When his doorbell rang later that afternoon, he hightailed it for the door, wondering if Jordyn had come back. Maybe she had figured it out, or someone had told her the truth behind what happened.
He was beyond disappointed to find not only the Pink Ladies, but also Aunt Rose.
The firing squad. Great. He opened the door only because they saw him through the glass; there was no ignoring them now.
“You look like crap,” Aunt Rose said bluntly.
“Yeah, when’s the last time you showered?” Glenda asked.
He took a deep breath and shut his eyes to avoid rolling them. “I’m not in the mood today, ladies.” He began to shut the door.
Rose stopped him with a hand on the door.
“What do you want from me?” he asked defeated.
Rose came on in and patted him on the shoulder. “Go take a shower. We have some planning to do.”
Glenda stepped in, without invitation, looked around disapprovingly, and gestured to her posse as they all invited themselves in as well. “And we’ll start the dishes since it looks like hogs would’ve been cleaner these last few days.”
He still stood there with the door open, shaking his head. “Excuse me? Planning?”
Aunt Rose smiled. “You do have a plan for getting her back, right?”
He nodded. “Working on it, yeah.”
Rose grinned. “Well, that’s why we’re here, sugar. We’re going to help you make sure that plan is foolproof. We want your girl back almost as bad as you do.” She stopped and looked oddly like she was going to cry, but that was crazy because Aunt Rose was tough as nails. “Jordyn belongs in Picketts, and we all knew it the minute we met her.”
He took a deep breath and swallowed down the ache he felt having heard that. He thought Jordyn belonged here too. “I wasn’t aware I needed help with my plan.” Then he looked at Glenda accusingly. “And when I was trying to run after Jordyn to stop her from leaving, you weren’t exactly so helpful with that plan.”
Glenda gave him the stink eye and gestured wildly. “Nonsense! Jordyn was going to need a minute to calm down after what she saw. From our angle, it looked really bad. That’s why when you go to get her back, you better make sure it’ll work. Are you absolutely sure this plan of yours will work, boy?”
He absolutely hated that this seventy-year-old spice of a woman had a point. He shook his head no. “I know how devastated she must feel because I feel the same. So no, I don’t know for sure if it’ll work. I don’t know if she’ll even hear me out.”
Glenda nodded in understanding and touched her permed hair as if pleased she was right.
Rose clapped her hands together once. “Well, that’s why we’re here. We’ll work our magic on your plan, and it will be foolproof.”
He was 99.9 percent sure they were just being nosy asses.
A car door slammed, turning all their attention since the front door was still open where Beckett held it. Blakely was lugging her suitcase out of her jeep.
“Am I late to the intervention or did I make it in time?” she hollered.
“Right on time, dear!” Rose called back.
Beckett rolled his eyes. The women in his life were going to be the death of him. All of them.
And this was either going to be the best idea ever—or the worst idea ever.
Coffee Purgatory
CHAPTER 25
She wanted to just lie around and eat cookies all day. Correction. Not cookies. Cookies reminded her of Beckett’s favorite cookie, and so then she’d just cry. She was done crying, so no cookies. Maybe brownies. Brownies with ice cream. Yep, that would do. Instead, here she was, sitting in meeting after meeting at AgGroSo.
Walt had taken her personally to the airport, gotten them earlier tickets to Houston, and flown back with her, allowing her to cry on his shoulder. He told her she could have the next week off if she wanted to and apologized at least a hundred times. Needless to say, he was feeling guilty for what went down in Nebraska.
But she wasn’t about to be made a spectacle of or gossiped about at the office. And though the tabloids hadn’t gotten word yet, they would. And she was not going to be moping and heartbroken when they found her. She was going to be kicking butt at work because that was what she did best. So, she did the only thing worse than not going back to work: she went back to work. Right away Thursday morning. And Friday.
She stayed strong. She managed to somehow sit in marketing meetings and talk about the commercial. Sure, there were whispers and stares everywhere she went, but when she looked marketing in the eye and told them nothing about the remaining plans had changed, they all had gotten back to work.
Walt was proud of her for staying strong, but he was worried. Probably because he was the only one she allowed herself to break down in front of. Everyone else she stared down and brushed off until they knew she was okay.
It was a big, fat facade. She was so not okay. Nothing was okay. Nothing was the same. And it felt like nothing would ever be the same again. Twice now, she had fallen for a football player. And twice now, reality had slapped her in the face. She hadn’t even known she had developed feelings so deep for Beckett. She had known him less than a month! But the moment it was all yanked out from under her, she knew she only hurt as bad as she did because she really loved him. And this time, it wasn’t young love. She couldn’t even blame it on being naive.
She probably should have known better. She had fallen for Beckett, and he had stomped on her heart. And that was that.
Fortunately, Jordyn knew what it was like to be brokenhearted. She knew what it felt like to have your heart put through the paper shredder. And twice now she knew what it felt like to find out she wasn’t the only woman in her man’s life. Just like last time, she would pick herself up and put herself back together. One day at a time. Because if she didn’t, if she allowed herself to mope, then Heartbreak Harper won the day. And she was not going to allow Heartbreak Harper to have that power over her. Nope.
She would admit she missed Picketts. She missed Rose, the café, the kind people at church, and even the Pink Ladies. But she would not miss Harper. No way. After what he did to her, she realized how silly it all was to imagine anything serious with him. And of course he had said that he wanted to date her long-distance. He had probably wanted Jordyn to leave so he could bounce between her and Ariana more.
And that thought made her want to projectile vomit.
Yep. Beckett Harper was dead to her now. Sure, her heart may still be hurting, but her mind was determined to write him off.
****
“Let’s go to Rose’s,” Blakely suggested. “It’s Saturday, and we always go to Rose’s on Saturdays when I’m home.”
“No!” Beckett said strongly, annoyed with his little sister.
Blakely grabbed his cup of coffee out of his hand, took a sip, and almost spit it out. “Yuck! Why are you drinking your coffee black? And you do realize you can’t hide from everyone forever?”
He nodded. “Yes, but I’d like to avoid them as much as possible for the next week.”
She thought about that. “But with Rose and the Pink Ladies on your side, everyone here in Picketts knows the true story. No one will probably even have the guts to say anything. Well, besides Aunt Rose.”
He rolled his eyes and ran a hand down his face. “I don’t care what they think. There’s only one person’s thoughts I care about, and she currently won’t even speak to me. Not that I blame her.” He sounded a little like a junior higher in that moment, but he didn’t even care.
Blakely put a hand on his shoulder. “She will, B. Give it time. The plan will work.” After a second she added, “Why the black coffee though? You hate it black.”
He shrugged. “Jordyn always made my coffee exactly right. I can’t get the mix right now, so I’m drinking it plain.” He shrugged again. “Why bother.”
Blakely gave him a look.
“What?!” he asked. Having Blakely home after her completed semes
ter of college was a double-edged sword. It was nice to have her around. Those first two days without Jordyn the house was so . . . empty. But with Blakely here, she didn’t let him mope around or feel sorry for himself. She kept trying to pull him out of his misery, and he wasn’t sure he needed saving from that just yet.
“You’re punishing yourself,” she said knowingly. “Coffee purgatory.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess I am. A little.”
Blakely shook her head. “She just doesn’t know the truth, B. Once she does, it’ll all fall into place. I just know it.”
“Do you know how many times I have called, texted, emailed? I’m trying to tell her the truth. She won’t even talk to me.” He sighed.
Blakely clapped her hands together, probably to make sure he was looking at her and not at his coffee. “Hey, that’s exactly why we aren’t giving her the opportunity to not talk to you.” She paused a moment. “You hear back from Walt?”
He nodded.
“He believes you?”
He nodded again. “He does now. Apparently, the Pink Ladies had already put in multiple calls to his secretary. He had to finally talk to Glenda or else they weren’t going to stop calling.”
Blakely had a good laugh at that. He would someday, but not until Jordyn knew the truth. He thought of every person who had ever let Jordyn down. In her mind, he was just another one of those people. In her mind, he was probably worse. Hell, he was probably just another Thomas George to her. That thought gutted him. He was nothing like that sorry excuse of a jerk.
Getting her to trust him again, even talk to him again, was going to take nothing short of a miracle. Unfortunately for him, he seemed to be fresh out of those.
He just missed her like hell. Until she left, he never realized the reason why his Heartbreak Harper days were so unfulfilling was because he was only filling one need. He hadn’t understood all the many ways she completed and complimented his life. She filled needs he didn’t even know he had. And he had to go and mess it all up, creating this huge, glaring void.
“Grab your jacket,” Blakely insisted.
“Blakely, I don’t want to go to Rose’s,” he grumbled. He loved his sister, but sometimes he just wanted to strangle her.
She scrunched up her nose. “Oh, so you’re going to continue moping around and punishing yourself for something out of your control? My brother, the football hero who kept going even when his pro career didn’t, is now going to feel sorry for himself?” She glared at him and he didn’t say a word, so she just kept going, really letting him have it. “You have your plan; you have your flight to Houston. You just have to wait it out. If you ask me, you should stop trying to talk to her. Let Walt tell her what really went down. Let him plant that seed and then let her sit on it a while. And in the meantime, you can carry yourself like a man who isn’t guilty of something.” She paused and gave him a squint. “Because if you really aren’t guilty, then you should stop acting like it.”
Damn. She had him there. He wasn’t guilty. And Jordyn would find out the truth if it was the last thing he did.
****
Walt called her into his office Monday morning right away. The weekend had sucked. She ended up getting a ton of stuff done that she’d been meaning to get caught up on because when she was working, she couldn’t think about how sad she was. So she had worked, and worked, and then worked some more. So, he was either going to chastise her for all the work-related emails over the weekend, or he was going to check and see if she was okay. Both of which annoyed her. She was fine. Why didn’t people get that? And the more they asked, the more she wasn’t fine. She wished they’d just leave her alone. It was hard enough trying to put herself together without someone reminding her of the pain she felt.
She put on her heels from under her desk and headed toward his office. “What can I do for you this morning, Walt? Please tell me not another field trip.”
He looked up at her and smirked. “Nope. I learned my lesson with those. But about that . . .” He moved to take off his glasses.
She put up her hand to stop him. “Walt, I don’t want to hear it.”
He furrowed his brow. “Okay, then. But do you know a Glenda Harrington? Leader of that pack of she-wolves in Picketts perhaps?”
She nodded and swallowed hard, feeling tears prick the backs of her eyes. Of course she knew Glenda. She must be pretty pathetic if she even missed Glenda. She’d known her like a week, but she still loved the old snoop.
“Well, she’s blowing up my email and calling me daily. She wants to speak with you directly and said that you have been ignoring her emails,” he explained.
“I don’t want to speak with anyone from Picketts,” she said stiffly.
He sighed, rubbing his bald head. “I get that, dear, I do. All I’m saying is that she is one persistent little bugger. I wouldn’t put it past her to book a plane ticket and come here herself—or worse, talk to the tabloids if you keep ignoring her. And that is about the last thing we need while we finish up the commercial. So can you do me a favor and just call her back and tell her why you aren’t going to be speaking with her any further?”
She groaned. Small towns! Ugh.
Walt added, “Look, I know you hate Beckett, but not everyone from Picketts is a jerk. She’s a gossipy old hoot, but she means well. Just talk to her, would ya?”
She nodded in defeat. “Is that all?”
He nodded back.
She left but not before grumbling, “I’m so ready for this dang commercial to be over and done with.”
Flipping Disaster
CHAPTER 26
One week. The slowest week of his life. He had gone one week without Jordyn to talk to, watch football with, or just give crap to. And yeah, he could give Blakely crap. Hell, making her mad was probably even easier than it was Jordyn. But getting under Jordyn’s skin was wayyy more fun. He missed the way her green eyes squinted at him like she saw right through him. He missed her laughing at something stupid one of them said. He missed the way she got into football games and always said, “Come onnnn.” He missed her curled into his chest. And maybe his sap meter was maxed out right now, but he even missed playing with her hair. And kissing on her, but that was a given. Don’t even get him started on that. It had been like their souls took a mutual sigh of relief every time their lips met.
He wondered how she was holding up. He hated more than anything he’d made her cry, been the reason for her tears. And worse than that, he hated that she wouldn’t even hear him out. He knew she had every reason not to trust him, but he had done everything in his power to do everything right with her. They had taken it slow. He had tried to show her how much she meant to him. And he thought she knew that, but she must not have if she ran so damn fast.
Maybe he needed to do a better job of not just showing her how he felt, but actually telling her too. He wasn’t the most poetic with words—he wasn’t going to write her some verbose love letter—but he would tell her so she understood how he felt. He was going to make it abundantly clear to her.
In two days.
His flight to Houston left in two days.
His doorbell rang, and he couldn’t help but still be hopeful. Every time that stupid thing rang in the last week, he was praying for it to be Jordyn. It wasn’t though. Aunt Rose had brought out lunch for him and Blakely.
“Just can’t stay away, can ya?” Beckett asked when he opened the door.
“I only have one niece and nephew, you know,” she said with a wink as she came in and took her coat off. She then looked around as if checking to make sure the house was still in working order.
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been doing my dishes, Rose. And everything is fine. I’m even showered. I don’t need the Pink Ladies on my case again.”
“Good,” she said with a nod. “And only two more days and you’re Houston-bound to get our girl.”
Blakely hollered down from upstairs. “Is that Aunt Rose?”
> “Get that booty down here if you want lunch,” Rose yelled.
While they ate, Rose filled them in on the latest town news. The Pink Ladies were in full force in Picketts. Some young high school kids had gotten caught making out in the church parking lot after hours. No clothes were missing, but since it was the house of God and all, the town gossips were in all sorts of a tizzy about it. Rose said as upset as Glenda was about it, you would’ve thought the altercation happened on the pulpit itself.
Beckett found himself laughing and having a great time. It was a lot more fun talking about the Pink Ladies when you weren’t the one on their radar. And since he knew he’d see Jordyn in just two days, he wasn’t feeling as down. He didn’t have long to wait anymore.
Blakely had gone to the freezer, gotten out some of Jordyn’s cookies, and warmed them up on a plate in the microwave. “I swear to God I’m going to gain ten pounds this Christmas. This girl can make a cookie, I’ll give her that.”
Rose nodded. “No joke.” Then she snapped her attention to Beckett. “These are your favorite. Why aren’t you having one?”
This woman didn’t miss anything. He sometimes wondered if she had cat-like instincts, the way she saw and heard everything. Nine lives maybe? And she could sniff out weaknesses too. She probably should’ve played football actually.
“Are you punishing yourself again?” Blakely asked, frowning. “I thought we were past that.”
He shook his head. “No. Not at all. I guess I was just pathetic enough to be waiting for a fresh one.”
Rose patted his hand and had to clear her throat. “Only two days, my boy. Only two days. And I couldn’t be prouder of the choice you’ve made.”
He smirked. “You talk like I’m getting married in two days.”
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