“So if Josh is dating Mary, why does he keep looking over here?” Booker asked.
“What?” Rebecca replied.
“I want to know why Josh keeps staring at you.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t realize he was.”
“Anything ever happen between you two?”
“A lot’s happened between us.”
“I mean, did you ever get together, hook up?”
“No,” she lied, thinking a year ago last summer was such a small exception it wasn’t worth mentioning.
“Well, he wants you, babe. He wants you bad.”
Rebecca rolled her eyes and started laughing. “No, he doesn’t. He hates me. I used to put gum in his hair.”
“I’m just telling you what I see. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.”
Booker had to be wrong. He was confusing all the bad blood between her and Josh with something else. Or Josh wasn’t staring at her at all. More likely he was staring at Booker. Except for Rebecca, no one was particularly happy about his return.
“How do you like Conner?” she asked, catching sight of Delaney’s husband quietly conferring with her over at the table. He was probably begging her to give up her vigil and go home and, in a way, Rebecca wished she would. Having Delaney there grounded her, and she appreciated that. It was the whole reason she’d taken the precaution of inviting her. But Rebecca had discovered that she didn’t want to be grounded at this particular moment. Not when she was telling the whole world to go to hell.
“He’s okay, I guess,” Booker said. “Delaney’s still hot. Too bad she’s married.”
“Sometimes I think so, too,” Rebecca admitted. “I’m happy for her, but I miss having someone to live with. And now that my lease is up, I’m going to have to move into a new house alone, if I can find one. There aren’t a lot of rentals in Dundee.”
“Don’t move into a house alone,” he said. “Come out to Granny’s and live with us.”
Rebecca pulled back to see his face. “What? I can’t do that.”
“Why not? There’s plenty of room and Granny would love it because she’d have another pair of hands she could put to work.”
“Doing what?”
“Weeding the garden, washing her old Buick, making a meal or two.”
“I wouldn’t mind helping,” Rebecca said. “I think it’d be fun to be around people again. It’s been me and my phone for the past five months.”
“I’ll talk to Granny and give you a call.”
“Great.” Rebecca smiled at finding a possible solution. The Hatfield place seemed like the perfect stopgap. Maybe her luck had changed.
Or maybe—she looked up at Booker—maybe she was selling her soul to the devil for a roof over her head.
CHAPTER SIX
TODAY WAS A DAY for change; Rebecca could feel it. Booker had called to tell her Granny Hatfield had no problem with her moving in, so she had a new place to live. Provided she performed a short list of chores each day, Hatty wasn’t even going to charge her rent. Her current landlord had agreed to let her out of her lease so she could move right away—actually, he’d practically wept in relief that his son, daughter-in-law and grandkids would now be able to have their own place. And Rebecca had gone the entire day yesterday without a cigarette. Surely she was making great strides toward solving the problems in her life.
Now she just needed to pack and borrow a truck. Booker had offered to help using Hatty’s Buick, but if they had only the Buick and her Firebird, they’d make a dozen trips, at least, and still have no way of getting her furniture into storage.
Rebecca was contemplating whose truck to borrow when the phone rang. She thought it was probably Buddy, but instead of hesitating, she snatched up the receiver because she no longer felt any need to avoid his calls. She could be positive and cheerful because she was feeling positive and cheerful. No man would be afraid to marry her if he talked to her right now. “Hello?” she said brightly.
“Becky?”
A little of Rebecca’s exuberance faded. It was her sister. “Hi, Greta.”
“Mom wanted me to call and see if you can come to dinner today.”
“Why doesn’t she ever invite me herself?”
“It’s nothing personal, Beck. I just phoned her to share a great soufflé recipe, and she mentioned that it’d be nice to get the whole family together this afternoon to finish making plans for your wedding. I told her I’d follow up on it.”
So much for making great strides toward solving the problems in her life. There were still two weeks until the anniversary party—two weeks during which she had to keep her plans a secret. In addition to that, she knew her family wasn’t going to be happy about her moving in with Booker, even if it was only temporary. And depending on how badly her sister annoyed her, she doubted she’d get through this conversation without a cigarette. “Um, I don’t know. I’m pretty busy today, Greta.”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“I thought I’d move a few things into storage.”
“It’s Sunday and you have the day off tomorrow. Can’t you do the storage thing later? We really need to finalize a few details if we’re going to pull this wedding off in six weeks, Beck. I’ve worked too hard to let anything slip through the cracks.”
Rebecca heard the accusation in her sister’s voice, the “after everything I’ve done for you, you’d have the nerve to refuse me?” and felt trapped. She hadn’t asked Greta to do anything special for her wedding. She’d wanted to keep it simple, and she’d said so from the beginning. But Greta was a stay-at-home mom with three small boys, and Rebecca suspected her older sister was a little bored. She’d embraced this event as though she was Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner.
Regardless, Rebecca knew better than to suggest Greta had involved herself because she needed a diversion. Her sister had baked and decorated five hundred sugar cookies. She’d spent countless hours using special food coloring to paint wedding bells on each one, and she’d filled the freezer of almost every friend the Wells family had ever had. After effort like that, no one was going to care whether Rebecca had asked for her help or not.
“When do you want me there?” she asked in resignation.
“At three.”
“Okay. Can I borrow Randy’s truck later tonight, then?”