Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch by Haywood Smith

Author:Haywood Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The following Sunday after church, Tommy and I were sanding Sheetrock joints in the apartment when we heard a knock at the door. My skin and hair coated in Sheetrock dust, a painter’s mask over my nose and mouth, and a pair of my father’s old work gloves on my hands, I looked over my granny glasses to find an amused Grant waiting in the doorway.

Even in cut offs and a T-shirt, he looked crisp and collected and way too gorgeous. Those long, hard, tanned runner’s legs …

“Hi. I heard you guys working and wondered if you could use a little help.”

Suddenly conscious of my appearance, I brushed vigorously at my hair, which succeeded only in raising a Pigpen-esque cloud around my head that set Grant coughing.

“Nice to see you.” Tommy stepped over and shook his hand. “We can use all the help we can get.” He pulled a mask from the box and handed it to Grant. “Here. Better start with this.” He waved his sanding sponge at the newly sealed, insulated, and Sheetrocked walls. “We were just about to finish up these joints. Then I was going to start laying the new tile in the bathroom while Lin cleans up so we can paint.”

As Grant put on the mask, Tommy paused. “No offense meant, but have you ever done anything like this before?”

Grant blinked at him, deadpan. “I put myself through college working residential construction.”

Tommy chuckled. “Great. You can be the foreman.” He handed Grant his sponge, then headed for the bathroom with the sledge hammer.

I just stood there like an idiot, wishing I hadn’t worn the old T-shirt with a hole in the side that exposed what was left of my love handles. And my baggy cutoffs made me look wide as a recliner.

The sudden self-assessment-and resulting insecurity—felt all too adolescent.

What was I doing? I was a fifty-year-old woman, not some kid on the prowl. Remember your motto, I exhorted myself. If he doesn’t like the way you look, fuck him.

The trouble was, I really wanted a roll in the hay with him, which was insane because I knew virtually nothing about him. At least, he was my only fantasy, so I must have wanted to go to bed with him, right? But only if I could give him an amnesiac so he wouldn’t remember anything.

Or maybe I only wanted to want to go to bed with him. After all, he was from California. He probably had a whole smorgasbord of venereal diseases. Why couldn’t he just remain my fantasy lover, leave it at that?

It was all quite exhausting.

What makes you think a good-looking man like him would even consider going to bed with a woman like you? my old self sneered. He could have any of the barflirts at Café Luna. Maybe he does.

If he did, it wasn’t at home. I’d never seen another car there besides his or heard a whiff of gossip connecting him to anybody in town.

He had, though, been getting mysterious calls at work lately from a sultry female voice.

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