Bluegrass Hero

Soap.

Gil slammed his truck into third gear. Soap is supposed to be home and laundry and Sunday-morning-go-to-churchness. Who knows what they put in it these days? Fragrance. That place smelled like a funeral parlor there was so much “fragrance” in it. Made it hard to breathe, much less think clearly enough to survive his last two visits to West of Paris. He’d sent his guys straight home in the van with Ethan and finished up the rest of his errands in a sour mood after his last visit to the shop.

Shop. That’s the trouble right there, Gil thought. Give me a store every time. A man can trust a store. A store’s where you go in, get what you need, pick up a few tidbits and go home with a fair deal. A shop, well, a shop’s where ladies meander and everything costs too much and you come home with far more than you bargained for. After all, no one goes “storing.”

And everyone knows what happens when women go “shopping.”

Gil had never met a man who “shopped.” And he never wanted to.

He hadn’t asked for this. He’d never have even set foot in the shop if he weren’t so pressed for time. Why hadn’t he just gone online and sent something to his niece last week? Now he owned broken soap dishes he’d never use, just because Ethan had knocked him into them. Not that he’d ever be seen with the likes of those kind of soap dishes in his bathroom. He hadn’t picked up the bars of Lord Edmund’s Pirate Voodoo Soap or whatever it was called—she’d put them in his bag. Without his permission. Gil was a man who cleaned up his own messes, but they were usually his messes, not catastrophes someone else had created.

“Mud.” Gil looked his basset hound straight in one bloodshot eye. “Never shop.”

Mud swung his enormous head away from Gil and looked out the passenger-side window, as if he found the very word repulsive.

“Good dog.”

Gil was leaning over to scratch Mud’s ears when his cell phone went off.

“What!” he barked into the phone, still angry.

“Hey, you’re the one who told me to call you. Somebody just kick you or something?” Mac’s voice was full of humor rather than anger. “So how was your niece’s thing last night? Did you smile nicely and play well with the others?”

Gil really wasn’t in the mood for Mac’s sarcasm. “Enough, Mac.”

“Okay, fine. Congratulate me.”

Gil blew out a breath. “Congratulations, Mr. MacCarthy. Why?”

“We got on the agenda.”

“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place? That is great news, Mac.” Gil’s mood changed instantly with the welcome news. Middleburg had been taking the term rustic to new heights, and if he and Mac didn’t steer their vision toward the future, there wouldn’t be much left to visit, no matter how charming. People in Middleburg were fond of the status quo. Very fond. And Emily Montague and her ilk were all too happy to keep it that way. A slot on the next town council agenda was the first step in what was sure to be a long uphill battle to shove Middleburg into the present (much less the future), but Gil was determined to do what he could. “What else is on the docket that night? Anything that could knock us off?”

Gil heard Mac shuffle a few papers. “Civic stuff, some planning for the Character Day speeches at the high school, a couple of scholarship awards and, uh, your favorite folks, the preservation task force. Something about banning ATM machines on Ballad Road. Gotta love that.”

“We’re done for, Mud,” Gil grumbled to the dog as he finished up his call and stuffed his cell phone back in his shirt pocket. “And it ain’t even noon yet.”

Sandy Burnside pushed through the Middleburg Community Church lobby to find Emily after Sunday service. “Can you do lunch?” she asked, folding the church bulletin and slipping it into her enormous silver handbag. “We’ve got some stuff to go over for town council. Nice job on the ATM thing, by the way.”

“Sure, I’ll do lunch, but don’t give me all the credit on the ATM. It wasn’t that hard to write a letter,” Emily countered, waving away the woman’s enthusiasm. “How tough can it be to talk the rest of our town council into loving Ballad Road the way it is?”

Ballad Road was part of what made Middleburg so wonderful. It was the kind of main street everyone wished they grew up on—a stretch of unique shops and friendly places to eat where everybody knew everyone else. There wasn’t a chain store in sight, everyone decorated to the nines for Christmas and they closed the street down for a festival on the Fourth of July. You didn’t run errands on Ballad Road, you visited friends while you just happened to get things done. Sure, it wasn’t that big—sometimes Emily had to send customers into Lexington for unusual requests—and it had its share of quirks, but Emily loved every stretch of that eight-block sidewalk. Like the other shopkeepers along Ballad Road, she felt like more of a curator than a merchant. They were protectors of a small-town atmosphere that was almost nonexistent in other parts of the world.

Sandy, even though her clothing shops weren’t on Ballad Road, was just as vigilant a soldier in the fight to keep Middleburg’s rural charms. Which made her a leader in the fight against Mayor Howard Epson and his ATM machines. “Don’t you go and sell yourself short. Howard was near drooling over that dumb idea to put cash machines all over downtown. Must’ve gotten the idea from some ad in the back of one of his fi-nancial—” she rolled her eyes and emphasized the first syllable in financial “—magazines. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already made a list of what he’s gonna do with his profits. And I’m pretty sure ‘tithe it to the Good Lord’ ain’t on the list.”

Emily pulled her jacket from the church’s coat rack. “The trouble is you’ve asked for things before. This was just arguing against something, even if it was Howard’s plan. That’s easier—it doesn’t cost anything.” She looked at Sandy, who was sharp as a tack and probably already knew why they’d met with a bit of success. “Anyone could have figured it out.”

Sandy grinned as she reached over and plucked her brown leather coat off a hanger on the other side of the rack. “Not anyone. You. I could learn a thing or two from you.”

Funny, I’d always thought it the other way around. Emily looked at her friend as they began the walk into town. Sandy owned three of the largest apparel stores in the county. Though small in stature, Sandy was a bubbly, larger-than-life character. A blizzard of blond hair, bright-pink fingernails and four-inch heels on even her most casual days, you could see Sandy coming a mile off. Sandy had considerable clout in both Middleburg and its city neighbor Lexington, but she never threw her weight around. No, Sandy sort of skipped through life, scattering her influence here and there as if she were a flower girl and life was her own personal, neverending church aisle. If you could dream up a one-woman cheering section, it’d be Sandy.

“You’ll be right beside me when we propose that ordinance,” Emily reminded her. “I need you and your sparkling personality to keep Howard and his buddies from just looking at the world with dollar signs for eyeballs.”

“Nonsense.” Sandy narrowed one eye and leaned in close. “They may be prickly, but they smell a skunk quick as everyone else. We don’t need to look like a shopping mall to draw folks—Middleburg’s best show will always be on four legs.”

Emily laughed at Sandy’s wild imagery. “Maybe, but you’ve always liked the show that walks on two legs and carries a full shopping bag.”

“Well, that kind of filly’s nice, too. I like our town just the way it is. I say we’ve always been able to keep ’em pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.”

And that, Emily thought, was a perfect description of Sandy: Pretty and happy and comin’ back for more.

“Speakin’ of fillies,” Sandy said as they settled into a table at a nearby coffee shop, “I solved your little mystery.” Sandy had social connections unachievable by mere mortals. She knew everyone, everyone knew her and Emily had yet to meet anyone who said they didn’t like Sandy. Lots of people thought her a bit…much, but they still liked her. If Emily needed anyone to do anything, chances were Sandy knew someone for the job. She was the heartbeat of Middleburg, and quite possibly of the state. “The bit about Ethan Travers,” she offered, “and his sudden popularity with the ladies?”

“You did?”

“You’re talking about Gil Sorrent’s foreman, right? Skinny, bushy hair, kinda wiry lookin’?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“Well, women were going after him at the interfaith church social Friday night. If you’d been there, you would have been able to see it for yourself.”

Emily, a fan of church but not of church socials, chose to ignore “matchmaker” Sandy’s gentle rebuke and keep to the subject at hand. “I know that part, but I need to know why. Ethan doesn’t strike me as a real ladies’ man.”

Sandy started laughing. “No, ma’am, he ain’t. It took a little doin’, but I have figured out why he was suddenly the center of attention. And I guarantee it don’t have a thing to do with soap.” Sandy rested her elbow on the table and leaned in. “Doc Walsh’s wife told me Thursday afternoon at the Women’s Guild meeting that she heard Ethan Travers has a birthmark shaped like the state of Texas on the back of his neck.”

Odd as it was, Emily didn’t see how it explained things.

“And Barbie Jean Blabbermouth was sitting beside me when she said it.”

Now that explained a lot. Barbara Jean Millhouse, aka Barbie Jean Blabbermouth, was so fond of gossip she was practically her own communications monopoly. Anything uttered in Barbara Jean’s vicinity was instantly public and often widely exaggerated. Given Barbara Jean’s talents, Emily was surprised she hadn’t heard that Ethan had a birthmark in the shape of Elvis and that he could make it gyrate on command.

Barbara Jean also had four daughters. Four single daughters, because none of them could keep their mouths shut any better than their mother and far too many Middleburg men had learned that the hard way.

“What did Ethan think? That he’d stumbled onto some kind of love potion? That man’s smarter than that. He knows there’s no such thing as love soap.”

“Actually,” Emily corrected, “there is. There’s also joy, and peace, and patience, kindness and the rest of the fruits of the spirit—you know, from the passage in Galatians? I just bought a line of soaps from a company called Edmundsons because I thought it was such a clever idea. Edmundsons is also the company that makes Lord Edmund’s Pirate Soap, which is what Ethan thinks made him a ladies’ man.”

“Spiffy marketing. Sounds like just the sort of thing you’d carry in that pretty shop of yours. But mercy, someone needs to set that Ethan straight about what soap can and cannot do.”

“Oh, believe you me, I think Gil Sorrent is doing that. In spades. Along with every last one of those guys up on Homestretch Farm.”

“Speaking of Sorrent, we’re gonna have a hard time convincing him Middleburg doesn’t need a herd of ATM machines. Him and his electronic gadgets.”

“He’ll be a harder sell, but maybe he’ll see it our way.”

Sandy stirred her coffee. “Let’s hope. But Emily, I didn’t bring you to lunch just to gab about money machines. I’ve got somethin’ serious to ask you.”

Emily looked at her friend. “Everything okay with you?”