Ann Major - Shameless

For an instant—just for an instant—she saw her mother’s white, lifeless face in her coffin and remembered how little and helpless she’d felt.

“Stay at the café. I’ll send Juan to get you as soon as he gets back with the truck.”

“Juan? I’d… I’d rather you came….”

But he didn’t hear her heartfelt plea. He’d already hung up.

Thirty minutes later Phillip’s ranch hand arrived in a whirl of dust. When Celeste saw him, she grabbed her guitar.

The waitress stared at the blowing dust and said to no one in particular, “It’s awful dry out there. We could do with some rain.”

Juan was short and dark, and dressed in a red shirt and baggy jeans coated with a week’s supply of dirt. He didn’t speak much English, and she didn’t speak any Spanish. So she spent the ten-minute drive singing to the radio and watching the scenery go by. If you could call it scenery.

Unlike Vegas, south Texas was flat and covered with thorny brush. When they flew through the gate, Juan braked in front of a tall white house with a wraparound porch. Dust swirled around the truck and the wide front porch as he lit a cigarette.

She coughed. “Where’s Mr. Westin?”

“Señor Westin?” Juan clomped up the stairs and pointed inside the house. Then he opened the screen door like a gentleman and beckoned for her to go inside. She nodded. Picking up her long skirt, she hesitantly stepped across the threshold into the living room.

The second she saw the burgundy couch she’d picked out at Sears, her heart began to beat too fast. Nothing much had changed. The same easy chair she’d bought for Phillip still squatted in front of the television set. Maybe the set was a little larger. She wasn’t sure.

She knew her way around the house, not that she intended to explore the rooms in the house she’d once called home.

The Lazy W had been a rundown ranch Phillip had visited most summers as a kid. He’d grown up loving it. As an adult, he’d helped his uncle out when he’d been unable to do the work himself. Then a few years back, his elderly uncle had died and left him everything including the ranch.

Phillip had told her several of his friends who’d served under his command in the 14th Unit of the U.S. Marine Corps lived nearby, too. The guys had all belonged to the Lone Star Country Club, so Phillip had joined because they’d told him that’s where the prettiest girls in town were. Apparently when the 14th unit was off duty, their favorite sport was chasing women.

Once a Marine, always a Marine, she thought grimly as she set her guitar down by the front door. Oh, dear, now that she was inside, it was all coming back to her. She’d been so crazily in love with Phillip, but at the same time, she’d wanted to be a star for as long as she could remember. Loving Phillip had only made her want it more. She’d wanted to be somebody…somebody special enough for Phillip to love on an equal footing, a somebody like her beautiful mother.

The two obsessions had fought within her. She’d felt deliriously happy when she was in Phillip’s arms, and then the minute he’d gone off to war she’d felt scared and trapped. Then he’d gone missing.

How long did a woman wait for a man missing behind enemy lines? Her fear that he’d been dead, like her parents, had driven her mad. She’d felt as if she’d be a nothing forever if she didn’t do something besides wait at the ranch. These very walls had seemed to close in on her like a prison. She’d had to run. She’d had to, but Phillip hadn’t seen it that way.

When he’d turned up alive and called her, she’d been overjoyed. She’d wanted to see him so badly, to tell him about recording her first song, the song he’d inspired.

Oh, why hadn’t he listened? Why hadn’t he been able to understand? All he’d understood was that she’d left him.

“But I didn’t know you were coming back! I thought you were dead!” she’d cried over and over again.

He hadn’t listened. He’d believed the worst of her.

Now she was back in Phillip’s living room. How would he treat her? Was he in love with someone else?

“Phillip,” she cried, suddenly wanting to stop the bittersweet memories as well as her doubts about the wisdom of coming here.

“Phillip?”

He didn’t answer.

Was she really so washed up she no longer had a chance to make it as a country-western star? Should she just give up and settle for some ordinary life filled with babies and chores with some ordinary man? Not that she’d ever thought of Phillip as ordinary.

She wandered into his kitchen. Dishes were piled high in the sink. She didn’t have to answer all life’s questions today. All she had to do was to convince Phillip to help her until she could find a job and could get back on her feet. He knew people. Maybe he could even get her a job if he wanted to. The Phillip she remembered liked to help people. Surely he’d help her. Even her. Surely—

“Phillip?”

Again, he didn’t answer, but when she stepped into the hall, she heard his shower running. At the sound, she almost stopped breathing. Paralyzed, she stood outside his bedroom door until the water was turned off, and she heard the same old pipe that had always moaned groan and rumble. The shuddering sound broke the tension and she laughed.

They’d made love in that shower more times than she could count. She leaned against the wooden wall behind her and fought against the memories.

“Phillip?” she called again just so he wouldn’t stomp out into the hall naked.

“Just a minute.”

His deep, sexy baritone sent a shiver down her back, and that was before he stepped out of his bedroom into the hall in skintight, faded jeans that weren’t zipped all the way up, rubbing his thick, dark hair with a white towel.

Oh, dear, he looked so good, and she was so grimy. She wished her mouth didn’t taste so stale.

He tossed the towel back into his bedroom. She’d forgotten that when his dark hair was wet, it had a tendency to curl.

Her eyes fastened on his brown, muscular chest and flat belly, on the whorls of black hair running up and down his lean frame, before roving hungrily back to his rugged face.

Oh, dear. He’d stayed in shape. But, of course, he would. Phillip had the Marine Corps can-do, will-do, damn-it-to-hell-and-back attitude. He was disciplined, focused. He could make a plan and stick to it.

Not like her, who dreamed and wanted and then sometimes got lost in the day-to-day problems that came with living. Things that needed doing didn’t always get done, and things she enjoyed doing were savored instead. She tended to drift and get nowhere or go hysterical and do nothing to solve her problem. She could waste days paralyzed by a mood. Which was why she’d landed on his doorstep without a dime of her own and looking even cheaper than the first night they’d met.

Some homecoming.

And Phillip? He was as handsome as ever, dangerously so. His mouth was wide and hard, his lower lip as sensuously kissable as ever. Oh, dear, she felt the old familiar ache to press her lips to his. He’d been so good at kissing, too. Too good.

Seven years on the ranch working outside had hardened his face and etched lines beneath his eyes and around his shapely mouth. He looked older, harsher, and yet…and yet he was still her Phillip.

Her Phillip? Don’t be ridiculous!

He hadn’t shaved yet, so his square jaw was covered with black bristles that made him look tough and virile and good enough to eat. Used to, he’d let her shave him in the shower before they’d made love.

Quit thinking about “used to.”

When her eyes rose to his, he flushed. She felt her own skin heat when she realized he was staring at her breasts.

“I—I didn’t have time to buy new clothes.”