“No comeback?” he finally asked and set a cup of steaming-hot coffee in front of me.
“I had my heart set on naming my first son Leroy Jethro after Gibbs on theNCIStelevision show. Or maybe Barney Huckleberry, after the purple dinosaur and Huckleberry Finn.”
“Well, darlin’,” he drawled, “I think that’s enough to warrant our big eighth-date fight right there.”
I took a sip of my coffee and held it in my mouth for a second before swallowing. I’d teach him to shock me like that. “Great! Now we have the foundation laid for our famous argument, and we don’t have to worry about it until summer.”
He sat down beside me and frowned. “Summer?”
“I don’t have a rule book, but that seems about right for an eighth date, don’t you think? We are both busy trying to settle into our new lives. A date every two weeks would be twelve weeks from now.”
“That’s spring, not summer,” he protested.
Ada Lou singing an old song about snow—off-key and out of tune—caused us both to stop and go to the door.
Jackson threw it open, and we found Ada Lou clearing a narrow path from her back door. She finished with the steps to his trailer and then slung the shovel over her shoulder. “Y’all put on your shoes and come over to my place. I just took a pan of hot cinnamon rolls fromthe oven and made a pot of coffee. We can have a midafternoon snack and play a game of Scrabble.”
“You baked?” I gasped. “Does that mean you lost the bet? Did Nancy get a red velvet cake?”
“I did not lose. We called it a tie, so this is the first time I’ve turned on the oven in years. I’ll expect you in five minutes.” She turned around and followed the trail back to her trailer.
Jackson came out of his room wearing rubber boots. I looked down at my high heels and hoped I wouldn’t fall out into the deep snow on either side of the narrow pathway. The worry didn’t last long, because Jackson scooped me up in his arms like a new bride and carried me outside.
“Is this an omen?” I asked.
“I don’t want you to ruin your shoes. My sister says that the ones with red soles are not cheap,” he said.
“Instead of carrying me over the threshold, you are taking me away. Does that mean there won’t be another date?”
“Definitely not,” he declared.
He almost slipped when we reached the first step on Ada Lou’s porch, but he regained his balance and knocked on the door with the toe of his boot.
“Come on in!” Ada Lou opened the door for us. “What a gentleman you are to not let Carla ruin her high-dollar shoes.”
Jackson set me down. “This place smells so good.”
“Yes, it does—and I want to hear what made you start baking again, Ada Lou,” I said.
She pointed across the room at the line of hooks on the wall. “Take off your coats and hang them over there. I’ve already set up the card table and chairs. When I heard y’all coming, I poured up some coffee. So we can sit down right now, and y’all can tell me if I’ve lost my touch after decades of not baking.”
I didn’t have to be asked twice, not when any kind of pastry was my greatest weakness. I was sure it was because we were in a crampedspace, but when Jackson sat down, he seemed to be taller and even more muscular.
Ada Lou cut out one of the enormous rolls and set it on Jackson’s plate, then she served me and, lastly, herself. “I’m afraid to take a bite for fear I’ll be disappointed. So ...” She pointed at Jackson. “You go first.”
“Oh, my God!” he said when he had swallowed. “This is amazing. You should put a bakery in Dell City. People would go crazy for these.”
She nodded at me, and I forked a bite into my mouth. “I will pay you to make these for the Tumbleweed.”
“I’m not going back into the business at my age, but I will teach you to make them,” she offered.
I cut off another bite. “Rosie won’t let me near her kitchen.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t make them at home,” Ada Lou said. “I had a dream last night.”
“So did Carla, but she said it was a nightmare,” Jackson said.
“What does your dream have to do with cinnamon rolls?” I asked, trying to deflect the conversation away from the shivers dancing through my body at the vision of seeing myself dead on the floor. I had to swallow hard to get the lump in my throat to disappear when I thought of how broken Jackson had been.
