Chapter 7 #2
“She did,” Millie said, holding Emma on her hip. “I’m more than willing to support a change in regime.”
“But Jessie Hancock?” Austin said. “I’m really not sure how I feel about this.”
“Why?” Cassidy asked, leaning in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. “I mean, if you don’t like Danielle anyway …”
“Better the devil you know?”
“I’d rather have the devil I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “It’s more interesting.”
“There you go. From the mouths of babes,” said Flynn. “Also, it makes a fucking difference to me, Austin.”
Austin looked sheepish. “Sorry. The thing is, I don’t think of them as your family. We’re your family.”
“Damn straight,” Cassidy said, talking around a mouthful of crumbs while she wiped her hand on her jeans.
“And they don’t deserve any of the wealth they have.
I’m all for this targeted takedown, even if it does involve the Hancocks.
But none of us have ever had quite the beef against them that you have, Austin. You’re the one who needs to relax.”
The front door opened, and Flynn’s stomach clenched, until his brother Carson and his wife Perry walked in. Of course it was Carson and Perry. Not even Jessie was feral enough to walk in without knocking.
“Oh, am I missing the Flynn/Jessie Jane gossip?” Perry asked, looking genuinely upset that she might have.
“There’s no gossip. Anyway, Jessie is coming soon.”
“Really,” Perry said. “I am living for this.”
“There’s nothing to live for, Perry,” he said to his sister-in-law. “This is just two people engaging in small-town talk. That’s it.”
“Well, that’s interesting enough in and of itself.”
“Get the grill going,” Austin said. And then Flynn found himself out on the porch, grousing as he ignited the grill and put the steaks on. That’s where he was standing when Jessie Jane pulled up in her old blue truck.
His body reacted. Which just made him madder. Madder at himself, madder at her for what had happened at The Watering Hole. Just mad.
She grinned at him from the driver’s side window as if they hadn’t left each other hot, panting, and furious last time they’d talked, and then parked next to Carson’s truck. She got out of the oversize vehicle, jumping down to the gravel and making her way over to him. “What are you grilling?”
“Elk,” he said, his voice clipped.
“Cool. Thanks for having me up for dinner.”
“This isn’t my house, and I’m not the one who invited you.”
“You’re such a romantic, Flynn. How is it that a girl hasn’t snapped you up yet?”
“I don’t know, Jess,” he bit out. “Maybe the same reason a man hasn’t made an honest woman of you.”
“You got me there,” she said, pointing finger guns at him.
Finger guns.
Like she hadn’t locked them in a bathroom and then run when it got too intense.
His blood felt hot. Felt like it was running just a little bit fast. He didn’t like it. He was used to being in total control of his attraction to women, and maybe that was the real thing that bugged him so much about Jessie. The control seemed to rest entirely with her.
“Be forewarned that my family is about to descend upon you like a pack of ravenous wolves,” he said.
Jessie did not look concerned about this at all. In fact, she looked as irrepressible as ever. “Excellent. Being invited to a Wilder family gathering. It feels like a Discovery Channel special. I’m about to see a rare creature in its natural habitat.”
“We aren’t all that rare.”
In truth, though, he supposed that he was. The only one of his kind. Part Wilder, part Respectable Family About Town. But that wasn’t what she was talking about.
“You get to give your little speech again.”
“I love a speech.”
She walked up the steps, but she didn’t knock on the front door; instead she came to stand beside him, craning her neck to look at what he had on the grill.
“Jessie,” he said, his tone warning. “Don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”
“But that’s what I do.”
He turned his head to look at her, and she was far too close. He wouldn’t take money for helping her, but he knew exactly how he would like to extract payment from her.
That was … not a thought he needed to be having right now standing on his brother’s front porch while grilling steak. No, it wasn’t.
But he felt compelled to make her pay for last night, or at least make it clear he hadn’t forgotten.
“Don’t push,” he said.
“Or …?” she asked.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”
“Maybe I do want to know. I heard curiosity killed the cat.”
“Curiosity might result in something else for your kitty.”
She stood there for a moment, not getting the double meaning, and then her eyebrows lifted just slightly.
“Oh.”
Right then the front door opened, and Millie rescued them both. “Jessie Jane!” She rushed forward as if Jessie was an old friend. “Come in!”
“Thank you,” Jessie said. “Sorry I didn’t bring any lemon bars tonight, but I will have plenty for tomorrow.”
Lemon bars. What?
“I’m excited. I have to warn you, though, that I put up a little informational thing about the booth tomorrow, and now Danielle is coming.”
“What?” they both asked.
“Well … basically I was hoisted by my own petard. Because I initially declined to let Danielle hang her posters up based on non-partisanship, now I have to allow her to have a booth in the parking lot.”
“Great,” Flynn said.
“Great indeed,” said Jessie, unflappable as ever. The woman was like Teflon. Whatever you threw at her just seemed to bounce off.
Though for a second there, when he had dropped that innuendo, she hadn’t looked quite as balanced as she usually did.
He didn’t know if he was proud of himself or ashamed.
“It will give us a chance to really stand in contrast to her. People don’t like Danielle.”
“Well, that is true. People think they have to like her. And that’s not the same thing.”
Jessie laughed. “You’re telling me.”
Jessie and Millie disappeared into the house, leaving him alone on the deck with his ruminations. That was when the door opened again, and Carson came out with a beer in hand, which he thrust toward Flynn. “I thought you might need this.”
“Thanks. Are you not thrilled to have Jessie in-house?”
“Oh, I have no issue with her,” Carson said.
“You were all wound up about me and her. There was never anything to it. All she ever did was ask me to do a little bit of work for her. There was never any … There was nothing on my end.” He paused for a moment.
“Now, West on the other hand, I might have issue with. Considering he did kiss my wife.”
“She wasn’t your wife then,” Flynn pointed out.
“I guess not. But I still don’t have to like the guy.”
“I guess not, Carson, but it seems a little bit disingenuous considering you were married to somebody else before you married Perry.”
Carson cleared his throat. “Listen. We all have a past. It’s fine. It just so happens that West kissed Perry when I wanted to kiss Perry and—”
As if she had been summoned, Perry appeared, looking sunny and beautiful as ever, her long blond hair a beautiful tangle around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing,” Carson said.
“Carson still has sour grapes about you making out with West.”
Perry smiled. “Really? Maybe you should talk to someone about that, Carson,” she said.
“I’m good,” he said.
“You know what else was good? West. He’s a good kisser.”
“No,” Flynn and Carson said at the same time.
Carson and Perry had been best friends their entire lives, and in reality, in love for most of their lives, but running from it as if it was the most terrifying thing either of them could imagine.
Carson had gone away to the military, had gotten married, and had been widowed only a few years later.
In the aftermath, he and Perry had finally worked out their feelings for each, but Lord, it had been messy.
Their foundation was strong, and their feelings were intense.
That kind of commitment made Flynn want to turn and run in the other direction.
In his estimation, love was … labor. Austin and Millie, for what it was worth, had a much less tempestuous relationship, but Perry and Carson had fallen in love kicking and screaming, wounding each other the whole way.
He was glad they were together now, but good God, you couldn’t pay him.
He’d been through enough when it came to love, even if it was of a different variety.
“What?” said Perry. “I wouldn’t have been thinking about West except you brought him up.”
“Well, his sister is here.”
“Thank you for that,” she said. “I did notice. But I also acknowledge Jessie’s identity apart from her family. Anyway, I’m primarily curious about your-all’s scheme.”
“You can’t tell anybody,” he warned.
“Yes, that has been said to me about fifty times. I know I can’t tell anybody.
We are united in this whole beat-Danielle thing.
The restaurant tax would have such a detrimental impact on tourism in town.
And anything that impacts tourism negatively is a hundred percent not for me. Plus, I don’t like her.”
“Nobody does,” Flynn said. “Well. That’s not true. Plenty of people do, or she wouldn’t be the mayor. But it’s a particular sort of thing. The kind of liking that has a clause. They’ll all turn on her if the tide shifts.”
“True that,” said Carson.
A minute later, the steaks were done. He carried the meat in and was unsurprised to see that Jessie Jane was holding court in the living room. He had just come in at the end of a full-on campaign speech.
Millie looked delighted, Austin looked dubious. Cassidy gave a fist pump of admiration.
He wished that Dalton were here, but he had gone down south to compete in a rodeo event and would not be present for the next couple of weeks to pass judgment on the situation. Very irritating.
It would’ve been nice to have his input.
“I think it sounds great,” said Cassidy. “Anyone who’s going after Flynn’s useless-ass family is good in my book.”