Chapter Fourteen
The perfection he found in one woman made the imperfections in the rest all the more obvious.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Anna credited Neil’s text message Sunday night to drunken texting. Because why else would he send her a message asking how she’d been since they hadn’t talked in a while?
But when she got a second one Thursday afternoon at work, in the middle of the day, followed by an email to the same effect, she couldn’t deny he was talking to her. On purpose.
So she deleted the messages and called Beth.
“Molar extraction going on here, Anna-banana,” her sister said. “Make it quick.”
“Neil texted me.”
“You still have his number in your phone?”
“Well, yeah. How else am I supposed to avoid his phone calls?”
Beth’s sigh echoed through the lab. Jules was at a staff meeting, and Anna was supposed to be proofreading more reports.
“Who’s that friend you keep talking about? Kaci? I need her number,” Beth said.
“Why?”
“So she can steal your phone and delete Neil.”
“But the next time he texts, I won’t know it’s him, and I won’t know to not answer.”
“Good! Say who the fuck is this?—sorry Trina, I’ll get a quarter—and let him get the hint that you’ve moved on with your life.”
A loud crash boomed behind Anna. Heart leaping, she spun in her chair. Jules was in the doorway. A stack of binders were scattered on the floor.
“I’m getting back to this extraction, and you’re deleting him,” Beth said. “Delete. Him. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“God, you need to get out of the South.” The line clicked off.
“Hey, Jules,” Anna said, her pulse thinking about settling back into a normal rhythm. “What’s up?”
Other than the guest speaker—on the topics depression and spousal abuse—at the staff meeting. Anna wasn’t invited to staff meetings, so she had no idea how it had gone over.
Her optimism only went so far, and Jules’s lip-curl didn’t look positive.
“Your new sample-tracking color-coding system was the toast of the town.” Jules nudged the binders. “Shirley wants the last two years of data synced to match. Preferably by next week. Corporate’s coming.”
Anna whimpered. Someone wanted to sink her happy boat. Not that she didn’t appreciate color-coding. Like Jackson said, it was her calling. But her first round of tests were soon, and she’d signed up to get officially certified on all the lab equipment.
The fun kept coming.
“Hope you didn’t have any weekend plans,” Jules said.
None that she was excited about. “Not really. How about you guys?”
Jules gave her the wary eye. “We’re getting out of town.”
“Oh. Nice.”
“Yep.” Jules hitched a shoulder. “Enjoy your weekend.”
Shirley stopped in shortly after Jules left. “Nice speaker,” she said unconvincingly.
“It was short notice. Did Jules even listen?”
“Couldn’t tell.” Shirley gestured to the binders. “Redoing the old stuff to match?”
“Jules said—” Anna buried her head in her hands and groaned. “Is Corporate really coming in for a visit next week?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t ask me to make the old data match the new system before they get here.”
“Nope. Not a bad idea though. Eventually.” Shirley tapped her pack of cigarettes against the cube door. “Well, kid, at least now you know she was listening.”
But it didn’t mean she heard.
There wasn’t much of anything moving in the trees today, not in the right direction anyway. Jackson had a notion that had something to do with his hunting buddy.
She hadn’t clamped her trap for more than the millisecond it took her to suck in a breath since they left his truck this morning. Radish hadn’t been happy to be left home this morning, but right now, Jackson was jealous of the old girl. Least she had some peace.
“How many times did it take you to pass economics?” Louisa was saying.
He swiveled his head away from the tree he’d been scanning to look his baby sister up and down. “You failed economics?”
“My teacher was a real dickhead.”
An explosion the likes of which he’d never heard from his daddy’s mouth erupted in his head, accompanied by a couple of tirades he had endured from his momma. “You talk to Mamie with that mouth?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward, though if she thought Daddy would’ve been on her side, she was flat wrong. “He was. It’s like he thought we all wanted to be economists.” She spat the word like it meant the same thing as murderers. “Plus, we all had other classes.”
“Some teachers are tough. Means you gotta be tougher.”
Her lower lip curved. Barely a smidge, but he noticed.
“Not everybody’s tough as a big old military officer,” she said.
“An economics class isn’t war.” He scanned the trees again. A branch rustled. A squirrel paused on it. He lifted his shotgun and aimed at the furry little thing.
“You got one?” Louisa yanked out her shotgun and bumped Jackson’s arm. “Where? I wanna get it.”
The squirrel jumped branches, and Jackson watched its path disappear in a zig-zag line of rustling leaves. “Louisa. Ain’t gonna get a thing if you don’t pipe down.”
Didn’t need to look close to see the lip now.
He stifled a sigh. That no-women-during-hunting-season rule apparently applied to girl hunting buddies too. He slouched against a tree. “We hunting or jabbering?”
The lip got bigger in direct proportion to her narrowing eyes. If it wasn’t for her having Daddy’s eyes and dimple, he would’ve wondered if they were full siblings, but she had ’em, all right.
Used ’em like Momma did though. “Some people can do both. Guess the big old Air Force didn’t teach you that yet.”
“Air Force taught me to keep my trap shut if I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.”
“Yeah, well, the squirrel won’t shoot back at you.”
Sweet baby Jesus, he’d brought a pacifist hunting. “You ever go hunting with Craig?”
That was a silent snarl if he ever saw one. Her face got so scrunchy even her hair curled up tighter.
He put the safety on his shotgun and tucked it down at his side. “What’s wrong with Craig?”
“Mr. Daddy’s Favorite? Like he had to work in college. He knew Russ would hire him. But he’s always picking on me because I’m a girl.”
Jackson’s throat muscles worked. He’d herded lieutenants who left him wondering about the future of the Air Force, but not one of them, not even the LT who had his momma write him an excuse for his PFT, had left him unable to form a coherent response.
Louisa had that stubborn debutante pose going on, so he eventually snapped his own trap shut and went back to scanning the trees.
Louisa slouched beside him. “I’m just glad Uncle Sam sent you back here close enough for me to go hunting with someone who can handle a gun.”
He slid his eyes to her. Girl was all talk. He was sure of that.
But he couldn’t figure out why.
“We doing this again next Saturday?” she asked.
Never thought he’d be grateful for a buddy tying the knot, but Lance and Kaci’s wedding suddenly seemed like a vacation. “Busy next Saturday.”
Louisa made a girly snort. “It’s always something, isn’t it? Sunday then.”
“Sunday’s not looking too good either.” For Louisa. It was looking mighty good for Jackson. Anna Grace didn’t have classes Saturday or Sunday, and he hadn’t missed that internal war she’d been fighting between getting sleep and going home with him after coffee two nights ago.
Louisa gave him the psychic eye. “You’re not giving up hunting for a whole weekend because of a girl, are you?”
“Nope.” Far as he was concerned, he was giving up a whole hunting weekend to suffer through and recover from a wedding.
But when they headed their separate ways after Louisa had talked his ears deaf and scared all the squirrels away, she insisted he’d meet her Sunday. So he sent Craig a message asking him to watch out for her, then went home to Radish.
Empty-handed and a little empty-headed too.