My Give a Damn's Busted (13 page)

A part of Larissa was glad for the intrusion because it stopped the questions and conversation about her mother. The other part wished they’d make excuses and leave so she could have Hank all alone that rainy day.

“I’ll make a pitcher of tea,” Linda said.

“I’ll check the pantry and see if there’s anything to stir up a dessert,” Betty said.

Janice went to the cabinet and took down a plastic bowl. “I’ll make a pan of biscuits to go with the soup. Bring out the flour and shortening while you are in the pantry, Betty.”

Hank raised an eyebrow.

Larissa smiled. “They are as much at home in my kitchen as in their own. Got to admit they’re a hell of a lot better at cooking.”

Janice patted her on the shoulder. “Aw, honey, when you get another thirty or thirty-five years on you, you’ll be better than us. Look how far you’ve come in the past six months. Lord, first time you tried to make a biscuit I figured we’d have to go up to the sheriff’s office and register the thing as a concealed weapon. If you’d have flung that thing at a man, it would have killed him dead on the spot.”

Hank stole glances at the three women. They were all somewhere between sixty and seventy. Was that why Larissa liked them so well? They’d become surrogate mothers.

Betty brought out flour, sugar, shortening, cinnamon, and everything else they needed and set it all on the cabinet. “Hey, how does snicker doodles made up in bars sound? That’s faster than waiting for cookies.”

Hank poured the boiling water off the potatoes and added milk. “I feel like a chef. Let’s put a fancy restaurant in downtown Mingus. Anyone know of a place I could buy?”

“I own a chunk of what used to be downtown Mingus but not even Hayes Radner who thinks he’s God could buy it from me. And honey, I’m too damned old to be working in a restaurant,” Linda said as she mixed butter and sugar together. “I’m close to retirement and when I can talk J. C. into it we’re going to travel.”

“Where to?” Hank wished he had a notebook with him. Larissa made mush of his brain most days and he had trouble at night remembering what he was supposed to put on the list for the investigators to check out.

“I haven’t decided. If I leave it up to J. C. it’ll be to Galveston for a night and maybe a day and then drive back home so fast that he won’t even stop for a dollar burger and a pee break. He doesn’t like to be away from his bed or his remote. I had to keep him liquored up in Vegas to be able to stay there a week and there were dancing girls and roulette wheels. That should tell you how much traveling we’ll really do but it’s a nice dream.” She laughed.

“You should see the exotic places like France and Italy. Maybe England or even Sweden,” he said slyly. “How about you, Betty? You want to travel farther than Galveston?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want to leave Mingus. Elmer is thinking that we ought to sell out and move to be closer to the kids but he’s going to be sleeping with one mad she-coon if he does. Hell, he might be sleeping with his old coon dog if he sells my house. I’m not leaving Mingus. This is home and I’m happy here. I love the whole bunch of them but if I lived close they’d drive me stark raving mad. If he wants to go worry with them, then power to him. He can go by himself and I’ll stay right here. ”

Janice threw up her flour covered hands. “Don’t look at me. Frank wouldn’t sell his chunk of dirt if God wanted to buy it for a new church house. Besides, I wouldn’t know what in the hell I’d do without my friends. I’d be lost and miserable. If Elmer gets a wild hair up his ass, you can live with me, Betty. Hayes Radner might as well scratch his ass with a length of barbed wire as come around wanting our place.”

He didn’t need to remember any of the conversation. If the rest of Mingus felt the same way there would never be an amusement park there. The Radner Corporation would have to move on down the highway and find another piece of property.

“Hank brought a movie to watch when we finish our mid-afternoon brunch,” Larissa said.

“You changing the subject. Lord, girl, you’re the one who’s been on the soapbox and preached the hardest about this thing. I figured you’d throw them onions down and begin to oratin’ like a holiness preacher on the last night of a revival,” Linda said.

“I’m just tired of it. I want to eat good soup, scarf down about six of those biscuits and some cookies, and watch a funny movie. I’ll be glad when it’s over. I’m not selling. You three aren’t. We’ll hope the rest of Mingus doesn’t. But with what we all own, he’d be getting only a little portion of what he needs and wants. So he might as well cut off a piece of barbed wire and bare his butt.”

Betty giggled. “What movie you got? That new one with Sandra Bullock?”

“Hank’s brought in
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
. Y’all ever seen it?” Larissa asked.

Janice clapped her hands and flour mushroomed over the table. “Love it. Haven’t seen it since it came out in the movie theater more than twenty years ago. Remember when we left the husbands at home and went down to Stephenville to see it?”

“I would never forget that movie,” Betty said. “I came home and thought about turning one of my empty buildings into a whorehouse. Figured we were far enough from Palo Pinto and the sheriff that I could get away with it for a while.”

“Why didn’t you?” Larissa asked.

“Figured Elmer would spend all my profit on the hookers and then I’d have to kill him and spend the rest of my life in prison. Besides, the sheriff up in Palo Pinto wasn’t nearly as good lookin’ as Burt. Hey, why don’t you put in a chicken ranch and Hank can run for sheriff. Can you sing like Dolly?”

Larissa shook her head. “Not me. My singing turns the hot water cold in the shower.”

Hank chuckled at the thought of running for sheriff of Palo Pinto County. Somehow he couldn’t picture himself in that role even though in another lifetime he could easily see Larissa running an old-time brothel.

“I’m ready for the onions so I can brown them in the bacon drippings,” he said.

She carried them across the room in a small bowl and handed them to him, their hungry eyes locking in the foot of space separating them. Hank’s conscience drove a railroad spike through his heart. He could not make love with Larissa again, not until after the town meeting. How could he live with himself?

After the meeting, she’d never speak to him again. That brought on pain worse than his conscience inflicted. How had he fallen for the woman? He’d come to the ranch with one stone in his hand to kill two birds. He’d spend a month with his father away from three-piece suits and high-dollar deals. He’d sip a beer in the evenings on the front porch, enjoy Oma’s spoiling, and all those things that drew him back to an easier way of life year after year. And he’d also do a little undercover work for the firm if he could get a foot inside the door with Larissa Morley.

“Get a room,” Linda giggled.

Larissa blinked and laughed with her. “Hard not to stare at something that looks like Hank, ain’t it?”

“Darlin’ if I was thirty years younger I’d do more than stare,” Betty said.

Hank blushed.

Larissa laughed harder.

The biscuits and cookies went into the oven at the same time. When the soup was finished they were ready to serve right along with it. Larissa sliced Colby cheese and added a few sweet pickles to a saucer for a relish plate and Linda set the table. Hank drug an extra straight back chair from the living room and all five of them crowded around the small table. He felt like Judas at the last supper. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he dug out the change in his pocket that there wouldn’t be thirty pieces of silver.

“So how long you stayin’ up at your dad’s ranch and what do you do in Dallas? Damn this is good. I’ve got to write off the recipe before we leave. Elmer will love it. I might make a pot full for supper. Hand me one of those biscuits, Linda,” Betty said.

Larissa looked at Hank, suddenly realizing she didn’t know much of anything about what he did in Dallas. “What do you do in the big city? I bet you don’t wear cowboy boots and western cut suits.”

Hank bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing. “No, I wear three-piece suits and dress shoes. I work in a big firm that diversified years ago into many areas. I have a doctorate degree in business finance.”

“Well, Dr. Wells, it’s hard for me to picture you all decked out like that,” Larissa said.

“It’s harder to picture myself as sheriff of Palo Pinto County,” he said, trying to change the subject.

“A doctorate degree, huh? Wait ’til I tell J. C. that Larissa’s got a fancy executive scraping her house and making potato soup in her kitchen. He won’t believe a word of it,” Linda said. “Pass me the cheese, Betty.”

“When I come to Palo Pinto, I’m a cowboy just like my dad,” Hank said.

“Well, it’ll make a hell of a good story,” Linda said.

When they finished the mid-afternoon lunch, Betty cut and stacked snicker doodles onto a platter while the rest of the crew put leftovers away and washed the dishes. She set them on a foldout tray in the living room so they could nibble while they watched the movie. The clock said it was five minutes past two. The movie would be over by four and she’d easily have time to make a pot of that delicious soup for supper.

“Everyone get a comfortable seat and we’ll put the movie in.” Larissa wiped her hands dry on a terry dish towel.

Linda claimed the rocking chair. Betty and Linda sat on the sofa. That left the loveseat for Larissa and Hank.

Betty ran a hand over the dark green micro-fiber couch arm. “I still can’t believe you found these two pieces at a garage sale. They’re practically brand new.”

“It’s a good story so I’ll tell it while Hank gets the movie ready. They came from Abilene and I spent almost as much on the U-Haul truck to get them up here as I did the furniture. It was an estate sale and a husband and wife team was getting rid of everything. It was his grandmother’s stuff and he’d made the stupid mistake of telling his wife about an affair that morning. I made a ridiculous offer for these two pieces plus the rocking chair and she sold them to me for fifty dollars,” she said.

“Vengeance was hers that day,” Linda said.

“Yep, it was and he couldn’t say a word. I lost out on a gorgeous lamp but he made that sale and it went for five times what I paid for the furniture.”

“You ladies ready?” Hank asked.

They all nodded and he pushed the button on the remote control. The next two hours the rain came down in buckets and they watched the madam of the Chicken Ranch, Miss Mona, and her sheriff boyfriend try to save her brothel from a TV muckraker. Hank did not see himself as the sheriff but took the place of the muckraker. The Chicken Ranch was a symbol of Mingus, Texas. Miss Mona, of course, was Larissa. When the story ended he made an excuse, left the movie in the DVD player, and headed north with “what ifs” playing in his mind the whole way home.

On Tuesday it rained.

Larissa waited for Hank to call or come by but he didn’t. She rationalized that it might not be raining in the northern part of the county. He and his dad only had a few more days before he went back to Dallas.

On Wednesday it cleared off.

Hank called to tell her that he wouldn’t be by that day either because the house would still be wet, making it impossible to scrape or paint.

“So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked.

“At noon. We got to get the rest of that place scraped and painted so it’ll be done before I leave,” he said.

“Which is when?”

“Right after the meeting on Saturday. I promised I’d be back in the Dallas office by Monday morning. I’m flying to Paris on Tuesday and I need to get everything together,” he said.

“Aha, the cowboy turns professor. That sounds like a good plot for a thick romance book,” she said. “Want some romance before we start scraping?”

“I reckon if we’re going to get this house painted turquoise before I leave then we’d best get busy,” he drawled. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Will you be cooking at the Smokehouse for us?”

“Not tomorrow. I’ve got a surprise,” she said.

It was evident from the minute he showed up the next day that something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her finger on it but her gut said that something had changed drastically in his life. Had she done something to offend him the day they had dinner with the ladies?

“So tell me, are you tired of the ranch and ready to get back into the fast life?” she asked when they’d finished scraping in the middle of the afternoon.

“Honestly?” he asked.

“Is there any other answer? We’ve joked. We’ve made love but we are friends, Hank. What’s on your mind? What happened since I saw you last other than rain?”

“Always before I’ve been so ready to go back to my friends, my condo, and my lifestyle in Dallas. This year I’m not. My dad is getting older and slower. I feel like I’m needed on the ranch more than in the office,” he said.

“So stay,” she said. “Surprise is that we are having dinner today over at Linda’s place. She made pot roast and invited us to come over and eat leftovers. They all had hairdo appointments in Abilene but I know where the key is. We just have to heat up a plate in the microwave. She even made pecan pie.”

“That sounds wonderful.” He smiled but it did not reach his eyes.

Linda’s house was close enough that they walked. Twice his hand brushed hers and he made an excuse to distance himself from her. Both times she wondered if he was battling a difficult life decision or if he was sorry about their skinny-dipping that Sunday.

Larissa turned over a rock in the flower bed and brought up a key. The house still smelled like roast and yeast bread and she was starving. “You really should put in a café with these women, Hank. You’d run the Smokestack some serious competition.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that in three days none of them would even be speaking to him, much less wanting to go into business with him. She helped her plate and stuck it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. He’d barely gotten his loaded when she pulled hers out and carried it to the table.

“Go on and eat. You don’t have to wait for me. I ate breakfast. You probably had a cup of coffee and a cookie,” he said.

“It was a chunk of leftover snicker doodle dipped in coffee.” She cut a piece of roast and moaned when she put it in her mouth. “This is soooo good.”

He removed his plate from the microwave and joined her. He’d worked up an appetite in spite of the conflicting emotions and the roast was seasoned just right. Linda could easily run a café.

“Are we going to start painting today?” he asked.

“I’ve got more than three hours before I have to take a shower and go to the Honky Tonk. I’m anxious to get started. Way I figure it is with both of us working we can get a lot done in three hours. The house isn’t very big. We should have it done by quittin’ time on Friday if we keep after it. Want to start earlier tomorrow? I’ll give up some sleep to get it finished before you leave.”

He buttered a hot roll. “I’ll be here at nine.”

“I’ll be up and ready then. Are you going to miss me when you go back to Dallas?” She held her breath waiting on the answer.

He looked across the table and his eyes went all soft and dreamy like they’d been on Sunday when they were making love. “I’ll always miss you, Larissa. This has been an incredible month. I’m glad that crazy deer introduced us.”

She smiled.

He didn’t ask her if she’d miss him. He already knew the answer. Once the cat was out of the bag she’d never want to set eyes on him again.

***

“I cannot believe you are really going to paint this house turquoise. I thought you were joking with me like you do all the time,” Hank snarled when he opened the first can of paint.

“I told you I love the islands. If I hadn’t found myself in Mingus I might have gone back there. I love the bright colors, the siestas, and the laid-back lifestyle.”

“How long were you there?” He remembered her talking about the islands before and he’d brushed it off as fantasy.

“Six months. In a turquoise house with hot pink trim. It was about this size only it did not have air conditioning. It was right on the beach though. Want to go there with me sometime?” she asked.

“Just tell me what time to meet you at the airport. We’ll have to get a red-eye on Sunday morning and fly back on Monday.” He slapped the first brush load onto the siding and grinned. The Chicken Ranch didn’t have a thing on Larissa Morley.

“I’ve got Sharlene helping me now. I could manage a long weekend.”

“Tell you what, you give me a couple of weeks back at the Dallas grindstone and call me anytime you want. I bet I can get away for any long weekend that you can,” he said.

She smiled brightly. He wasn’t upset with her after all.

She started painting. “Will we go skinny-dippin’ in the saltwater?”

He kept his eyes on the bright colored paint and didn’t look at her. “If you want to skinny-dip, we’ll hang our clothes on the bushes and dive right in.”

“Gawd Almighty, what are you doing?” Amos parked his motorcycle in the driveway and shook his head.

Hank was glad for the distraction. He’d been amazed that Amos hadn’t recognized him and had been nervous as hell around him those first few times he’d been in the Honky Tonk. But lately he’d begun to fit into the Hank Wells cowboy skin better and better.

“I know. It looks like shit, don’t it?” Hank said.

“That’s enough from both of you. When it’s all done it’ll be beautiful. Hell, everyone in Mingus might be painting their houses to look like Bahama homes,” she said. “Beer is in the fridge if you are thirsty.”

“Thirsty, hell! I need a dose of Pepto after looking at that color. I cannot believe you went to all the trouble to scrape the old paint off if you were going to put that shit on your house,” Amos said.

“That’s what I told her,” Hank said.

“Looks like I’m outnumbered today but you’ll both rue the day you made fun of my pretty house,” she said.

Amos grinned. “I’m thirsty enough to shut up right now. Has Linda and the ladies seen this?”

Larissa shook her head. “I’m surprising them.”

“You sure are, darlin’.” Hank laughed.