She's Gotta Be Mine (45 page)

“Fine,” she lied, hiding once more behind her closed lids. Her head still ached.

In those few moments with Warren, she knew she could have said the word and they’d have returned to their old life. But you couldn’t regain the past, whether it had been twenty years or three months.

Warren had left her searching for answers. He had yet to find them. She had yet to find her own. She only knew she didn’t want to be lonely anymore. If you were with a man, you darn well better not be lonely. Being by yourself was better.

She wondered if Nick could ease the loneliness. If he’d want to. The fear she’d experienced in
Jimbo’s
lodge lingered. What would she have done if she’d lost him? It didn’t seem possible that she could feel this way about a man she’d met only a few days ago.

“Did he beg your forgiveness and ask you to go back to San Francisco?”

A tightrope of tension stretched between them. She felt Nick’s eyes on her and seethed with the need to ask if he wanted her to stay here.

“It’s where you belong,” he said, slowly, as if searching for every word. “You were happy before all this shit went down.”

She hadn’t been happy in a long, long time.

She turned then, and looked at him. Nick faced the faded head-high wood fence as he spoke. “He’s probably regretting his midlife crisis.”

“It wasn’t a midlife crisis. He’s always been this way.” She hoped Warren could change that, but she wasn’t so sure.

Nick wrapped the fingers of one hand around the wheel. His knuckles stretched, whitened, then he eased his grip and stroked the leather cover.

Bobbie was suddenly sick to death of the little white lies she told everyone to make them feel comfortable, especially the ones she’d told herself. She was tired of choosing each word to keep the peace, making decisions based on what others wanted her to do. She’d left the biggest thing out of her confession to Nick. If Warren hadn’t left her, she would have gone on trying to make him want her until the day she died. Because starting over, possibly failing at anything, or everything, terrified her.
That
, not Warren, was the reason she’d never had children. That’s why she would have go on with her life the way it was if Warren had never found Cookie. It was easier to stick with what she had, what she knew. Familiarity was safety, even if she’d been drowning in loneliness.

She hated that weak woman. Roberta. What she craved was Bobbie, the woman who stood up in The Hair Ball and told the truth no one wanted to hear. The woman who wouldn’t tread lightly with Nick.

She sat up, her head swimming with the movement.
Swallow it, I’m busy
. The thought gave her courage. “I don’t want to go back to Warren. I don’t want to be an accountant. I’m staying here. In Cottonmouth. I belong
here
.”

Nick rubbed his hands on his pant legs.

“I’m going to open a coffee shop, like Starbucks, but better.” The idea had always been there, but fear stood in her way. Now she let her dreams blossom. “Mine will be different. I’m going to rent out classic movies, too, just classics, so everyone can enjoy them the way I do. And I’ve got all sorts of ideas for how everyone in Cottonmouth can steal back all the business from that darn old
minimall
. We’ll make Cottonmouth special again, with a hometown feel those big chains can’t offer.”

Her excitement mounted, and the nausea receded.

She stuck her neck out further. “And you
wanna
know something else?” She didn’t care if he didn’t, she’d tell him anyway. “I belong with you.”

“I...” His profile rigid, he put both hands on the wheel this time. “I was going to remind you that you’ve only known me a week.” He laid his head on his hands and looked at her. “But fuck the week. I know what I want. I knew it when I got that note and thought you were going to die. You belong with me.”

“What about Mary Alice?”

“Who?” His eyes dropped. He knew exactly who.

Bobbie’s stomach plunged. But she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut about it. She couldn’t, not after Warren and Cookie. Not after spending fifteen years feeling like she was treading on burning coals, hopping around Warren’s feelings as if they had the power to scorch her soles or her very soul.

“You were in love with her in high school.”

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes. “
That
Mary Alice. I wasn’t in love with her. I had a crush on her. That’s a long time ago.”

“I shouldn’t have to remind you that Cookie was a long time ago, too. But that didn’t matter to Warren.”

“You’re right.” His gaze caressed her face. “I’m sorry. For me, it
was
a long time ago. And it did end.”

“Did you get her pregnant and make her have an abortion?” She held her breath.

He let his breath out with a whoosh. “You’re the only one I’ll answer that question for. No, I didn’t get her pregnant. I don’t know who got her pregnant. At the time, I thought it was
Brax
. But twenty years have shown me I was probably wrong about that. She wanted to get an abortion. I gave her the money. I didn’t have any right to tell her she shouldn’t do it. So I went with her.”

“But everyone found out anyway. And they thought it was you. Why didn’t you tell them?”

“If I’d made it clear I wasn’t the one, her parents never would have left her alone about who the father was. It was just easier for her that way. And I didn’t care what they thought.”

But he had cared. And that had been the beginning of his fuck-you attitude that
Brax
talked about. He’d wanted them to believe he wouldn’t have done that to Mary Alice.

But no one had.

She cupped his chin. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Warren all over again.”

God, he actually understood. “I don’t want to live with ghosts anymore.”

He turned his lips into her hand and kissed her palm. “No ghosts, I swear.”

She wriggled across the seat, leaned over the gear shift. “Do you really think it’s possible to fall in love in a week?”

“Yeah. I do.” He stroked a hand down her cheek to the crook of her neck and let it rest there. “I have never felt this way about any other woman. Tonight, I would have done anything to save you. And when I thought I might not be able to—”

She put her fingertips to his lips, then closed her eyes until she’d stuffed down the memory of that gun poised to shoot him. “I don’t want to think about that anymore.”

His fingers twitched at her throat. “Marry me, Bobbie.”

She thought of all the things that stood in the way. Not the least of which was a healthy dose of fear about making a mistake. Again. She stuffed the fear down, too, and simply enumerated the problems. She refused to ignore them this time.

“I think I’m past the stage of wanting to have children.”

Nick caressed her shoulder. “I’d probably end up raising serial killers, so it’s better that way.”

“I’m forty.”

“I like older women.”

“I’m not divorced yet.”

“You will be.” The corner of his mouth rose with a surety she knew he hadn’t felt until that moment. “Any more objections?”

She’d hit all the highlights, though there must be a million more. All of them fear-based. Roberta Jones Spivey had made all her life decisions based on fear. And they hadn’t turned out worth a darn. Why not, just this once, make a decision based on gut instinct?

Her gut said that Nick would never leave her lonely.

“Jump, Bobbie. I’ll catch you, I promise.”

She let the lip she’d sucked between her teeth plop out.
Take a chance. Stop playing it safe.

“All right,” she whispered, “I’ll jump.”

Then she clamored over the gear shift, squeezed past the steering wheel into his lap, and sealed her fate with a kiss.

“So,” she said, lips to lips, “now that you’ve asked me to marry you, can I see your paintings?” Maybe someday she’d tell him she’d already sneaked a peek.

He chuckled against her mouth. “Don’t you want to watch
Buffy
?”

“No.” She nibbled his bottom lip.

He grinned and pulled back to look down at her. “How about your favorite movie,
Laura
?”

She punched his arm lightly. “No.”

“All right. You can see the paintings. But the price is your posing for the next one.”

She tilted her head, a little thrill racing up her spine. “With or without clothes?”

He merely raised one adorably devilish eyebrow.

Epilogue

Across the town square, Mayor Wylie Meade wound through the crowd of festival-goers, his large frame tucked into an extraordinarily flexible set of lederhosen. A long feather bobbed on the hat perched atop his head.

In the center of the square, on a makeshift stage, three accordion players squeezed out a rousing polka. On the portable dance floor in front, couples dressed in colorful national costumes flowed across the fake parquet, their heels adding another dimension to the music on stage.

Nick was sure he’d been dropped into a Lawrence
Welk
nightmare. Bobbie stuck her hand in his and pulled him past the row of food stands. Boiled cabbage perfumed the air, the spice of meatballs and other ethnic delights layered beneath it. Nick had never enjoyed a day more. He’d never enjoyed a woman more. And he’d go on enjoying this one for the rest of his life.

He knew he was grinning like a sap. A sap in love. He didn’t give a damn as long as she was his.

“Nick,” Mayor Meade called, fluttering his hand above a boisterous sea of unattended teenagers.

Nick tucked Bobbie beneath his arm, then wiped away a touch of mustard from her lip, the remains of her Polish hot dog. He kissed the tip of her nose. Life couldn’t be better. Even if Wylie Meade was bearing down on him like a runaway Mack truck.

“What do you suppose he wants?” Nick muttered.

“Rumor around town has it he wants to ask you a favor.” Bobbie stuck her ice cream cone in front of his mouth for a lick. Lord, the things that woman could do with ice-cream on her tongue.

“Christ, a favor?”

“Be nice,” she whispered as the mayor waddled closer, “and I’ll be very nice to you tonight.”

“If you put it like that.”
Happy
was not a word he’d used to describe his life, until Bobbie. The smile on his face was no phony.

Wylie Meade’s voice boomed out of him. “Nick, my boy, so glad you made it to our little festival.” The mayor slapped him on the back. After
Brax
revealed Cookie’s scheme, Nick had, somehow, become the man of the hour.

“Bobbie wouldn’t let me miss it. She’s taking all the credit for the magnificent decorations.” Nick let his gaze roam the gay square. Three-dimensional cardboard accordions and facsimiles of Lawrence
Welk
hung from strings anchored in the surrounding trees. Streamers of gold and green flapped in the warm June breeze. Next week they would come down to make way for the July Fourth parade, but for now, Bobbie beamed.

“She’s done a bang-up job, stepping in after...the Cookie Calamity.”

Nick almost laughed, but erased the smile seconds short of disaster.

Wylie Meade was totally serious. “This town will forever be grateful to the two of you.”

Nick wasn’t completely sure why. He’d almost gotten the two of them killed.
Brax
was the one who saved the day. But he feigned a sheepish grin. “Shucks, it was nothing, Mayor.”

Bobbie elbowed him in the ribs, then turned a magnificent smile on the mayor. “You had something you wanted to ask Nick?”

Wylie cleared his throat and puffed out his chest, only to exhale with a grunt as Eugenia Meade’s shriek cut across the music. “Wylie Meade, don’t you dare start without me.”

For one moment, the square fell silent, the only sound being Eugenia’s
stertorous
breathing as she picked up her skirts and careened across the tramped lawn.