Sweet Nothings (15 page)

“Oh, Nicky.” Vomit-inducing sweetness oozed from Gina’s mouth. “Let’s not interrupt her. You can show me your place another night.”

“It’s my place.” The words barely whispered out of Joanie’s mouth. How dare he bring this woman to GiGi’s house.

Nicky
patted the hand clenching his forearm and eyed Joanie, his expression strangely blank. “You’re right, Gina. Let’s head out. We’ll leave Joanie to finish up here.”

They left in the same flurry of perfume and wiggling hips in which they’d arrived, and Joanie closed the door behind them. The nerve of the man. Bringing Gina Gregory into this house.

The fact that Joanie had not only turned him down, but suggested he go find another woman wasn’t lost on her. But seriously,
Gina Gregory
? He was going out with her for one reason only. Which, of course, he’d said yesterday he’d be perfectly happy with. A good-looking woman, a good time, and a hop in the sack after.

The definition of a man’s ideal night.

Her skin crawled. Had he planned to sleep with Gina at the house?

Disgust rolled through her. She shouldn’t care who he dated or what he did with them. She and Nick were only friends.

Then, why did she feel such jealousy?

She shoved a newspaper off the recliner and plopped down with the remote. The cable had been restored, so she curled her legs up under her, patted Cat when he jumped up to sit in her lap, and flipped through the stations until she tired out her thumb. Then she watched whatever was on the screen. Or more aptly, stared.

It didn’t matter if Nick was out with Gina, or if he was sleeping with her right at that moment. He was a red-blooded man. That’s what he should be doing.

Because Joanie was standing by her guns. She wouldn’t go out with him. He was the type of man who’d want more. He was the type to get inside her head and then the next thing she knew she’d be alone and broken. She’d be just another in a string of bad Bigbee relationships.

She closed her eyes, refusing to feel anything. It was for the best. It wasn’t as if she and Nick had anything more between them than the one kiss, anyway. Thank goodness.

When Joanie woke later, a crick in her neck and her back cramped, Nick was coming in through the front door. She glanced at the face of her cell phone. Three hours had passed since he’d last been there. He really had done it. He’d slept with Gina Gregory.

The rotten jerk.

Nick stopped in the doorway and stared at her, no expression on his face.

Her vision suddenly blurred and her throat burned. She stood without speaking—couldn’t if she’d wanted to. She didn’t see her boots, so she grabbed only her purse and left without a word.

As Joanie passed, Nick inhaled the dust that still clung to her, as well as the underlying scent of oranges. He wished he hadn’t been such an idiot.

Why had he brought Gina back to the house? Was he really so petty that he’d wanted Joanie to see he was not sitting around waiting for her? That he
was
the type who could sleep with a woman one night and move on the next?

Though he’d proved that not to be true tonight.

The idea of sleeping with Gina had quickly been tossed out the window. Not only because he’d kept thinking about Joanie, but because it had become very clear that if Gina was given even the tiniest hint of suggestion, she would dig in and wouldn’t let go. The woman may be willing to sleep with him on a first date, but that was not her ulterior motive. She wanted a husband.

And he didn’t want her.

He slammed the door as Joanie got into her car without so much as a backward glance, and then stormed across the room, yanking off his jacket as he went. The damned fabric smelled of strong perfume and a woman that wasn’t Joanie.

After he’d dropped Gina off, he’d driven around for hours, waiting for Joanie to leave, refusing to let her see him come home early. He couldn’t let her know she’d been right. He wasn’t the type of man to take a sure thing and move on to the next. At least, not when someone else clouded his mind.

He did not want to fall for Joanie. She was not what he was looking for. Yet stupidly, she was all he seemed to think about.

And now he owed her an apology.

Whether she wanted a relationship or not, they’d had a connection. He shouldn’t have tried to make her jealous. But dammit, she got under his skin. One damned date. That’s all he’d asked.

He threw his coat on the bed and stomped into the bathroom. Who was he kidding? One date wouldn’t crack the surface of what he wanted with Joanie. Maybe it wouldn’t go more than a few weeks, who knew? But what was so wrong with wanting the opportunity to explore the option?

She was fun. They could have a good time together.

When he returned to the bedroom, he took in the mess scattered outside the closet door and shook his head. Joanie had great intentions, but she stunk at follow-through.

He spent the next few minutes dragging what he was fairly certain was trash out to the Dumpster, then loaded up the bags of clothes into the back of his truck. Since they were of the fashion of a woman much older than Joanie, he suspected they were meant to be donated. He’d check with her later and drop them off wherever she needed them to go.

Next he opened the three boxes pushed haphazardly to the middle of the floor and stared down at the mounds of colors and fabrics, unsure what she intended to do with those. Surely not keep them. Though given the amount of junk he’d watched her load in her car to take home with her so far, it wouldn’t surprise him.

He checked the two smaller boxes next. Spoons?

He nodded.
These
she intended to take home. Junk.

The fabric went into his truck, spoons were stacked beside the front door so she could easily sneak them out when he wasn’t looking, then he returned to the bedroom and stared down at the piles of letters spread out in a half-circle. She’d clearly been sitting in the middle of the pile. He stooped to study them more closely.

They were yellowed and crinkled with age, and all appeared to be addressed to her grandmother. He pulled one out and saw that it was signed by Gus Bigbee. Joanie’s grandfather.

Scanning over several lines of the block penmanship, it hit him like a brick to the side of the head that they were love letters. From the man who’d left his wife after thirty-three years of marriage.

What history he held in his hands. He couldn’t help but wonder if Joanie could get any answers about her grandparents’ lives from these letters. Or if she already had.

While he’d been out with Gina.

He growled under his breath at his stupidity, then carefully gathered the envelopes back into the cigar box that sat empty in the floor. When he stood, he looked around, trying to decide what to do with them. He could add the box to the spoons by the door, but his gut told him it would be better if Joanie wasn’t alone when she went through them.

They were personal. He couldn’t let her read those alone. So far, anything she’d come across that had been the slightest bit personal had caused her to go quiet, while at the same time get a faraway look on her face.

She was fighting through the past, as well as her feelings about her grandparents.

And he didn’t want her to have to do that by herself.

He’d been the only one around to dig through his mother’s things after she’d passed, so he understood how it felt. Losing her may have only hurt from the loss of the idea of a mother, but reliving her life through her personal effects had not been easy.

He made a decision and took the letters into the kitchen, placing the box inside one of the new cabinets. He would offer to read them with her. After she calmed down from tonight.

When he once again returned to the bedroom, ready to shuck his clothes and crawl under the covers—where he knew he would only dream about Joanie, because that’s all he’d dreamt about for days—he pushed the closet door closed, but opened it again when something caught his eye. A small black square in the back corner. He stooped to look closer and as he picked it up, realized it was an old Polaroid.

The cute girl on the swing had to be Joanie. It was her smile. He could practically hear her happy laugh just looking at it. Which made him smile, too.

Oh geez, he had it bad.

He opened the drawer beside the bed and dropped the photo in, then turned out the light. Joanie was supposed to be over this weekend to continue cleaning out the house. Maybe he could use the picture as an opening to an apology.

“Three hours. Can you believe that?” Joanie dragged a fry through her chocolate shake and popped it in her mouth as she sat across from her friend the following Monday afternoon. The salty, chocolate treat did little to help her remaining irritation over Nick. “There’s no doubt in my mind what he was doing for those three hours.”

Lee Ann did what good friends were supposed to do and grunted her disgust, as she’d done with everything else Joanie had ranted about for the last forty minutes. They’d spent the weekend together working side by side at GiGi’s, but since they’d been alongside Cody and the girls, Joanie had held off on sharing the full details of Friday night’s disaster. She hadn’t wanted to risk anyone getting the idea she was jealous.

She’d dragged her friend over to the Barn so she wouldn’t have to be alone in the house with Nick, but needn’t have worried. There had been a houseful of workers around all weekend. It was astonishing what had gotten accomplished. She was already starting to see Nick’s plans coming
to fruition. Even more unbelievable, she’d managed to spend hours there without once having to make more than the barest hint of conversation with him.

She was skipping out on going back tonight, but she couldn’t do that much longer. There was too much to get done. She would eventually have to talk to him again, she knew, but not yet. Right now, she was still too annoyed at his veiled attempt to rub Gina in her face.

This afternoon she and Lee Ann had decided to do their normal Monday girls’ day, so they’d ended up at the diner. They were currently on a milkshake kick, and the diner made the best.

“I just don’t get it,” Joanie continued. “Why’d he ask me out one day and then sleep with her the next?”
And why did I end up in tears about it?

Two French fries and a gulp of chocolate shake later, Lee Ann pierced Joanie with a questioning look. “If it’s bugging you so much, why did you refuse to go out with him in the first place?”

“Are you listening to anything I’ve been saying? I can’t go out with him because he’s a long-term guy. You know I don’t do that.”

“I know you haven’t in the past. But I don’t see why you can’t.”

Joanie gave her friend a long-suffering stare. “Because I won’t be like my mother when it comes to men.
Or
my grandmother. Or any other number of Bigbee women. Did you forget about that? We’re losers in love, Lee. The whole town knows that. They’ve written newspaper articles about it.” She shook her head and shoved another milkshake-covered fry into her mouth. “I’d rather be without than be a broken shell of myself,” she said around the food. “Or be pathetically chasing one after another my whole life.”

Lee Ann just stared at her and then dipped her own fry in her shake. “Your mother was a loser. If a deadbeat walked in the room, she was on him like white on rice. But she bent over backward to morph herself into what she thought they wanted. No wonder she never kept any of them. She didn’t know how to love. You’re nothing like that, Jo. Everyone in town loves you because you are so genuine. You’re always you.”

Joanie glanced down at her plate. Lee Ann must have forgotten what had happened when Joanie was sixteen and her grandmother had gone out of town.

GiGi had discovered Pepaw had died and was being buried at Arlington, but Joanie had refused to go. He’d left them. She didn’t see why they needed to be there for him. So GiGi had left, and Joanie had invited her boyfriend, Adam Langston, over to keep her company. She’d thought it would be romantic.

She’d thought they were in love.

And she’d stupidly thought the curse didn’t apply to her.

It was amazing how quickly she’d learned that not to be the case. Seemed she hadn’t missed out on that trait after all. She could pick losers just like the rest of her female relatives.