Chapter Nineteen
She did less climbing of the ladder and more hopping rung to rung.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Monday morning, Rex sputtered his normal protest, but Anna couldn’t stop smiling.
Until Jules popped in. “Hey, I need new RR—holy hell, what happened to you?”
She fingered the bruise on her cheek. “Next time you’re at a wedding where the bride’s bouquet is made of lollipops, run.”
Jules reached for the ruler in her desk organizer, but stepped back and gnawed on her thumbnail instead. “Nice wedding otherwise?”
“Yeah.”
“See anybody I know?”
She froze. Had Jules helped Neil? Why?
They stared at each other. Jules didn’t blink. Anna’s fingers tightened on Rex’s mouse. “I don’t think so,” she finally said. “How was your weekend?”
Jules held her gaze a moment longer.
As if she were calling Anna a liar.
Jules opened her mouth, but heat surged through Anna’s cheeks. “You know what?” Anna said. “I did see somebody you know. And I’m having a hard time figuring out how he knew where to find me.”
A guilty flush crept up Jules’s neck. Her eyes hardened. “You trying to say something?”
“I’m saying it would’ve been a shame if my ex-husband made scenes at two of my friends’ weddings this year,” she bit out. “Why would you do that?”
“Do that? God, you act like getting back together with Neil would be horrible. How long did you mope that he was gone? How many times did we need to hold your crybaby hand over him? Did you ever think I was trying to do you a favor?”
Her jaw dropped. “You want to mess with my head? Fine. Mess with my head. But leave my friends out of it. It’s called a conscience, Jules. Get one.”
The flush had reached Jules’s ears and was sneaking up her cheeks. “You should be thanking me. Not like anybody else is interested in dating you and your problems.”
“Tell that to my boyfriend.” And even through her anger, she heard the squeal of triumph in her own voice. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but she was sleeping with him and he’d asked her to lunch today. Close as she would get.
Jules’s lip curled. “Enjoy it while it lasts.” She thumped the door frame. “I need new RR-40s if you want to keep your job.” She left a lingering odor of pessimism and ugliness in Anna’s cube.
Anna dug into her drawer for her can of Lysol. She shot a spray of disinfectant into the doorway.
And then she got back to work.
Because standing up for herself was fantastic, but it wouldn’t pay the bills.
It took three days for Louisa to get around to telling Mamie she’d found Jackson with a woman.
He knew that, because it took three days before Mamie called him.
He was propped on his couch, eating reheated chicken and biscuits, still in his ABUs after work.
He muted the game he still hadn’t watched all the way through and took the call. “Yes, ma’am?”
“We need to halt the biscuit orders over here?” she asked.
He gave a grin and a head-shake. Radish settled her head back down on his foot. “My freezer’s getting mighty full.”
“You eating okay? Or are your new friend’s biscuits that good?”
He paused the DVR and settled deeper into the couch. “Tell you a secret, Mamie?”
“Of course you can, sugarplum.”
“She bakes pies.”
Jackson almost felt the wind Mamie made when she sucked a breath in. “Better than your momma’s?” she said with the same discreet tone another woman might’ve used to ask about plumbing problems.
“Told you it was a secret.”
“Well, you bet your biscuits I won’t say anything.”
“Much obliged, Mamie.”
“So when do I get to meet this girl?”
He cleared his throat.
“Don’t you be starting that, sugarplum,” she said. “You’re old enough to know forever can work. Just because your daddy—”
“She’s not interested in marrying a military man again,” he interrupted, because Mamie was the only person in the world who got to say a bad thing about his daddy, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it.
His daddy was the best man Jackson ever knew.
If he wasn’t man enough to keep Momma happy, Jackson didn’t reckon that left him with much of a chance of ever doing any better.
Mamie cackled one of those deep, evil chuckles she got when she threw the kitchen sink at her hero. “Oh, sugarplum. Sounds like you found your perfect woman.”
Yeah, and it left those biscuits feeling like IEDs in his belly. They’d go off sometime, and when they did, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Maybe he’d get lucky and they’d be duds. But seeing how much he was looking forward to seeing Anna Grace tomorrow night, lucky wasn’t in his future.
Well, that kind of lucky was. Long-term lucky, probably not.
But her smile was worth the risk. They both knew the rules. “You taking notes, Mamie?”
“Notes? This here calls for firsthand research.”
The thought of Mamie and Anna Grace teaming up against him should’ve made his blood run cold.
Put something warm in his veins instead. “Mamie—”
“Oh, don’t go getting your bootlaces all knotted. I’ve been around the turnip truck a time or two. Know you gotta time these things right.”
“And here I was fixing to ask how you were planning on fitting in a visit, what with your schedule. Don’t know that this warrants missing a bowling night.”
“Well then maybe you might could bring her on over so we can check out her form.”
Radish lifted her head and gave a disgusted snort.
Jackson couldn’t blame her. He didn’t need a mirror to know the goofy grin he was wearing didn’t do any justice to his manhood.
But he couldn’t help it, not when he got to thinking about what Anna Grace would make of the Misses. “She’s booked tighter than you, Mamie.”
“Don’t you worry about that, sugarplum. If I need to meet her, we got lots of time.”
But after he’d hung up with Mamie, something bothered him.
And he had a pretty good feeling it was knowing that if he was picturing Anna Grace bowling with the old gals, he had a good case of being smitten.
Thursday night, Anna stepped out of the James Robert chemistry building and into the night.
The cooler air eased her swollen, exhausted brain back down to its normal size.
She powered up her phone and headed for the parking lot.
Wisps of mist danced through the streetlights.
Disjointed conversations of her rapidly scattering classmates rolled over the asphalt.
Her phone beeped with a text message notification.
The message put a giddy jog in her step.
Radish misses you.
Her shoulders scrunched in girly excitement. She thumbed a quick message back. Such a sweetie. No wonder she and Enrique get along so well.
When she pulled up in front of his house, he was tooling around with hunting gear in the garage. Radish watched him from her position sprawled across the floor. They both glanced up at her, and she couldn’t decide which one had the biggest grin.
This wasn’t permanent, but a warm welcome from a friend couldn’t be bad for her.
She swung out of her car with her bag over her shoulder. “Getting packed?”
“About done.” He tossed a camo duffel into the truck, dusted off his hands, and then pulled her in for a peck on the cheek. “Rest can wait. Tests good?”
“Passed one. Won’t know about the other until next week.”
“Feel good about it?”
“I’ll let you know when I find my brains to think about it again.”
His thumbs flicked over her ribs. “Looking for some stress relief?”
She leaned into him, inhaling the subtle hints of Old Spice. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“We’ll get to that,” he said on a chuckle. “Had a buddy over the other day. Said he wished his kitchen was clean as mine. Said he’d pay good.”
Anna perked up. Organizing for cash? “Really?”
“Yeah, but don’t you be getting any ideas about his drawers, you hear me?”
She laughed. “Yes, sir.”
“Now then.” He pulled her closer. “You’re looking right pretty tonight.”
And he was being right gentlemanly to say so, since there was no way it was true. She reached up to trace his ear. “You too.”
He inhaled sharply, and his eyes went dark.
“So you like that.” It was probably the most useful thing she’d learned all week.
“Not all I like.”
Over her laughing protests, he swung her up over his shoulder, ordered Radish inside, and spent the next two hours making her brains completely unnecessary.
Monday morning, Anna fired up Rex then swung herself into the snack kitchen for coffee. Shirley turned from the sink and gave her a once-over.
Anna was humming.
“Good weekend?” Shirley asked. Her tone implied her real question. Get laid?
Anna stifled an irreverent smile. Not since Thursday. She’d spent the weekend studying, cleaning Walker’s fish bowl, and getting paid to organize one of Jackson’s old ROTC buddies’ kitchen. But on the drive in this morning, she’d realized something.
She liked her life. “It was. Yours?”
“Too much time at soccer games, but it was nice. Classes going well?”
The one speed bump. She was doing well, but she wasn’t enjoying them. She felt as if she were spitting out a bunch of blah blah blahs every time she took a quiz or test. But she was hitting the right blah blahs, because she was passing this semester. “Very.”
“Good. I called Corporate and told them you’re qualified on the equipment. They want you to start running tests.”
Anna sucked in half of her bottom lip. This should’ve been good news. But— “Does Jules know?”
“She’s out sick today. Order a couple of extra samples from storage so she can double-check you when she gets back.”
The pot of coffee Shirley held suddenly looked like a big, black void, sucking all of Anna’s happy feelings out her skin. Shirley might’ve been trying for her poker face, but her tone, the incline of her head, the way her eyes narrowed, Anna knew.
Shirley wanted Jules fired.
Anna couldn’t deny her own feelings toward Jules had frosted like Minnesota in October, but she didn’t want the guilt of being the catalyst that got someone fired.
She inhaled through her nose and moved to close a drawer that was sticking out. “Things have been improving,” she hedged. Her suspicions about Jules and Neil aside, Jules had been more pleasant lately.
“Or she’s hiding it better from you. Shit happens, kid. I’d rather work with someone who bakes pies through it. Been real impressed with you lately. Don’t go screwing it up, putting misguided loyalty above taking care of yourself. Nice doesn’t pay the bills.”
Anna gulped back the bile making her feel as filthy as the coffee looked. She backed toward the door. “I’ll get those extra samples ordered.”
“Good decision, kid. Good decision.”
Jules was back on Tuesday. She was so pale, she made the moon look tan and her cheekbones bordered on Cher sharp. But it was her subconscious gesture to her lower abdomen that made Anna’s breath slip out in surprise.
Jules’s eyes went as brittle as Anna’s luck at weddings. “Problem?”
Anna shook her head. “Just remembered I have a quiz tonight. Feeling better?”
“Yep.”
“How was your weekend?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Brad?”
“Fine.” Her first fine sounded as fine as a flat tire. This one sounded as fine as cleaning up roadkill.
Anna stifled a sigh. “You talk to Shirley this morning?”
The wonky eyebrow made a rare appearance. “Now why would I want to ruin my perfectly good Monday morning?”
Oh, goody. Anna loved playing go-between as much as she loved having someone play with the days of the week. Her Tuesday, Jules’s Monday. “She asked me to get a couple of extra samples and run them yesterday. Thought she might’ve mentioned it to you.”
“Nope,” Jules said. Her left nostril scrunched up in a sniff, but otherwise, she didn’t seem to care one way or another. She ambled over to Anna’s desk and plopped down at the edge, hands in her lap. “How’d it go?”
“Good,” Anna said cautiously. “I have everything lined up for you to double-check, but nothing looked unusual or raised any flags.”
“Great.” Jules flicked her left thumb over her right fingernail, which was the only one that hadn’t been already taken down to the quick. “Maybe after I’m done we can grab a late lunch.”
They hadn’t done lunch in months.
“Unless you have plans already,” Jules said quickly.
“No plans. Lunch sounds great.” Great for easing some guilt, anyway.
“Great,” Jules said again. She slid off the desk. “Now quit goofing off and get back to work. Reports won’t write themselves.”
“Yes, ma’am.”