Fiona overslept on Sunday morning and grabbed a biscuit stuffed with bacon on the way out the back door. Dora June and Truman had left more than an hour before because she had Sunday school class. If Jud hadn’t knocked on Fiona’s bedroom door as he was leaving, she’d still be asleep.
She’d dashed across the hall to her still messy room, found a bright green skirt that had a matching sweater, and gotten dressed in record time. She’d gone to bed with her hair still swept to one side and it looked like an upside down string mop that had been set out in the sun to dry. She pulled it up into a bun on the back of her head, letting a few curls escape to frame her face. Forget makeup, she didn’t have time for that.
Everyone was singing when she slipped in the back door of the church and tiptoed up the aisle to sit at the end of the Logan pew beside Jud. He shared the hymnal with her, but they were on the very last line of the final verse.
The preacher took the pulpit and covered a yawn with the back of his hand. “Y’all excuse me. If you didn’t go to the ranch party at the Lucky Penny last night, you missed a good time. I’ll make the sermon short this morning. If you will open your Bibles to the twenty-third Psalms, I’m going to talk about the present. The previous two Psalms talk about the future and the past, but this one tells us what we can expect from the present and that’s what’s important because it’s what we have today.”
Work all week, church on Sunday, go see Granny when possible. Fiona asked herself if this was what she wanted out of life as she tuned the preacher out and thought about her own past, present, and future.
Jud laid a hand on the back of the pew and let it fall over her shoulder. A smile tilted the corners of her mouth upward. The past hadn’t been so great. A job was a job if it was in a fancy office with a view or if it was in the back room of a little convenience store. The future was as uncertain as Texas weather. This was the present and for right now, she liked her place in it.
“A reminder”—the preacher was winding down when she started to listen again—“we are having our annual Christmas dinner in the fellowship hall today. After we eat, I understand Santa Claus will be ready for pictures and will give out candy and fruit to all the children here today. I’ll say our ending prayer and the blessing for today’s food at the same time so that y’all can go on and eat as soon you get there.”
Everyone’s head bowed and the preacher said a very short prayer, which led Fiona to believe that he hadn’t had time for a proper breakfast, either. Immediately afterward, there was a mass exodus as the women hurried off to the kitchen, leaving the men folks behind to find their own way in their own time.
“So why aren’t you hurrying off to get our donation to the church dinner?” Jud asked.
“Dora June brought our contribution this morning. We had leftover brisket and dozens of cookies from the party last night. Besides, there’s enough cooks in the kitchen right now,” she answered.
Truth of the matter was, she didn’t want to answer a million questions. She’d shared Jud’s hymnal, even if only for a few seconds, and he’d put his arm around her. In small-town Texas, those two gestures carried weight and lots of it. Hopefully, everyone would still be talking about Truman, but if they saw her, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that poor old Truman would take a backseat.
“You look pretty serious.” Jud propped a hip on the arm of the first pew and waited for the line to go from the sanctuary through a narrow hallway to the fellowship hall to thin out. “What were you thinking about?”
“Truman deserves the place of honor,” she said.
“And that means?” Jud raised an eyebrow.
“What does it mean in your part of Texas if a cowboy shares his hymnbook with a woman and then puts his arm around her in church?” she asked.
“What’s that got to do with Truman?” Jud asked.
“Everyone is probably talking about him, but when they see us, he’ll go to second place and they’re going to bombard me with questions,” she answered honestly.
“We could always sneak out the front door, go have Sunday dinner in Seymour and go to a movie after all. We could use the excuse that you needed to see your granny.” He took both her hands in his.
“I promised to be there for the rental company. Besides, if we aren’t at the potluck, the rumors will get even worse. We might as well go on and take our medicine.”
“Then I say let’s give them something to talk about.”
Eyebrows shot up when they entered the room holding hands, but everyone was so busy either getting food ready or dishing it up that no one approached Fiona right away. It wasn’t until she and Jud sat down at a table with Allie and Blake that anyone said a word. Then it was her oldest sister.
“So it’s happening, isn’t it?” Allie asked.
“Yes, it is. I’m guilty. I’m having all these carbs when I know they’ll go straight to my butt,” Fiona answered.
Lizzy leaned around her sister. “You can’t run from the truth any more than you could run from your heart.”
“What? That my jeans will be too tight after dinner today?” Fiona asked.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Lizzy frowned.
“So?” Fiona asked.
“Be careful,” Allie whispered.
“I told you the same thing,” Fiona reminded her. “I don’t believe either of you listened to me. Where is Audrey?”
“You can’t change the subject like that, but Dora June is rocking her while I eat and then I’ll take over.” Allie nodded toward the oversized chairs they’d brought in for Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.
“How serious?” Allie whispered.
“It was just a hymnbook and we were so damn close together that his arm was pinched,” Fiona said.
“And the hand-holding?”
Fiona giggled. “We thought we’d give everyone something to talk about. Looks like it’s working.”
“Well, dammit!” Lizzy said. “I should have known you’d stir up trouble.”
“Me! If you two hadn’t already created gossip with your escapades, then no one would even think of throwing me and Jud together.”
“Did I hear my name?” Jud asked.
“Of course you did,” Fiona said. “I said that you liked sweet potato casserole.”
“Yes, I do.” He grinned.
After the meal, Santa Claus appeared and everyone was so involved with him that only a few folks noticed when Jud and Fiona left by a side door. The snow had completely stopped and the sun was shining but the north wind bit through her coat and flipped her skirt tail up more than once on the way to her car.
Jud followed her in his truck. Déjà vu all over again so much that she kept her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel. She did not intend for her mother to come home and find that Fiona had driven her car through a barbed wire fence.
She parked in the front yard of Audrey’s Place at the same time the rental company truck backed in beside her, and Jud pulled up on the other side. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. She shut off the engine and had reached for the door handle when Jud opened it for her.
“How about that for getting here at the right minute?” he asked.
She unfastened her seat belt and put her feet out on the ground. “Pretty good, I’d say. I’ll get the door open for them and then I’m going up to my room to change and straighten things up enough so I can stand to be in there. I’m the neat freak in the family. My sisters, especially Lizzy, never put anything away.”
“While you are doing that, I will set up our theater,” he said.
“What are we watching?” She opened the door and motioned for the three rental guys to come on inside.
“You have a choice. It’s one of those six screen things so you can pick which one you want.” He held the door while they brought in their dollies to help get things out easier.
“Why only six?”
“Because that’s all Josie would let me have. She said I’d have company and she was out there in the boonies all alone so I couldn’t have all the movies.”
“Okay, then, see you in a few.”
Fiona changed into yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt, straightened her room in record time, and then started toward Jud’s room when she noticed that he’d set up his laptop on the credenza in the hall and the two wingback chairs were pulled up close enough so she and Jud could see the screen.
Three movie cases were on one side of the computer, three on the other. Some of the Fast & Furious movies took the right side. On the left, she had a choice of Something to Talk About with Julia Roberts, the first Lethal Weapon with Mel Gibson, and Shooter with Mark Wahlberg. She’d seen them all at least once and some several times but she chose the Julia Roberts movie.
“I can’t believe you even have a chick flick in your stash,” she said.
“It’s got a good lesson in it.” He slid the DVD drawer out of the side of the laptop, put the disk in, and started the movie. “Popcorn or a drink before it starts?”
“Too full still for popcorn. What do we have to drink?”
“Enough Jack for a shot each. Two beers and enough Crown Royal for a Crown and Coke. Your sisters pirated off the rest of it,” he said.
“A beer would be great.” She settled into one of the chairs and wiggled but couldn’t get comfortable. “I’ve got a better idea about how to watch a movie. Please push these chairs back where they belong.”
He went into his room, brought out two beers, set them on the credenza, picked up a chair, and put it where it belonged. She glanced over her shoulder as she headed for her bedroom and watched him pick up the second chair. Muscles straining at the sleeve of his shirt, his stance all powerful—her pulse jacked up at least three notches.
She disappeared into her room and brought out a down comforter and two pillows. She fluffed the comforter out on the floor in front of the laptop, tossed the pillows onto it, and stretched out on her stomach.
He eased down beside her with a groan as the movie started. “And to think that tomorrow night we have to move all that furniture back into the house.”
“Poor baby, want me to kiss it and make it all better?” She inched over and kissed him long, hard, and with so much heat that they were both panting when it ended.
“That definitely makes it all better,” he said.
Three hours later, the movie had long since finished, the beers were warm and flat, and Fiona was curled up in Jud’s arms as they both slept. The rental company had finished and locked the door behind them.
They were sleeping so soundly that neither of them heard Dora June’s labored breathing as she climbed the steps. It wasn’t until she yelled from the top of the stairs that Fiona set up with a start.
“I was worried about y’all,” she giggled like a schoolgirl. “We brought some fried chicken from Wichita Falls. Went on up there to see Irene after the church thing and I talked Truman into wearing his Santa suit. We took the extra candy bags and passed them out to the folks in the home there.”
“I could eat some chicken.” Fiona stretched and yawned. “We were watching a movie and fell asleep.”
“I see that. You might as well pour them beers down the drain, though. They won’t be fit to drink. Come on down to the kitchen with us and have some chicken. Your granny was having a good day and we talked about all you girls. And guess what, we drove past that RV place. I know Truman would never do it but sometimes I sure do yearn to see things before I die,” she said.
“We’ll be right down,” Fiona said.
“Are we in trouble?” Jud opened one eye a slit.
“I don’t think so. She didn’t catch us in a bedroom. And I think she wants an RV so bad that she’s got that on her mind.”
“It was nice to wake up with you in my arms,” he said.
“I thought so, too,” she said softly. “It felt right.”