Jinx Xmas

  Jinx Xmas

  By

  Sandra Hill

  CHAPTER ONE

  It's amazing what you can find in a supermarket today...

  Brenda Caslow was standing in the personal products aisle of the A & P when she heard the first scream.

  It was immediately followed by another scream, then shouts of:

  "It's him! Omigod, It's him!"

  "Hurry, Ralph, buy a camera."

  "Whoa! He is hot."

  "Maybe he'll sign my t-shirt."

  "Maybe he'll sign my bra."

  That's all Brenda needed to hear. She knew what it was...rather, who it was. The louse must have tracked her to the grocery store. Lance Caslow, her ex-husband.

  He sauntered up to her and smiled. Probably figured one smile and she'd be melting at his feet, right here under the suppositories and...oh, no!...condoms.

  Actually, his smile did make her melt. Always had. Ever since they were kids, riding their tricycles down the neighborhood sidewalk. Lance had shown his competitive spirit even then; he'd always insisted she had to race him, and he always won. She'd had to give up her stash of Tootsie Roll Pops then as a prize. Later, she gave up lots more.

  They got married right out of high school, had been together for nine years before she got pregnant, and were divorced three years later. A lot of history there.

  And, hot damn, giving him a quick head-to-toe survey, she could see why women flocked all over him, and not just because he was a NASCAR superhero. He was tall...well, six foot to her five-six. He had dark blond hair, spritzed up right now into one of those silly styles that looked as if it had been combed with a mixer, classic facial features, a golden tan, and a body to die for with not an ounce of fat. She should be so lucky. On a perpetual diet, Brenda had more curves than a Slinky. In fact, she'd been about to buy some diet pills. Not that they ever worked.

  "Hey, babe," he said casually, as if he showed up in the A & P on a regular basis. More like, never. He leaned forward to give her a kiss.

  She turned her head, and his lips met her cheek. Even that caused little ripples of pleasure to ricochet through her body in anticipation of more. Not gonna happen.

  "Are you stalking me?"

  "Me?" He slapped a hand over his heart in mock affront.

  Then he grew more serious. "It's the only way I can get you to talk to me."

  "We have nothing to say."

  "Yeah, we do." He tugged at one of the blonde curls framing her face, the bane of her life. "Your hair looks different. Nice."

  "Highlights."

  "I like it. Oh, no!" He took the box that she still clutched in her hand. "Diet pills! You aren't still obsessing over your weight, are you? Believe me, you look great just the way you are."

  "Hah! I'm always going to be a size ten, when the ideal is a size six. I'm always going to have curves, when slim is in. I'm getting older, and your girlfriends are getting younger."

  "I'm the same age you are, and thirty-five isn't old. As for your curves, I love each and every one of them."

  And he did. Brenda knew that. He had adored her body, with all its imperfections. "Listen, I don't have time for this."

  "You still working for that treasure hunting company? Jinxed?" He was stalling for time.

  "Not Jinxed. Jinx, as in Jinx, Inc. And the answer is yes."

  "You ever gonna come back to NASCAR to work in the pits?"

  Brenda was a top notch mechanic. When Lance had first gone to Indiana to start racing, she'd gone along as a mechanic. Women had been dogging him then, too, but she'd been there to put the kibosh on any hanky panky.

  "How did you find me?"

  "Uh..."

  "You rat. You've been pumping Patti again, haven't you?" Patti was their seven-year-old daughter.

  "It didn't take much pumping." The little rascal, like many other casualties of divorce, adored her father and wanted them to get back together again.

  Just then, they noticed the crowd which had gathered at both ends of the aisle, craning their necks to see them, creeping closer and closer as newcomers pushed from the back. They were mostly quiet, watching. Some were flashing disposable cameras.

  Damn! I'll probably see us on the cover of The Star next week.

  "Hey, folks, great to see ya." It was amazing to watch Lance morph into his celebrity persona. "I'll sign some autographs if you move yourselves out to the parking lot, in an orderly fashion. I've gotta talk to my wife here."

  Where did he learn to handle a crowd like that? Certainly not growing up in Perth Amboy. He gained polish over the years. I gained weight.

  He put an arm around her shoulders, and squeezed.

  She squirmed out of his embrace. Being that close to Lance was dangerous. "I'm not his wife," she yelled out, but no one was listening. The herd was rushing to the parking lot to get the best positions. "Anymore," she added more weekly.

  "Semantics," he commented.

  She and Lance had divorced five years ago. It had not been pretty. Lance had to be dragged kicking and screaming into court. Even then, he'd told the judge he didn't want a divorce. Unfortunately, actions spoke louder than words.

  "I still feel like your husband. I still wear my wedding band. C'mon, Brendie, let's go somewhere and talk. I can't be charming in the middle of fifty types of sanitary napkins."

  She hated that he called her Brendie, mainly because she used to love the way he called her Brendie. He would whisper that name when he... I am not going there. No way! "You could be charming in the middle of a pig sty, covered with hog doo-doo, and you know it."

  He shrugged. "Have dinner with me. Or a drink. Yeah, drinks would be good."

  She had to smile. "So you can get me drunk and have your way with me?"

  "God, yes!"

  "Lance," she said with a whooshy exhale, "how many women have you made love to?"

  "Ever?" He was clearly shocked to be put on such a wide spot.

  "Ever?"

  "None."

  "Puh-leeze!"

  "You said making love. I've had sex with lots of women, but I only ever made love with one. You."

  "Semantics," she repeated his own word back at him. "You and Bill Clinton oughta form a club."

  "You believed everything you read in those tabloids, honey, and they just weren't true."

  "I know that, but pictures don't lie. And that blonde bimbo was sitting on your lap with her hand on your butt right smack dab on the front page of the National Enquirer."

  "Pictures lie, too."

  "You're giving me a headache. We have been over this so many times."

  "I never, ever, cheated on you while we were together."

  "Obviously, you and I have different definitions of cheating. And, by the way, I notice your careful choice of words. `While we were together.' How about while we were married but separated?"

  His face flushed. "I was angry."

  "I was angry, too."

  "Okay, I was stupid."

  "That was never in doubt."

  "Give me another chance, baby."

  "No." She saw the grief on his face, this man that she knew so well. But he had hurt her so badly. Over and over. His celebrity had become more important than her. And the groupies...there were all those beautiful women just waiting to jump in bed with the winner of the next Brickhouse, or Daytona, or race du jour.

  "I love you."

  Oh, that was a low blow, especially when he said it with tears welling in his eyes.

  "I don't love you any more," she lied. "I don't even like you."

  "Yeah, you do. Give me fifteen minutes in a private room, and I'll prove it to you."

  "You are such a...a toad."

  "Yeah, well, you must have a taste for pond scum because there was a time when you enjoyed licking me all over. I
t's a wonder you don't have warts on your tongue."

  She knew he spoke from pride and disappointment. That didn't excuse his crudity. "You jerk!"

  "I love you, too, baby."

  She grabbed hold of her own short curls and tugged with frustration. "Aaarrgh! You're driving me crazy."

  "I take that as a good sign."

  "You're delusional."

  "I'm not giving up, Brendie. And you know why?"

  She was probably going to regret this, but she asked, "Why?"

  "Because of this." He pulled her into his arms and wouldn't let go, even when she smacked him on his shoulders and the side of his head. Then he lowered his mouth to hers, open mouthed and hungry. He devoured her with his never-ending kiss till she softened with a moan of surrender and opened her mouth to his, kissing him back with a traitorous fervor. When he finally released her, she had to hold onto the grocery cart or risk melting to the floor in an erotic puddle.

  To give him credit, he didn't smirk or make a gloating remark. Instead, he used his thumb to caress her bottom lip and said in a raw voice, "That's why I'm not giving up, babe."

  With those words, he walked off.

  And she wondered how she was going to withstand his next assault, never doubting he would try again. And again. And again.

  Me and Pamela WHO?

  Lance was walking away from Brenda with a mixture of elation and bone-deep disappointment.

  Elation because she still loved him. He knew she did.

  And disappointment because she was grinding him down with all the rejections. Nothing he did seemed to work. Nothing. Five years of cajoling, apologizing, teasing, and begging. What did he get for his efforts? Nada.

  He was passing by the checkout lines, heading toward the crowd outside when he stopped and did a double take. Holy shit! He saw himself staring out from one of the tabloids...with freakin' Pamela Anderson. It looked as if she had her hand on his crotch.

  He had no idea if he'd been at the same party that Pamela Anderson had--you'd think he would remember that--or if some enterprising editor had done a cut and paste job. All he knew was that he'd never been with the goddess of silicone, in any way. But if Brenda saw this picture, it would be five years ago, all over again.

  So, he did what any half-brained guy would do. He bought every issue of the tabloid before he left the store.

  *****

  Desperate men do desperate things...

  "I'm desperate," Lance Caslow said later that night, and almost fell off his chair at the Loosey Goosey Bar, somewhere in California...he wasn't exactly sure where.

  "Nah. Yer jist drunk, thass what you are," his best friend and fellow NASCAR driver Easy Eddie Morgan slurred out, even as he tried to wink, but just grimaced at a buxom blonde waitress who should own stock in a push-up bra company.

  "We're both drunk," Lance concluded. "Knee-walking, shit-faced, we-oughta-go-home blitzed. Can you remember why?"

  "I think we mighta won the Brickhouse, or placed, or somethin'. No, no, no. That was last summer. We were doin' a commercial. In L.A."

  "Oh, that's right."

  "So, why are ya desperate, good buddy?"

  "I'm so in love with my ex-wife it hurts, right here." He pressed a forefinger to his abdomen, though he'd been aiming at his heart. "But she won't take me back."

  Easy shrugged. "Ex-wives are a dime a dozen. Find another one." Easy should know, he had three of them and was paying alimony out the kazoo.

  Lance shook his head. "I don't want anyone else and haven't for a long, long time. Brenda and I go way back, to elementary school. I thought we would be together forever." He didn't even care how corny that sounded.

  "And?"

  He sighed. "I screwed up. Bigtime."

  "Didja say yer sorry?"

  He nodded.

  "Didja buy her jewelry to make up fer it?"

  "Yes. She threw the damn necklace in my face."

  "Flowers?"

  "A pigload. She gave them to the old folks home."

  "Well, that leaves only one thing. Beg."

  "I tried that, too."

  Easy looped an arm over his shoulder. "I hate ta break it to ya but she might not love ya anymore."

  Lance shook his head slowly, and then he shook it harder from side to side till a headache began to jackhammer right behind his eyes. "She loves me, all right. She just doesn't trust me any farther than she can throw me."

  "Ya need a plan. Ya need outside help."

  "Where's a matchmaker when you need one? Ha, ha, ha!"

  "Yeah, hire yerself a yenta. Ha, ha, ha!" Easy sometimes lapsed into his Jewish heritage; so, he knew words like that.

  A tiny little niggling idea burrowed into his pathetic brain. A matchmaker? "Hmmmm."

  "What?"

  "Remember that wedding I went to?"

  "The one with the crazy ex-Amish Navy SEAL?"

  "That would be the one. Anyhow, there was this crazy old Cajun lady there. She was spoutin' stuff 'bout St. Jude and hope chests and thunderbolts of love."

  "Man, yer really drunk," Easy slurred out.

  "I'm goin' to Loo-zee-anna," he announced. "Southern Loo-zee-anna. Bayou Black, to be precise."

  "Yer big plan is to get a matchmaker?"

  "Yep! Her name is Tante Lulu.

  *****

  Shopping...the cure for every girl's woes...

  "Are you sure you don't want to sit on Santa's lap?"

  "Moooooommmmm!" Brenda's daughter Patti said, gazing at her with horror. Patti--seven, going on seventeen--quickly glanced around her at the mall to see if anyone had heard her mother's embarrassing remark. "That is sooooo uncool!"

  "Well, excuse me, for not being cool." Brenda squeezed her daughter's thin shoulders to show she wasn't offended. "In the past...last year, for heaven's sake...you gave Santa your Christmas wish list."

  "I was a child then," Patti said. "Besides, Santa already knows what I want for Christmas." She gave Brenda a pointed look to let her know who the Santa in question was.

  Brenda wasn't even going to react to that wish remark, and spoil their post-Thanksgiving trip to the massive Woodbridge Mall, a virtual city of stores, restaurants, and entertainment. Patti's wish was the same every year anyhow. "Dear Santa: Please let Mommy and Daddy make up so we can be a family again."

  Brenda hated it, that Patti no longer believed in Santa Claus, that she was growing up so fast, and that she still hoped for a reconciliation between her and Lance. With each year, Patti looked more like her Daddy. Dark blonde hair, perfect features, a beauty in the making. She shared Lance's sense of style, too. The outfit she'd chosen for the day: a twirly red and green plaid skirt, a red turtle neck, a short pink fake fur jacket, white knee-highs, black patent leather shoes and a sparkly hair clip. She'd inherited her father's gift of charm, as well, as indicated by her next observation.

  "You know, Mom, you are so beautiful. It's no wonder Daddy loves you so much."

  "Give me a break!"

  "Really, he does love you. He tells everyone."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Yep, he told me again before he went...uh, I mean...uh, before he went on his trip."

  Brenda recognized a slip of the tongue when she heard it, especially from her too-transparent daughter. "What trip?"

  "I don't know." Patti's cute little pixie face bloomed pink.

  "Patti?"

  "It's a secret trip, and that's all I can say. Okay?"

  "A secret trip? He better not be buying you another outrageously expensive Christmas gift." Last year he'd given her an electric mini-sports car that exactly matched the vehicle he'd used when he won the Daytona the year before. It probably cost ten thousand dollars.

  "The trip has nothing to do with me. And that's all I'm gonna say. You wanna get a soft pretzel and a drink, or...?" Patti's eyes twinkled with mischief.

  "Or what?"

  "Or we could go into Victoria's Secret and buy you one of those see-through nighties. Betcha Dad would like that."

/>   Yep, her daughter was growing up way too fast.

  *****

  CHAPTER TWO

  Even desperate men draw the line at...

  Lance was cruising along U.S. 90 out of Houma, Louisiana. He passed a few sugar plantations on the way, some decrepit shacks and houseboats, and modest bayou-side homes. All of them still showed damage from Hurricane Katrina.

  He was heading for a cottage on Bayou Black that he had pinpointed on his GPS system. It was the home of Louise Rivard, better known as Tante Lulu, matchmaker extraordinaire.

  This is the dumbest thing I've ever done, and I've done some really dumb things.

  Like losing Brenda? a voice in his head said.

  Yep, the dumbest.

  The weather was a balmy seventy degrees...balmy, considering that this was December. But then, this was the Southland. Despite the weather, he wasn't about to put the top down on his Lexus convertible, the least flashy of his fifteen automobiles. Even wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, he'd been recognized occasionally when he stopped for gas on the three hundred mile trip from his home in Texas. Publicity was the last thing he needed on this desperate mission.

  "This must be it," he murmured, pulling into the driveway of a small cottage covered with logs accented by white-washed chinking. A wide porch, with several wooden rockers, faced a stretch of stream...well, a bayou, actually. That's what they called alligator-infested creeks here in Louisiana.

  "Son of a bitch!" he said aloud. There was a real live gator sunning itself right in the old lady's yard.

  Swamps and thick jungle-like vegetation ruled in this region, but the cottage had neatly trimmed grass and colorful flower beds in cleared areas on all four sides. He smiled when he recognized the plastic and plaster statues placed in various spots among the flowers. St. Jude. Tante Lulu's favorite saint, he recalled. In fact, last time he'd seen her at a wedding in Central Pennsylvania a few months back, she'd shoved a miniature statue into his hand and told him, "It's fer hopeless cases...like yours."

  He gave the gator another wary look and shivered with distaste. Lance had a pistol under his front seat that he kept for security reasons. Should I shoot the bugger? Nah! I'll just run like hell if the beast comes after me.

  No sooner did he step out of his car...carefully, with an eye on the walking pocketbook...than Tante Lulu stepped out onto her porch. "Welcome, cher, welcome! Come make yerself at home, you. I gots gumbo on the simmer and a strong cup of Cajun coffee hot enough ta burn yer tongue."