Chapter 5
Jones was thankful the children were in the kitchen. They cheered after the kiss and then started asking for breakfast, and their gram started giving them directions on setting the table and getting things ready as she got three more pancakes off the griddle and set them down in front of them.
He hadn’t eaten so many cookies that he wouldn’t have been hungry, but the kiss had stolen his appetite. He had not thought about kissing Amy before, and even now, he’d figured she was just going to brush his cheek or something, but he should have known better. She always went into things headfirst, although maybe she’d just been going too fast to get where she was aiming.
He let out a humorless laugh. It was so Amy. They’d also satisfied the kids, and he should be just fine with it. But instead, he was left reeling. Feeling like his world had shifted, and things would never be the same. But that might have been partly because of the ten million dollars and the fact that Roland and Mom had both suggested that Amy be the girl he looked at.
At first, he rebelled, the same way Amy had, only she always reacted more vocally than he did.
But, wow. Now... Did that change anything?
He thanked Marjorie for pancakes, waited for the kids to be served, and they all were quiet again. Normally Amy and he would both be up helping Marjorie, but he hadn’t even given it a thought. He’d been so engrossed in trying to figure out what to do, and then the kids feeling like a whirlwind, and then the kiss .
“I ate too many cookies,” he said low, while the kids and Marjorie talked at the table.
“Me too,” Amy said softly beside him.
“But I don’t want to hurt your mom’s feelings.”
“Me, either. I’ll have to throw up later.”
“I was going to hang out with you today, but I just changed my mind.”
She laughed, as he figured she would. It didn’t matter what he said, she always thought his jokes were funny. Even if they were corny and dumb and she’d heard them a million times. She always acted like it was the first time.
So they both sat there, forcing the pancakes into their mouth, eating as quickly as they could without even talking about it.
Still, the kids were done and on their feet, and Marjorie was working on making sure they had their backpacks and other things together, before he and Amy finished and gathered up the plates, putting them in the dishwasher.
Amy grabbed a rag and wiped the table and counter, and he rinsed off the bowls and utensils that Marjorie had used to make pancakes, sticking those in the dishwasher and starting it.
He felt as at home in the McBrides’ kitchen as he did in his own. More so, since it was actually a kitchen and not just a refrigerator and stove with a short counter between them which is what he had over the garage of the place that he rented.
It served him just fine, on the few, very few, times that he ate by himself.
“Ready?” Amy asked as she came over and rinsed the rag off in the sink.
“Yeah.”
“You guys have a great day at school,” Marjorie said as she kissed the head of each child as they walked out the door to wait for the school bus.
“I want to check my mail,” Amy said as they walked out the door .
Jones figured she was probably going to check her mail to see if there was a check in it. He hoped there was, for her sake, but it brought back the thought that maybe marrying her wasn’t such a bad idea. She could use that ten million dollars far more than he could. Of course, she made her choices. She decided to open the pet sanctuary almost directly out of high school, since she was already taking in stray dogs and cats. She could have gone to college, or she could have started her own business or even gotten a real, regular job.
But she’d chosen to go get donors for her pet sanctuary and devoted her life to her animals. She was just reaping what she sowed and doing what she wanted.
He knew he should be hands off, but she was his friend and he...loved her. Because he loved his friends.
Friends .
Right?
He thought again about that kiss. It was just a simple kiss. Something he could have given any woman and not felt bad about it. Although he didn’t typically go around kissing people on the lips.
Actually as he thought about it, he wouldn’t mind doing it again. Just to see if it was as...shocking? Something. Just to see if he felt the same way after the second kiss.
He wasn’t going to suggest that to Amy though. She didn’t need to have any idea that he was thinking about kissing her. Again.
They left, telling Marjorie that if they didn’t see her before, they’d see her Sunday at lunch. He and Amy rode in the horse-drawn wagon to pick up the kids with Judd driving. So it took them a little longer to get there after church, since they had to drive the kids home. Still, all the family had been really good about it, and they never started eating without them.
They got in his pickup, and as he was pulling out of the drive, which was just about three minutes from where Amy had her pet sanctuary, he said, “Sorry about that. ”
He wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for, he just felt like he had to say something. Amy meant more to him than anyone else in the world, and he didn’t want to ruin whatever he had with her. Even though his entire life seemed to be spiraling, maybe not out of control, but fast enough that he felt like he needed to grab something to hold onto, and the only one that ever felt sturdy enough for him to clutch was Amy.
“Oh goodness, don’t worry about it. We did it to shut the kids up. And to make it so that Mom didn’t lose all of her hair this morning. Just most of it. I don’t know how she does it every morning.”
“How is Sally doing?” he asked, figuring that Amy probably didn’t know anything more than what he did. It was just something he asked in order to change the subject. He’d apologized, she’d accepted it, and they could move on from it for now. She wasn’t upset. It was Amy. If she were upset, he would know.
“The same. Worse. I don’t know. Treatments aren’t working, they want to send her home and call in hospice, but Gilbert doesn’t want her here, with him solely responsible for taking care of her. He’s afraid she’s going to die. That’s what Mom said. And I was just sitting there thinking, but she is going to die.”
“That’s the point of hospice. To get to die at home. Surrounded by people who love you, and in surroundings that are familiar.”
“Yeah. Although, Mom’s house is hardly familiar to Sally. They’ve been there, but it’s not like her house.”
“Is Gilbert going to move back once...”
He didn’t want to say “once she died,” but that was what he meant.
Amy didn’t make him say it. She understood. “I don’t know. I can’t say, ‘hey, what ya gonna do after your wife kicks the bucket,’ you know?”
“Yeah. Some people can accept those kinds of things, but Gilbert seems like he wants to keep fighting. ”
“I would appreciate that, if I were Sally. But I think everyone has admitted that if she’s going to get out of this, only God can do it. She might as well come here to Mom’s house and get hospice, because God can do a miracle here just as well as He can in the hospital.”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t sure what he would do. Of course he didn’t have a wife, but Amy was the closest thing... But no. He wasn’t going to marry Amy.
“You mind stopping at the mailbox?” she asked, even as he had turned his turn signal on and pulled into it, opening up the little door and pulling out some letters.
He was going to tease her with them, but he just handed them over. The top one looked like a bill, and he figured she probably wasn’t in the mood to get teased about that.
The silence felt loud as he shut the door, put his window up, and waited for a car to go by before he crossed the road and pulled into her drive.
“Bills, bills, bills... Hey! I think this is a check!” Amy said as she pulled the envelope open.
“Careful. You’re gonna rip the check,” he said as he stopped the pickup beside her tiny little car. He didn’t figure the size should fool anyone, because he’d seen Amy haul at least four dogs around in it, and not small ones.
“It is! I can buy dog food! This is awesome.” She bowed her head and said quickly, “Thank you, Lord,” and then raised her head just as fast and turned her shining eyes on him. “He sent me a check. He doesn’t want me to close down yet.”
He couldn’t help but smile. She was so over-the-top exuberant. Of course, she’d mellowed from when she was a kid. Robert, whose only speed was a run and whose only voice was ten thousand decibels, reminded him a lot of Amy. Of course, there were some boy-girl differences, but Amy always ran on full speed, and while she didn’t yell at the top of her voice every time she wanted to say something, she could get excited and forget to modulate her tone.
He smiled affectionately at her as she waved it around and did a little dance on her seat before yanking at the door handle.
“Is that okay? Do you mind if we go get dog food?” They always spent his day off and the weekends together. But usually they chatted about what they wanted to do, laid out the needs that they had, whether it was grocery shopping for the week or visiting the kids they would be picking up on Sunday morning for the wagon ride to church.
Somehow, they managed to get it all done, and somehow, they managed to do it all together, and even more amazing, now that he thought about it, was they managed to do it without getting tired of each other.
“Sure thing. All I need to do is pick up a few groceries for lunch this week, but nothing else.”
“Did you decorate your apartment?” she asked, like he hadn’t spent nearly every waking second with her and might have somehow found time to do it when she wasn’t around.
“It’s too small. And there’s no point. I got that little tree up in the office, and that’s going to do it for this year.”
“That’s what I got done,” she said as they walked side by side to the front door of her house.
She opened it, and he held it while she walked in. She didn’t bother to lock it, and he’d stopped asking her to. When she first moved out of her parents’ house so she could be closer to her animals to make it easier to take care of them, he tried to get her to lock it, and she resisted. Saying that it was Mistletoe Meadows, and not only that, but she had fifteen dogs on the place. No one was going to be sneaking in.
Speaking of dogs, her three small house dogs, all rescues, jumped up and came bounding over to greet them, wagging their tails and begging to be petted .
Amy knelt down immediately, and he knelt down beside her. He wouldn’t have become a vet if he hadn’t loved animals to begin with, but Amy might have taken it just a bit far.
Still, he didn’t have any pets, so she more than made up for it. When he went home, it was a little bit quiet in his apartment above the garage where his office was, but sometimes he appreciated the escape. Not from Amy. From the animals.
“Hey, Chatty. What’s the matter?” Amy said as her most vocal dog, Chatty, whined and scrambled to keep her attention.
Casper, older and slower than the other ones, was content to allow Jones to pet him. Dragon, aptly named, showed his teeth to Chatty, who immediately hunkered down and rolled over, showing her belly.
“Guys, you gotta get along,” Amy said, the same thing she said a hundred times to them every day.
Amy stood and walked to the counter. Her house was tiny, almost as small as his apartment. The living room was just a touch bigger, and she had been able to fit a queen-size bed in her bedroom. He ought to know, because he’d helped her put it there.
“Let me get this deposited, and I think they’ll give me enough of it in my account right away for me to get at least a couple of bags of dog food.” She spoke as she grabbed a pen and signed the back of the check.
As she reached over the counter for the pen, his eyes caught on her waist as her sweatshirt came up.
“Where’d you find those jeans? They look like they’re about six sizes too big.” He noted the way her belt pulled the waist tight. There were big gaps where the material gaped.
And then, as he looked a little closer, he realized that she’d lost weight. That was why the material was gaping and the jeans looked so big. She’d been wearing bulky sweatshirts, not necessarily to hide it, but because it was cold out .
“These things? I’ve had them forever,” she said offhandedly as she used her phone to take a picture of the front of the check.
Yeah. And even this summer, they hadn’t been so big on her that she’d even needed a belt.
But of course, she lost the sponsorship from the Richmond Rebels, and when that happened, the townspeople had jumped in to help her out, but he supposed that most of those were one-time donations, and people needed to be reminded that she was here.
“When was the last time you did a sponsorship drive?” he asked, thinking that maybe she was in more dire straits than what he thought.
“I don’t know. I know I need to, but I hated to do it around the holidays. People are so tight with money already, and prices are up. It’s killing everyday families, and I hate to hurt them even more.”
She had been cheering about being able to buy dog food, but she hadn’t said a word about getting herself groceries. He quit scratching Dragon’s head as he stood and wandered into her kitchen.
It was neat if not tidy, and there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff sitting around.
Typically he didn’t snoop in her cupboards. If they were cooking, he wouldn’t hesitate to get in and get whatever he needed, but it felt just a touch odd for him to open them without needing anything. But he knew exactly where she kept her dry goods, and he cracked the cupboard door.
Some rice, three cans of beans, and two boxes of pasta. He thought there might be two cans of chopped tomatoes, but he couldn’t see the label and didn’t touch them.
He heard the check flip over, and figured she was probably taking a picture of the back, as he moved to the refrigerator and opened it.
There were half a dozen eggs inside, and that was it. Not even milk. There was some butter, a jar of ketchup, and mayonnaise .
She’d basically been eating beans and rice. Maybe pasta, although he wasn’t quite sure what she was going to put on the pasta. Chopped tomatoes?
“All right. Yeah, it’s saying that part of the check is available immediately. That’s awesome. I’ll be able to get enough to last the weekend, and I can go back on Monday and get more.” She broke off abruptly. “What are you doing?”
He hadn’t realized he was staring at the refrigerator, running through the implications in his mind.
He shut the door and turned slowly to face her. “Your pants are baggy because you’ve been losing weight. You’ve been losing weight because you’re starving yourself because you don’t have enough money to feed yourself and the animals.” He wanted to say, why haven’t you told me? But he had to ask himself, why hadn’t he opened his eyes and looked at her? Why had it taken him so long to figure it out? It wasn’t like they didn’t work together all day every day.
He knew it was a baggy sweatshirt, a fact he didn’t really pay attention to. He should have. Should have paid a lot more attention to her than what he did.
“I never look at you,” he said softly. Almost to himself.
“You just realized I’m beautiful. Is that what you mean?” she asked, shoving her phone in her pocket and lifting her brows, asking him if he was ready to go without saying anything. And also saying, what’s going on? Why are you being so weird?
“I just take advantage of you. You’re just...here.”
“I take advantage of you, too.” She lifted her shoulder like it wasn’t a big deal. “That’s what friends do. They rarely appreciate each other until something happens, then when they need someone to lean on, your friend is standing right there, shoulder near, tissue at the ready, just there waiting for you to tell them what you need, so they can go do it. That’s what friends do.”
“You’re starving,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is America. People don’t starve in America.”
“You ate pancakes at your mom’s house, and cookies.” He’d eaten just as much as she had, and he wished he wouldn’t have brought that up, because the kiss had ruined his appetite and hers as well.
She should have gotten as many pancakes down as she could, and come to think of it, more than once she had grabbed something and been eating it as she walked out of her mom’s house.
But they didn’t eat at her mom’s house a lot. Enough to keep her from dying of starvation apparently.
“So, what are you trying to say?”
There might have been something similar to irritation in her tone, but she was never truly irritated at him.
“Never mind. Let’s go,” he said, nodding at the door and starting to walk. It was just two steps until he passed her, and he was tempted to reach out an arm and wrap it around her waist, gauging for himself how much weight she’d lost, except he never touched her that way, so he really wouldn’t be able to tell how different she felt.
“You don’t have to get all snippy about it,” she said as she ripped the check up and threw the pieces in the garbage as they walked out the door.
“I just feel like you’re not telling me everything. Like you’ve been hiding something big from me, and I should have known. You should have told me.”
“There wasn’t anything to tell you. And I don’t want to talk about this. Your car or mine?” she asked as he shut the door behind them, and they walked down through the yard.
“Mine,” he said immediately. She probably couldn’t even afford gas. “Maybe this is something I think we should think about.”
“What?” she asked as they got in the pickup together.
“My inheritance. The ten million dollars. The clause that I have to marry. Everyone you suggested gave me the shudders, every time I thought about spending the rest of my life with them. You and I spend all day every day together, and I haven’t gotten tired of you yet. And you still put up with me, somehow. So... Maybe your mom and Roland were not crazy after all.”
“You can’t be serious. You and me get married? That’s...”
He almost expected her to end that comment with, “gross,” or “disgusting,” or “unthinkable,” but she didn’t. “It’s what?”
“I just never thought about it like that before. You’re...Jones. That’s who you are.”
“I already kind of feel like your family is my family, but I never think of you as my sister,” he said, and he felt hesitant about saying that, since he was admitting it and they hadn’t really talked about it before,
“I don’t think of you like my brother, except... You’re better.” She fell silent after that, and they didn’t say much on the trip to town. He tried not to go too often, because it was a long drive, and typically they just went on the weekend. Sometimes after he got off work in the evening and she was done with the dogs and they didn’t have anything else to do, they’d take a trip, and then they’d go hiking or something on the weekend.
Neither one of them ever had an issue with what the other one wanted to do. It was like they were so into each other that they just floated along together.
Although, he knew that wasn’t true. They were so opposite that neither one of them had much in common.
“You think the reason that you and I get along so well is because we trust each other?”
“Maybe. What do you mean by that?” she asked, slanting a gaze across the seat from him, and he wished he would have asked instead what she was thinking about.
Although that was a question he never asked, so it would be very telling. He wanted to know what she thought about the kiss.
And maybe about getting married to him .
“I just mean that sometimes when you’re with someone who likes to do things that you don’t, you resist. You don’t really want to do what they want to do because...you feel like if you give in, you’re just constantly going to be giving in and you’re never going to get your way? You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I guess I kinda see that. You mean trust as in, you can do what I want, because you know that in the very near future, I’m going to be doing what you want, and it’s just something we do.”
She lifted her shoulder, tilting her head a bit as she looked out the windshield. “I never really thought about it as a trust thing, but I think you’re right. I do know that I can hold my nose and do some things with you, because you’ll hold your nose and do some things with me.”
“Not everything that I do with you is me holding my nose and just doing it.”
“No. I didn’t mean that,” she said, laughing a little bit.
They might not especially want to do things sometimes, but it never felt like one of them was holding their nose. They had a good time together, no matter what.
They were quiet as they rolled down off the mountain and passed through the little town of Whisker Hollow. There was a nice grocery store just off Main Street, with the feed store beside it, and he pulled into the parking lot.
“Usually I don’t have to tell you to talk to me, Amy, but you’ve been awfully quiet.”
“You’ve been quiet too,” she said, grabbing the latch and yanking.
He got out as well.
“You have your grocery list?” she asked, as though she had just thought about it.
“I do. We can get the dog food first.”
“It will fare better sitting in the car,” she said, and they strolled to the feed store, getting the bags she needed and taking it back to the car before they got his groceries .
He noted she didn’t get anything, and he’d wondered how he had managed to not notice that she hadn’t been buying much.
“I guess I assumed you were just eating more at your mom’s, with Gilbert, and everything that was going on with him, and your sister Isadora as well.”
“Yeah. There’s been a lot of turmoil at Mom’s house, and all the grandkids always running around,” she said.
“So, I’m not super hungry, but I’ve been hearing so much about these breast cupcakes. What do you say we go try them out?”
“Nora’s cupcakes in any shape are delicious.”
“You’ve had Nora’s cupcakes with me, and we both agreed that they were delicious. But we haven’t had these cupcakes.”
“I don’t know, this is a little bit embarrassing.”
“I heard it was an accident.”
“I heard that too. I also heard that she ended up dating Leo Lipinski of the Icebreaker hockey team. Which is...pretty big.”
“Yeah, girls say a hockey player is better than a veterinarian any day,” he said, wondering why he was annoyed. He didn’t typically get upset or annoyed about anything Amy said, although she didn’t typically talk about other men. Was that really what bothered him? That she was talking about another guy and he was jealous?
“Sorry. I just meant he was famous. You know, girls typically swarm to guys that are famous or have done big things, and I don’t know. It’s just a girl thing.”
“It could be a guy thing to do. Like with a supermodel.”
“True,” she said, nodding her head and then looking up at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you saying I’m not a supermodel?”
“You’re skinny enough to be a supermodel right now. But you lack the height.”
“And the gorgeous facial features, great hair, and a deep-seated desire to walk naked or mostly naked down the runway. Yeah. This kid was not destined to be a supermodel. ”
“I wouldn’t be able to hang out with you all day most days if you were a supermodel. So for one, I’m thankful, for two, who said you weren’t gorgeous?”
He knew that was crossing the bounds of their friendship, a line they never even came close to. Maybe it was all the talk of marriage, but he couldn’t let her get away with saying that.
“I say it. I mean, I can tell you all the reasons why I’m not a cover model, if you really need me to. But it has to do with my cheekbones here and—”
“Amy. I don’t care where your cheekbones are. Well, we are talking about your facial cheeks, right?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Where’s Jones? What have you done with my friend?”
He grinned. “I think it’s all this talk about marriage.”
“Really? I would have mentioned the M word years ago if I’d realized it was going to get you to call me gorgeous and start talking about my cheeks. Actually, no. That was a little awkward.”
“What?” he asked, realizing that he didn’t feel nearly as awkward as he thought he might. It was Amy. He could talk to her about anything. Even cheeks, upper and lower.
“Okay. I admit it. This conversation is not nearly as awkward as I would have said it would have been, if yesterday someone would have asked me. But... I don’t know. You’re just easy to talk to.”
“I feel the same way about you,” he said, pushing the cart to the side of his truck, where he grabbed the few groceries he had bought and stuck them behind the seat while Amy took the cart and put it in the cart return.
“Cupcakes?” he asked when she came back.
“If you say so. Although, I feel like you’re just trying to put weight on me now.”
“No. I really want to see these cupcakes. I’ve heard so much about them, but just from clients.”
“You should have said something about wanting to go down and grab some. I’d have been on board for that.”
“Talking about breast cupcakes with you just seemed weird, but... It wasn’t. We got through it just fine.”
“Just like we got through that kiss just—” Amy’s mouth snapped closed, and her eyes shot to his, wide and horrified.
She slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh. We’re not talking about that?” he asked, his brows going up, humor dancing in his eyes.
“I wasn’t going to. I mean, we did it, and it’s over.”
“Is it?” he asked, not really expecting her to answer, just knowing that for him, it wasn’t.