Daisy's Back in Town

by Rachel Gibson

  Well, at least she wasn’t a blood relative to Ronnie. “Lily and Ronnie’s divorce was final a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.” She smiled and said just above a whisper, “Ronnie’s a dog and no one could figure out what Lily ever saw in him.”

  Brandy Jo was obviously a smart girl.

  “I came by to talk to you about that football game tomorrow night,” Jack said.

  “And you couldn’t find anything to do until I got here, so you decided to make out with my mom in the front yard?”

  Daisy’s mouth fell open.

  Jack laughed. “It seemed like a good way to pass the time.”

  Daisy turned around and looked at him.

  “What?” he said through an evil grin. “You thought so too.”

  Chapter 18

  Daisy had lived in the Northwest for fifteen years, but she’d never forgotten how seriously Texans took their football. Be it the Texas Stadium in Dallas, a high school field in Houston, or a small park in Lovett, football was considered a second religion and was worshiped accordingly.

  Amen.

  What Daisy hadn’t known was that this particular game was an annual event. A yearly meeting where grown men gathered to sweat, ram into each other, and compare battle wounds. There were no yardline markers. No referees. No goalposts. Just two sidelines and end zones marked off with DayGlo orange spray paint, and someone with a stopwatch. Jack’s team wore red practice jerseys, the other team wore blue.

  Each team brought grit and spit and a desire to tear each other’s heads off all in the name of fun. This was football in its rawest, purest form, and Nathan Monroe was going to be the only player who wore pads and a helmet. A fact that angered him to no end.

  Daisy tried to talk him out of his anger by pointing out that he was fifteen and he was playing against men who were all a lot older and bigger. He didn’t seem to care that he’d get hurt, only that he’d looked like a wuss.

  “Nathan, I paid over five thousand dollars for your straight teeth,” she’d told him. “You’re not going to get them knocked out.”

  It wasn’t until some time later, when Brandy Jo showed up at the park and told him she liked the way he looked in pads and helmet, that his mood seemed to brighten a bit.

  She and Nathan caught a ride with Jack to the park, and as the three of them moved closer to the playing field, Jack took a closer look at her dress. “That doesn’t look like your cheerleader outfit,” he said when Nathan walked over to Billy to get his red-mesh jersey.

  Daisy had ignored Jack’s suggestion that she wear her cheerleader skirt and sweater, and had chosen instead a peach apron dress that crisscrossed down the back. She looked down at the hem of the dress just above her knees. “Too long?”

  “And it doesn’t have a back.”

  “I guess I won’t be doing any of those toe-touch jumps that you were apparently so fond of in high school.”

  His gaze scanned the members of his team assembled in the center of the field. “In the dress you got on, you’d probably hurt your pom-poms. And that would be a true shame.”

  “You don’t need to worry about my pom-poms.” She stopped at the red sideline. “They’re fine.”

  “They certainly are,” he said over his shoulder as he continued toward his team.

  Daisy stared after him and smiled. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath his mesh jersey, and his tan skin showed through the tiny holes. Her gaze slid down his back to his tight, butt-hugging football pants. Jack Parrish was mighty fine himself. His pants encased his legs to just below his knees, and he wore black football socks and cleats. He moved as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he wasn’t about to spend the next hour or so getting run over and the stuffing knocked out of him.

  Tucker Gooch called her name and waved to her from the middle of the blue team. She waved back to him and noticed a lot of faces she’d gone to school with. Cal Turner and Marvin Ferrell. Lester Crandall and Leon Kribs. Eddy Dean Jones and several of the Calhoun boys, Jimmy and Buddy included. She wondered if Buddy knew that after he’d had sex with Lily, she’d gone crazy and driven her car into Ronnie’s front room.

  Probably not.

  She recognized a lot of other faces too. The people she’d grown up with in Lovett. Penny Kribs and little Shay Calhoun. Marvin’s wife, Mary Alice, and Gina Brown.

  Jealousy knotted Daisy’s stomach. She wondered if Gina and Jack had been together in the past month. They probably had. Jealousy moved up from her stomach to twist her heart. She knew the feeling and was familiar with it. She’d felt it fifteen years ago when just the thought of Jack with someone else used to torment her, sending her emotions bubbling up over the top.

  But Jack wasn’t hers and she wasn’t a kid anymore. She knew what to do with jealousy now. She didn’t fight it or pretend it didn’t exist. She felt every prickly thorn of it. Then she let it go as best she could.

  Her head won this round over her heart, and she sat in a folding chair next to Rhonda and the girls on the sidelines. All three little girls wore red cheerleader outfits and jumped about like their legs were made of springs.

  “Last year Billy tore a groin muscle,” Rhonda told her as she pulled off Tanya’s socks so the baby could wiggle her toes. “He whined about it for three weeks.”

  “Marvin broke his thumb last year,” Mary Alice added as she leaned forward in her chair.

  Groins and thumbs weren’t covered by padding and helmets. Daisy stood, ready to drag Nathan away from the team huddle, then she sat back down. He would never forgive her if she did that. So she crossed her fingers instead.

  The game kicked off at seven-thirty. It was ninety degrees in the shade and sweat poured off the players. Jack was the quarterback for the red team, and Daisy had forgotten how much she liked to watch him play. Every time he drew his arm back to drill that ball down the field, his jersey pulled up and Daisy was treated to a view of his flat stomach and navel just above the waistband of his pants. When he got knocked flat, she got a glimpse of his chest.

  Horizon View Park was soon filled with the shouts of men calling out to each other, cleats pounding down the field and muscle hitting muscle. Of bodies hitting the ground with an audible thud followed by a whoosh, and the cheers and jeers of spectators on the sides.

  In the first quarter, Jack threw a short pass to Nathan, who caught it and ran with it for about ten yards before he got tackled. Daisy held her breath until her son got back up and brushed a chunk of grass from his helmet. In the second quarter, Jimmy Calhoun made a touchdown for the red team. Unfortunately he was tackled in the end zone and went down hard. When he was finally able to get back up, he limped to the car and Shay took him to the hospital. Everyone predicted a knee injury. Buddy hoped it wasn’t something more permanent.

  “Shay’s got her heart set on a big family,” he said as he watched his brother being whisked away. “Hope he didn’t rupture any thang vital.”

  During half-time, Daisy helped Rhonda and Gina pass bottles of water out to both teams. Each man looked somewhat worse for the wear, and they had half the game left. On the blue team, Leon Krib’s left eye was swelling, and Marvin Ferrell had a busted lip. While Tucker Gooch wrapped his ankle, he asked for her phone number.

  She didn’t give it to him.

  She excused herself and talked to Nathan to make sure he was all right. Billy grabbed him around the neck and rubbed his knuckles in Nathan’s hair. Instead of getting angry like Daisy half expected, Nathan laughed and socked Billy in the gut.

  “Billy really wants a little boy,” Rhonda told her. “But he’s going to have to settle for playing with Nathan.”

  Billy only had about three weeks before she and Nathan were returning to Seattle. Daisy wondered how Nathan felt about leaving. If he was still excited to get back home.

  Was she? Her little tug of anxiety turned into a hard yank at the thought, and she was very much afraid the answer was no. Just yesterday she and Nathan had been driving throu
gh the small downtown area of Lovett and she’d noticed a vacant space right next to Donna’s Gifts on Fifth. Before she even realized what she was doing, she’d visualized herself there. A sign hanging beneath the striped awning. DAISY MONROE PHOTOGRAPHY painted on it. Or maybe she’d name her business Buttercup or . . .

  Her heart and head were at war, and she’d better figure things out quick before she signed a lease in Seattle.

  She handed water to Eddy Dean who had bloody knuckles and to Cal Turner who was already limping. But the limp didn’t keep Cal from asking her to meet him at Slim’s later that night. She glanced at Jack, standing a few feet away, deep in conversation with Gina. He stood with his hands on his hips, a white towel hanging off one shoulder. Gina gestured to the left, but Jack’s gaze was on Daisy as she approached him.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Gina said and moved to the sidelines.

  “Okay, thanks.” Jack grabbed two bottles of water and twisted the cap off one. He had a bloody raspberry on his left elbow and his white pants were covered in green. He drank half of one bottle and poured the rest over his head.

  “Are you going to go out tonight with Cal?” he asked as he wiped his face with the towel.

  She’d wondered if he’d heard Cal. “Would that bother you?”

  He looked at her over the top of the white cotton, then hung the towel around his neck. “Would it matter to you if it does?”

  She turned her attention to the sidelines and Gina. “Yes.”

  Jack placed his fingers on her cheek and brought her gaze back to his. “Yes, it would bother me. Don’t go out with Cal or Flea or anyone else.”

  “I’m not going out with Cal or anyone else.” She looked down at her feet then raised her gaze back up the lacing of his football pants, his red jersey, then into his green eyes. “Are you still going out with Gina?”

  He moved to stand so close they almost touched, and he tucked her hair behind one ear. “I haven’t been with anyone,” he said just above a whisper. “Not since I put you on the Custom Lancer.”

  She wondered if he was talking about the car. Knowing Jack, she doubted it. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” His fingertips slipped to the side of her neck. “How about you?”

  She smiled because she couldn’t help it. “Of course not.”

  He smiled too. “That’s good.” He pressed a quick kiss to her mouth then walked around her toward the rest of his team. As kisses went, it shouldn’t have counted. It was hardly a kiss at all, but it had been just wet enough to leave the taste of him on her lips. Just warm enough to slide inside and light a fire next to her heart.

  During the third quarter, the blue team scored a touchdown, but Daisy wasn’t paying close attention to the game. She had bigger worries on her mind. She was in love with Jack. She could no longer ignore it. She’d come to Lovett to tell Jack about Nathan. She hadn’t meant to fall in love with him again, but it had happened, and now she had to decide what she was going to do about it. Fifteen years ago, she’d run away from the pain of Jack not loving her in return. She wasn’t going to run this time. When and if she left, she would know how Jack felt about her.

  Three minutes into the fourth quarter, Jack got creamed by Marvin Ferrell, who had to outweigh Jack by a good hundred pounds. He went down with a umph, and Daisy’s heart dropped a few inches. He lay on his back for several long moments until Marvin helped him to his feet. Jack moved his head from side to side as if getting out the kinks, then he slowly walked back to the huddle. His next pass was a fifty-foot bomb to Nathan, who ran it all the way for a touchdown. Nathan tore off his helmet and spiked it into the ground. He jumped around, giving high-fives, and smashing knuckles with his teammates. Jack hooked his arm around Nathan’s shoulders. Father and son, their heads close as they talked and walked to the sidelines, both of them smiling as if they’d just won the million-dollar lotto.

  After the game, Nathan was still so excited he forgot himself and gave Daisy a hug that picked her up off her feet.

  “Did you see that touchdown?” he asked and released her.

  “Of course. It was a beauty.”

  Nathan pulled the shoulder pads over his head as Brandy Jo and a group of teenagers approached. They all seemed quite impressed that a fifteen-year-old had been invited to play football with the men.

  “I got to play because Jack and Billy play on the red team,” he said.

  A boy wearing a Weezer T-shirt asked, “Who’re Jack and Billy?”

  “Billy’s my uncle.” Nathan paused and looked over the top of Daisy’s head. “And Jack’s my dad.”

  She felt Jack behind her a split second before he squeezed her shoulders. She looked up into his unfathomable eyes and his pleased smile, she then turned her attention back to Nathan. The two men in her life stared at each other and seemed to reach an unspoken understanding. No weeping or crying or falling on each other’s necks. Just an acknowledgment like the slapping of hands and smashing of knuckles.

  Instead of coming home and celebrating his touchdown with her and Jack, Nathan asked if he could go hang out with his new friends. By the way her son looked at Brandy Jo, Daisy knew she’d just been usurped in her son’s life by a fifteen-year-old girl with long brown hair and a Texas twang. She felt an unexpected pang of jealousy. Nathan was growing up much too quickly, and she missed the little boy who used to hold her hand and look up at her as if she were the most important thing in his world.

  “Are you ready to go now?” Jack lowered his face to the top of her head. “I want to get you out of here before Cal comes over and hits on you again.”

  He wasn’t really fooling her. She could hear the pain in his voice. “What hurts?”

  “My shoulder,” he answered as they moved toward the parking lot, “like a son of a bitch.”

  “I don’t understand why you guys don’t wear pads.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know. Pads are for sissies.”

  Jack opened the passenger-side door for her. She moved to get inside but looked back across the field one last time at Nathan. “He’s growing up too fast,” she said as she watched him walk in the other direction with Brandy Jo on his arm. “He was always so rowdy and independent. I couldn’t take him anywhere cause he’d just run off. So I got one of those leashes you put on little kids so you don’t lose ’em. I always felt so much better knowing he was on the other end of the leash. I’d give a hard tug, and he’d come rolling out from wherever he was hiding from me.” She grasped the top of the car door that separated her body from Jack’s. “I wish I could just give him a tug now and make sure he stays out of trouble.”

  Jack put his hands on the outside of hers. “He’s a good boy, Daisy. He’ll be fine.”

  She looked up into his eyes and he leaned forward and gently pressed his mouth to hers, easing into a kiss so slow and sweet, it just seemed to melt her heart. He smelled of sweat and grass and Jack. His thumbs brushed over the backs of her hands as the tip of his slick tongue touched hers. Jack took his time, and the kiss turned more deeply intimate. It touched places deep in her soul that recognized him. This was more than a mating of mouths. More than the hot rush of sex that demanded to be satisfied.

  When he pulled back, he looked at her the way he used to all those years ago. His guard down. His wants and needs and desires unmistakably clear in his green eyes.

  “Come home with me,” he said as his hands moved to cover hers in his warm palms.

  She swallowed and the corners of her mouth turned up. She didn’t have to ask what he had planned. “I thought your shoulder hurt?”

  “Not that bad.”

  “I could massage it for you.”

  He shook his head. “You need to save your energy to massage other things.”

  Chapter 19

  Daisy ran her hands across Jack’s smooth shoulders and pushed her fingers into his knotted muscles. She massaged his back and ran her thumbs up and down the indent of his spine. A bead of water dropped from his wet hair, slid down his
back and was absorbed in the thick blue towel hung low on his hips.

  The drive from the park to Jack’s had taken less than ten minutes. Usually it took fifteen, but Jack had run several stop signs and blown through a traffic light.

  At present, he sat on a ladder-back kitchen chair next to the dining room table. His legs straddled the seat while his arms rested across the top rung. He’d insisted on taking a quick shower to get rid of the grime before he’d let her touch him, and when he’d come out wearing nothing but a towel, she’d about jumped him then and there.

  “How’s this feel?” she asked as her palms slid down his hard muscles, then up again.

  “Like something I could get used to.” The heat from his skin warmed her hands, and she felt the contours and textures as she learned the definition of him all over again.

  “Daisy?”

  She looked down at the back of his head. The dining room light shone through his dark hair, picking out strands the color of coffee. “Hmm?”

  “When we were at Lake Meredith, you said you’ve missed me.” He reached up and grasped her by the wrist. “Is that true?” He looked over his shoulder at her. His intense gaze told her the answer was very important to him.

  “Yes, Jack. It’s true.”

  He pulled her arm down around his chest and said, next to her right cheek, “I missed you too, Daisy Lee. All these years I’ve missed you more than I knew.” His placed his free hand on the left side of her face. “More than I ever wanted you to know.”

  Her chest got tight and achy, and she lowered her mouth and said against his lips. “I love you, Jack.”

  He closed his eyes and let out his breath. He was quiet for several long moments then he said, “I have always loved you. Even when I didn’t want to.”

  “Turn around,” she whispered.

  His eyes opened. “What?”

  “Stand up.”

  As soon as he stood and turned toward her, she put her hand on his shoulders and pushed him back down again. “I don’t know what happens next for us,” she said as she pulled up her dress and sat in his lap facing him. He spread his thighs and her bottom hit the seat of the chair. Her bare feet hung over the sides. “Whatever it is, I will always love you. I can’t help it.”