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 havemyname. 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.
