The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

by Shirley Jump

  The coward in him leaped at the change in subject. He cleared his throat. “Uh, Meri sent me. She wants...one of everything.”

  “One of everything? Oh, my.” Betty’s wide face broke into a generous smile. She bustled behind the counter and set about boxing up the sweet treats. “Well, it’s about time. If you ask me, that girl spent too much time looking through the glass case instead of enjoying what’s inside.”

  By the time Betty was done, she had filled four large white boxes with cupcakes, brownies, cookies, chocolates and all kinds of things Jack couldn’t name. He started to reach for his wallet, but Betty waved it away.

  “On the house. For you, for what you did, watching over my Eli when he was there, and for Meri, who deserves all these and more.” She placed the boxes in his hands, then gave him a soft kiss on the cheek.

  Jack mumbled something that sounded like a thank-you, then got back in his truck and hated himself for letting Betty Delacorte think he was some kind of hero. It was a good long while before he put it in gear and drove back to Meri’s cottage. He dropped the boxes on her front porch, then headed home, like the coward he was.

  * * *

  Meri slid out of bed and padded barefoot down the hall. She glanced out the window at Grandpa Ray’s cottage, mere feet away from her own. His window was open, the lights off, and if she held her breath, she could barely catch the even sound of his soft snores. Maybe it was her imagination or stubborn hope, but she thought he sounded better than when she’d first arrived two weeks ago.

  That gave her hope for the future. Maybe if Grandpa kept taking his medications and kept on eating right and doing the daily walks she’d instituted, he could get better. She wasn’t naive enough to think Grandpa would live forever, but she’d at least like a few more years. Grandpa Ray was the closest thing she had to a real parent, and she’d always pictured him walking her down the aisle, holding his first great-grandchild, sitting on her porch and watching the sun go down over the world.

  She realized, though, that once Grandpa Ray was better, she would have no reason to stay in Stone Gap. She had a job waiting for her in New York, a career that had barely gotten its wings, and she needed to get back there. Get back to her dreams.

  Get her life back together, period.

  She thought of the camera up in her room, gathering dust. Maybe tomorrow she’d take it and go down to the water. Try to snap a few pictures.

  Maybe.

  In the kitchen, Meri opened the first box of desserts from Aunt Betty’s bakery. She didn’t know why Jack had just dropped them off and gone home. She’d called his house, but gotten no answer, and when she’d asked Grandpa Ray about Jack leaving earlier, he told her that Jack was a man who needed space sometimes.

  Best thing to do is give him that space. Eventually, he’ll get to feeling lonely and he’ll come back around to living in the world again. He’s just having trouble feeling like he belongs.

  She knew that feeling, knew it well. Though why Jack Barlow—war hero, town bachelor, loyal son and friend—would feel like that, she didn’t know.

  She grabbed the box, pulled on a sweatshirt, then headed out to sit on the Adirondack chair. She settled on the hard wooden seat, the box on her lap, and was bringing the first bite of a raspberry thumbprint cookie to her lips when she saw a familiar figure cutting a long, straight path across the placid surface of the lake.

  Meri put aside the box, then picked her way down the path to the water. The full moon above her lit her way, casting its pale light across Jack’s back, glinting off his arms as he raised them, then dug in again, swimming hard and fast. His arms were long, sleek machines in the water, pulling his body through the dark surface with easy, swift strokes.

  By the time she reached the bank, he had paused, treading water, his breath coming in fast, short gasps. After a moment, he started toward shore. He rose up, a magnificent-looking man, the water glistening across the ridges and planes of his muscular body. She took in a breath, but still her heart skipped a beat and her pulse thundered in her veins.

  She’d been talking about decadence and fantasies earlier, as if she meant chocolates and cookies, when really, her biggest fantasy was a six-foot-two, sleek, wet, all-American male stud. Holy cow.

  “Meri? What are you doing out here?”

  “Uh...couldn’t sleep.” She held up the half-eaten cookie as if that explained everything.

  “Me neither.” He cast a glance at the ground, then let out a soft curse.

  “What?”

  “Forgot a towel.”

  She grinned. “You were in that much of a rush to take a swim?”

  “Sometimes, yeah, I am.” He shook his head, sending a soft spray of water in an outward arc.

  Meri put the cookie on a stump, then unzipped her sweatshirt and handed it to Jack. “Here.”

  “I can’t take that.”

  “You prefer to stand there and freeze to death?”

  “No, I just don’t want to take a jacket from...”

  “From a girl?” She propped her opposite fist on her hip and shook the jacket at him. “Don’t be a gentleman at the cost of being an idiot, Jack.”

  He stepped forward, so close she could see the water droplets glistening on his skin, reflecting the moonlight in tiny oval diamonds. The cool air made steam rise off his warm body, and a part of her ached to touch that steam, to let her hand trail down his arms, his chest, his legs. “What about you?” he said.

  “What...what about me?”

  “Aren’t you going to be cold?”

  “I’m...” Her gaze roamed over his body again before she jerked her attention back to his face. “I’m quite warm right now.”

  A knowing smile slid across his face and he shifted even closer. “You have changed, Meri Prescott.”

  “I keep telling you that.”

  “The Meri I remember wasn’t so...bold.” He trailed a finger down her lips, over her chin, down her neck, lingering above her cleavage. “The Meri I remember would blush at the mere mention of sex.”

  “I don’t blush anymore, Jack.”

  “Oh, I bet I could make you blush.”

  She raised her chin, her heart thudding so hard in her chest she was sure half of Stone Gap could hear the rapid thud-thud-thud. “I’d like to see you try.”

  His finger, cool against her skin, slipped over the ridge of her V-neck and slowly drew a lazy line between her breasts. Her nipples, without the barrier of a bra, tightened against the thin cotton. Jack smiled, then leaned in until his lips were brushing against hers. “Do you still close your eyes when you kiss?”

  “Only one way to find out.” She’d hoped he would join her on her dessert gorgefest/picnic. And hoped that maybe, after the rush to have the treats, she could indulge in him, too. Fulfill the fantasies that had starred in her dreams ever since her first real date with Jack.

  But then he had ducked out without a word, leaving the boxes on her porch and leaving her wondering if maybe she was fantasizing about the wrong man. But here he was, in the flesh, and what amazing flesh it was. Hot enough to make her forget the boxes on her porch and the missed picnic.

  “Do you want to find out?” she asked.

  “I have wanted to know the answer to that question for two weeks,” he murmured. He kissed her, hot, fiery, hard and fast, his mouth opening against hers like a hunger too long denied. Her body responded like quicksilver, surging against his, heat racing through her veins, into her core. The sweatshirt tumbled to the ground and Meri reached for Jack, her hands sliding against the cool slipperiness of his wet skin.

  He groaned and lowered his touch to her back, then over her buttocks, drawing her pelvis up and into his erection. She wanted him and she wanted him now.

  “Jack,” she whispered, into his mouth, against his tongue, a whisper that beca
me a plea the second time. “Jack.”

  His hands snaked beneath her T-shirt and up to cup her breasts. The cool touch made her nipples harden instantly, and fire erupted deep inside her gut. He nudged the shirt upward and an instant later, her breasts were exposed to the air, to his touch, to a naughty deliciousness of being outside, in the dark.

  She ran her hands down his back, then under the elastic banding of his swimsuit. His skin was cooler here, which only encouraged her touch, around his hard, tight butt, then sliding one hand around the front to grasp his erection and slide her hand along its length.

  Jack let out a sharp breath, then a curse. He stepped back and her hand slid off him and out of his shorts. Her shirt fluttered back down into place. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this. I’m not...”

  “It’s okay, Jack. I’m not sixteen anymore. I know what sex is. And how to have it.” She grinned and stepped toward him, but he moved back again.

  “I’m not...” He let out a curse again. “I’m not interested in you that way.”

  He might as well have thrown her into the lake. She sputtered in surprise. How had she read the signals so wrong? What had she missed? “But you...you kissed me. Twice. And then this...whatever that just was.”

  “They were just kisses, Meri. Not a relationship.”

  The hurt stung, like a blade slicing along her heart, but she raised her chin, defiant, cool. “Who the hell said I wanted a relationship?”

  He moved into her space, his dark eyes meeting hers. Heat curled between them. “Are you telling me you want a fling? One night with the guy who might have been all those years ago? One screw for old times’ sake?”

  Her eyes burned but she refused to let Jack know he had hurt her. “You might think you’re doing a great job with this jerk-of-the-year act, Jack, but I’m not buying it. I know you. Better than you think. And you are not this—” she waved a hand between them “—arrogant bastard.”

  “Maybe you’re the one that’s wrong. Maybe this is who I was all along.”

  Maybe that was so. Maybe she had idealized and romanticized their past and had never seen the real Jack Barlow. She bent down, picked up the sweatshirt, then pressed it to his chest. “Better cover up before your icy heart freezes to a stop.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Icy heart.

  Those two words stayed with Jack. Stayed like a thorn in his thumb. She didn’t know. She didn’t understand. And he wasn’t about to slice open that slab of iceberg sitting in his chest and explain what had changed.

  He pounded through the streets of Stone Gap, ignoring the heat of the rising sun, the thick humidity that forced his lungs to work overtime. He ran, down streets, in and out of parks, through parking lots. He ran and ran, as if a demon was chasing him.

  He hadn’t paid attention to his path or his route. Partly because he knew Stone Gap like the back of his hand, and partly because he’d figured he’d run until the words icy heart stopped ringing in his head. Then he rounded a corner, and his steps faltered, and the masochistic side of him laughed.

  The Stone Gap cemetery loomed in front of him, its wrought-iron gates propped open, revealing a shady, flower-lined path that curved like a mistress.

  He cursed, and lowered his head. But when he tried to power forward, to run past it like he had the mailbox on Juniper Street and the bike rack at the Publix, his feet refused to go straight. Instead, his steps veered right, off the sidewalk and down that shady path.

  He didn’t need a map. Didn’t need a guide. He knew where to turn, which of the winding paths to take. He hadn’t been inside this cemetery in more than five years, not since his grandmother’s funeral, but it was as if he’d been here yesterday.

  A hill crested in front of him, lush green lawn leading up to a rhododendron that had gotten overgrown. At the back stood a thick, tall oak tree, its branches spreading like arms over the granite stones beneath its shade.

  A stone mausoleum stood to the right of the tree. It dominated the hill and the landscape with its ornate carved angels perched atop pillars that sat on three granite steps. Stone flowerpots held blooming annuals, so well-tended not a single bloom had faded. Letters carved into the top generations ago were beginning to darken with age, but the name was clear.

  Prescott.

  Beside it, a smaller gravestone, still shiny and unblemished, less elaborate and far more simple, reading Delacorte. The families flanking each other in death as they did in life.

  Jack took a step. Something crunched under his foot, and he froze. His heart stilled, his breath held. His brain whirred like an engine skipping a beat. It was a stick, just a stick.

  But his mind didn’t see or hear stick. In Jack’s mind, the snap had been a mine, a trigger tripped by a careless footstep. Get down, get down, his mind screamed.

  He clenched his fists. Forced a breath in. Out. Another.

  There was no danger here. He was safe. There were no troops behind him, no men waiting for him to signal their next move. Nothing but a shady oak tree that had lost a branch. He was safe.

  Then he glanced up the hill again, at the small, simple stone with Eli’s name etched across the front.

  Jack wasn’t safe. Far from it.

  * * *

  The reminder of her promise came in the form of a monogrammed envelope with a giant gold AL intertwined with a smaller P. Heavy hand-cut linen cardstock—the kind of paper Meri’s mother used for important occasions.

  Hidden meaning—don’t ignore this.

  Meri was half tempted to just toss the invitation in the trash. She held it out separate from the rest of the mail as she headed back up the walk to Grandpa Ray’s house. She glanced around for Jack, but he hadn’t been by in days.

  Was he avoiding her after what had happened that night at the lake? The Jack she remembered had never run from a problem—he’d always gone headfirst into everything he tried. It was part of what had made him so perfect for the military. But this Jack, this wounded man who had returned, seemed to do the opposite. Jack Barlow had become an enigma, one that intrigued her and drove her crazy all at the same time. True to his word, he had fixed her car, driving it off to the shop one morning and returning it ten times better than before. She wasn’t sure what all he had done, but the aged Toyota purred like a kitten now and sported four new tires. He wouldn’t take a dime of payment, just dropped off the keys and told her to drive safe. Because he was her friend? More? Or because he was just being a good neighbor? Either way, she should forget him—the problem was getting that message to her brain.

  From his seat on the porch swing, Grandpa nodded toward her as she climbed the porch stairs. “I see from the fancy-dancy envelope you’re holding that Her Majesty is requesting your presence.”

  “She wants me to photograph one of her events.” She handed over Grandpa Ray’s pile of junk mail, then took a seat on the space beside him. “The new LL Bean catalog came in the mail for you today.”

  “Just what I need. Another flannel shirt.” He grinned, then gestured toward the white envelope. “You at least going to open the summons?”

  “I’m not even sure if I’m going. I still haven’t picked up my camera or managed to take a single photo.” She blew her hair out of her face. “Besides, I don’t know if I want to deal with all my mother’s stuffy friends.”

  “What better way to start taking pictures again than at the zoo?” Grandpa winked.

  Meri swallowed a laugh. “That’s not nice.”

  “I’ve been to your mother’s parties. It’s like watching a safari. All those animals, trying to either kill or outdo the others.” Grandpa Ray nodded at the envelope. “If I can eat salad, you can go to your mother’s shindig.”

  “Are you comparing eating healthy to dealing with my mother?”

  “They’re almost the same thing, aren�
�t they?” Grandpa Ray grinned. “Your momma can be as irritating as a billy goat in a bad mood, but that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to ignore her. Blood is blood, after all. And besides, she’s finally taking an interest in you doing something other than looking pretty and wearing one of those crown things...”

  “Tiara.”

  “Tee-hee foolishness, if you ask me. If she can take an interest, then you can at least help her out with a few snapshots.”

  Meri toyed with the envelope. She bit her lower lip, then finally let out a sigh. “You’re right.”

  “That’s one of the perks of being the oldest man alive.”

  She nudged him with her elbow. “You are not the oldest man alive. Heck, you’re not even the oldest man in Stone Gap.”

  “Tell that to my knees and my ticker.” When she shot a look of concern his way, Grandpa Ray smiled and patted her hand. “I’m just fine, Merry Girl. Thanks to those salads and vegetables.”

  She laughed. “Okay, okay. Hint taken.” She slid a finger under the flap and lifted the thick paper, then slid out the single square sheet inside. “Well, it’s definitely not a backyard barbecue. Apparently, she wants to celebrate the first day of summer with an outdoor extravaganza. There will be a dance floor, a band and—”

  “The regular Prescott simple shindig accoutrements.”

  Meri laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word accoutrements.”

  “Hey, just because I live like a hermit in the woods doesn’t mean I can’t dazzle with a few big words here and there.” He tipped his head toward her. “It pays to do the crossword puzzle once in a while.”

  Meri pressed a kiss to her grandfather’s cheek then got to her feet. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Me, too. That means you can get back to your life and stop hanging around here, keeping an old man company.”

  “I haven’t minded one bit,” Meri said. She looked out over the woods beside them, the curve of the road that led away from her beloved lake and toward the road that would take her back to New York. “Besides, I’m not quite sure what life it is that I’m going back to. Exactly.”