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“No, ma’am,” I replied. “Just a gift for a friend.”
She scanned the beer. “That nice gentleman who moved in next door?”
I smiled tightly. “No.” The lie rolled smoothly from my tongue. The last thing I needed was the local grapevine to know I was taking the ‘nice gentleman’ from next door alcohol. They’d be marrying me off in seconds.
“Right-o,” she sang, giving me my total right after. I paid with some of the cash I’d swiped from the register—it was my business, okay?—and took my alcohol out to the car.
I really should have bought wine.
I eyed the store. Did I really want to go back in there?
No, because then I’d be accused of being a drunk.
God, wasn’t living in a small town fantastic?
I set the alcohol on the front seat and got into the car. After waiting for three of the world’s slowest drivers to pass and park, I pulled out of my parking space and made my way back across town, away from Main Street, and toward home.
It was late enough that all the roads were quiet—not that they ever really got going—and my mind whirred the entire time. What was I supposed to say to Mason?
Here’s alcohol, let’s be friends.
Sorry, I was a bit of a bitch, here’s some booze.
Wanna get drunk?
Yeah. No. Not the last one. That was how the whole shebang had started in the first place.
Drinking was bad.
She said with a six-pack of beer and liquor next to her.
Whatever.
I had no idea what to say to Mason, and that was the long and short of it.
The closer I got to his house, the more obvious it became that I had to wing it.
God, I was going to have to wing it, wasn’t I?
See, if I were a smarter woman, I’d have been nice to him the first time I’d seen him. In all honesty, I’d been too shaken and let my emotions overrule my common sense, but now, it was different.
Imogen Anderson was going to be a slave to her common sense. Amen. Blessed be. Hallelujah.
Did you end a prayer with hallelujah?
God only knew.
I didn’t. I really had to get to church once in a while. Not that Grandma and her band of merry erotica-philes ever went.
The church would go up in flames if Grandma, Kathleen, Evelyn, and Lillian stepped foot inside one.
If anyone had the devil in them, it was those four.
I pulled into the driveway outside my house and frowned. The mailbox was half-open with a brown package sticking out, and I groaned as I got out of the car. I’d told the mailman a thousand times to leave it on the porch if it didn’t fit in the mailbox.
Ugh.
I pulled the package from the mailbox and looked at the name. It was for Grandma, and a shake confirmed it rattled.
I swear if it was Viagra…
Shaking my head, I tossed it into my car where it bounced off the stick onto the floor and turned back to the mailbox. Grandma hadn’t checked it so there were probably three days of mail in there.
I pulled it open and peered inside.
Fear wracked my body.
The biggest scream I’ve ever screamed left my body, and I staggered back into my car where I almost fell into my wing mirror. The front door swung open, and Grandma hobbled out, a large kitchen knife in her hand.
“What’s going on? Who’s there? I’ll get you!” she yelled. She scanned the street until her eyes landed on me. “Was that you making that ungodly noise?”
Swallowing, I nodded. “Spider.” I pointed at the mailbox. “Big spider.”
Grandma huffed. She tossed the knife onto the porch like it was the sink and made her way down to me with a series of mutters that I was pretty sure complained about how much of a wimp I was.
This, from the woman who couldn’t leave the house with mascara.
I was pretty sure spiders eclipsed that fear.
Grandma shoved her way to the mailbox and shoved her hand in it, leaning on her cane. A chortle accompanied a sweeping movement of her yanking a huge spider out of the mailbox, and I jumped so high I was almost sitting on top of my Mazda.
“It’s a rubber spider, you pussy.” Grandma laughed, poking it with her stick. “But do that again. I want to get the camcorder to video it.”
My nostrils flared. “You can call me a pussy but don’t know we don’t use camcorders anymore? I don’t know how I live with you.”
“I pay you rent.”
“No, you don’t.”
“All right, I garden.”
“Totally comparable. There’s a package for you in my car.” I motioned to the vehicle and moved for the rubber spider. “Did you do this?”
She balked. “When do I have the time to get a rubber spider?”
“You have the time to shop online.”
“Those are my vitamins!”
I stared at her for a moment. Her expression didn’t change, and I reluctantly backed down. “Fine. But who the hell would do this? It has to be someone who knows I’m scar—”
