Stealing Taffy (Bigler, North Carolina #3) - Susan Donovan Page 0,17
forcing him to marry her. From that point on, nothing seemed to work for Tanyalee. She miscarried but didn’t tell J.J., and when he found out he divorced her immediately. Next came the misdemeanor shoplifting charges, and eventually the felony forgery mess. Sometimes she didn’t recognize the person she’d been back then—a person who’d had the audacity to take out a loan and claim Granddaddy was a cosigner, forging his signature. What a sense of entitlement she’d had! Then came the crushing shame of seeing her name in the police blotter of the Bigler Bugle, the newspaper her family had owned for generations: “Taken into custody was Tanyalee Marie Newberry, 28, of Willamette Road, Bigler. Newberry was scheduled for arraignment Wednesday.”
A night in jail. A bail hearing. Humiliation. Desperation.
Was it any wonder Wim Wimbley no longer had looked like such a bad option? The preppy little weasel had a ton of money, and because he’d wanted in her panties since high school, he’d been disgustingly easy to twist around her baby finger. So that’s how she’d ended up living in a big house, driving a new Mercedes, wearing expensive clothes and a two-karat emerald-cut diamond, engaged to a rich man without a conscience. It was a detail that hadn’t bothered her in the slightest—until he pulled a gun on her.
Sometimes, the weight of her own stupidity and selfishness took her breath away.
“Oh, it’s a long enough list, Aunt Viv,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Granddaddy, Cheri, and J.J., of course. Even Wim, since the only reason I was with him was for his money. Plus a lot of people from my past—school friends I talked about behind their backs, all those boys I dated to either get back at another girl or for what they could do for me, the owners of C’est La Vie Boutique in Asheville.”
Viv’s glass tumbler began to slip from her grasp. Tanyalee caught it.
Her aunt cleared her throat and patted her chest. “You’re going to go digging around in all that old dirt? Especially with Cheri and J.J.? Why in heaven’s holy name would you go and do something like that?”
She handed the tumbler back to Viv. “Don’t look so shocked. That’s the reason I went to Arizona—so I could sort out why I did all those dishonest things and find the courage to ask for forgiveness and make better choices in the future.”
“Oh, all right. I think I understand.” Viv nodded tentatively. “Wasn’t that an episode of Dr. Phil?”
Tanyalee laughed. “I think that’s pretty much all the episodes of Dr. Phil.”
“Well, I’m proud of you anyway, Taffy,” Viv said, patting her niece’s knee again with one hand and raising a glass to her mouth with the other. “That’s a brave thing to do, I suppose.”
Just then, a car pulled into the drive. It took Tanyalee three seconds to notice it was a brand-new Lexus LS 460 sedan in the most beautiful pearl-gray finish she’d ever seen. Frankly, the Mercedes coupe Wim had given her as an engagement present looked like a stripped-down Ford in comparison. “Who the hell is that?” Tanyalee asked.
“Oh, that’s Tater Wayne.”
Tanyalee let loose with a hoot of laughter. “Oh, Aunt Viv. You’re so funny.”
“Am I, now?” She grinned widely. “I take it you didn’t visit with him at the wedding?”
“Uh, no.”
“So you don’t know what’s been going on with Tater Wayne lately?”
She didn’t. The last Tanyalee had heard, Tater Wayne was mowing Aunt Viv’s grass and cleaning out her gutters, his left eyeball twitching all the while. Tater was a good soul, but not the world’s most attractive man, that was for sure.
And anyway, she hadn’t “visited” with anyone at the wedding, which was only supposed to be an engagement party. Talk about a shock! Tanyalee had completed six weeks in rehab and Dr. Leslie arranged for her to attend the party as an assignment, not a social event. So she headed to the lake house with a prettily wrapped gift and her sincere wishes for happiness—only to find out Cheri and J.J. had just gotten married! Lord-ee! She’d hopped into Aunt Viv’s old pink Caddy and driven back to the house, shaking all the while, then called Dr. Leslie and cried her guts out for fifteen minutes in a fit of rage and jealousy and regret. Tanyalee was on a plane the next day, headed back to Sedona Sunset for the additional month of inpatient treatment Dr. Leslie believed was necessary for her recovery.