Just after dusk, Kaci sat at the edge of the fairgrounds with Tara Shivers, her roommate and sometimes partner in crime. Tara was an adorable brunette. She’d been a friend of a friend looking for a new apartment at the same time Kaci had moved here just under a year and a half ago. They’d both been newly divorced from military men, adjusting to a new town, and eager to get on with their lives.
Like too many military wives and ex-wives, Tara was overqualified for jobs that required little to no experience, but underexperienced for jobs that required her educational qualifications. So she was taking classestoward an accounting degree at James Robert while working nights and weekends at Jimmy Beans, the coffee shop just off base. She was moderately more levelheaded than Kaci, which had made her the perfect choice as an assistant to keep Kaci from going too redneck and getting herself arrested tonight.
“Are you sure this is legal?” Tara said from her perch in the back of Kaci’s Jeep.
“Nothing illegal about improving a catapult.” Kaci flung her knife into the dry earth. She pried off the pumpkin’s top and shoved one of her ex-husband’s old medals inside. “I’m so done with military men. They’ve died on me, divorced me, and now they’ve taken my girls’ trophy. If I could put the whole lot of them in this pumpkin and launch them instead, I would.”
Especially the one who’d given her the hottest kiss of her life and then run away.She’d shove him in that pumpkin first.
Pompous bastard.
“Can mine go in too?” Tara’s flashlight bobbed in the night.
“Absolutely.” Kaci patched the pumpkin back up, then loaded it into a slightly modified Ichabod.
Her girls were winning this contest next year, dang it. No more arrogant, dark-haired, hypnotizing-eyed flyboys would beat her team.
He’d been right.
Even if his squadron had juiced their pumpkin, it wasn’t against the rules.
Not in this contest.
Which meant her girls simply had to have a better catapult. And she probably owed him and his team an apology.
Withoutkissing.
Sweet baby José, that had been the worst wayeverto work off steam after a day ofbad news. What she got for running out of tequila at home.
“So, ah,” Tara said, “usually wouldn’t you like to see where you’re aiming something like that? It’s kinda dark outside.”
“Miles and miles of cornfield, Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Hush on up and help, or get out of my way.”
Tara’s laugh interrupted a hooting owl. “Miss Goody Two-Shoes? Have we met?”
“Stand back. I’m letting her rip.”
Tara scooted farther back. “Should’ve brought night-vision goggles.”
“You got a pair?”
“It’s the one thing of Brandon’s I didn’t burn.”
“Lordy goodness, girl. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know exactly what you were up to.”
“Huh.” Kaci set the catapult, then steppedback and tugged Ichabod’s release mechanism.
The sound of rattling wood as the pumpkin took flight eased the ache in her chest and the irritation in her belly and brain.
Tara was right. She should’ve brought night-vision goggles so she could see if her tweaks to Ichabod were helping or hurting.
A softthudechoed in the darkness.
“Aaahh,” she sighed.
Nothing like destruction and exploding pumpkins to lift a woman’s burdens.
