Restless in Carolina (21 page)

Saturday, October 2

L
ast night Reggie was perturbed with me; today it’s Boone. I thought I made it through the lobby without detection, but no sooner did I lower into the chair opposite J.C. than my most persistent widow sniffer appeared at the restaurant entrance. I acknowledged Boone with a wave. He nodded and walked away but has returned twice.

“The butternut squash soup sounds good.” I snap the menu closed.

J.C. looks up, his green eyes exceptionally bright in the sunlight that falls across our window table. “That’s all?”

“It’s a generous serving. Also, it comes with a bread basket and honey butter.”

“I need something more substantial. Is the chicken potpie good?”

“Real good. It—”

His cell phone rings.

He looks at me. “I’m sorry, but I have to check.” A moment later, he repockets the phone. “Chicken potpie it is.”

My cell phone rings.

I look at him. “Sorry, but I need to see if it’s my mother.” When I dropped Birdie and Miles at her house this morning, she said she was doing better but was still slump-shouldered with fatigue. I dragged from my father a promise he would stay home and help with his grandchildren. Unfortunately he doesn’t always keep his word.

I read the number and, with an apologetic grimace, flip open the phone. “Everything all right, Mama?”

“No,” Daddy says. “I need you to watch the kids while I take your mama to the doctor.”

I startle straight in my chair. “What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothin’ other than a woman’s problem, but I want her checked out.”

That’s a first. Of course, Mama’s health is more of a concern to him when it cuts into his recreational time.

“Though it’s Saturday, her doctor agreed to meet us at his office and have a look. Can you be here in five minutes?”

“I’m coming now.” I close my phone and push my chair back. “My father is taking my mother to her doctor and needs me to watch Birdie and Miles.”

J.C. stands. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“She’s been under the weather lately. Probably a bug, but I’m glad she’s finally seeing her doctor.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

I nearly protest but Boone is back, and he’s less likely to try to engage me if J.C. is at my side.

However, as we exit the restaurant, he steps forward. “I didn’t know you were dining with us today, Bridget.” He glances at J.C.

“I was, but a family …” Not
emergency
. My mother just needs her husband to do his part, and hopefully this visit to the doctor will bring him around. “… situation has come up.”

“Can I help?”

“Thank you, but I can handle it. See you later.” I continue past Boone, and J.C. follows me outside.

“I’ll call you,” I say as he walks me to my truck that looks especially shabby in daylight. Oh well.

“Perhaps we can have dinner instead.”

I step off the curb and hurry around the tailgate to the driver’s side. “I would, but I accepted an invitation from Caleb Merriman.” Not only to learn where he stands on the estate but to see if that kiss of his had any long-reaching effects. No, I’m not buying into my father’s matchmaking scheme, but when Caleb’s cajoling voice and humor warmed me across the phone line this morning, I accepted that he’s still something of a maybe. And since I’ve worked through the wedding band, the bandage, and the bed …

“Tomorrow, then.” J.C. says,
his
voice far from cajoling, humor absent.

I turn to where he regards me from the opposite side of the truck, his lids weighted with what can only be disapproval. Though I didn’t intentionally flaunt the competition, there you go. “You’ll be in town awhile?”

“I’ve cleared my schedule to focus on the Pickwick project.”

Then he’ll be here a couple of days? A week? “Tomorrow it is.” I pull open the driver’s door. “I’ll meet you at …” Not the hotel restaurant. I’ve had enough of Boone’s Bridget-watching. I point across the square. “… the Grill ’n’ Swill at twelve thirty.”

“I’ll be there.”

I jump into the cab and flip the key in the ignition. “I’m comin’, Mama.” Maybe not. I try the key again, but it and the engine are no longer on speaking terms. And another try yields more unproductive chugging.

A tap on the passenger window turns my scowl from the dashboard to J.C. He raises his eyebrows and points to his chest.

I could run across the square to Maggie’s auction house and ask her to drive me, but her regular Saturday auction will be in full swing, along with her gavel-wielding arm. I fling open the door and drop my feet to the asphalt.

“Thank you.” I come around the front of the truck. “I knew something was up with my truck but didn’t get around to havin’ it checked. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“No inconvenience.” J.C. heads for the white Lexus at the corner. “I did plan to spend the afternoon with you.”

True, but talking property was what he had in mind, not chauffeuring.

He opens the passenger door, and I feel a fleeting touch at the small of my back as I slide in—as if he, a little late, thought better of stirring up whatever feelings made him touch my face last night.

We leave the town square behind, and he turns onto Main Street which becomes Pickwick Pike farther on. As always, the enormous billboard that advertises a single-family home development on Pickwick Lake jumps out at me. When old man Truman passed away, his children sold his land that bordered the west side of the lake, and now it burgeons with high-end homes so closely built neighbors can nearly reach out their windows to borrow sugar. I can’t let that happen to Uncle Obe’s land. Progress is inevitable, but it has to be responsible.

Take those office suites that look more like a village. The building was destined to be a monstrous mirrored thing, but when Easton found out, he and I drew up a petition that thousands of Pickwickians signed. In that case it worked, but not with Wal-Mart. The field where a fruit-and-vegetable stand once stood is now mostly asphalt and concrete block painted an ugly gray-blue color.

“The hotel manager—Boone, was it?” J.C. says.

My reflection in the glass comes into focus before my thoughts. I look around. “Boone?”

From behind his sunglasses, J.C. looks at me. “He obviously numbers among your admirers.”

I sigh. “Yes, another widow sniff—” Oops. “So, are you likin’ the gas mileage you get out of this fancy hybrid?”

“Widow sniff?”

Great. And since for the life of me I can’t think of an acceptable alternative that could be mistaken for
widow sniff
, I’ll have to lay it out there. “Widow sniffer.”

His teeth flash in what I’d say is the most genuine smile I’ve seen from him, and it tempts me to snatch off his sunglasses so I can witness it all the way up to his eyes.

“I’m guessin’ that means a man who is attracted to widows.”

I can’t help but like him better when he relaxes into his drawl, so I decide to ride out the conversation. “That’s what I call them, whether it’s the husband’s life insurance they’re after, they’re lookin’ to exploit a woman’s vulnerability during her time of loss, or they merely rank high on the sympathy scale.”

His smile begins to twitch. “Or they’re anglin’ to get their hands on a certain property.”

I know what that’s about—the same as last night when he mused aloud about Caleb hiring experts to evaluate a property that is to remain a private residence. My formal education may have ended with high school graduation and I may be more comfortable with dirt beneath my feet, but I’m not ignorant of the seed J.C. is sowing. However, neither
am I offended, especially since competition can only help Uncle Obe’s bottom line.

I figure my expression into the facial equivalent of a question mark. “You’re sayin’ I should read any interest you show me as purely mercenary?”

His smile stops its twitching.

“Well, I appreciate the warnin’.”

After a moment, he says, “You’re welcome.”

I turn my gaze forward and am surprised to find we’re already on Pickwick Pike, not far from my parents’ home and a few miles from Uncle Obe’s. “In about a mile, turn right at Mew Way.” My folks’ private driveway,
Mew
short for Bartholomew. Hold it! I look anew at J.C. “How did you know my folks live off Pickwick Pike?”

Did his jaw tighten, or was it like that already? “When I’m considering investing millions of dollars”—he flips on his turn signal—“I make it my business to know the logistics, not only with regards to the property but also the surrounding area.”

Talk about thorough, but I suppose he would take into account the proximity of my folks’ home. And I do remember Piper had one of those maps that showed their acreage, name and all.

J.C. turns the car onto Mew Way, which is in sorry need of a new layer of asphalt, what with weeds and grass poking through cracks. The driveway, a shorter version of the one on the Pickwick estate, rises and curves gently toward my childhood home that will come into sight any second now.

“So,” J.C. draws out the word, “how do you distinguish between a widow sniffer and a man who is genuinely attracted to you?”

It’s my turn to twitch, but not from a smile—rather, discomfort. How did we end up back here?

“That’s assuming you don’t label all men who show an interest in you ‘widow sniffers.’ ”

“Of course not.” My denial is knee-jerk, but it’s all I have because, come to think of it, every man who has sought me out since Easton has been a widow sniffer.

“What about Merriman? Would you call him a widow sniffer?”

I remember his kiss. He can’t be after Easton’s life insurance money, since he seems to have plenty, and he doesn’t strike me as someone who feels sympathy for a person he hardly knows, but because of his interest in the Pickwick estate and my involvement in its sale, he might be hoping to use me to his advantage. But that’s none of J.C.’s business.

I cross my arms over my chest as he brakes before a scaled-down version of the Pickwick mansion and behind a car that is not Daddy’s.

“Because there he is.” J.C. inclines his head.

I look around, and as Daddy blusters off the bottom step, I see that Caleb—the owner of the car ahead—is on the veranda up top.

Have I been had again? I’ll bet Daddy either eavesdropped on me telling Mama I was having lunch with J.C. or she let on (she did say J.C. seemed a fine specimen of a man). And under pretense of worrying over Mama, Daddy determined to interrupt my meeting by throwing Caleb at me. Sometimes I really do not like the man who fathered me.

I’m too mad to think straight enough to open the car door, and so Daddy opens it. He pokes his head in and glowers at J.C. “You again,” he says, rude as all get out.

I could explain about my truck, but I’m in no mood. “J. C. Dirk,
Daddy, the
other
party interested in the property.” I’m tempted to tell J.C. to take us back to the restaurant, but Mama appears at the top of the steps, a pink pocketbook swinging from her arm, makeup doing a poor job of disguising her fatigue. This may have been a ruse on Daddy’s part, but Mama will see her doctor today.

“Excuse me, Daddy,” I say as my mother gingerly descends the steps, her little Malti-Poo dog tinkering alongside.

He steps back, and I swing my legs out.

“I suppose we’ll talk tomorrow,” J.C. says.

I peer over my shoulder at him. “Actually, providing you don’t mind a little down-home hospitality, we can talk here.”

“Did I hear right?” Daddy huffs as I rise before him. “Did you invite that man into my home?”

“I did.” I close the car door. “In between keepin’ an eye on Birdie and Miles, J.C. and I can finish what we started over lunch.”

“But Caleb—”

“As I’m sure you know, I’m havin’ dinner with him tonight.” Behind me, J.C.’s door opens and closes. “He and I can talk then. Now”—I kiss the cheek Mama extends as she comes off the steps—“you’d better get to the doctor.”

Daddy clomps up the steps to where Caleb is watching.

“Hello, Mr. Dirk,” Mama says as he comes around the car.

“Call me J.C.”

She nods. “Welcome to our home.”

“It’s lovely.”

True, though it needs a lot of TLC, most of which Daddy hasn’t delivered on despite his promises.

While J.C. shakes Mama’s thin-boned hand, the Malti-Poo yips and strains to look up at the man who has hold of her beloved.

“Cute dog.” He withdraws his hand, slips it into a pocket, and there’s that jangling again.

Mama smiles, although normally she would beam—all the more reason for Daddy to get a move on. “I named her Itsy because she’s so itsy-bitsy.”

I look to where Daddy and Caleb are conversing in low voices and say, “J.C. prefers small dogs.” Oops. I swoop my gaze to Mama, but she doesn’t seem surprised by my insight. Miles probably told her about J.C.’s visit to my home last night and, going by Daddy’s behavior, him too.

“If it’s small dogs you like,” Mama says, “you certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be here when we had a pair of bull mastiffs years ago.” She shifts her attention to me, and I suppress the impulse to rub away the dark smudges beneath her eyes. “I don’t know if you remember them, you were so little.”

“I do.” Huge dogs, well over a hundred pounds each. I loved them like I love all animals but feared them too, the way they ran over whatever was in their path.

“Anyway”—she goes a little more limp—“I don’t care that your daddy said they were the best guard dogs you could buy. If he’d had them properly trained, perhaps, but they were unpredictable. Why, we could have been sued when they chased a couple of boys who came onto the property and bit one of them on the face. Not long after, the male knocked over our little Bonnie and caused her to break her leg. And that’s when I put my foot down and told Bartholomew to get rid of them.”

“Is that right?” J.C.’s posture is the opposite of hers—all stifflike, as if he’s remembering what made him wary of big dogs.

Time for Mama to go. “Daddy!” I scoop up Itsy for fear she’ll get tangled in Mama’s legs and unbalance her. “You’d best get Mama to the doctor.”

He leans nearer Caleb, chuckles at something, and tromps down the steps again.