Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
After the funeral, Tully had planned to head out to the highway and set up a speed trap.
She had not planned on going to her grandma’s house for Rosie Hennessy’s funeral reception.
Especially after a restless night filled with thoughts of tatted forearms and intense gold eyes.
She had planned to stay as far away from the Hennessy boys as possible until they left town.
Unfortunately, no one got away with saying no to Granny Birdie.
“You can set up a speed trap any time.” She latched onto Tully’s arm and tugged her toward her patrol car. “Right now, we need to get to the house lickety-split and get some food ready.”
Tully was confused, but waited until they were on their way to her grandparents’ farm before she spoke. “We need to plan the food? Aren’t people bringing food?”
“That’s how it usually works, but it turns out that none of the ladies in the church thought to plan a funeral reception.”
Obviously, the townsfolk had felt obligated to attend the funeral of their favorite bar owner, but not obligated to attend a reception for the three ornery boys responsible for breaking out their front windows with rocks, beating their mailboxes off their posts with bats, and terrorizing their kids at school.
Tully couldn’t blame them. The Hennessys had been holy terrors. With Huck’s black eye, Dawson’s swollen jaw, and Jaxon’s split lip, they looked like they hadn’t changed. But she couldn’t help feeling as badly for the Hennessys as Birdie. Everyone deserved a funeral reception. Even bad boys.
And she would never forget the sadness she’d read in Jaxon’s eyes when he’d looked up while they were lowering the casket.
“If your mama was still here,” Birdie continued. “She would have done it up right. But since she’d not, it’s up to us.”
Tully couldn’t help feeling a twinge of pain. It had been over a year since her mama had left her daddy and Tully still wasn’t over it. Her parents had always been the perfect couple. High school football star who became the town sheriff and homecoming queen who became the town sweetheart.
Then suddenly her mama had started acting weird and talking about needing to find herself. Before Tully knew it, she was packing up and heading to Big Springs to live with her sister. It felt like someone had jerked the rug out from under Tully.
As much as she loved and looked up to her daddy, she also adored her mama.
What wasn’t to adore? Laura Gentry was perfect.
From her styled hair and coordinated clothes to her gracious personality and sunny disposition.
She was everything Tully wasn’t. Graceful, funny, organized, and good at whatever she did.
Whether it was organizing a church potluck and bringing half the dishes, making all the costumes for the Christmas pageants, or throwing the best birthday parties a daughter could ask for .
. . even if no one came. Tully’s mama was a country Martha Stewart with a Texas twang and a smile that could light up a room.
Tully missed seeing her every day. She missed her cooking, hugs, and being married to her daddy. It wasn’t right. Not right at all. No matter how much her mama tried to explain that she needed space to find herself, Tully didn’t understand.
Nor had she truly forgiven her mama for leaving.
Something Birdie knew.
“Now don’t be gettin’ all melancholy at the mention of your mama, Tallulah Grace,” Birdie said.
“She had her reasons for leaving. As much as you think your daddy hangs the moon, he’s far from perfect.
He always did put his job before your mama.
And as important as his job is, a wife is important too. ”
“But she could have stayed and worked it out,” Tully grouched. “She’s not as happy in Big Springs as she was here. I can tell every time I visit her or talk to her on the phone.”
“She tried and your daddy wouldn’t listen.
He’s always been stubborn as the day is long.
But what happens between your mama and daddy isn’t our business.
What is our business is figuring out what we’re going to make for the Hennessys.
I told everyone at the funeral if they didn’t show up at my house with food in twenty minutes, I wouldn’t let them have the fall hayride at the farm this year.
But we still need to have something for those boys to eat when they get there. ”
“I don’t know how we’re gonna do that when neither one of us can cook.” Tully didn’t get her mama’s cooking gene. Or her sewing gene. Or her cleaning gene. Or her organizing gene.
“We’ll make do.” Birdie reached for the siren switch. “Now let’s haul some ass!”
There was nothing Tully’s grandma loved more than turning on the siren and lights. She chortled with glee as people pulled off on the side of the road to let them pass—including a pristine turquoise and white classic Chevy.
As they sailed past Jaxon’s truck, Tully kept her eyes on the road.
Birdie didn’t.
“Damn, those are some good-lookin’ boys,” she said as she rubbernecked. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d give any one of them a run for his money.” She turned back around, but continued to look in the side mirror. “Or maybe all of them.”
“Granny!”
“What? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the Hennessy boys—especially the tall, dark, and handsome eldest. As a kid, you blushed hotter than a branding iron whenever Jaxon walked into a room. And I can’t say as I blame you. Bad boys are hard to resist. Which is why I married one.”
Tully laughed. “Granddaddy Lowell was not a bad boy. He was the sweetest, kindest man this side of the Mississippi.”
Birdie sent her a sly smile. “Who's to say that he didn’t save all his bad boy for me?” She pointed to the mud-splattered truck ahead of them with her pinkie.
“Would you look at Danny Mueller refusing to pull over? I swear the man is as deaf as a stone. I don’t know why I still employ him to help with the farm.
He can’t hear one instruction I give him. ”
Tully rolled her eyes. “Maybe because he’s the only one who isn’t a relative that is willing to put up with your orneriness.”
Birdie shrugged. “There is that. Now get up on his bumper and let’s give him a scare.”
Tully flat refused to scare a seventy-year-old man with hearing loss. She turned off the lights and siren, which resulted in Birdie sighing in frustration.
“I don’t know how I got such a rule-following stick in the mud for a granddaughter.”
Tully was a rule follower and had been ever since she was seven and her friend, Maggie Hastings, had talked her into shoplifting Nutty Buddys from the mercantile ice cream freezer.
Maggie had gotten off with a stern lecture from Sheriff Gentry, but Tully .
. . Tully had also gotten a look of pure disappointment from her daddy’s soft blue eyes.
And disappointing her daddy had broken her heart clean in two.
She’d sworn right then and there to never ever do anything else to disappoint him.
If that meant she was a stick in the mud, then so be it.
She liked her unexciting life just fine. She had a good job. A cute little house in town. And a sweet cat named Dumplin’ who never complained about her messy owner.
If, occasionally, Tully felt a little restless with her unexciting life, she just put on her running shoes and ran it out . . . like she had done that morning. All it had taken was three miles—or had it been five? —for her to feel calm, relaxed, and more like herself.
Of course, her calmness had gone to hell in a handcart when she’d glanced up from the lowering casket and caught Jaxon staring at her. She’d felt embarrassed all over again for almost shooting him, but then she’d read the sadness in his eyes and had just wanted to give him a hug.
Which was silly.
Jaxon Hennessy didn’t want a hug from her.
He probably hadn’t given her a passing thought in the years he’d been gone.
She’d been five years younger than him in school.
Just a kid when he’d left town. And yet, she’d thought about him more than once over the years and wondered what kind of trouble he’d been getting into.
She still wondered.
Fifteen minutes later, that bad boy was standing broad shoulder to broad shoulder with his bad boy brothers in Birdie’s living room.
“Well, make yourselves at home,” Birdie said. “Hang your hats on the hooks and help yourselves to some food.”
Tully cringed. She didn’t think what she and Birdie had thrown together qualified as food.
The Hennessys didn’t either.
They looked more than a little repulsed when they stepped into the dining room and saw the platter of half-frozen Eggos covered in a mountainous squirt of pimento cheese, the bowl of cocktail weenies swimming in catsup, and the microwave bag of chili powder-covered popcorn .
. . because Birdie thought it would spice things up.
“What the hell is—?”
Dawson jabbed Huck in the ribs and Huck cut off before his white teeth flashed beneath his mustache. A mustache that took away from the pretty baby face Tully remembered and gave him sexy Riley Green vibes.
“Looks . . . scrumptious, ladies.” He picked up a Dixie plate. “I can’t wait to dig in.”
Thankfully, before the Hennessys had to choke down a bite of her and Birdie’s crazy concoctions, the doorbell rang. When Birdie answered it, a group of women hustled in, carrying covered casserole dishes and Tupperware containers.
Tully quickly grabbed the plate of cheesy Eggos and the bowl of catsup weenies and hurried to the kitchen.
It was one thing to let the Hennessys know she couldn’t cook and another for the gossiping townsfolk to find out.
She knew it was stupid, but she didn’t want them knowing she hadn’t gotten her mama’s cooking ability.
For the last year, she’d fooled them by bringing the freezer casseroles her mama always brought every time she visited.