I leave the water and walk over to the cooler to get a beer, but Miranda and Corey follow me.
I glance from one concerned-looking sister to the other as I pop open a beer.
Miranda lowers her voice. “Gigi told us why you don’t want to get married. Again,” she adds with raised eyebrows.
I tilt my head, and Corey leans in conspiratorially. “She said you and your mother are unnaturally obsessed with Jane Austen and that your dream since you were a little girl was to be just like Jane when you grew up.”
O-ka-ay.
“Being a famous novelist would leave you no time for domestic things like taking care of a home and kids. So marriage was out for you.”
“Ri-ight. I guess.” I tilt my head back and empty about half a bottle of Lone Star down my throat.
“And you wanted to try marriage out the way most people try on a prom dress. Just for a night, right? With sex, of course.” Miranda laughs. “Marriage would suck without sex. But so would a prom. I mean, what’s the point?”
I drop my bottle and watch the rest of the beer pour out onto the grass.
“Is Logan good in bed?” Corey whispers to me. “I mean, I always had a cowboy fantasy, and Logan’s forearms sure are muscular. Not to mention the way he fills out those jeans. Did he—you know—satisfy you? Because Gigi’s waiting until marriage to find out.”
She’s what??!
I jerk my head toward Logan and Gigi by the water.
They aren’t having sex? So that means Logan hasn’t had sex since Vegas—with me.
I suck in my breath. “A lady never tells.” I grab a fresh beer from the cooler. “Excuse me.”
Not knowing what else to do, I decide I might as well get my interview over with. I motion to Skip to follow me over to the lone picnic table up on the bank.
“Okay,” I say once we sit down, and he’s still staring down at the creek. His gaze is trained on Gigi’s ass. “Eyes back in your head.”
Skip drags his gaze back to me. “Do you think all New York City girls look like that family?”
“I would imagine not. But who knows?”
I take a few sips of my beer. Okay, more like several really big gulps. Now the bottle’s half-empty. Skip watches me as he matches my gulps with one small one.
“Boy, that was amazing pie, Macey. You made it?”
When I nod, he sighs. “The best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Quit the flattery. You already have the interview. See, maybe you should have tried complimenting me instead of blackmailing me.”
He takes out his phone and readies his iPad. “I’m going to record your words on my phone, and I’ll be typing into the pad. But I can pause the recording anytime you say ‘off the record,’ okay? First let’s start with something easy. Your opinion on why the legend is so popular here. Is it all because of Jane Austen or something else? You start whenever you’re ready.”
He presses record as I watch Gigi laughing at something Logan said. I take several more large sips of beer.
“I can’t remember a time when my mother wasn’t consumed by her.” My gaze passes over Skip to the dark woods behind him. “By a ghost, for God sakes. Because Mama used to say Jane never asked to be Queen. ‘A true heroine never does, Macey. A true heroine just is. And Jane Austen’s ghost certainly never asked to be jailed against her will and kept apart from her soul mate.’ But whether the whole thing is true or not, one thing I know for sure—the spirit of Jane Austen is no ordinary ghost. And my position at The Cowherd is no ordinary bar job. As my daddy once said to me, ‘Darlin’, running The Cowherd Whiskey Saloon & Chapel isn’t like running your normal, run-of-the-mill bar. It’s like adding gasoline to whiskey and praying it doesn’t catch fire.’”
Skip nods solemnly as he pushes the phone closer to my mouth and types vigorously into his iPad.
And I keep talking. “But the legend of Darcy, Texas didn’t begin here. It started all the way across the Atlantic where town founder and first mayor Frederick Woodholm Haskins was still living in England with his new bride, Vivian Elmstock Haskins. That’s when Frederick strayed with another woman. And that’s when the facts get fuzzy and the legend gets deeper. It’s widely believed that an outraged and humiliated Vivian agreed to still sail with him across the Atlantic, and settle in the Texas Hill Country part of America he’d visited and fallen in love with two years prior, on one condition—that he name their landing place after the author who wrote about romance and that he kidnap that same author’s spirit from her peaceful resting place in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral and bring her to Texas. Jane Austen wasn’t even that famous yet, but literary people already respected her writings. And of course, soon she would become known the world over.”
“What about Pride and Prejudice?” Skip asks. “How did the greatest love story ever written play a role?”
“One evening,” I say, “Vivian found an open copy of the novel alongside an unknown bottle of perfume in her husband’s private study, and she put two and two together. Rumor has it there was hell to pay when he returned home from the local bar. But Vivian didn’t just yell at her husband—she also picked up that copy of Pride and Prejudice and read it cover to cover. And she decided Jane Austen’s romantic touch must have been the X factor in her husband choosing another woman over her.”
“The X factor.” Skip nods vigorously and continues typing. “Of course.”
