“Are you sure?” Mari Belle said. “Men are hard to read when you’re out of practice.”
“I’m sure.”
Tara clapped her hands. “Oh! Shelby! Did we tell you your hot neighbor came to the ER the other night? Now that would be a ride. Have you seen that man’s biceps? I’ll bet he’s got a six-pack too.”
He did. Shelby might’ve been hiding in the house yesterday while he was trimming her magnolia, but she’d peeked through the blinds to watch him. And her jaw had almost fallen off when he lifted his shirt to wipe his forehead. A full six-pack, along with the chest that was everything a girl who’d seen the abs and the biceps would expect.
Mari Belle shook her fork at Tara. “Neighbors are a bad idea. Still there after the kids get home, and other neighbors will talk.”
“Maybe he has a friend.” Kaci wiggled her eyebrows. “He did offer whatever she needed.”
“That man has his own ideas of what I need, and I don’t need him,” Shelby said.
And there went four pairs of eyes seeing right through her again. Four simultaneous realizations and squealed questions drew the attention of everyone around them.
“You talked to him?”
“What did he want?”
“Did he offer to kiss your boo-boo?”
“He didn’t do anything inappropriate, did he?”
“Oooh, you do want to do your neighbor!”
“Hush,” Shelby hissed. “He helped me get the dog out of the tree and then trimmed my branches.” And threatened to kiss me. “He’s just—he—he’s—”
“A flaming bundle of testosterone that makes you want to do the hubba-bubba with him?” Tara said.
“Yes,” Shelby whispered.
He’s as arrogant as Alexander, she wanted to say. I’m settled here, I’m not moving with the military again. Or even He doesn’t like me.
But the truth was—the man made her think of sex.
Hot, carnal, home base sex.
“Oh, honey,” Anna murmured. “Is this only since the kids left? Or did it start before?”
“Before. But I doubt he’s noticed me.” She grimaced. “Anything good about me. I’m just the cranky mom next door.”
“Aw, sugar.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, sweetie.”
“You are a fabulous woman, and any man who can’t see that doesn’t deserve you.”
“You are so much more than just a mom. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“Honey, if he’s not falling on his knees to worship you, he’s a moron. You’re every bit the sexy, desirable human being he is.”
“You betcha.”
A chorus of amens followed, and they all clinked their glasses. But Shelby’s vision was a little blurry, and her smile felt foreign enough to almost hurt. “I love y’all.”
She might have felt like a spastic basket case just barely holding her life together some days, but she had friends who made it okay. Even without a man, even without a great job, even without her babies, she wasn’t alone.
But she could still be better at being her. If she could figure out who she was now.
Chapter 4
Wednesday morning, Zack set himself up with a cup of coffee on his back patio. He’d seen One-Two-Shelby come and go yesterday while he was working on his cabinets, but he hadn’t talked to her.
Mostly because the more he thought about threatening to kiss her, the more he wanted to follow through. Single mothers weren’t usually his thing. He liked kids and had a horde of nieces and nephews he loved to spoil rotten when he visited. But kids of his own? Nah. He’d let his sisters and brother have them.
Zack had plans. He was going to see the world. He was expecting orders to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska any day now. In another seven years, he’d have not only his retirement pension but the rental income from this house and the one he’d bought at his last assignment in Oklahoma.
And then he’d be off.
It had been his plan since the summer he was eight years old, when his parents had scrimped and saved to take the whole family to Colorado for vacation. He might’ve been only eight, but those mountains had spoken to him. There’s more to the world than the wheat fields of Illinois, those mountains had told him.
And they’d been right.
He would’ve gone into photo journalism if he could’ve afforded school and the equipment. Instead, he’d enlisted in the Air Force straight out of high school. Over the last thirteen years, Uncle Sam had paid for him to slowly earn his bachelor’s degree in business, along with helping him knock a few countries off his bucket list, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Zack had taken himself to a few other countries, along with nearly every state in the U.S.
In seven more years, he’d be off to conquer the rest of the world.
No room for attachments there, so he left single mothers alone.
But he’d broken this single mother’s arm, and ever since he’d threatened to kiss her, he’d had those lips of hers on his mind. So when Penelope came barreling out the back door Wednesday morning with her owner hot on her heels, Zack tried—and failed—to not smile behind his coffee cup.
The magnolia still looked funny with its lower branches gone. One-Two-Shelby was halfway through the yard when she stopped on a dime. Her lips parted, her head tilted at the tree as if she’d forgotten the branches were gone too, and then she shot a glance at his house.
His yard.
Him.
He lifted his coffee cup. “Morning. How’s the arm?”
“Still attached,” she said.
He wondered if she was as spunky when she was asleep as she was when she was awake. Wasn’t hard to picture her rolling over, mumbling a bless your heart over someone snoring beside her, or taking too many covers, or doing God only knew what in her dreams.
“Doc gonna put you in a cast?” Zack asked.
She gave him a jerky nod. “Once the swelling is down.” She looked at the dog, who was doing her business on Shelby’s other side. “Be good today, Penelope.” She turned toward the house.
Zack stood and ambled toward the fence, coffee cup still in hand. “You need a ride anywhere?” he called. “I’m off all week.”
“Aren’t you the sweetest thing,” she said over her shoulder, still retreating.
He heard the but I don’t need help coming before she said it.
For reasons he couldn’t fully understand, that irritated the shit out of him. “Don’t forget sexy too.” He settled his arms on the fence support between the top links and winked at her.
Two bright pink spots appeared high on her cheeks. “That may be, Sergeant Sugarbuns, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to your gentlemanly offer.”
“Now that’s funny,” Zack said. “My sisters say gentlemanly and sexy go hand in hand, and we’re not even Southern.”
Her lips parted.
“You think I should change my tactics?” he asked.
“To…to be sexier?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I meant to be more helpful, but if you think I could be sexier—”
“I have two little kids and I still remember where they came from.” She took a giant step backward and nearly tripped over a tree root. He lunged forward, as if he could catch her from half a yard away, but she pointed her good hand at him. “You stay on your side of the fence, and I won’t have to show you what my daddy taught me to do with a shotgun.”
First a chainsaw, and now he was getting half hard at the thought of her wielding a shotgun. “You shoot? For real? Or are you faking?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m Southern to the core, Sergeant Honey Muffins. We don’t fake anything.”
She was far from the first woman to tell him she didn’t fake it, but she was the first one off-limits. He shifted his stance in case her daddy’s shotgun was within easy reach of her back door. Even one-armed, he had a feeling she could hit her target. “You hunt, or just do target shooting?”
“I do what needs doing.”
> “You fish too?”
“Hon, I don’t even do catch and release. Like I said, I still remember where my babies came from.”
“Didn’t mean that kind of fishing,” he said over his coffee cup.
“Sure you didn’t, Sergeant Sexy Strut.”
The woman was quick as a whip and funny as hell. And he needed to do his Sexy Strut to take his Sugar Muffins back safely inside his own house before he got any more intrigued by this single mother.
But her kids weren’t here. And he was leaving about as soon as he had orders in hand. So he turned his coffee mug and gave her as innocent a smile as he could manage. “All right, no hunting, no fishing,” he said. “What do you do for fun?”
“I yell at other people’s kids instead of my own.” She widened her stance and gave him a look that told him in no uncertain terms that she thought he was an idiot. “There’s no time for fun. There’s time for work, time for being mom, and time for sleeping. I tried playing softball for fun, and this is what happened.” She waved her splinted arm, still in the white sling, at him. “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to take myself up to Atlanta and see a show at the Fox. I’d like to go down to the beach with a stack of books. I’d like to go over to Savannah and take a trolley tour and watch the barges go up and down the river. But instead, I’m fixin’ to take myself to work, then go get a cast on my arm. All because I got myself pregnant two months before I graduated college and then I married the guy because I thought he loved me more than he felt responsible for me, and I’ve spent the last six years losing myself being married to a stranger to the point where I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore, and I can’t go anywhere because I have two babies who might need me. So you go on about your merry way and have a nice day, and thank you for asking after little ol’ me, but as you can see, I’m busy as a bee in spring.”
Zack straightened. “Shelby—”
But she was gone, dashing back into her house, herding the dog with her, and slamming the door shut.
This was exactly why he didn’t date single mothers.
The baggage.
But he stood at that fence, staring at her back door anyway, because it wasn’t his fault her marriage failed, and it wasn’t his fault she had children, and it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t go anywhere, but he wanted to take her somewhere anyway.
Maybe he felt bad because he’d broken her arm. Maybe because he’d seen her herding her kids enough in the last two months to know she worked hard and deserved a break. Or maybe because he’d want someone to treat his sisters to a night away if they were in Shelby’s situation.
But more likely, it was because she was strong-willed and funny and quick on her feet. She’d make a journey more fun.
Unpredictable.
Exciting.
New.
Zack couldn’t take a weekend away right now, and he hadn’t sought out a travel companion in years. Not since his high school best friend gave up adventures in bachelorhood for adventures in marriage and fatherhood. Zack had been good with doing things on his own.
But today, he was sad to see that door shut. Because even stripping and painting cabinets would’ve been an adventure with someone like Shelby overseeing it.
And that was a sad state of affairs.
Chapter 5
Shelby may have been a Thermokopolos by marriage, but she was a Dukakis by birth, and Dukakis women did not cry, dangnabbit.
Not over an itch she couldn’t scratch inside her new cast. Or over the third letter this week telling her she didn’t meet qualifications to teach grade school. Or over her babies sounding happy as kitties in the sunshine without her. Or over being pretty certain she could not, in fact, drive herself to the Exes and O’s softball practice tonight.
Despite what she’d insisted to her friends last night in their private Facebook group. Y’all have done so much, you don’t have to give me a ride to practice too. I’ll make it if I can make it, and otherwise, y’all have fun.
She couldn’t. Her arm itched too badly in her new cast for her to concentrate on the road.
And how would she give Hailey and Braden their baths and cook their dinners and do their laundry one-armed for most of the summer?
Nope. No crying.
Instead, she stood outside in the steamy, post-afternoon-thunderstorm evening, staring down the late model green Dodge minivan she’d gotten in the divorce, her mind drifting away from that pep talk she was trying to give herself and to wondering if there were any sticks in the yard that she could shove down this dadgum cast to scratch her arm.
Something dripped down her back—a bug or a drop of sweat or… or the feeling of being watched.
Dangnabbit again.
Zack Montgomery lounged on his porch stoop, those sharp, bright, fun-loving eyes trained on her. “Car trouble?” he called.
That voice.
Land sakes, her friends were right. Shelby’s body was giving her all of the time-to-have-a-romp-in-the-hay signals. She wanted to jump the man.
Instead, she closed her eyes, squeezed her thighs against the long-forgotten urge reminding her that her femininity hadn’t shriveled up and died of old age or bitterness yet, and counted until she felt awkward for not answering.
Which was somewhere around seventeen…and coincided with that creepy-crawly sensation that hit her about the same time that she sniffed the subtle scent of seductive male.
“You locked out?” Zack asked beside her.
Southern honey, she reminded herself. Be nice. Even if Zack was a total no-go, she needed to practice not being a frumpy hag. “Car’s fine, most likely.” She stared at said car, because it was easier than looking at him. Was that—oh, lordy. That was definitely Hailey’s handwriting, backward, smeared inside the window, probably written with Shelby’s hand lotion. “My mom farts lowd.”
Good thing Shelby couldn’t afford debutante school, because it probably wouldn’t work on that girl. But Shelby wanted to smother her with hugs anyway, and she wouldn’t care if there was grape Popsicle in her hair, or if she was wearing orange striped leggings with her purple polka-dot shirt, or if she spilled the rest of the milk in the house. Shelby wanted to hug her babies. And for her arm to not be broken. And to go to Atlanta with Mari Belle this weekend but still be close enough to get to her babies if they needed her.
Zack was still standing there, and she didn’t know what was worse: wondering if he was looking at her, or wondering if he was reading Hailey’s message. A flush crept over her whole body, but she sucked up the Dukakis side of her heritage and looked him in the eye. “Just working out how to drive with this ol’ thing,” she said, waving her new hot pink cast at him.
“That’s easy,” he said.
“Is it?”
He nodded. “You don’t. Need a ride somewhere?”
“Oh, no, my daddy taught me to—”
“Drive before you learned how to use a chainsaw?” he deadpanned.
Lordy, she must have seemed like a piece of work. Her flush went flushier. She fanned her face with her good hand and opened her mouth to apologize as her momma taught her. But then his lips spread in a grin, and his blue eyes lit with something heavy on the friendly and medium on the speculative. “Didn’t teach you to ask for help when you need it though, did he?”
“I—” she started.
But he was right.
She needed help. “Well, now, I don’t need to be getting anywhere right now, so I don’t see as how this is a problem.” Except she wanted—badly—to go to softball practice and live vicariously through her girlfriends.
Zack crossed his arms over his T-shirt, and suddenly she wanted to salute and call him Sergeant Bossypants. “You afraid I couldn’t take directions?” he said.
“Well. If the gender fits…”
“Your ex was an asshole, wasn’t he?”
She snorted. “Oh, honeybuns, you open that can of worms, you’ll have enough to fish for a year.”
Jesus, Mary, a
nd Starbucks, that man’s smile could’ve melted her panties right off. Shelby cleared her throat. Forget a stick to scratch her itchy arm. She needed something to scratch her other itch.
Zack studied her, then seemed to reach a decision about something. “Ask you a question?”
Shelby scratched her cast and gave a slow nod. She needed to find a man. A handsome man. One who didn’t live next door. It was too dadgum bad gigolos weren’t as prolific as hookers. And her momma would want to wash her brain out with soap if she heard that thought.
“Where do you want to go so badly that you’d try driving while you’re itching like that?”
She suddenly realized she was squirming. She forced herself to stand still and ordered her brain to spit out a snappy response, but instead, “Anywhere but here,” slipped out.
He held out his hand, palm up. “Then hand over the keys, and let’s go.”
She blinked. “Oh, no, I couldn’t—”
“You ever do anything spontaneously?” he asked.
Not since that fateful moment that led to her first positive pregnancy test “Oh, sure I do. I’m all kinds of spur-of-the-moment when I’m not eating bonbons and having spa days.”
He smirked, and she sucked her lips in.
There she went again, being a hoity-toity priss. Good for staying single, bad for being a neighbor. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I have... issues.”
His smirk spread into an honest, friendly grin. “The gender fits.”
Oh, but he was a devilish one when he wanted to be. Probably with all the ladies. Though she’d heard through the neighborhood grapevine that he didn’t date much. No time, some said, with all the weekend trips and the nights spent renovating his house. A deep dark secret from his past kept him single, others suggested. Miss Mitzi across the street said he hadn’t found the right girl to rope him in and satisfy his carnal cravings.
In Shelby’s experience, Miss Mitzi was usually right, though she hadn’t been so blunt when Shelby was growing up here.
Moonshine & Magnolias Page 3