Sweet Southern Nights (Home In Magnolia Bend Book 3) (22 page)

All she had to do now was prove to him that he was worthy of her love.

* * *

E
VA
COULD
TELL
Clint knew something was up because for the first time in over a year, she’d shown up sans cookies or muffins.

“Eva,” he said, reversing his chair and allowing her to come inside the rustic yet contemporary lake house. “What a nice surprise.”

“Hey,” Eva said, stepping into the large hearth room. Mounted ducks flew over the stone fireplace, and skylights brought in lovely natural light. “Is your father here?”

“No, he’s in town picking up some things. What are you doing here? Not your usual day to visit us.” He maneuvered so he faced the large floor-to-ceiling wall that overlooked the lake. The water was choppy and though it was far, she could see the clearing where she and Jake had made love. A pair of binoculars sat on a small nearby table, giving her a sickish feeling in her stomach. Had Clint watched them make love?

It was a creepy thought, but how else would he have known about them?

“Good, because I needed to talk to you. Privately,” she said.

“Is this about our conversation last weekend? Have you given some thought to my question?”

“No.”

He lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.

“This is about you and Jake,” she said.

“Me and Jake?” His voice sounded incredulous, but she could tell he knew what she meant. “What about us?”

“You know what this is about. Don’t play dumb. Too many people overheard you in Ray-Ray’s. Did you think I wouldn’t hear the rumors?”

“I didn’t care if you heard the rumors. I meant what I said. Jake has no business messing with you. He’s used goods.”

“Used goods? Why? Because he’s slept around? This isn’t the Victorian Age, Clint. Men and women do have sex outside of marriage, quite frequently, in fact. So don’t cast that judgment on him. Not even his own father does that.”

Bitterness etched Clint’s strong jaw. “Oh, I see. It’s too late. You’re already smitten with the great Jake Beauchamp. Fine. Go ahead and try a go with him. You’ll see too soon nothing will come of it.”

Eva set her hands on her hips and glared at Clint. “So you think you can manipulate everyone around you, huh? What, you sit up here on your high horse and plan how you can manipulate people using past mistakes against them?”

“You think that’s what I do?” Clint’s self-righteous smirk disappeared. Target hit.

“Seems like it. You love to lord the fact you were handicapped in that accident over Jake. You’ve chained him to you with guilt, and the thing is, he loves you.”

“No, he doesn’t. He feels obligated. Think I don’t know that?” Clint said, his voice sad. Like he wished it wasn’t so.

“Maybe he feels obligated, but he shows up. He stayed here and shows up for you every week. If the shoe were on the other foot, would you do the same?”

“But it’s not,” Clint said softly. “The shoe is on my foot, and I live with that every day. I live with the colostomy bag, with strange nerve pain, with the fact I can’t do what Jake does. I can’t pick up women, swagger around and sweet-talk everything in a skirt anymore. I live with that shoe on
my
foot every day. So if Jake feels guilty, good. He should.”

Eva shook her head. “How can you live like that? How can you hold him in your palm like that and squeeze so hard?”

Clint sat a stone, unmoved.

“But this time you didn’t merely manipulate Jake, you manipulated me. You didn’t think this would affect me? That I wouldn’t hurt because of your selfishness?”

“My selfishness? Because I think Jake will hurt you? Because I think being with him is an exercise in futility? I spoke to him on your behalf.”

“I never asked you to. You had no right.”

“Maybe not, but sometimes one has to do things for his friends for their own good. Like you do for Charlie.”

“Oh, my God. You really believe what you did was right.”

Clint shrugged. “Jake will chew you up and spit you out. Make no mistake of that. He can’t be happy.”

“Because you won’t let him. You enjoy using his guilt against him. What does that make you, Clint?” Eva walked over to the man who she’d only thought of in the best of terms until now.

Clint had shown so much good humor and determination in facing his disability. They’d spent many days of the week in the gym working toward his being able to compete in parasports. They’d even planned a trip to Houston for one of the runs. She’d visited him here in this very house, sharing details of her childhood, funny stories from the firehouse. She’d always thought Clint her friend.

But maybe not.

He wanted her for something more than friendship and when he couldn’t have her, he made sure that the one person she wanted, the one person she truly loved, wouldn’t give her a chance.

Clint was a messed-up dude.

He looked up at her now. “One day you’ll thank me.”

“Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Likely never.” Then she turned and walked out of the room.

“Oh, come on, Eva. Don’t leave like this.”

She turned around, coming back with long, angry strides.

“Did you watch? Did you spy on me and Jake?”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “And if I did? You pretty much dropped your sanity when you dropped that dress.”

“You did!” She jabbed a finger at him. “Do you know how sick that is?”

“I stopped watching when I saw what was happening. I’m no glutton for punishment or pervert. So, no, I didn’t watch you screw my best friend.” He pressed a button and rolled toward the ramp that took him to the upper level of the split level.

“You’ve said your piece. You can see yourself out,” he said, before disappearing into the inner recesses of the house.

“You son of a bitch,” Eva whispered under her breath, tears pricking her eyes. She walked out for the second time, this time slamming the door because it felt good.

She’d thought he’d admit he’d been wrong to approach Jake about her. She’d hoped he might go to Jake and say he’d been presumptuous, but instead Clint had remained stonily convicted he’d done the right thing.

And that pissed her off.

Because she was a grown-ass woman who didn’t need anyone to guard her from anything. It also proved Clint didn’t know the first thing about her. She had never needed protecting...especially from her own mistakes.

God, men really, truly were idiots sometimes.

She climbed in her car and called Abigail to tell her she was on her way.

* * *

C
OOPER
P
LATT
WAS
more than happy to switch shifts with Jake, and the chief didn’t seem to mind, either. So as of ten o’clock Monday morning, Jake was officially a member of A shift. Which meant he didn’t have to work on Monday, which meant he had more time to stew over the crappy thing he’d done to Eva. Which blew. Because he really didn’t want to sit home reliving their horrible conversation.

Thankfully, Abigail called and asked him for some help. To make ends meet he often took on small repair jobs, relying on the skills his father had taught him as a youngster. As the baby of the family, he hadn’t been called on much to lend a hand around the house, until all his siblings had left for college and there was only him to help Dan measure boards and refinish old furniture. Ironically, he found comfort in a hammer and nails, so while many firemen made up for the pittance of a salary by doing lawn service, he hung up a shingle for handyman. Of course he got a couple of calls from lonely ladies who implied their pipes needed cleaning, but for the most part he’d earned a reputation as a guy who could do small projects for a good price.

Abigail had used him a lot in the restoration of her bed-and-breakfast. The main house was beautifully restored, and thus, Abigail had moved on to the small cabins that had once been slave cabins...and more recently had been used as a sort of commune for artists. Abigail had been working to restore the neglected row of cabins so they could be used by guests. She’d been really picky about salvaging all she could from the original structure in order to preserve one of the only plantations with standing slave cabins. The first cabin would not be for guests, but rather a historical tour for visiting classrooms and tourists. Turning something that carried pain into something that could educate meant a lot to Abigail.

So he hopped in his truck and drove out to Laurel Woods, painfully aware he could take a brief hike and reach Eva’s house through the woods. The thought made his heart ache but he ignored it. After all, this would be his lot in life for the foreseeable future.

He parked and trudged out to the cabin and found Abigail wearing a pair of rubber boots, some cutoff shorts and an old softball team T-shirt that had seen better days a few years back. Her hair was held back in a bandanna.

“Finally,” she huffed, carrying a bucket of worm-eaten boards to a small area where a planer sat. “Look at these and see if any of them can be saved. I’m thinking if we run them through this puppy—” she slapped the machine “—we can salvage them.”

“Hello to you, too,” he drawled, shrugging out of the long-sleeved button-down shirt he’d thrown on that morning. The first chilly day of the fall had arrived, and for about one hour he had been chilly. In typical Louisiana fashion it was now once again near eighty degrees.

“Oh, sorry. How are you this morning, Jake?”

“Shitty. And you?”

Abigail smiled. “I’m getting married in two months to the man of my dreams, Birdie got an A on her pre-algebra test and I’m booked for the next three weeks.”

“So shitty, too, huh?” he drawled.

Abigail rolled eyes that matched their mother’s. “I’d ask why you were such a grumpy goose, but I’m afraid of the answer.”

Jake shrugged and took the bucket, eyeing the boards inside. “Let me run these through and it will tell us if any of the flooring is worth saving.”

“I’ll rip out the others,” Abigail said, walking back to the dilapidated cabin. “Hey, Margaret Stein told Hilda she thought it was embarrassing that I wanted to capitalize on these cabins. She said it was insensitive to race relations. Do you think that’s true?”

Jake looked at the run-down cabins. “I never thought about it.”

“I never thought about it, either, but then I did and I kept thinking about how families lived here and even though their lives were horrifying, they mattered. These cabins were the only places they could escape to...maybe I should tear them down and not worry with it.”

Jake pursed his lips. “Why don’t you restore this one and think about it. Either way, you’re turning this one into something that will teach folks about the lives of the people who lived here.”

Abigail set her hands on her hips and looked down the string of four cabins. “Yeah. We’ll start with this one.”

For the next three hours, Jake worked beside his sister, running the wide boards through the planer and pulling up sections that would have to be replaced. Abigail was a tough taskmaster, which meant Jake earned every bit of the money she’d insist he take. He’d offered to do it free of charge—what are brothers for—but Abigail was as stubborn as she was pretty. He always went home with a check from Laurel Woods.

Finally, Abigail called a halt. “Whew, I think this is enough for today. We’ll load these boards and store them in the old garage. Don’t want rain to get to them since they turned out so nicely. Guess you never know what is lurking beneath the weathering, huh?” She ran her hand over the ones that had been replaned. They looked incredibly different after the gray weathering was stripped off to reveal the beautiful grain beneath.

“That should be a lesson about people...except for Aunt Opal. I’ve seen beneath her ‘weathering.’ She’s still as mean as an old tom,” Jake said.

Abigail laughed. “Hey, I heard from the checkout girl at Maggio’s that you and Clint had a run-in over Eva. Any truth to that?” She cocked an eyebrow and removed the bandanna. Her dark hair with the iconic stripe of silver fell around her face, making her softer.

“Eh, sorta. It’s no big deal.”

“Maybe not the words you exchanged with Clint, but that it was over Eva? That was news to me.”

Jake didn’t want to talk about Eva. In fact he’d rather talk about Hitler and the devil than the woman who had tied him into knots. “I don’t want to rehash. It’s old news.”

“Oh?” Abigail said, tucking the bandanna into her back pocket. “Just thought you might want to talk to someone who had perspective into something like this.”

He had to take the hook. “Like what?”

“I’m a woman,” she said, pointing to herself.

“I know. You have boobs and wiggle when you walk. I figured that out a long time ago.”

“Be a smart-ass.”

Jake grinned and that felt good. He wasn’t totally dead from tossing away the chance he’d been given with Eva. Same old Jake. Smile and crack jokes. “I’m good at that.”

“Especially the ass part,” Abigail grumbled. “It’s just I noticed something different between y’all, and I thought that it was a very good thing. I always thought Eva would be good for you. And you for her. Like balancing the scales.”

Jake started stacking the boards on the trailer hooked to the mule his sister had bought to navigate the large property. “Nah, Eva and I are friends. It’s better that way.”

“Oh, the old friends thing. Been there and tried that. Doesn’t always work when you’ve knocked boots. Wait, have you and Eva...?”

“None of your business, sis. But Eva has always been my friend. This little blip of what could be was bound to happen. We’re two young, decently attractive single people in a two-horse town.”

“So why was Clint in your business?” Abigail put her hand on the board he lifted, stilling him. “He doesn’t always have your best interests at heart, you know. Clint’s not a bad guy. I’ve always liked him, but he’s nursed something for too long.”

Jake sighed. Abigail was the person in the family who didn’t let go. She would mow you down, sit on you until you cried uncle and arm wrestle you into submission. She pretended to be casual and nonchalant but then before you knew it, you were strapped to a board, a bright light in your face and water dripping a constant beat on your forehead. “I know who Clint is, but his words weren’t selfish. He merely reminded me who I am and how that would ultimately hurt Eva.”