Moonshine & Magnolias

by Jamie Farrell

  Mari Belle squeezed her good arm. “We’ll take care of it,” she said, echoing Tara’s sentiments.

  “And he’s from Canada. He’ll never even know what happened,” Tara said.

  Anna stomped a foot. “The Midwest is not Canada,” she declared loudly enough for all of Alabama and Mississippi to hear her too.

  “You keep telling yourself that, Anna Grace,” Jackson called from the outfield.

  The usual joke was enough to make even Shelby smile while the rest of the team laughed. “I love y’all,” she said.

  “We love you too,” Tara said. “Now scoot your tush on over to the sidelines so we can take care of that boy for you.”

  Shelby went. And she almost felt sorry for Zack. He had no idea what was coming.

  But then, he wasn’t taking Shelby’s hints. It was time to bring out the big guns. And there were no better allies than her fellow ex-wives. Shelby gave it half an hour, tops, before Zack Montgomery was running for the hills.

  Chapter 7

  Two hours later, Shelby was still dealing with Zack Montgomery.

  He’d said all the right guy things to ingratiate himself with Jackson and the other token guys on the team. He’d helped Mari Belle’s ten-year-old daughter improve her swing and then showed Tara a little trick to improve her pitch. And then he’d offered his momma’s secret pineapple pie recipe to Anna.

  And then he’d driven Shelby home, telling her stories of the time he rode a camel, the time he rafted down the Colorado River, the time he got stuck at an airport after losing his passport in some nondescript European country, the time he had a grand ol’ life seeing the world and doing things and going places.

  “You go home,” she’d said when he parked the car. “You go on home and have your happy little fun life all by yourself.” And then she’d marched herself inside, let Penelope out to do her business, and then banged around in her kitchen until she finally found her daddy’s jar of moonshine.

  But when she went looking for the shot glass her daddy always took his in, something dripped on her shoulder.

  Shelby looked up.

  Then she let loose with a few words she’d learned from her daddy but had always known not to say in his presence.

  Which was how she found herself outside in the rapidly darkening evening, cobwebs from the garage clinging to her hair, clunking an ancient aluminum ladder across the patio to the back wall of the house. “Dadgum roof,” she muttered. “Dadgum rain. Dadgum life.”

  Good news was she knew how to slap tar on shingles. The bad news was, she couldn’t do it one-armed.

  “What are you doing?”

  That voice.

  That dadgum voice.

  “Go home,” Shelby said.

  “Put the ladder down.”

  “Go home.”

  “Shelby.”

  He was already in her backyard, and he had his arms crossed and his legs spread. No small part of her wanted to drop the ladder on the grass and her head onto his chest.

  To let him handle the leaky roof.

  “It’s not weak to be smart.” He angled his body, took one step closer, arms still folded. “You don’t want my help, fine. Call your friends instead. But put the ladder down.”

  An unusual thickness settled in her throat, followed by more of that itching behind her eyeballs.

  “One…” he said.

  A choked laugh took her by surprise. She let go of the ladder, and it clattered to the ground, banging her leg. She winced, but she blinked back the sting in her eyes and looked at Zack.

  He didn’t move.

  Didn’t say anything.

  He just watched her.

  And it was hard to not watch back. Dusk had settled, and all she could really see was his outline, but it was enough.

  He was here.

  Here was here, and she wanted him.

  She needed him.

  He was strong. Fearless. Dependable.

  He owned his life, and he was offering to help with hers too, despite everything she’d done and said to him.

  “My momma taught me to have better manners than to send away a gentleman offering help,” she whispered.

  “I’ve got a good feeling your momma wouldn’t have liked me much.”

  He was wrong. He would’ve charmed her momma right out of her pearls. “She hated Alexander.”

  “Smart lady.”

  Shelby almost smiled, but she felt too naked in the darkness. “You’ve never met either of them.”

  “Don’t have to. I’ve met you.” He angled closer again. “Your roof leak?”

  She nodded. Warmth swelled in her chest, battling with the panicked hammer of her heart.

  He was a good guy. A nice guy. A ridiculously handsome guy.

  “Can’t see it tonight,” he said. “Got a name if you need it. Can probably get him out tomorrow.”

  “It’s leaking in my kitchen.”

  “Dripping?”

  “You think I’d be climbing this ladder in the dark for anything less?”

  The quiet, still, minding-his-own-business Zack disappeared, and he leapt into motion, heading for the back door. “Didn’t rain that much today.”

  Shelby trailed after him, a new panic settling in her chest.

  Penelope greeted him with an eager bark, leaping from her front to back legs while her tongue wagged out. Zack strolled past her, then came to a complete stop under the soggy spot in the ceiling. A grim smile settled on his lips. “You’ve got a busted pipe.”

  Shelby looked at him.

  Then at the widening, mud-colored circle spreading out on the ceiling over the sink, the steady drip-drip-drip coming faster.

  And then she turned to the moonshine.

  Forget the shot glass. Forget propriety. Forget responsibilities.

  Shelby needed a drunken outlook on life.

  Chapter 8

  Zack should’ve gone home after he found the right valve to stop the leaky pipe, but that desolate, broken look in Shelby’s eyes had tugged at something deep in his chest. He hung around, took a shot of moonshine with her, put a bucket under the drip, and then listened while she pulled out her what-for stick and stopped short of counting to three if the pipe didn’t fix itself before her babies got home.

  He should’ve gone home after that too, but then Shelby tossed back a third shot of moonshine.

  He couldn’t leave a lady to get drunk all by herself.

  Plus, the second shot had made her all kinds of talkative.

  When his sisters chattered like that, Zack tuned them out. But Shelby had put away One-Two-Shelby and Southern Belle Shelby and pulled out Redneck Shelby, and she was hilarious.

  “I knew the first time I saw Alexander’s tallywhacker that it was something best used only to say you’d done it once and could now, in truth, confirm that size matters,” she declared from her perch on her pink and brown striped couch. Her feet were up on a matching ottoman. Pictures of her kids smiled down at her from the wall above. “I reckoned he might could’ve been hiding a sense of adventure under that ROTC uniform, but let me tell you something, that man was so set in his ways, he’d go getting himself all blocked up for being afraid to poop in a different pot every time he went TDY. And when we moved? Lord love a latte, we picked our second house because it had the same house number as the last one.”

  She waved her fourth shot at him. “Let this be a lesson, Mack Zontgomery. Don’t ever believe one condom’s enough. Double or nothing. That’s my new motto. But if I have sex with you, it’ll be triple. Bet you’ve got swimmers of steel.”

  “Like tanks,” he said. He probably needed to take that shot away from her. But he was stuck on the idea of Shelby wanting to have sex with him.

  Some other night, obviously.

  “I’m fixin’ to remind you you said that,” Shelby said.

  Zack stretched out in the chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “I’m fixin’ to be a gentleman and pretend we didn’t have this conversation.�
�

  She suddenly sat up straight. “Have you seen the pyramids?”

  “The…?”

  “The pyramids. The big ones. With the nose that fell off.”

  He stifled a smile. “Ah. The pyramids.” He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “See, that’s what I like—hate about you. You’re fixin’ to see the pyramids, and I’m fixin’ to be underemployed and living here in Georgia for the rest of my days.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you go laughing at me. I’m serious as a heart attack. My momma and my daddy took me places—they took me to Macon and Atlanta and Birmingham and Destin. They took me to Tennessee and to the space center in Huntsville. They knew the educational power of traveling, and do you know what my ex-husband said? He said we’d travel when we could afford it, or when the kids were bigger, or when he recovered from having that stick surgically removed from his rear end. And now here I am, taking alimony and collecting a list of schools and day cares that don’t want my aged self working for their tax and tuition dollars.”

  Zack looked down. He still had several years to retirement, but he’d been around.

  And he knew she was right.

  The military life sucked donkey balls for spouses with college degrees. It wasn’t much consideration for him, but he’d seen his buddies’ wives fight the same battle. Not enough work experience on paper, even if they could move mountains. “Your friends much help there?” he asked.

  “They got me the job I have now.” She squinted at the moonshine with one eye, then switched and squinted with the other. “It’s fuller on the left. Know what that means?”

  “Time to put it up for the night?”

  “Time to put it out of its sweet misery.” She tossed it back, then shuddered. And when the last shiver had played out of her shoulders, she tilted her head at him. “I give you a gold star in kissing.”

  He gave her a freaking medal. “And that’s my cue.” He pulled himself up out of the chair. “Getting late, One-Two-Shelby. Time to go to bed.” And he’d take the rest of her jar of moonshine home with him to keep it out of her reach tonight.

  Her lips puckered out. “I wanted to go to the beach,” she said.

  “Tonight?”

  “You said you’d drive me anywhere.”

  He held a hand out to her. Her hair was mussed, practically inviting his fingers to dive into the thick, silky softness of it. And those pouty lips and lowered lids were temptation incarnate. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  When she was sober. And when he’d had a cold shower. Or eight.

  He didn’t date single mothers. But he very much wanted to take Shelby out to dinner and then back to his place.

  She gave him a drunkenly magnified scowl. “That’s what Alexander always said. We’ll do it someday, Shelby. Six years, and the only someday that ever happened was my marriage ending. We lived with mountains in our backyard. We lived forty minutes from the beach. And we never got up close and personal with either.”

  Zack shouldn’t have taken it as a taunt, but it was hard to miss the comparison to her ex.

  He hated her ex. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Ever been to Savannah?” he said.

  “Not in twenty years.”

  “Come with me this weekend.”

  She blinked at him, once slowly, once quicker, and then the Cheshire grin slid across her lips, with the added bonus of an adorable little dimple at the corner of her mouth. “Are you inviting me to a weekend of sin and temptation, Sergeant Squeezey?”

  He coughed to cover a snort. “Squeezey?”

  “Turn on around and I’ll show you.” She flexed the fingers on her good hand.

  “Don’t think so, sweetheart.” He snagged her hand. “C’mon. Bedtime.”

  “Zack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I miss my babies.”

  He tugged her up off the couch. “Bet they miss you too. You talk to 'em lately?”

  “Every day.” She hiccupped. “I can’t go anywhere. They might need me.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. For kissing boo-boos. And what if Alexander isn’t putting their sunscreen on? And what if he’s not combing the tangles out of Hailey’s hair right? And what if Braden has an accident at the store and he doesn’t have any spare clothes? And what if—”

  “And what if they’re not your responsibility right now?”

  “They’re always my responsibility.”

  She swayed to the left, and Zack moved to steady her. Crazy woman smelled drunk, but she smelled like flowers too. Like the magnolia blossoms in her backyard. And she felt good, all those soft curves pressed against him.

  She deserved a little fun.

  He was probably crazy, but he’d done Savannah and Tybee Island before. By himself. Taking Shelby along—that would be a whole different adventure.

  She wouldn’t go. She’d sober up and come up with plans she already had with her girlfriends. But he wouldn’t have minded if she did want to hang with him.

  As long as he remembered to keep his hands to himself. “Can’t keep blaming him for you not doing anything when you’ve got an offer to get away right here,” Zack said.

  She blinked up at him, her eyes almost focused. “Zack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That last shot was a bad idea.”

  “Why—oh, shit.”

  Yep. She’d sober up. And she’d decide not to go with him.

  But she’d be doing both the hard way.

  * * *

  Zack woke up with a crick in his neck, sticky cotton in his mouth, and a knocking in his ears. Took him a minute to process where he was. Not unusual—he’d slept in his deployment bunk more nights than in his own bed this year—but crashing on a couch was something he’d given up in his twenties. This morning, his body was more than happy to remind him why.

  The knocking came again, and he shoved up and stumbled across Shelby’s tan carpet to peek out the peephole on the front door.

  A honey blonde and a dark-haired major were on the doorstep. Jackson and Anna from Shelby’s team.

  Zack ran a hand over his buzz cut, then flipped the lock and opened the door.

  A matching set of raised eyebrows greeted him.

  Anna’s smoothed out into a knowing smile, but Jackson did exactly what Zack would’ve in his shoes.

  He gave Zack the silent bro code for Don’t make me kick your ass.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” Anna said. She smiled too widely and innocently at Zack. “For your sake, I hope Shelby’s okay that you’re here. You wouldn’t be the first guy Jackson’s beat up for me.”

  She was still smiling when she stepped around him. “I’ll go check on her quick.” She went into the dining room and hung a left toward Shelby’s bedroom, leaving Zack alone with Jackson.

  “Your bed broken?” Jackson said.

  Zack crossed his arms. The other man outranked him, and Zack would give him the requisite amount of respect, but his personal life wasn’t any of the major’s business.

  Not this morning, anyway. Zack hadn’t done anything wrong. Zack wouldn’t have done anything wrong. Not with Shelby in the shape she’d been in.

  Soft, indistinguishable voices drifted through the wall to Shelby’s room.

  Jackson lifted a brow and quirked a grin. “Nothing good ever comes of them talking. You got about two minutes before Anna Grace comes barreling out of there with a plan to fix whatever you broke.”

  “Only thing broken is her water pipes,” Zack said.

  “She got a plumber on the way?”

  “Have you met Shelby?”

  Jackson grinned. “You catch on pretty quick for a Yankee.”

  “Jackson Davis, you hush,” Anna said from the doorway. She wagged a finger at Zack. “And you too. What were you thinking, letting her into the moonshine?”

  Yep. No winning with these folks. Zack ignored them both and passed Anna to knock on Shelby’s door. “My shower works if you need it,” he called
through the wood.

  He wanted to bang the door down and see for himself that she was fine, but that had too many shades of relationship written on it. Neighborly was one thing. Overprotective was another.

  “Honey, Southern women always smell like roses, but that’s mighty nice of you to offer,” Shelby called back.

  And now he wanted to both hug her and throttle her. She was back to normal, but she was shutting him out.

  Which was a good thing.

  He didn’t have anything to offer her. Tough as she acted, she wasn’t a one-night stand kind of girl. She’d made that abundantly clear. Her kids came first. Period.

  “You change your mind about Savannah, my car leaves at fifteen hundred tomorrow, and not a minute later,” he said.

  Because it wasn’t really his call whether she was a one-night stand kind of girl.

  Her door clicked open. One hazel eyeball peered out at him. It searched his face, then swept down and back up his body. Warmth crept into his skin.

  Warmth, and something else.

  “A real gentleman would ask what time he can pick me up at work instead of issuing orders,” she said.

  “A woman who wants to see the world doesn’t question opportunities when they fall in her lap.”

  That eyeball didn’t blink. And even though it was only half of the full force of her One-Two-Shelby gaze, Zack felt it boring through him as though there were ten of her instead of only one.

  “You won’t have half as much fun without me,” she said.

  The craziest part was that she was right. “Only because I’ll be wondering who’s keeping you from taking up gymnastics while I’m gone.”

  “Honey, there’s no taking up. There’s getting back on the balance beam. And you’ll pick me up at work at four.”

  Arguing was futile, mostly because the blood that should’ve been powering his brain was headed directly to his crotch. So he simply nodded.

  And when he left her house five minutes later, after checking on the leak drying up in the kitchen, he ignored the knowing smirk on Jackson’s face.

  He wasn’t whipped by a woman.