Taking Her Time by Cait London Page B

you sit down…. Don’t you dare lay any more guilt on me, Carly. I do not want to feel guilty about you and Tucker one day longer. Now pick yourself up and let’s go dancing.”
    â€œI can’t. Tucker just said something that really got me. I don’t know how to take it. He didn’t give me a chance for a comeback.”
    â€œIf Tucker said it, he’s thought it through and he means it, bottom-line.”
    â€œI can’t go dancing.”
    â€œSure, you can. You’re the town legend. People expect anything from you. It’s been real dull here without you. I need you to take the pressure off me. Their expectations are getting pretty high.”
    Ramona’s spiffy little red convertible sportscar wasn’t the typical minister’s wife’s station wagon. She whipped around the city blocks until they squealed to a stop behind Carly’s rented car at Anna Belle’s house. While Carly showered, Ramona picked out dancing gear and laid it across Tucker’s mussed bed. “You should use that bed, with Tucker in it, and loosen up a bit. Your neck got stiffer every time you came home to visit, or I would have told you about having Tucker sooner. Don’t think for a minute that it was his fault. I knew what I was doing. He didn’t.”
    Carly stood still beneath the cosmetics that Ramona applied to repair her crying jag. “I’ve got a boyfriend. Tucker has probably cost me the chance to nab him. Gary is sensitive and kind. We’re both up-and-coming business executives. We’d make good working partners.”
    â€œI’ve got a husband. I love him. We argue and make up and balance out life pretty good. I’ve never looked at another man. Frank understands me, and my need to go dancing on a Saturday night and get my ration of romance without the kids jumping on us in the middle of good sex. They’ve learned how to pick the bedroom lock…. Frank still lights my fire. I’d say Tucker stil llights yours.”
    â€œTucker is probably at his blond girlfriend’s. I am not aching for him. But he started something, and I’d like to finish it. And I want my grandmother’s house. I was supposed to inherit it and Tucker bought it right out from under me.”
    Ramona pushed the mascara wand into the tube and capped it very slowly. She seemed to be circling an answer for Carly, then she said, “You’re going to have to figure out what is best for you, Carly. Just do it, like you always do. You can’t change who you are. You’ve just got to deal with yourself.”
    â€œYou sound like my grandma.”
    â€œOh, yeah. Well, with my brood I’ll probably be a grandmother soon enough. Face life, Carly. What’s the way it is, just is. There’s no going back. You just have to deal with what’s on the tabletop now, and do the best you can. If your feelings about Tucker are still nagging at you, the best way is to have sex with him and see how you feel after that. You’re both wiser now—and I did not believe for one minute that Tucker was planning to seduce you at the Last Inn Motel. I knew that movie star wanted you and I knew the party would be private. I also knew that I had to get to Simon Gifford first if I wanted to go to Hollywood. That’s how I was back then.”
    Ramona studied Carly in her jeans and long sleeve T-shirt with a red rose on the front. “You look good. But I can tell you, a man dying of a heart attack during sex did not make my day. You’d think that a movie star would keep himself in better condition.”
    While Carly was feeling bruised and tired prior to that knowledge, her agile mind now came to a full stop. “You wouldn’t be fibbing, would you?”
    â€œThe undertaker had a time getting that smile off Simon Gifford’s face,” Ramona answered seriously.
    Carly rubbed the headache beneath her temple. “It’s been a long