He didn’t much care to think about why.
After the ladies set the food out, Lance and Jackson put it in the right place over the fire. Louisa simmered down, and the tension slowly left the campsite. Everyone chattered away about safe topics.
They all settled in to eat dinner, Jackson flanked by Louisa and Anna, Lance and Kaci across the fire. Lance twisted the tops off two beers, then handed one to Kaci. “Heard you guys scored tickets to the Alabama-Auburn game,” he said to Jackson.
“Four of ’em,” Louisa said proudly.
“Craig’s getting one,” Jackson said.
Louisa almost toppled her chair into the fire. “Nuh-uh.”
Jackson speared a potato and avoided looking at her for fear her eyes had turned into the lost ark, capable of turning him to ash if he looked too close. “Said he wanted to go.”
He shot a glance at Anna to avoid the smoke of displeasure shooting out Louisa’s aura. Anna Grace looked as if she were absorbing a couple new Southern insults.
“Guess you picked your date then,” Louisa said.
Jackson’s left ear twitched at the honey in her tone.
He grabbed for his water bottle. It made an ominous crackling noise. “Guess so.”
“Well, good,” she said. “I’m taking Anna Grace.”
His head whipped around so fast it shifted the flow of the campfire smoke. He rolled his foot, trying to ground himself so the electric currents of disbelief would flow back through the earth down to hell, where they belonged, and quit making his heart stutter all irregular and panicky.
“Just Anna’s fine,” Anna said breezily.
“Well,just Anna, you wanna come to the Auburn-Alabama game with me?” Louisa said.
Kaci made a weird choking noise. Anna wasn’t saying anything, and she might’ve been three feet behind him, but he could’ve sworn he felt her heart tripping in time with his.
He didn’t want to take a gander on whether it was because she wanted to meet his momma, or because the thought turned her into a yellow-livered Yankee. But Louisa had put the invitation out there, and he’d do a lot of things for Anna, but he wouldn’t insult anyone—not Anna, not Louisa, not his family—by taking it back.
But he had an easy out. Thank sweet baby Jesus for the timing of the Iron Bowl. “Anna Grace, you going home for Thanksgiving?” he said.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Kaci hollered. “She’s making our pies.”
Well, this was as tidy as a palmetto bug in a cat’s paw, now wasn’t it? He forced himself to look at Anna. “You stayinghere?”
Wasn’t that something he should’ve known?
There was a reason he didn’t date women during hunting season.
She shrugged. It irritated him that he couldn’t read the semi-panicked expression in her eyes. Panicked he’d withdraw Louisa’s invitation, or panicked he wouldn’t?
Didn’t help he couldn’t decide himself.
“Finals are two weeks later.” Her eyes shifted.Thatone he got. She was still hiding from family, embarrassed about her divorce. “I’m taking some extra time at Christmas instead.”
His daddy was having a full-out rolling-on-the-ground laughing fit up there in Jackson’s head. Warm dampness broke out on his forehead. That usually happened only three miles into a five-mile run.
“So you could come on over for the game,” Louisa said. “It’s only a little drive on up to Auburn. Not like you gotta go all the way to the devil’s stomping grounds.”
Jackson was starting to understand what blood pressure felt like.
“I really need to do well on my finals,” Anna said. She looked as though she wanted a new label maker, and Jackson’s sympathy for her overrode his sympathy for himself. This wasn’t her fight, but she was stuck in the middle all the same. Stuck in the middle with Louisa and Momma and Russ.
He had a sudden image of taking Anna out with Mamie and the girls. The pressure in his throat eased up.
