“’Kay. Night, lover boy.”
He snorted and ended the call, then exhaled and leaned back against the couch again.
A slow smile spread over his face. Undersheriff. The title made it sound like he needed a cape.
And all that did was make him think of Glory and her hair, and Sir Walter Raleigh and the cloak, and how much better good news became when he shared it with her, and how she hated him right now for doing what was essentially his job.
And his job... well, like it or not, he was his job and his job was him.
His smile faded.
Damn. He was also really freaking lonely.
He wished he could fast forward to the wife, the kids, the two cats, and the mutt dog he’d always imagined. Truth be told, it had always been hard to picture Glory in that context. Even though she loved her sister’s kids.
It was harder, though, to picture anyone else in it.
That was the paradox of his life. To be stretched out on a sort of Catherine wheel, pulled between equal and utterly opposing desires. And if you believed the legend of the Eternity Oak, he had only himself to blame.
But “martyr” had never been on the list of his ambitions.
He ran his thumb over her laughing face in that photo in his hand. As if he could dial back the past. That’s not how time worked, though.
He took one last deep breath. He’d survived endings before. He could make destiny his bitch. And he would get over this.
And then he finally put that picture of Glory in the drawer with all the rest of them and slammed it shut.
Chapter4
“Gary Shaw, that Sierra Property Management fella, the one that Britt Langley works for? I hear he’s single.”
Glory’s drooping head shot up. She’d been inhaling coffee steam from a mug faded to a streaky yellow from countless journeys through the dishwasher. It was nine a.m. She’d spent the six previous hours mostly staring at her bedroom ceiling because her mind felt one way about Eli Barlow and her body felt another way entirely, and when her mind got tired, her libido took over. She’d flopped about in her bed like a pair of jeans in their old dryer. Irritable and yearning.
And she couldn’t get the last words he’d said to her out of her head.
Now she was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, the anticipated foreclosure notice on the table between them. Truth be told, in the annals of Greenleaf History, it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened, or even the first time this had happened since this house was built in 1960. Still, miracles were not to be expected.
And seeing a foreclosure notice in person did tend to elevate adrenaline.
“I feel like the entire first part of a conversation took place inside your head, Mama. Why on earth are you talking about the Sierra Property Management guy?”
Her mother looked alert and fully groomed, complete with lipstick, even if her clothes were as faded with laundering as Glory’s coffee mug. The radio, the one that had been in the family since before she was born and sat on the kitchen table between them, was on low.
“Baby girl, I’m just saying, that’s the kind of guy who would make a perfect starter husband for you. He won’t beat you, and if he tries you can outrun him. He’ll kick in a few years and you’ll still have your looks. He’ll leave you with all his properties—you sell ’em, move on to a bigger city, where the men have more money, and pretty soon you got yourself, oh, an Audi. God didn’t give you a face or boobies like the ones you got without a plan in mind.”
She was only half joking. Charlotte Greenleaf was nothing if not a planner. Clearly the foreclosure notice had her thinking about Glory’s future.
Gary Shaw was probably sixty-three if he was a day. Hollywood probably contained its share of hot sixty-three-year-olds, but Hellcat Canyon sure didn’t. Every guy over sixty looked like Glenn Harwood, the owner of the Misty Cat Cavern, with a big comfortable stomach and a luxurious gray broom of a mustache.
Glory could have said, “I’m going to be a big rich rock star, Mama,” but that sounded as improbable as marrying Gary Shaw at the moment.
She sighed. “Mama, do you ever listen to yourself? It’s like the women’s movement never happened. And for the love of God, please don’t ever say ‘boobies’ again.”
“You think picking out a husband doesn’t require any business savvy? I do my due diligence on a guy before I buy in, use my assets and experience to make the sale, and then I sit back and enjoy the rewards and take my lumps, as the case may be. How, I ask you, is that different from those rich guys like Getty? Society wants to judge me, so be it. What I do takesnerve, baby doll.”
Glory was momentarily transfixed by this loopy rationale.
Then she zeroed in on the fatal flaw in this logic. “Getty never had to sleep next to Raymond Truxel.”
