Chapter Three
Not every man could appreciate the beauty of an alphabetized medicine chest, but he was not just any man.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Anna flew down the hallway to the lab. She was late.
Her first class of her new life, and the samples were late.
Which meant the documentation was late. Which meant she was late checking it all into the system.
Which meant she would be that student in class tonight when she walked in fifteen minutes after the first roll call of the semester.
She’d never been that student.
She hit her passcode wrong on the lab door and had to enter it twice before she finally got through. Rex had fallen asleep. She jiggled his mouse. “Come on, come on, come on.” She should’ve been halfway to James Robert College by now.
Jules leaned into the cube and tapped her stubby fingernails on the doorframe.
Her normally poofy brown hair was even bigger today, apparently still recovering from all the humidity of her tropical honeymoon.
And seeing her smile so much was plain weird.
But other than having to listen to her tell the story about Brad and the horny dolphin half a dozen times, the wedding and honeymoon talk had been minimal.
The familiar box Jules carried on her hip didn’t look promising for the trend to continue.
“I’m hurrying,” Anna said.
“Eh. It’ll wait until tomorrow. Got a minute?”
Work, waiting until tomorrow?
She eyed the box again. Oh, jeez. Not now. “Actually, I’m late.”
Jules set the box by the door, then propped herself on a corner of the desk and grabbed Anna’s silver letter opener out of the desk organizer. “Meeting with the lawyer?” She casually flicked the letter opener beneath her fingernail.
“Class.” Despite her mother’s insistence that Anna could still save her marriage if she tried, her sister had come through as the voice of reason.
If he doesn’t love you, screw him. You deserve better.
Judging by how fast Neil had accepted her lawyer’s proposed settlement, Anna figured Beth had been right.
Even if it still stung a bit. Like losing an arm in a paper shredder.
Rex finally came to life. She pounded in her password. The dinosaur thought about accepting it.
Jules slid further onto the desk. Her rump scooted Anna’s desktop calendar crooked. “They have divorce classes?”
“Thermo,” Anna said. “I enrolled last week.”
Jules glanced up sharply. She dropped the letter opener into the organizer amid the highlighters. “Didn’t you take that in college?”
“Too long ago. James Robert College wants me to take it fresh.” Anna plunked the letter opener into its slot beside her ruler. “And I’m late. Really, really late.” She told Rex to close her mail program, then tabbed over to the database and told Rex to close that too.
“Listen, about your scene at my wedding.”
Anna cringed. “Really?”
“Dude. Bad juju. You don’t think I’m going to forget that shit, do you?
Now listen. Rodney’s coming through on leave this weekend before he ships out, and I promised the big lug we’d do karaoke at Taps.
He wants a Sandy to his Danny. You come be his date, or I’ll tell my Aunt Bernie that Brad’s holding back on sex and I think it’s your fault.
She’ll come up with some crazy-ass juju-washing ritual involving that gift right there and dancing naked in the moonlight, and then you’ll wish singing in public was all you’d done. ’Kay?”
A date. She was late for class. She could still barely process that she was about to become the first Jensen in the history of Jensens to get divorced. Her closest local friend was returning the wedding gift Anna and Neil had given her. And she was supposed to go on a date.
She gulped back the diamond-sized lump lodged in her esophagus. “If I say yes, can I go now?”
Jules slid off the desk and gestured to the cube door. “Of course. But if you’re just saying it, you will pay. I told Brad you get us in the divorce, but that’s negotiable if you act like you don’t want us.”
God. It wasn’t enough to split their belongings, they had to split their friends now too?
She was never, ever doing this again. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Go on, get going. I’ll shut this down for you. And take that present with you. I don’t want it.”
Anna grabbed her purse and the label maker she’d gotten the newlyweds, and she made a mad dash out the door. Pop Rocks fizzled in her belly. Probably a good thing she didn’t have time for food. She wasn’t sure she could keep it down.
Outside, she stumbled into a wall of air as hot as a cheese curd–frying vat back home at the state fair. Her steps slowed. Maybe it would be easier to swim to her car. At least she’d thought to park beneath a tree.
An extra burst of heat spilled out of her car when she swung the door open. This weather was defying the laws of thermodynamics. At least, what she remembered of it. Thank goodness she didn’t have to smell pretty to be smart. But it was June. Nowhere should’ve been this hot in June.
She tossed the label maker in the back seat.
She braced herself, scooted into the car, and cranked the engine.
Steam flowed out of the air vents. She tilted them away while the AC system caught up.
After buckling in, she gave her rearview mirrors a quick check.
The gearshift seared her palm, but she gritted her teeth and put the car in reverse anyway.
Something tickled her finger. She absently scratched it and gave the car a little gas. Something else tickled the back of her hand.
She frowned.
Sweat didn’t usually tickle. Not like that.
She moved to shift the car into drive and something dark scurried over her windshield. “What the—”
A line of fire ants marched across her steering wheel.
She shrieked. She threw the car into park and tumbled out of it.
“Get off! Get off!” She raked her hands over her arms and hopped on her clogs to shake the little bugs off.
The prickles moved to her back, up her neck, into her hair.
She knew the ants couldn’t be up there, there’d only been one or two, but she scrubbed at her scalp anyway.
“Ma’am? You okay?” A guy leaned out the side of a red car behind her. She was blocking one of the exits.
“Oh, yeah, sure, you betcha.” She wiggled her itching toes. “Sorry. It’ll just take me a minute to get out of your way.”
Her car’s engine whined. Heat radiated off the hood and wrinkled the air. The backs of her knees tingled as if a hundred ants had gathered there for an impromptu Riverdance.
A car door shut behind her. “Need a hand?” he drawled in a Southern accent.
“Everything’s fine. Thanks.” Because she carried insect-killer in her car all the time in case her car came down with a case of the ants.
It took some effort to not reach for her phone. This was the kind of thing Neil would’ve taken care of for her. And it pissed her off that she wanted to let the man approaching solve her problem.
She was an independent woman, dammit. She’d fix this herself.
She squared her shoulders, marched to the edge of her door, and hit her trunk release.
She scooted around the car to survey the potential ant weapons in her trunk.
She had to have something useful. Maybe she could club them one by one with her jumper cables.
Shoot her emergency flares at them. Drop the box of Neil’s junk on them.
Label them to death with the label maker.
It’d worked on her marriage.
And there was that stingy feeling behind her eyeballs again.
Long runner’s legs ending in flip-flop–clad feet entered her blurred vision. “You got some friends there.”
If Neil had to leave her, he should’ve done it somewhere else. Somewhere without fire ants, somewhere more hospitable to her Norwegian coloring, somewhere with halfway intelligent locals. She shot her audience a look she should’ve tried on the ants. “Where I come from, they’re called a nuisance.”
Instead of shriveling up and dying, he flashed her a goofy grin. His dark-lashed eyes creased in the corners.
Those lashes and the mass of just-long-enough-to-be-curly hair on his head were proof positive a man could have brains or looks, but not both.
And that tingly sensation along her breastbone was proof positive she had no business being single. First she agreed to a date with Rodney, now she was getting hot over a redneck.
She was supposed to be worrying about the ants. Class. Her life.
He scratched his curly hair and surveyed her neatly organized trunk.
As if he could wield her jumper cables better than she could against an army of fire ants.
Instead, he swung her Windex out of the trunk like a gunslinger preparing for a showdown, then tucked her paper towels under his arm.
“My car is very—” she started, but then it hit her.
He wasn’t going to clean it.
Carbon-based ants, meet ammonia.
Forgetting simple chemistry principles was not a good omen for her degree.
Wanting to watch her unexpected helper go to battle against the ants wasn’t a good omen for her sanity.
Her skin flushed as if she were standing inside hell’s boiler room. She reached for the Windex, but something stopped her before she could get close enough to grab it.
Something that tasted suspiciously like fear.
Not of him.
Of herself.
“I’ll do it,” she bit out. She flicked her fingers up, gesturing for him to hand over the Windex.
“Ain’t no trouble.” His gaze wandered down her body, and she felt a whomp in her chest beneath the tingles spreading to her rib cage.
“Be a shame to mess up them pretty clothes,” he said.
“I can handle this,” she said firmly. She gestured to his car. “There’s another exit two rows down. I’ve taken enough of your time.”
His eyes were big and blue as her wounded heart, but when he squinted at her like that, they went a shade darker to cobalt. “Now I’m sure it don’t matter none to you, but my momma’d have my hide if she heard I abandoned a lady with critters in her car.”