by Emily March
“More a Club Fed than prison. It’s unfortunate and shouldn’t have happened—basically a good intention gone south big time—and her sentence was only for two weeks to set an example. She violated parole. But she’s put it behind her and promised to turn over a new leaf in Texas.”
Jackson sighed.
Boone suggested. “Look, why don’t you talk over your concerns with Celeste. See what she has to say.”
“I’ve tried! She seems to be listening to me. She smiles and pats my arm and then somehow the conversation goes off track, and before I know it I’m okaying a change in wall color for the Sundance suite.”
“That’s our Celeste,” Boone agreed.
“So what do we do about it? From everything I’ve read since we decided to do this thing, an innkeeper can make or break an enterprise.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. We need to trust Celeste. If she says that Angelica is the right person for us, then it’s true.”
“I dunno. Every family has their problem child. I’m afraid she might be dumping her own problem onto us.”
“Look. You haven’t seen Celeste in action. You can ask anyone in Eternity Springs. The woman is uncanny. You have to believe me on this one, Jackson. If Celeste says Angelica’s right for us, then she’s right.”
“Okay. But if it goes south, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
They covered a couple of more issues as Jackson picked up his damp towel and hung it on the towel hook. While his cousin yammered in his ear, he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Damn five-o’clock shadow. Maybe he should shave. Should he shave?
This isn’t a date.
Annoyed with himself, Jackson sat on his bed and pulled on his socks and boots. “Wrap it up, Boone,” he said. “I’m losing interest.”
“Bite me,” his cousin fired back. Following a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “You doing okay today, Jackson?”
The question hit him like a fist. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He’d worked like a dog and filled every minute of the day in an effort to keep his thoughts away from the significance of the date. “I’m fine. Talk to you tomorrow, Boone.”
The called ended and he stood for a long moment awash in despair. He was tempted … oh, so tempted … to call and beg for one act of mercy, one conversation, one opportunity to speak to his little girl. He ached to wish her Happy Birthday.
“Can’t do it,” he muttered. “Do not do it.” His lawyers had assured him that even one single ding against the court order would provide ammunition to his ex for their next custody battle.
Jackson closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath as he mentally worked to shore up his defenses. Tuck it away. Think of something else. Think about the afternoon and Caroline and her song.
See that girl.
This wasn’t a date. It was a Hail Mary. Caroline Carruthers had inspired him once before. He was superstitious enough to believe that she might do it again. If the stars aligned after spending some one-on-one time with her today, maybe he’d finally be able to finish her song. What he had of it was good, but it needed another verse or two. Once he got a single good song beneath his belt, surely this mental block of his would dissipate.
He missed his music. He wanted it back. This wasn’t a date, it was … therapy.
In a burst of optimism, Jackson slipped the harmonica into his pocket, and then took one last look around the trailer. He spotted a paper towel on the floor, scooped it up, and arced a perfect throw into the trash can. He checked the fridge. Steaks and salad ready. Potatoes washed and wrapped in foil. Everything was good to—oh, wait. The dishwasher. He’d meant to unload the dishwasher in order to facilitate cleanup.
He tackled the task and five minutes later, exited the trailer and climbed into his truck. He took the new road they’d had built out of the canyon. It wasn’t as scenic as the original one, but it was wider and safer with half as many switchbacks. It cut the time of the trip into town by a third, and he rolled in five minutes before the hour.
A parking spot opened up in front of her building right as he approached. Jackson whipped into the space, shifted into park, and turned off his engine. He wasn’t the sort of man who bothered glancing into a mirror after he finished his morning shave. Nevertheless before reaching for the door latch, he flipped down the sun visor and checked his reflection.
Then Jackson climbed down from his truck and headed for the door where a new sign hung. “The Next Chapter,” he read aloud. “I like it.”
Moments later, Caroline Carruthers answered his rap on the door wearing snake boots and a smile. And so began the date that wasn’t a date.
Chapter Eight
“Good afternoon, Jackson. Come on in.”
He stepped into the building and took a curious look around. A half-dozen pieces of sheetrock stood against one wall with lumber stacked beside sawhorses and power tools. A pile of PVC pipe and plumbing parts filled one corner, and the acrid scent of paint thinner hung in the air. Considering how he’d spent much of the past year, Jackson felt right at home.
He turned in a slow circle. “This is a good space.”
“It will be.” Caroline braced her hands on her hips and mimicked his motion. “We still have a lot of work to do. I had hoped to be a little further along by now, but unfortunately”—her eyes twinkled as she gave an exaggerated sigh—“my plumber is running behind. Apparently he had a callback to a previous job.”
Jackson’s grin was unabashed. “Hey, it’s not my fault that he screwed up his parts order.”
“But the job I need him to do is tiny compared to yours! If you’d loan him to me…”
“Can’t do it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in the Texas Hill Country, Mrs. Carruthers. When it comes to contractors, it’s every man for himself.”
She shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Never. Those Bambi eyes of yours might have worked, too, if I didn’t have our soft opening coming at me like a freight train.”
She gave him a look of surprise. “Bambi eyes?”
“Big, beautiful, and soulful. Surely you’ve heard that before.”
“No. No, I haven’t.”
She tilted her head and studied him, and Jackson began to feel like a bug on a microscope slide. In an effort to change the subject, he made a sweeping gesture around the room. “Will you show me your vision of your shop, Caroline? I’m interested.”
“Sure. I love to talk about The Next Chapter.”
“Great name, by the way.”
“Thank you. It feels appropriate.” She led the way toward a desk at the back of the space. “I have a 3-D rendering on my computer. Let me pull it up.”
They spent the next few minutes discussing her plans, and she asked his advice about a couple of ideas she’d been debating. “I know it’s not original to this building, but I don’t think I really care.”
“Don’t let our new friend Henry the historian hear you say that,” Jackson cautioned.
“I know. He’s a stickler for historical accuracy, but I think a tin ceiling like the one in your saloon would add a lot of character and atmosphere. Besides, I like them. I don’t need a reason beyond that, do I? This will be a bookstore, not a museum.”
“Go for it. You don’t need a reason. That’s one of the nice things about being a boss. It’s your shop. You get to decide.”
“Unfortunately, I’m a ditherer. Decision making has never been my strong suit. I can whittle it down to two or three options, but when it comes time to make the final choice, I waffle. I’ve always needed a sounding board, someone to give me a kick in the pants when I need one.” Her smile turned reflective and a little sad. “I still have trouble believing I actually pulled the trigger on this move and career change, and that I did it all by my little lonesome.”
Her little lonesome. Jackson studied her and wished he knew her better. The elephant in the bookstore was taking up half the space. Should he bring it up or leave it … well … buried? W
as Caroline the sort of person who would like to talk about her husband or did she want to put the past behind her and move on? Jackson was the move-on type, but women were different.
Very different. Might as well just ask. “I take it your husband served as the pants kicker?”
“Yes. Well, actually, I take that back. Usually, he made the choice for me.” Her gaze flicked up to meet his. “He was a take-charge kind of guy. He liked to take care of me.”
Huh. Caroline didn’t strike Jackson as being the little-woman type who needed a man to take care of her. He wondered if he gave his thoughts away when her next words addressed exactly that.
“Not very modern of me, I admit, but I was young when we got together, and he was older and experienced and smart. Robert was an extremely intelligent man.” She hesitated a moment and added, “Alzheimer’s was a brutal diagnosis for him. He tried so hard to be strong for me, but on days when he was feeling low … more than once I heard him say maybe he’d get lucky and get run over by a bus. Well, he got lucky.”
She gave her head a shake and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t yammer on about that.”
“Hey, feel free to yammer. It’s not healthy to bottle stuff up inside.”
“It’s been almost a year.”
“So what? Nobody gets to decide how long somebody else gets to grieve. If you need to talk, I want to listen. That’s what friends do.”
“Not all friends,” she replied with a wry note to her voice. “I have it on good authority that too much wallowing in the past is boring.”
Jackson frowned. “You need better friends, Caroline.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
The woeful expression on her face tugged at his heart. He reached out, took hold of her hand, and gave it a supportive squeeze. “Don’t let anyone tell you how to mourn. That’s about as personal a thing as we have to deal with in life.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she drew a deep breath, lifted her chin, and changed the topic. “I’m excited to see the ghost town. I’m coming prepared.” She lifted a foot and pointed toward her obviously new snake boots.
Jackson grinned. “Good girl. So, are you ready for Ruin?”
“I am. Mind if I bring my camera bag along?”
“Not at all.”
In Jackson’s pickup during the drive to the canyon, she asked about his cousins. “Boone is doing fine for someone who is burrowed away in a Rocky Mountain snowdrift. Don’t get me wrong. I like Eternity Springs a lot. But they had an unusually long winter this year, and I’m just not much of a snowbird. Give me heat over the white fluffy stuff any day.”
“I’m with you. Austin gets a trace of snow once or twice a year, and that suits me just fine. And Tucker? What is he up to?”
Jackson pursed his lips. “We don’t hear from him much. I figure that’s a good thing, considering that he’s active duty military. No news is good news.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She waited until he navigated a sharp turn on the narrow road they traveled before asking, “Do you have other cousins? Any siblings? Are your parents and grandparents still around?”
He gave her a recap of his family—no siblings and he’d lost both his parents within the past three years. He had various aunts and uncles and one surviving grandmother.
He remembered that she’d denied having any family beyond the sister-in-law during that drive to Austin, so he asked about another sort of family. “What about pets? Are you a cat lady? Dog person? Fish aficionado?”
“No, no pets. Yet. I’ve been thinking about getting a dog, but I want to get settled first.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of dog to you want?”
“I’m not sure. Something small. What about you? Do you have a pet?”
“No, I don’t, although I’ve been thinking about getting a dog, myself. Not a little ankle-biter type though. I want a real dog, something with some size like a bird dog or a boxer or a Lab. A friend of mine has a chocolate Lab who’s a great dog.”
Caroline wrinkled her nose. “Little dogs are real dogs.”
They talked dog breeds for a bit before the conversation waned, and a comfortable silence fell between them that lasted until they passed a lump of roadkill that reminded him of a story he’d heard from one of the painters at the saloon.
“Did you hear about that skunk that came calling at the house behind your shop last night?”
“What do mean ‘came calling’?”
“You’ve met Denise Sears? She owns the candy shop catercorner to you.” Caroline shook her head, and Jackson continued. “Anyway, Denise has an old hound dog named Barney who has taken to waking her to go out in the middle of the night. Last night she put the dog out and a few minutes later saw him hauling tail toward the door. She opened it, Barney darted past her, and before the stink made it to her nose, the skunk actually chased the hound inside. Barney knocked over a lamp and broke it, then threw up on her carpet. The skunk ended up under her bed.”
Caroline covered her mouth with her hand and groaned. “That’s horrible. Although, now that you mention it, I did notice a skunky smell when I went for my run this morning.”
“It gets worse,” Jackson said as they approached the canyon turnoff. “Denise has sense, so she hurried to open the sliding glass door in her bedroom in order to give the skunk a path of escape. Then she went out the front door to wait him out, but all the noise woke her brother-in-law who was asleep in the guest room—wearing only his tighty-whities. He’s about five ten, weighs at least two fifty, and doesn’t have the sense God gave a goat. He grabbed a broom and went down on his hands and knees and tried to shoo the skunk out from beneath the bed.”
“He didn’t!”
Jackson smirked. “The skunk unloaded everything he had before he finally wandered out of the house half an hour later. Denise is gonna have to replace most everything she owns.”
“That’s terrible. I wonder if her homeowner’s insurance would cover something like that?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Jackson replied.
They rode for a few moments in silence until a giggle escaped her. “I’m sorry. I do feel so sorry for the woman. It’s just that the visual you painted…” Caroline gave her head a shake. “You are an excellent storyteller, Jackson.”
“I used to be.” Time for another change in subject. “Look off to the right. The sunflowers and lavender fields are in bloom.”
“Oh, wow. That’s so gorgeous. What a fabulous backdrop for your B and B. Except, this isn’t the same road that Maisy and I took, is it?”
“No.” He told her about their decision to build a private road into the canyon.
“Whoa. Let me try to make sense of this. You built a road in Texas. And, finished it in less than five years? In Texas?”
“Well, I didn’t do it personally…” Jackson laughed when she gave him a chiding look. “Although, I did run the Bobcat a lot because it’s fun. Boone and I had a bet, and I wasn’t going to lose. Actually brought the job in two days ahead of deadline.”
“Congratulations. It’s a nice smooth road.”
“Thank you. I will own up to a handful of potholes, however.”
“Are you in charge of the flowers, too?” she asked, nodding toward the sunflower field.
“The sunflowers, yes. We planted them with dove season in mind. The lavender fields were established by one of the farmers who owned land in the canyon years ago. A little TLC has done those plants a world of good.”
“I hope you’ve had someone out to take photographs.”
“We have. Boone has a friend who owns and operates a resort in Colorado, and she’s here helping us get ready to open. She brought in a photographer earlier this week. If you want, after we finish at Ruin we could stop by the inn and dance hall, and you can see the changes we’ve made.”
“I’d like that.”
Caroline gazed around with interest as they traveled the canyon road. She laughed softly when she spied the first of the signposts they�
�d installed: Beware, You Are Traveling the Road to Ruin.
“The next one says Drive Friendly on the Road to Ruin,” Jackson said.
“Cute.”
“It was Tucker’s idea. Our families often vacationed together when we were kids—usually in Colorado. The drive between Fort Worth and the mountains is never-ending, the stretch between Wichita Falls and Amarillo boring as dry white toast. You’re probably too young to remember, but these were the days before cars had video on demand.”
“Too young? I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”
He took his gaze off the road long enough to flash her a roguish grin. She rolled her eyes and asked, “What do your signposts have to do with a boring drive across Texas?”
“Between Childress and Clarendon there were a series of billboards that advertised a roadside convenience store. One sign would dangle pecan logs, another frozen slushes, the next one clean restrooms—you get the drift. One year we counted twenty-five of them. By the time you got to the one-thousand-yards sign, then the one-hundred-yards sign, no way was a parent gonna get past it without stopping. Getting out without buying some sort of souvenir was next to impossible, too.” He paused, and then wistfully recounted, “I really liked those pecan rolls. I still have my plastic squeaking alligator. Remind me to show it to you later.”
“A squeaking alligator?”
“I think it was probably a dog toy, but I loved it. Was great for scaring my mom and aunts and the girl cousins. Good times.”
She laughed freely and the sound made Jackson grin all the way to Ruin.
* * *
As Caroline stepped down out of Jackson’s truck and onto the road at Ruin, she said, “How cool is this? I feel like I should be wearing a prairie dress and a bonnet.”
“I know. It’s all I can do not to strap on a gun belt and a six-shooter every time I come here.”
“Do you own a six-shooter?”
“I might have purchased a non-firing replica Colt. And a holster and gun belt. And a black hat.”
The gleam in his eyes amused her. “A black hat?”
