Lori Wilde - [Cupid, Texas 02] Page 3

  How was a guy supposed to respond to that? He just smiled.

  Heads turned as he and his entourage entered the hospital. People whispered and pointed. Feeling like Pimp Daddy, he kept the smile shellacked on his face all the way to the elevator.

  “We gotta go,” the shorter brunette said wistfully.

  “The maternity ward is on the first floor,” explained the redhead.

  “It was sure nice meeting you,” said the other three in unison.

  He tipped his hat, winked. “You ladies have a nice day.”

  They giggled. The elevator dinged. Reluctantly, they bid him good-bye, all five of them walking backward so they could watch him until he disappeared from sight.

  The door slid open. The Muzak of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons—Summer spilled out.

  Pierce stepped quicker than he should have, eager to get on the elevator, and plowed right into a pair of plush, pillowy breasts.

  “Ooph.” The woman coming off the elevator took a step back.

  “I’m so sorry.” Pierce put out a hand to cup her elbow and stared straight into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen framed by a pair of small, rectangular, black-rimmed glasses.

  A soft hiccup escaped lips the color of roses in full bloom. Jet black hair, cut to fall just below her chin, arched around her face in big silky curls. Her skin was smooth and pale as Ivory soap, her eyelashes long and thick.

  Call central casting at Disney. He’d found Snow White.

  In that moment Pierce experienced the most overwhelming sensation of … Well, what in the hell was this sensation?

  He had no words to describe it. The only comparison that seemed even remotely apt was how it felt to be sacked by a human steamroller at the exact same moment the wide receiver who’d caught his Hail Mary pass ran into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown. Lying on his back, vision blurry, breath knocked out, charley horse squeezing his gut, grinning like a Texas opossum at the crowd’s wild roar, knowing that all the pain was worth the victory.

  Sweet heaven.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  She jerked her elbow away, tossed her chin in the air, and pushed past him. Her palm made contact with his rib cage. Instant heat spread up his body, warmed his chest.

  “Excuse me,” she said brusquely.

  She was built like a brick house with a beautiful plump rump that his hands tingled to latch on to, and he thought, Cadillac, ripe Bartlett pears, Versailles, curvy cellos.

  He knew this woman but for the life of him, he could not place her. He stepped out of the elevator to watch her spectacular ass bounce down the hall, his heart hammering strangely. The elevator door whacked him in the side, but he barely noticed. He blinked and finally recognized her. She was the younger half sister of his best buddy in high school.

  Lace Bettingfield.

  All grown up.

  Stunned, Pierce staggered to the rear of the elevator, braced his shaky arms on the railing, and leaned his head back against the wall as violins wept through the piped-in sound system. He stood like that for a good two minutes, his breath quickening along with the crescendo of Vivaldi’s honey-coated summer before he realized he’d forgotten to push the button.

  Yes, some things never changed. But Lace Bettingfield sure had.

  Chapter 2

  Crown: part of a plant where the root and stem meet.

  IN a haze, Lace pushed through the front door of the hospital and stood outside on the sidewalk, blinking in the sunlight. Her pulse pounded in her ears. So what if Pierce was moving back to Cupid? She didn’t care. She’d gotten over him years ago. She’d done just fine there in the elevator. She’d held her head high and kept on going. Fine, huh? So what was she doing out here when she was supposed to be in Aunt Delia’s room?

  Pivoting, she walked back into the hospital. Using a technique she’d learned while undergoing therapy to treat her stutter, she recited basic botanical terms. The trick never failed to calm her. Stem, node, internodes, bud, stipule, rhizome, root, bulb.

  A bright-face candy striper stuffed her hands into the wide pockets of her pink pinafore, and grinned at Lace. “You saw him too, huh?”

  “Who?” Lace asked.

  “Pierce Hollister. He’s so hot.” She melted against a cart loaded with pots of Dianthus caryophyllus, the ubiquitous get-well carnations, that was parked outside the hospital gift shop.

  The pots wobbled and Lace quickly put out a restraining hand to keep them from toppling over. “Why would you say that?”

  “ ’Cause this is the second time you walked past here in the last five minutes looking dazed and confused. What else would have you looking like that?”

  “It’s not Pierce Hollister,” Lace snapped.

  “Oh yes it is. My daddy is a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys and Pierce is from Cupid. And believe you me, it was Pierce. I even snapped a picture of him on my cell phone.” She pulled the phone out of her pocket. “Wanna see?”

  “I do not want to see.” Lace had meant that it wasn’t Pierce Hollister who’d caused her to rush into the hospital twice, but she was lying about that. She’d spotted him in the side visitors’ parking lot surrounded by beautiful women.

  Shocker.

  To avoid him, she’d driven around the other side of the building, parked there, and rushed through the front entrance before he could untangle himself from the groupies. She’d thought she was safe until the elevator opened on the third floor where Great-aunt Delia’s room had been and rushed in only to find it empty, before she remembered Carol Ann had told her that Delia had been moved to the rehab wing.

  She’d hopped back on the elevator, hell-bent on getting to the rehab wing ASAP. As rotten luck would have it, Pierce had been there waiting on the elevator.

  But she’d been cool. Hadn’t given away that she recognized him. Prayed he hadn’t recognized her, and she’d walked right out the front door. She was not going to allow that man to have any influence over her feelings. None whatsoever. That mess was a long time ago. Ancient history. She’d put it all behind her. He was nothing but high school foolishness.

  Lace waved a hand at the candy striper. “Where’s the rehab wing?”

  This was rich. She’d been born and raised in Cupid. Been inside the hospital numerous times. She should know her way around. But hey, they’d remodeled Cupid General while she was away at college.

  “Take a left at the next corridor.” The candy striper pointed.

  “Thank you.”

  Lace found Delia’s room easily enough. Once she got to the rehab wing, all she had to do was follow the laughter. The door stood ajar and everyone was already there.

  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon the volunteers met to answer the letters written to Cupid. There were eight permanent Cupid volunteers, plus a dozen others who showed up periodically or filled in for the core group when they went on vacation, experienced illnesses, or had family obligations.

  The Cupid letter-writing tradition had started in the 1930s after the Depression hit and the town had a desperate need of extra income and they were doing anything to generate tourism. Lace’s grandmother Rose had spearheaded the campaign, gathering some of the local women to answer the letters that people left at the base of the Cupid stalagmite inside the Cupid Caverns. At first, the replies to the letters were left on a bulletin board posted outside the caverns, but that became unwieldy and in the 1940s someone had the idea of doing away with the bulletin board and instead printing the letters and “Cupid’s” reply in a free weekly newspaper that was paid for, and distributed by, local businesses.

  Great-aunt Delia was propped up in bed wearing a puckishly gamboge knit cap over short-cropped, cement-colored curls. She was the family matriarch, the last surviving member of Millie and John Fant’s eight children. The overbed table was positioned across her lap. The hospital lunch sat untouched on a tray, while Delia munched a drumstick.

  “Best fried chicken ever,” Delia sang out. “Tell Pearl she has my undyi
ng gratitude. If I had to survive on that hospital tuna casserole, I’d shrivel up and die.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Cousin Natalie said.

  Pearl worked for Natalie at her bed-and-breakfast, the Cupid’s Rest, and she was inarguably the best cook in town.

  “Should you really be eating that, Delia?” Carol Ann asked. She sat in a blue plastic chair drawn up to Delia’s bedside and her legs were primly crossed at the ankles, her knees pressed together, a tablet computer in her lap.

  Mignon delicately stripped the skin from her chicken, and pushed it to a pile on the paper plate. Mignon was Delia’s daughter-in-law. She and Delia’s son, Michael, ran Mon Amour, one of the three vineyards on the outskirts of Cupid. Mignon had been born in Loire, France. She had dark hair, almost as black as Lace’s own, and everything she did seemed utterly sophisticated and elegant. Mignon and Michael had no children and had never wanted them. “Children have a way of ruining passion,” Mignon was fond of saying, usually with a suggestive wink.

  Sometimes, if she and Michael were having trouble with the vines, they consulted Lace on how to improve the crop. “You are the plant whisperer,” Mignon told her once. “Whenever you speak to them, the grapes flourish.”

  It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

  “Lace, sweetie, are you feeling well?” asked Aunt Sandra. She sat to Mignon’s right. “You look flushed.”

  “Fine.” She put a hand to her face. Her cheeks were warm, but it was not from running into Pierce Hollister on the elevator. “I’ve been in the sun all morning.”

  “Have something to eat,” Sandra invited. “It will make you feel better.”

  Sandra was Delia’s sister-in-law, but twelve years Delia’s junior. Even at sixty-five, her cocoa-colored skin was still flawless. She loved to eat and it showed in her matronly figure, just made for hugging her numerous grandchildren. Sandra was the connector of the group, the one who smoothed things over when feathers got ruffled, although Natalie did that as well. Sandra’s favorite saying was “You can’t push a river.”

  After that humiliating incident in high school, Sandra was the first one to show up. She knocked on Lace’s bedroom door. “Honey child, I made you a big ol’ bowl of banana pudding.”

  Lace had refused to come out of her room or talk to anyone for two days, freaking her mother out. But she slid off her bed and cracked the door open for Sandra and motioned her in. They sat on Lace’s bed eating the most heavenly banana pudding in the world, and Sandra never said a word about the newspaper letter or Pierce Hollister. She didn’t tell Lace that one day she would look back and laugh at this the way her mother and father had.

  They ate the entire bowl of pudding, then Sandra got up, kissed Lace’s forehead, and whispered, “Love just plain hurts sometimes, but we can’t let that stop us from loving. Love is the only thing in the world that really matters.”

  She still wasn’t sure about that one. Did love of plants count?

  “Lace?” Sandra handed her a paper plate, breaking her from the memory.

  “Fine,” Lace repeated, and moved to where the food was laid out on a short dresser, but for once after heavy gardening, she wasn’t hungry. Oh no, you’re not going back there. Eat something.

  Cousin Zoey reached over and plunked a chicken breast and a big spoonful of potato salad on Lace’s plate. “There you go.”

  “Thanks,” she said tightly.

  Today, Zoey was dressed in playful black pleather shorts that showed off every bit of her long tanned legs, a floral silk raspberry blouse that had flowy ruffles at the scoop neck, and black and raspberry wedge-heeled espadrilles. In contrast to her chic clothing, her fingernails were ragged and unpainted, reflecting her new interest in archaeology. Zoey had an explorer’s enthusiastic spirit, and the spunk of a chipmunk, eagerly hopping from one fascinating discovery to another. Lace sometimes wondered if her cousin had an attention deficit disorder.

  After “the incident,” Zoey, who’d only been ten at the time, trotted over to Lace’s house with a Raggedy Andy and a box of pins. “Let’s pretend this is Pierce and make a voodoo doll out of him.” She handed Lace a straight pin with a big red head. “Go ahead, stick it where it’ll hurt.”

  Bloodthirsty kid. But Lace had done it. Ramming the pin right into Raggedy Andy’s heart. Immediately, she’d felt bad about it and yanked the pin out. After all, it wasn’t really Pierce’s fault that he had not loved her. She’d been the stupid one, writing that letter in the first place.

  Now Zoey spontaneously wrapped an arm around Lace’s waist, laid her head on her shoulder, and whispered, “It’ll be okay.”

  Lace froze, her hand gripping the paper plate. Organic fertilizer. Did they all know that Pierce was back in town?

  She turned back around to see everyone staring at her with a mixture of concern and fascination, like a huddle of doctors consulting on a mysterious illness, ready to poke and prod. Yep. They knew.

  “People,” she said. “It’s no big deal that Pierce Hollister is back in Cupid. I do not care. He means nothing to me.”

  The concerned fascination turned to sympathetic disbelief.

  “There’s no shame in still having feelings for him,” said Junie Mae Prufrock from her spot beside Sandra. Junie Mae was the only volunteer who was not related in some way by either blood or marriage to Millie Greenwood Fant.

  Junie Mae resembled Dolly Parton when she was in Steel Magnolias—big blond hair, even bigger boobs, and that slow Southern twang. She ran the LaDeDa Day Spa and Hair Salon next door to Natalie’s B&B. She decorated her place with artificial plants, which set Lace’s teeth on edge. “I was born with the blackest thumb around,” Junie Mae pronounced when Lace had tried to give her an ivy plant. “If you don’t want that poor plant to rest in peace in the Dumpster by the end of the week, take it back.”

  Lace slowly blew out her breath. They meant well. She knew that. “I do appreciate your concern, but truly, I’m fine. Can we get down to work?”

  They all exchanged looks.

  Although she dearly loved her huge extended family, sometimes they could be a serious pain in the keister.

  Delia kicked the foot of the leg on the opposite side of where she’d broken her hip. “Sit on the end of my bed, Chantilly.”

  Her great-aunt had fun calling her the names of different types of lace. Gingerly, she sat on the end of the bed and balanced her plate on her knee.

  Cousin Natalie, who was sitting at the folding table between Junie Mae and Mignon, reached for a letter at the top of the pile. Natalie had an air of ethereal peace about her that had intensified since she’d fallen in love with former Navy SEAL–turned–cowboy Dade Vega. The two were so lovey-dovey it was enough to make a single woman hurl, but Lace couldn’t resent Natalie’s happiness. Poor girl had been through a helluva lot in her life, losing both her parents in a plane crash when she was nine and left with the responsibility for her kid sister, Zoey, and a permanent limp. Now in the throes of new love, she positively glowed.

  Natalie was the one who waited while the rest of the family had rallied around her after “the incident,” even though the last thing Lace wanted was for people to keep trying to make her feel better about it. Natalie seemed to understand that.

  After things finally died down, Natalie drove up in their grandmother Rose’s car one Sunday afternoon. Lace had been sitting on the front porch reading a book on botany.

  Natalie rolled down the window. “Get in.”

  She shook her head. She’d avoided leaving the house. “I’m good.”

  “Lace,” Natalie had said patiently but firmly. “Get in the car.”

  She hesitated, but the look on Natalie’s face persuaded her. She closed the book, opened the front door, and called to her mother, “I’m ga … ga … going to hang out with Natalie.”

  “Have a good time,” her mother hollered from the kitchen. “Be back in time to set the table for supper.”

  She’d closed the door and walked up t
o the driver’s side window. “Wh … wh … where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Don’t wa … wa … wa … wanna be around pa … people.”

  “We won’t.”

  It wasn’t like Natalie to be cryptic. Intrigued, she had gotten in. Her cousin had driven them to the entrance to Cupid Caverns.

  “The caverns are closed on Sunday,” Lace said.

  Natalie dangled a key on a scarlet ribbon in front of her face. “I sneaked the key out of the teacup on Gram’s hutch.”

  “Natalie!” Lace giggled at her daring.

  “Get the tote bag out of the backseat.”

  Lace retrieved the tote bag. Inside she found two flashlights, two slingshots, and a bag of black-eyed peas.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  Natalie shouldered the tote and led the way. They entered the caverns. It was spooky all alone inside, but Lace wasn’t afraid of the dark. They played the flashlight beams over the path that wound around to the cavern containing the Cupid statue on which the town legend was based.

  The fable started before Cupid became a town, when a charming outlaw named Mingus Dill, on the run from a posse for stealing a horse, took refuge in the cavern. It was just after the Civil War and there was an odd law on the books in Trans-Pecos territory that a man could be saved from being hanged for any crime, except murder, if any single woman claimed him for her husband.

  Mingus stumbled into the dead-end cave that housed a stalagmite that looked exactly like Cupid. As the sounds of the pursuing posse filled his ears, Mingus dropped to his knees and prayed to the Roman god of love to send an arrow through the heart of some local woman to save him from being hanged. And it happened just as he prayed when a childless spinster, Louisa Hendricks, saved him from the noose. He and Louisa fell madly in love, and although they never had any children, they had a long and happy life.

  The romantic tale was cemented when their great-grandmother, Millie Greenwood fell in love with her employer’s brother, the richest man in Cupid, John Fant. John loved Millie too, but he was betrothed to another. On the day before John’s wedding, a brokenhearted Millie wrote a letter to Cupid, asking him to intervene, and she carried it to the caverns in the dead of night on Christmas Eve and laid the letter at Cupid’s feet. John Fant ended up leaving his betrothed at the altar in order to marry Millie. Thus spurring the letter-writing tradition.