by Unknown
Jericho and Zoey were sitting side by side at the bar. They’d been there for thirty minutes, waiting for the crowd to thin. Chantilly’s was packed to the rafters and Walker McCleary, proprietor of McCleary’s Pharmacy and newly minted author of A Time to Heal, the biography of pioneer pharmacist August McCleary, stood by the buffet table surrounded by his adoring community.
Whenever Jericho thought about Zoey’s illustrious family, both branches of which had founded and formed this town, he couldn’t help feeling intimidated by how deep her roots ran. The kicker was she didn’t seem to appreciate the power of her heritage. Family ties meant a lot to Jericho, probably because he had so few.
On the long buffet table sat a white sheet cake baked in the shape of an apothecary’s mortar and pestle with royal blue icing that spelled out: “Congratulations Walker.” Even though Walker’s book was hardcover, someone had put “Paperback Writer” on the jukebox.
The walls were made of Texas limestone, and the floor was stained cement. The owner of the bar, gristle-bearded Jasper Grass, who looked like an 1860s prospect miner, was behind the counter, twisting caps off beer bottles as fast as people lined up to ask for them. Nothing much had changed here in the three years Jericho had been away.
Against his better judgment, he had shown up for the party after Zoey had called and begged him to come. He had a tough time denying her anything, and truth be told, he didn’t want to be alone tonight, not after that bumpy job interview.
Zoey swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees on her barstool while simultaneously tossing another peanut into the air, and snagging it in mid-whirl.
He shook his head. “Amazing talent.”
“Cultivated by years of misspent youth,” she chirped zealously.
But he detected a wistful note in her tone. What was that about?
“Hey, watch what I can do with a cherry stem.” She finished the revolution, fished a maraschino cherry from her cherry martini, and popped it into her mouth. Her jaw worked for a quick minute, and then she proudly stuck out her tongue to show him the woody cherry stem tied into a neat knot. “Ta-da.”
Cherry juice clung to her lips, but she didn’t seem to care, and that was okay by him. She folded the tangled cherry stem into a cocktail napkin. In the golden glow of the neon beer signs, she looked like a naughty celestial nymph. A hot ripple started in the pit of his stomach and undulated downward in serpentine waves. Clenching his jaw, he picked up his drink and glanced away from her adroit pink tongue.
She inclined her head toward Walker and his congregation. “Maybe we should just go over and muscle everyone out of the way.”
“Patience,” he said.
“You know that is not my strong suit.”
“All the more reason to cultivate it. A good archaeologist is infinitely patient.” He slid her a sidelong glance. Her whole-wheat colored hair was drawn up in a casual, girl-next-door ponytail that, in spite of its messy innocence, made her look wildly sexy. When had she gotten so damn beautiful?
“That’s why you’re a brilliant archaeologist. You’ve got the patience of … of …” She snapped her fingers. “Who was that Bible guy?”
“Job.”
She shook her head. “Not him. Job was kinda whiny. ‘Why me, God,’ and all that. I’m talking about the dude who worked for his would-be father-in-law for seven years to marry the woman he loved and the guy pulled a bait and switch and made him marry the older, ugly daughter first and then he had to work for the guy for seven more years before he got to marry the one he really wanted.”
“That’s a twisted version of the chain of events, but you mean Jacob.”
“Yeah. That’s the one.” She shook her index finger at him. “You’ve got the patience of Jacob. I mean besides all that waiting, once he finally snagged Rachel he had to put up with two wives. Can you imagine that honey-do list? ‘Hey, Jake, you brought camel dung in on your sandals, clean up your mess.’ Or, ‘We’re having date cake for dinner, shimmy up that date palm and get us a bushel,’ or ‘I don’t care if you visited her tent last night, it’s my turn for a little pinch and tickle.’ ” She paused for a breath. “How come in polygamous cultures it’s always one guy and gobs of women and not one woman and gobs of guys? Maybe because guys wrote down the history, ya think?”
He smiled. Whiplash chatter. That was his Zoey. The woman possessed a brain so nimble that few could fully keep up with her sharp—and granted occasionally nonsensical—mental acumen, but he could. “Pinch and tickle?”
She nudged him lightly in the ribs with her elbow, lowered her eyelashes, and winked. “You know what I mean.”
His pulse skipped. Was she flirting with him? Quick, deflect, deflect.
“How’s the kitten?” he asked, surprised to hear his voice come out hoarse and scratchy.
“Adorable. I bought Eggy a bed and a scratching post and a litter box that I put in my bathroom. I had no idea kittens slept so much.”
“He’ll be more active at night. Cats are nocturnal.”
“Oh good. I am so not a morning person.”
“Tell me about it,” Jericho said. “Remember that time at astronomy camp when you hid in the closet because you didn’t want to get up for eight o’clock classes and the entire camp went on a crazed manhunt searching for you?”
Her eyes met his. “And a crackerjack detective of a camp counselor found me sound asleep and totally safe.”
“I wasn’t a crackerjack detective. I just knew you better than anyone else,” he said.
She touched his shoulder. “Do you remember the year I jumped off Telescope Cliff into Tranquility Pool?”
Jericho scowled. “How could I forget? You gave me a heart attack. That was damn reckless of you, Zoey.”
“You’re still pissed off about it?” Her laugh sounded a little shaky.
“What if the water hadn’t been deep enough? You would have broken your neck. Spent your life in a wheelchair or worse.” He tightened his grip on the long-necked beer bottle in his hand. At fourteen, she’d been a sassy little pistol, all bravado and no common sense. Honestly, on that score, not much had changed.
“I wouldn’t have broken my neck,” she said confidently.
“Don’t be glib. You’re not immune to the laws of physics. If you don’t know for sure the depth of the water, diving off a cliff into a pool is a damn foolhardy thing to do.” He glowered.
She drummed her fingers against the polished wood of the bar. “I’ve heard this lecture before.”
“I might have spoken the words, but I don’t think you heard them.”
Her eyes widened. “Dude, chillax. What are you getting so worked up about? It was ten years ago.”
Why? Because he’d been responsible for her, and for one horrifying moment, he thought she’d killed her fool self on his watch. He’d never been so scared in his life as at the moment he dove into the water after her, leaving the other campers in his charge standing at the top of Telescope Cliff, gaping in shock and awe.
Even now, the memory had his heart rate kicking up. He’d stared down that cliff to where she’d dropped into the pool. She hadn’t come up and she hadn’t come up and she hadn’t come up. He’d been forced to throw caution to the wind and jump in too, desperately searching the water, guilt and fear gnawing him up inside, until finally, he came up for air and spied her sitting on the bank soaking wet and laughing at him.
Fury, born from expelled adrenaline and stark terror, had taken over. He’d slogged through the water, snatched her up by the hand, and marched her straight back to the camp, immune to her apologies and cajoling. He’d turned her over to his supervisor and said if they didn’t kick Zoey out of camp, he was resigning, but her pedigree was the double threat of Fant and McCleary, the two richest families in Cupid. She stayed put and the camp manager had talked him out of quitting, but he insisted on being transferred to a younger group of campers. He simply couldn’t stand by and watch her do reckless things that put her life in jeopardy.
Zoey rubbed his upper arm. “Just to let you know, I planned the whole thing. I sneaked down to Tranquility Pool the night before to find out how deep it was so I could dive off during our hike to impress you and the other kids.”
Jericho stared at her. Was it true? Or was she just saying that now in retrospect? “You never told me that.”
“I didn’t tell you because you were so busy yelling at me that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and besides, everyone was so awed by my daring that telling you would have shot my cool reputation.”
He snorted. “Since when have you not been able to get a word in?”
“That day. You were like a pot of scalding water boiling over.”
“As I had every right to be. You were under my supervision. I tried my best to keep you safe, but how was I to know you’d take a crazy impulsive leap off a cliff? It was damn random. Who could anticipate that?”
“I might be impulsive, but I’m not stupid. The risks I take are calculated.”
He canted his head, eyed her for a long moment without saying anything. He didn’t believe that for a moment.
She notched her chin up, blinked, but held her ground. “It’s true.”
“What about the time you borrowed your Aunt Carol Ann’s car without permission before you had a license and went off joyriding to Marfa?”
“I went there to see you, I might add, and the road from here to Marfa is long, lonely, and straight as a ribbon. If I’d run off the road the worst thing I would have hit was a cactus. I weighed the odds.”
“Something could have hit you, like a pronghorn or a mule deer.”
“But one didn’t, did it?”
Jericho shook his head. “If I had a dollar for every time you scared the living hell out of me—”
“You worry too much.” She patted his cheek. “And you’re too young to be such a fussbudget, but I will give you that I was kind of a hellion when I was a teenager.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Kind of?”
“Okay, I was a hellion, but I outgrew it.” She grinned and swatted his shoulder. “Stop looking so dubious.”
Her touch sent a trail of sparks shooting along his nerve endings. Taken aback, Jericho leaned away from her and picked at the Budweiser label wrapped around his beer bottle.
“So what happened with Mallory?” Zoey reached across him for the bowl of peanuts on the bar; her breasts lightly grazed his forearm.
The bright sparks burst into rolling flames. Jericho froze. While she was leaning forward, her cute little purple shirt pulled up, creating a gap of bare skin between the shirt’s hem and the waistband of her low-rise jeans, exposing the whale-tail of her purple thong panty. He gulped. What was going on here? He wasn’t going to lie. Yes, he’d been attracted to Zoey in the past, but nothing to this extent.
“Well?” She settled cluelessly back down on her barstool and the thong disappeared. Thankfully. Sadly.
Knocked senseless by what he’d seen, Jericho grunted. “Huh?”
“Mallory.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I’d rather sit here and watch you.
“Oh no, no, no.” She waggled a finger. “You’re not getting out of this. It’s nonnegotiable. Breakups must be dissected.”
He grunted. “What for?”
“So you can put the past behind you.”
“Mallory is so far in my rearview mirror, I’d have to drive around the world to run over her.”
“Ouch! Do I detect some bitterness?”
“None at all.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He held up his right palm like he was swearing on a Bible in a court of law. “I promise. It’s all fine.”
“Hmm.” She rubbed her chin pensively. “When exactly did you guys break up?”
“Just before Christmas break.”
She sank her hands on her hips, inclined her head at him. “Almost six months ago! Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
He shrugged. Why? He didn’t really know.
She sniffed. “I thought we were best friends.”
“We are.”
“And yet you keep something this big from me?”
“It wasn’t that big.”
“Breakups are always big news. Remember that for future reference. You and Mallory went together for over two years. What happened?”
“Graduate level anthropology.”
“Huh?”
He studied her face. God, she had gorgeous eyes, a plump mouth, and round, guileless cheeks. Stop staring. “I was the teaching assistant for fundamentals of evolutionary ecology and Mallory needed the class for her core curriculum and the course wasn’t being offered again until the following fall. If she didn’t take it that semester it would throw off her graduation date.”
“And?”
“I should have asked for another class. I knew better, but I didn’t listen to that voice of reason.” Much like now, when every shred of common sense he possessed was hollering at him to stop thinking about purple thong panties and move away from her, but instead, he actually leaned closer.
“Well, it’s not like she started dating you to get a good grade or anything. You guys were already living together and you were the TA, not the actual professor. Not such a major abuse in the grand scheme of things.”
“Even so, it’s ethically questionable to date a student, whether TA or full-fledged professor.”
She made a steeple with her fingertips. “I’m assuming being Mallory’s teacher must have led to problems in the bedroom.”
He winced and took another swallow of beer. “You might say that.”
“That.”
He chuckled. “You’re trying to cheer me up.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“I would.”
“So what was between you? Power struggle? Or were you too soft on her?”
He met her gaze. “On the contrary, I gave her a D.”
“In bed?” She grinned. The imp. “Or in class?”
“I don’t rate lovers on an alphabetical scale.”
She leaned toward him, smelling of cherries, and Zoeyness—how he’d missed that scent—and lowered her voice. “What scale do you rate them on?”
“I don’t rate my lovers at all. Do you?”
“You mean other than small, medium, and large?” she quipped.
“Whew,” he said. “I’m out of practice. You make me feel like I’ve just run around in circles at a dead sprint.”
She laughed. “Hurry and ketchup, tomato. I’ve missed this something fierce.”
Me too. “It’s impossible to keep up with you.”
She looked pleased at that. “I’m guessing Mallory was plenty miffed when she got the D.”
“It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Her work was subpar and she’d had all semester to improve. I warned her. She said I was being too hard on her.”
“Were you?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t very well allow her to skate by just because she was living with me.”
“Not even for the sake of your relationship?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” Zoey took the last cherry from her martini and popped it into her mouth. A dribble of juice stained her lips red.
He had an overwhelming urge to scoot closer and kiss the sweet glistening droplet away, but he forced himself to stay rooted on the stool. You gotta stop this. “Hmm what?”
“I’m just thinking that you must not have loved her if you couldn’t at least give her a C minus. That way she would have passed. With a D, she would have to take the course over.”
“You would have me compromise my standards?”
“C’mon, for love you have to give a little.”
That’s the thing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever loved Mallory. To be quite honest, he wasn’t even sure what love was. “You don’t have to feel sorry for her. She appealed the grade to the professor, and since we were living together it turned into this big th
ing, so even though he conceded she’d done D level work, I was called on the carpet for not making him aware of our relationship and he adjusted her grade to a C. Of course, that was all before I found out why she’d done D level work.”
“I feel a cliché coming on.”
“Yep.” He took another sip of beer. “She was boffing the dean of the English department behind my back.”
“Oh foul! How come it was bad form for you to date a student but not for the dean?”
“She wasn’t a student in his department.”
“Still, completely uncool.” Zoey knotted up one of her small fists. “Good thing she’s not here right now. I’d be tempted to let her have it.”
“Violence is not the way to solve anything. Learned that the hard way after I decked the dean when I found him in our bed with Mallory, wearing my favorite cowboy hat.”
“Wait a minute, who was wearing your favorite cowboy hat, Mallory or the dude.”
“The dude, but he was wearing it on his Johnson.”
“Eww. Low class.”
“Definitely.”
“What did you do with the cowboy hat?”
“What do you think? I burned it.”
“What happened with the dude?”
“He initially filed assault charges and it turned into a thing and I was almost suspended over it, but Mallory talked him into dropping the charges and smoothed things over.”
“How nice of her.”
“Wasn’t it? Except archaeology is a small world and everyone knows everyone. The incident could very well affect my chances of getting this job.”
“Well, that blows.”
“Big chunks.”
“Do ya think—” Zoey slapped a palm over her mouth.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s something or you wouldn’t have said it,” he prodded her.
She pursed her lips, slid them from one side of her face to the other like she was trying her best not to blurt what was on her mind.
“Go ahead, spit it out. I can take it.”
“Could it be … umm … maybe, just maybe, you wanted her to break up with you. If that’s true, failing her was a pretty passive-aggressive move, but if it was subconscious, you might not even realize that’s why you did it.”