Frisco Joe's Fiancee (13 page)

“Hey, Mimi,” said Laredo when she blew through the front door. His non-welcoming tone caught her attention and she halted, counting ten of the Jefferson males sitting in the den watching TV.

Well, now they were watching her.

All ten appeared displeased. “Where’s Mason?” she asked, not sure what gave them such disgruntled faces. Maybe Mason was out of town again.

“He’s not here right now. Checking some equipment in the barn. But we’ve darn sure got a bone to pick with you,” Tex said.

“What?”

He pointed to the ceiling. “The housekeeper from Hell.”

“That’s not nice, Tex.” Mimi frowned at him. “Mason says she’s doing great.”

“Because Mason got here after the Lonely Hearts women were here, and he thinks Broomhilda—”

“Helga.”

“Precisely. H-e-double-l-g-a.” He stared at her to make certain she understood his meaning. Hell-ga. “He thinks Helga is the reason the houses look so nice.”

“Isn’t it?” She glanced around the room. “It certainly seems tidier in here.”

“We don’t want it tidy,” Fannin told her ominously. “We like living in some fashion of disarray. The remote belongs beside the easy chair. It’s always been that way.” He gestured to the table where they liked to sit and play cards or dominoes. The table held a pretty, bright finish, instead of dull fingerprints.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“We’re not allowed to touch it,” Ranger said. “How the hell can we play cards if we can’t touch the table?”

“It’s your table. Do as you like.”

“If we do, she’ll dust around our elbows while we play. It’s quiet warfare between us,” Last said. “And I pride myself on being easygoing, but if I have to eat cabbage and sausage one more breakfast, I’m going to have a permanently puckered face.”

“Tell Helga what you want to eat,” Mimi said reasonably.

“She got upset and went to Mason, telling him we didn’t like her cooking. Since he’s enamored of the cabbage stuff, he told her that whatever she fixed, we’d eat.” Archer was outraged.

Crockett shot her a dirty look. “Of all the tricks you’ve played on us over the years, Mimi, this one stinks at the lowest level.”

“It wasn’t a trick! I was trying to be helpful!” She couldn’t figure out what they were complaining about, anyway. Didn’t they want to have a clean house and hot food?

“It’s either me or her,” Bandera said.

“You don’t even live here, Bandera.”

“Yeah, but we eat here and crash here after work to relax. We can’t relax like this,” Calhoun said. “I’ve never felt so jumpy in my life. It’s like having fleas in my boots.”

Navarro shook his head. “Mimi, you’ve brought good men to their knees.”

“Oh, brother. What a bunch of whiners! If you don’t like her, have a family council and tell Mason what you’ve told me. It’s ten against one—where’s Frisco?”

“It’s eleven against one, but Frisco left without casting a vote. He couldn’t handle being jailed by Helga the Horrible. She watched him like a hawk, in her version of nursing. But he felt like he was living in a psycho movie, where any minute he was going to open his eyes and find a gray-haired drag queen standing over him, preparing to take a butcher knife to some parts of himself he prizes,” Laredo said. “Not that Helga’s mean or anything, but she watched him pretty good and it made him crazy, and
he got sleep-deprived so that he was starting to hallucinate a bit. Frisco fighting off dream spiders in the night is not much fun to listen to.”

“Poor Frisco! Where did he go?”

Tex shrugged. “No one knows. He had Jerry come get him when we were all busy. He left a note saying he was going on a long vacation where he could sleep like a baby. Said if he could just get forty-eight hours of undisturbed sleep, he’d be ready to rock.”

She reminded herself that these were grown, if not one-hundred-percent mature, men. They could handle themselves—and Helga—if put to the task. “Listen, I didn’t come over here to listen to y’all bellyache, though I’m sorry you’re not happy, but it sounds like your beef is with Mason, since he likes Helga.”

They murmured darkly at that.

“I just wanted for all of you to be the first to know.” She took a deep breath. “I’m engaged to be married.”

A
T NEARLY THE SAME TIME
Mimi made her announcement, Annabelle was making one of her own. “I’d like to speak with Tom, please,” she said to the receptionist of the Never Lonely Cut-n-Gurls Salon.

It was true what she’d heard. The chairs
were
red, the lights
were
dim. The infamous slogan
was
on
the wall in gold letters. Every mirror had a lavish sign with a woman’s name painted on it: Dina, Lola, Sapphire, Ruby, Silk, Emerald, Marvella, Satin and Valentine. Every chair had fresh-cut flowers beside it; the towels were purple. Fragrant candles burned here and there. In the back of the salon, a raised spa bubbled away, big enough for ten people to fit into.

It was all Annabelle could do not to gasp. And no telling what secret pleasure grottos awaited upstairs. No wonder the men brought their business to the salon!

“Tom’s not here,” said the receptionist, who happened to be Valentine, according to her tight red T-shirt lettered with the name.

“His car is around back,” Annabelle said, expecting the excuse. “And either I see him now, or I call the police and let them know you’ve a lice infestation of biblical proportions. The police and health department will be out on the double, and they may not find lice but from the looks of things, they’ll find something else to cite you for.”

Valentine snatched up the phone, staring at Annabelle rebelliously. “You’re just jealous because Tom left you. And we’re putting your salon out of business.”

“We don’t conduct your kind of business. And as for Tom, I’ve got a cowboy asleep on my bed, waiting for me, who makes Tom look like the Pillsbury Doughboy with an itty-bitty jelly roll, if you
get my drift.” She snapped her fingers. “Either you make a call, or I do. Your choice.”

Valentine punched the button. “Tom’s got a visitor,” she said into the phone. “No, I don’t think
she’ll
wait.”

She hung up, her eyes snapping sparks at Annabelle. Examining her long fingernails, she said nonchalantly, “How’s the baby?” in the tone of someone who thought babies were living hell.

“Going to grow up to be a lady,” Annabelle shot back. “You’ll have to look that word up in a dictionary. Tom, thanks for sparing me a moment of your time,” she said, as he came down the stairs, his light hair awry and his trousers unzipped, though buttoned.

Dina followed behind him a second later, bearing a furious expression and no lipstick, since Tom had it on his fly. Note to self—red lipstick shows big-time on khakis.

Thank heavens Frisco preferred blue jeans, one-legged as they were right now due to his cast. Red wouldn’t be quite as startling on denim—although as Tom had said, she was a sensible girl. She knew where to leave her lipstick, and it wouldn’t be on the fabric.

“What happened to you not wanting to get your trousers dirty proposing?”

“Huh?” he asked, clearly hoping to play dumb.

Well, that wasn’t too hard for him. “I’ve thought
over your marriage proposal,” she said to Tom, “and I—”

“Marriage proposal?” Dina demanded.

Tom’s guilty expression gave away the wrong answer. Dina slapped the guilt and maybe two layers of skin clean off his face. “You slimy turd!” she screamed.

“Oh, that was painful,” Annabelle said sympathetically, silently applauding Dina. Now Tom’s cheek matched his crotch, and it was all good in her book. “I can’t accept the proposal, of course. But my lawyer will be contacting you to arrange the paperwork for visitation, should you want it, and, of course, for child support payments.”

“Child support payments!” he howled. “You’ve got a lot more money than I have, Annabelle. Millions! I’m going to sue you for…palimony or something! I have rights in this, too.”

“How do you know about my financial situation?” She hadn’t expected him to want to pay—that had been a bonus jab for fun—but she was curious as to why he thought he deserved palimony. Ridiculous, since no court would consider such a stupid claim, but all the same, she wanted to know.

“You’re Annabelle Turnberry of Turnberry Wines, and you just came into your father’s entire fortune and estates.” He shook his finger at her. “I don’t have to pay you a dime.”

“You’re not paying me,” she said quietly. “You’re
living up to your responsibility by seeing to your daughter’s future. If you choose not to do that, I’m certain that my lawyer could work out a deal with you. No child support, no visitation.”

He glared at her. “I don’t want to see her anyway.”

For Emmie’s sake, her heart broke, but she’d expected no less. She’d been prepared. The truth was, she’d fallen for Tom when she was in pain from her father’s death. She’d thought he was someone he wasn’t, but her innocence was spent. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Emmie had her, and that was enough.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Tom. I’ll have my lawyers send you the paperwork—to this address, I guess?”

“Hell, no!” Dina shrieked. “You get out of here, you two-timing, lying, bellycrawling shyster! And you’d better pay me the thousand dollars you borrowed, or…or—” She glanced at Annabelle for inspiration. “Or you’ll be hearing from
my
lawyer!”

He stared at both of them, his mouth gaping open.

“Tom, your fly is open,” Annabelle said.

M
ASON SHOOK HIS HEAD
like a big bear, trying to clear it from what Laredo had just said. “Mimi’s engaged? Who would marry her? I didn’t even know she was dating anyone.”

He was babbling. He certainly didn’t want to hear
any more than he just had. “Maybe you heard wrong.”

“No, she came over to tell us first, she said. And she was wearing a huge rock, though none of us recovered fast enough to ask who’d given it to her.”

“Maybe it’s a fake,” Mason said.

Laredo shrugged. “I doubt it. It sure was catching the light. Anyway, why would she fake having an engagement ring?”

“Fake engagement,” Mason clarified, the last hope available to him sounding odd even to his ears. “Don’t think she would. She seemed very serious. Like I’ve never seen her this serious.”

Mimi had clearly been swept off her feet by the Ferrari city dude. “Well,” he said slowly, “I wish her all the best. Guess I’ll get to meet him sooner or later.”

“Probably not until the wedding. And after that, she’s moving to Houston with him. At least that’s what Sheriff Cannady said.”

“Houston!” Mason thought that sounded highly unlikely. “Mimi doesn’t belong in Houston.”

“Well, she’s been here all her life. I think she’s probably ready to move on. Raise her own family and all. She’ll be a good mom, although I have a hard time seeing her driving a van in car pools and dragging snacks to soccer games. Sitting on the sidelines with the cheerleaders and doing booster club stuff. Actually, I don’t have a problem seeing that
at all,” Laredo said thoughtfully. “Mimi will do awesome. She’s got all that energy she’s never known what to do with.”

“Mimi…raise a family?” Mason’s heart slid somewhere below his boots, right into the very ground he stood on. He couldn’t imagine her pregnant, had never thought of her in that manner. “What for? I mean, why would she do that?”

Laredo smirked at him. “Because everybody who doesn’t live at the Malfunction Junction usually wants one, bro.”

“I suppose.” He didn’t. He’d thought she felt the same way. For some reason, he felt a bit betrayed. “I never knew she wanted children.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Laredo slapped him on the back. “You’ll make a great uncle.”

D
ELILAH HUNG UP HER
cell phone with a smile. “Jerry said he dropped Frisco Joe off in town to visit Annabelle,” she told her staff. She was happy about that, because she had a funny feeling those two had something to talk about and maybe a little more, but she had something sad to tell the rest of her girls: Beatrice, Carly, Daisy, Dixie, Gretchen, Hannah, Jessica, Julie, Katy, Kiki, Lily, Marnie, Remy, Shasta, Tisha, Velvet and Violet.

She was going to miss them.

“There’s something I have to tell you all. This week has been a vacation of sorts, or at least that’s
what I told you. Actually, it was my last chance to be part of a big family. I’m going to have to cut back, girls,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, because you are all like daughters to me. Unfortunately, I’m not making what I was at the salon, and now I’m barely covering the rent.”

The women sitting and drinking coffee with her in the highway-side coffee shop stared at her with trepidation.

“Cut back?” Katy Goodnight asked. “How much?”

“I’m going to have to reduce my staff by fifty percent.”

A gasp of dismay met that announcement.

“I couldn’t feel worse about this. But since my sister opened her salon across the street, my life has changed in many ways, and I don’t think I have to tell you that.”

Kiki nodded. “We understand, Delilah. You took most of us in when we had no place else to go, and we’ve been grateful for that. When will you tell us who has to go?”

“I’d as soon know now,” Shasta said.

Delilah nodded. “Fair enough. Was anyone planning on turning in their notice to me any time soon?”

No one spoke up. She hadn’t expected them to. They’d been a family for a while. Most of these women had no place else to go. Or they chose not
to. Sighing, she tore paper strips off the place mat. “I’ve thought about this every which-a-way. I could go on a seniority basis. I could go on a most-earned basis. None of these ways strikes me as particularly fair, because I love all of you, and that’s not a business emotion. They say not to mix business and pleasure, but you girls have been my pleasure, and without you, I wouldn’t have had a business. So. I’m going to draw names.”

Her heart bleeding, she wrote each name on a paper. Every stroke of the pen made her hand shake more. She didn’t think she’d be able to write the last name; the pen felt as heavy as an executioner’s blade. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.