Love in a Small Town (20 page)

“I went out the bathroom window of Country Joe’s Bar and Grill down in Fort Worth . . . and I was gettin’ away from a man, just like you are now,” Rennie told her. “Only the window was a lot larger and closer to the ground.”

“If you have that much experience, you should have gone first,” Molly said, as she helped Rennie to turn on the narrow sill.

“This is good for you, Sissy. This sort of thing gets you out of your doldrums. Dang, that hurt my ankle.”

Molly reached out to steady her sister, and then they were looking at each other and chuckling.

Molly shook her head and breathed deeply. “Oh, Rennie. I feel so crazy.” She gestured at the window. “I mean, climbin’ out a window all because I’m terrified of seein’ Tommy Lee.” The tears came suddenly. “And what I really wanted was to see him. Oh, Rennie, I’m so messed up.”

Rennie put an arm around her shoulder. “I know, Sissy. . . . I know.” She kissed Molly’s warm, sweet-smelling hair and squeezed her close, whispering, “It’ll be okay.”

But she wondered if it would. Sometimes people just did the silliest things, and some heartaches never did heal. She knew that only too well.

Molly said, “Your purse is still in there . . . and we have to pay the bill.”

“My purse isn’t goin’ anywhere and neither is the bill. Let’s go on down to Blaine's and get a Coke. I’m thirsty after that barbecue—and all that climbin’.”

Arms around each other’s waist, they started down the alleyway. Sprinkles began to fall, and they looked upward to see a cloud right over them while the sun still shone.

Chapter 12

That’s As Close As I’ll Ever Get To Loving You

Sam Ketchum slowed as he passed Molly’s office on Main Street. He was driving his brother’s Bronco, and it kept threatening to die. He shifted into neutral, so he could press on the gas and keep the idle up. Because of the blinds on the big window of Molly’s office, he couldn’t see if she was in there.

There was no space to park on the block; things were busy on a Friday afternoon. Valentine was the hub of the farming area and growing as a bedroom community for Lawton, for people who worked in the city but wanted to have their country acreages and gentleman farms.

A car honked behind him, and Sam hurried to shift into drive and go on. He felt a nervous itch between his shoulder blades when he thought about Molly catching sight of him stopping; she knew he drove Winn’s Bronco when in town.

He proceeded down the block, noting that Blaine’s Drugstore had a new sign now proclaiming it as the “hometown choice,” and that a Dollar Store had opened in the old Western Auto building.

Sometimes Sam had to ask himself why he continued to be tied to this town where he had never quite felt he fit. To start with, Sam and Winn had been born in New Jersey, his mother’s home state. They had come here when Sam and Winn’s father had been assigned to the army base in Lawton. Their father had wanted to live in the country. But only a year after getting them settled here, when Sam had been five, he had been working with explosives and gotten blown up.

People here were very friendly, but they’d had trouble understanding a person from New Jersey, an eastern city girl, who had no family here yet chose to stay here after her husband had died. The thing was, his mother’d had no family anywhere, nor any money to go elsewhere.

When Sam had been in high school, he’d had long hair and was one of the first to wear an earring, two things that didn’t go over really big in Valentine. His junior and senior years of high school had been his hippie period, when he’d worn sloppy tie-dyed T-shirts and peace signs. He’d been the school’s token hippie and added to that was his inclination for art. Teachers in Valentine schools hadn’t known what to do with a boy who would rather draw people playing football than play it. When he’d been in Valentine school, art class rated lower than a foreign language with the hierarchy of the school, who lived and breathed for football and basketball and Future Farmers. The art class met and did the best it could in a small portable building out behind the FFA barn. Half the time the music teacher doubled as the art teacher. In his junior year, Sam did most of the teaching. He also started getting into jewelry design then—another thing that hadn’t gone over really big in Valentine. Except with the girls. Both his jewelry and Sam had always been a hit with the girls.

After about fifteen years of doing women’s hair in this town, his mother had gained acceptance. His brother, Winn, had become a local business owner and a member of the chamber of commerce, and had been on the school board for the past ten years. Whenever someone disagreed with Winn, it might be pointed out that he wasn’t a native, but Winn would just laugh about it. Because of Winn, the school now had fully funded programs in art, music, journalism, and mechanics.

Sam, who had at the start been ostracized because of his art, was now something of a small-town treasure because of his success. When it became known that Robert Redford had bought one of his pen-and-ink drawings and that Reba McEntire wore one of his bracelets, his acceptance was immediate.

Sam supposed he never felt he fit anywhere and that Valentine would always be as much home as any place ever could be. His family and lifelong friends were here. Friends like Tommy Lee and Molly, whom he’d known since grade school.

When he thought of it, which he had on a number of occasions, Sam thought that his friendship with Tommy Lee was an unlikely pairing. He and Tommy Lee were not, on the surface, much alike. Sam was taller and slimmer and more finely made; he had muscles, but not like Tommy Lee’s. And Tommy Lee was a steady and straight sort, while Sam tended to be wild and uneven as a dirt road. One thing they did have in common, though, a trait not easily seen and one maybe some people would argue, was that Tommy Lee, although born and raised here, had always been somewhat of an outsider, too. Each of them in their own way, Sam thought, was a person to step to the beat of his own drum.

Turning into the alley, bumping the rear tire on the curb, he drove slowly until he spied the El Camino tucked in near the back door of Molly’s building.

He parked, took up the bulging file folder of receipts that was his excuse for coming, and went in the back door, into the hallway that separated Molly’s office from the offices of Jaydee Mayall, attorney-at-law. That was the lettering on Jaydee’s glass doors and on his plate-glass window, and on his briefcase and the pens he gave out and the billboards at either end of town and even the doors of his Cadillac, all of which seemed a bit much for a town the size of Valentine.

“Are you afraid you might forget who you are, Jaydee?” Tommy Lee had asked the man once.

“Why, no. Why do you say that?” Jaydee had been puzzled, and he certainly couldn’t tell by Tommy Lee’s tone or expression that Tommy Lee was about to pull his leg. For one thing, Tommy Lee hardly ever spoke out, so no one was ever expecting him to.

“Well, you seem to have your name written everywhere you look. Since we’ve all known you for some time, I thought maybe you had it for your own benefit, just in case you forgot who you were."

Sam and half a dozen others who had overheard the exchange had gotten a big kick out of it, and what was funnier still was that Jaydee never really had understood that Tommy Lee had pegged him for exactly what he was—a conceited blowhard.

Tommy Lee had always been good at seeing people as they were, and he never was much impressed by anyone. Sam had always envied Tommy Lee’s self-assurance. Sam loved Tommy Lee, better than Winn, actually. That was why he had always kept to himself the way he felt about Molly.

Since school days, Sam had loved Molly. But she had always been Tommy Lee’s girl.

The door to Molly’s office stood open, and he stopped there, hesitant and eager. He saw her sitting at her desk, her back to him. She brought her hand up and tucked her hair behind her ear, setting her earring to swaying. He thought her hair shorter than when he’d last seen her, but it was straight and silky as it always had been. She was talking on the phone. He himself talked at least two or three times a month with Molly on the phone. She did his business records, which was as close as he could keep himself to her.

After a moment of gathering himself, he tapped the file folder against the door frame.

Molly turned and saw him. Surprise widened her eyes, and then pure pleasure filled her face. The light slanting through the blinds made her eyes sparkle like polished turquoise.

She held up a finger, turning her head as she spoke into the telephone receiver. Sam came into the office. It was small, but she had made good use of the space, with a cherry wood wall-unit computer desk, tall cherry filing cabinets, and a lady’s writing desk, where she sat now. No carpet, but polished oak floors, with two wool Navaho rugs. The two chairs she had for clients were of a sort that invited people to sit and chat. Molly was a person people felt they could talk to, and she often ended up dispensing consolation and encouragement along with her financial counsel.

Tommy Lee had fought her about the office. Tommy Lee had a controlling streak in him.

Sam’s gaze moved around the walls, until it came to the pen-and-ink sketch he had given her—an office-warming gift. She’d been hesitant about accepting it.

“Oh, Sam, I can’t take it. . . . It’s worth too much.”

“Oh, hell, Molly, I have a dozen like it back at the studio.”

The only piece of jewelry he had ever given her had been when he’d first started out—a pair of silver feathers. She wore them sometimes still. He would have liked to give her lots of his jewelry now, pieces worth far more than those silver feathers, pieces with turquoise to bring out her eyes and delicate silver and gold to hang against her soft skin. But prudence kept him from it. She and Tommy Lee might have thought something if he tried to give it to her.

Then she was up and coming toward him. “Oh, Sam . . . it’s good to see you.”

She smiled, but there were shadows in her eyes. She went to reach for his hands, but he opened his arms wide and she came into them, and they hugged. He held her for a moment and inhaled the sweet scent of her, felt her soft cheek against his.

She pulled away, averted her face and tucked her hair behind her ear, nervous like. “Have you spoken to Tommy Lee?”

“I saw him this mornin’.”

Her green eyes came to his. Then they were looking at each other. Sam just couldn’t help looking at her like he did.

Her face turned pink as a rose, and she glanced through the door—over to where Sophia, Jaydee’s secretary, sat across the hall, staring at them. Sam leaned over to give Sophia a good view and waved.

“Hi, Sophia. You want to come on over so’s you can hear everything?”

The woman puffed up like a bullfrog, and Molly gave him a little shove and closed the door. Gesturing toward the folder he’d forgotten he held, she said, “I see you brought me some work. I’ll get you a cup of coffee and we’ll take a look.”

As she swept stray hair behind her ear, he saw that she still had on her wedding band.

* * * *

Molly walked Sam to the back door. Sam smelled really good, a cologne that seemed to burrow down into her senses each time she breathed. He was a tall man; with his hat on he almost scraped the top of the door frame.

For a moment he paused, gazing down at her. His dark eyes were soft as velvet.

“I’d like to see you this weekend. Maybe we can have dinner together.” His accent was distinctive, a drawl but as if it met halfway between Oklahoma and New Jersey. His eyes shifted nervously. “Well, I mean I’m your friend, same as Tommy Lee’s. I’d hate to see that change.”

“I know. So would I. I’d never put you in the middle, Sam.”

“Well, how about lunch Sunday afternoon?”

“I’d like that.” She felt defiant and daring, and thought that was really silly.

He nodded and hurried to the Bronco, hunching against the rain that had just that moment started to fall in fat drops. Molly moved forward and put a hand to the door frame and watched him drive away. She gave a little wave, and he did, too. Suddenly the rain came harder, and she looked up into the boiling sky. Thunder rolled, as if echoing the threatening feelings churning inside her.

Sam had looked at her.
She tingled with the thought, both thrilled and frightened, guilty, too. She told herself not to be silly. . . . Sam was simply a friendly person. Then she thought that she was
not
mistaken. He had looked at her, and she wasn’t sorry she had looked back, either. But of course, she’d known Sam forever . . . and he liked to flirt. Many thought him an incorrigible flirt, but she knew better. Once, a number of years ago, they’d been alone on an early morning on her front porch. Sam had confessed that he wished he could find a woman and have a marriage like she and Tommy Lee had. Sam could be really tender.

Tears came to her eyes.
Why couldn’t Tommy Lee look at her like Sam had?

A panicky feeling came over her. She certainly didn’t want to break down in one of her horrible bawling spells there in the office, where Sophia or anyone who happened to walk in could hear. Crossing her arms, taking deep breaths, she walked back to her desk. She felt the fluttery, wild feeling rising up in her chest and spreading through her limbs. She felt off-kilter, as if she were about to run naked in the rain, or at the very least go dance right in the middle of Main Street. As if she just had to do
something.

She began straightening papers on her desk, tapping them into order, dropped the pencil in the pencil holder, put the coffee cups back on the shelf. Stood there a moment, then reached for the phone and dialed Rennie’s number.

“I want to run naked in the rain, but I think it would be better if I went to Rodeo Rio’s tonight,” she said. “Will you go with me?”

Of course Rennie would go and very eagerly. “Wear that blue chambray dress Lillybeth gave you,” she said.

When Molly hung up, she thought that she would go by McMahon’s Dry Goods and get those red canvas sandals she’d seen in the window. They had long ribbons that tied up her ankle in a flamboyant, sexy way.