CC’s face as he left her surrounded by a bunch of old men, all ear-bashing her with their ideas.

“I need a beer,” he said to Tucker. “A big one.”

Drinking before five o’clock was something Wade wouldn’t normally countenance, but Credence and its intransigence was enough to drive anyone to drink.

“Went that well at the old folks’ home, huh?” Drew asked, a half-full glass of beer in hand.

Wade snorted as he sat on the stool next to Drew. “I swear Bob Downey exists just to drive me nuts.”

Tucker placed Wade’s beer on the bar in front of him. “I told you, you were wasting your time.”

“I can’t believe they’re behind this crazy idea.” Wade hadn’t, for a single minute, thought they’d be so open-minded. “Bob’s getting a helper together from the home to prepare the old boardinghouse as free temporary accommodation.”

Drew laughed. “He must be getting mellow in his old age.”

Wade snorted. Bob wouldn’t know mellow if it bit him on the ass. “The whole town’s gone mad.”

Tucker folded his arms across his chest. “It’s a good idea, man. Worth a try at least.”

“Yeah.” Drew drained his beer. “You’re just worried that a bunch of NFL groupies are going to come to Credence looking to bag a celebrity husband. Which is kinda shortsighted and self-centered. Plus, and I hate to be the one to mention this, but not every woman is a Jasmine.”

Wade scowled. “Don’t you have to polish the hubcaps on the hearse or something?”

Jasmine, his first and last serious girlfriend, had done a number on his head, but this wasn’t just about him being able to walk around without groupies and cameras everywhere. He actually feared for Credence at the hands of the national media. He feared the town’s quirkiness would be exploited and their way of life held up to ridicule.

Because as much as this place and these people drove him nutty, Credence was his place and they were his people, and he would defend them with his dying breath.

“Plus,” Tucker added with a grin, “I hate to break it to you, dude, but you’re not that much of a catch anymore.”

“Oh, bite me.”

Tucker and Drew cracked up as Wade drank half his beer, the cold ale going down well after a morning of labor in the sunshine and an hour of futility with the Credence elders.

A big hand landed on his shoulder from behind. “Is this guy being a nuisance, barkeep?” Wade didn’t have to turn around to know it was Arlo.

“Nah.” Tucker shook his head. “I think he needs a hand having the stick removed from his ass, though.”

Arlo glanced at Drew. “I believe that’s your territory.”

“Not if he’s alive, it isn’t,” Drew said, and Arlo laughed as he took the seat on the other side of Wade.

“Beer?”

Arlo nodded. “Please. It’s hot as a three-dollar pistol out there.”

“Should you be drinking on the job? Don’t you have bad guys to arrest?”

“I knocked off ten minutes ago. And we don’t have bad guys in Credence because people fear me.”

Wade snorted at his friend’s attempt at a joke. “You will when a bunch of strangers start running around all over town.”

Drew groaned, and Tucker shook his head. “Jesus, Wade, turn the record over.”

“Della said Bob Downey overruled you at the old folks’ home,” Arlo said just before lifting his beer and taking a swig.

Wade would have liked to have heard a lot less glee in Arlo’s voice. “Aren’t you worried about how a sudden influx of people is going to impact the police resources of the town?”

“Hell, Wade. They’re coming for a look-see, not a rave.”

“Yeah, but nobody’s going to do criminal checks or anything, are they? We’ll have no idea what kind of undesirables might be sneaking into town under the cover of single women looking for love.”

“You’re right, Wade, maybe we should just build a wall?” Drew drawled.

Wade glowered at Drew before addressing Arlo again. “What if things get unruly?”

Arlo smiled. “I’m sure I can handle a few unruly women.”

“I’ll help if you need backup,” Drew volunteered.

Tucker nodded. “Hell yeah, me too.”

Wade shook his head. “You’re all perverts.”

“Dude, you got any idea how hard it is for a one-legged cop to get laid in Credence?”

“Ha!” Drew stared morosely into his beer. “You should try being a terminal specialist.”

Wade cocked an eyebrow. “A terminal specialist?”

“I’m working on euphemisms for undertaker.”

Tucker laughed. “Keep working, buddy.”

“So go out of town,” Wade said, getting the conversation back on track.

“What do you think we do?” Tucker demanded. “And that’s okay if you’re after something casual. But what about if we want more, Wade? If we want someone in our lives for good? Marriage and children, the whole shebang. Women from outside Credence aren’t so thrilled at the idea of moving to a small town, and who can blame them? It’s not like there are huge career prospects here for them. Which means we either leave to be with them, or we choose Credence over the chance at a different kind of life.”

Wade blinked. He wouldn’t have thought Tucker Daniels had that many words in him. Arlo nodded. “I’m thirty-five, Wade. So’s he.” He pointed at Tucker. “So’s Drew. Your brother is almost forty. None of us have wives or girlfriends or anything really past a casual hookup somewhere outside the town limits or when the fair comes to town.”

“Right.” Drew nodded his head vigorously. “So the town council identified a problem and has come up with a solution, and I think we should at least give it a whirl and see if it works before we start listening to horseshit about public law and order from probably the most frequently laid guy in Colorado. If you’re worried about the goddamn women, stay inside that mausoleum of a house of yours and batten down the hatches.”

Wade was going to protest the mausoleum dig, but hell, if anyone knew about mausoleums, it was a terminal specialist.

And it wasn’t the relevant part of Drew’s spiel anyway. His broader point was they weren’t getting any, and Wade could hardly tell three guys in their prime to tie a knot in it while he was the grateful recipient of very regular action.

“There’s Della,” Wade said.

Arlo almost choked on his beer. “No there is not Della.” He banged his beer down on the bar, causing a wave of liquid to wash over the edge. “She’s only twenty-four—that’s way too young for any of you, and she’d still working through her issues from her crappy childhood and shitty ex. She’s off-limits to all you perverts, so don’t even think it.”

Wade held his hands up. “Whoa, sorry.”

“Jesus, dude.” Tucker frowned as he wiped up the puddle of beer on his bar. “You gotta let out some of that rope, or she’ll come to resent you.”

“I’m protecting her. I couldn’t do that for the first two decades of her life, but I sure as hell can now.”

“A gilded cage is still a goddamn cage, Arlo.”

Arlo didn’t say anything, just drank his beer, his forehead scrunched into a frown, as if Tucker’s assessment had bothered him. When the glass was almost drained, he put it down and turned to Wade. “Speaking of women other than my sister… Where’s that pretty PA of yours?”

It was Wade’s turn to frown as Tucker and Drew also turned their attention on him. “Yes.” Drew nodded. “Where is the lovely CC today?”

Pretty. Lovely. Wade had used many words to describe CC over the years. Neither of those fit.

Smart. Efficient. Professional. Resourceful. Competent.

Infuriating. Neat freak. Opinionated.

As a man, he recognized that she was an attractive woman. Not his type, but attractive nonetheless, with her petite athletic figure and that cute little pixie cut. Every now and then he surprised himself and noticed she had boobs.

But that was the Y chromosome for you.

More than anything, CC blended. He was surrounded by people a lot of the time. Not as much as he was during his NFL career, but still enough. Friends and colleagues as well as the hangers-on and people who either wanted to give him stuff or wanted something from him.

A lot of egos.

So, to have someone on his team that was there for him when needed, but happy to fade into the background when not, was a godsend. In fact, CC had become so much part of the furniture of his life that no one really noticed her.

Until she spoke. And then people listened. Because she just didn’t speak unless it was necessary. And, petite or not, she was as immovable as a brick wall when it came to his schedule.

Her borderline OCD had come in real handy for that.

And the thought she would be gone in three months beat like hummingbird wings inside his brain. In his arrogance, he’d just assumed she’d always be around. That she wouldn’t actually leave when her time was up. The knowledge that she was going to leave sat like a burr beneath his skin, and Wade knew he had to use this time in Credence to try and convince her to stay.

Wade shook his head as he stared at Arlo. “Leave my PA alone.”

That goddamn uniform made women stupid. He’d seen it firsthand. Probably not CC who, thanks to five brothers, failed to be impressed by anything overtly male. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Wade didn’t want that kind of attention on his PA. That kind of male attention. She was here to work, not hook up.

“Oh…” Arlo frowned. “Sorry, are you two…?”

“Nope.” Hell no. No way, no how, no siree.

“So she’s single?”

“Yep.”

“So then…you wouldn’t mind if I…”

Wade did not like the way Arlo had let his sentence drift off like that. Full of possibilities. “Hell yes, I would.”

“But…” Drew was frowning now as well. “You just said there’s nothing between you?”

“She’s my PA. It’s strictly business between us—that’s it. That’s all it’s ever been. But she’s here to work, not play.”

“To be fair, dude,” Tucker interrupted, “I don’t really think you get a say in what she does in her free time or who she does it with.”

Wade snorted. “That’s nice that you think she has free time.”

The three guys looked at each other and started to smile. “What?” he demanded.

“So you don’t want her,” Arlo clarified, “but you don’t want anyone else to want her, either.”

Wade sighed. It was like explaining stuff to a two-year-old. Times three. “At the end of the summer, she’s leaving my employ for good and going to SoCal to live. I don’t give a rat’s ass how many dudes she sleeps with on her own dime.” An unfortunate little stab in his chest confused the hell out of him, but Wade plowed on. “I do care when it’s on mine.”

“So, that’s a no to me asking her out?” Arlo said, an expression of faux disappointment fixed to his stupid face.

The sudden thought of Arlo, of any of them touching CC, any man touching her, was extremely discomforting. Like ants marching under Wade’s skin. “Touch her and I’ll break your fingers.”

Arlo chuckled. “I’m the chief of police, dude.”

“Then you can arrest me afterwards.”

All three of them laughed again in a smugly superior way, which was starting to piss Wade off. Tucker placed another beer in front of him. “Here you go, man. Shall we drink to denial?”

“Screw you all,” Wade said. But he drank anyway.