Loving Jackson (Wishing Well, Texas Book 10)

by Melanie Shawn

  “Jackson Briggs!”

  I lifted my head and saw Mindy Greer standing beside me. At least I was ninety percent sure that it was Mindy Greer. I hadn’t seen her since Grad Night and since then, I’d heard that she’d married Max Lambert and had a few kids. The person in front of me wasn’t the beanpole that I remembered Mindy being, she was a woman, but she had the same green eyes and smile.

  “Mindy?”

  “Yep. It’s me. I heard you were back in town! How long are you staying?”

  “Just a couple of days.” It was the first time I’d said that, and actually felt a twinge of disappointment.

  Normally, I was itching to get out of here. But this was the first time, I wouldn’t mind sticking around for a while. Between my parents getting older and all of my siblings’ lives changing, I felt as though I was missing out on what life was really about.

  I’d never had those thoughts before. Maybe I was just getting old.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the town or my family I didn’t want to leave. Maybe it was the redhead in the diner across the street that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.

  “You should stop by, I know Max’d love to see you.”

  I’d always liked Max. We’d played sports together from little league and Pop Warner up through our senior year of high school.

  “How’s Max doin’?”

  “Good.” She beamed. “Just busy. We’ve got four under eight.”

  “Wow. You guys are busy.”

  A smile spread across her face and she got a twinkle in her eye that I didn’t like one bit. I’d seen it in my mom’s eyes too many times. “What about you? Any special lady in your life?”

  Josie’s face popped into my head, but I ignored it. “No.”

  “I heard that Madison gave you a ride home after the proposal.”

  Ah, so it was Madison. I still hadn’t been sure if it was her or Melody.

  “Do you think you’re gonna see her again? Before you go?”

  “It’s a small town.” As evidenced by the fact that you knew I got a ride home from Madison. “So, I just might.”

  “I think she’d like to see you, if you know what I mean.”

  Did she actually think she was being subtle?

  Before I could respond, the alarm on her phone went off. She pulled it out of her back pocket. “Shit. I gotta go pick up Ivy for ballet and Benson for baseball.”

  “It sounds like you have your hands full.”

  A genuine smile spread across Mindy’s face. “I do, but I love it.” She pressed her key fob and climbed in her minivan. “You should see Madison while you’re in town.”

  I lifted my hand, gesturing goodbye. I honestly didn’t know how my brothers had lasted living here with all the matchmaking and everyone being in everyone’s business. But I guess they hadn’t lasted. Most of them coupled up.

  When I turned my attention back to the Spoon, I saw that Mia and Josie were no longer seated at the corner booth. They must’ve left when I was talking to Mindy and I’d missed it.

  I started to get into my truck, figuring I’d head back toward home and hopefully pick her up on the way, when long red hair caught my eye. I did a double-take and saw Josie standing in front of the wishing well that sat in the center of the town square and which the town was named after.

  Seeing her standing there confirmed the suspicion that I’d had the night before when the moonlight was shining down on her. Mother Nature was definitely her personal lighting tech. The sunlight that shone down on her now highlighted the strands of gold, of blonde, of copper.

  I grabbed my camera out of the front seat of the truck and started snapping pictures of her. I captured her getting a penny out of her purse, holding it close to her chest as she closed her eyes, and tossing it into the fountain.

  I’d just lowered my camera and was going to go ask her if she’d like a ride home when Dixie Porter, Edith Scoggs, Barbara-Jean Nelson, and Dorothy Higgins approached her. Unless I was imagining things, all the women had shrunk since the last time I’d seen them, which was probably five years ago. They looked like sweet little old ladies and, as much as I loved the foursome, I also knew that they could be very intimidating.

  And from the looks of how they circled Josie, these women meant business.

  As I got closer I could hear Mrs. Higgins speaking as she ran her hands through Josie’s hair. “Why, aren’t you just the spittin’ image of her.”

  “You truly are,” Mrs. Nelson agreed.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “Is it true that she dated Rock Hudson?”

  “If she did, at least we know why it didn’t work out.” Mrs. Scoggs wagged her brows.

  “Um no.” Josie smiled sweetly at the trio. “I don’t think so.”

  “Afternoon, ladies.” I tipped my baseball cap to the group at large. “You are all looking lovely today.”

  “Is that…” Mrs. Nelson, who had always been my number one fan because I reminded her of her late husband Phil, lifted her hand and squinted as she looked up at me. “It is! Jackson Briggs, what in the world are you doing back in Wishing Well? Have you finally got some sense and moved home for good?”

  It’s the same question that I was asked every single time I came back to my hometown.

  “He’s here to work on Mia’s project.” Mrs. Porter, whose granddaughter Destiny was married to my brother JJ, explained. “I told you he was coming back Barbara-Jean.”

  Mrs. Nelson waved her hand in the air. “Oh, you know I never listen to what anyone says.”

  “I hate to interrupt, but I was wondering if I could steal Josie. My mama wanted me to give her a tour of the town.”

  The fastest way to get out of a situation you didn’t want to be in around here was to say that your mama asked you to do something. No one messed with mama. Especially my mama. Dolly Briggs did not suffer fools, especially if one of those fools happened to be me or my brothers.

  Everyone knew she meant business and took no prisoners.

  “Well, now.” Mrs. Nelson patted my arm. “You best listen to your mama.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I dipped my chin and offered Josie my arm just like I had at the dinner table. “Shall we?”

  Josie’s fingers wrapped once again around my bicep, and the same jolt shot through me that did every time we touched, no matter how innocent. If we ever had any real contact, I wasn’t sure I’d survive.

  But what a way to go out.

  “Bye, ladies. It was lovely meeting you all.” Josie waved and allowed me to escort her down the steps of town square.

  As soon as we rounded the corner of City Hall, she dropped her arm. I immediately felt the loss of her touch but tried not to read too much into that.

  “That’s twice you saved me. Thanks.” She waved and turned to walk in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?”

  On her heels, she pivoted back toward me, uncertainty written all over her face. “Um…back to the farm.”

  “I wasn’t lying back there. My mom did tell me to take you on a tour.”

  She waved her hands in front of her as she shook her head. “You don’t have to do that.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “You’ve met my mother.”

  “She is sort of scary.”

  “Sort of?” I emphasized, making it clear that she was very scary.

  Josie’s head fell back and a flutter of laughter filled the air. The sound was so sweet, so pure it made me feel lighter, freer. Freer than I’d ever felt in my life. Which didn’t make any sense considering I was in the place that had always made me feel trapped.

  Chapter 10

  Josie

  “Lean into the drama, darling. Without it, life would be boring.”

  ~ Josephine Grace Clarke

  As much as I’d been looking forward to the solo walk back to the farm to clear my head and figure out what to do about the show, I had to admit, I wasn’t hating being on a guided tour with Jackson. If anything, I wa
s liking it too much.

  The energy between us had shifted since yesterday. The crackle of sexual attraction was still there, at least on my side. But Jackson seemed so much more relaxed and open. It was like a wall that had been between us was gone. We’d known each other less than twenty-four hours but I felt so connected to him.

  I could feel attachment to him growing with each minute that passed. It made the notion of spending the next week working so closely with him dangerous. How could I spend that much time with him and not walk away with a broken heart?

  Part of me was relieved that the trauma I’d experienced hadn’t done permanent damage to my ability to be interested in someone,—which I hadn’t been since Gio. But another part, the one in charge of my self-preservation, was waving red flags and flashing a warning sign.

  Jackson Briggs didn’t do relationships. At least that’s what Dolly had told me this morning when I’d gone down for coffee. She’d mentioned that Jackson had never brought a girl home before. She’d explained that Jackson had an independent spirit and he was scared of commitment.

  In other words, he was emotionally unavailable. Besides him being Mia’s brother-in-law and the two of us meeting in a professional capacity—those two facts alone were reason enough for me to stay away. He was not the person I should step back up to the plate in the game of love for.

  If I were looking for a fling, he would be the perfect candidate. But I knew that I was much too fragile in the intimacy department to dip my toe back in the relationship waters without a life vest on. And anything happening with Jackson would be a belly flop in the deep end.

  It was just so hard not to want to take that chance. Besides being ridiculously good looking, talented, and smart, he was also really funny. When he’d told me about streaking across the town square and running into Mrs. Nelson, literally bumping into her while buck naked, I’d laughed so hard that tears had come to my eyes.

  And apparently, he’d been quite the daredevil. He’d jumped into the river out of a crop duster. And he’d surfed on top of a van like in the movie Teen Wolf.

  “And this is the water tower where my best friend Holden Reed and I decided to jump off of onto a trampoline when we were twelve.”

  I gasped. “You didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “How did you not die?”

  “We surrounded it with haystacks. Only broke six bones,” he shared as if it was a point of pride.

  “What about Holden?”

  “I jumped first and when he saw how badly I was hurt, he climbed his ass down.”

  “Your poor mother.” I shook my head. “How did she raise nine of you? That woman is a saint.”

  “That’s what she’s been telling us for years.”

  His lopsided grin had my stomach doing all sorts of flip flops and when my phone rang, I was happy for the interruption. When I looked down I saw that my grandmother was Facetiming me. The show was set to film in thirty minutes.

  “I’m sorry, I need to take this.” I stepped away from Jackson so that he wasn’t subjected to listening to the conversation.

  I accepted the call and my grandmother’s nearly wrinkle-free face filled the screen.

  “Darling, I just went over the questions that you sent.”

  “Good.” It had been a fight for me to convince my grandmother to start reading the questions before she filmed her responses. As witty as she was off-the-cuff, when she had a day or two to mull over the questions she actually gave productive advice.

  “I feel like they need to be spicier.”

  Spicier was her code word for wanting more questions that had to do with sex.

  “You’re not Dr. Ruth, Grandmother.”

  “I’m also not Dear Abby, what a bore she was.”

  It was the same conversation that we had before every episode. My grandmother always wanted more “spice.” Josephine Grace Clarke loved drama. She loved controversy. She loved being the center of any sort of attention. Which normally would be a producer’s dream. But I didn’t want her show to digress to the punchline of a raunchy joke. I wanted to preserve credibility and class. I wanted to balance out her controversy with her heart.

  “I’ll make sure that the next show is spice filled.”

  “Thank you, darling.” She squinted and leaned toward the screen. “Where are you?”

  “I told you I’m working on that show with Mia. It’s called What is Love?”

  “What an odd question to ask.” My grandmother gestured with her arm dramatically. “What is Love? Who could possibly answer such a grandiose inquiry?”

  “I’m hoping our interviewees can.”

  It was strange to me that my grandmother didn’t approve of my project. She’d loved love. Exhibit A: she’d been married nine times. Granted, three of those were to the same man, my grandfather. But those were just the ones that she’d walked down the aisle with. She’d been engaged fifteen times.

  I’d basically lived with her during my entire adolescence, and she fell in love so many times, I stopped learning her “suitors” names. It had gotten so confusing after they started having duplicate first and last names. When I met my second Robert Jones, I decided to throw in the get-to-know-you towel.

  “And where, pray tell, has this quest for the unanswerable led you to?”

  “I’m in Texas.”

  “Texas? Hmm. That’s full of possibilities.”

  “It is?” My grandmother fancied herself a city girl through and through. She despised insects and the outdoors, so the country really wasn’t her scene.

  “Yes, darling. Perhaps you can find yourself a strapping cowboy to get back in the saddle with.”

  My grandmother did not approve of my single lifestyle. She regularly commented that I was wasting my best years refusing to date. She’d signed me up for countless dating apps without my knowledge and was constantly engineering “meet-cutes.”

  “You know what they say, darling, save a horse, ride a cowboy.”

  I heard Jackson’s deep chuckle beside me, and I desperately hoped that my grandmother had missed it.

  She hadn’t.

  Her face lit up. “Oh, it seems I have an audience. One with a seductive baritone, at that. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “Oh he’s not…I mean…I just met him.”

  “Hello!” My grandmother spoke over my stammering and introduced herself to Jackson, who I was sure she couldn’t see because he wasn’t in the frame. “I am Josephine Grace Clarke, and who does that deep cachinnation belong to?”

  Jackson’s face appeared in frame, and I wished the hot Texas sun would melt me into the ground. I had no clue what my grandmother might say or if she’d pick up on my attraction to him. If she did, she wouldn’t hesitate to point it out.

  “Jackson Briggs, ma’am, nice to meet you.”

  “Oh my…” My grandmother lifted her wooden folding fan and began waving it next to her face. “The pleasure is all mine, Jackson Briggs.”

  Jackson grinned and I could see that even he wasn’t immune to my grandmother’s enchantment. All my life I’d heard about the “it” quality. That something special that made a person stand out. My grandmother had that in spades. She oozed “it.” It didn’t matter that she was going to be ninety in just a few months, she still had men wrapped around her finger, no matter what their age.

  I may have inherited most of my grandmother’s genes, but the charismatic chromosome apparently skipped my generation.

  “Are you on a date with my granddaughter, Jackson Briggs?”

  “No!” I shouted. I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, it had just happened. “Jackson is Mia’s brother-in-law. He’s just giving me a tour of Wishing Well.”

  “Pity.” My grandmother tsked. “You two would make gorgeous babies.”

  I wasn’t sure my cheeks could get any redder than they already were, and it had nothing to do with the sun beating down on them.

  “I have to go, Grandmother. I’ll speak
to you soon. Love you.”

  “Ta, ta, darling.” She leaned forward and gave me two virtual air kisses. “And Jackson?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “It was very nice to meet you. I believe you’re just the cowboy for the job.”

  My thumbs fumbled as I quickly ended the call. He must think that my family is a bunch of sex-crazed nymphos. I’d texted that I was horny, and my grandmother had just suggested he get me pregnant.

  “I like her.”

  “Most men do.” A smile pulled at my face and I was surprised by how much joy it gave me that he’d said that. Everyone loved my grandmother. But for some reason hearing that Jackson did was special. Personal.

  “She’s a firecracker,” he added.

  “Yes, she is.”

  I lifted my eyes to find him staring down at me with an intensity that sent a tingle racing down my spine. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his ocean blue stare kept me frozen in place. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

  My heart was pounding as his head dipped, his lips moving closer to mine. I could feel the heat of his breath on my face and I closed my eyes. Before our mouths touched, my phone dinged with an alert, and I jumped.

  The moment I did, he took a step back and the moment was over. Once the bubble we’d been floating in popped, I suddenly felt very self-conscious. I’d been about to kiss him. Or he’d been about to kiss me. I didn’t know which and I had no idea if I should address it or ignore it.

  Another ding sounded and I took that as a sign to ignore it. I looked down and saw that Randy had sent us tapes of potential hosts.

  “I’ve got to get back. I need to go over some tapes.” My heart was still beating a mile a minute and I noticed that my hand was trembling as I held my phone.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It will be.” I said in faith. “We lost our host and field producer. But we’re going to find backups. Don’t worry.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “Oh, okay. Good.” I wished I had the same contained confidence that he had.

  “Why don’t you do it?”