Stealing Taffy

  What happened to him? What if he was still out there somewhere and came looking for her? The idea was enough to make her shiver, but there was nothing she could do, of course. She didn’t know who he was. He could be dead like all the rest of them. God, she hoped so.

  Fern took another sniff of Bobo, and shut her eyes against the bad thoughts, the horrible memories. Right at that moment, she was safe and clean and back in school, which she loved, though she’d never admit it to anyone. Fern giggled to herself. She even had herself a damn mentor. Ha! That Tanyalee lady was even wackier than her great-granny, but harmless enough, she supposed. Honestly, all the stories Gladys had told about the Newberrys made Fern feel a little more kindly toward her own kin. She supposed money didn’t make much of a difference with families—if things were gonna be fucked up, things were gonna be fucked up, and the only difference was whether it was gonna happen in a skanky trailer or a swanky mansion.

  “Fern! Supper!”

  She kissed Bobo’s stitched-up eye, propped him against her pillow, and jumped from the twin bed. She threw open the bedroom door and began to race down the hallway.

  “Stop right there!” Gladys called out from the kitchen. “Did you wash up?”

  “No.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “No, ma’am.” Fern rolled her eyes and trudged back to the bathroom, where she let the water splash over her hands.

  “Use soap, now!”

  “Okay!” Shee-it. It was nice having hot food and all the hot water she wanted, but she sure as hell didn’t like all this bossing-around crap. As Fern dried her hands on a fluffy towel, she caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  It surprised her a little. Her hair was all pale yellow and shinylike now that it was clean, and her cheeks were pink because Gladys made her scrub her face with a wash rag—a clean one every time she took a bath! Fern’s eyes seemed brighter, too, and her lips softer. She knew that when she was living with her daddy and his meth buddies, the most important part of every day was keeping her ass out of sight. There hadn’t been a whole lot of time for girl stuff like taking a bath or combing her hair.

  Come to think of it, that was one thing the crazy Tanyalee Newberry might be good for. She was the girliest girl Fern had ever seen in real life. She looked like somebody who could be on TV or in a movie. One day Fern would ask her a few things about being a girl.

  Someday. Maybe. If she ever decided that was something she might need to know about.

  “Fer-ern!”

  “Coming!”

  “What you mean to say is, ‘I’m coming, ma’am!’”

  “Coming, ma’am!” Shee-it.

  Chapter 10

  Tanyalee wasn’t sure where to focus her attention. Should she continue shooting evil stares at Aunt Viv in an effort to stop her from asking embarrassing questions of their visitor? Should she glare at Granddaddy Garland every time he started laughing? Or should she allow herself the guilty pleasure of simply watching Dante Cabrera eat?

  She propped her chin in her hand and sighed. Good Lord, the man could pack it away. The room service overload back in that Washington hotel room hadn’t been a fluke. He was on his third serving of sweet potatoes. He’d eaten four biscuits with gravy, two helpings of ham, and a dinner plate full of string beans. Dante Cabrera was Aunt Viv’s wet dream of a dinner guest.

  “More ham, Agent?” Viv asked.

  “Oh, no, thank you, ma’am. I think I’ve hit the wall.”

  “I’d say you done plowed through the wall, son,” Granddaddy said. “Maybe the floor, too.”

  Dante smiled self-consciously.

  “Garland!” Viv wagged a finger over the gravy boat. “Leave the young man be! I know your memory’s going but there was a time when you could eat just as much if not more.”

  “I am not losing my memory, Vivienne,” he replied, sighing. “On the other hand, the cheese has most definitely started to slip off your cracker.”

  Tanyalee squeezed her eyes closed to block out the ugly truth. She’d be turning thirty in a few months. She was a grown woman. She should have a career, a family, and a home of her own. And above all, she shouldn’t be sharing a house and a supper table with Aunt Viv and Graddaddy Garland. It was as unnatural as it was annoying.

  A warm, strong hand touched hers under the table. Tanyalee jerked in surprise, then slowly opened her eyes to see Dante looking at her, one corner of his mouth tipped in a smile.

  “Where is your family from, Agent? Any brothers and sisters? Are your parents still living?”

  Dante answered Aunt Viv’s questions without giving any indication that he’d just laced his fingers with Tanyalee’s and squeezed. “New York City, ma’am. Brooklyn born and raised. I have a twin sister, Dayana, and my mother is going strong. My father died suddenly a few years ago.”

  Her aunt shook her head and clucked. “So sorry to hear of his passing…” She paused, which Tanyalee knew was a clue that the next thing out of her mouth would be mortifying.

  “Aunt Viv, would you please pass the—”

  “New York City?” Viv said, ignoring Tanyalee’s attempt to change the subject. “That must be a very unsafe place to live, what with all the crime and drugs in the North.”

  Dante started to respond, but Granddaddy saved him the trouble. “Nowhere is crime-free anymore, Vivienne, and I’d venture to guess that what’s going on in Cataloochee County these days is just as vicious as any big city, north or south. Am I right, Agent Cabrera?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s correct, unfortunately.” Dante’s leg brushed up against Tanyalee’s. It took a great deal of restraint for her not to gasp in pleasure.

  “I do read the Bugle, Garland,” Viv snapped. “I am well aware of what goes on in the world.”

  “As the World Turns, maybe.”

  Viv sucked in her breath, deeply offended. “You know my story’s not on the TV anymore. You know they canceled it a few years back. That was just plain mean to rub it in like that!”

  Tanyalee dared look up into Dante’s face. When he turned toward her again, she saw the half smile was still in place but there was a new gentleness in his expression. He winked at her, squeezed her hand, and pushed his thigh harder into hers. Tanyalee was struck by how reassuring all that was. He was telling her not to be embarrassed by her bickering relatives, which was surely kind of him, but damn near impossible to comply with.

  “No cheese on the cracker,” Granddaddy repeated, shaking his head.

  “Crazy old man,” Viv snapped, beginning to gather up the dishes.

  “Dinner was delicious,” Dante quickly interjected. “I appreciate you asking me to join you, but I should probably get going.”

  “But you haven’t had any cobbler!”

  “As much as I’d love to taste your—”

  “Nonsense.” Viv used her foot to kick open the swinging door to the kitchen. “Your clothes are still in the dryer. Why don’t ya’ll go enjoy the beautiful evening on the porch swing while I get dessert together.”

  “Sounds like a mighty fine idea,” Granddaddy said.

  “Not you, you nosy old coot. I was talking to the young people!”

  Tanyalee pulled on Dante’s hand as she stood. “Thank you for a lovely meal, Aunt Viv. We’ll be back in a little while.” She led him through the foyer, to the front door, and down the porch steps.

  Dante looked over his shoulder at the porch swing. “I thought—”

  “Shh. I need some air.”

  Dante’s eyes widened. “In this?”

  Tanyalee forgot that Dante was still dressed in selections from Granddaddy’s chifforobe—a pair of threadbare sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt with paint splattered all over it, and old plastic flip-flops. “You’ll blend right in where we’re headed,” she said as they reached the sidewalk.

  “We’re going to Walmart?”

  Tanyalee laughed. “Next best thing, Mr. Yankee smart aleck. We’re gonna take a stroll through the neighborhood. I’ll show
you around.”

  She noticed how Dante looked down to where their fingers remained laced together. Her heart sank. She dropped his hand. “Sorry.”

  “About what?” he asked.

  “I’m sure you’d rather not have the neighbors see you holding my hand.”

  “I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks,” Dante said, weaving his large fingers with hers again. “I thought you didn’t want them seeing me holding your hand.”

  Tanyalee pretended to scan the trees like she found them fascinating and hadn’t been looking at them since the moment she’d been born. That way, Dante couldn’t see her smile like a goofy preteen.

  “These old houses here are very pretty,” he said.

  “They are. Most were built between the 1870s and the mid 1920s. Apparently, Bigler was rolling in money back then with a paper mill, mining, the railroad—most of it related to the effort to rebuild the economy after the war.”

  Dante frowned. “But that was way before World War II.”

  “I’m talking about the war, silly.”

  “Ah.” One of Dante’s dark eyebrows arched. “The Civil War.”

  “We prefer to call it the ‘War of Northern Aggression.’”

  “Right. I think somebody warned me about that when I got transferred down here.”

  “Warned you?”

  “Yeah, you know, because it’s one of the quirky things about the South.”

  “Quirky?” Tanyalee tipped her head and scowled at him. “Are you making fun of us?”

  “What? No!” Dante pulled her close to his body, then slipped an arm around her waist. Tanyalee wasn’t all that certain she wanted to return the gesture of affection, so her arm just hung loose and banged against his leg. “It’s like a different world down here, is what I’m saying,” he continued. “Sometimes it feels like a foreign country to me, the way you talk, cook, the way the air smells. I’m sure you’d feel the same if you spent any time in Brooklyn.”

  Tanyalee had begun to relax. The rhythm of his deep voice had that effect on her. She stopped fighting it and brought her arm to his waist. Dante felt so solid. She remembered the feel of his body against hers as he’d grabbed her bottom and yanked her tight, crushing his mouth to hers as he walked them out of the lake. Who knew what would have happened if Dante hadn’t lost his footing in the muck and landed on his ass, making them both laugh hysterically? They might be lying naked on the dock right now, lost in each other the way they’d been in the Washington hotel room.

  “Maybe someday I’ll show you around Brooklyn. We’ll take the train into Manhattan.”

  “Seriously?” Tanyalee was shocked.

  “Why not?” Dante said with a shrug. “You said you’ve never been to New York, right? What better way to see it than with someone who grew up there.”

  “I’m just…” Tanyalee stopped herself. She didn’t want to sound surprised that Dante liked her enough to talk about showing her his hometown one day. What was so unbelievable about that? After all, she was showing him around Bigler right this very minute, wasn’t she? “Tell me about Dayana.”

  Dante let his hand slip lower on Tanyalee’s hip, and she snuggled into him. “She’s a psychiatrist. Lives in Chicago now and teaches at a med school in addition to having a private practice. She’s pretty cool, even though she busts my chops every chance she gets.”

  Tanyalee giggled. “Maybe that’s what twin sisters are supposed to do, you know? There’s probably no one in the world who knows you as well as she does, right?”

  “True,” Dante said, his voice thoughtful. He looked down at Tanyalee and smiled. “In fact, I was on my way back from visiting Daya the day you and I met.”

  “Oh.”

  “So.” Dante’s eyes were kind. “I know you and your sister have had your issues, but are you closer to her these days?”

  Tanyalee took a moment to organize her thoughts. It would be a challenge to explain to Dante everything that had driven her and Cheri apart over the years—at least on a short walk around the block. “When Cheri gets back from her honeymoon, I plan to do whatever I can to make that happen. But there’s a lot I need to apologize for, I’m afraid. I spent about twenty-five years trying to make her life a living hell, to tell you the truth.”

  “Yeah, I think you alluded to that on the plane. Something about stealing her true love.”

  Tanyalee jerked back a bit, then loosened again. “Oh,” she said. “I forgot about that.”

  “But why all the drama between the two of you?”

  Tanyalee sighed. “It’s a long, long story, but it started when we were little, before our parents died. Cheri and I fought all the time about the stupidest stuff and it stressed out Mama and Daddy something awful, and that’s the reason they decided to take a little vacation from us, to get away from the bickering. They rented a beach house on the Outer Banks. Just the two of them.”

  “I see.”

  Tanyalee looked up past the trees, seeing the first stars peek through the veil of a darkening sky. When she was little, she’d tell herself the night’s first two stars were Mama and Daddy looking down on her. Sometimes, she still did. “They died on that trip. The police ruled it an accident, saying there was a faulty gas line in the beach house, but a couple months ago, Cheri and I learned they were killed to keep Daddy from printing a story in the Bugle. That’s the newspaper my family owns.”

  Dante nodded, pulling his lips tight. “I have a confession to make, Tanyalee.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “Oh?”

  “What you just told me—I know about it. I know a lot about your family, because once I traced the Caddy to your aunt I was able to do a little research on the Newberrys.”

  Anger began to well up in her. She felt her cheeks get hot.

  “I know that must feel like an invasion of your privacy.”

  “That’s because it is. You seem to invade my privacy a lot, Dante.”

  “I…” Dante let go with a sigh of exasperation. “I’m sorry, Tanyalee. Look, I admit it. I’m a little paranoid. It comes with the territory in my line of work. If I’m interested in a woman, I need to know exactly who I’m dealing with. It’s a reflex.”

  “That’s a little one-sided, wouldn’t you say?” She heard the sharpness in her own voice but didn’t care. “It would be nice to have all kinds of information about you, but I don’t have the same resources, do I? And I bet if I Googled you, nothing would even come up.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Well, now. That’s my point. It’s not fair.”

  “Tanyalee.” Dante’s voice became so soft she barely heard him. “I have nothing to hide from you. I’ll tell you anything you ever want to know about me—well, except for the details of my work.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments. Eventually, Tanyalee’s irritation subsided and she felt her body calm again. “Thank you, Dante.”

  He came to a stop, which brought her to a halt as well. Slowly, Dante turned her toward him, tipped up her chin, and lowered his lips to hers in the sweetest of kisses. The touch of his mouth against hers didn’t last very long, but its tenderness lingered, leaving Tanyalee worried that her knees might buckle. She’d experienced a lot of sensations in Dante’s company—most of them outrageously carnal in nature—but nothing like this gentle affection.

  It almost felt as if she were being wooed.

  “I’m enjoying our walk,” Dante whispered, still cradling her chin in his hand.

  “Me, too.”

  Mrs. Wayne’s porch light suddenly flipped on, spilling light out onto the sidewalk where they stood. Tanyalee peeked around Dante’s wide shoulder, chuckling.

  “Are we busted?” Dante asked.

  “Yes, but it was only a matter of time.” Tanyalee linked her arm with his and started walking again. “Sippie Wayne is a nosy thing. I’ve known her since I was a baby, which is as long as I’ve known most everyone on this street. The house Aunt Viv and Granddaddy live in used to belong
to their parents, and most of the houses get handed down through families like that. People tend to stay here forever. I guess that’s why—” Tanyalee gasped. She’d completely forgotten about Tater Wayne’s girlfriend! “Oh, my God!”

  “What?” Dante stopped. “Is something wrong?”

  “No. It’s just…” Tanyalee sputtered with laughter. “It’s about your boss.”

  He scowled. “What about her?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing bad. It’s just that Sippie Wayne—the woman who just turned on her porch light right there?”

  Dante’s gaze followed where Tanyalee pointed. “Yeah?”

  “Her son lives with her, or at least he did until very recently. His name is Tater. He’s dating your boss.”

  Dante stilled. Tanyalee could see the tension in his jaw. “Did you just say Tater?”

  “Well, now wait a second,” Tanyalee said, thinking. “I stand corrected. He goes by Thomas nowadays. That’s his given name. Everyone has always called him ‘Tater,’ but that was before he won the Mega Millions and got his eyeball and teeth fixed and moved out. Up until then, he was doing odd jobs for Aunt Viv and other people in town.”

  Dante tilted his head side to side until his neck cracked. “Tater? As in potato?”

  Tanyalee burst out laughing. She laughed so hard and long that her sides started to hurt. Dante led her to the stone wall in front of Judge Van der Rohe’s house, where she sat down. “Give me a minute,” she said, holding up a hand, trying to gain control of herself. “I’m sorry, but that was hilarious the way you just said ‘poh-tay-toh’ in your uptight New York accent, like it was some kind of horrible dirty word. God! Whew! Okay. I’m better now.”

  When Dante didn’t say anything for a long moment, Tanyalee dared glance up at him. He looked deeply puzzled, his face lit under the streetlight that had just flickered on.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, catching her breath.

  “I … it’s just … the Mega Millions? Are you sure? And this was recently? And what the hell was up with the dude’s eyeball?”