Taking Her Time by Cait London Page A

paused, straightened just a bit, then turned the corner into the back street and out of sight.
    Carly sank down and let the evening shadows surround her, brooding on Tucker’s admission and reflecting on the last bitterness of their marriage. She allowed her tears to drip down her face. Tucker had always been her friend and then her sweetheart, and she’d hurt him. He never lied and he’d just told her how his heart had bled. Valentine-proof lay in a box as worn and tired as she felt.
    She amended the “never lied” fact. Tucker’s “innocent date” with Ramona hadn’t exactly been true.
    When she heard the jail’s back door scrape open, Carly said unevenly, “I feel like I’m in pieces.”
    Norma’s silence caused Carly to turn and look at the lady police-person, whose expression of sympathy was quickly shielded. “Uh-huh. I have to go home and fry up these fish. I’d rather you didn’t sit on the jail’s porch all night. Here’s a plastic sack. Put the fish heads and guts in the trash can before you leave. Go home.”
    â€œI have no home. You’ll have to arrest me for vagrancy. Can I stay in the jail all night?”
    â€œNo.” The door closed and the alley’s shadows deepened into night and Carly was alone.
    And Tucker was taking his newly developed skill for intimacy-talk to his blond girlfriend. Another woman would be sharing it with him. He was the same and he was different. In the eleven years since they’d divorced and Carly had visited her grandmother, they’d never come close to each other—or said what they had to say for closure. Now Tucker had closed his part and left hers unfinished.
    Just like the need to stake him out and have him. It vibrated deep and warm inside her—the need to have Tucker. His expression had been tender as he looked down at her, and he was all hot and hungry—but there was something else tangling between them….
    Carly sighed deeply and wearily cleared the jail’s back steps of fish guts as she reviewed the day’s events—her hunt for the diary, the frantic call from her office, rolling with Tucker on her grandmother’s lawn and the humiliation of being hauled in by Norma had exhausted her.
    So she wasn’t in the mood to see Ramona, the minister’s wife, the mother of five children and the pillar of the community, dressed in tight jeans and a red satin blouse and matching dancing boots. She wasn’t wearing big hair now, but an all-sticking-out-ends cut that framed a pixielike face. “You’re a pitiful sight, Carly Redford. I heard you were holed up back here after rolling on the front lawn with Tucker and playing suck-face with him.”
    â€œAren’t there rules about how a preacher’s wife and a mother is supposed to speak? Don’t you have to bake a pie for a bazaar or something?”
    Ramona’s laughter ricocheted off the alley’s brick walls. “You’ve been running away from a talk with me for years. Now, maybe you’ll listen. Let me give you a ride back to Anna Belle’s. You can clean up and we’ll go dancing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s that when you think you can’t face the world, you’d just better get up and do just that.”
    After a deep breath, Ramona continued, “Of course, I wanted that fine young stud years ago, but he was hot for you and he resisted. But I nailed him one night when he was down and missing you. I knew when you came back from that weekend honeymoon and glared at me, that he’d finally told you. I knew you’d settle in and dig at that until you made him pay. You weren’t in a listening mood then, or later. Then you up and took off and left this whole mess simmering. I’ve had to live with it.”
    Ramona walked to Carly and studied her. “Maybe I’d better put a tarp on my car seat before