Forrest lifted a brow and the smile that appeared on his lips grew slowly, methodically. Twyla felt her shoulders sinking and she held her breath as she tried to decipher his reaction.
“Still in love with Norma Rose?” he said.
It sounded like a question, and she responded, “Yes, you’re still in love with Norma Rose and you’re trying to break her and Ty apart.” For good measure, she added, “It won’t work.”
A full smile curled his lips as he turned toward the lake. It remained there, his grin, at least from what she could see by staring at the side of his face. He had a dimple in his cheek, a tiny one that was a mere a fraction of his handsomeness. She liked dimples, but no matter how hard she tried or how long she stood before the mirror twisting smiles and frowns in all directions, she couldn’t make one form in her cheeks. In all the years Forrest had been gone, she’d never forgotten his dimple. That hard lump in her stomach twisted into a double knot.
“That’s why you told me to stay away from your sister,” he said, more a declaration than a question.
Snapping her attention away from his dimple, Twyla sighed. There wasn’t anything she could do about the knot. “Yes.”
“And that’s why you agreed to be my date tonight.”
She nodded, yet inwardly wanted to shout that a meal and a dance didn’t constitute a date. Not a real date. The kind she’d always dreamed of. One that included hours of fun and adventure. Maybe a kiss or two.
“Aw, Twyla,” he said slowly. “I assure you, I’m not in love with Norma Rose.”
A blank formed in the space occupied by her brain. It was a moment or two before she could speak. “Yes, you are. Why else would you be here?”
He stared at her for several long and rather intense moments, before saying, “Maybe because I’m set on the Plantation becoming a rival to your resort.”
Her mind kicked in fully. He was attempting to fool her. That wouldn’t happen ever again. She let out a snicker. “The Plantation hasn’t rivaled Nightingale’s for years, even before your father went to jail. He practically ran that place into the ground with his Hollywood prostitutes and button men.”
“Yet Galen was never busted, was he? No federal agents ever came sniffing around his door.”
Twyla thought it odd that he called his father by his given name. She didn’t remember him doing that in the past. His tone was notable, too. Almost as if he was disgusted his father had never been caught. “Because his button men had machine guns at every entrance,” she said. “Sheriff Withers may be growing older, but he’s not stupid.” Recalling something she’d once overheard, she added, “Besides, it was all a show for your father. He wasn’t involved with real gangsters. They’d have planted him five feet under the first time he cheated them, and everyone knows your father wasn’t an honest man. My father proved yours wasn’t invincible.”
“Or, maybe your father wanted to keep him alive. Sometimes that’s worth more.”
Twyla could have sworn that hairy, creepy spider was back and crawling its way slowly up her spine this time. The conversation had taken on a completely different tone. She leaned forward to peer around the side of Forrest’s face and look him in the eye. In the darkness, his eyes looked black instead of brown, but not even the night sky could hide the dullness they now held.
“Why do you say that?” she asked. “Like that?” she added, withholding a shiver. Surely he didn’t believe her father was in cahoots with his. That would be insane. They hated each other. Forrest hadn’t been around when things had been really bad. When Galen had bad-mouthed all of the Nightingales, claiming they were gold diggers. No, Forrest had already up and left. Vanished without a word to anyone. That had been before Prohibition, before her father started making money, but that was also when her father started refusing to let them leave the house. The exact time her world had turned into a dark and lonely place.
Forrest shifted slightly, turning her way, and she held her breath, sensing he was about to answer. When a smile slowly curved his lips, her breath stalled in her lungs.
“I am not in love with Norma Rose, Twyla.”
She leaned back against the fountain’s concrete wall and huffed out a breath, totally flustered he’d brought the conversation back to that. “Yes, you are,” she insisted. He’d always been in love with Norma Rose and probably always would be. There was no mystery there, but there was something behind his other comment—about her father keeping his alive. He knew something. A deep, dark secret he wasn’t prepared to share. If she knew what that was, she’d have some real power to hold over him, perhaps enough to make him stay this time. Inside her head she pinched herself, a reminder that she needed to get rid of him, not make him stay.
“Why would you care if I was?” he asked.
She took a moment to contemplate how she wanted to answer that. This was Forrest, a man she’d known all her life, and despite what she told herself, a single day hadn’t gone by when she hadn’t missed him. Missed the fun they used to have. Swimming and fishing, playing hide-and-seek, and card games when it was raining. He’d been a permanent fixture at their house in the summertime. He’d been someone she believed would always be there. Right up until his disappearance. That’s when she learned nothing was forever.
At first she hadn’t believed it and refused to listen when Galen spouted that it was Norma Rose’s fault that Forrest had left town. As time went on and no one heard a word from him, Twyla had to start believing, especially when Norma Rose voiced her hatred of Forrest.
A flicker of hope had been lit inside Twyla when she’d heard he’d returned to town last fall. For weeks she’d stared out the window, waiting for him to visit, but he never had. He’d refused to talk to her, too, when she’d called about hiring Slim. Last weekend, when he’d come out for Big Al’s anniversary party, she’d purposefully stayed clear of him.
Hating him had been much easier when he’d been gone. The thrill of spying him from afar at the amusement park or seeing his airplane overhead, soaring around like an eagle in the sky, did something unique to her insides.
Flying had to be the ultimate freedom. Up there, you weren’t attached to anything. The closest she’d ever come to that would have been years ago, when they used to go swimming. Forrest had tied a rope to a tree branch hanging over the water, and she’d loved those few seconds that occurred between the time she let go of the rope and when she landed in the water.
She’d told him that once, when it was just the two of them jumping off the rope—her sisters had been afraid of it, even Josie—and Forrest had agreed with her. Maybe that was why he took up flying.
Her mind had gone full-circle. Turning to look at him again, she asked, “Why do I care?”
He nodded.
Her stomach tightened and her throat grew a bit thick. Her answer had to be about her. That way, Forrest would believe her. It also was the truth, even if it didn’t feel as important as it had before. “Because I want more excitement than hosting a kissing booth out of the back of the cotton candy shed. While you’ve been out seeing the world, flying planes, I’ve been stuck here.” Pushing off the ground, she rose to her feet and waved a hand toward the resort on the other side of the water fountain. “I live at the biggest, most fabulous speakeasy in the nation, but I’ve never been able to enjoy it.”
“Why?”
“Because of Norma Rose,” she snapped.
“Why are you blaming Norma Rose for that?”
“Why?” Twyla