Allie bit her lip to keep from smarting off, but she did touch the pistols and wish for one second that they fired real bullets and that God would look the other way. If she didn’t go to church, Blake would think she was running from him. If she did go, she’d have to endure the business of talking to him as well as Grady. Lord, why did life have to be so complicated?
She still hadn’t made up her mind what she was going to do when she reached the foyer. Granny sat ramrod straight in the chair beside the foyer table. She was dressed in a cute little navy blue pantsuit and her shoes matched. Her hair was combed back in waves and her lipstick had settled into the wrinkles around her mouth.
“I don’t want to go to church,” she whispered.
“Me, either. Let’s run away,” Allie said softly.
“We can’t. We are strong women and we don’t run from our problems,” Granny said.
“What is your problem?” Allie asked.
“I forget where the bathroom is, but I can depend on you to remember, can’t I?”
Allie sighed. “Yes, Granny, I will sit beside you and remember for you.”
Snowflakes drifted to land among a few dead leaves, blown in from the scrub oak trees across the street from the church that morning. Would winter never end? Allie was so ready for spring, for the sound of birds chirping instead of sleet pounding on the metal house roof, to sit on the porch swing in the evening instead of having to be inside all the time.
Allie, her mother, and grandmother had all gone together in Katy’s vehicle. Lizzy had tried her best to fix it so that Allie would ride in the backseat with Grady in Mitch’s truck, but Allie had sidestepped the issue by saying that she’d help with Granny.
When they reached the church, Allie manipulated it so that she sat on the end of the pew next to her grandmother. Katy was next in line and then Lizzy with Mitch beside her and Grady on the far end. Lizzy didn’t spare a bit on the dirty looks, but Allie could endure those if she didn’t have to sit beside Grady.
She glanced over her shoulder after the announcements were made and the preacher was making his way from the short deacon’s bench to the pulpit. Deke, Toby, and Blake were all sitting in the back pew. It was the first time that antsy feeling hadn’t forewarned her that he was in close proximity. Did that mean that whatever they had—friendship, relationship, or one-night fling—was over?
Deke waved.
Toby smiled and nodded.
Blake looked straight ahead.
She whipped back around and from that moment, the preacher might as well have been reading the dictionary because Allie didn’t hear a single word.
Like a record playing on a loop, she kept hearing that television commercial from a year ago. It advertised a dating site and said that love didn’t come first, but like did. She argued with it, saying that it was a little late for that since she and Blake had already had sex. But the damn commercial took on a life of its own and fought with her.
Sex, like, and love are three different things, it said.
That stumped her train of thought completely as she analyzed the statement and decided it was right. Sex, like what Deke and Toby had Friday night or what she and Blake had on Friday afternoon, was a very different thing from like or love.
But what about the sex Blake and I had? What does that mean? She didn’t get an answer from the commercial or from the preacher who was preaching from Psalms Twenty-three that morning.
She liked Blake as a person, as a hardworking rancher, but she was not going to be the friend who hopped over the fence for booty calls whenever Blake wanted a quick romp in the hay. If that’s what he wanted, he could call his ex-wife, Scarlett, to warm up his bed.
She folded her hands in her lap and tried to listen to the preacher. It didn’t work because within seconds, she was back to the argument. She’d followed her heart when she married Riley and intended to be his wife until death parted them. But she’d learned after two years that physical death wasn’t the only way to end a marriage. It could simply die in its sleep or it could be murdered by a two-timin’ husband.
That antsy feeling that said someone was staring at her made her look over her shoulder. Blake’s lips curled into a smile when their gazes locked and held for several seconds. When she started to turn back around, she caught Grady’s gaze from the other end of the pew. It had the intensity of a hungry hound chasing a rabbit and made her skin crawl.
Trust my heart when it failed me? Trust my sister’s advice when it makes me want to run for the hills? Maybe I should simply forget all about men and become a nun. I bet a convent could use my skills as a carpenter.
If the pistols resting between her breasts could have fired for-real bullets, Allie would have aimed, fired, blown away the smoke, and toted her sister’s lifeless body out to the back side of the twenty acres known as Audrey’s Place for the buzzards to feast upon when the family got back to Audrey’s after church.