Winter Hearts

by A. E. Radley

  “Sure!” Wyatt said, and grabbed Cara’s hand. “Can we, Mama?” she asked.

  “Fine. But we don’t need to keep her long. It sounds like Miss Phillie is a busy woman, and we don’t want to get in her way.”

  Jesse followed Cara and Wyatt with Misha still clinging hard to her neck. Cara led them through the store, past shelves of supplies, displays full of the kind of things Jesse assumed truckers must need, and rows of drinks that ranged from brownish gray vegan energy shakes to bright blue wine coolers. She finally stopped when they got to a bright red door marked Employees Only.

  Cara gently pried Wyatt’s hand from her own. “If you’ll excuse me, I just need to go in and let Phillie know I’ll be bringing you in. As long as she’s not slammed or on the phone, she would be glad to meet you all.”

  Wyatt watched as she walked in and closed the door softly behind her. Then she turned and faced her mother. “Oh, Mama, I really like Cara. Don’t you?”

  Jesse had to agree. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, something happened to her when she started to think about Cara. Seeing Cara had given her a much stronger reaction. It was a feeling she had never had before for a man or a woman, and as much as it scared her, it also thrilled her.

  A moment later, Cara opened the door again and ushered the three in. Jesse followed Wyatt and, led by Cara, was whisked through a long corridor and into a big office with a black metal desk in the center. Around the desk were two sets of shelves and a large filing cabinet with one drawer open to display the immaculately labeled and kept files. She had a feeling Phillie was not a typical small business owner.

  The woman herself came out from a little nook in which a coffee area was stowed to shake her hand. She smiled, but her eyes were stony and watchful, and combined with the girth of her and the short clip of her hair, served to make her look like a severe figure.

  “Phillipa Herbig. Phillie’s what they call me.”

  “I’m Jesse Waters. It’s not a nickname.” She chastised herself for adding on the last part, but it came unbidden to her lips and left her shamefaced.

  Phillie nodded and let her hand drop. When she saw Wyatt, however, her eyes lit up and she immediately dropped down into a crouch. “And who is this lovely young woman?”

  Wyatt giggled at being called a young woman, then held out her hand as she had been taught to do. “My name is Wyatt. And this,” she said, patting the back of her brother’s shoe, “is my little brother, Misha.”

  Phillie shook the girl’s hand with vigor. “It’s a pleasure to meet you and your brother, Wyatt. Do you think it would be okay with your mom if you two had a little hot cocoa?”

  She didn’t look at Jesse, but Jesse could tell it was a test, and she desperately wanted to pass. “If it wouldn’t inconvenience you,” she said, and Misha scrambled down from her arms onto his feet. He gave Cara a red-faced smile, then dashed along behind his sister and the older woman toward the little coffee area. Jesse felt herself deflate.

  Cara whispered from beside her. “She’s not as gruff as she seems.”

  “Good thing,” Jesse murmured back. Phillie gave them a look and she felt her face go blotchy with embarrassment again. Then the older woman turned back to making cocoa for the two happy kids and Jesse closed her eyes with relief.

  “What else is on the agenda today?” Cara asked. “You already did groceries and came here.”

  Jesse didn’t have a plan, but she didn’t want to let Cara know that, so she dodged. “I really enjoyed meeting everyone so far.”

  Cara raised an eyebrow, but didn’t call her on her dodge. “Even Jim?” she explained.

  Jesse laughed. “Even him.”

  “I think you’ll like Phillie,” Cara said, so softly Jesse barely heard it over the whir of some machine Phillie was still running in the coffee nook. “She can seem a little gruff at first, but once you get under that shell, she’s a teddy bear.”

  Jesse smiled. “I hope you’re right,” she said as Phillie and the kids moved away from the machine in the corner.

  Wyatt walked behind her brother dutifully as he carried his little mug of cocoa, holding her own as if it were the Queen’s china and blowing over the top to cool it. They settled at Phillie’s desk where, once the cups were on the flat surface, Jesse was surprised to see Phillie pull away from them and gesture for Cara to take her place. Cara, to her credit, hopped right up and took the chair behind the big desk. She started playing with the kids and ignoring the adults, which gave Jesse and Phillie a chance to get to know each other better. Just what Jesse wanted.

  Phillie’s eyes settled on Jesse like a lead weight and Jesse squirmed uncomfortably in the leather chair. It squeaked under her thick pants.

  "What brings you to this side of paradise?" the older woman asked. She watched with her cold eyes as Jesse fidgeted. No one else seemed to notice, as the kids played at dunking their mini marshmallows with Cara.

  "Your accent pegs you from somewhere more southerly. Tennessee?"

  "Texas," Jesse said, glad she could say something that wouldn't be scrutinized.

  Phillie’s eyes went wide. "Texas? I didn't think Cara would bring a Texas girl home. Too many guns, not enough rights."

  Jesse gaped at her. Then she realized what the Matriarch was doing and snapped her mouth shut. She smiled tightly. "No guns; rights for everyone. At least, that's how I feel. I can't speak for anyone else."

  "No, you certainly can't," Phillie’s said, but she didn't look convinced at all. If anything, the set of her jaw was tighter and her eyes more narrowed. "So, like I asked, what brings you here?"

  "Work."

  "What do you do?"

  "I'm in technical support."

  "Computers?"

  "Phones." Despite herself, she smiled. She hadn't had someone to rapid-fire with since college, and that had been far too long. "Androids."

  "Cell phones," Phillie said with a shudder. She tamped a hand down on a push-button landline phone set on her desk. "This is a phone."

  "If you ever want my help, I'd be glad to walk you through setting up a cell. They're good for long trips and emergencies."

  At that, Cara head popped up. "Phil, this is your sign. I told you that you needed a phone, and here someone waltzes into your office who helps people like you for a living."

  Phillie grimaced. "I'm not like anyone else. You know I just don't want a phone. Has nothing to do with not understanding."

  But she looked somewhere between afraid and intrigued, which was the sweet spot where Jesse was concerned. Jesse couldn’t help herself; she jumped right into work mode and pulled out her own phone. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a look?”

  Phillie glared at her but Jesse was used to dirty looks in the field. When she worked in the Houston field office, she got them a hundred times a day from disgruntled customers and potential customers all the time.

  “I really like my phone. It’s easy to use, and took me about fifteen seconds to set up just how I wanted it. It’s new – not really like any other phone on the market.” She jiggled it in the air. “Want to look at it with me? I have a simulation on her that shows what it would be like to set up a new phone.”

  “Do it,” Cara said without looking up from the tower of marshmallows she and the kids were building.

  Phillie sniffed. “Can’t hurt to take a look, but I’m not buying anything.”

  “And I’m not selling anything,” Jesse said. She held her smile back, because she knew if she grinned as wide as she wanted, she would lose Phillie. As she walked her through the simulation, she could see the set of Phillie’s jaw loosen and her posture relax. She asked questions and made selections based on the answers, just like she always had, until Phillie actually did something with her face that looked like it was near a smile. “What do you think?”

  “If I had to get a phone, I guess that wouldn’t be a bad one. For emergencies, you know.”

  “Of course,” Jesse said with a nod. She put away her phone feeli
ng elated.

  Phillie clapped and stood to her full height, which Jesse had forgotten was quite substantial. She towered over her without that hint of a smile again. Then she looked at the kids, and a real smile popped onto her face. “I hate to kick the four of you out, but Cara can attest that I am a busy woman with a business to run. I can’t spend all my days having this much fun.” She turned and a little of the light of her smile shone on Jesse, and she felt like maybe she hadn’t lost her completely. “Cara, can you bring the kids out and let them pick something for the road?”

  “Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” Jesse tried, but Phillie just jerked her head for Cara to follow her instructions. She did, leaving the mugs still on the desk and the destroyed tower in all its white, puffy destruction. Jesse tried to move to leave too, but Phillie stayed her with one large forearm. When they were finally alone, she turned on her and all traces of that smile were gone. “I appreciate what you did to help me with the phone, so if I decide to get one, I’ll go with you.” Jesse didn’t interrupt to tell her she wasn’t sales. That would have been suicide. “But I have something to say, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.” She stared hard at Jesse until Jesse flinched under the pressure and looked away. “Cara’s a good kid. She has a sweet, giving heart, and she loves people like you. She loves kids. She loves being needed. But I won’t let you hurt her. So I’m telling you to stay away. You don’t have to cross the street when you see her coming, but you need to let this one go.”

  “What?” Jesse was flabbergasted. She had never intended anything toward Cara, but here Phillie was accusing her of… something.

  “You heard me. I won’t tell you again, and I won’t have another woman waltz in and break her heart. I have connections in this town, and if I find out that you’ve hurt Cara, I’ll use them.” It wasn’t a threat, but it really was, and Jesse heard it for what it really was.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Phillie sighed. She settled into her desk and swept the remnants of the children’s game to the side. Then she pulled her notebook back out and opened it to the page she was on. “You don’t have to understand, girl. You just have to agree.”

  “Okay…”

  “Good. You can see yourself out.”

  Jesse turned and let herself out. She watched, helpless, as the door closed automatically behind her. She had no idea what had just happened.

  CHAPTER 6

  Two days later, Jesse still hadn’t figured out why Phillie had such a bad taste in her mouth about her after only meeting her once. She wasn’t perfect, but she considered herself a pretty likable person. It was such a conundrum that she didn’t even realize until she was halfway through a doodle that she had been drawing Cara’s name in swirly script all over the page in front of her. There was even a little heart at the tip of the last A.

  That gave her pause. The last time she had taken to drawing someone’s name all over her things, she had been in high school, and she had two kids to show for that affection. Stifling a mortified groan, she put the page on the bottom of the stack and tapped the stack of papers roughly on her desk. She had to focus. She was five minutes out from her first post-move conference call, and she wasn’t going to let some kind of childish friend-crush get her head in a tangle. She was a professional.

  A ding from her phone, which she had somehow forgotten to silence, roused her from her brooding. She silenced the phone then checked the message, a text from her ex-husband, Chaz.

  “Don’t be mad, but I booked a flight for next week.”

  She seethed. Of course she was angry, but if she let him know, he would make a thing of it, and as much as Jesse didn’t need a friend-crush, she needed her ex hurt and pouting even less. She shot back a text to the affirmative, told him she was about to be on a call, and he said he would call her about it later. That finished, Jesse checked herself in her computer screen again. Her hair was in place. Her complexion was clear for once. She even had everything she needed on the desk in front of her. Now all she had to do was wait and hope she remembered everything.

  An hour later, she was finished. She pulled the band out of her hair, shook her hair out, and twisted it up into a bun at the back of her head. It wasn’t pretty, but it was more functional, especially with her brushing it off her neck a whole lot less. She pushed away from her desk. With the call out of the way, she had the whole rest of the day to wait for Chaz to explain why he suddenly needed to see the kids when he hadn’t in a month before the move.

  “I got busy at work,” he told her later. She knew that, but it didn’t make it any better. She grimaced but kept her mouth shut. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

  “Don’t call me that. We aren’t together anymore.”

  “And whose choice was that?” he shot back. Then, a moment later, his voice was softer again. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I need to respect your boundaries, and your decision to dissolve our marriage has no bearing on our current situation.”

  She hated when he talked like that. The gears in her head started to turn and she tuned him out as he talked some more about feelings and rights. When she finally tuned back in, he was saying something about taking her out to dinner. She finally piped up, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. I just moved here and I don’t know very many people. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

  “The wrong idea?” he asked. She could practically see the pout on his face, and it turned her stomach. As much as her friends had always gone doe-eyed over sensitive bad boys with leather jackets and deep souls, Jesse had always wanted someone a little tougher. A man’s man. Someone who might rough her up a little, but only enough to get her pulse racing, nothing scary. “What wrong idea would that be?” Chaz asked.

  “I don’t want anyone to think I’m in a relationship.”

  “Oh.” The seconds ticked by and Jesse wondered if he had hung up. It was only when she heard him suck in a breath that she knew he hadn’t. “Okay, don’t worry about that. I can handle platonic.”

  “Can you?”

  “Watch me,” he said, and she knew he would be tilting his head, his curly hair falling back, with a goofy grin on his face. She couldn’t help but smile. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He showed up three days later with two duffel bags and a to-go bag from a local fried chicken restaurant. Jesse tried to hide her grimace at the thought of both kids being slimy from chicken and mashed potatoes, and she hoped she looked pleasant enough when it was her time to give him a hug. He didn’t act offended, so she figured she got away with it.

  Cara, who was inside helping her with the heater’s chattiness, shook his hand when he came in. Chaz gave her a wounded look for only a second before a big smile spread across his face and he clapped her on the back.

  “Jess, why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have -” she started, but he was too absorbed in introducing himself in the most inane way possible to Cara, who also couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

  Jesse tried to get his attention, but Cara just winked at her and answered all the questions about herself that he shot at her. Jesse figured it was him trying to get to know her new squeeze, so she let it peter down to nothing before a devious idea popped into her head.

  “It’s great to live in an age where two women can be together without dealing with the negative implications of not having someone around to ‘take care of’ them,” Chaz said with the air quotes. “Jesse has never needed anyone to take care of her, and I doubt you have either.”

  Cara smirked. “No, I haven’t, and no, she definitely seems to be able to take care of everything herself. I had to convince her to let me come by and take a look at the heater,” Cara said, raising a wrench she still had in her dirty hand. “And that’s only because I’ve lived here my entire life and Jesse doesn’t know a heater from a hole in the ground.”

  Chaz laughed too loudly. Jesse took her opportunity.

  “You know, I was
wondering, Chaz, if you don’t mind staying here with the kids while Cara takes me out. We haven’t been able to spend any time alone yet.”

  He blinked hard, then smiled harder and nodded. “That sounds like a great idea. The kids and I will eat and I’ll put on a movie. Anything in particular they might want to watch?”

  “Anything but the new fish movie. I’m saving that one for next week.”

  “Gotcha.” His smile was so bright, Jesse almost closed her eyes as if to block its shine. “You two go have some fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Jesse caught herself before she responded, then nodded and gave him a side hug. “Thanks, Chaz. We’ll be back later.”

  When they climbed up into Cara’s truck, Jesse couldn’t help but start laughing. Cara joined in quietly until Jesse was done, then raised an eyebrow at her.

  “What?” Jesse asked.

  “I had no idea we were an item,” Cara told her. She cranked the truck anyway, though, and started down the driveway.

  Jesse blushed pink. “We’re not. I’m sorry about that. I just… I needed to get away from him already. He’s…” Jesse reached in the air for the right word, but couldn’t keep up with it.

  “He’s a lot.”

  “Yes. He’s a lot.”

  Jesse watched as the road flew by and wondered where Cara was taking her. A bad feeling slithered into her chest and warned her in a hissing whisper that she was doing something wrong, and as much as she tried to ignore it, it only got stronger. When they finally reached their destination, Jesse looked around, not knowing where they were.

  “My house.”

  “I thought you said we were neighbors,” Jesse said, thinking of the five minutes that had gone by as she wrestled with her internal stuff.

  “We are. If I need to, I can get to your house on foot in less time, but the polite thing to do is drive on the road.”

  “Nice.”

  Cara killed the truck and turned in the seat to face her. “I figured since Chaz expected us to go somewhere, I would take you somewhere close by. In case he calls. I’m not sure how great he is with the kids.”