Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) (16 page)

Richard gaped at me as though I’d suggested we steal a couple of axes and start hacking people to death. “The chainsaw work is on the schedule for Sunday,” he said once he regained his speech.

“I know, but some people might not like these things taking up thirty feet of sidewalk. People walk their dogs around here, you know?”

He scrunched up his face, frowning at me as if I’d suddenly gone off my rocker. Men give that look when they want women to feel foolish. I wasn’t happy to see that expression on Richard. One point off for Richard. Make that ten.

“What? We can’t vary from ‘the schedule’? What is it, set in stone?”
Like your jaw?
I wanted to add. He had that stubborn macho man thing going. It looked good on some men, but Richard wasn’t one of them.

“We could vary from the schedule if there was a good reason,” he said, “but there isn’t. Let’s just stick to it. I spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to do everything.”

Ten more points off for Richard. It didn’t look like he could dig himself out of this hole. The good thing was I wouldn’t have to feel guilty when I told him to get lost. I mean, honestly, who could live with a guy like this?

“Okay, but if I get a violation from the town for the bamboo on the sidewalk, you’re gonna pay the fine.”

He rolled his eyes—just slightly, but enough to piss me off further. My little voice was telling me not to let him get away with this, that I should call him on it or insist we do things my way. It was my property after all. I raced through the possible repercussions, one of them being that Richard might get mad and quit. Since I didn’t have a chainsaw to finish up the cutting, and I probably couldn’t start it if I did, that wouldn’t be a good thing.

I stabbed the ground with the pointy end of my bamboo stalk and stared at Richard through narrowed eyes. Maybe that was what he was going for. Maybe he didn’t like me, so he was trying to make me dislike
him
so I wouldn’t want to marry him. Of course, I already didn’t want to marry him, but he didn’t know that. I didn’t like thinking he was trying to trick me into disliking him by acting like an ass, though. But he
was
an ass, wasn’t he? So it wasn’t really a trick, was it?

It was all so confusing, the more so because I had sneaked into the house under the guise of a bathroom break and downed two shots of tequila. I would’ve preferred to bring out a beer, but Richard said alcohol and yard work didn’t mix. Why he thought that was a mystery. They were mixing just fine for me.

It was one more reason not to feel guilty about giving him the boot when this was over. No one could expect me to marry a man who drove me to drink, especially in secret.

B
y the time the weekend came, we were behind. That wasn’t good because yard trash was picked up only on Mondays. Richard didn’t seem worried. They didn’t pick up until late in the day, and he was taking Monday off so he could cut everything up. I couldn’t take Monday off because we had a board meeting at work. I really wanted to say
I told you so.
If he had strayed from the stupid schedule as I’d proposed, the bamboo stalks would be chopped up and ready to go.

When I left for work Monday morning, he was already there cutting away, but the pile stretched thirty feet down the sidewalk and spilled over both sides. He would wear himself out, but he deserved it.

When I pulled onto my street after work and saw all of the bamboo still there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The thirty-foot-long pieces had been cut in half, but that was it. A note taped precisely to the middle of my door said his chainsaw had broken.

What the hell? I punched his number into my cellphone so hard that I sprained my index finger. I got his voicemail.

Well, this was just freaking
fan
tastic. Now what was I supposed to do? Hurricane Flossie was brewing in the Atlantic and though the last report I’d checked said the storm was predicted to turn north and go through Bermuda, I didn’t believe it because goose bumps had raced all over my body as the meteorologist said it. My full-body goose bumps were never wrong.

I was in panic mode now, but I tried to calm myself. Surely Richard had thought of all this. Richard with the schedule and the timetable and everything just so. He would have a plan.

He damned well better have a plan.

Just in case he didn’t, I strained my brain for options. I made a mad dash down to Hank’s to see if I could borrow his chainsaw. As I recalled, it was gas-powered like Richard’s, which meant I wouldn’t be able to start it, but Richard would have to get his ass back here to help. Plus he’d have to take all the crap to the dump.

Hank wasn’t home. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him or his truck all week. I peered through the garage side-door window. No truck. I didn’t know anyone else with a chainsaw, and I didn’t have a number for Hank, so that took care of that.

I got on the phone and started calling stores. I didn’t know how much chainsaws cost, but I had about $500 left on my credit card that I could use. As it turned out, I didn’t have to make that decision. Stores were sold out.

In the middle of all this, Bryan Rossi called to make sure I would be safe during the hurricane. While he was asking, I wondered how he’d gotten my cellphone number, and then I remembered he had my medical file with my contact information. Then I wondered if my medical file said I’d worn a pink thong to my doctor’s appointment or if it said I had fungus on my foot or that I’d had sex with my son. Then I told myself to quit wondering.

I heard me say I’d be fine, that I was spending the hurricane with family. I lied because I didn’t want Bryan worrying about me. There was no way I would ask him for help with my problem, so the best thing to do was get him off the phone so I could get back to doing something about my situation.

I worried about it all night while I rummaged through file cabinets, drawers, closets, and boxes for flashlights, batteries, my weather radio, and anything else I might need during a hurricane. I went outside a couple of times to take another look, just in case the big pile of crap had magically disappeared.

“You’re gonna do something about this, aren’t you?”

Good old Mr. Pitt, a neighbor from the next street over, was walking his bulldog, Miser. There was something to be said for that old joke about people growing to look more and more like their pets as they aged. Both man and his best friend were short, squat, sturdy types with jowls that hung almost to the ground. The only difference between them was that Miser had a pleasant personality.

Mr. Pitt mistook my silence for confusion.

“You might as well put a missile launcher out here.”

“Huh?” It wasn’t that I didn’t get his drift. I was just too panicked to produce words.

“You can’t leave this stuff here. One swift gust will send it crashing through windows. I’m going to call the city and tell them to send someone out to get it.”

“No!” I said. The city wouldn’t send anyone to get it. They’d just send someone to give me a fine. “I
am
going to do something about it.” And I was. I just had to figure out what.

*****

At work the next day, I called around to see if anyone would come out and cut up the bamboo. I bit off my nails waiting for callbacks. The answers came dribbling in but they were all the same … sure, they would come and cut it—in a week or two.

In between taking calls, I left a ton of messages for Richard. I’d decided he’d have to make twenty trips to the dump with the smaller stuff, leaving only the long pieces of bamboo behind. First he’d have to come help me drag the long pieces off the top of the pile because, like an idiot, he’d left them there. I never heard back from Richard.

Wednesday I called around about renting trucks, wondering if companies even rented trucks that could haul something fifteen feet long. I didn’t think I could drive a truck that big, so it was probably just as well that no one called back.

Thursday I called in sick—sick with worry about how I would deal with the bamboo and other preparations for Hurricane Flossie. Flossie was a monster at Category 4 and I knew, I just knew, it was coming straight for us. My boss relieved my guilt by telling me the computer servers had been relocated offsite, the phone message had been changed to alert customers to the fact that we were in hurricane mode, and that no one should come into work until after Flossie passed.

I hung up and immediately called around looking for trucking services that would haul to the dump. That was when I learned I was out of options. The dumps were closed except to city trucks, which were picking up all the regulation yard trash they could get to in order to get it off the streets. That wouldn’t include mine. Mine wasn’t regulation.

I’d have to drag every last freaking piece of bamboo back into my woods. I couldn’t leave it sitting on the street and risk pummeling people and their property to bits, and there wasn’t any other place I could take it. I decided to do that in the morning. In the meantime, I pulled every important piece of furniture—like great-grandma’s hutch and my big screen TV—away from doors and windows.

Before I flopped into bed, I cleared the hall closet of all the junk I usually stored in there. Now it housed most of the necessities from my hurricane list plus my cellphone, a litter box, dry cat food, and water. I hadn’t actually put litter in the litter box; I’d only do that if I could catch Little Boy. At the last minute I’d also collected my Alphasmart, which ran on double A batteries, in case I could get in some writing, and one of my favorite historical romances. Though I’d read the romance too many times to count, the hero could get a woman through anything. If only I had my own hero with me …

Richard finally called, as I was trying to fall asleep while debating which I should tackle first in the morning—pounding the plywood over my windows or dragging the bamboo into the woods—only to say he had to get his own house ready for the hurricane and couldn’t help me with anything. Oh, and yeah, he’d asked his patent attorney friend about my case, and his friend said it would be a waste of money.

Hank still hadn’t shown up, and I figured he wouldn’t. He must have evacuated. No one would come back the day before a major hurricane hit. I thought briefly about Nicole’s husband, Steve, and Katherine’s husband, John, because I didn’t know how I would board up my windows by myself. I’d have to hold up the plywood and screw it in at the same time. But it was too late to ask either of my brothers-in-law for help, and honestly, I’d rather be dead.

I was on my own.

I
’ll help you and in return, you will help me,” said my neighbor, Alberto.

It was Friday morning and though we still weren’t sure where Flossie would make landfall, it didn’t appear to matter because the storm was gigantic. The entire state of Florida would take a beating. Still, I had a feeling Palmeroy would take the worst beating of all; my goose bumps said so.

I’d been moving all the loose, or almost loose, items from my yard into my garage: the reel for the watering hose, the extended gutters Hank and I had screwed onto the downspouts, the patio furniture, the gas grill. Next I carried out the plywood for the windows, one piece at a time. I had to carry them a piece at a time because they were too heavy to do it any other way.

I turned around slowly to face Alberto. “Help you how?” I stood a piece of plywood against the courtyard wall and crossed my arms over my chest, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

Oh, hell, who was I kidding? I was dying to know, especially now that his eyes had gone sexy, and his lips were parting as he stared at mine. That might have worked a few months ago. Come to think of it, it
had
worked a few months ago. He hadn’t even needed his eyes or lips; his voice over the phone had been enough, leaving me with the conviction that men with sexy accents should come with a warning label.

I’d been attracted to him from the moment we met, introduced by my neighbor, for whom he was dog-sitting. Alberto had been born in the Canary Islands and he had that Javiar Bardem thing going, that sexy voice and boyish grin. And he had the quickest wit I’d ever come across. Add that to the fact that I hadn’t had sex in a year and a half, hadn’t had good sex in four. It was all I could do to keep myself from jumping him in the movie theater when he traced his finger over the back of my hand. It was little wonder we ended up in bed after the show.

The sex was great. I thought about it all day. He called me the next night as I was getting ready for bed and said he couldn’t get me out of his mind. Said he’d been having a fantasy about me and asked if he could tell me about it. That voice again. My knees almost gave out right there. He only got halfway through his fantasy before I hung up. I donned my sexiest nightie, wrapped a long sweater around me, and ran right over.

We didn’t make it to the bedroom. We did it there on the living room floor. And then came the punch line. The instant it was over, as I was about to bask in the afterglow, he stood up and threw my clothes at me. As I was slapped in the face with my sweater, he said, “I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve got a big day tomorrow.” Then he turned and strutted toward his bedroom, disappearing into the darkness.

I remember very little after that. I think I mumbled something about having a big day myself. I was out of there before his door could hit me in the ass. I never took another call from him and believe me, he called plenty.

The only person I told was Sue, who totally got it. I may have acted like a whore, but I didn’t expect to be treated like one. Sue was just as outraged as I was. More so, maybe. The morning after I told her, Alberto was swearing around four flat tires, and I was enjoying my day. Good friends are worth their weight in gold.

And now he thought if he scratched my back, I would scratch his? Except that the scratch I needed was life and death help against a hurricane. It took a pretty small man to bargain with that.

I smiled sweetly. “You’re saying you’ll help me board up these windows if I … what? Help you board up yours?”

“I’ll help you board up your windows if you’ll spend the duration of the hurricane with me and my …
cousin.
” He waved in the direction of his house, and a stunning brunette who looked to be in her early twenties stepped off the stoop and waved back.

“
She’s
your cousin? What are you, kissing cousins?”

“She is a very, how do you say,
friendly
girl.”

“How you say it is
slut,
I believe.”

“Now, now, now. There is no reason for you to be jealous, Jane.”

Jealous, my ass. “You know what, can I just say ‘no, thanks’?”
And then slap you upside the head with a piece of plywood?

“You know you want to, Jane. Why don’t you for once just do what your heart tells you instead of what you think is right?”

Oh boy. If I did what my heart was telling me, I’d spend the rest of my life in a four by six cell, probably with a roomie named Big Bertha.

He leaned in. “I’ve been having a fantasy about you, Jane. Can I tell you about it?”

I drew myself up to my full height so I could look down on him. Since I was short, it didn’t work, and I had to tip back my head. “Sure, but why don’t you just skip ahead to the part where you throw my clothes in my face and tell me to get out!”

I stomped off and almost mowed Hank down.
Hank?
I bit my tongue to keep from crying out his name at the relief that swept through me. That relief was followed by a thrill. Hank was every inch the sexy cowboy in his blue jeans, boots, and hat, and the plain white T-shirt he was wearing was just snug enough to show off his muscled chest. His bright smile lit up his face—and mine, I was pretty sure.

He nodded toward Alberto, who was making his way back to his
cousin
with a walk that was somewhere between a stroll and a strut. “Why didn’t you go after
him
for a husband? He’s obviously interested in you.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s interested all right. We just don’t share the same interests.”

“Such as?”

“Porn. Only one of us is interested in porn.”

“And which one would that be?”

“Ha, ha,” I said.

Hank was still looking at me, waiting for an answer, so I gave him one, the true one. “Believe me, he’s not husband material. He came to tell me he’d help me board up my windows if I joined him and his shapely young
cousin
for a threesome. Otherwise, I can put the plywood on all by myself. Chivalrous of him, wouldn’t you say?”

Hank took another look—a long one—at Alberto, a muscle twitching in his jaw, which now seemed to be square and as hard as marble. Men. Sometimes that muscle-twitching jaw thing happened when they were being asses. Sometimes it happened when they were being sexy. This time was one of the latter.

“Where’s Richard?” he asked when he finally took his eyes off Alberto.

“He has his own house to secure, so he can’t help me with mine. Helping with my house isn’t really part of the deal.”

“I’ll help,” Hank said. “I’ve been helpin’ a friend, and I promised to stay with her until the hurricane passes, but I’ve got some time before I gotta get back to her.”

Now, why did my heart sink at that news?

“Are you sure? I don’t want to screw up your plans.” I hoped he would say I wasn’t screwing up his plans. No, what I really hoped was that he would fill me in on exactly what those plans consisted of. But he didn’t.
Dang.
I wanted to know more about this girl.

“Yeah, I’m sure. No problem.” I knew he meant it. Hank wouldn’t say something he didn’t mean.

He made a quick call on his cellphone, moving away so I couldn’t hear. I felt a pang of guilt as I brought out my tools for hanging the plywood—obviously someone was waiting for him or he wouldn’t have felt the need to call.

I had plywood for two sides of the house: the eastern and northern sides, the two that could take a direct wind hit before the storm weakened over land. That didn’t mean the south and west sides didn’t need protection, but my west side only had one window, and the south was buffeted by the woods and my fence. Besides, a girl can only do so much. Someday I hoped to have hurricane shutters all around, but until then …

We had only just set the numbered pieces below each window when a huge diesel truck pulled into my driveway. The driver’s door opened, and a hulking guy stepped out, seemingly without having to lower himself to the pavement. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch. He had smooth, very dark brown skin, a bald head, and biceps like tree trunks.

“My friend Keith,” Hank said to me. “I called and asked him to stop by for a spell.”

I said nothing, but I wondered. Hank had said he didn’t know anyone but me, so who was the girl he was spending time with and how did he know Keith? Maybe Hank was one of those informants who’d had their identities changed, and he wasn’t allowed to tell people like me the truth about his friends.

Introductions were made; Keith held onto my hand for a few extra seconds. “I feel as though I already know you, Jane,” he said with a smile as big as everything else about him.

“It’s not all true,” I said. “Some of it, maybe, but not all. I wasn’t topless, for one thing. Just the dancers were. I was a waitress. I don’t even know how to dance.”

Keith’s confused gaze switched to Hank and then back to me. If Hank hadn’t started laughing, I’d have continued jabbering until I made a fool of myself. Or maybe I already had.

“He doesn’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Jane. He just knows you through me. What I said. And I didn’t say one word about you being topless.”

“Oh.”

“It sounds like an interesting story though,” Keith said. “I’d like to hear it sometime.”

He chuckled and nodded at Hank. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a nod of approval. Hank lowered his eyes and brought them back up. The cowboy’s nod. Now what did
that
mean?

“Keith’s gonna help me put up the plywood. Whether you’re holding the plywood or using the hammer drill, it takes strength. He’s got fifty times yours, so you can go ahead and work on other preparations. This will only take us thirty minutes.”

Hank smiled and though Keith was standing right there, it seemed as though his smile was just for me. I dragged my eyes away and scuttled to the pile of crap.

By the time they were finished putting up the plywood, I had separated the bamboo and was dragging the first long piece into the woods. When Hank asked what I was doing, I explained. He and Keith conferred for a minute and then Keith offered to help, saying that if he had known earlier in the week, he could have cut the stalks up and taken them to the dump. But it was too late now, which I already knew. He told Hank to go on to his friend’s house and he would finish up with me. I felt a pang of regret when Hank left, but my gratitude far outweighed it.

*****

“Did you hear that?” I asked Keith. He was shoving the last piece of bamboo into a thicket of palmetto bushes so dense that I feared we’d never get it out again.

“There,” I said. “Did you hear
that?
”

Keith cocked his head to one side. “I heard something, but what was it?”

I didn’t know. It was a mix between whining and crying, but so faint I couldn’t make it out. As we stood waiting for the sound to repeat, Little Boy came cozying up and rubbed against my leg. He wasn’t usually so affectionate, and I wondered if he was afraid. The winds had been steadily building, and there was only an hour or two before dusk. Maybe this was a night Little Boy wouldn’t mind staying inside, and he was trying to tell me so.

The sound came again, in between the guttural caw of a crow and the shrill voice of a hunting hawk. Little Boy stood up on his hind legs and tapped my hand with his paw.

Keith gawked. “I’ve never seen a cat do that. It’s as though he’s trying to take your hand.”

Yeah, it seemed a little strange, but I didn’t have much experience with cats, so who could say for sure? Little Boy repeated his antics, then took off trotting toward an old shed that had fallen half apart during the winds from Hurricane Cindy. When he got to the door of the shed, he stopped and turned around to give me a look.

“I think he wants you to follow him,” Keith said. I thought so too, so I did, though I wasn’t anxious to get close to the shed. Snakes were known to live in places like that. At least I had on boots.

I heard that strange whining again, only this time my brain told me it sounded like kittens. Uh-oh. Keith had figured it out too, evidently, because he was shaking his head. He was braver than I was, probably because his feet were big enough to crush a snake to death, so he pushed on the shed’s door, which was half open already. I stepped forward when I saw him smile. Sure enough, there was a cat standing over three tiny kittens, which were evidently crying because they couldn’t reach Mama. The way Little Boy was prancing around, I assumed the kittens were his. I should have taken him to the vet. Like a typical male, he was cavorting with every female he could get his paws on, with no care to the consequences of his rakish behavior. He was getting fixed as soon as the hurricane passed, no ifs, ands, or buts.

“Now what?” asked Keith.

“Well, I can’t leave them here. This shed will be blown to smithereens.” I took another step forward, and the mother cat, who had lain back down to nurse her kitties, growled. Oh dear.

I took another step anyway, and she got up, shaking the kittens off. They mewed, waving their tiny legs and bobbing their heads, trying to catch hold of her again. This was no good. I didn’t want to scare the mother off; I didn’t have anything to feed kittens with. I scooted back, not knowing what to do.

The mother cat did though. She picked up a kitten and carried it to me, dropping the squirming gray and white ball at my feet. Keith stared, dumbfounded, then pulled his shirt off over his head and turned it inside out.

“Here,” he said, handing it to me. “You can hold them in this.”

For a second I couldn’t come up with two words to string together, thanks to the sight of Keith’s half-naked body. There was more muscle showing than I’d ever seen on one guy, and he was totally hair-free. I wondered if he was a professional body-builder because I couldn’t imagine any normal man with muscles like that. A six-pack didn’t begin to describe what I was looking at.

When he realized my predicament he shrugged, which only served to send a ripple through a plethora of muscles, including a set of enormous pecs that put my rack to shame. “I am what I am,” he said with a sheepish grin.