by Debby Mayne
His smile widens as he jots some things down and hands the cards back to me. “Are you running late for something?”
I slowly shake my head and fight back the tears as I think about why I was driving so recklessly. I’m not a lawbreaker. I follow all the traffic rules, so being a speed demon is new for me.
His smile fades into a frown. “Is there a reason you’re in such a hurry?”
Now I can’t control my emotions. My chin starts to quiver as the tears spurt. I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, smearing makeup all over my sleeve.
“Ma’am, would you like for me to call someone?”
“No, I’m fine.” I sniffle. “Just a few personal problems, but nothing all that major.”
He glances over his shoulder and then looks back at me. “Tell you what, Ms. Bucklin. I’ll follow you to wherever you’re going to make sure you arrive safely if you promise to pay attention to your speed in the future.”
“I’m not getting a ticket?” I glance at his name tag and make a mental note.
He shakes his head. “Not this time, but consider it a warning.”
“Thank you, Officer Murdoch. I’ll be fine.”
“Um . . .” He straightens up, rubs the back of his neck, and then looks back at me with a smile that makes me think there’s something else he wants to say but won’t. Or can’t.
I look into his gorgeous brown eyes and find myself speechless. I clear my throat and manage to squeak, “May I go now?”
He nods and gives me the handsomest smile I’ve ever seen in my life. His teeth aren’t perfectly straight, but they have character. He has a strong chin that evokes confidence and strength. There’s something about him that makes me feel warm all over—and safe—something that never happened when I was with Kyle.
As I drive away, I glance in my rearview mirror and see him standing there on the side of the road, watching me. I’m almost home when I realize something. I’m totally attracted to him, but I don’t know how to finagle a way to see him again. My lack of experience has caught up to me once again.
Okay, breathe, I tell myself. This isn’t the end of the world. And Pinewood isn’t a big city, so if he wants to find me, he will. But what if he doesn’t? What if he didn’t feel the magnetic pull between us? I have no idea what to do.
The one person who will know is Shay. She’s the smartest person I know, and I can trust her.
I pull off to the side of the road to call her, but before I click the Send button, I decide this would be better in person. So I make a detour and head to downtown Pinewood, find a parking spot in front of La Chic, and say a short prayer that she’s working today.
She is. As soon as I walk in, there she is, smiling. “Hey, Coralee. Back for more cute things?”
I shake my head as I glance around. “Are we alone?”
A frown quickly replaces her smile. “Yes. Is everything okay?”
“Sort of . . . but not really.” I give her a pleading look. “I need help.”
A soft laugh escapes her lips. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, and maybe we can figure it out?”
I start out by letting her know how much I love my new clothes, hoping I’ll get the nerve to tell her how attracted I am to Officer Murdoch. I’m about ready to transition when I see her gaze darting to something outside. I glance over my shoulder to see what has her attention, and then I have to do a double take.
It’s Officer Murdoch. Suddenly, I start stuttering, and she looks back at me with concern.
She looks out the window before turning back to face me. “Are you okay, Coralee?”
I nod, but I can feel my face heating up. “I . . . uh—” I’m silenced by the jingling bell as the door opens.
Shay’s face lights up. “Hey, Trace. What’s going on?”
I can’t bring myself to look directly at Officer Murdoch—or Trace—so I stare down at the floor. He apparently doesn’t realize or remember I’m the one he stopped less than a half hour ago.
“Since you’re part of the Bucklin family, I figured you might be able to help me out. I’m looking for Coralee Bucklin. I wanted to get her phone number, but I couldn’t while I was on duty.”
My heart hammers as I look up and meet his gaze. His face instantly turns as red as mine feels.
Shay whispers, “Okay, I think I know why you’re here.” Then she laughs and backs toward the hallway. “Why don’t the two of you talk while I finish up something in the office?”
I feel like I’m back in middle school as we look at each other, both of us at a loss for words. The situation is extremely awkward, but it’s not terrible.
He finally smiles and licks his lips. “Sorry. I had no idea it was you.”
“That’s okay.” I glance down at the floor and clear my throat. “Shay’s my cousin.”
He nods. “I figured that. I suppose you heard what I said when I first came in here.”
My face gets even hotter. “I did.”
“Then can I have your phone number? I’d like to call you sometime.” He clears his throat. “That is, if you’d like to talk to me again.”
“Sure.” I put my handbag on the counter and dig around for a slip of paper. After I jot down my information, I hand it to him.
“I wanted to ask when I stopped you, but it’s against our policy.”
I’m so excited I feel like jumping out of my own skin. “I understand.”
“Would you like to go out with me sometime?”
My lips are dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, so all I can do is nod. I see movement in the hallway, and it’s Shay giving me a thumbs-up.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other before taking a step toward the door. “I guess I’d better leave so you can talk to your cousin.” Then he leaves.
Shay walks back into the shop area, still grinning. “So, one problem settled. Now, do you need help with anything else?”
I tell her about the traffic stop, and she listens. After I’m finished, she chuckles. “The Lord has a way of working things out, doesn’t he?”
“He obviously does.”
“There’s something else you probably don’t know about Trace.”
I brace myself for some bad news. “What’s that?”
“Grandpa Jay has hired him to work at the family reunion.”
“Doing what?”
“Security.” Shay smiles. “Grandpa Jay figures having an officer of the law present will keep everyone on their toes and hopefully out of trouble.”
I think about that before grinning right back at her. “That’s probably wishful thinking.”
Her grin widens. “I know.”
I have to admit, after talking to Jeanine, I’m having some reservations about buying her condo. There’s something about her that makes me unsure if I want any connection with her at all.
As soon as I walk back into the condo I’m already living in, Sara confronts me. “Is your new place still standing?”
I tell her all about my conversation with Jeanine, and she nods her understanding. “So, what do you think?” I ask.
“I totally get why you’re worried.” She places a hand on my shoulder. “I would be too.”
“Do you think I should go through with trying to buy it?”
“I’m not sure. There are more issues you need to consider.” Before I ask what they are, she starts naming them. “First of all, she has proved she can’t be trusted by being involved with a married man, which means she doesn’t mind hiding information. That leads me to think there might be something she’s not telling you about the condo.”
I nod. “I have thought about that.”
“Another thing is that if she has people mad at her—like the man’s wife—what if they come looking for her, and they find you instead?”
That’s something I hadn’t thought about. “That could be dangerous.”
“I know. And then there’s the issue of her being so strange. What if she has seller’s re
morse and decides she wants her place back?”
“I’ll change the locks, first thing.”
“I don’t know, Sally. Maybe you should reconsider this whole thing and wait for something else to come on the market.”
“But the baby—” I point to her belly. “You’ll need to get your nursery set up.”
“Justin and I have been talking, and we’ve decided to keep the baby in the room with us for a couple of months.”
“Are you sure?”
Sara nods with enthusiasm. “Positive. Even if you move out, I don’t want to be separated from the baby at first.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “That settles it. I’m going to call Nate and let him know that I don’t want the place.”
He answers on the first ring, and I tell him what happened as well as my thoughts and reservations. “I agree with you,” he says. “We’ve always known there’s something not right about that woman, and I’m beginning to think it’s worse than we thought.”
“So, what will the bank do with the place?”
“What we always do. We’ll finalize the foreclosure, make sure everything is in order, and put it on the market.” He pauses. “To be honest, I’m relieved you’re not still on for buying that place. In this business, we’ve seen a lot of weird things happen. I’d worry about you because I like you too much.”
“You do?” My heart pounds so hard I’m afraid it might jump right out of my mouth. I consider myself very independent, but I still love the fact that he’s trying to be protective.
He lets out what sounds like a nervous laugh. “This isn’t something I wanted to tell you on the phone, but I’m sort of falling . . . well, I’m pretty crazy about you.”
My heart hammers hard. “I like you a lot too.”
“Now that we have that out of the way, what do you want to do this weekend?”
We talk about several options and settle on ordering pizza and watching a movie on Netflix. Then I decide I might as well bring up something I’ve been thinking about. “Would you like to go to my family reunion?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Really?”
He lets out a soft chuckle. “Yes, really. First of all, I’m honored that you’d want me to meet your family. And second, the Bucklin family reunions are known as the event of the year around here.”
“Even in Hattiesburg?”
He laughs again. “Even in Hattiesburg. When people find out I’m dating you, one of the first questions I usually get asked is whether or not I’m going to your next reunion.”
“Maybe we should charge admission.”
“You’d probably make a few bucks if you did.”
“Then it wouldn’t be as much fun because we’d have to perform to make sure everyone got their money’s worth. As it is, every single act of misbehavior comes natural—and that’s something the Bucklins do so well.” I glance at the clock. “I need to go. See you tonight.”
I head on back to the workroom and give Sara a report. “He sounded excited when I asked him to the reunion.”
“Are you sure you want him to go?” Sara gives me a long look. “What if he finds out how crazy our family really is and decides he doesn’t want any part of it?”
“Well, first of all, we haven’t discussed anything long-term—at least not yet—so that’s not an issue . . . yet. And second of all, I think it’ll be good to see the family’s reaction to him and how he deals with the craziness.”
She bobs her head. “Yeah, there is that.” She points to some ribbon she’s laid out. “We have a huge order for some gold-lined green-and-red-plaid bows, so I figured it would be best to knock those out before we start on the smaller orders.”
I get right to work on the new order. By the time I finish the last one, I know that if I never see another green-and-red-plaid print, I’ll be happy. This happens when we get huge orders, but I’m not complaining. This business might be monotonous, but it keeps us from having to go to work for someone else, doing something we dislike even more.
As soon as we’re finished, Sara leans back and turns to me. “Do you ever think about what you’d really like to do with your life?”
I shrug. “Not really. Why?”
“I know we’re making a boatload of money, but it seems that there’s something else. Something more rewarding.”
I lift an eyebrow and point to her belly. “You already have something more rewarding, but if we’re talking about a career, what are you thinking about?”
“I’ll tell you when I figure it out.” She grins. “But in the meantime, I suppose we’ll just keep on making hair bows as long as mamas are willing to buy them.”
“Which will be forever.” I clean up my workspace and stand. “I don’t think there’s ever been a time when mamas didn’t want to put some crazy stuff in their daughters’ hair.”
“I know. Remember when our mama used to pull our hair back and stick those insane ribbons in our hair?”
I nod. “The only thing that was worse was when she bought some comic strip bows from a craft fair.”
Her eyes widen as she remembers. “Yeah, those were the ones someone made by covering real comic strips from the newspaper with contact paper.”
“I was embarrassed to leave the house when she stuck those in our hair.”
Sara shakes her head. “Which was why we conveniently lost them in the bushes right outside the church.” She drums her fingers on the table and gets one of those familiar looks on her face. “Do you remember what they looked like so we can replicate them?”
“Don’t go getting any ideas.” A familiar feeling of dread washes over me at the very thought of putting a child of today through that kind of torture.
“Why not? If they sell, we’ll make a fortune. All we have to do is buy a bunch of Sunday newspapers, and we can ask people to save them for us.”
She has a point. “Well, the cost will be lower than all the ribbon we’re buying.”
“Let’s see if we can find instructions on YouTube.” Without waiting for me to respond, she pulls her laptop toward her and starts searching. “Look. There’s a bunch of ’em. All we have to do is pick one, make a prototype, and add it to our Etsy page.”
As we study the different types of comic strip hair bows, we chuckle about the fact that we’re actually doing this. “It’s like we’re in cahoots with the mamas to torture their little girls.”
Sara crinkles her nose as she gives me one of her looks. “They’re not as bad as I remembered.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” She scrolls down to the next tutorial and smiles. “In fact, I actually like this one.”
“I pity your baby if it winds up being a girl.”
She rubs her belly. “I have a feeling it just might be.”
If someone had told me Julius would be excited about building a boxcar, I would have said they were crazy. But here he is, asking questions about what’ll make the thing run faster.
“How would I know?” I stand back and stare at the pile of junk he and his daddy have put together. “All I know is we get in it, someone gives us a shove, and it’s over when we reach the bottom of the hill.”
“How did you build it if you don’t know what makes it work?” Julius continues staring at his boxcar.
I shrug. “I just did what Daddy told me to do. He knows how to build those things.”
“I wish my dad was as cool as yours,” Julius says. “He keeps griping about all the money he spends on my cars, and he says all I want to do is put together a homemade mess that I’ll never be able to use again.”
I stare at Julius. He thinks my daddy’s cool, yet his dad makes sure he has the best wheels at Pinewood High School. I don’t know of a single girl who wouldn’t jump at the chance to go for a ride in his car . . . or a guy, for that matter. And he wants to be in some silly boxcar race? He’s messed up even more than I realized.
“So, what can I do to fix this thing?”
Julius stands back and shoves his hands into his pockets as he gives me a questioning look.
I walk around it, bend over to check how the wood is screwed together, and finally stand up straight. “Ya got any tools?”
“Yeah, my dad has a toolbox in the garage.”
“How about screws and brackets?”
He looks confused. “What do you need screws for?”
“You’ll need screws and brackets to keep the sides from falling off.”
“Oh.”
I vaguely remember the steps we went through to put mine together. “Maybe we should go to the hardware store and pick up a few things.”
“Let me go tell my mother where we’re going. I’ll be right back.”
As Julius runs into his family’s ridiculously big mansion, I rock back on my heels and ponder what to do. Mama dropped me off, hoping Julius and I would hang out here and find some common ground. Maybe this will be just what we need. I’m actually surprised she wanted me to come here because of what she found in my room. But Daddy has convinced her that I’m a good kid, and I need to figure out how to stay out of trouble without her constantly hovering.
He comes back with a grin on his face. “She said go on ahead.” Then he holds up a credit card. “And we can buy whatever we want.”
“You have your own credit card?”
“Get real.” He makes what Mama calls an Elvis mouth. “I got this off my dad’s dresser. He won’t even know as long as I put it back when we come home.”
If I did something like that, my daddy would tan my hide and ground me for a solid month. But this is Julius, and I doubt his dad would even flinch, since they have more money than they got sense, according to Mama.
While we’re in the hardware store, we pick up a bunch of things, including the screws, brackets, and some spray paint. I’m surprised he picks the bright orange.
“That way they’ll know it’s me,” he says. “I like to make a statement.” He picks up a can of black spray paint. “This is for the stripe down the side.”
“Why don’t you just get some black tape? That’ll be easier.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. I want it painted on.”