His slow, triumphant grin sent another wave of a-tingles down her spine.
“Wouldn’t be right gentlemanly of me not to offer to let you off the hook, seeing how I didn’t know you got a broken partner,” he said.
“Afraid of letting me and my label maker into your kitchen?”
“No, ma’am. Looking forward to it. You know how to use a kitchen, or just put stuff away in one?”
Hesowasn’t in the plan, but a little bit of fun never hurt anybody. So long as she kept him only for fun, she’d be fine. “Three-point question.”
“You’re on.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
To his way of thinking, if a man had a good shotgun, football season, and a dog, he had all the love he needed.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane,by Mae Daniels
Jackson hadn’t planned on staying late enough to help with the cleanup, but on his way through the kitchen to say good-night, Kaci shoved a piece of apple pie at him and offered him a second to take home if he made himself useful. He took one bite and offered to marry her instead.
Pretty safe bet considering she was already taken. But it earned him a smack upside the head, and not from Lance. “Anna made that pie.”
“She bake biscuits this good?”
He thought that was a safe question too, since Anna was outside gathering trash, but Kaci smacked him again. “Don’t you play games with her, you hear me?”
“She looking for number two?” If that was the case, he’d make himself scarce quick. Anna was some fun when she loosened up, but like Mamie said, he had some choices when it came to his biscuits.
“It’s not what she’s looking for that has me worried. It’s what she’s not looking for but still needs.”
Jackson looked to Lance for a translation, but his buddy gave a shrug. Man-speak forI don’t talk woman. You got her going. You figure it out.
Jackson took another bite of pie and waited.
Kaci checked Anna’s progress through the window, then hopped her backside onto the counter Lance had cleared. “Her ex didn’t treat her the way a man should.”
Now that was clearer, but still not straight enough. “He hit her?”
“Pshaw. Anna wouldn’t have stood for that.”
“Cheat on her?”
“Nope.”
Well what else was there? “Didn’t let her have new clothes and get her hair done?”
“No, sugar, he didn’t love her.”
Lance shook his head like Miss Flo and Mamie did whenever Miss Ophelia started yapping about her boyfriends leaving the toilet seat up.
It was alwayslove, wasn’t it?
Man could work his rear end off, treat his woman right, respect her, give her everything she ever asked for, but if she decided she didn’t love him anymore, then he was done for.
Jackson never had made up his mind if his daddy was lucky he’d passed on before he figured out Momma was in love with his best friend, or if his life would’ve changed enough that he wouldn’t have been on that road that night. If he would’ve moved out, stopped for dinner on his way home instead of heading for Momma’s cooking, anything to put him on a different street or milliseconds to one side or another of his drive home.
Mamie said a person’s time was a person’s time, and God would’ve gotten him anyway, but he still wondered.
Still, he was glad his lifestyle didn’t lend itself to settling down. Nobody to please but himself and Radish, and if he got run over by a truck tomorrow, nobody left waiting for the news that he wasn’t coming home.
