Restless in Carolina (27 page)

“Ted promised a truckload first of next week.” He grins. “I squeezed a fifteen percent discount out of him to make up for the delay.”

I would have asked for twenty. “Sounds good. I’m goin’ in to Asheville to visit my mother. Will you keep an eye on the office?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll take your truck, if you don’t mind.” Actually, it’s the nursery’s truck, as is the one Allen drives, but for as hard as these men work, I do my best to take care of them.

“Fine with me.”

“If you need to run errands, you can take my daddy’s Oldsmobile.”

He nods. “Did they figure out what’s wrong with your truck?”

“All three hundred dollars’ worth. It’ll be ready Wednesday.” As I near the steps, the sound of a vehicle entering the parking lot gives me a boost. Though it was busy this morning, it’s been dead for the past hour. This time of year that’s to be expected, which is why the unexpected is so welcome—providing I’m not up to my elbows in something. Thinking customer, I glance over my shoulder.

It’s J.C., not a customer.

Yet
. If Dirk Developers buys the Pickwick estate, they’ll need plants and trees and fertilizer. Trying to focus on that rather than the discomfort over yesterday’s three-ring circus and my disappointment over his plans for a golf resort, I tell Taggart, “I’ll handle this.”

A moment later, the trailer’s screen door bumps closed, and J.C. halts near enough to confirm he hasn’t gone back to his stinky cologne. And I can’t help but note he looks good in a black jacket over a white open-collared shirt and worn denims.

“I was hoping to find you here.”

Refusing to be self-conscious about my appearance, I turn my hands up. “Hope granted.” You work at a nursery, you’re gonna get dirt under your nails. “What can I do for you?”

His hand brushes my cheek, but before I can sputter my surprise, he turns his smudged fingers toward me.

And
you’re gonna get dirt on your face. “Occupational hazard,” I say, trying to lighten the lingering feel of his touch. “How can I help you?”

“First, accept my apology; second, my invitation to lunch.”

Goodness, by now he and Caleb should have given up on cozying with me over a meal. But here stands J.C., and last night Caleb left an invitation for dinner on my answering machine. I should call him back, since a private residence, even without a reclaimed quarry, seems preferable to a golf resort. That is, providing Caleb isn’t trying to obtain the property under false pretenses as J.C. would have me believe.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Unless you’re apologizing about your resort and making good on that apology by rethinkin’ it, I don’t need to hear it.” Yes, as Piper pointed out, investors expect a return on their investments and J.C.’s investors are no different, but if he were Easton—

He’s not. And even Easton couldn’t change the course set by the Pickwicks years ago and cemented by your uncle’s determination to do right. One way or another, the estate has to be converted to cash
.

“My apology is for cutting out on you yesterday,” J.C. says. “I knew you wouldn’t be thrilled with the plans for a resort, and I intended to talk to you afterward to alleviate your concerns, but …”

His slow smile crawls the wall of my resentment. While I want to be mad at him for not buying the estate for a wildlife preserve or some other beneficent purpose, I recall him in the library, looking out of place as one eyebrow-raising scene after another shook out like so much dirty laundry. Though I try not to smile, I feel my mouth curve. “But suddenly you found yourself on the set of
The Good, the Bad, and the Pickwicks.
”

He chuckles. “I did wonder if I was being had.”

“You wouldn’t be the first. But in defense of my family, what you saw is not the norm. We’re usually better behaved—well, some.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Lunch?”

I sigh. “You won’t be surprised to know I have plans, but I could do an early dinner. Fiveish?”

He shakes his head. “I’m going to Asheville this afternoon. I’m not sure I’ll be back by then.”

“What’s in Asheville?”

“Business.”

I raise my eyebrows, but all he says is, “How about a late dinner?”

Here we go again. “Sorry, but Trinity is dropping Birdie and Miles at my house around seven, and I’ll have them all day tomorrow, so that won’t work either—” My plans catch up to my brain. “Hold it! The reason I can’t have lunch with you is that I’m visiting my mother at the hospital
around one. If we drove to Asheville together, not only will one less car on the road save gas and put one less ding in the environment, but it’ll be a good use of time since you can
try
to alleviate my concerns about your golf course during the drive.”

He starts to frown.

I return the favor. “Or was that all talk?”

He looks momentarily away, and I get a whiff of the discomfort that came off him yesterday when he was a lone Dirk among Pickwicks. “No.” He looks back at me. “But if I drop you at the hospital, it could be as late as six before I pick you up.”

I shrug. “I like my mama. We’ll find some way to while away the hours.”

“All right.”

“And maybe we could do a drive-through on the way out of town. I’m starved.”

His eyebrows jerk. “
You
eat fast food?”

“I prefer slow food—even make my own bread—but sometimes a body’s gotta have a good ol’ greasy burger.” I tip my head to the side. “What about you? Do you ever give in? Or is it fine dining all the way?”

He smiles again. “Sonic and I go way back.”

I’m surprised, and yet not. As I’ve seen time and again, J. C. Dirk has more layers than first supposed. “It would seem we’re both more than we appear to be.”

He checks his watch. “When can you leave?”

“Give me ten minutes to clean up.” Motioning for him to follow, I take the steps two at a time; however, when I enter through the trailer’s rickety screen door, I find myself fighting my own discomfort. My office
with its cluttered desk, cracked vinyl chairs, and stained indoor-outdoor carpeting is a far cry from the one J.C. is accustomed to. And then there’s Reggie curled up on the desk. I whip around to tell J.C. I’ll meet him at his car, but he’s right behind me.

Oh well. “There’s water in the fridge if you’re thirsty.” I point to the cubicle that contains a dozen stainless-steel bottles of water I purify myself so my employees and I can do our part in keeping plastic bottles out of landfills.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be right back.” I indicate the chairs before my desk, behind which sits Taggart, glasses down his nose as he examines the nursery’s bank statement, having exchanged his gardener’s hat for a bookkeeper’s hat. What would I do without him?

“Well, if it isn’t Reggie,” J.C. says as I scoot into the bathroom. Then, “J. C. Dirk. And you are?”

“Name’s Taggart.”

I close the door and step to the mirror over the sink, relieved to find I don’t look half as bad as expected. Still, I wish I kept a change of clothes here. I shouldn’t care how the man who wants to commercialize the Pickwick estate perceives me, but I do.

“A waste of time.” I unwind the rubber band from my ponytail and rake fingers through my soft blond hair to which I’ve finally become accustomed. “J. C. Dirk is not part of your world.” I narrow my eyes at my reflection. “Never has been, never will be.”

T
ell me about your husband.”

I stop dragging at the milkshake that remains reluctant to inch up the straw though we left Sonic ten minutes ago.

“Easton, right?”

I lower the milkshake to my lap alongside the cheeseburger I was hungry for a moment ago. Is Trinity’s comment that I’m a “confirmed widow” behind J.C.’s request? Is it curiosity that makes him ask?

“That’s right—Easton. But shouldn’t you be trying to sell me on your plans for the estate?”

“True.”

Only curiosity, then. The open places in me start to close, and I feel relief at the protection they offer—but also a flutter of resentment that they’re trying to keep me in the past where I don’t care to stay.

“I apologize.” J.C. merges onto the highway. “That’s too personal—at this point.”

What point is that? And what other points lie ahead? “What do you mean?”

He balls his burger’s wrapper and drops it in the paper bag. “Though the … meeting with your family made me think twice about crossing the line between business and personal, I’m attracted to you, Bridget.”

Still?

“I’m hoping it’s mutual.”

The almost-kiss. I sigh. “Just as you question Caleb’s interest in me, I’d be a fool not to question your continued interest in me, especially seein’ as my family made you think twice
and
you admitted to being a widow sniffer.”

“Some.”

I shrug. “I don’t care to be a knuckle on the bone you and Caleb are wrestlin’ over—you know, the part that’s the first to get chewed up. So if you really want to know me on a more personal level, let’s start with J. C. Dirk. You said your past tends to bring out the worst in you. What past is that?”

His jaw tenses. “I do want to talk to you about that, but it would probably be best if we hold off on the personal side of things until negotiations for the estate are closed.”

Is his past really that bad? Might he have experienced greater loss than I have? Though the stubborn in me doesn’t want to share if he won’t, I remember Bonnie’s warning about carrying my loss to the grave. “All right, I’ll go first. What do you want to know about my husband?”

J.C. reaches for his bottled water, and his Adam’s apple slides twice before he returns his drink to the cup holder. “Why Easton?”

Talk about personal. “We met shortly after he moved to Pickwick and opened the nursery. He understood who I was, even when I wasn’t sure myself.” I nip my bottom lip. “We wanted the same things—a good but simple life that respected the environment. Of course, we had our differences, especially in matters of faith. He was a Christian and I wasn’t sure about God. But Easton didn’t push, and eventually I wanted what he had.” For awhile …

“You loved him.”

“As I’d never loved. I was sure we’d grow old together. You know”—I settle on J.C.’s profile—“so bent and feeble we’d get to hold even tighter to one another.”

After a brief laying on of eyes, he nods.

“It didn’t work out that way. Do you want to know how he died?”

“If you want to share.”

Strangely, I do. And J.C.’s eyes being turned forward—that he can’t look pity at me—makes it easier. “I suppose my brother, Bart, put it best when he said Easton ‘up and died.’ Of course, I about purpled his arm the first time he said it.” My hand remembers, curling into a fist. “Bad timing.”

Peripherally, I see J.C.’s head turn toward me.

“Hunting season was coming on, and I was banging around the kitchen one morning, gripin’ about the owner of the neighboring property who allowed family and friends to hunt his land. If that wasn’t bad enough, the bow hunters—his teenage nephews—liked to use an old deer stand our neighbor claimed was on his property, which the tree probably was as a sapling but I was pretty sure had grown partly onto our land over the years.

“Since I’d caught the teens using it to take down a buck on our property the year before, I told Easton I had a mind to chainsaw it. When I said I could get away with it since the stand was rotting and could be declared an attractive nuisance if our neighbor tried to bring charges against me, Easton said the Christian thing to do was talk to him. I reminded him I’d done that when the buck was killed on our property, and he reminded me there was more yelling than talkin’ going on.”

I peer out the window at the blur of trees, many of which autumn
has turned sunshine yellow, blazing orange, and brilliant red. “I said I would pray hard that sometime in the next twenty-four hours, the old deer stand made its last stand.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “I did that sometimes when Easton riled me—poked at his beliefs though I was also saved. He—”

J.C.’s cell rings. He ignores it. “Go on.”

I almost wish he’d take the call to give me time to consider how far I’m letting him in. “Easton knew I meant to take care of the problem, so he did it for me, though I didn’t know it until I came out of the shower and heard the chainsaw. I hurried and got dressed so I could help him, but when I got there …” My throat feels full. “… he was on the ground, the stand in pieces, the chainsaw biting up the dirt.”

Catching the tightening of J.C.’s face, likely due to the horror he thinks I witnessed, I shake my head. “The chainsaw didn’t get him. It was the rotting wood that had been my justification for taking the matter into my own hands. Still, Easton seemed all right, if shaken up. He told me he’d only started with his chainsaw when the stand collapsed—said it was a good thing it was him and not a bunch of boys, since they might have broken their necks. Though he said God would do any healing that needed to be done, I insisted on taking him to an emergency clinic. The doctor said everything looked fine but recommended an MRI. Easton refused, but since I was driving …” I replenish my breath. “He hated the hospital, seein’ as he lost his mother as a child when she went in for a routine surgery and died from complications.”