Читать книгу A Week Till the Wedding - Linda Winstead Jones - Страница 10

Perhaps he’d made a mistake when he’d let Daisy go. He hadn’t had a choice, he couldn’t see how his life could’ve unfolded in any other way, but dammit, had he made a mistake?

This was the thought that plagued Jacob as he pulled his rental car to a stop in front of Daisy’s home. He never second-guessed his decisions, never looked back and wondered.

The sooner he finished up here and got out of town, the better off he’d be.

Daisy still lived in the house she’d grown up in, a yellow cottage a mere five blocks from the shop where she worked. The house was square and wide and one-story, with a large wraparound porch complete with a pair of matching white rockers and healthy ferns. The yard was dotted with ancient trees; the branches intertwined overhead, and while he couldn’t see it from here he imagined there was still a vegetable garden out back.

Her car was parked in the driveway, but instead of pulling in behind it he stopped at the curb. A concrete sidewalk ran in front of her house, and a leg of that sidewalk shot from the street to her front porch. This was a neighborhood where the residents walked, both for exercise and for more practical reasons, where they visited one another—on special occasions and sometimes for no reason at all. Both sidewalks saw a lot of wear. Or at least, they once had. He imagined that hadn’t changed.

Daisy’s entire life was right here, a general store, doctor’s office, pharmacy—and her work—within easy walking distance, while he flew from one time zone to another on a regular basis. He was good at what he did, a whiz with numbers and an unshakable faith in his own instincts. The men he worked for trusted his instincts, too. They trusted him with billions of dollars in investments, and he hadn’t let them down yet. In fact, he’d made them all lots and lots of money.

In the early days they’d called him a whiz kid. These days he was a highly valued member of a company that continued to grow, in large part thanks to him. And what had it gotten him? Insomnia. An almost nonexistent social life. And a fat bank account.

The second he stopped the car at the curb Daisy threw open the door and jumped out, as if she couldn’t wait to escape. He should wave, let her go and hurry home. But instead he shut down the engine, jumped out of the car and followed her.

She glanced over her shoulder as his car door slammed. She was not happy. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Walking you to the door.”

“If a man in a suit follows me around my neighbors are going to think someone is suing me for a bad haircut, or maybe the tax man is after me.”

“The tax man? Really?”

“Shoo,” she said, waving her fingers in his direction.

He ignored her dismissive order and took two long steps to catch up with her. “What’s your problem with the suit?”

She didn’t look at him. Her chin was in the air, her hair whipped as she glanced in the opposite direction. “I have no problem with what you wear. I don’t care at all what you wear.”

“Then why have you mentioned the damn suit so often?”

“It’s summertime in the Deep South,” she said. “Unless you’re headed to church or a funeral, the suit is downright unnatural.”

Daisy stopped in front of her porch steps, then spun around to face him. She was no longer trying to avoid him. No, instead she looked him in the eye, unflinching. She was stronger than he remembered. Tougher. “On second thought, wear a suit every day for all I care. It will serve as a constant reminder that you don’t belong here.”

“I don’t need a constant reminder that I don’t belong here.” No, he’d felt it every second of every day.

“Neither do I.” She took a step back and up, onto the bottom step.

Jacob matched her step, moving forward but not up. He wasn’t ready to let her move away. They were nose to nose, now, eye to eye. “Then who am I supposed to be reminding?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“You’re not making any sense at all….”

“I don’t have to make sense if I don’t want to.”

Jacob shook his head. “When did we start arguing?”

“Seven years ago,” Daisy snapped.

Jacob reached out, took her face in his hands, stepped into her space and kissed her. He wasn’t sure why, he just couldn’t help himself. He had to kiss her; he had to press his mouth to hers. He’d thought her scent was maddening, but her taste … he had forgotten … how the hell had he forgotten this …

She tensed for a moment then she melted. Her lips molded to his, her eyes closed and they kissed. Long and soft and easy.

He never should’ve let her go.

She tasted so good, so warm and right. Her face in his hands was soft, and he loved holding her almost as much as he loved kissing her. She kissed him back, well and deeply. She leaned toward him, into him and when he swept his tongue just inside her mouth she gasped and moaned and deepened the kiss. The years melted away, the miles that had come between them no longer mattered.

Daisy pulled away from him sharply. Her lips were swollen and wet, her eyes wide and surprised. Was she surprised by the kiss, or by her response?

“Don’t do that again,” she ordered, backing up the front porch steps, toward the front door and escape.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a very bad idea.”

He didn’t follow her onto the porch; he’d pushed his luck enough for one day.

“Tomorrow night,” he reminded her. “Lemon cake and chicken and dumplings.”

“Surely Miss Eunice will forget all about those plans by tomorrow morning,” Daisy said as she stopped by the front door and grabbed her house keys out of her small purse. “I hope,” she added beneath her breath.

“If she doesn’t …”

“She will,” Daisy said, almost as if she was commanding it to be so.

“Maybe. Probably.” Jacob stood on the walk for several minutes after Daisy had closed the front door. When he’d heard about his grandmother’s condition and decided to come home for a long visit, he hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t expected to have the past come to life again, to look at Daisy and suffer a deep regret for what he’d lost.

He shook his head, as if he could shake off unwanted thoughts, and turned around sharply to make his escape. Coming home had been a mistake. He’d had his reasons, and it was too late to turn back now. But the truth of the matter was, his life was no longer here in Bell Grove. It hadn’t been for a very long time. Daisy and the reactions she elicited were a part of another life, and no matter how pleasant—and frustrating—it was to see her again, he had to remember to leave her in the past. Where she belonged.

Daisy didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, after everything that had happened in the past twenty hours, but after Jacob dropped her at home she slept amazingly well. She dreamed about the kiss, which was very annoying because in her dream that kiss didn’t end too soon. In her dream she got a lot more than a kiss from Jacob. She woke with a start, sweating and shaking and most of all angry with herself for allowing her badly neglected physical needs to wipe away every ounce of common sense. First the kiss, then the dream. Where was her self-control? Why couldn’t she just be angry with him and leave it at that?

She should’ve bolted when he’d moved in for a kiss. She could have. Should have. But she’d wanted that kiss so much, and at that moment the want had been a lot stronger than her sense of what she should do.

Her dad had always been philosophical. Everything happened for a reason, he’d said on numerous occasions. There was a purpose in every heartbreak, in every decision, in every coincidence. She’d dismissed that way of thinking for a long time, because she hadn’t been able to believe that her parents had died for some lofty reason that she didn’t understand.

But as she walked to work she convinced herself that Jacob had returned to Bell Grove for a specific purpose, that Miss Eunice had lost her mind to put Daisy in this very position. Why? Easy. So she could get over Jacob once and for all and move on with her life.

They’d never had it out, had never really ended their relationship. They’d simply drifted apart, fallen into lives so different there was just no way to make them mesh. If she ever wanted to move on she had to get over Jacob, once and for all. Oh, she’d insisted to anyone who would listen that she’d gotten over him years ago, she’d even convinced herself, for a while. But now she knew that was a lie. If she’d really gotten over him, the unfortunate kiss wouldn’t have affected her the way it had. Looking at Miss Eunice’s wedding dress wouldn’t have given her shivers. As well as a bout of unexpected nausea, if she were being completely honest.

She should have a few days to come up with a plan. As bad as her memory was these days, Miss Eunice had surely already forgotten about chicken and dumplings and lemon cake. What were the odds that she’d also forget that her grandson and Daisy were “engaged”? Daisy could hope, but the engagement seemed to be a thing Miss Eunice had grabbed on to, and she likely wasn’t going to let it go easily. There was such joy on her face as she planned a wedding that would never take place.

Jacob seemed to think he was humoring his grandmother by playing along—and by dragging Daisy into the family mess—but what would happen if Miss Eunice’s fantasy didn’t fade? Did he really expect that she would go through with a fake wedding ceremony at his family reunion? No, something had to break before that happened. This charade couldn’t go any further.

Much as she wanted to get Jacob out of her heart once and for all, Daisy knew very well that pretending to be his wife would shatter that heart beyond saving.

The morning was an easy one, until her eleven o’clock cut and color started talking about Jacob. She supposed it was inevitable that everyone would find out he was back, but you’d think people would have better manners! Not Amanda Williams, who had never met a silent moment she liked.

She started while Daisy was applying color to her hair.

“I hear Jacob Tasker is in town.”

Daisy made a noncommittal humming noise that sounded affirmative enough to her.

“I also heard that he was in your shop yesterday. Did he need a haircut or did he just stop by to chat? I’m sure none of the Taskers handles their own engine repair—they have people for that sort of thing. And really, why on earth would he want someone from Bell Grove to cut his hair?” She laughed, not realizing that she’d just insulted Daisy—Daisy, who had scissors and a variety of interesting hair dyes within reach. “Oh, you two were such a cute couple, back in the old days.” She barely took a breath, much less leave spaces in the conversation for Daisy to actually respond. Which was just as well, in Daisy’s opinion.

“Everyone always knew Jacob would light out of town as soon as he got the chance. He was always so smart, so driven to succeed. I didn’t think he’d go without you, though.”

Well, he did. Daisy wondered if it was too late to add some purple to the color she was putting on Amanda’s honey-blond hair. Maybe a Mohawk …

“I hear he looks good. Is he married, do you know? Still working for that same company that hired him right out of college? I haven’t heard much about him for a couple of years, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

He looks damn good, I don’t know for certain if he’s married or not but I don’t think so and last time I checked he was still working for that soulless money-hungry company that stole him out from under me. “I need you to sit under the dryer, now,” Daisy said.

Sadly the noise of the dryer didn’t shut Amanda up. She raised her voice and continued, thankfully moving on to the other Taskers. Sure, a beauty shop was a great place to gossip, but Amanda’s rambling made Daisy wonder what the residents of Bell Grove had been saying about her lately. All gossip concerning Daisy Bell probably began with “That poor girl, bless her heart …”

She didn’t want to be a poor girl, didn’t want people to bless her heart behind her back. What the hell had she done to herself? Mari and Lily didn’t need her anymore. Well, they needed her as a sister and she’d always be there for them, but her years as guardian were behind her. She loved Bell Grove, loved her job and her friends, but she no longer had her sisters as a barrier keeping her from pursuing romance. Maybe there wasn’t exactly a glut of handsome, available, appealing men in town, but not every man in the county was an ogre or a jerk. Why was she alone after all this time?

Jacob’s return was making her question everything! Just what she didn’t need: a man to screw with her head.

But she did need a man in her life. That was becoming clear. She wanted to be kissed, wanted to have sex outside of a dream, wanted to marry and have kids and make a life for herself. Maybe that would happen here in Bell Grove, and maybe it would have to happen somewhere else. She should make more trips to Atlanta, broaden her horizons.

But it wouldn’t happen at all until she ended things with Jacob once and for all and allowed herself to start over.

Jacob left his grandmother’s room with a frown on his face. Great. Just great! Her memory issues were pretty damn selective. And inconvenient. She had told Lurlene to prepare chicken and dumplings for supper, and she’d already started talking about how much she was looking forward to Daisy’s lemon cake.

Daisy couldn’t cook. She was good at a lot of things, but cooking wasn’t one of them. Maybe he could drive to Atlanta and buy a lemon cake. Not that a store-bought cake, even a spectacular one, would fool Grandma Eunice even on her worst day.

It had been seven years since he’d been with Daisy, and in that time she’d raised her sisters, taken over the family business, basically grown up. Maybe she’d learned how to cook. Maybe she did know how to make that lemon cake. He called the shop, and she answered with a sharp,

“Bell’s.”

“It’s me,” he said.

“Me? I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, sir.” Her voice was sweeter, now, a little lower and calmer, but with an edge he couldn’t dismiss. “Would you like to make an appointment for a haircut? I do have an opening this afternoon.”

“Dammit, Daisy, it’s Jacob.”

“Oh, so sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “I didn’t recognize your voice. You sounded a little bit like Old Man Johnson, but I was afraid to assume …”

“We need a lemon cake,” he snapped, without arguing that he sounded nothing like Old Man Johnson, who was ninety-seven years old and had the deepest Southern drawl of any man for miles.

The moment of silence told him Daisy was as bothered as he was. “She didn’t forget?”

“No. You’re expected for supper, and you’re expected to bring a lemon cake. She’s been talking about it all morning.”

“I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes,” she said. “I have a customer.” She disconnected without a goodbye, and for a few seconds Jacob stood there with the phone in his hand, staring at it as if somehow Daisy was still there, harassing him. Driving him crazy.

Making him pay.

He hadn’t purposely left her behind, it had just happened. Like that made a difference. He’d planned to send for her, to send for them all, but the one time he’d mentioned moving, Daisy had been horrified. She wouldn’t uproot her sisters, she’d said, wouldn’t drag them away from their friends and the only home they’d ever known. He’d planned to come home for Christmas that year, to convince her face-to-face to return to California with him.

But he hadn’t made Christmas that year. There had been a business emergency—in hindsight so unimportant that right now he could not remember what it had been—and he’d canceled his travel plans.

And that had been that, though there had been a few awkward phone conversations in the early months of the new year. Not many and nothing had been said that could break through the distance between them, distance both physical and emotional. He and Daisy had no longer wanted the same things. They’d drifted apart. His life was there, her life was here. Simple. She’d faded in his memory, as he was certain he’d faded in hers. Life went on.

Dammit, that hadn’t been entirely his fault. She’d played a part, as well. Maybe he hadn’t fought for her the way he should have, but she hadn’t exactly fought for him, either.

When Daisy called back he was still holding the cordless phone in his hand, ready for her. Her words were sharp. “Grab a pen and paper. I’m going to tell you what I need, and you’re going to put on that fancy suit of yours and head to the Piggly Wiggly.”

A part of her wanted to kick Jacob out of her house and tackle this chore alone, but two things stopped her. One, she needed the help. Two, she’d never get over him if she didn’t kick this annoying habit of being downright twitchy when he was around. Not twitchy in a bad way. No, he made her squirm in a way that was annoyingly pleasant. She felt like he had literally worked his way under her skin.

He looked good in khakis and a golf shirt. She’d kidded him about his suits, but he did look sharp in them. The more casual outfit he wore this afternoon showed off the muscle he’d built up since he’d left her. Not massive muscle, thank goodness, but he did have some interesting definition.

More reminder that they weren’t the same people they’d been seven years ago. Of course they weren’t! They’d been little more than babies, untouched by the real world, unshaped by loss and hardship and responsibility.

Daisy tried to keep her mind on lemon cake, but she really wanted to touch Jacob’s forearm to see if it felt as hard as it looked. She wanted to look under that shirt—just a peek—to see what muscles he’d added there. He’d probably added some chest hair, as well. He hadn’t had much at twenty-four. Oh, she really hoped he hadn’t turned into one of those guys who worked out in a gym and waxed his chest….

Her mind could not wander there.

“Do you actually play golf?” she asked, pointing at the dark blue shirt with the little embroidered doodad on the pocket.

“No.”

“Doesn’t that make your outfit false advertising?”

He’d didn’t answer, but he did give her a frustrated look that made her smile as he unpacked everything he’d bought at the Piggly Wiggly down the road, a small grocery store that served the next town over as well as two communities that were too small to support their own. His purchases lined the counter in the Bell kitchen, a boxy room with a small table that was older than she was and appliances that weren’t much newer. They worked. And it wasn’t like she cooked all that often anyway.

He picked up a box. “I’m pretty sure your mom’s famous homemade lemon cake didn’t start with a cake mix.”

Daisy shot him a cutting glance. “No, but I don’t have time to make a homemade cake, and besides, it’s the icing that makes it special.”

“It’s a good thing you were free this afternoon.”

She glared at him. Again. Still. “I wasn’t free. I had to reschedule a regular for tomorrow afternoon. Remember Miss Hattie?”

“How could I forget. Did you tell her why you had to cancel?”

“No, I lied and told her I didn’t feel well. Do you know how much I hate lying to my clients?” She didn’t point out that she hated the idea that the facts of this charade might get out much more than she hated fibbing to her customers.

“Sorry. I’ll be happy to pay you for any income you lose because you’re helping me.”

“I still don’t want your money, Tasker.” She made sure she sounded sharp and certain. And annoyed.

He sounded pretty annoyed, himself. “I don’t want you to lose money because you’re helping me out of a tough spot.”

“I’m not helping you. I’m helping your grandmother.” He could drown in his tough spots for all she cared.

“Sorry,” he said sharply. “I forgot.”

The tension in the air was almost unbearable. It hung between them, like every unspoken word that haunted her, still. He was angry. She was antsy.

“Are you married?” She’d planned to ask, needed to know, but the question could’ve come at a better time and been delivered more graciously. Instead she’d just blurted it out, standing in the kitchen with an apron worn over a pair of denim shorts and an old red tank—she always made such a mess when she did try to cook—feet bare, a box of butter in one hand and a sack of lemons in the other. The question did diffuse the tension, a bit. Maybe because it apparently took Jacob by surprise.

He shook his head. “No.”

His answer was sadly insufficient, so Daisy pressed on. “Engaged? Dating seriously? Involved with any woman on any level?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not? I’m sure you’re quite the catch, even in California. I’ll bet the women looooove your Southern accent.”

“I lost my Southern accent years ago,” he insisted.

Daisy laughed. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

Jacob’s lips thinned. His jaw twitched. Finally he asked, “Would I have kissed you last night if I was married, engaged, or involved?”