Roundabout Road (Saving the Sinners of Preacher's Bend Book 2) (13 page)

As if she wasn’t already aware of this fact.

Liddy was just about to pull away, but somehow forgot
to. Her right hand drifted upward to encompass a massive left upper arm as he
deepened their kiss. Her left hand skimmed up to the tiny stubble on his face—avoiding
his right arm altogether.

They’d spent the better part of five long hours
together. Jake’s five o’clock shadow was starting a little early. But she did not
care. All Liddy knew, all she even aware of was they were exhibiting the moral
standards of two horny teenagers on a Friday night down in the quarry. Neither was
willing nor able to pull away; even remotely capable of stopping such an insane
madness.

Liddy lowered her hand, placing it against the bared
flesh of his chest. Jake’s deep groan was captured within her mouth. Daring to
go lower still, as his whole hand encompassed her left breast Liddy grazed her
knuckles over his manhood through the tailored suit pants.

Jake Giotti,
Mr
.
All in Control
, looked
to be having difficulty kissing her, fondling her breast, and perhaps not
exploding by her gentle touch altogether. He was the first to pull away,
smiling into her eyes.

“Apology accepted, Mrs. Giotti.”

Liddy knew he was only masquerading as someone not in
dire need of physical release at this point.

And she could barely think at all. Let alone, act
normal, until both of them heard the door to the police station open and they physically
yanked apart faster than a rubber band snapping in the middle.

There was most likely the look of guilt on her face. Jake,
however, was grinning from ear to ear.

It was Rachel. Again the witch was ruining an aspect
of Liddy’s life. But at least she was bearing gifts.

Chapter Thirteen

“Ceril told me I was to bring you food. So I have.”
Rachael handed the bag threw the bars to Jake; who’d moved quickly to the cell
door and took it from her fingers.

Liddy was still glued to her spot, simply by what she’d
let happen, quite unable to stand up at all.

“Smells really good,” he said.

Rachel smiled through the bars. “It had better, Jake
Giotti. I made it just for you.” She purposely added under her breath, “
She
ever cooked food smelling like this for you?”

Liddy started laughing at the rather catty, easily
overheard comment, biting down on her lower lip to keep from saying something
nasty right back to the bitch. What Rachel wanted to say, had to be said. If
not for her, then said to clear the air.

Jake, nice man she knew him to be did the nasty
comment for her. “Only when in bed, and then, while cooking my goose. Liddy could
heat up in the kitchen pretty fast . . . if you know what I mean.”

Rachel looked appalled, handing Jake the other bag she’d
brought, almost as if she’d been thinking briefly of not feeding Liddy anything
at all.
The witch
!

“Oh, and by the way . . . Theo is, at this very
moment, on her way over here. Once she heard you were thrown in jail, she moved
heaven and earth to get someone to tell her all about your, um,
visitor
.”

“My
visitor
?” Jake chuckled at.

“What else was I to say to her?”

Rachel covered her mouth with her hand the moment she
realized she let the cat out of the bag and dug her own grave right in front of
them.

“You could have tried saying nothing at all for a
change, Rach,” he warned; a dangerous lilt set to his voice.

He turned back to Liddy to hand over her portion of
food. Post haste, she dove into the bag without any care as to what they may
have thought of her, shoving as much food as she could into her mouth while the
two quarreling lovebirds hashed out their differences by the steel bars. 

She was about to bite into a thick, juicy hamburger
when in waltzed none other than one very bitchy Ms. Theodora Rosebud. The old
hag was clicking her tongue woefully at all three.

“Get back to the diner, Rachel. Lollygagging don’t
feed the customers.” Theodora moved toward their co-inhabited cell by shuffled
gait.

Rachel, quite unexpectedly, did as she was told,
closing the door to the police station behind her back and high-tailing it
across the street.

Liddy’s mind refused to wonder how the two of them had
even got inside the police station without using a key; seeing as how Debra had
locked the door when she’d left. But there were a lot of things her mind suddenly
refused to wonder about today. And it was always best never to question what
happens in Preacher’s Bend without a bottle of aspirin in hand.

“That granddaughter of mine! She’ll be the death of me
yet,” Theo sputtered; while most of those thoughts had come their way as she
pulled up a chair to sit down, placing the chair right next to the holding
cell.

“Granddaughter?”

The word just flew right out of Liddy’s mouth. Honest
to God! Along with a bit of hamburger, she feared.

Theodora Rosebud was acutely aware that she did not
know Rachel was her granddaughter.
How could she?
And Jake was fully
aware that she did not know this, as well. Was this part of his
things
better left unknown
?

She suddenly gave her husband the evil eye; getting,
in return, a nasty smirk.

“Now, Jake,” Theo started. “You do know today is Sunday,
right?”

“Yes, Theo. I do know today is Sunday,” he
acknowledged.

“Then why am I here, on a Sunday no less . . . if you
know that today is Sunday?”

An old school Marm had nothing on this woman.

Jake sat down next to Liddy, holding off with eating
his meal. He wasn’t about to get off the hook so easily on that one. But Liddy was
not about to stop mid-stride at consuming food. It was simply too good. She was
hungry, damnit! Their argument was none of her concern.

“I don’t know Theo. What
are
you doing here on
a Sunday?”

Jake being . . . well, Jake.

Theodora Rosebud cleared her throat. She looked him
dead in the eyes, and said, “A little lip will get you nowhere, Jacob Curtis Giotti.”

He turned quickly toward Liddy, his grin held back
with tremendous effort. But knowing him as well as she did, Liddy knew what was
coming out of him next. Jacob Curtis Giotti was holding back from being
flippant.

He should have known there were things even he couldn’t
control, and one of those things was Theodora Rosebud calling him Jacob, his
given name.

“I don’t know. Lip sort of got me exactly where I’d
wanted to be a little while ago,” the man so damn smugly offered an old woman.

Choking without water in sight was not a good thing to
do, especially with food in one’s mouth. Choking seconds after a comment like
that?
Regrettably, insanity had its perks.

Theo quickly came to Liddy’s rescue and handed Jake a
full paper cup of water through the bars. Liddy grabbed it from his hand, swallowed
the contents within seconds, but the large chunk of hamburger still stuck in
the back of her throat had her eyes filling with unshed tears.

“See what you did!” Theo snapped. “You about made her
choke to death on a single bite of hamburger.”

Her darling husband faced her again. “It will take a
lot more than just a little lip to end this woman’s life, Theodora.”

“Jake!” Liddy blurted out, brushing the moisture from her
eyes.

Theo cut her off with the wave of her withered hand.
“Pooh, pah. You shouldn’t pay any mind to him today. The man’s just being who,
and what, he is. A man. Don’t let him get to you, honey.”

Liddy’s eyes widened.
Pooh pah
? Who the bloody
devil says Pooh pah, other than an old hag?

“I have better things to do with my time than sit here
listening to a couple of lovebirds argue about petty things,” Theodora added.

“Lovebirds!” both she and Jake blurted, looking
quickly at the other.

“That is what you are. Ain’t it?”

Jake offered up, before Liddy could, “Not exactly.”

“Then why did Lidia come back looking for you, if not
to rekindle the romance between you? It certainly looks that way to me.”

Cripes sake!
Was the woman an actual Alzheimer victim gone amuck? She already told Theo why she
was here! To get an annulment signed from a man she didn’t want to be married
to anymore. And Mrs. Rosebud just about flipped her lid the very minute she’d
said it.
“Blah! Blah! Blah! Yadda, yadda, yadda
.
Preacher’s Bend’s
occupants do not get annulments”
, was what she’d quibbled back, or
something to that affect.

But Liddy was no longer one of Preacher’s Bend’s
occupants, now was she? So, on a technicality, she should be able to get an
annulment from Jake and get away with it, without being judged too harshly for
the crime. Right?

“Liddy wants a divorce, Theodora. So she can marry
some other guy. A lawyer.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, standing up for herself.
Someone had to around her. Why not it as being her this time?

“Yes. You do,” he snapped back.

“No, I don’t,” she warned him, shaking her head. “You’re
the one who wants a divorce. I want a . . .”

Jake’s hand clamped over her mouth to shut her off. Whereas,
gut-wrenching as it was, she bit down on it rather hard.

The hand was quickly removed from her lips post haste.

“—an annulment!”

Her final thrust of sword was to glare at his face.

There
. E
at
crow, you arrogant sonofabitch!

She’d wanted to add, “Piss off!” for throwing his hand
over her mouth, but he didn’t quite look ready for any more out of her.

He glanced at his hand instead, then at her. And quite
pointedly told her she was going to pay for the disrespectfulness of biting him
through a heated glare. In fact, she was going to pay dearly. And this debt
collected soon.

Theo, on the other hand, was glaring at both of them. “Over
my cold dead body will the two of you get an annulment.” She slammed the foot
of her cane on the floor of the police station. “No one, and I mean
no one
who lives in Preacher’s Bend, gets one of those ugly things. They wouldn’t
dare. Not on my watch. And now, with dear Petty gone, it is my watch. So, no!
Not now. Not ever.”

Unfortunately, the old hag wasn’t done. “I have always
said, if you made a bed in the first place, you must take the consequences of
lying under its sheets. There will not be an annulment of this marriage. It
will have to be dissolution of marriage by way of divorce. A long, dragged out
dissolution, or nothing at all.”

Both she and Jake had been paying very close attention
to Theodora because neither said another word. Theo rose. The old bat headed
slowly to the door, and once there, turned their way.

“And don’t you
dare
make me come back here on a
Sunday, Jacob Curtis.”

Jake looked too stunned to answer Theodora; too
stunned to have made a Rosebud do anything a Rosebud didn’t want to.

Once the old hag was out the door Liddy boldly dove
into shark-infested waters with both eyes closed. “She can’t do that can she?”

Mr. Giotti simply uttered out words poorly said, in her
opinion. “The judge is her grandson. Theodora Rosebud can do just about
anything she likes around here.”

Like getting Jake to tend to her bees as part of his
parole condition, getting what was once a wild man to live in a one room shack
located under old peach trees, and getting him to mend his ways—turn the other
cheek, time and time again.

If memory served her correctly, Jacob Curtis Giotti had
gotten his ass kicked—time and time again—because he was too stubborn to keep
his big mouth shut. Turning the other cheek wasn’t in his vocabulary.

If Theodora Rosebud said
‘No annulment!’
there
wasn’t going to be an annulment. Period.

“Has a whole town gone completely insane? Or just the
people who still live in it?” She dropped the rest of her hamburger onto the
paper sack lying on a hard metal bench, no longer hungry.

“Just the people who live at the far end of Roundabout
Road, I fear,” Jake offered up, digging into his food.

Chapter Fourteen

Six hours later Deputy Wesley found her and Jake
playing tic-tac-toe with a packet of ketchup and a pressed down brown paper
sack placed between their hips. They were completely bored out of their
ever-loving minds. There wasn’t much else to do except beat their heads against
the walls. Or, beat each other up. And as far as she could tell, Jake had no
desire to punch out her lights, at least not yet.

“Rachel brought you food?”

Jake answered, “Yep,” watching her finger make a
circle in the top left corner. His sudden grin to her move was very evil, if anyone
asked.

“And you have not killed each other while I’ve been
away?” Debra prodded.

“Apparently not,” he responded, making an X in the
middle square.

Jake won for the eleventh time in a row.

“Should I wait a few more minutes? Just in case,” she
questioned.

Liddy’s gaze rose to her sister-in-law. Christ! It had
almost sounded as there’d been hope in her voice. Jake raised his eyes to Debra,
as well.

“No. Nobody is killing anybody today.”

Debra clearly looked disappointed at this news.

“If I have nothing to clean up, nothing to make a
report over, I’m going home. I’m going to put up my feet up, watch a little TV,
and forget the two of you even exist for a few lousy hours.”

Liddy shoved the make-shift tic-tac-toe board unto the
floor to move hurriedly to the cell door. “What about us?”

Debra raised her brow. “What about you?”

“You have to let me have my one phone call!”

“Says who?” Debra put her beefy hands on her equally
beefy hips to state firmly Liddy had better speak now or suffer the fated consequences.

“Says the United States of America!”

Debra actually growled this time. Then, in the blink
of an eye, she stormed over to the cell door, slipped in the key, hauled Liddy
out by the arm; shoved her body toward one of the station’s desks with little
care if she’d get hurt, and smart-mouthed, “Fine, you get to make your one
phone call. And you had better make it worth the trouble, Hussy.”

Liddy didn’t dare verbally retaliate, now that she was
out of the cell. She moved to the old rotary phone, picked up the receiver, and
turned to Jake. He was trying hard not to laugh. But he knew what she wanted
out of him and eventually the man sighed out the numbers. Her fingers dialed
them as he spoke. By then, Debra had moved over the cell door.

“You gave her
your
phone number?” Words Liddy
never heard.

On the fifteenth ring, Liddy regretfully acknowledged
no one was home. No one was going to save her from all of this. No one in Preacher’s
Bend even cared. She hung up. With her head hung low, she let Debra shove her, quite
roughly, back into the holding cell, stumbling with little to no care toward
Jake.

“You gave her
your
phone number?” Debra
repeated, waiting for Jake’s answer as she relocked the cell door.

But he completely ignored the question, eating another
fry.

“Well, little Hussy, you just wasted a very precious
phone call to a man who is not home. And I am surely putting it down that you
did, the time you made it, who you made it to, and
why
. I wouldn’t want
to upset the entire United States of America, now would I?”

This time it was Liddy who completely ignored Debra.
Instead, she slammed a murdering gaze into Jake’s raised mercury orbs. He’d just
betrayed her beyond all forms of betrayal imaginable.

Her life? She figured it was now well on its way to
being completely over.

Debra left before Liddy had the actual courage to call
the bastard out on what he’d done to her.

“Why did you do that? You know I get only one phone
call. Why did you give me yours’? You were supposed to give me Julia’s!”

“I wasn’t ready for you to leave just yet.”

“Wasn’t ready?
Why you . . .
” Liddy was so
angry she slammed her fist into his sore arm with a bit of power behind the
punch, hoping to make the man feel her wrath.

Jake was on his feet within seconds. He had her in an
angered grip a half second later, and there was mutiny in his eyes.  

“
We . . .
are not done here, Liddy.”

“Oh, yeah? I think
we
are so done here!” Her
thoughts spat out quickly, she figured this as foolish on her part considering she
was now locked up in a tiny holding cell with a really big man who looked ready
to explode. And, who’d likely kill her with his bare hands if given half the
chance, any witness long gone.

But Jake simply ignored the pain she gave him. “If
Theo said no annulment, then we have sixty-plus hours to figure out exactly
what it is we are going to do—
without
Theo finding out about what we are
up too. So, yeah, we have unfinished business. I thought it best you stayed with
me to finish our unfinished business; but you had better apologize for hitting
me on the arm, and soon, or our
business
will be finished quicker than
you could’ve imagined . . . Mrs. Giotti.”

He really had no need to sneer on her name.

Without thinking, Liddy moved her head down and
brushed her lips over the raw wound on his right arm, kissing a snake she’d
probably kissed a thousand times over in her lifetime.

The shock of his warm flesh touching hers was quite
substantial.

“There. Now
that
was much better.” Jake’s
arrogance showed through his slightly cold exterior. “Now you can kiss another
part of me that’s hurting.”

“What other part?” she so innocently,
so foolishly
asked.

He moved his hands to her shoulders and shoved her
down to her knees, hard. Easy enough to do, since Jake could bench press 280lbs
with one arm tied behind his back, but very had to accept when it happened to
her.

“The part really missing you all these years.”

Her gaze rose, as did her eyebrows; but her mouth
remained clamped shut.

“It’s been hurting something fierce since the moment
you let me touch you. The least you can do is soothe away some of its pain.”

Biting on her lower lip, Jake’s fingers dug painfully
into her shoulders. His eyes blazed down into hers; Liddy’s filled with unshed
tears to the sudden onrush of unwanted memories stifling her mind.

“Forget how, Liddy?” he taunted.

She tried to stand up, but he was much stronger than she.
Standing on her two feet would now be up to him. Yet, remaining on her knees
was far better for the time being; as she closed her eyes and allowed the
memories to drown her. Of course she didn’t forget.
The bastard!

Jake quickly hauled her up to his bared chest. Her
treacherous body slammed into his. His hands found the back of her head and his
mouth attached to hers, open and waiting.

Seconds later, Liddy was left panting; with Jake
looking at her as if he no longer knew her name or could even recall his.

He turned . . . and hit the concrete wall with his
fist.

She could hear the crack of bone; yet he wouldn’t show
pain toward what he’d done.

“Damnit, Liddy! Ten years and you can still hurt me
this badly?”

What was she to say to this?
I’m sorry?
Because,
at the moment, she wasn’t sorry for anything he desired her to be sorry for.

She wasn’t sorry for hurting him or for punching him on
the arm as she had. She wasn’t sorry he likely broke his hand against a
concrete wall because he had a trigger-finger temper usually flaring at will.
And she wasn’t sorry for wanting him out of her life yesterday, and all the
yesterdays before.

She was, however, truly sorry for herself: for still
loving this man, still wanting him so badly, even being forced to her knees in
a holding cell had been a complete and sudden turn on.

She was ever so sorry for actually wishing she could be
bold enough to kiss him exactly where he wanted to be kissed, chickening out at
the last second.

Unfortunately, Jake could read her every thought
through her eyes now staring up at him. His voice lowered. His temper died out.
He angled her very close to his being.

“How can you still do this to me?” he wondered aloud,
never needing any answer from her; asked, more than likely just to get it out
of his system. “Why can you still hurt me so badly?”

She tried to look away but something held her gaze to
his. Something trapped her eyes to those silver-gray orbs turned liquid mercury.

“Is this Mack guy everything you want in your life,
Liddy?” Jake’s voice was raspy, breaking up, turned thoughtful; a bit
reluctant, to a certain degree.

For a moment, she’d barely recognized it as his.

Liddy chomped down on her lower lip, stalling for
time. She’d thought at one time in her life Mack Wells as everything she could have
ever wanted in a man: a provider, a husband. If ever the time came, father
material. Christ! The guy had tons of money, tremendous power in a rather elite
circle of life, political influence to die for, and a great big name flashed in
large neon lights. Those lights had drawn her in. In Miami, folks loved to sue.
She would’ve been rich.

Now Liddy knew better. She knew everything she should
have always known. The man holding her, suddenly taking the rubber band out of her
hair, staring into her soul, was everything she’d ever wanted in her life.
Was
, and would always be everything she’d ever wanted in her life.

Everything she would ever need.

Jake let her hair fall over her shoulders. His fingers
entwined through the thick golden tresses.

Her answer came out as, “You are. Damnit, Jake! You’re
everything I had any need for.”

“I don’t want to be your
need
, Liddy. I need to
be the
want
you can’t live without.”

She bit down on her lip even harder, drawing her head
back to stare at him.

“I mean it. This will go no further if you can’t let
yourself admit what you did to me was wrong.”

He wouldn’t back down and she had nowhere to go except
the guided path of truth.

Liddy shook her head, but the tears fell in spite of
the fact all she had to do was say the words. “What I did to you was wrong.
What I’ve been doing to you the last ten years was . . .”

She never got out the rest because his mouth sealed
over hers. Strong, relentless, the kiss lasted five whole minutes.

Once breathless, he drew back. “Then you had better
pray for a miracle to save you, Mrs. Giotti. Or you’ll soon find yourself
making love to a husband you’d wanted to get rid of ten years ago.” His lips
brushed against the top of her head this time. “I sure as hell waited long
enough for you to come back to me. A man can only take so much torture.”

He wanted to talk about torture? Didn’t he realize her
being here, each remembering their lives together, remembering what had been
good about them—setting aside all the bad—was torture to her? Didn’t he
understand she wanted him so badly, her undies had wetted? Or just one touch,
and now many, had tightened her core to unbearable? Good God! All he’d have to
do was set his hand there, and she would explode into a billion shards of brittle
glass.

Torture?

Goddamnit! Liddy knew how big he was, and how well he
fit. Torture meant something entirely different to her, than it did him. Jake
had no idea at all what the word meant. No idea at all!

“Jake?”

“Yes?”

“Are there . . .” Liddy paused, sighing in her head. Could
she really do it? Set aside the bad for one more moment of the good?

Ah hell!

A
dded words then
spoken as, “Are there any cameras watching us right now?” As said, the undies already
wet and the body inflamed beyond redemption.

“None, as far as I can tell. Why do you ask?” He raised
his left brow, baiting her.

Liddy shrugged her shoulders as if it really did not
matter what she was about to say to him would rock his world. “Then don’t you
think we should end this, once and for all?”

He pushed her body far enough away only to get a good
long look at her face, flaring his nostrils.

“Don’t be teasing me in this way, Little Darlin’. It’s
not very nice. And it won’t end as prettily as you want it to, if you are.”

“Who said I was teasing you, Jake? I’m dead serious.
Make love to me, right here, now. Who’s ever going to find out? Once we get it
out of our system . . .”

He quibbled, “Once?” raising a telltale brow to warn
her of the substantial flaw in her plan.

“Okay, twice, three times. However many times it takes
the both of us to get it out of our systems . . .”

“Well, shit, Liddy!” he slipped out, grinning
devilishly.

“But . . .,” she stopped at, holding up her hand. Very
sure-footed, that upon her decision she would not regret this later on in life.