“Well, actually, it is. It says on the second page that should the landlady find it necessary to enter the house, she is authorized to do so.”
Jessie watched various emotions play over Boston Macnamara’s face. Incredulous was warring with furious.
“That refers to
emergencies
, like pipes leaking while I’m at work or a fire breaking out.”
“It doesn’t say emergencies, does it? It says if the landlady finds it necessary. Well, I find it necessary to help my granddaughter put food on her table.” Besides, her houses were the best on the tour, if she did say so herself.
Jessie called to Madge to bring her some herbal tea. She couldn’t handle the caffeine in coffee anymore—it kept her up at night and messed with her bladder, and Lord knew she had enough problems with that leaky sieve as it was.
Boston was turning a strange purple, damn near like her petunias. For a second, she rethought her plan, since he seemed a little more uptight than she’d remembered from their initial meetings over renting the house. Then she decided that she had been right. Shelby needed a man with a sense of direction in his life, since she seemed content to float adrift on her own indefinitely.
The girl didn’t even think anything of living in her grandmother’s house, which was just downright sad for a woman in her prime.
Then this here attitude right now was confirmation that Boston Macnamara needed a woman who was easygoing. Someone to help him slow down, relax, and enjoy life instead of racing to get through it.
“Listen, young man, you’re getting all worked up for nothing. The tour only runs twice a day, five days a week, and half the time you’ll be at work anyway. When you are around, the tour is only in the house less than ten minutes.” Jessie smiled at him and patted his white knuckles gently. She did not want him to move out.
“You’ll never find another decent place to stay on such short notice. There aren’t any motels in Cuttersville, unless you want the one out on the old highway that’s full up with prostitutes and that bunch of folks who chant at night and proclaim they’re aliens.” She took in his black shirt and tan pants, expensive watch and salon-styled hair. “You don’t look like the chanting type.”
He snorted. “Hardly.”
“The rent is a steal, you know that. You could never rent a whole house in Chicago for only fifteen hundred dollars. And you have a housekeeper.”
She didn’t feel a bit of guilt that she was technically overcharging him. It was a steal for him, and a windfall for her. She’d lived too damn long to spend time feeling sorry for folks with money.
Eyeing her over his coffee mug, he asked, “Housekeeper? You never mentioned a housekeeper before.”
“I didn’t?” Jessie feigned surprise. “Well, of course you have one. Mary’s absolutely miraculous.” She didn’t mention just how miraculous. “She pops in two or three times a week and will do whatever needs doing, including your laundry. She’ll even cook for you if you’d like.”
She sensed she was reeling him in. He didn’t say anything, just sat there looking sullen, like Shelby had as a child when she’d gotten in trouble for dirtying her church clothes. Shelby had very little regard for her appearance to this day. Jessie pictured those dusty shorts she had been wearing that morning and shuddered.
Now she wasn’t any fashion plate herself—she was too old and lived in too small of a town to ever be in style—but Lord, Shelby ran around looking like she’d collided with a wheelbarrow full of dirt. It was going to take some coaxing to bring her around to thinking she should set her sights on the immaculate Boston Macnamara.
The little ingrate had actually cussed when Jessie had suggested it over breakfast.
“Mrs. Stritmeyer,” Boston said slowly.
She smiled. “Call me Jessie, honey.”
He set his mug back down hard. “You know, I don’t like the way you’ve manipulated me. But since I’m only here temporarily, I guess I don’t have a choice.”
Jessie knew there wasn’t anyplace else in town he could stay that wasn’t a dump or didn’t require a year-long lease. “Oh, you won’t be sorry. Trust me.” Not when at the end of the day he had her granddaughter keeping him company at night.
“There is one thing, though.”
His cell phone rang and he reached for it reflexively before stopping himself.
Feeling magnanimous, Jessie nodded. “You can answer it. Go on, I don’t mind.”
Hitting the button and holding the tiny phone to his ear, he said, “Samson Plastics. This is Boston Macnamara.”
It was enough to make even an old lady shiver. He was sexier than sin, in her opinion, and she knew Shelby wasn’t immune to that fact, no matter how many four-letter words she tossed off.
Boston spoke for another minute, giving perfunctory commands, then he hung up the phone. He met her curious gaze and said, as if they hadn’t been interrupted, “Shelby needs to knock first. Not on the door to my bedroom, but on the front door, before she and her rubbernecking tourists can come into the house.”
Jessie allowed herself a satisfied smile. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”
If she had anything to do with it, Shelby wouldn’t need to catch the man sleeping in order to see him naked.
Shelby was on her way to the Busy Bee for a late lunch, annoyed to find she was disappointed that she hadn’t run into Boston Macnamara on her eleven o’clock tour. The house had been silent except for the shuffling of her guests, murmurs that they swore the upstairs hall was cold, and the low hum of a fan Boston had left running in his bedroom.
“Hey, Shelby, honey, darlin’, sugar, what are you up to?”
Big arms wrapped around her from behind and Shelby was swallowed in a convulsive bear hug from her ex-husband, Danny Tucker. She loved Danny, she really did. All two hundred brawny pounds of him.
He had caught up with her outside the hardware store, next to the diner, and she nearly dropped the keys in her hand from the impact of his embrace. “Hey, Danny. I’m grabbing some lunch. You want to join me?” At least if she had Danny to distract her, she wouldn’t be tempted to call up mental images of Boston and the eyelet spread for cheap thrills over her ham and cheese.
“Sure, I’m in town all day. You buying?” Danny pulled off his baseball hat and grinned, his cheeks sunburned from another day out in the fields.
She snorted. “You wish. Dutch, buddy I don’t recall agreeing to any alimony that says I have to buy you lunch.”
He laughed, that carefree sound that endeared everyone to him. “Damn, I should have had the lawyer write that in. That’s a good one.”
Danny was good looking, an all-American boy. Healthy, hardy, blond. A ripped-T-shirt-wearing farmer, and doggone nice to boot. Lack of love or lack of friendship had not been a problem in their marriage. It had been lack of passion.
Shelby felt a pang of something that was either loneliness, regret, or heartburn from going too long since breakfast. Her fingers drifted up to Danny’s cheek. “You fool, you got sunburned again. How many times do I have to tell you to wear sunscreen? You watch, when you’re fifty years old they’ll be hacking half your face away because of skin cancer.”
Danny covered her fingers with his, large callused fingers that always had dirt under the nails. Workingman’s hands, unlike that city boy who probably stopped into a salon called Rupert’s or something once a week for a sissy manicure.
“That’s because I don’t have you taking care of me anymore.” He took her hand to his mouth and kissed each of her fingertips, his brown eyes teasing.
For the ten-thousandth time Shelby wondered why life couldn’t be simple. In a perfect world, she would be weak-kneed with wet panties right now, urging Danny to whisk her off to the back of his truck for a nooner. In her less-than-perfect Cuttersville reality, Danny’s kisses were just warm and wet, like a friendly dog.
Yet Boston Macnamara set her thighs burning.
She decided she was a contrary soul.
Boston tried to concentrate on Bob and Phil, the plant managers for the Cuttersville division of Samson Plastics, but all he could do was stare out the window at Shelby Tucker getting mauled by some big brute of a guy wearing a sweat-stained gray T-shirt with the sleeves torn off.
He forced himself to look down at his turkey sandwich, which was loaded with bacon and had a glop of mashed potatoes lying on the plate next to it. Picking the bacon off, he wondered exactly why Bob and Phil were treating him like he was the second coming of Christ.
They were gushing. Hearty. Jovial. Nervous, and sweating like two overfed pigs in golf shirts.
“So exactly how long are you going to be here?” Bob asked for the fourth time in the three hours since Boston had met him. “Mr. Delmar didn’t say.”
Since Boston had no idea and wasn’t about to admit that Brett Delmar had left him dangling on this one, he shrugged. “As long as we feel it’s necessary.”
For what, he hadn’t a damn clue, since he had no idea what exactly he was supposed to be doing in Cuttersville. At his tour through the plant that morning, he had decided to treat it as an inspection, since his duties had not been defined to him by Brett. He would see if the plant was running efficiently, then report back to his boss.
Then beg to get the hell out of here.
Before he dropped dead of a heart attack from excessive fat and grease at the Busy Bee Diner.
He wiped his bacon-compromised fingers on a paper napkin and looked out the window again. Shelby was still wrapped up in the sweaty embrace of Farmer Ted out there. “Who’s that guy with Shelby Tucker?” he heard himself say before he could debate the wisdom of it.
Why he cared, he couldn’t imagine. If Shelby had a nice local boy to squeeze her day and night, it wasn’t his concern.
Except her grandmother had hinted that Shelby was available.
Which still had nothing to do with him, since he wasn’t interested in entangling himself with the local tour guide, no matter how firm her thighs were.
Phil set down his barbecued sparerib sandwich and narrowed his eyes to look out the window. “Oh, that’s Danny Tucker. Her ex-husband.”
A piece of turkey fell from Boston’s open mouth to his plate.
Well, well. Another good reason he shouldn’t entangle himself with her. An ex-husband who looked to still be very friendly with her. Good thing he wasn’t seriously considering doing
anything
with or about her. He was far too rational for that.
The ex-husband appeared to be sucking on her fingers now. Boston tried not to imagine doing the same. “It must have been an amiable divorce.”
Phil had gone back to his sandwich, but Bob smoothed back his receding hair and nodded. “Yep. No one was really quite sure why they got divorced. But maybe it was because they got married just about right out of high school. Five years later people change, I guess.”
Five years? She had been married for five years? She looked younger than him, and yet she had been married for quite a while and divorced already. Boston hadn’t dated any woman longer than a year, and he was leery of even getting a dog. Committing to anything other than his job for an extended period of time, with no closing date, scared the proverbial shit out of him.
Bob said, “You know, our numbers at the plant are really good. We’ve met production for the last eight quarters and our overhead is low.”
Boston forced his mind off Shelby and to the man sitting across from him. Bob was staring at him intently, and Phil had shifted on the cracked vinyl booth. Boston noticed for the first time that the diner was once again hushed, like it had been that morning. While he’d been staring at Shelby out the window, every man, woman, and child inside had been staring at him.
Bob and Phil, between effusive compliments, kept emphasizing their productivity, and Boston finally caught the hidden meaning. Would have caught it earlier if he hadn’t been distracted since the minute he’d woken up and found Shelby gaping at his tortured penis.
They thought he was here to check up on the plant and, maybe specifically, to check up on them.
The polite thing to do would be to tell them the truth, that he was apparently on the outs with his boss for some unknown atrocity, and that he had no clue why he’d been banished to Cuttersville.
But his pride wouldn’t allow that.
The pride was what had gotten him through childhood, through the heartache and embarrassment when his father had skipped town with a wad of embezzled cash and Boston’s eighteen-year-old babysitter. Pride had earned him a spot at the University of Chicago, and then a job at Samson Plastics.
It had served him well, and all the Shelby Tuckers in Cuttersville couldn’t force him to part with it.
“Well, after lunch, we’ll head back on over and you can show me these fabulous numbers you keep bragging about.”
After all, he did have to do something here, and every one of Samson’s holdings did need to be watchdogged from time to time. He would just self-appoint himself to the task.
Maybe Podunk wasn’t going to be so heinous after all. He had just landed himself a three-month vacation from real work.
The seniors were getting restless. Shelby recognized the signs. Shuffling of walkers and canes. Griping at their spouses. Fiddling with the false teeth.
She rang the doorbell of the White House again. Gran had told her about the agreement with Boston and she was willing to abide by his rules. But he wasn’t answering the door and she had a whole porch full of people with prosthetic parts. They couldn’t stand around for very long without locking up.
Knocking with enough force to wake the dead, or at least to rouse Boston, since the dead were already awake, she turned to her audience.
“This Victorian home built in 1886 is home to at least seven spirits. From the nanny who continues to watch over every generation of children in the house and the kindly housekeeper who keeps serving meals, to the forlorn and malicious man who lurks in the basement, there is never an empty room in the house. The current resident is only temporary, while the spirits reside for eternity.”
The current resident wasn’t answering his damn door, and she figured she’d fulfilled her end of the bargain. Gran had only said she had to knock. Nobody said anything about waiting for Boston to actually let her in.