Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
He didn’t know whether it helped, but it was clear.
The RMC building was cold. Not heater-not-running-right cold. With the unseasonably warm December, the heater wasn’t necessary.
It was more like an unwelcome chilly, and Anna couldn’t tell where the chill was coming from.
Could’ve been the odd looks that she may or may not have imagined from her coworkers as she walked to Shirley’s office at 7:56 a.m.
Could’ve been the steel-blue walls, walls that two weeks ago had been a warm, welcoming shade that soothed Anna’s soul but today threatened to suck her joy meter empty.
Or it could’ve been fear.
Plain, simple fear that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked on this contract, the government might terminate her own contract in as few as three short months.
What incentive would RMC have to find her a new position in the company?
What incentive would Corporate have to keep this branch open?
How would she finish her damn degree and get a stupid technical job then?
“Get on in here,” Shirley said from her doorway. “Got a lot of work to do, and not enough lifetimes to do it in.”
Anna followed her into the office and took a seat on the edge of a prettier-than-it-was-comfortable guest chair. She pulled her cardigan tighter around herself.
“Congratulations, you’re our new lead analyst. Gonna have to stay in school, have to continue with the certification series, but Corporate’s approved your promotion.
” Shirley dumped a stack of papers at the edge of her desk.
“All the resumes from the last six months. Pick out four or five you like, and we’ll interview them for your assistant. ”
“My—wait, what?”
“Assistant. We need somebody to do your old job when you take over the vacant analyst position.”
It was stupid, immature, and really, really stupid, but her chin trembled.
Then her core quaked, a rumble that emanated from her midsection and bounced through her chest like Rex’s motherboard on a Monday morning.
“There a problem?” Shirley said.
Anna licked her lips.
Of course there wasn’t a problem. “A promotion?”
“With a pay raise. A big one.”
A pay raise. Comfort. Temporarily more security.
But—God, this was stupid—but—“Will I still do the filing?”
Shirley peered at her.
She pulled her glasses off, wiped them, pushed them back up her long nose, and peered harder. “No,” she said, enunciating the word so Anna heard at least six letters and eight syllables of highly uncomplimentary opinions aimed toward her person.
But it didn’t matter, because she was being offered a promotion.
She’d proved her technical worth and her loyalty to the company, and she was in a position to convince the customer that she ran a lab as sound and smooth as the best damn lab analysts in the entire country.
The experience would look fabulous on her resume after she finished her degree and started job-hunting.
This was a gift from the heavens, a karmic high-five for all that she’d endured since the moment she set foot in the great state of Georgia.
And she was honored to have the opportunity to serve her country while she taught someone else—someone fresh and green and eager—how to keep the paperwork of a laboratory in good working order.
She was the luckiest woman on the face of the professional and technical worlds.
And she would tell Shirley so as soon as she could get oxygen past that red remove before flight tab blocking the flow of air through her throat.
“You do want the job,” Shirley said.
Her lungs and nose and air passages snapped back into rhythm.
She forced an overly bright smile, nodded, opened her mouth, and said—
“I quit.”
Shirley blinked.
So did Anna.
And then she gasped, felt her eyelids stretch so wide her eyeballs bulged and her vision crossed. She ordered her tongue to take the words back, to correct that erroneous statement.
It came out stronger. “I. Quit.”
And instead of feeling the earth quake and tremble beneath her, instead of being struck down by a sucker punch of God’s laughter delivered through a lightning bolt, instead of imploding with a panic attack of epic proportions, Anna closed her eyes, inhaled the stale office air tinged with a hint of Shirley’s pre-workday smoke, and smiled a real smile.
Her chest expanded, free and clear and free, wide-open to a new world of possibilities.
“Oh my God,” Anna said on a laugh. “I really do. I quit.”
Quit the job, quit the expectations, quit feeling the weight of everyone else’s disappointments in her failures.
“You have lost your ever-loving mind,” Shirley said.
But there was something else there.
Admiration.
A tad bit of jealousy.
And, yeah, a lot of this one’s gone loony too, but it was beneath the good stuff.
“You bet your ketchup-drenched fried Twinkies I have,” Anna said.
She grinned wider and laughed again.
She was free.
Freedom, it turned out, didn’t come with a recipe for biscuits.
But Kaci was happy to share her momma’s recipe, her tub of bacon grease, and her old cast-iron skillet, along with an offer to blow up Anna’s separation paperwork whenever RMC got around to delivering it.
And the bills for those classes she’d taken.
But she’d refused alimony from Neil in exchange for their modest savings, so all was not lost.
She flashed a wide grin at the mess on her countertop. Bowls and spoons and pans littered the dirty surface. She slid on spilled flour, but she didn’t stop to wipe it up. She had better things to do than clean her kitchen.
As soon as that timer dinged.
Someone knocked on her door.
Banged, really. Repeatedly.
Probably her landlord to kick her out after he found out she’d quit her job.
She eyed the timer. Forty-five seconds. She’d give the landlord her notice, and then she’d get on with getting on with her life.
She hoped.
One way or another, she wouldn’t be staying here.
But it wasn’t her landlord on the other side of the door. Her heart launched a thousand butterflies into her chest. “Oh!”
“Anna. Don’t go.” Jackson was disheveled, his uniform blouse crooked, his eyes wide and pleading. He touched a finger to her lips. “Listen a minute, okay?”
This wasn’t the plan. She was supposed to find him.
But she was working on being flexible, so she nodded, all those butterflies in her chest making her ribs tingle like her lips beneath his finger.
“I owe Uncle Sam about another year and a half. Always figured I’d retire nine years on and then get to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. But the last few months, I’ve been what I want to be, I just didn’t know it. But I know now. I want to be yours.”
The oven timer beeped. She tried to pull in a breath, but those butterflies were tickling her lungs. Her eyes went misty.
“I love you, Anna Grace,” Jackson said. “You wanna go to Iceland, I’ll go to Iceland. Darlin’, I’d go live in an igloo if it’s what makes you happy. You go on and tell me what you want, and I’m gonna go on and do it.”
A whimpery laugh slipped through her lips.
Wonderful man.
Crazy, wonderful, perfect man.
The oven timer beeped again. “I quit my job,” she said.
Confusion skittered over his features. “Kaci said you got—” He stopped. His jaw went slack. “Son of a biscuit. She got me good.”
Her breath hitched. If he couldn’t play hero, did he still want her?
A familiar old grin flashed. “We’ll find you a new one.
A better one. Whatever you want to do, we’ll make it work for you.
Just don’t go.” He engulfed her in a full body hug, stroking her arms, her back, rubbing his jaw in her hair.
“Don’t leave me, Anna Grace. You and me, we’re just getting started.
Thirty years from now, I want to be rocking on our front porch with you, watching our grandbabies, smelling that fancy shampoo you like to use, laughing and talking and loving you. ”
“Grandbabies?”
“Babies and grandbabies and great grandbabies. And I’ll buy you enough label makers that you can stamp labels on every single one of them.”
Oh.
Oh, yes.
He was worth every painful moment of this year. Every moment of her first time as an Air Force wife.
Every moment of her life.
“You need to stop talking,” she said, “before you make me burn your biscuits.”
His eyebrows knit together. He sniffed the air. “Biscuits?”
She smoothed a hand over his blouse, then flicked open the top button. “I wouldn’t have left without offering you my biscuits.”
His delicious chuckle sent a shiver through her bones. “Thought you figured out I’m a pie man.”
His fingers went to work doing wicked things to the back of her neck.
He was solid and safe and more dependable than she’d known she could possibly want.
She didn’t care that the biscuits were burning, because he had five more buttons that needed undoing, plus the rest of his uniform to get through.
She pulled back to look into those wonderful, crinkled cobalt eyes while still working at his buttons. “I love you.”
“I love you. Pies and burnt biscuits and label maker and all.”
“You love my label maker?” Her voice cracked.
“You bet your biscuits.”
She grabbed his biscuits and gave them a squeeze.
Still solid and perfect as ever.
So was his mouth when he kissed her.
Slow and thorough and perfect.
The man didn’t just love her. He loved her good. She wrapped herself around him and kissed him and loved him back until they fell against the wall for support.
“Been thinking,” he said into her neck, “we could find you a job with that label maker.”
She knew. She’d been researching professional organizing while she baked, and already had a color-coded binder started.
Best part was, it was a mobile career. It’d take a while to build up her reputation, to draw a regular, decent salary, but she didn’t plan on doing it alone. “Have I mentioned I love you?”
His eyes went soft and smoky. “I love your independence.”
“I love how you take care of me.”
His arms tightened. “I mean it, Anna Grace. If anything ever happened to me, I know you’re gonna be able to take care of things.”
The oven timer beeped again. “I need to take care of your biscuits.”
The rich sound of his laughter washed over her and enveloped her in bliss. “Darlin’, we got the rest of our lives for making biscuits.”
“Just biscuits?”
He swooped her up into his arms. “Biscuits. And pies. And stewed okra.”
She laid her head against his shoulder and let out a leaky laugh.
“And corn bread,” he said. “We haven’t talked about your corn bread yet. You make corn bread?”
She pressed a kiss to his jaw. “Three-point question.”
“You’re asking for trouble, Anna Grace.”
“And you’re going to love every minute of it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And he loved her so much, he even buttered her burnt biscuits.