Chapter Three
Jackson Quaid ruined everything.
Probably not fair and a bit too general but I’d known him for a long time and had some experience in this area. He was Celia’s nephew. A real nephew. Not a “nephew”
in one of those Southern everyone-is-considered-family kind of ways. Actual kin.
Jackson’s mom, Savannah, was Celia’s baby sister. Two of the five kids in the Windsor clan with Celia being the oldest and Savannah being the youngest. That was the good side of the family. Then there was Harlan, Jackson’s father. A glad-handing, rarely genuine lobbyist type who had been immersed in politics for so long that he’d forgotten how to tell the truth.
Harlan came from a long line of blowhard, pontificating Quaid men. He was the kind of guy who made a compliment sound condescending. He used to talk about what a good housewife Savannah was . . . then would say she didn’t have the skills to be anything else.
Maintaining a certain public image guided every move Harlan made. Except when it came to women. Dealing with women made him extra messy. He’d waited five whole weeks after Savannah died following a lengthy battle with breast cancer before moving his pretty “real estate friend”
into the family home. He, and only he, was shocked when people gossiped about his appalling timing.
It might be faint praise, but Jackson was the best of the Quaid men by a mile. He was also an only child. His parents clearly realized their tragic mistake after having him and stopped making kids. At least that was my working theory.
People described Jackson as focused and smart. I’d add humorless and prone to mumbling under his breath. He was a successful lawyer because he’d actually finished law school without dying of boredom or failing out. The show-off.
He stepped out of the French double doors off the dining room and onto the back flagstone patio. He wore a buttoned-up dark suit, giving off his usual put-together vibe. Objectively handsome—not that I noticed—but only as long as he didn’t talk.
I’d been at Gram’s place for two hours and outside in the backyard for ten minutes before he showed up. He usually sniffed out when I crossed the state line and came running as I pulled in the driveway. Waiting over 120 minutes to pop up and spread his joy meant he must be slowing down in his old age, that age being thirty-three.
Jackson sat on the half of the wicker couch I wasn’t using. The cool steel-blue cushions looked out of place. Not a flower or sunburst pattern in sight, so nothing Gram picked.
I didn’t have to look up to know Jackson started doing his staring thing. I did anyway. As usual, his scowl conveyed his disappointment in my life choices. He glided along, operating by a set of rules only he knew. I’d never been able to figure out what those rules were, but I clearly violated them.
“I heard you were here.”
He had the nerve to smile. “Did you get fired?”
It took less than two seconds for him to pick a fight. Surprisingly, that was longer than usual. “I’m starting to feel attacked.”
“I think that’s what you said after you lost the bank job and we dared to question you about it.”
The brain-numbing bank teller job I took after the law school misfire. My dalliance with finance lasted less than two months. A short-term career stop, at least that’s how I preferred to think of it. Hours of inactivity punctuated with screaming fits of rage by irate customers. One minute bored. The next paralyzed with fear that I’d accidentally honor a fraudulent check or complete a transaction and not notice a counterfeit twenty. Worst job ever.
“I quit. No one fired me.”
I took a long sip of ice water and didn’t offer him any. He knew where the kitchen was.
He’d been coming to the house since before I moved in. At six, I’d been traumatized and scared when I walked in the big front door with my little suitcase. He’d just become a teenager and had taken an instant dislike to me for infringing on his precious territory.
He believed Gram and Celia liked him more than me both back then and now. They didn’t. Couldn’t. Not possible.
He stretched his arm across the back of the couch with his fingers almost touching my shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
Squirming. Being this close to him always turned me into a fidgety mess. I spent most of my energy trying to remain composed and keep my voice steady. “Sitting.”
“I meant in the state.”
“Same answer.”
A small smile came and went on his lips before he settled back into his usual grumpy state. “So, you haven’t changed.”
Neither had he. Under the starched shirt and perfectly knotted tie lurked a hottie. Not that I would ever admit that out loud. Brown, almost black, hair. Brown eyes. That perfect face. The firm chin. Those wide shoulders.
Damn . . . He was far too attractive. Noticing had been a lifelong problem. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t shake the thing where my mind wandered in his direction. The weakness swamped me and drowned my common sense. I’d tried everything to crush the weird dance my stomach did whenever I saw him, including pretending we were blood related and he was off-limits. Neither of those things was true.
In addition to smelling good, and he did, he’d starred in most of my teenage daydreaming, but I was an adult now. I could control my bad decisions, including my unwanted lingering crush on him. I needed to stomp that out or at least ignore it. And I tried. Honestly.
We were complete opposites. My light to his dark. My charm to his moodiness. My flailing to his overachieving. My inability to hold a job to him making law partner before any of his classmates.
My taste in men changed as I got older. Now I picked losers who ghosted me after two dates instead of one . . . but Jackson’s pull still kicked my ass.
I decided to speed up the conversation. The sooner he delivered whatever lecture he had planned, the sooner he’d leave. “I’m visiting my beloved grandmother and my aunt.”
“My aunt and I’m surprised they didn’t put you to work cracking eggs or sifting flour.”
Same, but give them time. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”
He groaned. “So many eggs.”
Okay, that was kind of cute. “They think I can’t bake.”
He laughed. “Can you all of a sudden?”
“Not even a little. No patience for the measuring.”
But enough about my long list of shortcomings. “What’s going on with you? Don’t you have a job you should be doing?”
“It’s been months since we’ve seen each other.”
Three months. Two days. “Not really an answer to my question, but okay.”
He threw out one of those beleaguered sighs men did when women didn’t immediately cede the floor. “You swung into town the last time you lost a job. I’m assuming it happened again and we’re in for another touch down of Hurricane Kasey.”
“When did everyone around here get so rude? Y’all are obsessed with my career status.”
“We’re trying to be prepared for the worst.”
The words sounded testy, but his posture remained relaxed. He didn’t appear to be in his usual hurry to race back to the office. That meant he planned to say something annoying.
As predicted, he continued talking even though no one had asked him to explain. “You tend to breeze into town, cause chaos, then run.”
“I see your interpersonal skills are as stellar as ever.”
No surprise there. People had to want to change, and he didn’t. “And ‘chaos’ is a strong word.”
“Is it, though?”
That voice carried a hint of a smooth Southern drawl. The tone wrapped around me like a hug. “I was here last time because it was Christmas and—”
“Oh, I remember. You insulted that bigwig at the tennis club. A client of your grandmother and Celia’s at the time. Thanks to you, they lost a contract for a New Year’s Day brunch and a lot of money.”
Yeah, that. “That’s not how I remember it.”
This twenty-something club jerk had lurked around a girl who couldn’t have been out of high school yet. He followed her down the hall toward the club’s bathrooms then moved in front of her and blocked her attempt to get around him. I stepped in and would do it again because that’s what women did for each other. I also had a general not on my watch rule to uphold.
“I think I showed amazing restraint in only telling that loser off.”
“I agree. If I had known about his amateur stalking, I would have told him off, too. But his father didn’t see the situation the same way we did.”
“That man had no sense of humor and a complete inability to see his son for the entitled walking disaster that he was. Not my fault.”
No one warned me about the harasser being the spoiled son of some rich dude who owned a company that sold rich dude things and didn’t hesitate to throw around his rich dude influence in the form of threats.
Time for a subject change. One that put the spotlight on Jackson. “Where’s . . . Lucy, Suzy, Dolly?”
I followed the question with a nonchalant shrug meant to telegraph how little I cared about his love life even though I sort of did. “Whatever you girlfriend’s name is.”
“Anna, and we broke up.”
Funny how Gram and Celia forgot to share that juicy piece of information during our weekly FaceTime calls. “She found someone else?”
“She moved to Atlanta.”
“So, your personality is driving them out of the state these days.”
His exhale drowned out the sound of the birds chirping in the trees behind us. “I seem to remember you asking Anna at Christmas if something crawled up her ass.”
That totally happened. “Did I?”
“It was basically a direct quote.”
“And a fair question on my part. She was very . . . clenched. I thought the poor woman might hurt herself doing that puckered-lip dismissal thing.”
It wasn’t my fault his ex-girlfriend lacked anything approaching a personality. Pretty but dull and her dullness turned out to be contagious. Jackson became positively humorless around her. She’d sucked what little charm he possessed right out of him.
“Your taste in women is weird.”
Since that seemed like a safe word to land on, I went with it.
He rolled his eyes this time.
“No. Don’t. I should be the one making dramatic gestures, not you. Did you forget she ate a muffin with a fork?”
He tried to respond but I talked over him because I had more. “If that wasn’t odd enough, she didn’t even finish it. A homemade applesauce muffin.”
“Your point?”
Oh, come on. “Who does that? It’s like opening a bag of chips and only eating one. I think she might have been a sociopath. Be happy I shooed her away.”
“You didn’t . . .”
He stared at my almost empty glass of water as if wrestling for control before continuing. “What are you really doing here?”
Apparently we were done talking about his fork-using ex. That didn’t mean I wanted to dance my way into a dangerous new subject. One that made me look bad. “A visit.”
“I know you. Stop bullshitting.”
He leaned in closer. “Are you planning on pitching Mags and Celia a wild business idea?”
What the hell was that scent? Cologne? Shampoo? He always smelled like he stepped out of a shower of citrus and sandalwood. It was sexy in a concentration-zapping way.
“Of course not.”
I switched to a whisper just in case. “How do you know about pitching?”
Jackson being Jackson, he kept right on talking at full volume. “I work with companies like yours all the time.”
Since when? “That’s what you do for a living?”
“I deal with corporate assets and regulations. Draft agreements. Work on contracts.”
He didn’t say duh but he looked like he wanted to. “What did you think I did?”
Boring lawyer shit. Just hearing him describe his job killed off most of my brain cells. “Sat in a room with a bunch of books and read documents.”
“That’s not far off except we use computers these days.”
He shrugged. “The point is I researched your job and company. I’m familiar with your responsibilities.”
Was that sweet or overbearing? Hard to tell. “That doesn’t sound stalkerish at all.”
“You’ve been there for a few months. I’m sure you’re getting pressure to produce.”
He seemed to know everything all of a sudden. “What’s with the overhyped interest in my work life?”
He stared at me for a few loaded seconds before shaking his head. “Can I offer you some friendly advice?”
“No.”
His advice tended to be more bossy than helpful. No, thank you.
“Whatever you’re planning to do is a mistake.”
“I guess you didn’t hear me say no.”
He kept right on talking. “Enjoy a few days of quality family time. Eat lots of baked goods. Forget about this pitch then go back to DC.”
He sounded a little too excited about the part where I left town. Then there was the bigger problem. “It’s not that easy.”
“See, that’s the thing, Kasey. You make things hard.”
His smile came roaring back. “This time, refrain.”