Chapter Eight #2
I had just opened the door to my SUV when a white truck braked and pulled up beside me, and Jackson rolled down the passenger window. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
“Playing Scrabble with a couple of sneaky old gals,” I answered.
“I forgot my backpack at the office, so I have to go back,” he said. “Want to go with me?”
“I would love to.” I grabbed my purse and got out of the SUV.
That was way too eager, the voice in my head seemed to shout.
I don’t care. I don’t want to go home to an empty trailer.
You never minded being alone in a hotel room, it argued.
I didn’t have friends then. I do now.
I caught a movement in my peripheral vision and glanced back toward the trailer. Ada Lou was giving me a thumbs-up from the porch.
“Now, what’s this about my new landlady being sneaky?” he asked as he turned around and drove back toward Dell City.
“She and Nancy—that’s the elderly woman who lives in the last trailer—have a bet going about who can find out the most about you.” Just thinking of those two old gals talking about sex put a big grin on my face.
His smile put extra sparkles in his eyes. “Why?”
“Because they’re bored, and they like to bicker about everything.”
“Then I hope I bring a little excitement into their lives,” he chuckled.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called. This job is bigger than I thought it would be.
I work nine hours a day and bring home paperwork to do after that.
That said, I’m glad I caught you today. I really enjoyed spending time with you in Sierra Blanca. ”
“Me too.” I held up my hand and splayed my fingers out. “Five.”
“Okay. Congratulations. You have four fingers and a thumb.”
“I now have five people that I can loosely call friends,” I said.
“Are they lined up according to importance or how long they’ve been your friends?” Jackson asked.
“Why?”
“I’m competitive, so I want to know where I stand.”
“You are right in the middle for both.”
“Fair enough. Being number three gives me a starting point. I’ll try harder to move up the ladder to number one before winter ends,” he said.
“Why would you want to be at the top of the list?” I wasn’t sure how to feel about someone actually wanting to be number one in my life—a little nervous, a whole lot excited, or maybe just perplexed.
“Because I want to get to know you, and I don’t want to compete with the other four, plus whoever else you add to the list along the way,” he answered, and changed the subject. “Have you had time to drive through Dell City?”
“Ada Lou gave me the grand tour,” I said as we passed the city limits sign.
My thoughts circled back to Jackson wanting to move to the top of my new list. Did I even want to get involved—friendship or more—with a guy at this point in my life?
“I bet after traveling all over the place, Dell City seems pretty small to you, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Rosalie’s truck was parked in front of the Catholic church again. She must have done something terrible in her past to need to go to confession that often.
“Well?” Jackson asked.
“I’m sorry. I saw Rosalie’s truck, and my mind went in circles,” I replied.
“I only lived in a house for a little while after my mama died, and then less than six months after Frank remarried. And yes, this place does seem small. If you gathered up all the people in town, you wouldn’t have a third of what I’ve seen in a Vegas casino.
Have you ever lived in a town this small? ”
“Not really, but I’ve been in lots of communities in other countries that had fewer houses than this place,” he answered.
We’d gone a couple of miles when I saw lights up ahead of us. “Is that the site?”
“Yes, it is, and the first place we plan to drill,” he told me. “There will be others if this one turns out to be as profitable as Henry thinks it will be.”
“Do you really think you’ll be happy here?” I asked.
He hesitated while he parked in front of one of several mobile trailers. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm. I’ve got beer and sweet tea in the fridge, and I can make hot tea or coffee.”
I opened the truck door, still without an answer to my question, and headed for a boxy-looking mobile trailer with no lights shining out the windows. “Why do you have so many of these homes out here?” Maybe that could get him talking.
Jackson used his long stride to get ahead so he could open the door for me.
“The major crew members share four of them. They have all been working for the company for years and are pretty senior in the business. They each have different days off so that they aren’t all gone at the same time.
The head honcho out here is Henry, our oil engineer, and he has a trailer of his own.
He’s been with Dad’s company since I was a toddler.
Aside from that, we need extra people on the site to prevent vandalism. ”
I thought about some of the places ol’ Frank and I had stayed in the days when we weren’t flush.
We always took everything in from the van on those nights and hoped that it hadn’t been stripped of its tires the next morning.
I didn’t like to remember those times, but the life of a poker player was not all rainbows and unicorn farts—another of ol’ Frank’s sayings.
“And I’m not sure about being happy, but I’m going to give it a try,” he went on to say. “The Good Book says something about being content with our lot. I didn’t ever realize what a big order that was until recently.”
Amen to that, I thought.
The place was even smaller than Ada Lou’s travel trailer. A makeshift desk with two folding chairs were to my right. A sofa took up most of the room at the other end.
“Take off your coat and have a seat. The sofa is a lot more comfortable than one of those hard chairs. Want a beer or—”
“I would love one.” I made a mental note to use a breath mint before I went home.
It wouldn’t do for Rosalie to smell any kind of alcohol on me.
The very idea of her getting so mad that she walked away from the Tumbleweed came close to stopping my heart.
I didn’t cook, and Rosalie seemed to be the core of the whole café.
He removed two bottles of beer from the tiny dorm-sized fridge and twisted the tops off each of them. Then he took a couple of steps, handed one to me, and sat down on the other end of the sofa.
I took a long drink of beer. “If you are thirty-eight and Henry has been around since you were a toddler, isn’t he about ready for retirement?”
“He doesn’t have family other than me and says he would die of boredom if he didn’t have new wells to drill.”
“Did he teach you all this stuff?” I waved a hand around to include everything.
“I don’t know everything yet, but Henry is giving it his best shot,” Jackson chuckled.
“I hung around him enough as a child that I at least learned the lingo, and then the army trained me in that area since they were putting me together with a team that would spend time in places where . . .” He paused.
“You could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me,” I said. “And then you would forever more remain at number three on my list.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “That just might kill me.”
“I figured as much. You learned the basics from Henry and some stuff in the army, and now Henry is teaching you whatever he knows that has to do with all those maps on the walls and those big books stacked up on the desk. And that is why you have to take stuff home with you at night. Right?”
He tipped up his bottle and downed a fourth of it. “Absolutely correct. Now, let’s talk about you and how I can move up to number one.”
Was that a pickup line? Or did he really mean it? I could flirt right back if it was the former, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it if it was the latter.
“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. Do you really think you’ll be happy doing this for the rest of your life?”
Jackson’s expression told me that he was thinking hard about his answer. Finally, he said, “I don’t know, Carla. Do you think you would be happy without poker games for the rest of your life?”
“If I had to answer that right now, I’d say no—but in a few months, I might change my mind.” I was surprised at my own answer. “What about you?”
He took another drink, which made me think that he was struggling with the answer.
“I got a phone call today. The army wants me to come back as an instructor to the new guys who are training for Special Forces. I was tempted to pack my bags, but I couldn’t do it.
I promised my dad a year. What kind of man doesn’t keep his word? ”
“But you wanted to, right? Just like I would love to get into a good game of poker.”
“I did,” he admitted. “However, I’ve chosen this path, and I have to finish it to the end, or I couldn’t live with myself.”
“I understand,” I said with a nod. “Every day this past week, I’ve counted my tip money and added my paycheck amount to it.
There’s not even enough to get me into a small game, much less the high-stakes kind I’m used to playing in.
Patience is not my best virtue, but Ada Lou keeps trying to convince me that I’m where I am supposed to be. ”
“She seems to be quite a character,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, but don’t ever call her Louise. She got all riled up when Nancy did. Do real friends argue a lot?”
“I will remember to always use Ada Lou,” he said, and covered a yawn with the back of his hand. “And yes, honest friends argue when they have a difference of opinion, or when they are just bickering for the sake of joking.”
I turned up my beer and finished it. “I’ll file that away. Right now, you are tired and still have work to do, so why don’t you drive me back to the RV park.”
“Will you come back another day and meet Henry?”
“I’d be glad to,” I answered. “He might even get added to my list of friends and drop you down to number four.”
Jackson chuckled as he stood up and extended his hand to help me. I took it and felt a rush of hot desire that I couldn’t blame on the weather.
Chemistry. Either you got it, or you don’t. And, honey, you’ve got it. The voice in my head sounded a lot like Ada Lou this time.