Just Let Go...

Even Jeff, perfect, perfect Jeff, couldn’t affect her the way a mere boy had. There were prickles on her arms again, and furiously she rubbed at them until they disappeared because she was too smart to get stupid again.

Before she confronted Delores, she double-checked her reflection in the glass doors, making sure the hair was in place, making sure the mascara looked fabulous, making sure that Gillian was still the most well-put-together female in three counties. When she was satisfied with the face looking back at her, she pulled open the doors and strolled inside. Casual. Easy. Confident.

“Didi! Look at you,” she purred in her best-friends-forever voice. “I love what you’ve done with your hair. Something new?”

Delores Hancock was twenty-seven, the same age as Gillian, and had a husband of ten years, two kids and had presided over the front desk at the Spotlight Inn since her great-uncle Hadley had died near eight years back. Her hair was glossy black, coordinating nicely with the snapping dark eyes that were particularly pretty when she wore a little extra liner.

Unlike Gillian, who knew the value of a wide smile—fake or otherwise—Delores could never mask her appreciation of a compliment—fake or otherwise—and some of the sharpness faded from her eyes.

“Thank you for noticing. I had it blown out yesterday, but Bobby hadn’t said a word.”

Gillian’s smile relaxed a bit. “Men don’t care about good hair, or dirty dishes. All they want is a piece of tail and a cold beer on Sundays. You can’t hold him responsible for something that’s not part of his DNA.”

“God’s truth, honey,” Delores agreed, but then shot her a smile that was a little too sugary. Joelle was right. Delores was going to hate her for the rest of her life.

Abandoning the token attempt at an olive branch, Gillian leaned in on the counter, one shoulder cocked low. It was a move that she’d seen in a lot of old Westerns, and Gillian used it whenever she needed to act rugged. “So tell me about those kids. I nosed around outside, but didn’t see any sign of them, broken-egg yolks or splattered cars.”

“I cleaned it all up,” Delores answered quickly. A little too quickly.

“Really? And none of the irate drivers stuck around?”

“Would you stick around this place?” Delores asked, nodding toward the wide stretch of highway and the exit sign that was still spray painted over with ODESSA-PERMIAN SUCKS, exactly as it had been since before Gillian was born.

“Got a point. Did you get a look at the kids involved?”

“No. The sun was right there in my eyes. I think they were wearing T-shirts, jeans and UT ball caps.”

Which described 99.7 percent of the juveniles in most of the state. “Sounds like we got us a mystery,” murmured Gillian, not wanting to call Delores a liar, which wouldn’t further what could turn into a beautiful friendship.

Delores stared at the door, a cat-and-the-canary smile on her face, and Gillian froze because the prickles had returned. “My, my, my…” said Delores softly.

Gillian instantly pushed her glasses down over her eyes and forced herself to move away from the security of the counter. “I’ll get back with you about those pesky kids.”

Slowly she moved toward the door, her face expressionless, pretending to ignore the man who had just walked in with his easy way and knowing smile.

Three more steps and then she would be past him.

Two.

One.

At last the door was directly in front of her, and she pushed at it with unsteady hands. There was no one to notice the slight tremors…except for him.

One steady hand beat her to it, tanned skin, long fingers, conspicuously clean nails. “Thank you,” she told him, eyes straight ahead, ignoring the faint whiff of some expensive cologne.

“You shouldn’t have cut your hair,” he answered in a low voice meant for her ears alone. The husky sound created a long-forgotten spark, a flash of summer lightning that she thought she’d buried for good.

Gillian didn’t bother to reply; wasn’t sure if she could. Her heart was hammering too loud in her chest. Head high, she strode toward the sheriff’s cruiser, and a mere four lifetimes later she had recovered her composure. With a hard foot on the accelerator, she gunned the engine, and was driving away.

Away from Delores, away from the Spotlight Inn and away from the man who had grown up to be a long, hot mess of temptation. But Gillian was stronger than that.

If this town wanted entertainment, then by God, they were going to have to spring for HBO.

AUSTEN HART HAD spent the last ten years dreaming of Gillian Wanamaker. Over that long a span, a man could create elaborate ideals of a woman—or fantasies, if he wanted to call a spade a spade. In his mind, her mouth had always been wide, perfectly glossed with rosebud pink. Her blond hair had always fallen in long, silky rolls down her back. In his mind, everything about her had always been mouth-watering perfection.

Unfortunately, Austen had never been much of a perfectionist. “Good enough” had served him well, and sometimes “not a chance in hell” seemed most appropriate. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming. He quit staring at the glass door and told himself, “Not a chance in hell.”

Today she seemed different. Harder in a lot of ways, although that could be the gun at her hip.

Damn. That was one career he would have never expected. Sheriff, he thought, remembering the badge. There were men who thought a woman packing heat was sexy. Austen had a healthy respect for the power of a gun. He’d been on the wrong end of one way too many times to be turned on, but Gillian… Mmm-mmm.

The clerk coughed to clear her throat, and Austen smiled automatically.

Normally, Austen didn’t mind being the object of attention. Hell, these days, he sought it out. Life of the party. Seeker of the limelight. Man of the hour.

Normally, he didn’t mind knowing that everyone was watching, but not in this town. Everyone here lived and died by their family, and Austen had always wanted that, too. Family, connections, solidity. But for the Harts? Ha. That was a laugh.

His older brother, Tyler, had left as soon as he could. Their mother had disappeared—no, she had deserted them, he corrected. He had a sister, Brooke—a sister he’d never known until recently and wasn’t sure he wanted to. No, the Harts should have been a family, but somehow, it’d gotten all screwed up. Gee, thanks, Frank.

When Tyler had gotten a full scholarship to college—two-hundred long miles away in Houston—that meant all eyes in Tin Cup were watching Austen. They were waiting for him to follow in his father’s footsteps. To explode in a violent rage, or stash a few purloined dollars in his pocket, or yell obscenities at any female that walked by—just like Frank Hart used to do. Six to sixty, coed to grandmother, his father hadn’t been a discerning man.

Austen had never liked the eyes watching him, judging him. He didn’t have Tyler’s brains, Tyler’s ability to shut everything out. So Austen had done what he could; when that didn’t work, he ran, possibly committing a class C felony in the process—as rumored around Tin Cup, where folks liked to believe the worst of the Hart family. Once he’d gotten the hell out of town, the air was a little clearer, and eventually Austen had made a quasi-respectable name for himself in the state’s capital.

The receptionist at the desk was Delores Somebody, a girl who had flirted with him in high school. Most girls did at one time or another. It was a rite of passage: hurling spitballs at the principal, cheating on a math exam and screwing Austen Hart. Most adolescent males wouldn’t mind that part, would have actively encouraged it. Yes, Austen had actively encouraged it, but he had minded it, too. A Hart was late-night material, the 2:00 a.m. phone call on a Saturday night. Everybody knew it except for Gillian, who thought she had the power to change it all. Yeah, right.

“When are you checking out?” Delores asked, nodding to the small bag he had packed, her eyes still a little flirty.

“Tomorrow.” 9:30 a.m. to be exact. As soon as the papers were signed. After that, Austen would disappear from this town once again. He ran his fingers over the fresh daisies on the counter, simply because he could. Simply because there was no one to look at him sideways anymore, no one to follow him around in the stores.

“That was Gillian Wanamaker you passed on the way in.”

“No kidding?” he said, sliding his sunglasses into the suit pocket. “She’s changed.”

“Not so much. Still thinks she runs this town.”

Austen hid his smile. Knowing Gillian, she probably did. “I’ll grab my stuff and be out of your hair.” With a polite nod, he collected the room key and picked up his bag, heading for the privacy of his room.

Her laughter caught him from behind, and Austen forced himself to slow down, walk easy. “No bother,” she called out. “It’s been a slow day. You should hit the night life. Get a beer at Smitty’s. There’s a lot of people who would like to see you again.”

“Maybe,” he lied.

A few minutes later, he had kicked off his boots and taken a shower, scrubbing off the dust of the road. The room was a clean, serviceable yellow, with a king-sized bed, a wall-mounted TV and a wide variety of flyers that extolled the virtues of Tin Cup, Texas: a modern recreation of Texas past. After reading a few pages, Austen put the booklets back in their place. In the ten years since he’d been gone, they’d built a new bank, a library, four churches and a ball field.

Golly, gee willikers, Wally.

That had been the hardest thing about Tin Cup, the consistency. Feeling not so much like a tourist, Austen stretched on the bed, closing his eyes, because he didn’t care, he didn’t have to care. It was in the middle of all that not caring when his cell rang.

“Hey, honey. Missing me yet?”

Carolyn Carver was the governor’s oldest daughter, and as such had a high opinion of her own importance. As Austen was a state lobbyist, her opinion wasn’t too far off. The cell connection was rotten, so Austen moved to the window where the static cleared. “I just got here, just walked in the door. I think I’m going to kick up my feet, and watch the cow tipping from my window.”

West Texas wasn’t a land for the faint of heart. It was hot and brutal and flat, an endless landscape of scrubby oak trees, dotted with the oil pumping units, their metallic heads bobbing up and down, feeding off the earth.

“When you coming home?” Carolyn asked. He’d been seeing her off and on for almost a year, and managed their relationship carefully. Austen wasn’t going to get serious with Carolyn, and she knew that, but he wasn’t going to make her mad, either.

“Shelby can do one-fifty when pressed, but I’d better play it safe. You know these country cops and the speed traps.”

“You can tell them it’s a state emergency. Tell them that Carolyn Carver wants to get laid.”

He laughed aloud because he knew she expected him to. “You keep that thought, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Maggie Patterson called looking for you. Said she was hoping to catch you before you left. Did she call your cell?”

“No.”

“Well, she said you couldn’t do anything from out there, anyway.”

“What did she need?”

“Some kid in the after-school program got arrested, and you’ve been duly appointed to bail him out, or talk him out, or bust him out. I swear, if her husband wasn’t your boss…”

Austen frowned. There wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do remotely, but maybe… “I’ll give her a call. See what she’s got on her hands.”

“A hard knock in the head from a crew of gang-bangers who know how to hot-wire a car, that’s what she’s going to have on her hands if she’s not careful.”

Austen didn’t even flinch. “Your father’s tough on crime. It’ll look good on his campaign posters.”

Carolyn giggled because in her world she wouldn’t know how to hotwire a battery. But Austen did.

“There’s a new band playing at Antone’s tonight. Jack Haywood doesn’t want to go alone.”

“Jack’s an okay guy, but don’t let him make you pay for dinner. That boy doesn’t have any class at all.”

She laughed again, and he moved toward the bed, hearing the reception go spotty. “Listen, Carolyn, I’m having trouble with the lines out here. Gotta go,” he told her, and then hung up, letting himself breathe.

Once again, he sacked out on the bed, but the curtains were half-open, letting him see to the outside, letting him see exactly what nothingness was putting the sweat on his neck. Idiot, that’s what he was. He moved to the window, and pushed back the sheers, and gazed out on the land. His shoulders ached from the drive, and he rolled them back, slowing his pulse, embracing the calm.

Why did he let the ghost of Frank Hart get to him? Why did he let this town crawl under his skin? Because it was who he was.

He picked up his cell, called Maggie only to find out that L.T., one of the boys in the program, had gone for a joyride. Maggie’s afterschool program was her pride and joy, but criminal activities always put a damper on its fundraising, so Austen did what he always did and promised to clean up the mess. Quietly, of course, and then he called Captain Juarez of the Austin P.D. After promising that L.T. would attend one weekend of Youth Corps Training and then sweetening the deal with a few seats to the Longhorns’ home opener for the captain’s trouble, Austen called Maggie and let her know that L.T. had been sprung.

One more delinquent back on the street. In Austen’s expert opinion, sure, you could put lipstick on a pig, but no matter how much you tried, it’s still a pig, and before long, that pig is going to end up being cooked and served up for breakfast, alongside scrambled eggs and a hot cup of coffee.

The next moment, he heard a discreet tap on the door. There wasn’t room service at the Spotlight Inn, and he hoped to God it wasn’t the cops…

Unless it was Gillian.

Not a chance in hell, answer the damned door.

It was Delores, still wearing the same flirty smile, only now it looked apologetic, as well. “I know that I shouldn’t be here, but Gillian called to check up on things, which I know wasn’t the truth, but during the conversation, she let it slip that she was going to Smitty’s—not that she wasn’t being completely obvious because the girl doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body, and I almost didn’t tell you—”

Delores took a breath. “—but I decided I should, because, even though it’s not my place to poke my nose where it doesn’t belong, I thought, what if she’s there, and you’re not, and everybody thinks poorly of you because you’re not, and then I’d have to live with the guilt of my actions. In the end, I just couldn’t do it.”

Austen stared flatly, tempted to feign illness, maybe the ebola virus, but no. Sure, he was being played like a cheap violin, but he still wanted to go. He wanted to see Gillian again.

“I’ll think about it.”

He thought about it for a long seven and a half minutes before his mind was made up. He changed into something a little nicer, washed his hands and polished his boots, and then left the safety of his room behind him.

Delores was still at the front desk, reading from the latest issue of People, and Austen strolled past like a man with no place to go, and no woman to see. “You know, I’ve changed my mind. Smitty’s, huh? I remember that place. Still over behind the Texaco?”

“Hasn’t moved. Landry’s still tending bar, and she gets cranky if you don’t laugh at her jokes. Been known to cut off more than one man for not showing proper appreciation for the entertainment. Such as it is.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll be careful. Lots of people there on a Thursday?”

“Everybody in town,” she promised, and as he walked away, he could hear Delores picking up the phone and starting to dial. In less than ten minutes, everybody would know exactly where he was, including Gillian.

Austen suspected that he was putting lipstick on a pig. In fact, considering the way he had left Tin Cup, Texas, he suspected that he was going to end up on a plate, served alongside scrambled eggs and a hot cup of coffee.

And yet still he walked out into the night.

Some things never changed.

3

THERE WAS AN ART to a world-class meringue. It required patience and control. The egg whites had to be whipped to an exact stiffness, the peaks had to be swirled with artistic precision. The toppings were spread on the chocolate cream pie with care, just waiting for Gillian to finish her masterpiece. The spatula was poised in midair, ready to rewrite culinary history, when Mindy burst in through the back door.

“You shouldn’t break in on a sheriff. I could shoot you dead and there’s no judge in the state that will convict me.”

Mindy took a long look at the pie, and shook her head, grabbing the spatula from Gillian’s hand. With a merciless smile, she began to massacre what had been a work of art.

“Give me a break. No criminal is going to bust in through the kitchen door,” Mindy insisted. “Emmett Wanamaker is usually out playing poker in his garage. Modine Wanamaker is usually found in the kitchen and Gillian Wanamaker is never one to be taken by surprise.”

Not anymore, thought Gillian to herself. “Why are you here?” she asked, thinking seriously about pulling the spatula away, but that was exactly what Mindy wanted.

“Are you going to go?” her former best friend asked.

Gillian pretended ignorance and poured two glasses of water from the pitcher on the counter. If Mindy wasn’t seven months pregnant, Gillian would have opted for wine. In fact, if she was a lesser friend, she would have poured herself wine, and made Mindy suffer with water. But she was a world-class friend, a world-class baker, a world-class basket case. After downing her glass, Gillian eyed the lopsided meringue. Unable to restrain herself, she grabbed the spatula out of Mindy’s hand.

Mindy checked her watch and laughed. “Three minutes. That’s a new record.”

“Eat this,” she shot back, adjusting the balance of the topping, putting the swirls back in their rightful place. “You’re baking.”

Gillian looked up and glared. “So?”

“You’ve heard. You’re in culinary denial.”

“I can bake without an ulterior motive. It’s not a crime. I would know.”

Mindy, damn her best-friended-ness, shot her a skeptical look. “You need to go.”

Undeterred, Gillian put the pie on the windowsill and started work on the next one.

“How many are you making?” Mindy asked.

“Seven,” Gillian muttered under her breath.

Mindy only whistled.

Gillian straightened, then scowled. “Are you going to stand there with your baby-momma smirk, or are you going to help? And no, that does not mean you can touch my meringue. Grab the bluebonnet tray from above the…”

Gillian never finished. Mindy’s head was already buried in the cabinet next to the stove. “You have to go,” Mindy insisted, sliding the tray on the white-tiled counter. Gillian had laid the tile herself, and painted the backsplash with a daisy-chain of flowers. She studied the grout with a critical eye. It was dingy, needing to be cleaned. Tonight, she could do that. And laundry. Maybe scrub the bathroom floors, as well. Compulsive? Nah.

“Don’t wimp out now,”

“I can’t hear you,” Gillian answered loudly, so loudly that her mother poked her head in through the swinging kitchen door.

“Gillian?” she asked, and then spotted Mindy, and of course, had to lavish Mindy with a big, squeezy hug, not wise to the sadistic machinations in Mindy’s hormonally overcharged heart. “Mindy! Didn’t hear you come in, but when Emmett’s got the air conditioner running on high, I can’t hear a darn thing. Look at you,” she purred, standing back and assessing Mindy’s belly with a grandmotherly eye.

Then, just as they all knew she would, she turned to her daughter, shook her head once, and walked out of the room in heartbroken silence.

“You didn’t have to wear the pink checks,” Gillian pointed out, nodding at Mindy’s adorable maternity blouse in estrogen-exploding pink.

Mindy grinned. “Never underestimate the impact of your wardrobe decision.”

“What bubblehead said that?”

“You did,” Mindy reminded her cheerfully. “What are you going to wear?”

“I’m not going,” Gillian answered, spelling out vulgar words in the meringue and then swirling over them.

“You have to go. Think of your pride, your upstanding reputation with all the women in this town. You’re our Che Guevara, our Davy Crockett, our Gloria Steinem. Take pity on those of us who have succumbed to the bonds of marriage. We need your strength, your unsinkable spirit. Gillian Wanamaker cowers from no man, least of all this one. Do you want him to think that you are too yellow-bellied to see him again? If you can’t do it for yourself, think of the women of Tin Cup, Gillian. Think of us, the faceless, the nameless, the married.”

Gillian couldn’t help but smile. She placed the pie on the breakfast table and pulled the next one from the refrigerator. “He doesn’t even know that I know where he is.”

“Oh, sure, Sherlock. Riddle me this. How do we know that he’s going to be at Smitty’s?”

“Delores told Bobby, who told the doc, who told your mother,” Gillian explained in her patient voice.

“Exactly! And how did Delores ascertain this intriguing fact?”

Gillian knew where this conversation was leading. She had thought through the paces herself, not that she’d ever admit it. “Delores knew because apparently he conversed with her and told her.”

“And do you think he would have conversed with her and let that piece of information loose unless he knew in the bowels of his black heart that it would get back to you? That conversation was no mere tongue-slip. It was a master plan, a public challenge, a gauntlet. If you don’t show up, then everybody will know that you know and decided to stay home alone. Once again.”

It was a cold reminder of Prom Night, when Gillian had stayed home alone, rather than endure the snickers. “I could have plans,” Gillian answered, more than a little defensively.

“Except that when Jeff called, you turned him down, ergo, everybody knows you don’t have plans.”

Gillian picked up the spatula and carved little daggers into the topping. “Maybe I don’t want to go to a bar.”

“Maybe,” agreed Mindy, “but that’s not what everybody is going to be thinking. You know what they’re going to think? They’re going to look at Gillian Wanamaker, the former pride of Crockett County, the only female to take blue ribbons in both baking and marksmanship, and they are going to feel sorry for her. They’re going to think that Gillian Wanamaker has gone soft.”

“I have not,” Gillian shot back.

“Then you have to go.”

Mindy was right. Gillian would be branded a coward, held up for ridicule—again. Sighing, she spun the pie around and started on the other side of the meringue. “You think he did this all to force my hand? Make me show up?” Gillian didn’t want to read things into the situation. She didn’t want to spend three hours analyzing the Austen Hart mind. Most of all, she didn’t want to make chocolate cream pies. Fat and flustered, all because of a man who wasn’t worth the calories. Dammit.

“Of course he did it to make you show up. It’s the way his mind thinks now. Assuming the worst about human behaviors. Assuming that greed will overcome statesmanship, that cowardice will triumph over bravery. And that’s not even taking into account rumors of his impending indictment. It’s the treacherous mind of a lobbyist.”

“Or someone who spends too much time watching soap operas,” Gillian added, putting the next pie on the counter.

Mindy was not deterred. “It’s the way you used to think. I used to admire you. You used to be the queen of sneaky.”

Gillian allowed herself a smile. “Maybe I still am.”

“So you’re going to go? I’ll go with you.”

Gillian took a long glance at Mindy’s swelling belly covered by the pink-ruffled maternity top. “You can’t drink.”