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The Mountaineer was entirely respectable, and, over the years, Kristy had lunched here often and shared dinner in the quaint dining room with family or friends, but no one had ever seen her like this. Alone. In the bar. At night. And dressed like this.
Ethan could barely contain himself. "Do you know what she did Tuesday in the parking lot after she ran out on me? She gave me the old one-finger salute. Kristy Brown!"
"I believe you've already mentioned that," Gabe said. "Three times."
"She's moving into her condo this weekend. Don't you think that someone who's probably spent the day packing up boxes should be too tired to party?"
"She doesn't look real tired."
Kristy laughed at something Andy said and let him lead her back to the table he was sharing with a couple of his college buddies, who'd come to visit. They looked like a bunch of slackers to Ethan. Caps turned backward, earrings, scraggly goatees stuck to their chins like fraying Brillo pads.
Well-built slackers, though. Andy played football for North Carolina State, and the size of the others at the table made Ethan suspect they were his teammates.
"This is all Rachel Snopes's doing."
Gabe's fingers tightened around his glass of club soda. "Her name is Stone. Rachel Stone."
"She's turned Kristy into a—a slut."
"Watch it, Eth."
"Her clothes are so tight it's a wonder she can move."
"But she's moving all right. Look at that." Kristy had just propped her arms on the table and leaned forward to hear something one of the football players was saying. "She's—she's sticking herself right in their faces!"
"It's hard to believe you never noticed that chest until now."
"You didn't notice, either."
"I haven't worked with her nearly every day of my life for the past eight years."
Ethan's frustration boiled over. "It's a good thing she quit because otherwise I'd have had to fire her. How could I have my church secretary behaving like that?"
Gabe spoke mildly. "She doesn't dress much different from Laura Delapino or Amy Majors, and you seem to admire them."
"They're not Kristy, and I don't know why you're being so stupid about this. She was fine until the Widow Snopes moved in with her. It's obvious that corrupting Kristy is just one more part of Rachel's plan to upset this town."
"You think she has a plan?"
Ethan shrugged.
Gabe's voice dropped. "You listen to me, Eth. It's taking every resource Rachel has just to keep her head above water. She's been shunned, her tires have been slashed, Annie's cottage vandalized. Don't talk to me about her plan to upset this town."
He was right, but Ethan's flash of guilt disappeared as he watched Andy tilt his beer mug to Kristy's lips. He shot to his feet. "That's it! I'm getting her out of here."
From across the bar, Kristy watched Ethan storm toward her. He'd ironed his T-shirt again, she noticed. It was very old, vintage Grateful Dead, but one of his favorites, and he took good care of it.
Ethan's clothes were always neat. He'd even pressed his perfectly faded jeans. His blond hair was well-cut and combed into place, his eyes liquid blue. Once his mother told Kristy the Bonner family had a great, unspoken secret. Although no one ever said it aloud, they all loved Ethan the best.
Well, not Kristy. She didn't love him the best. He'd betrayed her, and now she was immune to that Gospel-preaching, God-speaking rat.
"Kristy, I'd like to talk to you."
"Shoot," she managed, just as sassy as anything Rachel would have come up with. For good measure, she added a head toss that sent her little feathers flying.
She wouldn't let him see how crushed she'd been by his attitude Tuesday morning. Afterward, she'd rushed back to the cottage and gathered up all her new clothes to throw them out. But then the sight of her reflection in the old cherry mirror over the dresser had stopped her.
As she'd gazed at herself, she finally understood what Rachel had been trying to tell her from the beginning. If she were going to do this, she had to do it for herself, not so she could catch a stuffy glamour boy of a preacher with the emotional maturity of a sixteen-year-old. That was when she'd decided she owed it to herself to give her new image a fair test trial and see how she liked it.
