She insisted on a hug, as always. And Johnny Bob Luther stopped him to share a joke that he’d heard maybe thirty times before from the old man. He laughed in appreciation of Johnny Bob’s skillful telling rather than the punch line. And then there was IvaDawn Carrol’s inquiry about how his parents were enjoying life in Florida. Even though they’d been there for five years now, IvaDawn always made it sound as if they’d just moved. Audrey’s mother, Helen, sat on the bench in the gazebo—silently nodding to the voices in her head that her early-onset Alzheimer’s provided.
By the time he got to the lemonade stand, the crowd had moved away. And surprisingly, it turned out not to be a lemonade stand at all.
“We’re selling raffle tickets,” Tess informed him. “Ten dollars apiece.”
Sol gave a low whistle. “What happened to three for five dollars?” That had been the going price for as far back as he could remember.
Audrey flashed him an apologetic smile. “We’ve got a grand prize this year that’s a real bargain for ten dollars.”
“Better than Patti’s pie a week for a year?” The owner of the diner across the street was notorious for her decadently delicious pies.
“A week at a beach house in Gulf Shores!” Tess fist-pumped the air with cheerleader enthusiasm and an infectious grin that showed off her new missing tooth.
“Man!” Sol was indeed shocked at the extravagant prize. “That put somebody back a chunk.” A zing of guilt flashed through him. He’d just gotten that huge amount of money from Kale in the sale of the marina, and he hadn’t yet given a dime of it to the school.
“The house belongs to EmmyLou Creighton’s family. Emmy’s donating her week to us.”
EmmyLou Creighton. The sexy-as-hell-and-didn’t-she-know-it bombshell who’d hit the local scene, what...maybe fifteen years ago? He’d gone out with her a few times when they were younger. Back then he’d been too full of himself to stay with anyone for very long. And now? If he thought about it too hard, he might think that EmmyLou intimidated the hell out of him with her grab-the-world-by-the-tail attitude.
The only thing he was up to grabbing most nights was the whiskey decanter.
“How are sales?” he asked.
Audrey gave a relieved sigh. “Really good. Better than we’d hoped for.”
“Tell you what, Tess.” He took his wallet out and handed the little girl a fifty. “Put my name on five of those suckers.”
Tess grabbed the pen and counted out five tickets. “How do you spell Sol?”
He winked at the little girl, who was the spitting image of her mom at that age. “S-O-L.”
Tess went right to work on her project.
Sol leaned closer to Audrey and lowered his voice. “And I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. When all the sales are finished, I want to match whatever you make. I’d like to have everybody in Taylor’s Grove’s name on at least one ticket. Can you do that?”
“You bet we can! Wow! Thank you so much, Sol!”
Audrey gave him a huge hug. The first time a good-looking woman had hugged him with happiness instead of sympathy in eight years.
It felt damn good.
* * *
“MATCH? AS IN give dollar-for-dollar everything you make?” Emmy grabbed the can of hair spray from her workstation at the salon and added the final touches to Audrey’s newly straightened locks. “Girl, you’ve got the most gorgeous natural color I’ve ever seen. You need to let me go wild with the teasing someday. And then you could put on a crop top and short shorts and look just like one of those models in the Guess ads. Mark would get an erection so hard he’d pole vault over the bed.”
Her friend’s face turned as red as her hair, and she did a quick glance around to see if anybody else heard. The quietest of her friends, Audrey was easy to shock, so of course Emmy tried every chance she got. “You’ve got weird thought processes, Emmy,” Audrey observed. “We were discussing Sol’s raffle contribution. How you went from that to Mark’s erection—” she whispered the last two words “—is beyond me.”
“You want me to explain?” Emmy made eye contact with Audrey in the mirror. “It just occurred to me that Sol’s doing this nice thing, which seems totally out of character for someone who goes around with a sneer on his face ninety-nine percent of the time.” Audrey opened her mouth, probably to take up for him, but Emmy wouldn’t hear it. “Don’t give me all that but he’s crippled crap. Everybody’s got stuff they have to deal with, and yeah, he took a bullet or something and I hate that for him, but he doesn’t have to act like the whole world’s his enemy.” She used the end of the comb to lift the hair at Audrey’s crown to form a perfect bump. “Soooo, I was thinking that he’s got a hard-on for the world, but it’s totally different from the hard-on Mark would have for you if you dressed up like one of those models in the Guess ads.”
Audrey dropped her head back and winked. “God, you are such a freak. But I love you anyway.”
“What’s not to love?” Emmy propped her hands on her hips and thrust her chest out, eyeing herself in the mirror. She worked hard at staying fit and doing everything humanly possible to fight the years. But it was Saturday, and while Audrey was going home to a husband who loved her, EmmyLou Creighton would be spending the night alone.
With a show of the innate closeness the two of them had developed, her dog Bentley came to her then and nudged her hand with his nose. He’d gotten too big to pick up, but she squatted and gave him a tight hug as Audrey stood up and stretched.
“It’s hard to believe Bentley and Bandit came from the same litter.” Audrey scratched Bentley behind the ears.
“What’s hard to believe is that anybody would’ve dropped off a precious mama dog like Cher and her puppies. Some people are just too ornery for words.” Emmy kissed Bentley several times around the eyes. “I think Cher showed herself to you on purpose, knowing you’d take her in and find good homes for her babies. Probably even knew you’d keep one, they were so stinking cute. I know I was a goner for Bentley as soon as I saw him and those big puppy eyes. That’s why he’s so big. Nobody can resist him, so everybody feeds him.” He licked her nose, which made her laugh. She wasn’t going home alone tonight after all. She’d be in the company of Bentley, who adored her. “Sol Beecher’s one of those people who are too ornery for words, too. The man needs a dog to get his mind off himself.”
Audrey laughed and shook her head as she laid her payment on Emmy’s workstation. “And the conversation has come full circle back to Sol.”
“So he’s gonna match the funds, huh?” He was doing a good deed, but it made her peevish just the same. Everything about the man made her feel that way.
“That’s what he said.” Audrey nodded. “I even called him later in the week to see if he wanted to change his mind. I mean, this could turn out to be pretty expensive for him. But he insisted that he wants to match dollar-for-dollar.”
An idea popped into Emmy’s mind, no doubt borne on peevish wings—a way she could raise more money for the school and aggravate the hell out of Sol Beecher in the process.
“Give
