Truly Madly Yours (16 page)

“How could you?” Gwen shook her head and placed a hand at her throat. “How could you do such a thing to this family? While you were crawling out your bedroom window did you give a thought to your father’s position in this community? While you were letting that Allegrezza boy put his hands on you, did you stop—for even one second—to think how your father would suffer for your actions?”

“No,” Delaney answered. When Nick’s head had been between her thighs, she hadn’t given a thought to her parents. She’d been busy humiliating herself.

“You know how this town loves to gossip. By ten o’clock tomorrow, everyone in town will know about your shameful behavior. How could you do this?”

“You’ve hurt your mother deeply,” Henry added. They were like tag team wrestlers, one ready to jump in when the other ran out of steam. “If your disgraceful behavior gets out, I don’t know how she’ll hold her head up in this town.” He pointed a finger at her. “We never expected this of you. You were always such a good girl. We never expected that you would do something so vulgar. I never thought you’d bring shame on this family. I guess you aren’t the person we thought you were. I guess we don’t even know you.”

Delaney’s hands clenched into fists. She knew better than to say anything. She knew defending herself only made things worse. She knew if she said anything, Henry would considered it arguing, and Henry hated for anyone to argue with him. But Delaney couldn’t help it. “That’s because you’ve never wanted to know me. You’re only interested in how I make you look. You don’t care how I feel.”

“Laney,” Gwen gasped.

“You don’t care that I don’t want to go to college right away. I told you I didn’t want to go, and you’re making me go anyway.”

“So that’s what tonight was all about,” Henry said as if he were an omnipotent God. “You wanted to get back at me for knowing what’s best for you.”

“Tonight was about me,” she said as she stood. “I wanted to go out and be a regular eighteen-year-old. I wanted to have a life. I wanted to feel free.”

“You mean feel free to screw up your life.”

“Yes! Free to screw up my life if I want to, just like everyone else. I never have the freedom to do anything. You choose everything for me. I never have a choice.”

“And it’s a good thing,” Gwen took over. “You’re immature and selfish, and tonight you chose the one boy who could hurt this family the most. You gave yourself to a person whose only interest in you was to get back at Henry.”

What Nick had done was a hot lump of humiliation burning a hole in her stomach, but the despair choking the life out of her was worse. As she looked at both of her parents she knew it was no use. They would never understand. Never change. And she would never escape.

“You’ve degraded yourself, and I can hardly stand to look at you,” her mother continued.

“Then don’t. You were going to take me to the University of Idaho in a week. Take me tomorrow instead.” Delaney walked from the room, the weight of resignation settling about her shoulders. She moved up the stairs, her feet felt leaden, her heart empty, too drained to cry. She didn’t bother to pull off her jeans before she crawled into bed. She stared up at the pink canopy above her head and knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, and she was right. Her mind raced with every dreadful detail of the past few hours. What her parents had said. What she’d said, and how nothing ever changed. And no matter how hard she tried to avoid thoughts of Nick, her mind turned again and again to him. She remembered his hot touch, the cool silky texture of his hair through her fingers, and the taste of his skin. She closed her eyes and could practically feel his warm wet mouth on her breasts and lower. She didn’t know why she’d let him do those things to her. She’d had enough previous experience with him to know he could pass for pleasant one minute and turn mean as a snake the next. So why Nick Allegrezza of all people?

Delaney punched her pillow and turned on her side. Maybe because he’d always been so free, and he’d always fascinated her with his heavenly face and wild hellion ways. Maybe because he was so beautiful he took her breath away, and tonight he’d made her feel like maybe she was beautiful too. He’d looked at her like a man who wanted to make love to a woman. He’d touched her as if he wanted
her.
But it had all been a lie. An illusion, and she’d been a naive fool.

I’ll give you something better than love
, he’d said.
I’m going to make you come
. Why he’d chosen that particular method she didn’t know. But he couldn’t have chosen anything more humiliating if he’d had years to plan it. He’d stripped her naked while he’d remained clothed. He’d touched her all over, and she’d never even gotten a glimpse of his bare chest.

Her only consolation was that no one knew, not even Henry, exactly what had happened on the hood of Nick’s Mustang. And unless Nick spoke of it, no one would ever know. Maybe her mother was wrong. Maybe no one would talk about it.

But Gwen had only been wrong about the amount of time it would take for the gossip to reach her. It was noon, not ten, the next day when Lisa called and told Delaney that someone had seen her and Nick at the Charm-Inn in the nearby city of Garden. Another had them running buck naked through Larkspur Park and having sex on the kiddie slide. And yet in a third, she and Nick had been sighted in the alley behind the liquor store, drinking tequila shooters and going at it in the backseat of his car.

Suddenly being sent away to college didn’t seem so bad. The University of Idaho wasn’t Delaney’s first choice, but it was four hours from Truly. Four hours from her parents and their tight control. Four hours from the gossip blowing through town like a hurricane. Four hours from ever having to lay eyes on Nick or any member of his family.

No, maybe the U of I wouldn’t be so horrible after all.

“If you get good grades and behave yourself,” Henry told her on the drive to Moscow, “maybe we’ll lighten your class load next year.”

“That would really be great,” she’d said without enthusiasm. Next year was twelve months away, and she was sure she’d do something in the interim to displease Henry. But she would try. Just like she always did.

She tried for one month, but her first taste of real freedom went straight to her head, and she pulled straight Ds her first semester. She lost her virginity to a wide receiver named Rex and got a job waitressing at Ducky’s Bar and Grill, which was more bar than actual grill.

The money from her job gave her even more freedom, and when she turned nineteen that February, she quit school all together. Her parents had been livid, but she didn’t care anymore. She moved in with her first boyfriend, a weightlifter named Rocky Baroli. She sought higher education reading Rocky’s incredible pecs and adding up how many straight shots she could consume at the all-night parties she attended off campus. She learned the difference between a Tom Collins and a vodka Collins, between imported and home-grown.

She’d taken her new independence and she’d run with it. She’d grabbed hold with both hands and taken a great big bite, and she was never going back. She’d lived as if she had to experience everything at once, before her freedom was snatched away from her. Whenever she thought back on those years, she knew she was lucky to be alive.

The last time she’d seen Henry, he’d tracked her down with the sole purpose of dragging her back home. By then she’d dumped Rocky and had moved into a basement apartment in Spokane with two other girls. Henry had taken one look at the garage sale furniture, overflowing ash trays, and collection of empty booze bottles, and ordered her to pack her clothes. She’d refused and the confrontation had turned ugly. He’d told her if she didn’t get in his car, he would disown her, forget she was his daughter. She’d called him a controlling pompous son of a bitch.

“I don’t want to be your daughter anymore. It’s too exhausting. You were always more dictator than father. Don’t ever hunt me down again,” were the last words she’d spoken to Henry.

After that, whenever Gwen called her on the telephone, she made sure Henry was never home. Her mother visited Delaney occasionally in whichever city she happened to be living, but of course Henry never came with her. He’d been true to his word. He’d disowned Delaney completely, and she’d never felt so free—free of his control, free to screw up her life with abandon. And sometimes she really screwed up, but in the process, she also grew up.

She’d been free to drift from state to state and job to job until she figured out what to do with her life. She’d finally figured it out six years ago when she enrolled in beauty school. After the first week, she’d known she’d found her niche. She loved the tactile sensations and the whole process of creating something wonderful right before her eyes. She had the freedom to dress outrageously if she wanted to, because there was always someone a little bolder than herself.

It may have taken Delaney longer than most to settle on a career, but at last she’d found something she was good at and loved to do.

Being a stylist gave her the freedom to be creative. It also gave her the freedom to move when she began to feel trapped in one place, although she hadn’t felt claustrophobic in a while.

Not until a few months ago when Henry had flexed his muscle one last time and left that appalling will, controlling her life once again.

Delaney picked up her boots and headed into the bedroom. She flipped on the light and tossed her boots toward the closet. What was wrong with her? What would make her kiss Nick out on a crowded dance floor in spite of their sordid past? There were other available men around. True, some were married or divorced with five kids, and none of them were as fine as Nick, but she didn’t have a painful past with other men.

Nick the snake. That’s who he was, like that big python with the mesmerizing eyes in
The Jungle Book
, and she was just one more helpless victim.

Delaney looked at herself in the mirror above her dresser and frowned. Maybe if she weren’t so lonely and aimless she wouldn’t be so susceptible to Nick’s hypnotic charms. There had been a time in her life when aimlessness had been her goal. Not anymore. She was living in a town she didn’t want to live in, working in a salon with no real intentions of success. Her only goals were to survive and aggravate Helen. Something had to change, and she had to change it.

After Delaney opened the salon, she grabbed a poster of Claudia Schiffer, her perfect body squeezed into a lace Valentino, her golden hair curled and blowing artfully about her beautiful face. There was nothing like a glamorous poster to draw attention.

Delaney kicked off her shoes with the huge buckles and climbed up on the window bay. She’d just stuck the poster on the plate glass when the bell over the door rang. She glanced to her left and set the tape on the ledge. One of the Howell twins stood just inside the entrance gazing about the salon, her light brown hair held back from her pretty face by a wide red headband.

“Can I help you?” Delaney asked as she carefully climbed out of the window, wondering if this was the twin who had jumped on the back of Nick’s Harley last Saturday night. If she was, the woman had bigger problems than split ends.

Her blue eyes raked Delaney from head to toe, scrutinizing her green and black striped tights, green lederhosen, and black turtleneck. “Do you take walk-ins?” she asked.

Delaney was desperate for clients, desperate for anyone who didn’t qualify for a senior citizen discount, but she really didn’t care for the woman’s close examination, as if she were looking for faults. Delaney didn’t care if she lost this potential customer, and so she said, “Yes, but I charge twenty-five dollars.”

“Are you good?”

“I’m the best you’ll find around here.” Delaney shoved her feet into her shoes, a little surprised that the woman wasn’t already out the door, running down the street toward a ten-dollar haircut.

“That isn’t saying much. Helen sucks.”

Perhaps she’d rushed to judgment. “Well, I don’t suck,” she said simply. “In fact, I’m very good.”

The woman reached for the headband and pulled it from her hair. “I want the bottom trimmed and layered up to here,” she said, indicating her jaw-line. “No bangs.”

Delaney cocked her head to the side. The woman standing before her had a great jawline and nice high cheekbones. Her forehead was in proportion to the rest of her face. The cut she wanted would look good on her, but with her big blue eyes, Delaney knew something short and boyish would look stunning. “Come on back.”

“We met briefly at a party on the Fourth of July,” the twin said as she followed Delaney. “I’m Lanna Howell.”

Delaney stopped in front of a shampoo chair. “Yes, I recognized you.” Lanna sat and Delaney draped the woman’s shoulders in a silver shampoo cape and white fluffy towel. “You have a twin sister, right?” she asked, when what she really wanted to know was if this was the sister who’d glued herself to Nick the other night.

“Yeah, Lonna.”

“That’s right,” she said as she analyzed her client’s hair between her fingers and thumb. Then she adjusted the cape over the rear of the chair and carefully eased Lanna back until her neck rested comfortably in the dip of the shampoo sink. “What did you use to lighten your hair?” She grabbed the spray nozzle, then tested the water temperature with her hand.

“Sun-In and lemon juice.”

Delaney mentally rolled her eyes at the logic of some women who spent big bucks at the cosmetics counter, then went home and dumped a five-dollar bottle of peroxide on their heads.

With one hand she protected Lanna’s face, neck, and ears from the spray while the other saturated the hair with warm water. She used a mild shampoo and natural conditioner, and as she worked, the two women chatted idly about the weather and the beautiful colors of autumn. When she was finished, she wrapped Lanna’s head in a towel and led her to the salon chair.

“My sister said she saw you the other night in Hennesey’s,” Lanna stated as Delaney blotted the water from her hair.

Delaney glanced in the big wall mirror, studying Lanna’s reflection. So, she thought as grabbed her comb, it was the other twin who had been with Nick. “Yeah, I was there. They had a pretty good R&B band up from Boise.”

“That’s what I heard. I work in the restaurant at the microbrewery, so I couldn’t make it.”

As Delaney combed out the tangles and secured the hair into five sections with duckbill clamps, she purposely moved the subject away from Hennesey’s. She asked Lanna about her job, and the conversation turned to the big ice sculpture festival the town held every December. According to Lanna, the festival had turned into quite an event.

As a child, Delaney and been shy and introverted, but after years of attempting to put her clients at ease, she could shoot the bull with anyone about anything. She could moon over Brad Pitt as easily as she could commiserate over cramps. Stylists were a lot like bartenders and priests. Some people just seemed compelled to spill their guts and confess shocking details of their lives. Styling chair confessions were just one of the many things she missed about her life before she’d accepted the terms of Henry’s will. She also missed the competition and camaraderie between stylists and the juicy gossip that made Delaney’s life look tame in comparison.

“How well do you know Nick Allegrezza?”

Delaney’s hand stilled, and then she blunt cut a section of hair at the center of Lanna’s nape. “We grew up here in Truly at the same time.”

“But did you know him very well?”

She glanced into the mirror again, then back down at her hands, snipping a guideline from left to right. “I don’t think anyone really knows Nick. Why?”

“My friend Gail thinks she’s in love with him.”

“Then she has my sympathy.”

Lanna laughed. “You don’t care?”

“Of course not.” Even if she thought Nick was capable of loving any woman, he wasn’t her concern. “Why should I care?” she asked and removed the clip at the back of Lanna’s head and clamped it on the bib of her lederhosen.

“Gail told me all about Nick and you and what happened when you lived here.”

Delaney wasn’t all that surprised as she combed out tangles and cut the new section. “Which story did you hear?”

“The one where you had to leave town years ago to have Nick’s baby.”

Delaney felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach and her hands stilled again. She shouldn’t have asked. There had been several rumors churning the gossip mill of Truly when she’d left, but she’d never heard that one. Her mother had never mentioned it, but then she wouldn’t. Gwen didn’t like to talk about the real reason Delaney had left Truly. Her mother always referred to that time as “when you went away to school.” Delaney didn’t know why such old news should bother her now, but it did. “Really? That’s news to me,” she said, ducking her head and sliding strands of Lanna’s hair between her fingers. She laid the open scissor across her knuckle and cut a straight line. She couldn’t believe the town had thought she was pregnant. Well, actually, she guessed she could. She wondered if Lisa knew of the rumor—or Nick.

“I’m sorry.” Lanna broke into her thoughts. “I thought you knew about it. I guess I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth.”

Delaney glanced up. Lanna looked sincere, but Delaney didn’t know the woman so she wasn’t real sure. “It’s just a little shocking to hear I’ve had a baby when I’ve never been pregnant.” She let down another section and combed it free of tangles. “Especially with Nick. We don’t even like each other.”

“That will relieve Gail’s mind. Lonna’s too. The two of them are kind of competing for the same man.”

“I thought they were friends.”

“They are. If you go out with Nick, he lets you know right up front it’s not marriage he’s interested in. Lonna doesn’t really mind, but Gail’s trying to get in the house.”

“Get in the house? What do you mean?”

“Lonna says Nick never takes women to his house for sex. They go to motels or wherever. Gail thinks if she can get him to make love to her in his house, than she’ll get him to do other things too. Like buy her a big diamond and walk down the aisle.”

“Nick must have a huge motel bill.”

“Probably.” Lanna laughed.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Me? Maybe if I were the one going out with him, but I’m not. Me and my sister never date the same men.”

Delaney felt relieved, and she really didn’t know why she should care if Nick had kinky group sex with a pair of beautiful twins. “Well, doesn’t it bother your sister?”

“Not really. She’s not looking for a husband. Not like Gail. Gail thinks she’ll change his mind, but she won’t. When Lonna saw you and Nick dancing the other night, she wondered if you were another of his women.”

Delaney turned the chair and let down the last section. “Did you really come here to get your hair cut, or are you here to get information for your sister?”

“Both,” Lanna laughed. “But I liked your hair the first time I saw it.”

“Thank you. Have you ever thought of getting yours cut short?” she asked, again purposely changing the subject from Nick. “Really short, like Halle Berry in
The Flintstones
?”

“I don’t think I’d look good in short hair.”

“Believe me, you’d look awesome. You’ve got big eyes and the perfect shaped head. Mine’s kind of narrow so I need lots of volume.”

“I’d have to think about it for a
really
long time.”

Delaney put down her scissors and reached for a can of mousse. She wrapped the ends of Lanna’s hair around a large round brush and blew it dry. When she was finished, she handed her an oval mirror. “What do you think?” she asked, knowing full well that it looked damn good.

“I think,” Lanna answered slowly as she studied the back of her hair, “that I don’t need to drive the hundred and fifty miles to Boise just to get my hair cut anymore.”

After Lanna left, Delaney swept up the hair and rinsed the shampoo sink. She thought about the old rumor that had her leaving town ten years ago because she carried Nick’s child. She wondered what other gossip had circulated when she’d left town and been stuck in a dormitory at the University of Idaho. Maybe she would ask her mother tonight when she drove out there for dinner.

But she didn’t get the chance to ask. Max Harrison answered the door with a highball in his hand and a welcoming smile on his face.

“Gwen is in the kitchen doing something to the lamb,” he said as he shut the door behind her. “I hope you don’t mind that your mother invited me tonight.”

“Of course not.” The wonderful smells of her mother’s cooking filled Delaney’s head and made her mouth water. No one cooked a leg of lamb like Gwen, and the scents from the kitchen wrapped Delaney in warm memories of special occasions at the Shaw house, like Easters or her birthday when she’d been allowed to choose her favorite meal.

“How’s that salon of yours working out?” Max asked as he helped her out of her long wool coat, then hung it on the hall tree.

“Okay.” Lately, it seemed that Gwen was spending quite a bit of time with Max, and Delaney wondered what was going on between her mother and Henry’s estate lawyer. She just couldn’t picture her mother as any man’s lover. She was too uptight, and Delaney figured it couldn’t be anything but friendship. “You should come in and let me cut your hair.”

His quiet laughter made Delaney smile. “I just might do that,” he said as they walked toward the back of the house.

When they entered the kitchen, Gwen looked up from the bag of baby carrots she held in her hand. An almost imperceptible frown narrowed Gwen’s eyes a fraction, and Delaney knew something was wrong.

Shit
! Someone was in trouble, and she doubted it was Max. “What’s the special occasion?”

“No special occasion. I wanted to make you your favorite.” Gwen looked at Max and told him, “Every birthday, Laney always requested my lamb. Other children would have wanted pizza or burgers, but not her.”

Maybe she wasn’t in trouble, but she pushed up a cheerful smile just in case. “How can I help you?”

“You can get the salad out of the refrigerator and dress it, please.”

Delaney did as she was asked, then carried the bowls into the dining room. The table was set with beautiful roses, beeswax candles, Royal Doulton, and fine damask. It looked like a special occasion to her. Which could mean two completely different things. That she should worry, or that she was worrying about nothing. Either her mother simply wanted to enjoy a nice meal, or she was covering for a crack in the facade.