Annie looked at him for a long moment. “Why did you never come back to Macon’s Point?”
“My dad started a new life after Mom died. We never really saw eye to eye on that.” He looked down, moved his silverware around. “Maybe I expected too much. My parents’ marriage made me think that sometimes people were just made for each other. That maybe they were born on certain paths that were meant to cross at some point. And that once they found one another there would never be anyone else.”
“And you don’t believe that anymore?”
“No, I don’t,” he said, looking up to meet the disappointment in her eyes.
“Is that why you’ve never married?”
The directness of the question knocked him off balance for a moment. “Got as close as almost. And I ended up hurting a very nice woman who did not deserve to be hurt.”
She considered that for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I guess I do believe certain people are meant to meet. That it’s not all just random.”
And sitting there across from a woman for whom such a thing ought to be true, Jack wished he could tell her he was wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE HAD INSISTED on following her home.
Annie had told him she would be fine, really. But he wouldn’t hear of anything other than making sure she got there safely. And, well, she couldn’t deny she was a sucker for chivalry. Since it rarely ever came along in her everyday life, its appearance was hard to resist.
All the way home, Annie thought about Jack’s jaded views on lasting love. So maybe that explained his less-than-sterling reputation for packing up camp at the first sight of anything remotely close to serious.
In the back of her mind, warnings were going up like emergency flares. He had just told her he didn’t believe in any of the things that she refused to discard as so much romantic notion. And his conviction ran deep enough to be of the permanent variety.
Still, she pulled into the circular driveway with his headlights reflecting in her rearview mirror, more than a little thrilled by his gallantry.
Stop, Annie. She put the Tahoe in Park, turned off the engine and removed the keys with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. Not the wine, either. She’d only had one glass. No, this was intoxication of another sort altogether. And without doubt, far more dangerous to the strands of independence that held together her very ordinary life. It was just that she wasn’t used to such treatment.
She got out of her own car just as Jack pulled in behind her and cut his headlights.
“I noticed there wasn’t another car here. Does your sitter need a ride home?”
“Her car was in the shop, so I picked her up this morning,” Annie said. “I’ll take her home. It’s just a couple miles.”
“Well, I’m headed back anyway,” he said. “Be glad to do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Come on in, then,” she said, tipping her head toward the house.
He got out and followed her to the door. The front-porch light was on, and she sent a quick glance at him while she fished through her purse for her house keys, which somehow always made their way to the bottom like rocks in a pond.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure Tommy is already asleep, so I’d have to wake him up to take Mrs. Parker.”
“Glad to do it.”
Standing there under the light on her porch, Annie felt his gaze on her. She looked up with the strangest sense of inevitability, as if this were a moment she’d been waiting for. And it was one of those moments when a woman knows, just knows somehow, that a man wants to kiss her as much as she wants him to do it.
The front door opened. The moment shattered like glass on granite.
“I thought I heard you pull in.” Mrs. Parker stood just inside the foyer, her oval-rimmed glasses half-askew, as if she’d just shoved them on. “I must have dozed off on the couch.”
“I’m sorry it’s so late,” Annie said. “We stopped for a quick dinner. Mrs. Parker, this is Jack Corbin. Jack, Lydia Parker.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Corbin.”
“Jack, please. And it’s nice to meet you. Thought I’d offer you a ride home, if you’d like.”
Mrs. Parker raised an eyebrow at Annie. “Well, now, I sure didn’t expect to end my day riding home with a handsome stranger.”
Annie smiled and knew just how the older woman felt. “Some days end with nice surprises, don’t they?”
“Some days do,” Mrs. Parker said.
* * *
THEY HADN’T GOTTEN a quarter mile down the road when the older woman said, “So you’re the young man Annie’s trying to convince not to close down Corbin Manufacturing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jack said, wishing he could have hung another identity on himself.
“Is she?”
Jack threw her a glance. “What’s that?”
“Convincing you?”
Nothing like directness to put a hitch in a man’s step. From all appearances, Lydia Parker was a sweet, gray-haired grandmotherly type. It looked as though he was going to get a quick tutorial that when it came to Annie, her protective feathers could get ruffled pretty easily.
And he liked her for it. Wasn’t too sure he appreciated her opening that front door at the precise moment she had, but maybe that had turned out to be a good thing. Because if she hadn’t, he’d still be back there on that porch, kissing Annie. There was just no denying that fact.
“I’m not too sure how things are going to turn out with the factory, Mrs. Parker. We’ll just have to wait and see. But yes, Annie’s had some very convincing arguments for trying to revive it.”
“You know there aren’t a lot of women around like that one these days.”
“She takes her job seriously,” he agreed, not sure where he was supposed to go with this.
“Yes, she does. Unlike that skunk of a husband she had.”
On this, Jack hoped she would elaborate.
“Any man who would run off and leave a woman and child like those two—” She broke off there, shaking her head, her opinion as clearly expressed as if she’d gone on for another hour reciting all the bad things that should happen to J. D. McCabe.
“Maybe he didn’t realize what he had.”
“No doubt about that,” she said with a nod. “She’d be just fine if she raised that boy on her own. But she deserves a good man in her life. It’s my hope she’ll find one. Or he’ll find her.”
Had Mrs. Parker been looking out the window before she’d opened that door a few minutes ago? Jack’s guess was yes.
“I sure would hate, though, to see her get her hopes up for something that didn’t have a chance. It’s taken a long time for her to get over the batch of hurt that J.D. left her with. She’s not one to let on to many people, but I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Annie’s lucky to have someone who cares about her the way you do,” Jack said, wondering if he should be offended that he was being alluded to in the same breath that Annie’s ex-husband was being taken down with.
“Not a lot of work to it,” Mrs. Parker said. “Turn right just past that barn. That’s my driveway.”
Jack slowed, flipped on his signal light and made the turn onto the gravel road. They drove another half mile or so before coming to a two-story brick house with twin pecan trees in the front yard.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate the ride. I hope Annie’s efforts pay off.”
“Good night, Mrs. Parker,” he said, not sure what else to say. He waited while she unlocked her front door and let herself in with a wave.
Driving home a few minutes later, Jack thought about what the older woman had said. Not a lot of work to it. And he had to admit that she was right. If a man believed in such notions as love and commitment, it would be hard not to fall for a woman like Annie.
If a man believed in that sort of thing.
* * *
THE PHONE WAS RINGING when Jack walked into the kitchen at Glenn Hal
l a few minutes later. A renegade hope that it might be Annie was his only explanation for the speed with which he snapped up the cordless phone.
“Jack? It’s Clarice. I hope I’m not calling too late.”
“No,” he said, surprised.
“I was wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tomorrow night.”
“Dinner,” he said, stalling and not at all sure where to go with this.
“I promise it’ll be good. Annie said she’ll supervise. She’s the cook in the family. I defer all judgment to her.”
Annie’s sister had just asked him out. So Annie had known she was going to? That explained, then, the frequent insertion of Clarice’s name at dinner.
It did not explain the fact that he’d almost kissed Annie less than an hour ago, and unless his intuition on such things had gone haywire, she’d wanted him to do so.
Apparently, his intuition had gone haywire.
Disappointment fell over him like thunderheads. Okay, so wrong read on that. Maybe his antennae were a little off and what he’d imagined back there on Annie’s porch had been one-sided altogether. That acknowledged, maybe having dinner with Clarice would be the exact thing to derail his growing feelings for her sister. “What time should I be there, Clarice?”
* * *
SUNDAY DAWNED crisp and clear, a beautiful early-fall day. Annie swung out of bed, something inside her feeling equally renewed.
Jack had nearly kissed her.
Or at least, she’d thought he was going to.
He’d wanted to, hadn’t he?
For the duration of her shower, Annie told herself not to be foolish. Feet on the ground, Annie McCabe.
She got out, anchored a towel around herself and rubbed steam from the vanity mirror. There was something that looked way too much like infatuation in her eyes.
The recognition brought with it a list of reasons for a reality check.
She took the list with her downstairs to the kitchen, where she pulled coffee beans from the freezer. The phone rang. She picked it up and tucked it under her chin, pouring beans into the grinder. “Hello.”
“Iaskedhimovertodinnerhesaidyescanyouhelpmefixsomethinggreat?”
“Clarice?”
“I’m desperate! I need your help.”
“You asked—”
“Jack.”
“Jack.”
“I kind of fudged and told him you said you’d help. I’ll owe you big.”
Annie dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment with lips pressed together. Told herself she was an idiot. “You won’t owe me, Clarice,” she said, her voice even, despite what felt like a very large lump in her throat. “I’ll be glad to help.”
“And you don’t mind? That I asked him, I mean?”
“Of course not. Why would I mind?”
“Annie, you’re the best. Okay, I’ve got to run by the office before church. I’ll see you there. Maybe we can go to the grocery store afterward?”
“Sure, Clarice.” Annie hung up the phone and put away the coffee beans, a few pins of sibling rivalry pricking at her skin. What was she supposed to say, though? No, Clarice. You can’t have him over for dinner because I thought he might kiss me last night, and I really wanted him to.
Clarice’s call should not have come as a surprise, but it left Annie feeling as though someone had knocked the wind from her sails. Because there was no denying that she’d gone to bed last night walking just a couple inches off the ground, ridiculously buoyed by what she now saw as no more than a moment of awareness between her and a man with whom she’d spent a very pleasant evening. A moment where she’d been sure he was going to kiss her, and she had wanted him to.
A memory echoed through her, one she’d thought long ago tucked away. The only major disagreement she ever remembered Clarice and her having. Over a boy, at that. Clarice had been in the tenth grade, Annie in the ninth. They’d been at a new school again that year. On the very first day, Annie had fallen stone dead in love with Craig Overby. Her locker was right next to his, and he’d struck up a conversation with her when he’d caught her staring at him, as discreetly as a ninth grader could stare at a star football player with a face that drew girls like a magnet did steel.
For two days, Annie had lived for visits to her locker. Each time she saw him they talked a little longer, and Annie had the kind of crush on him that made it impossible to eat, sleep or think.
And then on the third day, Clarice came by to see Annie between classes. Annie just happened to be looking when Craig spotted her sister. His eyeballs all but fell out of his head. And that was pretty much that. Clarice’s reaction to him had been the same as Annie’s, the only difference being that within three days, they were holding hands beside Annie’s locker.
Annie had never been angry with her sister before. But fury boiled inside her, until one night after supper, her father noticed that the two girls weren’t talking and confronted them.
“All right, you two, what seems to be the problem?”
“Annie’s mad at me because she thinks I stole her boyfriend,” Clarice had explained as if she were telling him Annie thought she’d taken the grapes out of her lunch box.
“Did you?”
“She might have thought he was her boyfriend! But Craig said he felt sorry for her because she was new and he was just being friendly!”
Something inside Annie had collapsed with the words. Humiliation coursed through her, hot, scalding. “Craig Overby is a jerk, and you’re welcome to him!” she’d said with less-than-believable vehemence.
“He is not a jerk! You’re just jealous!” Clarice had cried.
“Go to your room, Clarice,” their father had ordered.
“But, Daddy—”
“Now.”
Clarice’s exit had left Annie alone to face her father’s disappointed head-shaking. “Annie, I don’t like seeing you girls fight over a boy. You’re awfully young for that.”
“He was my friend, Daddy, until Clarice came along.”
Her father sighed and sat down on the couch beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders. “You’ll probably find this hard to believe now, honey, but my brother Ed was always the looker in the family. From the time he was in nursery school, girls flocked after him like he was the Pied Piper. Anytime Ed was around, I felt like a shadow, just kind of in the background. And of course one year when we were in high school, I developed a crush on this girl I actually thought I had a chance with. Until she saw Ed.”
He tilted his head at her, the meaning behind the words clear. “I was so mad at my brother I could hardly see straight for days. But then I finally realized it wasn’t Ed’s fault. He didn’t try to take her away from me. She just preferred him, and there was nothing I could do about that. I decided then and there, though, I was never going to compete with my brother over a girl. No girl was worth the two of us fighting over. Luckily, your mother thought I was the better pick of the litter, and Ed never had a chance with her.”
A wink accompanied this, and Annie tried to smile.
“You’re a special girl, honey. Selfless and loyal. And one day a man is going to come along who appreciates those qualities.”
At fourteen, Annie had understood what her father was trying to say as painlessly as he could. There were some things in life a person just had to accept. The fact that Clarice had been born movie-star beautiful was one of them. The fact that Annie had not, another.
For Annie, like her father, the lesson that day had been never to compete with her sister again. It just wasn’t all that smart to start battles she had no chance of winning.
Besides, she told herself, shaking off the past, Clarice was the one who really wanted a man in her life now. Who’d been waiting for the right one to come along. Macon’s Point wasn’t exactly overflowing with eligible men. Clarice spent so much of her free time with Annie and Tommy, anyway. Far too much for a single woman looking to get married.
So what if she’d wante
d to be kissed last night? Nothing abnormal about that. Just her heart’s way of telling her maybe it was time to start going out again. She was a young, healthy woman.
She could thank Jack for proving that much, anyway.
And if Clarice wanted him, then Annie would be her biggest champion for the cause. She pulled her favorite cookbook from the shelf on the kitchen island and began looking for something he might like.
CHAPTER NINE
SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE at Macon’s Point First Baptist began at eleven. It was the only church Annie had ever been to where there was actually standing room only at quarter till. The church, with its wonderful old stained-glass windows, was some hundred and fifty years old and sat smack in the center of town. It had been one of the first buildings erected by the area’s early citizens, and the town, as it was to become, grew outward from here.
“Mama, where’s Aunt Clarice?” Tommy looked up from the bulletin he’d been folding into a fan.
“She must be running a little late this morning.”
No sooner had Annie said the words than Clarice appeared beside them, breathless but smiling. “Hey,” she said, voice lowered. “Can I climb over?”
“Sure,” Annie said, letting her sister squeeze by to sit on the other side of Tommy.
Clarice gave him a smooch on the forehead. “What’s up, scooter?”
Tommy smiled and said, “Nothing, Aunt Clarice.”
“Nothing? Goodness, that’s boring.”
Annie smiled at their teasing.
Clarice’s eyes suddenly went wide.
“What?” Annie said.
“He’s here!”
Annie turned to follow her sister’s surprised gaze. On the other side of the aisle was Jack Corbin sitting next to Essie Poindexter. No sooner had Annie spotted him than he looked up, catching the two of them staring. Heat torched Annie’s face. She gave a quick wave and as impersonal a smile as she could muster.
“Oh, my heart, Annie,” Clarice stage-whispered. “He’s wearing a suit! Does he look good in that or what?”
“I’m wearing a suit, Aunt Clarice,” Tommy chimed in.
“You certainly are, Mr. Handsome,” she said.
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