Romeo: A Payne Brothers Romance Page 9

  It didn’t take much for me to figure her out. First, she was absolutely beautiful. Second, the girl was wound so tight nothing would puncture her paradise to take that virginity.

  And third, when she got pissed, NORAD issued an alert.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you.” Lady lowered her voice but couldn’t hide a squeal of frustration. “You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”

  “Did you miss me that much?” I gave her a wink, knowing full well she wouldn’t know what to do with it. “You’re the one who shoved me out of the window yesterday. We could’ve had all night and morning together.”

  The glasses made her eyes even wider in a good way. An innocent way. It played to her strengths. I didn’t know whether to wrap her up tight in a book or tear out those pages to see what happened when school let out.

  Lady had yet to untangle her hands from my shirt, and those fingers delighted me with promise. What sort of damage could a kitten like her do? I never was a guy who liked getting clawed in the heat of the moment, but if those marks came from a woman as beautiful as Lady in the throes of ecstasy? Those were scars any man would display with pride.

  She hauled me deeper into the church, attempting to hide me between the scenery, lighting, and all-around chaos that was the church’s new summer pageant and preschool nutritional program—The Garden Of Eatin’ …One Bad Apple and Other Healthy Fruits and Vegetables. She cornered me beneath an artificial pine tree that had miraculously survived getting torched during the Christmas pageant and silenced me with a finger to her lips.

  “I’m regretting this plan,” she said. “This is a bad idea.”

  I never had bad ideas. Sometimes I had ideas that had only seemed good at the time, but, barring any broken wrists from Slip N Slides down the farmhouse stairs or stashing our three-legged goat in Cassi’s car overnight, I knew what I was doing.

  Then again, I had left Lady’s bedroom last night without a kiss, promise, or hint of what she hid under her robe. One glance hadn’t been enough. A couple minutes lying in her bed, inhaling her scent wouldn’t sate my hunger. It’d been a long time since I’d been so ravenous for a woman.

  Should’ve gone for it, if only because she was so damned innocent, and watching her squirm was just as entertaining as anything I might’ve done to her.

  But she was a Barlow.

  And she was blowing our cover.

  “Rule number one of any clandestine operation is that you can’t act nervous,” I said. “You start getting antsy, everyone will know something’s up.”

  “Hard to be calm when I don’t know what we’re even doing.” Lady smoothed her hair—a picture perfect French braid complimented by a pair of heart earrings. This girl was too wholesome for the world. “We don’t even have a plan.”

  “Why do we need a plan?”

  “So we aren’t just stuffing our sisters into a very small rec room that’s doubling as a prop closet for this Adam and Eve show. The women are preparing for war in there. One of them is making a slingshot out of her knitting needles…or maybe a pair of gloves…but it still looked aggressive.”

  I shrugged. “All right. What do you want to do?”

  Lady groaned. “I thought you had this figured out. We should’ve made a diagram or something. Excel spreadsheet. A script. We can’t just wing this.”

  That all sounded like a hell of a lot of work. “Look, I’m not a guy who plans anything. I hate thinking ahead.”

  The church doors opened, and a parade of preschoolers dressed as a variety of animals descended upon the Chapel. A four-year-old monkey roared and leapt upon the pine tree, scattering chunks of papier mâché across the pews.

  Lady dodged a little girl pretending to be a tiger and ducked as a boy armed with two powder blue kites did his best to impersonate a parrot.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You never plan for anything?”

  What had the future ever promised me? No sense planning for all the complications, medical bills, and health issues that would plague me as I grew old. Life was much more manageable if I took it one candy bar at a time.

  “Here’s what we do,” I said. “I’ll go talk to the knitting clubs, try to get Cassi and Regent together. You just…back me up.”

  Lady dodged a flying beach ball painted like a coconut. “Back you up?”

  “Pretend I’m the smartest man in the world.”

  “How good of an imagination do you think I have?”

  I grinned. “It better be good, and it better be dirty, because once this works, you’ll be dreaming up ways to thank me.”

  Lady didn’t believe me, but that made it more fun. I rarely got a chance to prove myself to a woman anymore, not when the girls at the bars needed only a drink and a proposition to go home with me. Working for this reward was fun.

  What man didn’t like a chase?

  Squawking rose from the rec room, but I’d left all the chickens on the farm. Lady braced herself with a whimper before leading me into the skirmish.

  The mostly retired ladies had always voiced reservations about allowing the younger generation to join the ranks of their club. Then again, it wasn’t like we had our choice of activities in town. Bingo night at the municipal building had ended in one too many black eyes and was resultantly cancelled. Microbrewing ended once the county went dry. And, while dancing was encouraged…the available partners were less bumping and grinding and more heeing and hawing.

  And so, knitting had become a fashionable hobby. In the past year, Butterpond had been inundated with projects. Fire hydrants donned sweaters. Every animal in the shelter had a blanket. And, of course, the catalyst for the most recent disagreements, Trisha Taylor’s baby had an entire drawer full of teeny tiny socks.

  …Problem was, the bulge under Trisha Taylor’s shirt was not the blessed miracle the town assumed, but a newfound appreciation for Lou’s new coronary cheeseburger. That assumption was the final insult to officially split the Knitters and Knotters.

  And tensions ran high.

  A dozen ladies angrily clucked their disapproval and clinked their knitting needles in furious braids of yarn. The rec room split down the middle. Each side was represented by the former founding members of the Butterpond Knitting Club—the sisters, Kathy and Selma Robinson. The family squabble impacted more than just their happy home. In a very public falling out, Kathy got the yarn, Selma took the cats, and they were still in litigation about the oversized throw they’d been knitting for their nephew, Charlie.

  “An emergency meeting?” Selma prided herself on losing her regional accent. She now compensated by adopting a British one. “Of course, you’d be the one to get your knickers in a twist, Kathy.”

  Kathy rolled her eyes—one blue, one glass. “What are you talking about? This wasn’t me. I was in the middle of weeding my hydrangeas when I got the call for an emergency meeting. So, I dropped my trowel, gathered my club, and forced them to cancel their afternoon plans just to meet here. And now you’re accusing me of calling an emergency meeting?”

  “Who else would be so hysterical as to invoke the Purling Promise Emergency Meeting clause?”

  “Hysterical?” Kathy’s shrill cry rose over the church. “If I recall, it was you who burned every quilt we made last year because you thought you had an allergy to wool. Turns out you went to bed with your makeup on and smeared lipstick over your cheek.”

  “Did I say hysterical?” Selma aimed a crochet hook for her sister. “I meant to say overbearing harpy.”

  “I’d rather be a harpy than an old spinster like you.”

  “You are an old spinster like me.”

  Kathy growled. “Don’t you call me old. You’ve got two years on me.”

  “Tell that to all those grays peeking out of that phony baloney blonde you dyed your hair.”

  Lady panicked in the back of the room, waving her hands and urging me to break up the fight. She had no sense of fun. All this needed was a bag of popcorn and a good bookie.


  The doors whipped opened, and my sister burst in, nearly tripping over two toddlers dressed as a bunny and a lion.

  Cassi was usually a ray of sunshine in a town as dreary as it was drunk. And she did everything she could to ensure that happiness passed from child to child, sibling to sibling, and church to congregation. But even my sister had her limits, and her patience waned right as her to-be-nieces began to wail.

  The lion and bunny belonged to her fiancé, Remington Marshall. He’d taken custody of his nieces then promptly hired Cassi to become their nanny. Rem had a lot of talents—carpentry, blacksmithing, lumber jacking. But trying to figure out how to pin the diaper on the lion? That was tricky. Fortunately, Cassi was great with kids, even if she had to chase around a four and two-year-old, both crying so hard they smeared their fresh face paint. The older child, Mellie, clutched at her throat and collapsed on the ground.

  Lady leapt to her feet. “Oh no! Is she choking?”

  Cassi gave the girl a solid whack between the shoulder blades. “Not anymore. We got it out. Mellie decided she was hungry, but instead of asking me for a snack, she stole the apple for the pageant.”

  Millie was a mop of blonde hair, watery blue eyes, and a lower lip in a perpetual pout. Cute as a button, but trouble incarnate.

  “Am I in trouble?” She sniffled.

  Cassi stared at her, hands on her hips. “Well, you just choked on the forbidden fruit, so I’ll assume you learned your lesson.”

  “Am I going to hell?”

  This quieted the little old ladies and stilled their knitting needles. Cassi gave a nervous laugh.

  “No,” she said. “But you are going to go sit quietly in the corner with your sister and think about why you would rather eat metaphorical sin than wait two minutes for your yogurt bites.” Cassi herded the girls toward the back of the room, only now realizing more women than her usual crew of Knotters were present for the meeting. “Uh-oh.”

  When we were growing up, my brothers and I used to joke that our adopted sister was a Disney princess…who had been exiled from her kingdom for crying too much. Fortunately, Cassi had grown into a lovely, kind woman. A pint-sized force of nature who only stopped smiling to keep us in line. Sure, her skin was darker than ours, but the Payne family temperament was learned, not passed through blood. She’d become the glue that held our family together with prayers, love, and the occasional smack upside the head.

  The Knitters and Knotters glared at each other from across the room, and it was about that time I regretted not including Cassi in our scheme before calling the meeting. My baby sister was patient, kind, and possessed every other virtue Varius so often preached on Sundays…but to know grace, one needed to experience sin. Cassi’s temper was hot enough to scold the devil.

  And her eyes laser focused on me.

  “Quint.” She crossed her arms. “Don’t tell me you called this meeting.”

  Was I becoming that predictable?

  I offered my most charming smile. “And, now that we’re all here. We can start.”

  A laugh echoed from the back of the room, cold as ice and sharp as diamonds. A dark-skinned beauty ran her fingers through hundreds of tiny, waist length braids. Little gold beads gently tinked throughout the strands.

  “Why am I not surprised a Payne called an emergency meeting,” she said. “It’s like you all thrive on chaos.”

  Regent Barlow was lovely, independent, and Butterpond’s biggest pain in the ass. Of course, she was royalty, like all Barlow girls. Problem was, her brothers heeded her commands. While our problems mostly stemmed from Duke and Marquis, Regent controlled those puppet strings. She didn’t have Lady’s brain, but she was damned close. Difference was, she used it for evil.

  Cassi did her best to calm the situation, mouthing a few choice words at me that she didn’t dare voice aloud in church. “I’m sure Quint had his reasons for calling an emergency knitting meeting.”

  I counted the old ladies in the room. Fourteen, each with a bag larger than the rest, more than willing to beat me into submission.

  “Of course, I do,” I said.

  She arched an eyebrow. “I’ve never seen you pick up a pair of knitting needles.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “When you’re not fake sword-fighting with Tidus.”

  I pointed to the puncture scar on the underside of my bicep. “It’s not fake. We take needle combat seriously.”

  Lady attempted to haul Regent into her seat before she escaped the room in a huff. She called to me, voice strained.

  “Maybe you should tell everyone why we’re here? I’m sure you have a very logical reason.”

  Logic was never my forte, but I was a quick-thinker.

  I shrugged. “Yep. Our alpaca is ugly.”

  “Annnndd we’re done here.” Regent popped out of her seat.

  Cassi scoffed. “Quint, no one needs a meeting for that. Everyone knows Alicia is ugly as sin.”

  I blocked Regent’s escape with an arm across the doorway. “You didn’t let me finish—she’s ugly, and she’s cold.”

  Regent frowned. “And your frozen, deformed alpaca is our problem why?”

  Well, with Alicia’s attitude and propensity to escape the farm and stampede through downtown Butterpond, she was becoming everyone’s problem.

  I pulled the letter from my pocket. I wasn’t sure why someone anonymously snapped a picture of Alicia, or why they mailed it to me, but the farm’s resident albino alpaca with alopecia gave me a good idea. And that was a very dangerous thing for a man like me.

  I offered the picture to one of the Knitters, politely sitting with a ball of yarn at the ready. She squinted at the photograph, pulled her glasses from her purse, then promptly shrieked, casting the image onto the floor.

  Kathy picked it up, and took one look at the flabby, pasty, leathery skin of the hideous creature inhabiting our barn. She issued a prayer and pointed to the door.

  “Quint Payne, you are lucky I loved your momma, or I would grab a switch and beat you myself. If she knew the sort of shenanigans you were pulling today—”

  “The alpaca needs a sweater!” I interrupted her and silenced the group’s murmurs. “I wanted to bring everybody together today because I need your help.” I grabbed Cassi, pulling her into my chest to give her a hug. “We need your help.”

  My sister pushed me away. “Don’t you dare blame me for this.”

  “Our alpaca doesn’t have any fur. She’s naked. And frankly, after just giving birth…” I made a face. “It’s a little obscene.”

  Kathy pursed her lips. “And what is obscene about a new mother’s body?”

  I shrugged. “If your utters were smacking dandelions, I think you’d want a sweater too.”

  Wrong answer.

  The hens clucked, lost feathers, and half of them headed toward the door. I shouted, arms extended, pleading to the heavens and to any Butterpondians who still had a heart.

  “Wait,” I said. “I can’t find a sweater for the alpaca because she’s a weird size. And whenever I go online and search for alpaca sweaters, the only results are shirts made from alpaca fur. And that’s like…hair cannibalism or something. It ain’t right.”

  Lady covered her face. “Oh, my God.”

  “I’m asking for your help,” I continued. “Will the knitting clubs please make my naked alpaca something to wear so the entire barnyard doesn’t see what she’s alpacin’ down there?”

  The ladies quieted, but Regent wasn’t convinced.

  “I know half of the Paynes are vagrants, but you do have a calendar, right? It’s the middle of summer.” The woman was ninety-nine percent sass. “You want the poor thing to die of heat stroke?”

  “’Course not.” I’d already prepared for this and started to schmooze the women. “But I wanted to give everyone enough time to work on this project. It probably takes you guys forever to make a sweater.”

  Cassi groaned.

  Silence descended.

  I�
�d fucked up. Wasn’t sure how, but I’d fucked up.

  Selma stood, brandishing her knitting needle. “Just what are you trying to say, young man?”

  Christ only knew. “I’m…asking you to make a sweater for a very ugly barnyard animal.”

  She scowled. “And you think it takes us forever to knit a sweater? Do we look like amateurs to you?”

  I laughed. They didn’t. “I assumed you were still Olympic eligible?”

  Kathy joined her sister’s side with an indignant huff. “You listen here, young man. We’ve been knitting for longer than you’ve been alive. I can whip out a sweater and a gag for that smart mouth of yours before you even leave this room. And, if you’re lucky, once I’m done, I’ll put my needles in my bag instead of where the sun don’t shine. You get me?”

  Jesus Christ.

  I glanced to Lady for help. She’d already fortified herself with her back against the wall, prison-style. I was on my own.

  Fortunately, I had a way with the ladies.

  I gave the woman a dashing wink. “Perfect then. Who better for this job than a woman like you, Kathy?”

  This didn’t please Selma. The woman only turned a cheek so she could wind up to smack a bitch.

  “So, you want Kathy to knit you a sweater?” Selma played it cool, buffing her nails on her jeans. “Guess you don’t want it to look good.”

  Kathy spun, directing her ire at her sister. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you got the stitch, but you ain’t got any taste.”

  “Are you saying I’m tacky?”

  “Not if you’re colorblind.”

  “At least I can finish a project,” Kathy said. “Not like you and your club, getting together just to gossip all day long. What was your meeting called? Knit-And-Bitch?”

  Selma bristled, puffing her chest out and threatening the engineering of her girdle. “It was a wonderful idea, and you know it. If I remember, it was you who spent an entire session ignoring a popcorn stitch so you could talk about Beth Wicker’s new lips.”

  Kathy took great offense to the insinuation. “Everyone was talking about Beth Wicker’s new lips. They looked dreadful.”