Chapter Eighteen #2
“Next time then.” He’d found some sticky notes to label parts of the drawer.
Silverware slid all over tarnation every time he opened it, but he could mostly find a fork when he wanted a fork and a spoon when he wanted a spoon.
And now Anna Grace had a good reason to come back and visit him again.
He’d just have to make mention that he found a drawer organizer.
“Homework?” Louisa asked.
“Mm-hmm.” Anna moved to the table to set three places. “Trying to finish my degree and get a few certifications at work. What do you do?”
“Little as possible.”
Jackson’s ear twitched at the truth of that statement.
“I tried that once.” Anna plunked a fork down, then a spoon and knife on the other side, and pushed up the bottoms until they were even. “Didn’t last long. I got bored.”
He pulled the biscuits out of the oven and dished up. Louisa took a plate for herself and moved to the table. “I don’t have that problem.”
“Gonna have other problems real soon,” he said.
He felt her scowling at him. “Guess maybe if I wasn’t a girl, then I might’ve been good enough for the family business. But seeing how I am, it doesn’t do me much good to fight it, does it?”
He started a second plate. He kept his hands steady, but he was getting mighty annoyed. “Getting your grades up might do you some good.”
“If you talked in plain English when I ask you a question, I might could.”
Anna snorted into her coffee.
Louisa flung herself back in her chair. “You ever listen to a rocket scientist try to explain algebra?” Her nose wrinkled. “Probably not.”
“I liked algebra. Calculus too.”
“You can do calculus?” Louisa’s incredulous tone made Jackson’s gentlemanly side want to offer Anna Grace another apology.
But she took it in stride. “I can do anything I want to do.” She snagged the ketchup out of the fridge before she took the plate he handed her, then went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Including let someone else make me breakfast once in a while. Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Anna Grace.”
He helped himself to his own plate, then joined the ladies at the table. He’d barely sat down before Louisa got that look again.
The brewing trouble look.
“You know,” she said, “Jackson was supposed to go hunting with me this weekend. He couldn’t go last year because he was over in the stupid desert, and now this year, he’s bailing on his family again. He tell you that?”
Anna smiled blandly. “What’re you hunting?”
“Snipe.”
“A little early for snipe season, isn’t it?”
“About a month,” he said. Louisa looked disappointed that Anna was smarter than she looked about hunting. Jackson, though, was intrigued. “Rabbit and squirrel season now.”
Louisa’s interest was obviously piqued. “You hunt?”
Anna shook her head. “My dad and brother-in-law go every year. I fish though.”
“Huh.” There was something too calculated in the tilt of Louisa’s head. “I might could give up a hunting weekend for a good camping trip.”
He stopped eating. If she was looking to interfere in his love life, she was looking in the wrong place. “Thought you didn’t like sleeping with spiders.”
“Aw, shoot, if Anna Grace can do it, I can too.”
“It’s just Anna.”
“You sleep with spiders?”
“Yep, and I bait my own hooks when I’m fishing too.”
Jackson laughed softly. “Of course you do.”
Didn’t matter what Louisa threw at her, Anna Grace handled it like a champ.
That made him happier than it should’ve.
And when he dropped her off at the hotel, he was right glad for a few minutes of privacy. Especially since she was looking at that big old hotel like she had plans to go inside.
If she was going inside for what he thought she was going inside for, he didn’t like it.
Not that he should’ve cared.
Still, he didn’t feel the least bit bad about pulling her across the seat and giving her a good reminder of what he could do for her.
Didn’t mind that she gave it right back either. Girl could kiss like sweet rain on a hot Alabama afternoon. “You ever take that overnight bag to class?” he asked.
Her hand slid somewhere it should’ve been physically impossible for her to reach, and he found himself mighty frustrated there wouldn’t be any follow-through.
“You asking me for another sleepover?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How’s Thursday?”
“Long time away.”
She laughed again. The sound suckered him deep in the gut, right in the place that used to ache after his daddy died.
If he wasn’t careful, she would do him good.
She cupped his cheek and grinned a sweet little grin that made him think of peaches and pool parties. “Two tests Thursday.”
“Two?”
“Work and school. But I’ll be out of class early.” She pressed one more kiss to his lips. “Hope you and Louisa have a nice day.”
He snorted.
“Not easy being the baby sister. Especially when you have so much to live up to.” She said it lightly, but the way her eyes flicked down, he didn’t know if she was talking about Louisa or herself. She nodded toward the hotel. “I have some business I need to finish up in there.”
“Want help?”
“No.”
“Had to ask.”
“And I had to say no.”
“Make sure you get all those no’s out before you come over Thursday night.”
Her saucy grin promised all he’d be hearing out of that mouth would be yeses.
Now if he could figure out how to handle having the perfect woman.
Anna knocked on the door of room 416 in The Harrington. After a minute, Neil opened it and blinked bloodshot eyes at her. He was still in his white linen mess dress shirt and whatever liquor he’d steeped himself in last night.
He stood straighter and winced. “Hey.” His voice was froggy. “Wanna come in?”
She’d seen him drunk enough to know the next step. He wasn’t a mean drunk.
He was a sorry drunk.
And she was about to make him wish a hangover was all he had. “You have ten minutes to get yourself cleaned up and meet me downstairs. After that, I’m leaving.” Because she wouldn’t have this conversation with him unless he was sober.
Or at least not getting drunker.
Nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, he sat down beside her in the lobby, leaving a respectable distance between them.
His eyes were still rimmed in brandy-overload and his movements were jerky, but he’d shaved and put on a shirt and pants that barely carried the scent of his pity party. “Hi,” he said.
Anna sat as tall as she could without standing up. “You divorced me,” she said without preamble. “You insulted me in front of our friends, you broke my heart, and then you left me here. You don’t get back into my life. Not yesterday, not today, not ever.”
His left cheek twitched like it always had when he was agitated. “I made a mistake.”
“And now I’ve made a life. Without you. You don’t get a second chance, Neil.”
“I just—” His head dipped to his knees. “I’m lost, Anna. I haven’t been on time for anything since I left. I can’t find stuff. I don’t know when I should book tickets to go home and see my parents for the holidays. I just don’t know.”
She’d been down too many times the last few months to take pleasure in kicking him. Seeing him broken was like staring back at herself right after he left, and she felt for him.
But he’d walked away from her. As they said down here, she could fix broke, but she couldn’t fix stupid. “Welcome to adulthood.”
She stood.
“Anna.” He reached a hand out, a pitiful offering from a man she’d given so much to. “I can do better by you.”
She caught sight of Kaci and Lance across the reception area. Two wonderful people she never would’ve met if Neil hadn’t abandoned her and who had introduced her to others she was blessed to call friends. She looked down at her ex one last time. “I have a good life,” she said.
And this time, she did the walking away, and he did the not-following.