Coach Love(51)
Kent still hadn’t moved. She elbowed him. He flinched and cleared his throat. “Um, yes ma’am I sure can do that.” He rallied and held out his elbow. Cara’s mother beamed at him. “I’ll meet you at your place,” he said to Cara. She caught the tremor in his voice.
“Sure,” she replied, mystified by Kent’s weird behavior, but unable to stop watching Kieran charm a new cluster of girls. “Sure,” she repeated, teeth clenched as she reached for Kent and pressed her lips to his, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. It felt like kissing a rock at first, but he finally warmed up and met her halfway, drawing wolf whistles and applause. She grinned and tucked into his side, making sure Kieran had seen it. He must have, if the evil look he was shooting right at her was any indication.
Good.
Jerk.
At that moment, Melinda materialized, smoothing her hair and straightening her skirt, her face flushed. The woman slipped behind the bar and smacked Kieran on the ass. He grinned at her then at Cara, before grabbing his apparently not-so-ex-fiancée and locking lips with her so hard the applause and cheers drowned out everything else.
“Come on, honey.” Lindsay tugged her away from the scene. “Let’s go.”
Irrational, ridiculous, jealous rage rendered her speechless as Cara let Kieran’s mother drag her away.
They drove out of the parking lot in silence, Cara keeping a death grip on the wheel, grinding her teeth down to nubs. At the last major intersection where the new Target shopping center had been constructed on a former horse farm, Lindsay sighed.
“I know my son still loves you.”
Cara offered a half-snorting grunt in reply then apologized. Lindsay chuckled.
“You know, one thing I realize about the male of our species, having so many of them in my life, is that they don’t ever get smarter. The men they become is determined by the boys they once were. I got put on this earth to guide them in the right direction, or so I hoped.”
The light Cara willed green stayed stubbornly red, the lack of oncoming traffic mocking her in the way of superfluous, small-town signals.
Lindsay continued. “My sweet Kieran. He deserves so much more. All his life he wanted to make everyone else happy, most especially his Daddy who didn’t have him do anything but play basketball, day and night. I’ll declare we had more fights about all that nonsense. The boy never got to enjoy his boyhood.”
Cara shook her head, unwilling to argue, but recalling plenty of times he had enjoyed boyhood, at least with her, before they’d discovered their immature, but mutual physical attraction. She shot down the darkened street, its curves and hills etched into her memory. Tears stung at the realization that she’d be leaving this all behind in a week, on to her new life in Louisville, with her husband—the man who loved her, but also, apparently, another man.
“Your mama is a fine woman,” Lindsay said. “She really is.”
“You know better than that, Miss Lindsay,” Cara insisted. “You and Mister Love practically raised me.”
“Well, some folks deserve second chances and I’m thinking she’s one of those. She’s trying. You gotta give her some credit for that.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll try.” Cara turned onto the long gravel drive and threw the car into park. “I love him, too,” she whispered, relieved to say it to someone other than herself. “I swear I don’t know why I ever—” She stopped with a loud, embarrassing sob.
“Shhh, shhh, now.” Lindsay draped an arm around her and let Cara sob into her shoulder. “It’ll be all right.”
“How? How can it possibly?”
“Not sure yet, honey.” Kieran’s mother patted her shoulder. “But usually when I think nothing will ever be right again, the good Lord surprises me.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Take it off.”
“Uh, what?” Kieran gripped his sunglasses as he attempted to figure out what the woman in the foyer of the Pussycat Club meant by that. His brain felt foggy from lack of sleep. He’d pulled a double the day before, pocketing the near four hundred bucks in tips before falling face first into his unmade bed, still dressed in his dark jeans and T-shirt uniform, reeking of cheap air freshener, glittery perfume, and booze.
“You heard me, Red. Let me see whatcha got under them clothes.”
“Are you messing with me right now, Jackie? Because I’m not in the mood.” He put his cardboard cup of coffee on the damp bar top and flopped into the nearest chair. A puff of stale air surrounded him that smelled of cheapened hopes and shattered dreams. He groaned under his breath for even thinking that, realizing for the millionth time that this had to be the most depressing place in the universe.