Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“No! Police brutality! No!” I squealed, laughing my head off as my upper body slid out of his grasp and toward the mud. I scooped up a handful just before Monroe righted me on my feet. I cocked my hand behind my head. “You will pay, Monroe!”

“You wouldn’t; you’re too nice a girl.” He grinned as he held my arms at bay. My face was dangerously close to his, the scrape of beard stubble just grazing the tip of my nose. We stopped laughing, our heads cradled together. I was fixated on the white curve of his smile, the warm flow of breath on my cheek. He tilted his mouth toward mine and -…

Behind us, I heard someone clear his throat. I looked up to see my brother smirking down at us. I glared at him. Chagrined, Monroe let go of me but managed to wipe his hands on my back. I snickered and smacked at him.

“So you must be Lacey’s neighbor,” Emmett said, barely able to contain his grin.

“Monroe,” he said, reaching out to shake Emmett’s hand but drawing it back for a wave when he saw how dirty it was.

“I was so worried about you up here all alone with that thunderstorm,” Emmett told me. “But obviously you’ve had plenty to keep you occupied.”

“This is my incredibly ill-mannered brother. Don’t worry, he’s adopted.” I assured Monroe. “Emmett, Monroe was helping me clear away the dock. It sank. And you’re just in time not to help us, so I’d suggest you zip it.”

“Oh, honey, I wasn’t worried enough to actually lift something,” Emmett said, shuddering. “So, Monroe, tell me all about yourself. What have you been doing with our little Lacey? She looks so relaxed…” Emmett sighed.

“Leave now,” I told a bemused Monroe. “Make your escape while you still can.”

“I guess I’ll go clean up. Let me know if you need help getting Mr. Borchard off your porch,” he told me. “It was nice to meet you -”

“Run, man, run!” I hissed. Monroe took one last opportunity to pat me on the back, leaving muddy handprints. He nodded to Emmett and then sauntered off.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I told my brother when Monroe was out of earshot.

“Hmmm.” Emmett said, linking his arm through mine as we made our way back up to the house. “It seems we aren’t s committed to the convent life as we thought.”

“Shut it,” I told him.

“I like him,” Emmett said. “Anyone who laughs at our jokes has my blessing to bone my sister.”

“Nice.”

“And he made eye contact with me, which is more than I can say for Mike,” Emmett said drily.

When we reached the porch, Hap handed me one sheet of paper estimating that it would take what could only be called a “crapload” of money to replace my dock.

Ouch.

“And I took the liberty of drawing up a list of things that you could stand to do around here, Miz Lacey, especially if you plan on staying up here this winter. Your storm windows and insulator need replacing. Your roof needs new shingles in a few places. It might take me a little bit, but I can finish up before the cold sets in.”

As long as Hap wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, I conceded, that was probably true.

“Well, you just let me know,” Hap said as I handed him an envelope full of cash for the dock removal. Hap didn’t like to leave a paper trail.

“You’re not really thinking of staying up here year-round, are you?” Emmett asked as we went inside.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It’s because of Monroe, isn’t it?” Emmett gasped as I poured us iced tea. “I knew it! You’ve been tearing up the sheets with Wolverine!”

“Okay, that’s it, you’re going to pun jail,” I told him. “No, I’m not sleeping with Monroe. We’re just friends.”

Emmett’s lips twitched. “Friends who wrassle in the mud and make out?”

“We were not making out!” I insisted. “We were just -”

“Face snuggling?” he suggested brightly.

I groused, “Shut it.”

“So if it’s not Monroe keeping you, why would you even think about wintering up here?” Emmett asked.

“It’s just that it seems to be working out pretty well. It’s cheap. It’s quiet. I don’t have to deal with Mike or anybody else.”

“Oh, honey, I don’t think people care about you anymore,” Emmett said. “Some woman in Texas locked her cheating husband in a dog kennel and posted pictures of it on the internet. By contrast, you’re downright conservative. They haven’t made fun of you on the radio in weeks.”

“On the radio?” I repeated. “When did that start?”

Emmett ignored me. “The citizens of our fair hamlet have had more to chew on than your sorry tale as Beebee is stepping on some toes. The humiliations have been public and spectacular. Beebee has become the talk of the town… again… for completely different reasons. She’s like the slutty secretarial Icarus. She’s flying so high that she can’t see how far she can fall. Beebee has lost all of her sense. Ruby Huddleston overheard her telling everybody down at Sassy Nails that since you didn’t work, she wasn’t going to work. She is now a full-time, stay-at-home hussy.”

“What exactly does that entail?”

He grinned. “Oh, shopping for trashy lingerie, going to the gym, scrap-booking the milestones of her adulterous relationship, getting permanent liner tattooed on her eyelids, networking lunches with other hussies. She’s spending money like water, redecorating the house like something out of a magazine… that magazine being Weekly World News. It’s nothing but hunting prints in the living room and tropical fish in the bathroom. It’s a collection of the world’s worst decorating themes all in one house.”

“I know I shouldn’t be enjoying this, considering that she’s pretty much destroying my former home,” I admitted. “But I am.”

“And from what I hear, Beebee’s not ascending to the social heights she’d anticipated,” he said. “She’s been wait-listed by the Junior League. And they haven’t wait-listed an applicant since 1975. Remember Maude Littleton? She tried to pass off Knox Gelatine recipes as her own in the church bazaar cookbook and it marked her for years. Anyway, Beebee has been semi-blackballed there. Mike can’t add her onto his membership at the country club as long as he’s still legally married to you. Beebee has been grudgingly accepted into the Ladies Auxiliary, but not selected for any of the important committees. She’s been stuck on the solicitation committee for the spring carnival. The lowest of positions in the Auxiliary’s hierarchy,” Emmett added with a bitchy snicker.

“All because of me?” I asked.

Emmett burst out laughing.

“What?!” I cried as he rolled on the couch. “Okay, so I’m overestimating my importance to my friends and neighbors.”

“It’s self-preservation,” he assured me. “The women of Singletree realize that introducing Beebee into their circles and more important, to their husbands, puts them all at risk. Even if Beebee doesn’t make plays for their husbands, seeing Mike and Beebee together might give their husbands the idea that they could trade their wives in for newer models. Beebee is like a social pathogen, contagious, virulent, and surgically enhanced.

“Wynnie blames you for this debacle, of course, to anyone who will listen,” Emmett said. “And that’s becoming fewer and fewer people. She keeps saying you should be ashamed of yourself for ‘running off’ on Mike and abandoning him. I don’t think she’s even embarrassed by the e-mail any more. She’s just pissed at you for losing Mike to someone so much worse than you.”

“Wow. Thank you so much.”

“People are asking about you,” Emmett said, looking contrite. “And not with that condescending, smirky look in their eyes. You could be welcomed back into the fold before you know it.”