Chapter Eighteen #4
As I crossed the floor, I gave myself a scolding for letting her affect an evening that Jackson had planned for us.
I was almost back to our table when I stopped behind a big plant and assessed the situation.
Julia’s rings sparkled in the candlelight as she shook her finger at Jackson.
James had his arms folded over his chest. Jackson had set his jaw.
He shook his head and said something, but I couldn’t read lips from that distance.
An eighth date might not ever be in our future, but I wasn’t going to let his parents totally ruin our evening. Julia’s face went from anger to a fake smile when both men stood up.
“Looks like I timed things perfectly. It does seem strange to be on this side of the game,” I said as I sat down.
“What does that mean?” Julia asked with more than a little ice in her tone.
“It means”—I nodded toward two people bringing trays in our direction—“that our food is coming, and I, for one, am starving. If I would have taken a minute longer, my food would have gotten cold, and that’s a sorry thing to do to a good steak.
” I kicked off my high-heeled shoe under the table and ran my foot up Jackson’s leg from his ankle to his knee.
That little gesture erased Jackson’s frown and put a smile on his face. Even if he never asked me out again, I didn’t intend to let these people intimidate me—not again, anyway.
I cut a small bite from the steak in question and popped it into my mouth.
When I chewed and swallowed, I nodded toward Jackson.
“You are right. I haven’t eaten all the steaks in Texas, so I wouldn’t know if this is the best in the state.
But it beats the ones I got at the Cosmo in Vegas, or even the Renaissance in New York City.
” I didn’t take my eyes off him. “And the company here is so much better than in either of those places.”
“Thank you.” He shot a sexy wink across the table. “I’m glad that our third date is going well.”
“This is the fourth one.” I held up a finger. “Number one was in Sierra Blanca.” A second finger popped up. “The second was in the little Mexican place in Dell City.”
“You are wrong,” he argued. “This has to be at least our seventh date—my lucky number. We can count the two nights we were snowed in at my trailer as three through six, and now we are here.”
My pulse raced, and I was sure that his parents could feel the electricity crackling all around us. “Then we’re getting close to the eighth one. Have you decided what we will argue about?” I ignored his parents and stared into his eyes.
Then Julia popped my pretty bubble.
“Have you really visited New York and Vegas?” she asked.
I slipped my foot back into my shoe and focused on her. “Yes, ma’am, I have, and I’ve played poker in every state except Hawaii. I’m saving it for a trip with someone very special.” I shifted my gaze back over to Jackson.
“Why . . . you aren’t old . . . When . . . ,” she stammered.
“I was fourteen and had a fake ID when I played my first official game.” I figured that I might as well come clean about my past. After all, this was our seventh date.
“My father taught me the basics, and the rest is instinct, I guess. I’ve always been good at it.
Living in a trailer and working in a café has been quite an experience, on the other hand.
I’m finding out that my friends”—I winked at Jackson—“are more important than slapping down thousands of dollars to get into a high-stakes poker game. Y’all know a little about Rosie, but did you know that she’s very religious?
” I went on to tell them about talking her into playing poker with me and then burying all the candy she had won from me and Scarlett.
Even Julia laughed, but I had exaggerated the hell out of the story. “Sometimes I feel like Cinderella in reverse,” I rambled on. “But I’ve talked too much. Let’s eat before our food gets cold.”
“Nothing worse than a lukewarm steak or cold gravy,” James said.
“I agree on the steak, but I put away Rosie’s biscuits and sausage gravy too fast for it to ever get cold,” I said.
Julia laid a hand on Jackson’s arm. “You haven’t told me how things are going in Dell City.”
“No shoptalk, Mother,” Jackson said. “I’m officially on a date and have better things to talk about than the company.”
I could fall in love with you. I was very glad that neither Jackson nor his mother could read my thoughts. My poker face was still intact.
“You were awesome,” Jackson said when we finally left the restaurant and were inside his truck.
“Thank you, but why do you think so?”
“The way you handled my mother was amazing. I love her because she is my mother, but ever since I retired from the army, she has been trying to set me up with women—most of them from her circle in Dallas.”
Those two women in the ladies’ room came to mind. “Are they interested in you or your inheritance?”
“Most of them want my last name,” he chuckled. “You would be surprised how many doors the Armstrong name will open.”
“But if they come from your mother’s circles, then they also have prominent names and money,” I argued.
“Yes, but . . . ,” he started and hesitated. “They don’t have my name. The first thing that I liked in the military was that no one gave a damn where any of us soldiers came from.”
“Ever think of changing your name?”
“More than once,” he answered. “How about you?”
“Nope, I was glad to be Carla Wilson and not Clara Williams.”
“How many guys still know you as Clara?” he asked.
“A lot, but not a one of them know me as Carla. How many women have you introduced to your folks?” I asked.
“Basically, only one, and that’s you,” he answered.
“Yvette?”
“By all standards, that was an arranged marriage from the time she and I were little kids.”
Surely I heard him wrong. “Repeat that, please.”
“Not really, but kind of,” he said. “Her parents and mine were best friends. They went to parties together. The mamas had lunch together a couple of times a week. Most of the time, they left me and Yvette with my nanny, so we were thrown together a lot. We dated all through junior high and high school. When we were about to go to college, I proposed to her. The plan was for a long engagement, a big wedding after we graduated, and then happy ever after living exactly in the pathway our folks had carved out for us.”
“But?”
“I played football with this guy who didn’t have the finances for college, so he decided to go into the army.
A six-year enlistment would get him enough money from the government to get him started on an education to be a doctor.
I went with him to the recruiter, and we both enlisted.
I lost him on one of our missions,” he answered.
I reached across the console and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I am so sorry. Was Yvette upset about you enlisting?”
Traffic was light at that time of night, so we were on the highway leading east in only a few minutes. For a while, I thought that Jackson wouldn’t answer my question, but he finally took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“She was angry at first, but after she thought about it, she said that everything would work out fine. I could go play my war games, and she could have fun doing the sorority thing. We would have a long-distance relationship and get married in four years. When I came home after basic, she had returned the ring to my mother and had gone off on a trip to Paris with some of her friends before she started at the university. She left a note for me saying that she wanted to enjoy her college experience without being tied down.”
The romance books I had read told me that was probably the reason he was thirty-eight and had never married. “And you never got over the heartbreak?”
“I was more relieved than anything. Being away, and in a place where I wasn’t any better or worse than any other guy, had already taught me a lot.
The major thing was that I was too young to tie myself down, even if the engagement was supposed to last for four years.
Now, let’s talk about how many old boyfriends you introduced to Frank. ”
“None,” I answered. “You are my first boyfriend.”
Jackson braked, pulled the truck over on the side of the road, and stared at me. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I have kissed guys. I slept with a few, but my lifestyle didn’t have room for anything that lasted more than forty-eight hours. Until I came here, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t normal.”
He put the truck back into gear and started driving. A couple of long, pregnant moments passed. I thought I’d really like to go out with him again—maybe more than once.
“What are you thinking?” I finally asked.
“That in a lot of respects, we have lived similar lives. I didn’t feel like I could get involved with someone for a long-term relationship when I was in the military.
It wouldn’t be fair for either of us. Sometimes I was gone for six months at a time, and in places where a woman couldn’t go.
Or would even want to. I had some of those short-lived flings, too. Can I see you again tomorrow?”
“That was abrupt,” I answered.
“Well, it was on my mind and just came out,” he said.
“We’re already committed to go to church with Scarlett and Grady, and have supper with his family after that,” I reminded him. “Unless you stand me up.”
“Never,” he grinned. “Shall I pick you up, or are we meeting at the church?”
“Let’s meet there. I’ll be the one sitting beside Scarlett.”
He turned onto the highway on the west end of the Tumbleweed. “I’ll get there early enough to walk inside with you.”
“Why?”
“Because a sexier guy might sit down beside you, and then there would be a fight right there in front of the Mendoza family and even God.” He held my hand all the way to the door. “Thanks again for being so understanding about my mother crashing our date.”
His mouth closed on mine, and the kiss was hot enough to melt all the snow between the trailer and the restaurant in El Paso.
He took a step back. “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”
“If Rosie wasn’t home, I would invite you inside and show you how good it was.”
“I really like you, Carla Wilson,” he whispered.
“I really like you, Jackson Armstrong—and it has nothing to do with your name.”