by Mae Nunn
“Chicken what?”
“Chicken tikka masala. It’s my favorite Indian dish. It’s spicy, aromatic, delicious.”
“Sounds scary.”
“You’ll love it.”
Mac called Gillian on his cell phone to get the name of the place, which was R and R Curry. She warned him it was a hole in the wall, and when he drove up to it after following her directions, he saw she wasn’t kidding. It was in the back of a gas station. “This is a little embarrassing,” he said to Jacqueline.
“Why?”
“Because.” Mac searched for the words. Because you look like a movie star and I’m taking you to a gas station for dinner? “I had no intentions of taking you to a dive for dinner.”
“Are you kidding? This is my favorite kind of restaurant.” Jacqueline practically bounced in her seat.
She wasn’t kidding. She was excited. In fact, this was the most animated he had seen her since she’d mimicked The Godfather in his office. He held the door open for her, and they walked to the back of the gas station, toward all sorts of exotic smells that tickled Mac’s nose.
CHAPTER FOUR
JACQUELINE ORDERED CHICKEN tikka masala for both of them with extra naan bread. Mac thanked the server for the ice water. She smiled to herself as he squirmed in his seat, fiddling with the tray of sauces when it was brought. He was obviously out of his element.
“I kind of like this arrangement.” Jacqueline smiled slyly.
“Dinner at a gas station?”
“Well, yes. I love a good dive. But what I meant was being in charge—knowing about something you don’t.”
Mac peered at her over his glasses. “Oh. I see. That’s how it is.”
“It’s a nice change from the office.”
“I’m sure you know more about a lot of things than I do about the world outside my office.” He bit into the naan bread. “I tend to be a little bit of a hermit. At least, that’s what my brothers say.”
Jacqueline saw something in his eyes and heard it in his voice. But what was it, exactly? Regret? Resolve? Resignation?
She traced circles on the surface of her water with a straw. “I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I don’t know anything as deeply as you know your world.” She met his intense gaze. “And I’m afraid I’m the same way with people.”
“What do you mean?” Mac leaned forward.
“It’s the way I was raised. We were gypsies—nomads—never stayed in one place long. My parents both make friends easily, but I’m not like that. By the time I started to feel comfortable with my surroundings and got to know anyone, it was time to move.”
Mac’s startled expression showed his horror. “I cannot imagine that. Honestly, I never would have survived.”
Jacqueline shrugged. She felt a little defensive, though she couldn’t tell why. “Well, it has its perks. I’ve seen a lot of places, met a lot of different kinds of people. You’d survive if it was all you’d ever known.”
The server brought their food. Mac thanked him as he helped set the table. Jacqueline watched with amusement as Mac inhaled the steam rising from his plate and his eyes started watering.
“I don’t know how it tastes yet, but this is good for the sinuses!”
She laughed. Mac watched as she spooned rice from a bowl onto her chicken, mixing them together and coating the rice with the pumpkin-colored sauce. He did the same. Then he dipped the naan bread she offered him into the sauce, tasting it before forking a piece of chicken. His eyes opened wide.
“You like?” she asked.
“Spicy.” Mac took a sip of water. “I like.”
She winked at him. “You need a little spice in your life.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Who else has told you that?”
“Mostly my three brothers.” Mac stirred in a bit more rice with his chicken. “And Alma. And Ella.”
“Who is Alma?”
“She was our housekeeper growing up. After my parents died, she became more like a second mother to me.”
“I think I remember meeting her once.”
“Really?”
“Yes. There was a study group one time that met at Joiner’s. She made the most amazing snacks for us. Tamales, chicken taquitos, guacamole, sopaipillas...”
“That’s Alma for you.”
“I was hungry a lot. You don’t forget food like that.” Jacqueline felt a pang at the memory and was sure it showed.
Mac’s eyes softened. “You were hungry? I never knew.”
“Joiner didn’t, either—I don’t think anyone did. I mean, it’s not like I was starving or anything. But food was pretty scarce.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.”
“Yeah, it was. Those days are over now, though.” Jacqueline grinned as she patted her tummy and took another bite of her food.
“Can I ask you about your work with KARIS? Tell me more about it.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you develop a passion for it? You said your focus was education for girls—how did that develop?”
Tiny butterflies erupted in her stomach at Mac’s serious expression. He seemed genuinely interested.
“Well, first, education has been so empowering to me personally. It was one stabilizing force in my life growing up, and then college broadened my horizons and opened up so many opportunities for me.” Jacqueline swallowed a sip of water. “One of those was travel abroad, and when I saw how girls in many places in the Middle East were denied this basic right, it broke my heart. I came to believe that helping girls get access to education was a real thing I could do to help the world.”
“That sounds so noble.”
Jacqueline frowned. “Not really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Mac, you have to think outside of Kilgore. At some point, I realized I could be any of those girls. The only difference between us is the geography of our births—nothing they or I chose. How could I not want to help them?”
“It’s still remarkable that you do.”
“I don’t think of it that way. I just think of it as human.”
Mac raised his glass of ice water. “Here’s to you, and Indian food, and being human.”
Jacqueline clinked her glass against his, but didn’t feel completely comfortable. Was he making fun of her? She didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
“What do you care about, Mac? Besides taxes.” She hoped there wasn’t an edge to her voice.
“I care about my brothers.” He paused after that, a little too long for her liking. “I care about hard work, and home, and my church.”
“Anything else?”
“I’ve been trying for some time to restore honor to my family name, but I’ve not been very successful on that project.”
“What do you mean?”
“You must be the only person in Kilgore who doesn’t know the story of my pap, Mason Dixon Temple. He was a wildcatter who went to prison for stealing oil. After he got out, we never saw him again. He died somewhere out west, but his grave has never been found, so there’s never been any closure to his complicated life.”
“You’ve tried to find his grave?”
“Yes—I’ve even paid a private investigator—but so far we’ve not been able to come up with anything. Joiner says he’ll go out west with me so we can look for ourselves. But I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like that’s the last resort—what would I do if we went out there and didn’t find it? It seems impossible to think about having closure without certainty. I guess that’s because certainty might clear our name.” Mac sighed. “It’s just a mess.”
Jacqueline understood what it felt like to be an outsider because of one’s family. She never tho
ught of Joiner and Mac that way growing up, but clearly, everyone had their own set of troubles. “I’m sorry, Mac.”
He drank the last swallow of his water. “It’s no big deal. I’m embarrassed, to be honest, after talking to you about all of this. My concerns must seem pretty small-minded to someone with your kind of vision for the world.”
The server returned to fill their waters and Mac asked for the check. When he paid, she noticed he gave the server a hefty tip.
Jacqueline’s heart softened toward Mac. They were as different as night and day, but he was a good person. And his simplicity was somehow refreshing to her. Steadying. “Not at all,” she told him. “It takes all kinds.”
He drove them back to the office. Dark had fallen early on the January night, and the streetlamps glowed with warm light. As they pulled into the parking lot beside her brother’s Prius, Mac said, “I’d like to follow you home, if that’s okay, just to see you in.”
“That’s really not necessary. I’m a big girl.”
“Still, I’d feel better. Humor me?”
Eyes the color of dark amber smoldered at her with what seemed like more than just concern. This guy could be pretty intense, it seemed, and she liked it. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re the boss.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MAC FOLLOWED JACQUELINE across town. She turned down what Kilgore locals called “Church Row,” a street that was home to the Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian and First Baptist churches. Jacqueline pulled into the driveway of a tiny old stone house across from the Methodist church. The house was shrouded by a craggy oak tree in need of trimming. The porch light flickered a soft white, revealing a grapevine wreath on the door and green welcome mat. Mac pulled his truck in behind her.
Jacqueline got out of her car, but instead of going to the door of her house she walked toward his truck. He rolled down the window. “Since you’re here, you want to come in for a cup of decaf?”
“I don’t drink decaf.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He felt unnerved, as though he’d insulted her somehow.
“But I would like to come in.” He slid out of his seat, worrying a bit about the appropriateness of what he was doing, but he quickly dismissed those thoughts. There was nothing wrong with being friendly.
She used her key to go in a side door, and they took their coats off and hung them on hooks. A small lamp illuminated the table by the doorway where she laid her keys. She flipped a switch to turn on another light and Mac followed her into a tiny kitchen. White cabinets framed a white stove, from which she grabbed a red teapot. She filled it with water and returned it to the stove, clicking the gas burner till it ignited. She motioned for him to sit down at a round ice-cream shop table with an oak top in the corner of the room. Then she brought two mugs and an assortment of teas to the table and sat down in the chair opposite him.
“Which one of these is best?” he asked, turning the teas and reading labels.
“I like the chai or the ginger peach. But the peppermint is also nice.”
Mac unwrapped a peppermint tea bag from its package and hung it over the side of his mug. When the kettle whistled, Jacqueline brought it and filled his first, then poured her own mug full of chai. She giggled.
He frowned. “What? What is it?”
“You don’t look very cozy in that chair.”
He smiled. His six-foot-four frame made the set seem like doll furniture.
She rose. “Come on. Let’s go in here where it’s more comfortable.”
Jacqueline led Mac out of the kitchen and down a short, narrow hall into the living room. She sat down on a horribly patterned sofa and he took the mismatched chair adjacent to it, putting his feet up on the pea green–colored ottoman. “That’s something nice,” he commented, settling in. The chair was surprisingly comfortable.
She laughed and the sound was like music. “Nothing but the best Kilgore Goodwill store had to offer.”
“I like it. The whole room is—creative.” Mac looked around, taking in the macrame design on the wall, orange shag rug and the beat-up coffee table where a wooden bowl full of pecans with a silver nutcracker sat. He tried to suppress thoughts of who the previous owners of this collection could have been, and what hygienic habits they might have been lacking. Breathe. He took a sip of his tea.
Jacqueline eased off her heels and put her feet on the table, wriggling her toes inside her gray stockings. “It was kind of you to follow me home.” Her eyes sparkled with warmth as she peered at him over her tea mug.
“It was kind of you to invite me in.” For some reason, Mac wasn’t bothered by her feet, even though he had a foot aversion. At least with other people’s feet.
“Are you cold?”
“A bit. Is it hard to keep this little old house warm?” Mac looked around for a thermostat.
“Check this out.” Jacqueline set down her tea and walked across the tiny room to the fireplace. She picked up a brass key off the mantel, fit it into a square on the hearth and turned it. Then she lit a match and tossed it into the firebox. Poof! A fire blazed, but there was no wood.
“Whoa! That’s old-school!”
“This whole house is old-school. I kind of love it.” Jacqueline sat back down on the couch, crossing one of her legs under her and picking up her tea again.
“How did you end up renting it? The King of Kilgore?”
“No, believe it or not. I found it on a website. It’s owned by the Methodist church. They rented it to me for three months.”
“That’s all?” Mac knew he sounded as disappointed as he felt.
“I think I’ll have the option to renew.”
“Good.”
“You may not want me on your payroll longer than that.”
“Are you kidding?”
Jacqueline grinned. Mac thought he detected a note of wistfulness when she said, “I told you from the beginning I wasn’t planning to stay.”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t try to change your mind.” He set down his mug.
They both stared at the fire for a long moment. To Mac, a flame was mesmerizing.
“Well.” Jacqueline finally broke the silence.
“That’s a deep subject.” Mac straightened his glasses. “My dad used to say that.”
“Tell me about him.”
Mac took a deep breath. He never talked about his parents, didn’t know where to begin. “He was a doctor. A good guy.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Yes. Sometimes. All of the time, if I let myself.”
“Are you like him?” Jacqueline’s voice was breathy, soft.
“I think I’m the most like him of all of my brothers, except maybe Cullen.”
“The professor?”
“Yes. We’re both more studious, and that’s like my dad. But Cullen’s into history. My dad was very scientific, meticulous, also loved numbers.”
“That’s like you.” She grinned.
“Yes. We both need—or he needed—certainty. That’s how he died, you know. Trying to find Pap’s grave. I still want to find it, but I don’t know if I ever will.”
“I remember the plane crash. That must have been so impossibly difficult, losing both of your parents.”
Mac nodded. There were no words.
“I envy you, you know.”
Jacqueline’s comment seemed so strange, he searched her face for meaning. Surely he misunderstood what she’d said.
“Roots.” She put down her mug and reached for the bowl of pecans. Bypassing the nutcracker, she took two pecans in her palm and squeezed them together, cracking them both.
“Man, you must have a grip of steel,” Mac said with admiration.
She picked the pecans out of their shells, depositing the remains in her empty tea m
ug, and offered one to Mac. When their hands touched, Mac felt an electric shock. He took the pecan. “Thanks.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Mac. I know you’ve suffered horrible losses that no one would envy. And I’m truly sorry.” Her eyes burned with intensity. “But what I envy is how grounded you are—your roots. You know where you belong.”
“It’s funny, but I’ve never considered that as a big deal. It’s just who I am.”
“It is a big deal. It’s something a lot of people don’t have.”
“But do you want to be grounded, Jacqueline? Really? To put down roots somewhere? I don’t want to talk myself out of a good assistant, but it seems like that kind of life might be too boring for you. Too—limiting.”
Jacqueline sighed. “My parents definitely raised me to think so. But I don’t know. My maternal grandmother—her name is Violet—believes the opposite. I never saw her much growing up because my mother broke with her when she met my father. But the few times I’ve seen her are the closest things I have to memories of a home.”
“Where does she live?”
“Iowa. In the middle of a cornfield.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I need to go see her sometime while I’m in the country. It’s been years.”
“Why so long?”
“It was up to my parents to take me when I was a kid, and that didn’t happen much. Then in college I didn’t really have the means. But we wrote letters.”
“I see.” Mac couldn’t fathom it. He’d always had the means, just no living grandparent to go visit.
As if reading his thoughts, Jacqueline asked, “Are any of your other grandparents still living?”
“No. They’re all gone—all passed before my parents.”
Jacqueline nodded sympathetically, her hair falling forward over her shoulder like a dark silk curtain. Mac suddenly had the urge to reach out and touch the strands. But instead, he rose. “I guess I better get going.” He wanted to stay with every fiber of his being. But the reasons he should go were more certain than his feelings: Jacqueline was in his life for only the short-term. She was like some exotic bird of paradise, and nothing he was or could do would ever be enough to keep her in Kilgore. So he’d best not get too close before she flew away.