Fall Guy (A Youngblood Book)

 
 
    Fall Guy
by
Liz Reinhardt
 
© 2012 by Liz Reinhardt
All rights reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention.
May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.
Cover Design by Stephanie Mooney.


Evan 1
My grandmother's pearls slide soft and cool against the skin of my neck as I twist them nervously.
I always imagined myself fingering them just before I walked down the aisle on my wedding day, their gold hue complimenting a snow white wedding dress that showed a tasteful amount of skin and hugged me in all the right places.
I had no idea I'd get a chance to wear them so much sooner, and for such an embarrassing reason.
This morning she inserts the necklace’s little gold hook into the eye-shaped clasp and presses it tight, her dry fingertips light and gentle on my shoulders, the softly sweet, rich smell of her perfume reassuring in my nostrils.
"Ninety percent of this entire ordeal is how you look, sugar. Keep that backbone straight, but don't you dare even think one solitary saucy thought. You don't have what it takes to keep your temper off your face."
I glance up at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror of my vanity, and guilt gives a long, silent scream in the back of my brain. There are lines between her ash-blond eyebrows I can't recall being there before I became a permanent fixture in her daily life. Her smile strains across her face and her blue eyes, the same light, icy blue as mine, are dull with worry.
Granddaddy stands in the doorway and clears his throat, too much of a marrow-deep gentleman to feel comfortable entering any lady's room while she is dressing. Gramma helps me slide my arms into the navy and white seersucker jacket that gives me an aura of demure sweetness.
"I'm ready, Granddaddy. You can come in."
All-encompassing shame shudders through me like a tiny tropical storm bashing underneath a bell jar. Granddaddy walks up to me, the sodden weight of his steps making guilt prick at my eyes, stinging as a relentless wind.
"Well, darlin', you look a picture. No man in his right mind, judge or not, could see a young lady so beautiful and fail to realize this is all just a big misunderstanding."
His breath wheezes from his mouth in labored gasps. August is an uncompromisingly hot month in Georgia, and the humidity makes his lungs constrict. It's painful for Gramma and I to see Granddaddy operating at less than his usual cyclone-riding-a-galloping-mustang energy level.
"I'll be fine. No matter what the judge decides." I pressure my lips to curve in a perfect, patient smile that is an undeniable family heirloom, passed down from my grandmother like a birthright. Composure in the face of any obstacle is just how the women of our stock function.
"I can't believe that boy's family wasn't willing to make peace over this whole...misunderstanding." Granddaddy's bright white mustache quivers with rage. "I understand a family's connection to their land, but it was just a bunch of damn nut trees."
Gramma squeezes his elbow and runs her hand in relaxing circles on his forearm. "Come and let's have some sweet tea. Kailyn made a big batch before she left last night. Come on, now. Evan needs to get a move-on, or she'll be late."
"Shouldn't we go with her?" Granddaddy demands for the hundredth time, and my heart squeezes with love for him.
It’s beyond sweet that he’s so focused on me and my crazy dilemma, especially considering the fact that Kailyn's sweet tea is usually enough to tempt that man away from even golf, his primary obsession.
"No, Granddaddy. This is my own mess, and I'm going to take care of it all by myself." Before he can protest, I hike up on my toes and pop a kiss on his cheek and my grandmother's, making a registered effort to avoid looking either of them directly in the eye. "Plus that, we have a strategy we need to stick with. I show up with you, and the judge assumes I think I can get myself out of this using my name."
"You should be able to." He rubs the spot just over his heart with short, firm strokes of his fingers, a tic that always rears its head when he's particularly annoyed.
I'd worry, but his doctor says he has the heart of an ox.
"I'll be just fine," I reassure them both, turning away from their worried faces.
I kept a firm hold on those breezy, confident words like they’re my life-jacket in a shipwreck, because I don't feel nearly as confident as I sound.
I run my hand down the shiny, curved wood of the left staircase that leads into the gleam of our crystal-filled front foyer, my feet tripping over the marble tiles before I burst through to the heat, so stagnant the air feels heavy and dead. I slide into the mechanically cool interior of the car I pre-started as quickly as possible and head to court early.
I manage to hang on to my cheery forced optimism all the way to the courthouse doors, in through the metal-detectors, and right up to the doorway of my assigned courtroom, but that's where I watch my confidence explode like a water balloon dropped to the cement from thirty stories up.
I'm positive the splash of my shattered courage should be audible, but no one gives so much as a quarter glance my way.
Lawyers with scuffed briefcases, a man with slicked-back hair and a clip-on tie, and a woman in saggy sweatpants rolled at the waist walk by, but no one notices me skulking in the corner.
My gold watch flashes from the limp bend of my wrist, warning me not to be tardy, not to make a bigger, more complicated mess of this than I already have.
I'm tempted to call my best friend, my life-line, Brenna, but what would she say? She'd make me go in, and I can't do that.
So I sit on the chilly slate floor, not worried about the wrinkles setting in on the sheath dress Gramma pressed