The Devil Wears Blue Jeans (One Pass Away: A New Season Book 1) Read online

  THE

  DEVIL WEARS

  BLUE JEANS

  ONE PASS AWAY: A NEW SEASON

  BOOK ONE

  ©2020 MARY J. WILLIAMS

  Copyright © 2020 by Mary J. Williams.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the Copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  First E-book Printing, 2020

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Writing isn't easy. But I love every second. A blank screen isn't the enemy. It is an opportunity to create new friends and take them on amazing adventures and life-changing journeys. I feel blessed to spend my days weaving tales that are unique—because I made them.

  Billionaires. Songwriters. Artists. Actors. Directors. Stuntmen. Football players. They fill the pages and become dear friends I hope you will want to revisit again and again.

  Thank you for jumping into my books and coming along for the journey.

  HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

  Please visit me at these sites, sign up for the Mary J. Williams newsletter, or leave a message.

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  MORE BOOKS BY MARY J. WILLIAMS

  Harper Falls

  If I Loved You

  If Tomorrow Never Comes

  If You Only Knew

  If I Had You (Christmas in Harper Falls)

  Hollywood Legends

  Dreaming With a Broken Heart

  Dreaming With My Eyes Wide Open

  Dreaming of Your Love

  Dreaming Again

  Dreaming of a White Christmas

  (Caleb and Callie's story)

  One Pass Away

  After the Rain

  After All These Years

  After the Fire

  Hart of Rock and Roll

  Flowers on the Wall

  Flowers and Cages

  Flowers are Red

  Flowers for Zoe

  Flowers in Winter

  WITH ONE MORE LOOK AT YOU

  One Strike Away

  For a Little While

  For Another Day

  For All We Know

  For the First Time

  The Sisters Quartet

  One Way or Another

  Two of a Kind

  Three Wishes

  Four Simple Words

  Five More Minutes (The Sisters Quartet Christmas)

  Six Days (The Sisters Quartet Wedding)

  Rock & Roll Forever

  Almost Paradise

  Almost Blue

  Almost Everything

  Almost Home

  Almost Like Being in Love (A Rock & Roll Forever Christmas)

  One Pass Away—A New Season

  The Devil Wears Blue Jeans

  The Back-Up Plan

  The Last Honest Man

  AUDIOBOOKS

  ONE PASS AWAY SERIES

  After the Rain – click here

  After All These Years – click here

  After the Fire - click here

  HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS SERIES

  Dreaming with a Broken Heart – click here

  Dreaming with My Eyes Wide Open

  HARPER FALLS SERIES

  If I Loved You – click here

  If Tomorrow Never Comes – click here

  If You Only Knew – click here

  If I Had You – click here

  THE SISTERS QUARTET

  One Way or Another - click here

  Two of a Kind - click here

  ROCK & ROLL FOREVER

  Almost Paradise - click here

  Almost Blue - click here

  Almost Everything - click here

  Almost Home - click here

  Almost Like Being in Love – click here

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ♫~♫~♫

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

  MORE BOOKS BY MARY J. WILLIAMS

  AUDIOBOOKS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  AUDIOBOOKS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

  PROLOGUE

  ▲ ▼ ▲ ▼ ▲

  FOOTBALL SAVED DARCY Stratham’s life.

  For the first few years of Darcy’s life, her story wasn’t unique. Like many children, circumstances beyond anyone’s control had left her without a father. Her mother worked hard cleaning other people’s homes and trying her best, through a series of less-than-prudent relationships, to find a substitute for the good, loving husband she loved and lost much too soon.

  Darcy didn’t remember her father—difficult to do when he passed away before she reached her first birthday. However, at the grand old age of six, she’d seen enough of her mother’s desperation and despair every time a relationship failed to grasp a concept that would ingrain itself into her consciousness.

  Though life could be hard, and sad, and lonely, the solution to finding contentment was not to be found in a man.

  At least, not just any man. And certainly not the first one who cast a smile your way. Nor the second. Nor the third. A woman could survive alone in the world just fine. She could make a living and take care of herself.

  No one could ever accuse Marian Stratham of being a bad mother. The love she felt for her daughter was clear. However, her questionable taste in men was another matter. Unfortunately, Darcy’s mother never took time between relationships, time to breathe, or learned to love herself first and a man second.

  One of the frequent questions that kept Bridgeton, Idaho’s coffee klatches gossiping? What loser would Marian end up with next? The summer before Darcy started the first grade, the answer was Shel Paisley.

  Shel wasn’t a bad person. Lazy, yes. Self-centered, sure. He spent his entire life trading on his good looks, average athletic ability, and a modicum of charm. In high school, he was a big man on campus. Star of the football team, homecoming king. He had his choice of any girl in town.

  The only son of a doting mother, Shel’s first eighteen years were lived in high clover. Things quickly changed after graduation.

  Not talented enough to earn an athletic scholarship and never what anyone would call an academic achiever, Shel suffered the fate of many a popular young man without the foresight to plan further ahead than his next sexual conquest. He’d peaked too soon. His glory days were over.

  Now, thirty years old, his hair rapidly receding up his forehead and twenty pounds of beer belly hanging over the waistband of his pants, Shel found Marion Stratham to be the answer to his lazy, inconsiderate, thoughtless prayers.

  Watching with gleeful curiosity as Shel moved into Marion
’s little house on the edge of town, all the residents of Bridgeton, Idaho could say about the relationship was, he isn’t the worst man she’s hitched her wagon to.

  “Why?” Darcy whispered with a frown when her mother announced Shel would move in with them at the end of the week.

  “A woman needs a man around the house,” Marion explained.

  Unconvinced, Darcy snorted.

  “You’re too young.” Her mother hugged her close. Darcy heard the catch in her voice. “One day, when you’re older, you’ll understand.”

  Somehow, Darcy knew her mother was wrong. After all the things she’d seen, she swore then and there she would never need another human being to make her life worth living.

  At first, not certain what to expect, Darcy was wary of the new man. She’d learned the hard way that some adults expressed their displeasure with stinging slaps across the face. Shel was not such a person. Turned out he was the best kind of new daddy; the kind who barely acknowledged her existence.

  Soon, the three of them all settled into an acceptable routine. Shel didn’t raise his voice—at least not too often. When at home, he could be found slumped in front of the television, a pile of empty beer cans carelessly strewn on Marion’s freshly polished second-hand coffee table.

  Best of all—in Darcy’s eyes—he didn’t make her mother cry.

  In Darcy’s limited experience, Shel was a keeper. She was much older and wiser before she realized how sad her immature assessment had been. A person deserved more than a warm lump of a body to fill the empty space on the other side of the bed.

  However, Marion seemed content. And Darcy didn’t know any better.

  As the hot summer days waned and cool fall nights took hold, Darcy found a kind of stability she’d never experienced before. Dressed in a skirt and matching blouse in the same blue shade as her eyes, her jet-black hair tied back in a bright yellow satin ribbon, she started the first grade and quickly added another lesson learned that would hold her in good stead in elementary school and beyond.

  Some boys and girls were nice. Others, not so much. However, when you find a soulmate with a shock of red hair, bright hazel eyes and tomboy tendencies to match your own, you hold onto her for life.

  For Darcy, Piper Winslow became just such a person. The girls would become confidants through good times and bad long after they left their childhoods, and Bridgeton, Idaho, behind.

  “You’re my best friend,” Darcy proclaimed the first day she and Piper met.

  Piper, always a person of few words, nodded her agreement.

  The girls, arms slung around each other, were out of breath, faces smudged with dirt, their new school clothes rumpled from a vigorous game of after school kickball.

  “Always?” Piper asked, her expression earnest. Too often, the little girl had been let down by broken promises.

  “Forever,” Darcy said with a firm nod.

  Darcy loved Monday through Friday and the joy of learning new things. Saturdays were treasured for the free time and the hours she and Piper spent playing and dreaming of the future neither could quite yet visualize. Then came Sunday.

  Her mother was a pious woman who believed in God and tried to instill the same devotion in her daughter. Darcy enjoyed church services well enough; the stories told with gusto by the man in black at the front of the church rarely failed to entertain and she was young enough to take everything at face value. And she loved the lacy white gloves she wore for the occasion.

  However, Darcy’s mind was quick and always filled with questions. Questions no adult could answer to her satisfaction. For instance. How could Noah build an ark capable of holding his family and two of every animal on earth? Or, why didn’t Lot’s wife have a first name? And, most important, if God was good, why did he take her father up to heaven?

  As with many things in Darcy’s life, as she grew older, she accepted some questions could never be answered. And though she respected her mother’s need to find solace in religion, she couldn’t embrace anything where so much was based purely on blind faith.

  Practical by nature and open-minded to a certain degree, Darcy never categorized herself as a total non-believer. Yet, how could she not have serious doubts about a God who cruelly took her father away without a thought for the chaos his absence would create?

  One Sunday late in September, Darcy and her mother arrived home from church to find Shel at the kitchen table. The sandwich Marion left for him was history, as was the better part of a six-pack of Budweiser. He greeted them with a half-smile and a belch.

  Never one to rock the boat for fear that she might be the one tossed overboard, Marion ignored the rude noise and the before noon drinking—a continuation of Shel’s habitual Saturday night bender.

  “Sleep well?” She brushed a kiss across his forehead.

  Shel grunted a barely intelligible yes as he drained the last drop from beer number four before popping the top on number five.

  “Don’t forget, you promised to watch Darcy this afternoon.”

  Darcy exchanged displeased looks with her kind of stepfather. Neither was thrilled with the prospect of alone time. However, the extra money Marion would make cleaning a house on Sunday appealed to Shel, so he kept his grumbles to a minimum.

  As for Darcy, she agreed to be good—not an easy task for an energetic, inquisitive young girl. But for her, a promise, once given, was set in stone.

  Five minutes after Marion left the house, Shel packed Darcy into the backseat of his tan-colored Toyota Corolla.

  “We’re supposed to stay home,” Darcy reminded him with a shake of her head. Between Shel’s irresponsibility and her mother’s desperate neediness, at the tender age of six, she sometimes felt like the only adult in the room.

  “Your mother asked me to look after you,” Shel told her as he drove through town, pulling to a stop outside The White Horse Tavern. “Didn’t say where we had to be.”

  Darcy had her doubts, but she allowed Shel to guide her inside the unfamiliar building without further protest. She blinked as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkened room, a frown marring her forehead as she drew in the familiar scent of sour beer and stale cigarette smoke.

  Perched on a stool, a man wearing baggy jeans and a pale green t-shirt called out Shel’s name. Behind the bar, a woman with short curly hair took a glass from the shelf. Her dark eyes narrowed onto Darcy.

  “Hell, no,” the woman yelled, her gaze darting to Shel. “No kids allowed.”

  “Darcy won’t cause no trouble, Bev,” Shel whined. “She’ll sit and be quiet as a mouse.”

  “I run a bar. Not a daycare center.” Bev slammed a bottle of beer onto the bar top ignoring the spray of foam and the disgruntled look from the customer who bore the brunt of the backwash. “You want me to lose my liquor license just because you can’t go twelve hours without drinking away what’s left of your paycheck?”

  Shel ignored Bev’s pointed dig at his lack of character—and probable alcohol problem.

  “Who’s going to complain? Even if someone does, ain’t no one to answer the call.” Shel nodded toward a nearby table. “The sheriff and his one and only deputy are too busy throwing back shots of Jack and watching the game to make a fuss over one little girl.”

  Bev didn’t seem convinced. However, the woman was a business owner which meant she was nothing if not pragmatic. Though Shel wasn’t a big spender, he was a steady reliable source of income. Plus, because he knew every other semi-drunk in the area, he brought in revenue she couldn’t afford to do without.

  Letting out a resigned sigh, Bev put aside her misgivings as a mother and reminded herself she lived in a small town where the goodwill of the locals was paramount if she wanted to keep her bar open and a roof over her babies’ heads.

  “You promise to keep quiet?” Bev asked Darcy in her best brook-no-shit voice.

  Catching a warning glance from Shel, Darcy nodded. Quiet wasn’t a problem, she thought, hiding her smi
le of anticipation as she glanced around the room. Trouble was another matter. Nothing she liked better than new places and The White Horse Tavern, with all the interesting nooks and crannies, was ripe for exploration.

  Wise to the ways of little girls, Bev settled Darcy into a booth—far away from the sheriff but close enough to keep tabs on. She set a tall, pink-colored drink on the table.

  “What is it?” Intrigued but wary, Darcy gave the liquid a sniff.

  “Called a Shirley Temple.” Already regretting her benevolence, Bev frowned at the television. “You know anything about football?”

  “No.” Darcy took a sip of the cherry-topped concoction and smacked her lips. Yum. She sent Bev her most winsome smile. “Twenty-two has cartoons.”

  “Honey, what few customers I have would riot if I flipped channels.” Bev leaned closer. “Football is king on Sunday. And Monday night.”

  “Why?” Darcy asked as she turned her gaze to the screen just as a bunch of funnily dressed men jumped on a man carrying a weirdly shaped ball.

  “Wish I had the answer,” Bev said with a wry chuckle. “A few words of wisdom—woman to woman. Learn to tolerate the game—fake interest if necessary.”

  “Why?” Darcy took another sip of her new favorite drink.

  Bev’s smile widened. Unlike most adults, the woman didn’t seem to have a problem with Darcy’s ubiquitous question.

  “Try finding yourself a man who doesn’t give a fig about football. A rare breed indeed. But if you do, let me know if he has a brother.”

  Darcy didn’t understand most of what Bev was talking about—just a collection gobbledygook she quickly forgot. However, as she continued to watch the television, she forgot about exploring the bar. She forgot about everything but the game.

  In the next few hours, something happened that would steer the course of her future. All of six years old and with no idea of the finer points or even the basic rules, Darcy Stratham found her first love. She fell head over heels for the game of football.

  When Marion’s one-time Sunday cleaning gig became a steady job, Darcy was thrilled. She didn’t care that Shel grumbled his displeasure all the way to the tavern and home again. For her, the time between was magic.