Southern Fried Blues (The Officers' Ex-Wives Club) Read online

  “She bake biscuits?”

  “Dunno.” He pushed his guns under the bed then shoved his travel bag under too, listening to Mamie think as loud as a few other women he knew.

  “You ain’t asked her,” she said.

  “Already got a freezer chock full of ’em. Didn’t see any reason to.”

  “Interesting.”

  Stick his head on a platter and call him toast. Mamie had that tone again. That Mamie-on-a-mission tone.

  “Thought you’d be bowling tonight,” he said. He dumped a stack of Air Force magazines in the closet.

  “Me and the girls are taking a night off,” she said.

  Jackson straightened. “Everything okay, Mamie?”

  “Nothing you need to be worrying over. Got a little bit of a sore shoulder after all that firing yesterday. I’ll put some ice on it and be better right quick.”

  “You sure that’s all?”

  “Had a few more hunting questions, but I can call you back later. You go on and have some fun now. And don’t forget protection.”

  Didn’t matter how many times she used that phrase over his lifetime, still made him wince knowing Mamie knew what was going on in his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  They disconnected. There was still too much junk piled on his dresser, but he’d made a clean path to the bed and it was made. He sucked in a breath, double-checked he had unexpired protection, then headed back to the kitchen.

  He turned the corner, and Anna’s phone beeped. She was still propped against the counter. A sweet smile curved her lips up. She noticed him and treated him to a you silly guy look. “Cute,” she said.

  “Wasn’t me,” he started, but she’d apparently already figured that out.

  Because when she looked down at her phone, her smile dropped away, her eyebrows knit tighter than a sweater, and her whole body went rigid as an armadillo’s armor.

  He had a feeling he wouldn’t be needing that protection now. He approached her slow, as he would a wounded deer. “Okay, Anna Grace?”

  “Yeah.” She sucked her lips into her mouth, staring at the floor.

  “Rain check?” Being the gentlemanly thing to say didn’t make it what he wanted to say.

  Her eyes squeezed shut. “Sorry.” But she lifted her head and looked straight at him, and he saw something else he wasn’t used to seeing in Anna Grace.

  Whatever that message was about, it had her spitting mad.

  Only two things he knew of that caused a woman to look like that, and since she didn’t have any babies to protect, he was betting it was a man. But she wasn’t railing at Jackson, so he took that as a good sign she might bake him another pie sometime.

  Might give him a gander at her peaches one of these days too.

  He gestured to the cabinet under his sink. “Got some Windex if it’d help.”

  A smile broke through her anger, but she was still simmering. “Don’t think it’ll squirt that far, but thank you.” She crossed the room, went up on her tiptoes to brush his cheek with a sweet little peck, then stepped away. “Thanks for dinner too.”

  “You going to Lance and Kaci’s wedding?” he asked, and then wanted to kick himself.

  Both because taking a girl to a wedding went against his religion, and because he wanted her to go with him anyway.

  She bent to pet Radish. Her doe-eyes were headlight wary. “I—I suppose I’ll see you there.”

  He should’ve been relieved. Wasn’t like he wanted the expectations of having a date at a wedding. Still, long after he’d walked her out to her car and seen her off, he was puzzling over how he was going to handle finding the perfect woman.

  Because despite how long Momma’d been saying women were perfection, this was the first time in his life he’d ever found evidence she might be right.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The perfection he found in one woman made the imperfections in the rest all the more obvious.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  ANNA CREDITED NEIL’S text message Sunday night to drunken texting. Because why else would he send her a message asking how she’d been since they hadn’t talked in a while?

  But when she got a second one Thursday afternoon at work, in the middle of the day, followed by an email to the same effect, she couldn’t deny he was talking to her. On purpose.

  So she deleted the messages and called Beth.

  “Molar extraction going on here, Anna-banana,” her sister said. “Make it quick.”

  “Neil texted me.”

  “You still have his number in your phone?”

  “Well, yeah. How else am I supposed to avoid his phone calls?”

  Beth’s sigh echoed through the lab. Jules was at a staff meeting, and Anna was supposed to be proofreading more reports.

  “Who’s that friend you keep talking about? Kaci? I need her number,” Beth said.

  “Why?”

  “So she can steal your phone and delete Neil.”

  “But the next time he texts, I won’t know it’s him, and I won’t know to not answer.”

  “Good! Say who the fuck is this?—sorry Trina, I’ll get a quarter—and let him get the hint that you’ve moved on with your life.”

  A loud crash boomed behind Anna. Heart leaping, she spun in her chair. Jules was in the doorway. A stack of binders were scattered on the floor.

  “I’m getting back to this extraction, and you’re deleting him,” Beth said. “Delete. Him. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “God, you need to get out of the South.” The line clicked off.

  “Hey, Jules,” Anna said, her pulse thinking about settling back into a normal rhythm. “What’s up?”

  Other than the guest speaker—on the topics depression and spousal abuse—at the staff meeting. Anna wasn’t invited to staff meetings, so she had no idea how it had gone over.

  Her optimism only went so far, and Jules’s lip-curl didn’t look positive.

  “Your new sample-tracking color-coding system was the toast of the town.” Jules nudged the binders. “Shirley wants the last two years of data synced to match. Preferably by next week. Corporate’s coming.”

  Anna whimpered. Someone wanted to sink her happy boat. Not that she didn’t appreciate color-coding. Like Jackson said, it was her calling. But her first round of tests were soon, and she’d signed up to get officially certified on all the lab equipment.

  The fun kept coming.

  “Hope you didn’t have any weekend plans,” Jules said.

  None that she was excited about. “Not really. How about you guys?”

  Jules gave her the wary eye. “We’re getting out of town.”

  “Oh. Nice.”

  “Yep.” Jules hitched a shoulder. “Enjoy your weekend.”

  Shirley stopped in shortly after Jules left. “Nice speaker,” she said unconvincingly.

  “It was short notice. Did Jules even listen?”

  “Couldn’t tell.” Shirley gestured to the binders. “Redoing the old stuff to match?”

  “Jules said—” Anna buried her head in her hands and groaned. “Is Corporate really coming in for a visit next week?”

  “Yep.”

  “But you didn’t ask me to make the old data match the new system before they get here.”

  “Nope. Not a bad idea though. Eventually.” Shirley tapped her pack of cigarettes against the cube door. “Well, kid, at least now you know she was listening.”

  But it didn’t mean she heard.

  THERE WASN’T MUCH of anything moving in the trees today, not in the right direction anyway. Jackson had a notion that had something to do with his hunting buddy.

  She hadn’t clamped her trap for more than the millisecond it took her to suck in a breath since they left his truck this morning. Radish hadn’t been happy to be left home this morning, but right now, Jackson was jealous of the old girl. Least she had some peace.

  “How many times did it take you to pass economics?” Louisa was s
aying.

  He swiveled his head away from the tree he’d been scanning to look his baby sister up and down. “You failed economics?”

  “My teacher was a real dickhead.”

  An explosion the likes of which he’d never heard from his daddy’s mouth erupted in his head, accompanied by a couple of tirades he had endured from his momma. “You talk to Mamie with that mouth?”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward, though if she thought Daddy would’ve been on her side, she was flat wrong. “He was. It’s like he thought we all wanted to be economists.” She spat the word like it meant the same thing as murderers. “Plus we all had other classes.”

  “Some teachers are tough. Means you gotta be tougher.”

  Her lower lip curved. Barely a smidge, but he noticed.

  “Not everybody’s tough as a big old military officer,” she said.

  “An economics class isn’t war.” He scanned the trees again. A branch rustled. A squirrel paused on it. He lifted his shotgun and aimed at the furry little thing.

  “You got one?” Louisa yanked out her shotgun and bumped Jackson’s arm. “Where? I wanna get it.”

  The squirrel jumped branches, and Jackson watched its path disappear in a zig-zag line of rustling leaves. “Louisa. Ain’t gonna get a thing if you don’t pipe down.”

  Didn’t need to look close to see the lip now.

  Jackson stifled a sigh. That no-women-during-hunting-season rule apparently applied to girl hunting buddies too. He slouched against a tree. “We hunting or jabbering?”

  The lip got bigger in direct proportion to her narrowing eyes. If it wasn’t for her having Daddy’s eyes and dimple, he would’ve wondered if they were full siblings, but she had ’em all right.

  Used ’em like Momma did though. “Some people can do both. Guess the big old Air Force didn’t teach you that yet.”

  “Air Force taught me to keep my trap shut if I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.”

  “Yeah, well, the squirrel won’t shoot back at you.”

  Sweet baby Jesus, he’d brought a pacifist hunting. “You ever go hunting with Craig?”

  That was a silent snarl if he ever saw one. Her face got so scrunchy even her hair curled up tighter.

  He put the safety on his shotgun and tucked it down at his side. “What’s wrong with Craig?”

  “Mr. Daddy’s Favorite? Like he had to work in college. He knew Russ would hire him. But he’s always picking on me because I’m a girl.”

  Jackson’s throat muscles worked. He’d herded lieutenants who left him wondering about the future of the Air Force, but not one of them, not even the LT who had his momma write him an excuse for his PFT, had left him unable to form a coherent response.

  Louisa had that stubborn debutante pose going on, so he eventually snapped his own trap shut and went back to scanning the trees.

  Louisa slouched beside him. “I’m just glad Uncle Sam sent you back here close enough for me to go hunting with someone who can handle a gun.”

  He slid his eyes to her. Girl was all talk. He was sure of that.

  But he couldn’t figure out why.

  “We doing this again next Saturday?” she asked.

  Never thought he’d be grateful for a buddy tying the knot, but Lance and Kaci’s wedding suddenly seemed like a vacation. “Busy next Saturday.”

  Louisa made a girly snort. “It’s always something, isn’t it? Sunday then.”

  “Sunday’s not looking too good either.” For Louisa. It was looking mighty good for Jackson. Anna Grace didn’t have classes Saturday or Sunday, and he hadn’t missed that internal war she’d been fighting between getting sleep and going home with him after coffee two nights ago.

  Louisa gave him the psychic eye. “You’re not giving up hunting for a whole weekend because of a girl, are you?”

  “Nope.” Far as he was concerned, he was giving up a whole hunting weekend to suffer through and recover from a wedding.

  But when they headed their separate ways after Louisa had talked his ears deaf and scared all the squirrels away, she insisted he’d meet her Sunday. So he sent Craig a message asking him to watch out for her, then went home to Radish.

  Empty-handed and a little empty-headed too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Life went on, except when it went backward.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  BY THE TIME KACI’S wedding rolled around, Anna was waffling between utter sexual frustration and the giddy feeling that came from being thoroughly courted.

  She mostly got why things with Jackson hadn’t progressed much since she fell in his trash can. He’d gone TDY and then hunting a couple of times. The one night they’d met for coffee, she’d been so exhausted that if she’d taken him up on his offer of a place to crash, she wouldn’t have made it past his front door, much less all the way to his bedroom. He’d seemed to understand when she insisted she’d stay at Kaci’s instead.

  But he’d texted. And she’d texted back. And he’d arranged to have Kaci deliver a few more notes and another box of chocolates, so when she put Kaci and Lance’s wedding gift in her car, she put an overnight bag next to it.

  She was wearing her favorite aubergine chiffon dress. The cut was borderline unfashionable, but no one would notice. Not with the bridesmaid dresses that Kaci’s mom had picked out. Besides, she loved the way the smooth fabric brushed over her legs.

  And she already knew it went well with Air Force mess dress.

  Kaci had not only refused Anna’s offers of last-minute assistance, she’d forbidden Anna from arriving at The Harrington any earlier than twenty minutes before the ceremony. Something about her mother, Yankee interference, and everyone’s constitution. After the fallout of the last wedding Anna had attended at The Harrington, she was more afraid of infecting Kaci’s wedding with bad juju.

  She arrived thirteen minutes before the ceremony. The parking spot she found two places down from Jackson’s truck had to be a good omen. Some of the tension that had popped up at the sight of the grandiose hotel melted away.

  More tension dissipated when Jackson swung out of his truck the same time she stepped out of her car.

  But then she spied someone who wouldn’t have been included on the guest list even if the wedding was in hell.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  He leaned against the building, well out of sight of the entrance around the corner, fidgeting with his phone. His tie was crooked and despite the pleasant seventy-two-degree weather, he’d already mopped his brow three times with a handkerchief.

  She left the gift in her car but snagged her small purse so she’d have somewhere to stash her keys and phone, then gave Jackson two seconds to catch up. “Anna Grace?”

  She latched onto his arm, ignoring the flutter in her heart from touching him, and pulled him toward Dr. Kelly. “How are you with distracting retired colonels who are crashing their ex-wives’ wedding?” she murmured, looking anywhere but at him and the bronze oak leaves on his shoulders.

  She hoped like hell after this wedding she’d be stripping a man out of uniform.

  Especially since Neil had nothing on Jackson. The uniform had made Neil look good, but Jackson made the uniform look good.

  “I, ah, he—what?”

  Anna nodded toward Dr. Kelly. “Kaci’s ex,” she whispered.

  Jackson’s face twisted into an expression that made her wonder if his momma knew he knew those ungentlemanly words. His lips settled into a resigned line. “Gonna owe me for this one, Anna Grace.”

  “Got an overnight bag in my car.”

  He didn’t twitch a single muscle, but his eyes turned to midnight. “Got a pie in it?”

  She laughed. “Something better.”

  Dr. Kelly looked at both of them, and his eyes narrowed.

  Jackson nudged Anna forward. “Works for me.”

  Kaci’s ex looked ready to bolt, and not toward the parking lot, so Anna stepped up her pace. “Hi, Dr. Kelly,
” she called. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  Jackson gave a soft snort. “Smooth, Anna Grace.”

  She elbowed him. Dr. Kelly angled closer to the corner.

  “Whew, this place is crawling with military guys today,” Anna said. “Weren’t you—”

  “Evening, sir,” Jackson interrupted, sticking his hand out. “Been a while.”

  Dr. Kelly clasped Jackson’s hand. “Stuck it out this long, have you?” the older man said. He spared another eyeball toward Anna before focusing on Jackson again. “Thought after AFIT, you’d hook up with Boeing.”

  Anna stifled a surprised squeak. Neil always said it was a small Air Force. Guess it was true.

  “Not in it for the money.” Jackson nudged Anna.

  “Nice to see you,” she murmured, and slunk around the side of the building to let Jackson handle it.

  She thought Kaci probably owed him for that one, but Anna was willing to take one for the team and pay her friend’s debt.

  She was a giver like that.

  She pushed through the revolving door and into the reception area. Clumps of people in fancy attire milled about the room in a disorganized line to the ballroom.

  The ballroom where her marriage had evaporated.

  Hoo-boy.

  “Anna?” A somewhat familiar, lanky brunette captain approached. She flashed a smile at Anna, her brown eyes keenly observant. The wings on her mess dress flashed.

  Anna didn’t know much about Lance’s sister beyond her call sign and that she flew fighters—and that Jackson had once asked her out—but if anyone fit the bill as a relative of Lance’s, this woman did. “Lightning?”

  She tipped her head up when she laughed. “Cheri, please. Kaci’s asking for you.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Mostly.” She leaned in and lowered her voice while they picked through the crowd. “Kaci’s momma insisted on doing everyone’s makeup. You seen the bridesmaids? Her momma’s turning this wedding into Gone with the Wind meets That Seventies Show.”

  Instead of heading toward the ballroom, Cheri led Anna up the back stairs to the second floor. She slid a key-card into the door slot, then pushed in. “Kaci? Found her.”