by Maddie James
“Oh, here. Give me that,” she said, indicating the dress on the hanger. He handed it to her and she folded it over her arm. Within a few seconds, however, Jim had gathered everything up, stood very tall and square in front of her—when had he become so tall? And why wasn’t he wearing his button down collar shirt and trousers? Oh, they weren’t at school—and he was looking at her with an intense, expectant, look.
“Where is your car? Let’s take these and deposit them there.”
“Oh.” That was stupid. Couldn’t she say anything else? Nope. She pointed toward the parking lot.
Jim headed that way, and she followed. It wasn’t every day that she saw Jim Hamilton out in public. In fact, she wasn’t sure she had ever seen him out anywhere, only at school. But as she watched his backside move toward her car, “it’s the silver Mazda, over there one row. Yes, that’s it,” she wondered why she’d never noticed how nicely he filled out a pair of jeans. Well, perhaps because she’d never seen him in a pair of jeans before? Or maybe she had, but never really had truly paid attention?
It was a mystery how these little things about Jim Hamilton kept popping up.
He stopped beside the car. She shifted the dress to her other arm, dug into her shoulder bag, retrieved her keys, and punched the unlock button. The car door clicked, and she reached, same time as Jim reached, while still juggling packages, for the door handle.
Their hands met, touched, and Jim dropped the cowboy boots’ box.
“Dammit.” He jerked back, and Patti stepped aside.
“Here, let me.” She opened the door, and together, they piled her treasures in the back seat. Finally she shut the door and faced Jim, who was looking at her with some sort of contemplative and frazzled look on his face.
“Thanks, Jim. I appreciate your doing that. Wow, funny seeing you here.”
He nodded, looked to his feet, shuffled back and forth for a second or two, and then lifted his face to look back into her eyes. “Had to get out of Legend,” he said.
She well knew how that felt.
“And I’m not ready to go back yet,” he added quickly. “I know it’s late, but I’ve not had lunch yet. Want to get something to eat?”
Patti blinked, thought about that for a brief moment, and thought, why not? She had time. “Sure. Come to think of it, I’ve not had lunch either. Sounds good to me.”
****
What in the world am I doing?
Calm down, Jim. It’s lunch. With one of your colleagues. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, of course, it’s adult conversation and companionship. Something you’ve been craving for a while.
It’s Patti. Quirky, funny, Patti, who teaches fourth grade in your school. Nothing more, nothing less.
Then why are those big green eyes of hers looking at me like that?
Because you are stupidly giving her that same look back. Stop it, man. Now.
“Where shall we go?” he eked out.
Patti glanced about. She twisted away from him slightly, her long, blonde, shaggy hairstyle, flipping as she did so. “Well, over there is Hooters.” She turned back and flashed a wicked smile. “You should like that.”
He didn’t want to think about hooters of any sort at the moment, since his jeans were getting a bit tight just standing there looking at her. He looked off in the opposite direction. “And there is Jane’s Diner over there. How about that?”
Safe. A family diner was safe. Right?
She shrugged and gave him an awkward smile. “Sure.”
He motioned that way, and she stepped in beside him as they took the short walk across the parking long. He held the door for her as they went in, and she, again, gave him a tentative smile, one that he didn’t quite know what to do with.
Was she just being friendly? Had she ever even once given him a “come-on” look or lingering glance? He didn’t think so. She was pretty much all business at school, except when she let her hair down once in a while in the teachers’ lounge. She was great at cracking jokes to ease the tension, particularly around testing times when everyone was a bit “testy.”
He’d known her for years, but he couldn’t ever remember seeing her in a social situation outside of school. Was this lunch a first? He wracked his brain trying to recall.
No. Other than get-togethers at other teacher’s homes, or at school events, this was it. Why?
He’d had to ask himself that question, but the answer was obvious. The “no dating teachers” rule was the reason.
The hostess led them to a corner booth, and Patti slipped in the far side. He sat opposite her and couldn’t take his gaze off her. She looked up at the woman, who was handing out menus and chatting, and smiled. He watched her pert, upturned nose, lazily lingered over her cute profile, and sighed.
Deep.
Hell. This lunch was probably a mistake.
“Sir?”
He looked toward the chatty hostess. “Hm?”
“Something to drink?”
“Oh, sure. Iced tea is good.”
“Sweet or unsweet?”
“Oh, sweet, of course.”
She nodded. “Two sweet teas coming up.” Then she left. He gripped his menu and stared straight across the table to Patti, who rattled on….
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you out of Legend, Jim. All these years.” She popped open the menu, perused it for a moment, then took a peek over the top. Jim realized he’d not even looked at his yet and wondered if he should. Eventually. “It’s kind of like the kids, you know?” she started in again, “they think the teacher’s live at the school and are surprised to see them in the Piggly Wiggly. Like they don’t belong there, or something. Kind of like you and me, here, now, in Pigeon Forge. Odd, huh?”
His thoughts exactly, and he gave a slight chuckle. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
Patti brought the menu up closer to her face. “Oh, they have roast beef open-faced sandwiches. I shouldn’t, but…” She laid the menu down again. “Jim, you don’t get out much, do you?”
Immediately, he smiled and relaxed somewhat. This was Patti. Just random and unexpected Patti. No worries. “Actually, no. I stick pretty close to home and school.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Really? That’s a shame.”
Damned straight.
“You didn’t grow up here, though.”
He nodded. “No, but Legend is home now.”
“And before?”
“I grew up in Texas.”
Patti sat her menu down on the table with a slap. “I had no idea, Jim. Man, you work with someone for years and the things you don’t know about them.”
Time to remedy that. At least in your case, my dear.
Shit. What was he thinking? Well, he was thinking that he did want to get to know her better, that’s what. Rules be damned.
He shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know a lot about you, either, Ms. Baker.”
She sat back against the padded booth. “Heck, Jim. I’m pretty much an open book. Born in Legend. Live in Legend. Work in Legend. Story of my life.”
The hostess returned with their tea. “Has ImaJean come to take y’alls order yet?”
They both shook their heads. “Shoot. I’ll go get that girl.”
Jim watched her sashay away, and had it been any other time, he might have liked watching her sashaying backside, but at the moment he was totally and physically enthralled with the woman sitting across from him at the table.
He leaned forward. “Legend is a great place. I came here after graduate school looking for an administrative position. No family left in Texas, and I just made Legend my home. I like it just fine. But it sounds like you don’t?”
She stared at him for a moment. “Jim, you should know me by now. I think big all the time, but I never act on it. I’ll likely never leave Legend, and well, you know, it’s probably because I am pretty happy here, if only I could just—”
She brought that thought to a close real quick, and for the first time
ever, Jim sensed a little vulnerability in Patti Jo Baker. As her mouth snapped shut, cutting off her sentence in mid-stream, her eyes grew wider, and her face softened. And flushed.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he wasn’t going to find out at that moment because ImaJean, their waitress, stepped up then to take their orders.
“What can I get for ya?”
****
ImaJean towered over their table, and suddenly, Patti felt like a kid again. Sort of like she’d just gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar—or that she’d done something extremely embarrassing.
Thing was, the only embarrassing thing she’d done at the moment was almost tell Jim Hamilton, her boss, that she would be happier if she only had a husband.
Shit!
She’d let her guard down way too much. Seeing Jim out of context, away from the school and in his tight jeans, and sitting casually across from her while she ordered—sipping his tea while peering over his frosty glass—was a bit unnerving.
Why? She had no clue. It was just…different.
“Ma’am?”
She glanced at ImaJean. “Open-faced beef sandwich,” she told her.
“Hot or cold.”
She grimaced. “Hot.” How else?
“With gravy?”
“Of course.”
“Rolls or cornbread.” Geez. Too many decisions!
“Rolls.”
“Green beans or slaw?”
Crap! “Slaw.”
ImaJean looked at Jim. “Sir?”
He handed her the menu. “Ditto. Right down to the slaw.”
ImaJean walked away, scribbling on her pad, and Patti sat back in her seat. “Whew!” Jim grinned at her. For the longest moment, he just sat and smiled her way. And for another long moment, she found herself completely entranced by looking into his eyes.
Wow.
This was a lot weird.
Chapter Four
Their open-faced beef sandwiches came and went.
They talked about school. And students. And pending snow.
They shimmied around talking about nothing but those two subjects, so much so that Jim was beginning to think he was boring as hell.
No wonder he couldn’t get a woman.
That’s why he said what he did next. “So what do you do for fun, Patti?”
The look on her face, complete with saucer-round eyes, told him that he’d likely said the wrong thing. Shit. Was that a line? Like, hey baby, what’s your sign? Surely, no. Because the last thing he wanted to do was insinuate he had asked her to lunch as a pickup.
“Fun? What’s that? I teach, remember? I stay up grading papers all night rather than hitting the bars.”
The right corner of her mouth jerked up in a half smile, and she started shuffling around, picking up her purse, moving her silverware aside; picked up her water glass and took a sip—all the while avoiding eye contact with him.
Dammit. He’d made her uncomfortable.
“Oh yeah. That’s right.” Stupid man.
She glanced at her watch. Okay, there was the signal. “I think…” she started.
He made an effort to look straight at the clock over the dining counter. “Oh hell. I need to get out of here.” He grabbed for the check about the same time she did, their fingers knifing together.
“Oh!”
“I have this.”
“Oh, no. What’s my part?”
“My treat.” Man, was she in a hurry. Well, so was he.
“Then I have the tip.” She scooted to the edge of her booth seat.
“Fine.”
Those fingers he’d collided with earlier plunged into her leather bag and pulled out a wad of bills. “There, that should do it,” she said.
“I’ll go find ImaJean.”
“You do that.”
They stood, both of them, facing each other, jerking first one way and then that, followed by a momentary pause halting all the skitter-skatter.
“I’m off now,” he said.
“Me too.”
Jim turned toward the counter, stopped, and glanced back.
Patti evidentially had turned the opposite way because she was half-turned too; her gaze shooting over her shoulder. “Thanks for lunch,” she told him. “See you Monday.”
He nodded, noting that her bottom lip was firmly embedded between her teeth. And for the first time ever, Patti Jo Baker looked, well, vulnerable.
He gave her a wave. “Monday.”
****
Halfway home during her thirty minute drive to Legend, Patti finally exhaled. Normally her radio would have been blaring, she would have been singing, and her brain would have been ticking off all sorts of to-dos for her weekend.
But not this day. And not during this trip.
Something strange was going on with Jim, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She wondered if he was overly stressed, or if the kids were finally getting to him or something because it was like he wasn’t concentrating at all on having a conversation with her.
It was a thought she couldn’t get off her mind.
It was unlike Jim to be quiet, and several times during their lunch, the silence had filled the air between them in the booth. Of course, it was normally unlikely for her to be so quiet too, and that’s what got her to contemplate what was going on with Jim, because she knew there was nothing wrong with her.
It had to be him. He wasn’t holding up his end of the conversation.
And it was like, well…it was like he was shy or something. This was not the Jim Hamilton she knew. The leader of the school who could bark at middle schoolers on the lawn to get them back to their side of the playground, the man who took charge of their faculty meetings even when the teacher’s got rowdy. The guy who could sooth and sway an irate parent with the best of them.
Jim was way too quiet today, and for whatever reason it was bugging the hell out of her.
Wait.
But was it Jim?
Or was it really her? Had she done something? Said something? Felt something?
Her heart clutched.
“Dammit.” She had not felt anything. Nothing at all. Especially not when their fingers touched.
No. When they’d touched, there was nothing.
Definitely not a spark. Not even one twit of one.
Swallowing hard, Patti stared ahead out of her windshield and looked at the gray sky, wondering if, indeed, they had snow in their forecast and tried to forget that last notion altogether.
No. No spark.
“Liar.”
****
A couple of hours later she approached the little Victorian cottage that was Suzie’s B&B. There was a sting of ice crystals in the air, a slant of sleet breaking through night. It was almost eight p.m. and it had been dark for a couple of hours now. She wondered if she should stay very long because of the weather.
Of course Suzie didn’t live too far from where Patti lived. Nothing in Legend was very far away from anything. The B&B did sit on the edge of town, though, closer to the lake and the mountain, and for whatever crazy reason, storms were worse on this side of town.
“I won’t stay long,” she muttered, gripping her bags tighter and stepping onto the porch. “Besides this is not going to work anyway. How could it?”
She had little confidence that Suzie Matthews would find her a husband. It might have worked for Mary Lou Picketts and for Lyssa Larkin, but she held no false hopes that it would work for her.
None.
But hey, she got new clothes and a makeover out of the deal.
About the same time she raised her hand to rap on the red door trimmed in greenery, Suzie snatched it open with a smile and said, “Patti Jo! Come on in. We’ve been waiting for you!”
It was the “we” that gave her a moment’s trepidation, and had she listened to those kinds of gut things that told her stuff was about to happen, she might have turned tail and ran.
But she hadn’t.
She forged ahead,
her packages grasped to her chest, and crossed the threshold.
Chapter Five
“Patti! We’re so glad you could make it!”
Shit.
She glanced about. People.
There was a couple here. A couple there. Everywhere a couple.
Over by the fireplace stood another, Suzie’s sister, Chelly—they were in the same class in school—and her husband, Matt. Suzie’s husband, Brad, headed toward his wife. They made couple number four. And coming in from the kitchen, was her best friend Kate, and her hunky hubby, Mike. Couple number five.
Couples.
But she was a single.
And damn her, Suzie said nothing about a party. Had she misunderstood?
Kate rushed forward, took a couple of packages from her arms, and kissed her on the cheek. “I didn’t know if you were coming or not!” she exclaimed, then turned to her husband. “Mike, can you take these things upstairs to the blue room? First door on the left.” Then giving Patti her full attention, she smiled. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart. Glad you are here.”
Patti lowered her chin and her voice. “Kate, what the hell…”
Kate grasped her arm and twisted away, dragging her toward the couple closest to the door. “There’s Nash and Mary Lou over there. You remember them, right?” She waved and Patti gave a little finger wave and grin back to the happy and newly married couple.
Something didn’t feel right in her tummy.
She turned back to Kate. “Tell me, please…”
“Oh!” Kate exclaimed, this time dragging her by the elbow to her left. “I don’t think you know Midnight and Martin, do you? Midnight owns the Emporium downtown.”
What the hell…
She halted Kate, twirled her around, and then Patti did the leading off, pulling Kate toward the kitchen. Once they were behind the solid oak door of the room, she lit into her. “Of course I know Midnight, Kate. I’ve lived here forever. I don’t believe there is a person in Legend that I do not know. Now,” she faced her, square on, and took another half-step closer to her friend, “tell me what is going on. I came here for a private consult with Suzie, and there is a party going on. A party, where there are couples everywhere. And me? I’m not a couple. It’s obvious. Something is up, and I don’t like it. I don’t like being left in the dark, and you know that, so Kate, my dear friend, you need to tell me right this instant what in the world…”