Chapter 4 #2
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Cocoa would do laps around the classroom if she’d been cooped up too long. She was so good with the kids and seemed to genuinely enjoy the attention they gave her.
My gaze strayed to Morris’s classroom. I hated to think about the little black-and-white rabbit alone in there all weekend long.
While April hefted Cocoa and turned off the lights, I peeked in the room across the hall. Oreo’s cage was in plain view on the opposite wall. It was pretty sparse compared to the double-decker bunny house April had for Cocoa. But the fluffy rabbit sat placidly in its pen. Poor thing.
“At least there’s a night-light plugged in for her,” I commented absently.
“Yeah, that’s one of those air freshener ones. Morris says her room smells like a barnyard because of Oreo.” My friend rolled her eyes.
Maybe I could talk to Morris, offer to help out with the rabbit.
I wasn’t really killing it at taking care of myself right now, though. In fact, breakfast this morning had consisted of me eating shredded cheese over the sink. But it might be nice to have a part-time pet around the house. Someone to watch Mr. Darcy with.
Troubled, I stared at the rabbit a moment longer before catching up to April and Cocoa. Now wasn’t exactly the time to push this. I needed to get over to the sheriff’s office and get this background check done.
I needed to pull it together, in general.
I was dropping balls and forgetting things, tarnishing my reputation at work, and feeding into the rumors and assumptions that I needed to be handled with care.
Next, my boss would be questioning my competency.
I didn’t want Alex to keep making excuses for me and giving me a pass because he felt sorry for me.
Not to mention the irresponsible way I was behaving. Getting drunk at Magnolia, waking up in someone else’s bed, arguing on the softball field.
It was humiliating to be the worst version of myself. I just didn’t know how to find my way back to the person I’d been before my life fell apart.
Mary Beth Collins answered phones and dispatch for the sheriff’s office. She was two years younger than me—in my sister Mac’s grade—but she greeted me warmly and showed me where I could sit until the administrative assistant who’d be taking my paperwork and fingerprints was ready for me.
When I rounded the corner into the small waiting room, there was only one other person there, but he and his motorcycle helmet took up two chairs.
I was pretty proud of myself for not stopping in my tracks and walking right back out the front doors.
Especially when Jack glanced up from the clipboard balanced on his muscular thigh.
He had his little round reading glasses on again, and I didn’t know why I found them nearly as attractive as the leather jacket stretched snug across his broad shoulders.
“Clyde,” he greeted.
The urge to make myself smaller was nearly overwhelming.
Some nervous creature living inside me was just waiting for the town bad boy to poke fun.
It put me on edge, kept me bracing for a well-placed jab or a stinging tease at my expense.
This man turned me into an uneasy sophomore again, forcing all my adolescent insecurities back to the surface.
But Jack just watched me, that same solemn, handsome face of his, endlessly patient despite my continued awkwardness.
“Hello,” I finally managed and took the seat diagonal to him rather than the one to his immediate right.
I’d seen him less than twenty-four hours ago. If the somersaults in my stomach were any indication, I was still feeling weird about the blueberry muffin incident and our mini-argument at third base.
Leaving the Tupperware on his motorcycle with a snarky note hadn’t been my finest moment, but he’d made me so irritated, practically calling me a martyr and pushing all my buttons.
I’d just wanted to do something nice. I’d only wanted to say thank you. What was so wrong with that?
I hoped he wouldn’t bring the muffins up.
So naturally, the first words out of his mouth were “Those muffins were good. I had two for breakfast.”
I swallowed. “That’s . . . nice.” I opened my mouth again to explain away my immature behavior the night before.
One dark eyebrow rose above the frame of his glasses. His expectant gaze practically dared me to apologize so he could call me on it.
I closed my mouth.
Jack grinned and then asked, “So, what are you in for?”
That startled a laugh out of me. “Just a background check for work. I’m a teacher,” I added.
He nodded like he knew that, but I couldn’t figure out why he would.
“Getting fingerprinted brings back memories,” he said passively.
I searched his face for a side of bitterness with that comment, but Jack mostly just looked amused, his grin toned down to something quiet and nostalgic. Maybe. What did I know?
I couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t offered up a reason for his presence in the sheriff’s office.
What could he be getting a background check for?
Starting a new job that required it? He’d been a bartender for a long time and seemed good at it.
Admittedly, our interactions had been minimal, but he seemed to have the right combination of traits to tend bar successfully: aloof, personable, and hard to ruffle.
I knew firsthand he could be a good listener.
Then there was the whole contrast of a buttoned-up, fancy-dress-shirt-wearing employee with tattoos and longish hair.
Upscale and rebellious at the same time.
I bet the leafers loved him—the women at least.
“But,” he went on when I’d zoned out, “you’re a good girl, so you probably don’t know anything about that.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “You’ve got me all figured out.”
Jack watched me calmly for a moment before admitting, “No, I don’t believe I do.”
He was right, though. I didn’t know why I felt disappointed about it.
I was a good girl. Always had been. Star student, responsible daughter and sister, reliable neighbor, model employee, and the furthest thing from a troublemaker you could get.
You couldn’t say the same about Jack. He’d adopted the bad-boy reputation in middle school and then backed it up with vandalism and grand theft auto before graduation.
I’d never heard more than rumors, but the gossip seemed to indicate he’d gotten lucky being tried as a juvenile and luckier still with a grandmother who refused to turn her back on him.
Jack had disappeared from Kirby Falls for a time, but I’d been in college and focused on other things. The whispers ranged from forced military enlistment to an electronic ankle bracelet and home confinement.
Then he’d popped up a few years later, bartending at Magnolia. His hair had been longer, and there’d been new tattoos peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt. After that, he’d joined the softball league with the Bar Hoppers, and our very limited interactions began.
I made myself ignore Jack’s teasing. I had my own clipboard to worry about.
Soon, the only sounds aside from my rapid heartbeat were pens scratching across our paperwork.
I filled in my name and address, and all the pertinent information.
Before I realized it, I’d checked the box for married instead of divorced.
Cursing myself inwardly, I quickly scribbled out the mark and then circled the correct option.
My eyes darted toward Jack, but he was focused on his own paper . . . like a normal person. He hadn’t noticed my mistake because why would he?
I was being ridiculous.
Angling my clipboard higher, I forced myself to slow down, to read every question thoroughly. No more scribbles and ink blots. No more slipups.
Eventually, a middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize poked her head into the small, well-lit waiting room. “Bonnie Jensen?”
I stood quickly—too quickly. My pen went flying off the clipboard and onto the floor.
Jack leaned down and retrieved it for me, soft-looking black leather stretched taut across his back.
As he extended his arm and held out the pen to me, something rebellious whispered in my mind. Probably the same antagonistic voice that had me arguing with him about self-flagellation muffins on the third-base line.
Suddenly, my mouth was saying, “Am I allowed to thank you for that?”
Tiny lines crinkled near his eyes, fanning out to his temples as he grinned. His hazel eyes contrasted with the golden rim of his reading glasses. They looked nearly green in the fluorescent overhead lighting. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”
I grasped the other end of the pen and said pointedly, “Thank you, Jack.”
He didn’t let go when I tugged. Instead, his smile widened. “You’re welcome, Clyde.”
We watched each other for a long moment, and those somersaults in my stomach resumed their floor routine.
Then an impatient voice called from the doorway, “Whenever you’re ready, Ms. Jensen.”
Whatever had come over me abruptly fled. I dropped my gaze, and Jack finally released the pen. Without looking back, I hustled after the sheriff’s office employee, mumbling out an apology for making her wait.
When I finished up twenty minutes later and left the station, I made my way directly to my car and didn’t let myself look for a shiny black motorcycle, or even the possibility of it.