Lucky For You
Page 16
Jordan shrugged and focused on shaping more dinner rolls. “George hasn’t killed me yet, so okay, I guess.”
“That’s a good sign. Anything available for lunch?” Casey asked his girlfriend.
“You know where the food is.”
“Ah, you spoil me.” With one last kiss just under her ear, he started rooting around in the fridge.
Jordan glanced over. George’s face was pink, and she was smiling broader than Jordan had ever seen. Behind her, Casey was bending over, giving a fine view of his assets, and Jordan couldn’t really blame the woman for being all hot and bothered. Plus he was nice—Casey had been very welcoming, and far more understanding than George whenever Jordan screwed up around the place.
Once he had a sandwich made and a bag of chips in his hand, Casey decamped to another part of the house to eat—with a slap on George’s rear on his way out—since there was no room for him in the kitchen.
“Any more at home like him?” Jordan couldn’t help asking when he was out of earshot.
“Afraid he’s an original and an only.”
“It figures.”
“Well, maybe you should reconsider you and Billy not being ‘you know’ . . . you know?”
Although she’d gotten more comfortable talking to George about a lot of things, there was no way Jordan was going to share her and Will’s sketchy track record in the romance department. Honestly, it had been humiliating, being rejected like that at Thanksgiving, and it still stung. Dammit, if she wanted a hookup, he should just be a Neanderthal and go along with it! But no. He had to be honorable or whatever.
“Um . . . Jordan?”
Oh no. George had come up behind her. And there was that tone. She’d done something wrong again. Was she taking out her irritation with Will on the dough? “What?”
“Why are you making penises?”
“Wh—penises?”
George examined the baking sheet. “Yep. I’m looking at a whole lineup of penises here.”
“They’re not!”
“Honey. They’re penises.”
“How many times are you going to say that word?”
“Okay, dicks. Why are you making dicks? You do realize we’re not hosting a bachelorette party, right?”
“Yeah. These are rockets, for the rocket scientists. Get it?”
“Explain the balls.”
“Balls?” Jordan surveyed her work. “Those aren’t balls. That’s the smoke or vapor—whatever comes out of the engines when they launch. I thought the rocket scientists would like the detail.”
“Aerospace engineers,” George corrected her. “And look again, please. Those are a bunch of . . . what’s the plural of scrotum? Scroti? Whatever, those are definitely not billows. Of anything.”
Jordan looked again. And damned if she didn’t see a whole baking sheet full of cocks and balls. “Shit.”
“Yep. Now get out of my kitchen.” For a moment Jordan was certain she had just been fired, but George added, “Have some lunch. And please find Casey. Tell him I’ve got a job I need him to do. Upstairs.”
Relieved, Jordan selected an apple from a bowl and grinned. She could only imagine what that job entailed. “Hey, George?”
“Hm?” the other woman asked absently, rolling out more pie dough.
“You and Casey.”
“What about us?”
“You’ve been engaged for a long time, right?”
George nodded. “Yeah, I suppose. Why?”
“Well, just . . . what are you waiting for?”
The other woman looked up sharply. “What?”
“What’s stopping you? From getting married?”
“Nothing! We’re just taking our time. Concentrating on the business first.”
“Yeah, but I’ve heard it’s been, like, years.”
“A couple, maybe.”
George’s look was darkening, and Jordan knew, in the back of her mind, that she should shut up now. Actually, she should have shut up several minutes ago. But she didn’t.
“So . . . if you know he’s the guy you want, why are you dragging your feet and making excuses?”
“I am not dragging my feet or making excuses! What the . . . Okay, you need to leave now. Eat your lunch and then make sure all the en suite bathrooms have towels and toilet paper. And then you can go.”
Oops. She’d stepped in it. Jordan had thought George would just laugh and say she and Casey had been making plans, and it was going to happen when it was going to happen, probably soon. Or she’d say they didn’t need a piece of paper to feel married, blah blah blah. Instead, Jordan had discovered the really scary side of Georgiana Down—her temper.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “So, what, am I fired?”
George hesitated just long enough to make Jordan’s stomach flutter with panic. But then she said with a sigh, “No, you’re not fired. When I said you could go, I meant you need to deliver the last batch of pies to Nora’s once they’re a little cooler. In about an hour.”
Dodged a bullet, that’s what she’d just done. God, sometimes Jordan completely understood why everyone acted like she was a pinless grenade. Here she was, creeping up on thirty years old, and completely incapable of filtering. No wonder people in Marsden still treated her like she was thirteen; in a way, she was—still seeking out negative attention, because at least it was attention of some sort. What a juvenile way to approach life. This was officially beyond a bad habit now. And what was worse, it didn’t need to be this way. She could fix it. She even had help, if she wanted it. Will believed in her more than she believed in herself, and for some reason she hadn’t managed to chase him off yet, brave boy.
She didn’t even resent the comment he’d made the night he’d shown up at her house, drunk and vulnerable and obviously sort of horny. Tell me you didn’t hook up with Cam. He hadn’t been judging her behavior. She knew that now. He’d just been desperate for a confirmation that the woman he was interested in hadn’t been with one of his brothers first. It made perfect sense. And she’d bitten his head off, thinking he was judging her for her wanton ways.
Now she’d pushed away one of the only women in town who had shown her any kindness, who had the potential to put up with her shit and get past it to be her friend.
Jordan hefted four of the pie boxes in her arms and eased her way out the back door. It was snowing again, a stiff wind whipping the flakes sideways through the air. She tucked her chin into her scarf and started down the back steps, then stopped at the sight of Casey’s pickup blocking her Chevy. She heaved a sigh. Now what? Well, she could go back into the house and try to find either George or Casey to ask one of them to move his truck, but she really didn’t want to do that because of her certainty they were on the third floor, in their apartment in the spacious renovated attic. Doing what any couple in love would be doing with a few stolen moments.
Jordan went back inside, put the pies on the table, and plopped onto one of the kitchen chairs. Should she wait for them to reappear? If they thought she was headed to Nora’s already, they were likely to plan on at least an hour of, uh, private time. If she sat there until they wandered downstairs (wearing clothes, she prayed silently), it’d be awfully late, and George would be mad at her all over again for not getting the pies to Nora in time for the early bird special. Dang, how those senior citizens loved their pie. She did have one other option: George’s decrepit Dodge Neon, which she fondly referred to as the Pink Lady, was parked in the back drive as well. And, unlike Casey, George kept the keys on a rack just inside the kitchen doorway. Who knew where his keys were? Probably in the front pocket of his jeans, which were most likely on the floor of the apartment . . .
Time to stop thinking about what was going on two floors up and make an executive decision. She scribbled a note explaining the situation, picked up George’s keys and the first stack of pie boxes, and headed out to load up the Neon.
Chapter 18
Will had never driven so fast in his life. Siren blaring, ta
king corners practically on two wheels. Always on the lookout for pedestrians and other vehicles, of course, but still going fast enough to spew gravel. Luckily nothing was far from anything in Marsden proper. If he’d had to drive into a seriously rural area to respond to this call, he wasn’t sure how he’d have managed it.
The part of his brain that had been conditioned to follow procedure kicked in, which was what all his police training was for, after all, but he felt a serious dose of cold, hard panic fighting to take over. He pushed it down and nudged a little more speed out of the cruiser. When he slid a bit on a patch of black ice, however, he eased it back. He was almost there . . . and it would be stupid for a cop to crash while responding to exactly the same kind of wipeout.
He spotted the MVA about three quarters of the way up the hillside to Bowen Farms, on a blind curve that could fool any decent driver if she didn’t know it was there. What didn’t make any sense was George did know it was there. But the dispatcher had said there were two vehicles involved; Will would have bet his badge it was the additional vehicle more than the layout of the road that had caused the accident. Sure enough, a pickup was angled across the road, right front tire hanging over the ditch on the eastbound side. On the westbound side, pointing the wrong way . . . the Pink Lady, now at one with a stubborn tree that had refused to get out of the way.
As he strode toward the crash scene, calling in his status, Will could hear the squalling sound of the fire alarm drifting up from the valley, summoning the volunteers. The Pink Lady was in much worse shape than the pickup, which was definitely saying something. Because the pickup belonged to Burt Womack.
“Here’s the cavalry,” the man in question said, coming around from behind his beat-up truck.
“Burt, are you okay?”
The scrawny man with the mud-colored—or mud-covered—clothes smiled, showing off the gaps in his teeth. “I’m fine. No biggie.”
No biggie? “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Burt waved one grimy hand dismissively. “A little bit of ice, that’s all. She shouldn’t have tried to pass me, you know? I’ll just get my truck away from the ditch.”
From the look of the Pink Lady’s front end, Will feared George was seriously hurt. Barely pausing to peer in the driver’s side window, he yanked open the door. “George, what hap—”
“Hey, Officer Billy.”
Will froze. “Jordan,” he whispered. “What—wait. Don’t move.” The woman had started to unbuckle her seatbelt, pushing the deflated air bag out of her way, but he put a hand on her shoulder. “Stay there. You could be injured.”
“I’m not injured. And stop looking so stricken.”
“Stay there anyway. Let the EMTs check you out.”
“You let Burt walk around.”
“Burt didn’t run into a tree. Does anything hurt?”
“No.” Jordan rolled her eyes, started to move, and winced.
“Liar. Stay put and tell me what happened. The ambulance should be here any second.”
“Ambulance? Oh, hell no. I don’t need an ambulance.”
“Motor vehicle collision involving a tree? Afraid I’m going to insist.” Will felt the need to keep her talking. Or maybe he was desperate to keep talking to maintain his focus. “Tell me what happened.”
“Burt was being Burt. Fourteen miles an hour, like you said. I thought I could pass him.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“I could. I did. Then I hit a patch of ice. Is she dead?”
“Who?” Alarm shot through Will again. Was another person involved? Was she hallucinating? Was she talking about herself in the third person?
“The Pink Lady. Is she dead?”
Relief flooding through him, he stepped back and surveyed the damage. “I’ll be honest—it doesn’t look good. The tree was tougher than the car. Let’s face it, the Pink Lady was kind of . . . old.”
“Vintage,” a new voice said. “The word is vintage.”
Will had been so concerned about Jordan that he hadn’t heard the footsteps behind him. He turned to find George and Casey standing there, Casey’s truck idling in the distance. George leaned in the open door and studied Jordan. “You okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Glad to hear it.” George paused, but only for a moment. “Now you’re fired.”
“You got a warrant?” Jordan demanded from her position on the couch, the split second Will let himself into the house.
“Again with the warrant. I’m checking on you; appreciate me.”
“I appreciate you immensely. If you brought my drugs, that is.”
Will sat beside her, near her knees, tucked in her blanket, and held up a small white bag from Marsden Mercantile. “Drugs. You’re welcome.”
“Gimme.”
“So you are in pain.”
Jordan made a face. “I’m fine. It hurt worse when I fell off the horse in the middle of the casino.”
“You do have an appetite for self-destruction.”
“The pony ride was intentional; falling off was an accident. And this was an accident too. I don’t often choose to drive into trees.”
“You’re going to be in serious pain tomorrow. Every muscle in your body is going to be screaming.”
“Looking forward to it. At least I can take it easy, with no job to go to,” she muttered, wrestling with the ibuprofen bottle.
“Ah, George’ll come around. She calmed down later.”
“You talked to her?”
“Had to, for the police report.” He took the bottle out of her hands and popped the cap. “Then again, she is still pretty pissed at you.”
“Ya think?”
“Well . . . you did kill her beloved car, plus turned a dozen fresh pies into mush.”
“That’s all she mentioned?”
“Why? There’s more?”
“Nothing about penis dinner rolls? Or . . . anything else?”
“Penis dinner—?”
“Never mind. Nothing else, then?”
“Nothing else.” Will was dying to ask, but he bit his tongue. “So . . .”
“Don’t tell me. Now she wants me to reimburse her for the car and the pies.”
“Yep.”
“Great.” Jordan sighed, holding out her hand. “Just add it to my tab, along with the ambulance ride and the emergency department visit. Not to mention the ankle monitor.”
Will tipped two pills into her palm. She beckoned at him for more. He cautiously tapped out just one more and ignored her when she demanded another. “I could negotiate for you.”
“What?”
“I could talk to her, see if I could get her to let you work something out.” Will expected Jordan to light up at the news, if not actually say thank you. But instead he watched her close down entirely. “What’s the matter?”
Her mouth opened and shut once, twice. Then she sat silent for a moment, and Will wondered if she actually did have a concussion even though the EMTs and the emergency department doctor said otherwise. She was never this quiet, obviously thinking about how to put something. Never. Finally, she said simply, “No. You’ve done enough already. And I appreciate it. Really. But I think it’s time I took care of this one myself, don’t you?”
“You’re going to talk to George?”
“No. That ship has sailed. Out of port, right into a storm complete with waterspouts and a kraken, and now it’s sunk in the Mariana Trench. I’ll get a job somewhere else, and I’ll pay her back, every cent, for her car and her pies.”
“She can’t ask for much money. The Pink Lady was only worth about a buck fifty, no matter what George thought of it.”
“Well, I still owe her something. So I’m going to handle my issues, including finding a job. On my own.”
“You don’t even want any tips or suggestions?”
“Not even.”
“Giving you one anyway: Don’t try Marsden Mercantile.”
And he cut her off with a sharp “No,” before she could get another word out.
She took another drink and winked at him. “Kidding. Don’t worry, Officer Billy. I won’t invade your territory.”
Jordan’s job quest didn’t go well. She was turned down by Smithson’s Hardware, Daisy’s Daycare, a couple of gift shops, and Missy Preston, but none of them said they didn’t want to hire Jordan specifically; instead, they cited hiring freezes.
Apparently forgetting all the details of the town that Will had imparted upon her from time to time, she’d walked into Suzette’s because there was a “help wanted” sign in the fashion boutique’s window. The minute Audra spotted her, she’d bellowed, “No. Just no,” from behind the counter, and threw Jordan out.
On the other hand, Beers bar owner Charlie Beers Jr. had been more than happy to take her on. Unfortunately, Mrs. Beers had had some concerns about exactly how happy Charlie Jr. was at the prospect and vetoed her husband’s decision. Will thought that was ironic, since rumor had it she’d been the one who’d put their marriage in jeopardy a few years back by playing footsie with the guy who danced around outside the Chicken Shack in a poultry costume.
“This suuuuucks,” Jordan moaned, so loud that Will had to hold his phone an inch or so away from his ear. “There are no jobs in this town.”
“Well, no. Not in the off season.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you said you wanted to do this yourself.”
“Why didn’t you argue with me?”
“Don’t we do enough of that already?”
“I’d call it sexual tension.”
He changed the subject quickly. “Going to tell me what happened at Paulie’s winery?”
Jordan had been hired at Paulie’s place, but she’d only lasted a day.
She whuffed. “I’m sure you heard.”