Diana Rigby was shaken out of a deep sleep with words she never thought she’d ever hear again.
“I’m callin’ ‘bout yo’ momma,” Aunt Lorraine said in that slow Southern drawl, laced with a kind of artificial sweetness that compelled an eye roll from Diana.
“What about her?”
Through the years as she climbed the ranks to become a Mixed Martial Arts Champion, she’d almost forgotten that she’d had a mother. That was her goal after she left Rhino, Texas not long after graduating high school. She left that same day, as a matter of fact, not bothering to tell anyone; determined to put as much space between her and the hell she’d grown up in as soon as possible.
“She ain’t doin’ too good, Diana,” Lorraine offered, then she waited, no doubt hoping that Diana would ask the most logical question. What’s wrong?
Silence hung heavy between the two for several beats before Lorraine continued. “Doctors say she ain’t got much time left. Cancer got her. She stayin’ here with me, until… well.”
“That’s too bad,” was the best Diana could muster.
Lorraine seemed disappointed in Diana’s lack of emotion or any expression of sincerity in her regret. Diana offered words. That’s all. She had nothing else to give her mother except empty and hollow words that meant absolutely nothing.
“She asks ‘bout you. Asks Tray to look you up on the Internet to see how you doin’.”
Again, Diana had no response. She left the edge of the deck and settled onto a cream- colored chaise.
“I’m sure she’d like to see you, Diana. It’s been so long.”
Returning to Rhino had never been on her radar. She never expected to see her mother again. But apparently, the umbilical cord between a mother and child is never fully severed, and it tugged on Diana until a few days later when she drove into town in a rented car on the same road she’d ridden on in that Greyhound bus when she left.
Welcome to Rhino, Texas, the sign on the side of the road read. Population 24,353.
* * *
The woman speeding down Flint Road in the flashy red convertible was definitely not from around here. So, of course, Jake postponed going back to the station to turn around and follow her. The speed limit was thirty, and she had to have been doing at least thirty-five. Being a small-town sheriff, little things like that mattered.
He flashed his siren and lights only for a moment before she pulled over to the side of the paved road. He’d probably let her get away with a warning, but if nothing else, at least he’d get to meet somebody new.
“Afternoon, Miss,” he said in his best Texas Sheriff drawl.
Damn! She was lovely, even behind those big sunglasses and that headscarf.
She turned her face up to look at him. “Was I speeding?”
Those, big, pretty lips of hers caused him to subconsciously lick his own. At first glance, he took her for a white woman, but up close he could see that she was either real light-skinned, Latina, or biracial. Stylish was the word that came to mind, right after beautiful. Everything about her screamed money, and she shone in the light like a new penny.
Jake had heard things, especially since she was back. Dirty Diana. Not white enough. Not black enough. She had a reputation for being loose, for lack of a better term. Looking for love in all the wrong places because she obviously wasn’t getting it from the one place she needed it most.
“You could always count on Dirty Diana for a good time.”
Good for who, though? Certainly not for a young girl who had probably been taught from birth that she wasn’t good enough or wanted. Guilt stuck in the back of his throat. If only he’d done something that first time he and the sheriff had answered the call to her house that day, maybe her life would’ve been different.
* * *
Jake wasn’t the type to get caught up like this. Women flirted. He flirted back, but he’d always known where to draw the line when one needed to be drawn for his sake, or for the sake of someone else. Level-headed. That phrase might as well have been his middle name, because it’s who he was, what he’d always been, to the point of being downright boring. She’d captivated him, somehow.
Diana Rigby had put a spell on him that he couldn’t shake, and that was fine with him.
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