I Want Candy

  When Turner busted out laughing, Reggie stopped talking. “Did I say something funny?”

  “Nope,” he said, letting his laughter die down to a bitter chuckle. “Thank you, Reg.” Turner patted his brother on the shoulder. “See, I was starting to think maybe I’d made the whole thing up in my head or exaggerated it all out of proportion, because when I asked Candy about it last night, she didn’t even remember the conversation. She said I’d never asked her out.”

  Reggie’s mouth fell open. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “I am not.” Turner sank back into the headrest.

  “So you asked her out again last night? Did she say yes this time?”

  Turner’s head popped up. “Hell, no.”

  “She said no again?”

  Turner sighed and started up the SUV once more. “I didn’t ask her out, all right?”

  “Well, why not? Jonesy Carmichael was wrapped up in his pointy-headed white sheet and laid in the ground a long time ago. This is God giving you a second chance, little brother. You need to jump on that.”

  “I am not ready to date,” he said, backing out of the drive even though Reggie was still leaning in the window. “And if I were, you think I’d be fool enough to start with Candy Carmichael?”

  Reggie began to jog along by the side of the vehicle, pivoting when Turner put the gearshift into drive. “Whoa! Damn, T! Why are you still touchy about that chick?”

  Still touchy? Hardly. Until she came back to town a few weeks ago, she’d barely crossed his mind. The last time he’d seen her had been more than five years before, at J.J.’s ill-fated wedding to Cheri’s flaky sister, when Turner and Junie had exchanged pleasantries with Candy. More importantly, Turner hadn’t had a decent conversation with Candy since before she went away to college and he joined the corps, which had been seven years before that.

  So as he drove back to the municipal complex, Turner thought about his brother’s fool question, and decided Reggie could be a real ass sometimes. Ridiculous! Of course Turner wasn’t still touchy about Candy Carmichael.

  He was touchy all over again.

  In fact, as he picked up his messages from Bitsy, he decided “touchy” might not even cover it.

  Turner closed the door to his office. He sat down in his desk chair. He nodded to himself. He wasn’t touchy. No. It was far worse than that.

  His fuse was lit and he was damn near ready to detonate.

  Chapter 5

  “All right then,” Jacinta said, smoothing her caftan around her in the easy chair. “First off, no men in the apartment. Also, no late-night phone calls. No alcohol. No smoking. You’ll have to sleep here.” Jacinta pointed at the cream and white floral tufted-back sofa. “And two weeks is the absolute maximum you can stay. It’s in the tenant association contract—only immediate family can spend the night and only for a total of fourteen days per year.”

  Candy nodded, dropping her overnight case on the plush carpet of Jacinta’s sitting room. From what she’d gleaned in the last hour—at the lunch table and from her mother’s ongoing commentary—this place had more official and unofficial rules than a federal prison.

  “And I’ll expect you to busy yourself on Monday and Friday evenings. That’s when I play bridge. And you’ll need to find somewhere to go every Tuesday and Saturday evening from between seven and ten, so that I can have my privacy.”

  Candy stared, then blinked.

  “I entertain, you know.”

  No doubt.

  Candy had seen evidence of that at lunch, when it became clear she’d landed in some kind of wrinkle in the space-time continuum where the plot lines for the movies Cocoon and Mean Girls had merged, where the cattiness far surpassed anything she’d experienced as a Tri Delta pledge at Florida State, and where the laws of supply and demand had gone haywire when it came to the most precious commodity of all at Cherokee Pines—men.

  She’d counted seven male residents in the dining room during lunch, each surrounded by a dedicated harem of females. The coveted seat Jacinta had feared would be snatched up was at the left elbow of Hugo Stevens, cock of the walk. He was a retired plumbing contractor who still had all his own hair, sported a pencil-thin mustache, and was partial to ascots. Candy had watched, impressed, as Jacinta managed to bat her eyes at Hugo while simultaneously beating off the competition with vaguely threatening hand gestures and snide remarks.

  So, sure. Candy would find something—anything—to do while Jacinta “entertained” Hugo on Saturday nights. Maybe she’d take up bowling.

  “Anything else I should know?” she asked her mother.

  “I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting, but we’ll cover it as we go along.”

  There was a knock at the open door to Jacinta’s apartment, and Gerrall poked his head in. He was carrying a box that Candy had intended to fetch from the lobby.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she told him, reaching out to take the cardboard container from his hands.

  Gerrall laughed. “Oh, yeah I did. Mr. Miller was freaking because it was sitting on the floor near the entrance. He said it looked unteamly or something.”

  “Unseemly?”

  “That was it.”

  “But I was coming right back for it,” Candy said.

  Gerrall actually smiled at her. “Miller can be a little stiff sometimes. Just try to ignore him.”

  “God knows we all do,” Jacinta said.

  Candy laughed as she put the box down by her suitcase. She’d already decided to leave the rest of her stuff in the car, since she was getting sick of packing and unpacking. Besides, she already doubted she’d last a whole fourteen days at the Senior Citizen Sing-Sing. It wasn’t intentional, but she let go with a loud sigh as she plopped down on the sofa.

  “Here. I snuck this out of the kitchen for you.”

  Gerrall reached down over her shoulder and gave Candy an up-close view of a piece of greasy chocolate cake wrapped in a napkin. Gerrall must have been carrying it around in his pants pocket, since it looked flattened.

  “Oh!” she said, accepting the gift, trying not to make a face. “How nice of you!”

  She’d attempted to eat a piece of this cake at lunch, and it had tasted like Styrofoam frosted with peanut-butter-flavored wallpaper paste, and she’d decided that no one—no matter how catty they were—deserved desserts that bad. In fact, the entire lunch had been lousy.

  Candy put the brakes on her racing thoughts, very nearly laughing at herself. Eighteen months ago, she was dining at Florida’s finest restaurants, drinking exotic cocktails at the best Miami Beach clubs, partying at private estates from Ocala to Key West. And now she was back in Bigler, an itinerant unemployable person, lucky to have food and shelter of any kind. And she was bitching about the cake at her mother’s retirement home?

  She needed to get a grip.

  “Thank you, Gerrall. I’ll just stick this in the fridge.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Jacinta said. “Any leftover food goes in a Tupperware container. No exceptions. It’s part of the bylaws.”

  “Got it.”

  Candy took a moment to check out Jacinta’s tiny but chic kitchenette, noting the quality tile, countertops, and cabinetry. Then she poked her head into the bathroom, where she found the same attention to detail. Her mother’s bedroom was large, featured two walk-in closets and a built-in window seat. She estimated that the apartment had to be close to a thousand square feet.

  Yep. This place was expensive. Candy swallowed hard at the prospect of telling Jacinta that she’d squandered the sixty thousand her mother had given her to invest in real estate.

  “I’ll catch you later then,” Gerrall said, waving good-bye to Candy as Jacinta shoved him out the door.

  “Little pecker-head,” her mother mumbled under her breath.

  “He seems nice enough,” Candy said, revising her original opinion of the guy as she came back to the sitting room.

  “He doesn’t come from good people, Candace. Ke
ep an eye on him. Do not trust him. And that goes double for Miller.” Jacinta pointed to the sofa again. “We might as well get down to business. Have a seat. I want to know how it is that my big-shot daughter has shown up on my doorstep without a dime to her name.”

  “Uh, well…”

  “Your daddy always said you’d shoot yourself in the foot.” Jacinta settled into her chair once more, spreading her caftan in an arc around her. “Thank God he’s not alive to see this. That man was insufferable when he turned out to be right.”

  * * *

  “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” Cheri’s voice was sharper and louder than usual. It was so loud, in fact, that Candy feared Jacinta could hear her best friend’s phone voice all the way through the closed bedroom door.

  “I’m sorry if you’re mad ’cause I left Viv’s,” Candy whispered. “I appreciate you getting her to let me stay for a while, but I just couldn’t stand it.”

  Cheri made a hissing sound of impatience. “Oh, Lord, Candy. I don’t blame you one bit for leaving—she told me you two had a run-in when you got home last night. I’m talking about Turner! Why didn’t you tell me about what happened with Turner when he pulled you over yesterday?”

  “Oh.” Candy sat up on the couch, slipped into her flip-flops, and tiptoed across her mother’s sitting room to the door. “Hold on a sec.” As silently as possible, she unlocked the dead bolt and crept into the hallway. It was nine-fifteen and the place was silent as a tomb. “Yeah, about that,” she said, leaning against the wall and sliding down until her butt hit the carpet. “It’s kind of a weird story, actually.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Jacinta’s place,” she whispered. “Believe it or not.”

  “Not,” Cheri said. “But I’ll get to that in a minute—why are you whispering?”

  “Because she said ‘no late-night phone calls’ and I’m sitting out in the hallway.”

  Cheri paused. “It’s nine-fifteen.”

  “Around here, that’s the middle of the freakin’ night.”

  “Right. So what did she say about the nest egg?”

  Candy gulped, not looking forward to sharing the details of that unpleasant conversation, even with Cheri. She wasn’t entirely sure which part was more painful—the part where her mother told her she never expected to get the money back in the first place or the part where she accused Candy of being incapable of staying put long enough to be successful at anything.

  “It took you three colleges to get one degree,” she pointed out. “You’ve started and ended a dozen businesses over the years. And Lord knows how many boyfriends you’ve run through that were never quite good enough to marry.”

  “I sold many of them, actually,” Candy said by way of clarification.

  Jacinta looked horrified.

  “My businesses, Mother. In the last eleven years, I’ve sold eight businesses for a profit, and I always rolled it over into the next venture. It’s called ‘enterprise.’”

  Her mother had pursed her lips. “Yet here you are, your enterprising ass on my couch and your possessions in a cardboard box. Obviously, something ain’t right.”

  Candy looked up and down the hall again to ensure there were no eavesdroppers before she answered Cheri. “Jacinta wasn’t thrilled, but she wasn’t surprised. She took the opportunity to lecture me about my lack of stick-to-itiveness.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  Candy shrugged. “It’s the price I gotta pay if I want to crash here. But I can only stay two weeks—it’s in the resident bylaws.”

  “I saw a HELP WANTED sign in the window at Lenny’s Diner today.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Keep your voice down or I’ll report you to Mr. Miller!”

  Candy nearly jumped at the sharp command coming from her right. She glanced up to see Lorraine Estes stick her pink sponge-rollered head from her open door. Candy had no idea her mother’s archenemy in man-chasing also happened to be her next-door neighbor.

  The plot was thickening.

  “You shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Lorraine added. “This here is a high-end place, not a flophouse. And what you did with your mother’s nest egg is a sin! Shame on you!”

  Candy rolled her eyes, pushed herself up from the carpeted hallway, and headed out toward the front lobby. “Hold on again, Cheri,” she said, noting that Gerrall was watching some action-hero movie on his laptop at the front desk. She waved at him and pointed to her cell phone. “I’m going to take this call outside.”

  “I’ll buzz you back in,” he said with a smile.

  “Now tell me about Turner.”

  Candy sighed, settling onto a bench near one of the white-pebbled walking paths, stalling, wondering how she would be able to avoid mentioning that she shoved her twins in Turner’s face. In retrospect, it had been a stunningly bad decision. “Uh, what exactly have you heard?” she asked.

  “J.J. told me the whole story, including the part where you flashed your boobs at the sheriff,” Cheri said matter-of-factly. “That was just before you reached up and grabbed his cheeks and kissed him. Now, would you mind telling me what I’m missing here? Because I had no idea you’ve been harboring lust for Turner Halliday all these years.”

  Candy laughed. “That’s because I haven’t! I mean, I didn’t know I was. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No, I do not.”

  That hadn’t come out right.

  “You’re telling me you’re hot for Halliday?” Cheri’s voice squealed a little.

  “No. Yes. I know I shouldn’t be. Would it be a problem if I were?”

  Cheri laughed. “The only problem is that I was the last to know!”

  “Sorry.” She propped her forehead in her palm and sighed again. She felt like an insane person—a homeless insane person. “I swear I would’ve given you a heads-up if I’d been aware of it myself, but it just kind of hit me. I looked up and there he was and it was like I was on autopilot.”

  “Just like that?” Cheri asked. “You pulled out one set of headlights because you forgot to turn on the other?”

  “I didn’t even know it was Turner at first.”

  “So it was a random flashing event.”

  Candy groaned. “Fine. I deserve this. I should have told you as soon as it happened, but I guess I was just embarrassed. Forgive me.”

  “Forgiven,” Cheri said. “So.”

  “So,” Candy replied.

  “J.J. says that Turner really enjoyed the kiss. In fact, J.J. thinks Turner likes you.”

  Candy sat ramrod straight on the bench. “What, are we suddenly in seventh grade again?”

  Cheri laughed loud and long. Truly, it was a beautiful sound and Candy couldn’t help but join in. How could she not be thrilled that her friend was so outrageously happy? It had only taken Cheri a month to figure out she’d always loved J.J. and was destined to be the newest Newberry to serve as publisher of the Bugle. If Candy envied Cheri anything, it was how simple and straightforward the transition to happiness had been for her.

  Their laughter eventually died down. That’s when Candy was suddenly hit with an appreciation for just how ridiculous her situation was. Last year at this time, her biggest dilemma was deciding whether to straighten her curls with a Brazilian blowout. And tonight she was freeloading in a retirement home, nine dollars and eleven cents in her pocket, talking on a cell phone that Cheri had paid for.

  The instant Candy felt the tear hit her cheek, she wiped it away.

  “How did we get here, Cheri?” she asked, her voice suddenly heavy with sadness. She knew her friend understood what she was asking, no matter how abrupt the subject change had been. And she knew Cheri didn’t mind answering her, no matter that they’d had this discussion a hundred times.

  “We were on a roll, girl,” Cheri said with a sigh. “It was a thrill to buy and sell and watch our net worth skyrocket. We were smart and we acted decisively. It was like a game for us. It got to the p
oint where it was easy to make money.”

  “Too easy,” Candy said. She stood up and began to wander through the pines, her fingertips brushing against the cool, flexible needles. “It didn’t even seem real sometimes.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Like play money.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But we were good at it, weren’t we?”

  “Damn good,” Cheri said.

  “Then the rules changed, just like that.”

  The two women were quiet for a moment, and the only sound was the crunch of Candy’s flip-flops on the pebbles and the chirping of nighttime bugs. She closed her eyes against the remembered pain of those awful months, where they could do nothing but watch as banks tanked, property values evaporated, and the market died on the vine. Candy heard the words burst from her lips before she even knew she planned to speak.

  “I’m so sorry for my part in what happened,” she said. “I was always the one pushing for more, telling you about some new property we could flip or cookin’ up some deal. I know I can go off on a tangent sometimes, and I think my grand schemes—”

  “That’s nuts and you know it.” Cheri cut her off. “We were a team. I made the numbers work and you had a knack for seeing the potential in properties. Whatever we did, we did together.”

  “But the commercial deal—”

  “Even that.”

  Candy raked a hand through her hair and tilted her head back. The pines rose straight above her, piercing into the wispy night clouds and the stars beyond. She took a deep breath and wondered to herself once more—what would have happened if she hadn’t talked Cheri into moving from residential to commercial? If she hadn’t pushed to leverage their entire net worth on a single strip mall property? If she’d been satisfied with what they’d already acquired?

  Sure, they would have suffered when the real estate bubble burst, like everyone else who owned property in southwestern Florida, but it wouldn’t have been total annihilation. Maybe they’d still have something left.