by Candis Terry
The truth.
But she could never give him that. Not without losing a whole lot more of herself than she was willing to give.
Which just proved what a total weenie she really was.
So now it became about who played the game better. And since she’d just graduated from a hard lesson of Living a Lie 101, she had no doubt who would win.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes. So here you go, big guy. I’m sorry.” Check. Mate. She folded her arms across her chest to mirror him. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic. Never been better.” His eyes lowered. Then that penetrating gaze moved back up her body—stopping, inspecting, assessing. “How about you?”
“I’m great.”
“Really? Cause you look . . .”
“Watch it.”
“Different,” he said, though she knew that wasn’t his first word choice.
“Don’t judge, Jackson.”
“I know it’s been a long time but . . . damn it Abby, you’re different.”
“Back atcha, bucko.”
“A lot has happened since the last time we saw each other.”
“Tell me about it,” she mumbled, then went back into the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator door. Cold air brushed her face as she peered inside. Nada. Not even a tray of ice existed in the freezer section.
What had she expected? For the past couple of years, her parents had been living the good life in the Florida condo her husband had given them. Scratch that. They’d been living the good life in the fully furnished Florida retirement condo her ex-husband had used as bribery. Or even more accurately, to remove them from any chance of their casting some kind of hillbilly blemish on his pristine status with the movers and shakers of Houston’s high society.
Quite the opposite of their two relatively mild-mannered daughters, her parents had always lived on the wild and loud side of Partytown. They might never have been the loving and devoted parents that Jackson was privileged to have—but even Abby had been shocked to discover how quickly her mom and dad had been bought like Las Vegas hookers.
At the time, her young and handsome husband had just been handed the Houston Stallions NFL team by his ailing father, and he’d been out to prove himself both on the influential social scene and on the scoreboards. The man oozed charisma. Especially when he wanted something. She should know. He’d turned that charm on her, and she’d been blinded. Eventually, the rose-colored glasses had come off, and she’d quickly learned that money could not buy happiness. But by then it had been too late.
So really, who was she to criticize what her parents had obviously seen as a way to a better life? She’d done the same thing. She’d just been really misguided about the true definition of a better life.
Empty-handed, she shut the refrigerator door and turned to find Jackson right behind her—so close she could smell the remnants of smoke in his hair. See the smudges of soot near his hairline and the exhaustion in his eyes. Her instinct was to reach up and brush the hair back from his forehead and trail her fingertips down the lean lines of his face. Instead, she curled her fingers into her palms.
“Cupboard’s bare?” he asked, with the hint of a smile that said he knew he was inside her personal bubble and was totally enjoying how much that made her squirm.
“Apparently.” She ducked around him and found a spot with more room to breathe. He had her squirming all right. But she was sure he didn’t realize in what manner. She didn’t know what she’d expected it to be like the first time she saw him again, but this whole heart-thumping, nerves-tingling, dry-throat thing hadn’t been it. “I don’t know why I imagined there’d be anything resembling life around here other than dust bunnies or spiderwebs.”
She leaned back against the counter—gaining at least another centimeter of personal space. “How’d you know I was back?”
“Ran into Brady. He said you’d come back to put the house up for sale.”
“That’s right.”
His brows lifted. “And that’s it?”
“Fishing was never your sport, Jackson. So why don’t you come right out and say what you’re thinking like you usually do?”
He gave her an honest smile, and her traitorous heart went all wibbly-wobbly.
“Thought maybe you’d finally come back to see me. But something tells me if I hadn’t come by, you would have done what you needed to do, then skipped town without my knowing.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really have a plan when I got here. Still don’t. I just figured I’d do what my parents asked, then I’d be on my way.”
“Back to Houston?”
A slow breath pushed from her lungs. “No.”
His head tilted just slightly. “Why not?”
Everyone who read a newspaper, the Internet, or subscribed to People magazine knew why not. Was he just being cruel? She searched his face for a hint of spitefulness and came up short. “You know why.”
“Tell me anyway.”
A rush of air pushed the words from her throat. “Because there’s nothing for me in Houston since my divorce.”
In the long, awkward pause that followed, Abby heard the sound of a car door close. The bark of a dog. The chirp of a robin. The pounding of her heart.
“Yeah.” There seemed to be more behind his single-word response. He glanced away. When he came back around, she still couldn’t get a read on him.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’m sure you don’t want all the ugly details.”
“There you go thinking you still know me.” His lips flattened and disappeared within that gorgeous face. “How about you start with why you ran off, cut me out of your life, then married a man you barely knew.”
She’d long ago accepted the circumstances that drove her from her hometown and into the big city. The reasons she’d taken the job in the Houston Stallions offices. The lunacy with which she’d married Mark Rich after only knowing him a few months. He’d been handsome, and attentive, and she’d thought it love at first sight. Kismet. An answer to her prayers.
Yeah. Maybe if she’d been praying to the voodoo gods.
“Why don’t we just cut to the chase?” she said, determined to give him answers with only a few of the facts and none of the emotion. She couldn’t and wouldn’t lift the lid off that steaming pot of absurdity, or she might be in danger of losing any of the stable ground she’d regained in the past few months.
His broad shoulders lifted. “Sounds good to me.”
“I left Sweet . . .” And you. “Because it was time. I was almost twenty-five years old and going nowhere in this town. I needed something different. Something new. Something that would make better use of my college degree. Something that would last a lifetime. I thought I’d found it.”
She blinked. Looked away from the intensity in his eyes. “Clearly, I’d been delusional. Mark made that very apparent when he . . .”
“When he what?”
Crap. She’d fallen right back into the comfort of their old friendship and said too much. While she searched for the right words to recover from her mistake, his eyes narrowed.
“It’s no big deal.” She spouted the well-rehearsed propaganda she’d fed everyone else. “Really.”
“Bullshit.”
Jackson had always been someone she could trust. But she didn’t know him anymore. And she didn’t trust as easily as she once had. Oddly enough, when she finally opened her mouth, it had nothing to do with him at all. When she spoke, it was to face her devils, shake off the shame, and put the past behind.
However, the irony of the situation did not escape her.
She’d cut Jackson out of her life. No looking back.
Her ex had done the same with her.
“Mark ejected me from his life. Quick. Clean. No looking back.” She forced her gaze to meet his and acknowledged the ugly truth. “Karma’s a really vicious bitch.”
In all the years she’d known him, Jackson had rarely been one not to have something to say
.
But for the first time in her life, she’d rendered him speechless.
Chapter 2
Combat nap or any form of peace of mind long forgotten, Jackson pushed through the glass door of the Sweet Pet Clinic.
“Hey, Jackson.” Andrea Davis, his brother’s newest and most likely short-term vet assistant, greeted him with a flash of flirtatious smile.
Andrea was pretty and shapely, and by the time Jesse spun his magic, she’d have fallen in love and tumbled into his bed. Once she discovered Jesse had no interest in anything more permanent than his cable TV subscription, she’d be on her way like all the others. Eventually another Heather, Nicole, or Britney would take her place, and the cycle would start all over again. Jesse had player down to an art.
“If you’re here to see Dr. Wilder,” Andrea said, “he’s in the back tending to Mrs. Purdy’s Pekinese.”
“Thanks.” He shoved his sunglasses up onto his head and ignored the pounding echo of his boots as he strode across the yellowed linoleum floor that had existed since he was a kid and they’d brought their Australian shepherd Ralphie to be neutered by old Doc Michaels.
Poor Ralphie.
When Jackson reached the back room, he found his brother murmuring in a gentle voice to the petrified pooch as he snipped the stitches on her shaved belly. At the sound of footsteps, Jesse looked up.
“Hey, little bro, what’s up?”
“He dumped her.” Jackson thrust his hands on his hips and expelled the breath he felt like he’d been holding since he drove away from Abby’s house.
A frown pulled Jesse’s brows together as he looked back down and carefully pulled a stitch with a pair of tweezers. “Who’s he? And who did he dump? And you’d better not say Reno, or I will personally kick his stupid ass.”
Their oldest brother had fallen in love—hard—and gone after his lady love—the host of the TV show who’d come in and renovated half their town, including Reno’s hardware store. As far as anyone knew, all was sunshine and lollypops on that front. “Not Reno. I’m talking about Mark Rich.”
“Uh-oh.” Jesse’s tweezers paused midair as he looked up again. “Are we talking about—”
“Abby. The son of a bitch dumped her like she was dirty underwear.”
“And we know this how?”
“She’s back.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” Jackson pushed another breath from his lungs. “Came back yesterday.”
“And you’ve already been to see her?”
The almost invisible nod he gave didn’t make his little visit to her any less lame. He’d sworn he was done the day she’d cut ties and got married. He’d sworn he wasn’t going to think about her. Wasn’t going to miss her. Wasn’t going to lose sleep over her.
What a load of crap.
He’d done all of the above and more. And didn’t that just make him Mayor of Loserville.
“Why?” Jesse tossed the tweezers on the towel-covered metal tray and lifted the little, flat-nosed dog into his arms with a comforting stroke of his hand.
The question was legit though that didn’t make Jackson want to answer it in any hurry. He shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” Jesse baby-talked to the snorting pooch, telling her what a good girl she’d been. Then he called for Andrea to take the dog back into the exam room, where her nervous owner waited.
“You’ve been waiting for her to come back ever since you found out she left,” Jesse added.
“I just wanted an explanation.”
“You get one?”
“No.”
Jesse folded the metal tools up in the towel and tossed it into a pile on the counter. “You try to get one?”
“Of course. What kind of idiot do you think I am?”
“The kind who’s been hanging around her as far back as when he thought giving her a frog he’d captured in the creek was a good idea. The kind who devoted himself to her but never took the time to explore what that meant until it was too late. The kind who—”
“Jesus, Jess, you don’t have to hammer into my head what a fuck-up I am. I came here to talk. Not get a lecture.”
His brother balanced his closed fists on the front pockets of his jeans. “I never said you were a fuck-up. But I’d have thought you’d learned your lesson by now.”
“Which is?”
Broad shoulders lifted beneath the white jacket with SWEET PET CLINIC monogrammed above the pocket. “When it comes to fighting fires or the enemy on foreign soil, your actions are about two steps ahead of your thoughts. When it comes to women, they’re about two steps behind.”
Good point.
Taking in mind the woman he’d married.
His now ex-wife.
He loved Fiona. He’d always love her. But in love was different. She’d been crazy to marry him—even if she’d been pregnant with his baby.
At the time, they’d both agreed it was the right thing to do. If he could have handpicked a woman who’d be a perfect mother to his little girl, he’d have chosen Fi. She was an amazing woman. But she deserved a man who would marry her out of love, not obligation.
From the moment his baby had taken her first breath, she’d become the light and purpose of his life. But he’d wronged her too by never allowing himself to even try to fall in love with her mother. He’d been too busy living in the past. Too busy thinking of a woman who’d made her feelings perfectly clear the day he’d been tiptoeing through the rugged terrain of Afghanistan dodging IEDs and she’d pushed pedal-to-the-metal out of his life.
“So what are you going to do?” Jesse asked.
In the last hour, he’d imagined every possible reason for Abby’s divorce. He thought maybe she’d finally come to her senses. But to learn it had been Rich who’d ended the marriage?
Game changer.
“Nothing.” Jackson shrugged. “Let her do her thing here and go on with my life status quo.”
“Seriously?” Jesse’s eyebrows jacked up his forehead. “How about you give that a little more thought. Maybe then you could actually make a plan that might make sense and put it into action. You and Abby were inseparable most of your lives. Spent a whole lot of time in that old tree house figuring things out.”
And she proved how much he’d meant to her the day she cut ties and took off. The devastation he’d felt when his brother had been killed almost destroyed him. If she’d been his best friend, she would have been there for him the same as he had for her when she turned sixteen, and her parents decided she could fend for herself and her little sister.
The agony of Jared’s death washed over him like it had happened just yesterday. He’d loved his big brother. Idolized him. From the moment he’d been able to recognize faces, Jared’s bright eyes and ever-present smile had been one of his favorite sights. He’d been a hell of a baseball pitcher. A superstar poker player. And the one person Jackson had always sought out for good advice.
Abby had been the perfect complement to his own personal Yoda. She’d always been there to share and listen. Even as a young girl, she’d handed out some solid solutions to the many scrapes he’d gotten himself into over the years.
When she and his brother both vanished from his life, he’d lost a piece of himself that he didn’t think he’d ever get back. When his father died, the losses became too great. And like the rest of his grieving family, he’d been devastated and retreated from everything that had once brought him joy. At that awful time in his life, all he’d wanted—needed—was his best friend to talk him off the ledge.
Only she hadn’t been there.
“Shit happens,” he said.
“Yeah, well, something tells me this might not be over between the two of you.”
“Oh, it’s over all right. Hell. I don’t even know her anymore.” He scratched his head, and a lingering hint of smoke filtered past his nose. “She doesn’t even look the same.”
“Oh?”
“Hair’s all straight like that Jennifer Ani
ston’s, and a different color too. And she’s too thin. Like she hasn’t eaten more than carrot sticks for months.”
Jesse laughed.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“You were her best friend when she had pimples, braces, and was flat-chested. You expect me to believe straight hair and a few pounds thinner is going to make a difference?”
“It’s more than that, and you know it. Too much water under the bridge. Besides, she’s just . . . different.”
“Then why don’t you try to get to know her again?”
“What?”
“Get to know her. Like you would any other woman you might be interested in.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Find out what makes her tick,” Jesse continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “What she likes. What she doesn’t like. Find out if you’re even compatible anymore. You’re either going to find out you are or aren’t. What have you got to lose?”
Not much, he thought. He’d pretty much already lost it all. “What makes you so smart?”
“Check the diplomas on my wall.” Jesse grinned. “I’ve always been smart. And you should be clever enough to pay attention to my words of wisdom.”
“So says the man with the revolving vet assistants because he shags them all.”
“Not all.”
Jackson laughed. “Right.”
“Seriously, Jack, you’ve got to ask yourself ‘What’s the story?’ Why would a man as shrewd as Mark Rich seemingly dump a woman as gorgeous and nice as Abby?”
Jackson glanced out the window to the canine exercise yard beyond. “That’s a damned good question.”
At the Touch and Go Market, Abby pushed the shopping cart with the wiggly wheel down the juice and water aisle. She kept her head down. Tried to make herself invisible as much as possible. She’d even changed into an older pair of jeans, a plain white tee, and a Cowboys ball cap, hoping everyone would focus on the two-for-one wiener sale and not the newcomer scoping the aisles.
Unfortunately, at the checkout stand, the current issue of the National Enquirer was plastered with seen-before photos of celebrity cellulite so there was an excellent chance that all the behind-the-hand whispers were focused on her. In Texas, gossip came as big as the hairdos. And everyone in the Lone Star State knew that the higher the hair, the closer to God.