Rachel Gibson - Truly Madly Yours

“Don’t bother him with this,” Nick said and leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator. As a boy, whenever he’d gotten in trouble or his mother figured he and Louie needed a positive male influence, she’d sent them to spend the summer with Josu and his sheepherders. Both of them had loved it until they’d discovered girls.

The back door opened and his brother stepped into the kitchen. Louie was shorter than Nick. Solid, with the black hair and eyes he’d inherited from both his mother and father. “So,” Louie began, closing the screen door behind him. “What did the old man leave you?”

Nick smiled and straightened. His brother would appreciate the inheritance. “You’re going to love it.”

“He got practically nothing,” his mother interjected, carrying a plate of sliced bread into the dining room.

“He left me his Angel Beach property and the land at Silver Creek.”

Louie’s thick brows rose up his forehead and a glint sparkled in his dark eyes. “Holy shit,” the thirty-four-year-old land developer whispered so his mother wouldn’t hear him.

Nick laughed and the two of them followed Benita into the dining room, then sat at the polished oak table. They watched their mother neatly fold back the lace tablecloth, then leave to get their lunch.

“What are you going to put on the Angel Beach property?” Louie asked, assuming correctly that Nick would want the land developed. Benita might not realize the worth of Nick’s inheritance, but his brother did.

“I don’t know. I have a year to think about it.”

“A year?”

Benita set bowls of guisado de vaca in front her sons, then took her seat. It was hot outside, and Nick really didn’t feel like stew. “I get the property if I do something. Or not do something, actually.”

“Is he trying to get you to change your name again?”

Nick looked up from his bowl. His mother and brother stared back at him. There was no way around it. They were family, and they believed family had the God-given right to stick their noses in his business. He snagged a piece of bread and took a bite. “There was a condition,” he began after he swallowed. “I get the property in one year if I don’t become involved with Delaney.”

Slowly Louie picked up his spoon. “Involved? How?”

Nick cast a sideways glance at his mother, who was still staring at him. She’d never talked to either boy about sex. She’d never even so much as mentioned it. She’d left the talk up to Uncle Josu, but by that time, both Allegrezza boys had known most of it anyway. He returned his gaze to his brother and lifted one brow.

Louie took a bite of stew. “What happens if you do?”

“What do you mean what happens?” Nick scowled at his brother as he reached for his spoon. Even if he were crazy enough to want Delaney, which he wasn’t, she hated him. He’d seen it in her eyes today. “You sound as if there’s a possibility.”

Louie didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He knew Nick’s history.

“What happens?” his mother asked, who didn’t know anything but felt she had the right to know everything.

“Then Delaney inherits the property.”

“Of course. Isn’t it enough that she got everything that is rightfully yours? Now she will be after you to get her hands on your property, Nick,” his mother predicted, generations of suspicious and secretive Basque blood running through her veins. Her dark eyes narrowed. “You watch out for her. She’s as greedy as her mother.”

Nick seriously doubted he would have to watch out for Delaney. Last night when he’d driven her to her mother’s house, she’d sat in his Jeep doing a really good impersonation of a statue, the moonlight casting her profile in gray shadows and letting him know she was royally pissed off. And after today, he was pretty sure she’d avoid him like a leper.

“Promise me, Nick,” his mother continued. “She always got you into trouble. You watch out.”

“I’ll watch out.”

Louie granted.

Nick frowned at his brother and purposely changed the subject. “How’s Sophie?”

“She’s coming home tomorrow,” Louie answered.

“That’s wonderful news.” Benita smiled and set a slice of bread next to her bowl.

“I’d hoped to have a little more time alone with Lisa before I tell Sophie about the wedding,” Louie said. “I don’t know how she’ll take the news.”

“She’ll adjust to her new stepmother eventually. Everything will turn out fine,” Benita predicted. She liked Lisa okay, but she wasn’t Basque and she wasn’t Catholic, which meant that Louie couldn’t marry in the church. Never mind that Louie was divorced and couldn’t marry in the church anyway. Benita wasn’t worried about Louie. Louie would be okay. But Nick. She worried about Nick. She always had. And now that girl was back and she would worry even more.

Benita hated anyone with the last name Shaw. Mostly she hated Henry for the way he’d treated her and the way he’d treated her son, but she hated that girl and her mother too. For years she’d watched Delaney parade around in fancy clothes while Benita had to patch Louie’s hand-me-downs for Nick. Delaney got new bicycles and expensive toys while Nick went without or had to settle for secondhand. And while she’d watched Delaney get more than one little girl needed, she’d also watched her son, his proud shoulders straight, chin in the air. A stoic little man. And each time she watched him pretend it didn’t matter, her heart broke a little more. Each time she watched him watch that girl, she grew a little more bitter.

Benita was proud of both her sons and she loved them equally. But Nick was different from Louie. Nick was so very sensitive.

She looked across the table at her younger son. Nick would always break her heart.

The plastic doggie scooper bags in the pocket of Delaney’s shorts seemed like some pathetic metaphor of her life. Shit, that’s what it was. Ever since she’d sold her soul for money, that’s what her life had become, and she didn’t see that it would get any better for another eleven months. Almost everything she owned resided in a storage shed on the outskirts of town, and her closest companions were the two Weimaraners walking beside her.

It had taken Delaney less than five hours to decide to accept the terms of Henry’s will. An appallingly short amount of time, but she wanted the money. She’d been given a one-week reprieve to travel to Phoenix, quit her job, and close her apartment. Saying good-bye to her friends at Valentina had been hard. Saying good-bye to her freedom was even harder. It had been only a month, but it felt like she’d been a prisoner for a year.

She had no job and wore boring clothes she didn’t particularly like because she lived with her mother.

The hot sun baked the top of her head as she made her way down Grey Squirrel Lane toward the center of town. When she’d lived in Truly ten years ago, most of the streets hadn’t had names. There had been no need, but with the recent influx of summer residents, and the boom in real estate, the city council had knocked itself out to come up with really inventive street names like Gopher, Chipmunk, and Grey Squirrel. Delaney, it seemed, lived in the rodent section of town, while Lisa fared somewhat better over on Milkweed, which of course was next to Ragweed and Tumbleweed.

Since she’d been back, she’d noticed a lot of other changes, too. The business district had quadrupled, and the old part of town had been given a facelift. There were two public boat ramps to accommodate the heavy invasion of boats and Jet Skis, and the city had added three new parks. But beyond those changes, there were two other very visible and telling signs that the town had finally been pulled into the 1990s. First, there was the Mountain Java Espresso Shop located between Sterling Realty and the Grits and Grub Diner. And second, the old lumber mill had been converted into a microbrewery. When Delaney had lived in Truly before, the people drank Folgers and Coors. They would have declared a double-shot skinny latte “sissy coffee” and would have beat the crap out of anyone who dared to utter the words “raspberry beer.”

It was the Fourth of July and the town was smothered in patriotism. Red, white, and blue flags and ribbons decorated everything from the “Welcome to Truly” banner to the wooden Indian standing outside Howdy’s Trading Post. There would be a parade later, of course. In Truly, there were parades for just about every occasion. Maybe she’d stick around downtown and watch the parade. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do.

At the corner of Beaver and Main, Delaney stopped and waited for an RV to lumber by. For walking so nicely beside her, she reached into her pocket and rewarded Duke and Dolores with Milk-bones. It had taken several frustrating weeks to assert her role as the alpha dog and teach them who was boss. She’d had the time. For the past month she’d spent some of her time catching up with a few old school friends. But they were all married and had families and looked at her as if she were abnormal because she didn’t.

She would have loved to spend more time with Lisa, but unlike Delaney, Lisa had a job and a fiancй. She would have loved to sit down with her old friend and talk about Henry’s will and the real reason she was back in Truly. But she didn’t dare. If its stipulation became public, Delaney’s life would turn into a burning hell. She would become the subject of endless speculation and the topic of never-ending gossip. And if the part of the will concerning Nick was revealed, she’d probably have to kill herself.

As it was, she was just likely to die of boredom before it was all over. She spent her days watching talk shows, or she walked Duke and Dolores as a means to get out of the house and escape the life her mother had planned for her. Gwen had decided that since Delaney would be living in Truly for a year, they should be involved in the same projects, belong to the same social organizations, and attend the same civic meetings. She’d even gone so far as submitting Delaney’s name to spearhead a committee concerned with the drug problem in Truly. Delaney had politely turned down the offer. First of all, Truly’s drug problem was laughable. Second, Delaney would rather drink bong water than get involved in the community.