He treated her to a wicked grin. “I’m gonna sit in my truck and watch your shirt get wet.”
“Your momma would be appalled.”
“Yep,” he agreed.
One more flash of that boyish grin, and he was climbing out of her Jeep. Raindrops pelted his Bama shirt. He lifted his hand in a wave before he dashed the four parking spaces over to his truck.
Kaci touched three fingers to her lips and told herself the comforting lie that another date—anovernightdate, complete with a bonfire and probably her potato gun—wasn’t any big deal.
They were friends.
With benefits.
And she could totally handle it.
“You’re hopeless,”Tara declared ten minutes later.
Kaci dropped her coolers in the kitchen. “Yep,” she agreed. “But I’m a pretty satisfied hopeless.”
She joined Tara on the couch, where Miss Higgs was squeezed between Tara’s belly and her laptop. “Write anything good today?” she asked.
“No. My dang hillbilly Sleeping Beauty story fell apart when I couldn’t convince my brilliant astrophysicist princess to kiss the weirdo passed out in the room over the bar.” She slid a meaningful look at Kaci. “You could learn a thing or two from her.”
“You haven’t even asked how it went.”
“Don’t have to. You’re still wearing that sappy grin.”
“I know it’s not serious with Lance,” Kaci told the dark TV screen. “But it’s dang fun hanging out with a guy who seems to like me for me.”
Miss Higgs shuddered out a snore.
“Has she been eating okay the last few days?” Tara asked.
Shivers prickled Kaci’s skin. “She’s been a little picky, but she’s always been persnickety like that.”
Tara didn’t call her out on the way she was stretching that truth so thin even a blind man could’ve seen through it.
Miss Higgs had beenridiculouslypicky about her food this week. And Kaci had been telling herself it was simply because the cat was crotchety.
She reached over and scratched the kitty’s head too.
“She’s a sweet cat,” Tara whispered.
“She found me after a horrific beautypageant,” Kaci murmured. “I was fixin’ to toss a homemade cherry bomb into a dumpster behind the auditorium, and this little white ball of fluff charged me. She’d speared a wine cork with one of her teeth, so it looked like she was smoking a short, fat cigar. She kinda wobbled like she’d been drinking the wine too. But she stopped me from tossing that cherry bomb and probably stopped me from ending up in juvie.”
“Only you, Kaci.”
“My momma said she probably had fleas and we couldn’t keep her, but I threatened to rip the shoulder pads out of my pageant dress and then cut up all the ruffles, so we compromised. Miss Higgs got to come home and have a flea bath, and I agreed to enter the Miss Grits pageant.” She stroked her fingers softly over her cat’s fluffy head. “She hated Ron.”
“She’s a good judge of character.”
“She’s getting old.” Kaci’s throat went tight.
“Here.” Tara lifted the cat and gingerly put her in Kaci’s lap. “I think you two need each other tonight.”
Kaci buried her face in Miss Higgs’s fur. The cat’s rusty purr vibrated against her chest.
She’d moved to Georgia determined to find stability.
