Rachel Gibson - True Confessions

“Oh, yeah? My mother-in-law reads those like the Bible and swears they’re true.” Shelly leaned across the table and whispered, “She’s crazy. Last year for my birthday, she paid the first installment toward a Ronco food dehydrator, then had me billed for the rest.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. I had to pay over a hundred bucks for that thing, and I’ve never used it.” She did a one-shoulder shrug. “But I guess it wasn’t as bad as the pig cookie jar she got for my sister-in-law. You lift the lid and it squeals like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.”

Hope leaned back in her chair and chuckled.

“Do you have a man in your life?”

Oh, Shelly was good. Real good. Trying to get Hope to relax, soften her up before she sneaked in a few personal questions. But Hope was better.

“Not right now,” she answered.

“There are a few available men in town. Some of them still have their own teeth and most of them have a job. Stay away from anyone with the last name Gropp. They look normal, but none of them are right in the head.”

“That’s okay,” Hope assured her. “I’m not looking for a man.”

Hope rinsed her plate, then washed her hands with Lemon Joy. When she turned off the water, the sound of Shelly’s bootheels and the low hum of a motorboat out on the lake filled the silence.

“Sounds like Paul and the boys are back,” Shelly said as she walked across the kitchen.

Hope reached for a towel and dried her hands. She glanced out the back screen door into the shaded yard but couldn’t see anything. “I better get back across the street.”

“Stay a minute and meet my husband.” Shelly stuck her head into the refrigerator, looking for something. She was nosy, but Hope could appreciate her style. She’d invite Hope to lunch to pump her for info, nonchalantly slipping in personal questions between amusing stories, bits of gossip, and bites of crab. “Are you staying in the Donnelly house tonight?”

Out of habit, Hope hung the towel over her shoulder. “That’s the plan. My things are supposed to be delivered later today.” She leaned her behind against the counter and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “But the way my luck is running, my stuff is probably lost in transit. Probably fell off the truck in Vegas.”

The screen door opened, then slammed. “Gotta piss so bad my back teeth are floatin‘,” Adam Taber said as he ran through the kitchen.

“Where’s Wally?” Shelly called after him.

“At the boat,” he answered, then was gone.

“Hey, there, Adam.” A deeper voice spoke from just outside the door. “You know better than to go into somebody’s house without knocking.”

Only that morning, Hope had heard the same voice ask if she liked passion fruit. She straightened and dropped her arms to her sides.

“Why should he knock when his daddy never does?” Shelly asked.

Dylan raised one hand above his head and rapped his knuckles against the wooden frame. “Knock, knock,” he drawled. “Can I come in?”

“No,” Shelly replied and shut the refrigerator door. “You smell like fish guts.”

He came in anyway and walked toward Shelly. From across the kitchen, his broad back and shoulders filled Hope’s vision. He wasn’t wearing the battered hat he’d worn that morning, and his short hair stuck to the back of his neck. He advanced on Shelly, his hands out in front of him as if he meant to touch her.

“Stay away, Dylan Taber, and I mean it!”

He chuckled, three deep “huh-huh-huhs,” then asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll beat you up like I did in the fifth grade.”

“Come on, now, you didn’t beat me up. You kicked me in the bean bags, Shelly. It’s not right kicking a guy in the bean bags.”

“You touch me,” she warned, “and I’ll tell Dixie Howe you love the way she looked in that sequined tube top she wore to the T-ball game last night.”

He dropped his hands. “There you go. Hitting below the belt again.”

“Paul, get in here,” Shelly called out. “We have company.”

“Dylan’s not company.”

“I’m not talking about Dylan. Hope Spencer from across the street is here.”

Dylan shot a glance over his shoulder and slowly turned to look at her. His brows rose up his forehead, and the kitchen light above his head picked out the gold in his brown hair.

“So,” Paul Aberdeen began as he and Wally entered the house, “you’re our new neighbor. Welcome to Gospel. I’d shake your hand, but I’ve been gutting fish.”

Hope offered him a smile. “Thank you.”

Paul was big and blond and his fair complexion had been burned red except for a white strip at his hairline. He gave Hope a quick up-and-down with his eyes before turning to Dylan and shaking his head. “I’ll see your five and raise you ten.” He opened the refrigerator and stuck his head inside. “Would you like a beer, Hope?”

“No, thank you.” Although she couldn’t imagine why, she had a feeling that they were betting on her.

“Dylan?”

“Yep.” The word was barely out of his mouth before a Budweiser was lobbed at him. He caught it in midair and popped the top.

“Remember me?” Wally asked as he came to stand before her. Like his father, he’d been burned by the sun, but that was where the resemblance ended. He was clearly his mother’s child.

“Of course,” she said. “You rescued my purse.”

“Yep.” He nodded and looked at his mother. “Where’s Adam?”

Shelly pointed in the direction of the bathroom and Wally went out of the kitchen. “Hope’s writing an article for a Northwest magazine,” she informed the men.

“What kinda article?” Paul closed the refrigerator door and hung one arm around his wife’s neck.

“Hope is into flora and fauna.”

Dylan raised the Bud to his mouth and watched her over the top of the can.

“I’m working on a nature article. I want to get some pictures of native wildlife and indigenous vegetation.”

Dylan lowered the beer as one brow lifted slightly. “At first glance, I’d never take you for a nature lover.”

“You don’t know me.”

“True.” He moved to the sink and set the can on the counter, next to her elbow.

“If you want to see nature,” Paul said, “you might want to camp out at the falls. Now that’s some beautiful country.”

Dylan stood so close his arm bumped hers as he turned the water on. Her pulse picked up a beat or two, but she stood perfectly still and refused to let him know he made her nervous. “I might do that,” she said.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Have you ever camped out somewhere other than a motel room?”

Well, there had been that one summer at Girl Scout camp. “Sure, I camp all the time. I love to commune with nature.”

He chuckled and reached for the lemon dish soap. His T-shirt brushed her bare shoulder. “Careful,” he whispered next to her ear, “your nose is growing.”

Heat radiated from his big body and she slid a few steps down the counter and walked around him. Okay, so he did make her a little nervous. He was just too big, too masculine, and too good-looking, and he probably knew it, too. And she suspected he was trying to make her nervous.

“Remember that writer last summer?” Shelly asked. “What was he writing about? I can’t remember.”

“He said he was a survivalist,” Dylan answered.

Paul scoffed. “Yeah, but he had his pack filled with ready-to-eat army rations.”

“You should write something like that, Hope,” Shelly suggested. “All kinds of stuff is written by men, mostly Grizzly Adams he-man stuff. You could go on one of those survivalist treks. It might be interesting to read something like that from the point of view of a woman like you.”