On my way back home, as I was driving down the highway, I spotted someone riding a horse. Which you never see. Sure, there are horses everywhere, but not on the goddamn side of the road.
As I got closer, my pulse started to race when I realized it washer.
Jane.
Her hair was loose, flowing down her back as she galloped between the shoulder and the fence line. I cackled. I mean, I’ve never seen her drive before because I’m pretty sure she’s too poor to own a car, but ahorse? How funny! How sad. Also, thankGodshe wasn’t actually hanging out at Blair’s house as I had imagined.
But then, watching her coast down the road, head held high, riding as if she were Anne of Green Gables or something made my blood boil. So I pressed on the gas, veered a little closer. Hung right beside her.
She looked over at me like she was confused, and I couldn’t stand the sight of her one second longer, so I revved the engine at her, then sped away.
14
Jackson
Jackson hates when Charleigh does this to him, leaves him hanging, waiting for her.
Not thirty minutes earlier, he was in his home office, iced tea in hand, the crossword puzzle from Sunday’sTimesstretched out before him. He likes to linger over it, make it stretch out into the week. It’s one of the things he does on break to shut off his mind: unlock a solution to something that’s been eluding him.
Then Charleigh called, all in a huff. “What are you doing right now?”
Jackson’s head spun with different excuses. He set his ballpoint down, sighed. “Working on a bid, actually,” he lied. “Why?”
“For who?” she demanded.
None of your business.
“Just a small deal; it’s nothing really.”I promise you’re still my biggest client. “Why, what’s going on?”
A groaned wheezed out of Charleigh. “Nothing.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What is it?”Nothingalways meantsomething, usually something big with Charleigh.
“Can you sneak away? Meet me at the Boat House for a daiquiri? I just met that new family, the Swifts, and amdyingto talk to you about it.”
So now this is happening. Jackson’s sitting outside on the deck, stabbing his frozen drink with his straw. He feels like a spectacle here. In Longview, yes, but especially at this chichi members-only club.
Dressed in dusty-rose IZOD khakis and loafers, Jackson subtly tries to signal that he’s gay (no other man in this town would dress in any shade of pink), even though he’s only out to Charleigh.
But it always fails. One of the old guard here, a woman in her late fifties, hair piled into a shellacked beehive, will spy him sitting alone and approach, usually with a not-so-attractive young woman in tow. The young’un is still single for a reason.
Jackson, who was raised with manners and is a people-pleasing middle child, thank you very much, will usually diplomatically extricate himself from these desperate attempts at setups by referring vaguely to a love interest back in Dallas.
The gorgeous women in town, on the other hand, are mostly all taken. Not that he has an appetite for them, nor they for him, once they get a clue. But it somehow doesn’t stop them—when they’ve had enough to drink—from pawing at him.
One thing he learned a long time ago: wealthy women think they owneverything,everyone.
Charleigh included. To her credit, she’s never drunkenlygroped or hit on him; she’s too in love with Alexander, for starters, and who wouldn’t be? But her thirsty possessiveness is insatiable.
He takes a long, icy pull from the strawberry daiquiri and is immediately punished with brain freeze. But it’s smoldering out. Even with the fans whirring, Jackson feels like he’s hovering over a steaming pot of gumbo, and the afternoon sun spackling the lake only makes it feel hotter.
Where is that woman?
He tugs his Ray-Bans down, another attempt to ward off anybody who feels the need to approach him.
Ugh, this town.Jackson isn’t used to this, this fishbowl-like existence. He was raised in a metropolis—Houston, for Christ’s sake—then went to college in Dallas. The only reason he’s here? His smothering mother, Willamena, refused to hand over any of her massive inheritance from his late father to help Jackson kick-start his design business.
“Find you a nice wife to marry, settle down with, and you can have all the money you need,” she said to him the last time he saw her, her coral-colored lips pressed into a smirk.
