THE BEST MAN IN TEXAS Read online

  "Sure. What's your name?"

  "Hank."

  "Hi, Hank. I'm Delia."

  "Hi." He gave her a shy smile.

  "Hank is my nephew," Joe supplied, giving her a look that said he knew what she had been thinking. He followed Hank up the stairs, making sure the little boy didn't fall, while Delia backed into the living-dining-kitchen area of the trailer. "We're hanging out together while his baby sister and his grandma take a nap."

  "Yup. Hangin' out." The boy nodded and Delia resisted the urge to smooth his hair. He was a stocky fair-haired child, unlike his lean uncle in looks and build, but the child clearly adored the man who entered the trailer behind him. He kept looking behind him to make sure his uncle was following.

  "I'm cleaning," she said. "So you'll have to ignore the mess." She might have been a little hasty moving all her worldly possessions to Pecan Hollow. After opening all the windows in Uncle Gin's mobile home, the smell of onions permeated the place and let the heat in, a necessary evil considering the circumstances. "And it still smells like my uncle's cooking."

  "It's liddle!" Hank peeked around the counter to the narrow hall that led to the bathroom and bedroom.

  "It is, isn't it?" She tried not to laugh at the child's excitement. "It's the perfect place for one person."

  "So, what are you doing here? Getting ready to rent it out?" Joe set the brownies on the freshly cleaned kitchen counter and popped open the beers. He handed one to her.

  "Thanks. I'm cleaning it out," she said, taking a sip of ice-cold beer. "Because I've moved in."

  "Moved in?" Joe frowned. "Why in he—heck would you want to live in this old place?"

  "It suits me just fine." She looked around the kitchen and was glad she'd accomplished so much in such a short time. It had taken an hour to go through the small cabinets and toss most of the food into the garbage. The refrigerator didn't have much inside, but she had thrown everything out anyway and gave it a good cleaning. On her hands and knees, she'd scrubbed the vinyl flooring with a stiff brush and soapy water with bleach added. There was great satisfaction in knowing that she was the only one who would dirty it.

  "It smells funny here," the little boy said, his nose wrinkling as he hopped up on a narrow brown couch.

  "Yes, it does. My uncle cooked a lot of chili," she said, unwrapping the brownies, handing the child one of them. Delia had doused furniture cushions with the scented spray until she figured she'd done all she could. For now the place smelled like onions and flowers mixed together, which was a little strange, but nothing a person couldn't get used to.

  "What do you say, Hank?" his uncle prompted.

  "Thank you."

  "You're very welcome." She turned back to Joe, who leaned against the counter as if he drank beer with her every afternoon. "So."

  "So," he drawled, and they each took another swallow of beer. Delia broke the silence first.

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "I thought I recognized you when you were unloading your car. My mother knew that Horatio was related to your mother and she wanted to show her sympathy to your family. I guess he lived here a long time."

  "I think he was the first one in Pecan Hollow."

  "Tell me you're not moving into this, uh, place."

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "It's not exactly your style." He looked around him at the brown built-in couches that lined two walls of the living area, at the windows now devoid of curtains—they were now in the garbage—and the battered paneled walls that were designed to look like wood, but weren't. "I've seen your white mansion, remember?"

  "This suits me just fine," Delia insisted, though she had begun to have doubts about how quickly the place would be habitable. She'd yet to unpack any of the boxes of beading supplies stacked near the television. Once she'd cleaned the place, she intended to turn the living room into a workspace.

  "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

  "No." She gave him her sunniest smile and hoped she didn't look drunk again. "I'd rather be on my own than in Martin's house. And I have a lot of my uncle's things to sort through, so I thought it would be easier if I just did it here."

  "In a hot tin can that, uh, smells like old food." He didn't look convinced, and he wiped his forehead on his sleeve, which reminded Delia that her body was damp with perspiration. "Is something wrong with the air conditioning or do you just like it this hot?"

  "There's something wrong. Probably old age."

  Joe leaned against the counter. "You want me to take a look at it?"

  "No, that's okay. I bought a small air conditioner for the bedroom, so I should be fine for a few days until I can get a repairman to—"

  "We're in the middle of a heat wave," he pointed out, setting his beer on the counter. "It'd be hard to take this kind of heat for too many days. Where's the unit?"

  She pointed toward a tall utility closet near the door. "In there. Let me move the boxes—"

  "Got it." He lifted the cartons that held Uncle Gin's music and moved them into the living area, next to an old wooden coffee table. She knew she shouldn't be gawking at the muscles in his arms, but she was only human. Delia hid a sigh and opened a drawer where she'd found a handful of screwdrivers and a measuring tape. She took all of the tools and set them on the counter, just in case they were needed, while Joe poked at the appliance that should have been pumping cold air throughout the trailer.

  "The switch is off."

  She walked over to see, which gave her a great view of Joe's back. "What switch?"

  "This one." He clicked something near the bottom of the closet and a fan whirred to life and the machine hummed. "I guess someone must have turned it off. I didn't see any leaks from the valves or anything like that, but this thing is so old you might want to have someone come out and take a look at it anyway. If you plan to stay here."

  "I will," she said, backing up. "Thanks."

  "What about the one you bought?"

  "I'm going to keep it, I think, just in case this one decides to stop working."

  He shut the closet door and looked like a man who was pleased with himself and wanted to continue to do good deeds. "Where is it?"

  "In my car, but—"

  "I'll bring it in for you." He glanced toward Hank, who sat cross-legged on the couch while he ate pieces of a brownie in slow motion. "Stay here, Hank. I'll be right back."

  "No!" The child looked terrified and the uneaten piece of brownie fell to the cushion as Hank scrambled to catch up with his uncle. "No, no!"

  Joe lifted him up. "I'm going out to the car, buddy." He pointed out the screened door. "See that car? Delia has something heavy in there that has to come inside. Can you wait here and help open the door?"

  Hank nodded and Delia put her hand on his tiny shoulder. "I'm really glad you came to see me today," she told him. "Don't worry. We can stand right here and watch your uncle, okay?"

  He nodded, his thumb settling into his mouth while he looked out the door. Joe easily wrestled the box out of the back seat and carried it inside while Hank watched. The little boy's worried expression eased once his uncle was inside the trailer again. Delia had no experience with toddlers—Jennifer had been an independent five-year-old when Delia had become her stepmother—but the little boy's reaction seemed extreme.

  "Bedroom?"

  "Yes." She followed Joe down the hall and then the realization hit her. Of course. Hank's mother had to be Julie, the same woman rumored to be vacationing with Martin this weekend. She should have realized it right away, but then she wasn't thinking straight these days. She'd been too busy looking at Joe Brown's muscled body.

  Poor Hank. She hoped he had a daddy who loved him, because unless Martin had changed completely these past months, he wouldn't have the patience for raising another family. He was relieved that she'd never become pregnant and he'd often said that he looked forward to Jen going off to college so he'd have a quiet house.

  "You expected to hook this up yourself?" Joe dropped the
box on the bed and turned around. "Tell me you're kidding."

  "I was going to give it my best shot." She smiled. "And then I was going to hire someone."

  "Good," he said. "At least you have some sense."

  "I should be insulted," Delia laughed. "But lately I've learned that there's a whole lot of things I know nothing about."

  "That's not your fault," Joe said, giving Hank a quick glance. The boy stood close to Delia, his head resting on her thigh as if he was about to fall asleep. She stroked his hair and he stuck his thumb in his mouth and closed his eyes.

  "Yes, it is," she said, but she didn't feel like explaining. "Where's his m-o-t-h-e-r?" Delia watched Joe pull a jackknife from his pocket and slit open the tape that held the box flaps together.

  "Good question." He didn't look up from his work. "I'd like the answer to that myself. She's taken off for a few days. To Vegas, maybe."

  "Then she's who I think she is?"

  "Yeah." Well, that was interesting. No wonder the little boy didn't want his uncle to leave him a few minutes ago. Little Hank no doubt wondered where his mother was, too.

  "So," Delia said, unable to mind her own business. "You live here in Pecan Hollow with your mother?"

  "Hell, no." He turned to look at her and frowned. "I live in Austin

  "So you're just visiting." The little boy was leaning hard now, so Delia sat down on the edge of the bare mattress and pulled Hank up so that he was sitting beside her. In a few minutes she'd ease him down and let him sleep if he wanted. He seemed content as long as he could hear his uncle's voice.

  "My mother sold the ranch a few years back and bought this place. She didn't want to leave July, though I can't figure out what makes her like it here so much."

  "She's used to it, I imagine. The older we get, the more used to things we become." She'd become used to living with a polite stranger and thought that was the way marriage was supposed to be.

  "My mother also won't leave because of the kids. My sister isn't the most dependable person on the planet and my mother picks up the slack by making sure her grandchildren are taken care of."

  Delia had an opinion about a woman who wouldn't take care of her own little children, but she kept it to herself while Joe skillfully removed the air conditioner from its box.

  "Which window do you want this in?"

  It was a good question, because the bedroom took up the back of the trailer and had small windows on all three sides. Delia had removed the curtains and left the metal blinds.

  "Wherever there's an outlet?"

  "Good choice."

  They both looked around the room, with Delia more aware with every passing second that J.C. Brown was in her bedroom. It shouldn't have been anything that would have made her self-conscious, except that he was so darned handsome and then there was that undeniably appealing "fix anything" aspect of the man.

  Now that you've fixed my air conditioning and installed another unit in my bedroom, could you repair my battered ego and make love to me for a few hours as if I'm some hot babe you can't resist? Delia rolled her eyes. Those weren't the feelings a newly independent woman should be having.

  "I can put it in there," he said. "No problem."

  "Yes," she said, hoping she wasn't blushing as he pointed to a window above an outlet that had appeared after he'd moved a stack of books. "That would be fine."

  "I left my beer in the kitchen." He grinned at her. "Are you one of those women who's going to yell if I ask her to get it for me?"

  "No," she said. "I have no pride when it comes to cold air." When she returned with the two bottles, she handed him his and he smiled.

  "I guess our afternoon happy hours are becoming a habit."

  Delia grimaced. "Look, I'm really sorry about what happened yesterday. Thanks for, um, taking care of me."

  "You're welcome."

  "I really don't do things like that, like drinking too much and depending on a stranger to take me home."

  "Yeah," he said. "I could tell." He picked up the installation booklet that came with the air conditioner. "You wouldn't by any chance have any tools around here, would you?"

  "A few." She hurried to the kitchen to retrieve the screwdrivers. By the time she returned, Hank was asleep in her bed and Joe Brown, deep into Mr. Fix-It mode, had stopped talking.

  Which was too bad, because Delia liked listening to him. She knew nothing about Joe, except that he was visiting his mother and he was handy with appliances. And he was sexy, whether a woman had had too many daiquiris or was completely sober.

  Long after he'd taken Hank and left, Delia found herself staring across the road at the huge mobile home that belonged to Joe's mother. Green and white, with neat window boxes, a screened-in porch and a paved driveway, it looked like a palace compared to Horatio's old trailer. In fact, from what she'd seen, the other fifteen or twenty mobile homes looked nice. Uncle Gin's was clearly the eyesore, and the closest to the main road.

  He'd told her once that Willie Nelson had bought it for him, after a song Willie had written hit the charts sometime in the seventies.

  "Top of the line," he'd said, patting the couch cushions with great pride. "'Course I gave ol' Willie the chorus to that song. Dottie West wanted it bad, but we told her it was a man's song, and she threw a pot of beans at me. We laughed so hard I dang near hurt myself."

  She would like to laugh that hard, Delia decided, looking at the old guitars hung on the wall above one of the couch sections. Maybe she'd turn out to be a hermit, too, Delia thought. Maybe it ran in the family.

  Ignoring her plan to diet, she ate brownies and chocolate chip cookies for supper, and when it grew dark out she crawled into bed. The sheets were cool and clean, and the air conditioner's fan blocked out the noise of someone's party three spaces down, toward the Laundromat and the convenience store.

  This hermit business was lonesome right now. Tomorrow she would go to a former neighbor's barbecue, the kind of party she'd been avoiding up until now. She would call Kelly, her oldest and still single friend, who wanted to spend Saturday night dancing at the Creek and was sure that all Delia needed was a night on the town.

  Neither offer sounded particularly appealing, but spending another night alone in the trailer reading sheet music was too depressing to contemplate. Things would be better, once she figured out what she wanted to do with her life. If all else failed, she could learn to play the guitar and sing songs like another Uncle Gin classic, "A Hard Man is Easy to Find."

  * * *

  "Isn't there anything we can do?" Betty peered out the window Saturday morning and frowned. "She's still there. I can't imagine what that place looks like inside."

  Joe could. While that trailer might have seemed like the height of luxury in the fifties, right now it looked like something that should be towed to the junkyard. "I don't think a woman like Delia Drummond is going to stay there for long, no matter what she says."

  "She's lasted another day," his mother pointed out. "And she's piled up a lot of garbage. There must have been a ton of junk in Horatio's place. I'll bet that poor girl is going to be cleaning all summer long."

  "I wouldn't worry about her, Mom." But he took his third cup of coffee and looked out the window, too. He couldn't help feeling responsible for her current trouble, but he'd done what he could with the air conditioning and he'd delivered the damn brownies. And when he was finished and had lifted Hank into his arms, Delia looked as if she was about to lose her one and only friend. He'd thought of kissing her, simply leaning over and taking a taste for himself, just because, well, just because she was so damn pretty and she'd looked so alone and maybe because he remembered her high school smile.

  All good reasons to stay away from her.

  "Go over and help her with those bags, Joe. She'll be all day lugging those to the Dumpsters."

  "Mom—" He didn't mind having an excuse to look at Delia again, but he didn't want to act like a stalker, either. "Don't you think this is awkward? Julie took that woman's hu
sband, for cripe's sake."

  His mother wasn't going to leave it alone. "All the more reason to help her now I'll fix her something nice for lunch. We'll have her over and I'll apologize for Julie's behavior."

  "I don't think that's such a good idea."

  "It never hurts to be neighborly, Joe." She started pulling food out of the refrigerator. "You think that Drummond fellow will return to his wife? Julie's never kept a man around for long."

  "I don't know, Mom." The thought of Martin and Delia back together again didn't appeal to Joe at all, but he didn't stop to wonder why that scenario irritated him so much. Surely Delia was better off back in her white house on Lincoln Street

  than in Pecan Hollow, but that didn't mean she was so desperate that she'd take Drummond back into her life.

  He turned back to the window and saw another black garbage bag fly out the door of Delia's trailer and hit the dirt. If she was a stranger, he'd be over there hauling trash, flirting, asking her out to dinner and hoping he'd get to spend the night.

  * * *

  The news quickly traveled around town: Delia Drummond, the former mayor's ex-wife, was forced to live in a rundown forty-year-old mobile home in the Pecan Hollow Trailer Park.

  Such a pity, it was said. Martin Drummond should be ashamed of himself, him living in that new town house development on the south end of town. Luxury for the man, poverty for the woman. Some said Delia didn't have a dollar to her name; others said that life wasn't fair. Not to women, anyway.

  Poor Delia, they said, shaking their heads when Lily May, chief owner and operator of Girls Curls, would have preferred they kept their heads still so she could get even cuts. Delia was sure having a hard time of it. Drinking, too. Acting wild, no doubt, and who could blame her?

  Poor Delia, they said, drinking tea in the diner and looking for Georgia to arrive. Delia's mother would certainly have something to say about the situation. And why was Delia living out at Pecan Hollow when her mother had that big old place in town?

  Poor Delia, they moaned, after word that she had been seen at the church thrift store a couple of days ago. Buying the things she needed, of course. Because everyone knew that Martin Drummond was spending all his money on his girlfriend. His young new girlfriend, the one who'd deserted her children and whose beauty was only skin deep.