Loving Jackson (Wishing Well, Texas Book 10)

by Melanie Shawn

  I turned and faced Josie. The moonlight shone down on her flawless face like Mother Nature was her personal lighting tech. The same sensation that filled my chest every time my eyes fell on her returned. I wondered if I’d grow immune to her beauty or if every single time I saw her I’d experience the phenomenon. Somehow, I doubted I could ever grow immune.

  “Did you know you’ve apologized to me a dozen times since I met you?”

  Her almond eyes widened. “You counted?”

  No. But I would say that was at least ballpark. “Yes,” I lied.

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again and her eyes darted down to the grass.

  “You were going to say sorry again, weren’t you?”

  Her eyes flew up to mine, wide with surprise at being caught.

  My lips turned up in a half-smile and she mirrored my expression.

  “Yes. I was.” Her admission was accompanied by a rosy blush.

  “Is this a habit of yours or do I just bring out the apologetic side of you?”

  “It’s a habit.” She sighed. “One I’m working on breaking.”

  “Good. You don’t have anything to be sorry for. There’s no place else I’d rather be and no one I’d rather be with.” That time I wasn’t lying. The beach that I thought I’d be sunbathing on with a faceless, nameless bikini clad woman didn’t hold nearly the appeal that it had this morning.

  I saw a flicker of emotion in her milk chocolate stare before she nodded.

  We started walking again, making our way around the property. We visited the chicken coop, the goats, the pigs, and met Eeyore the donkey. I loved watching the way her face lit up with each animal I introduced her to. It was clear that she was a city girl, but she obviously had a soft spot in her heart for farm life.

  A lot of emotions I wasn’t familiar with came up during the tour. Seeing her on the farm, my family farm, felt so…intimate. I told myself that the only reason it did was that I’d never done this before. If I’d brought other girls here over the years, then this wouldn’t feel so personal. But I hadn’t. So it did.

  “Oh, she is gorgeous,” Josie breathed when she saw Duchess grazing along the fence line.

  “That’s Duchess, she can be a little bit of a diva.” My mom joked that Duchess lived up to her name and considered us all peasants. She only acknowledged us when we had food, and even then it was with an air of superiority, as if we should be grateful for her attention. “She doesn’t really like people.”

  Imagine my surprise when Josie held out her hand and Duchess lifted her head and nuzzled into her palm.

  Apparently, Josie’s charms weren’t limited to people.

  “You’re such a pretty girl,” Josie cooed to Duchess who was eating up the attention.

  Josie pressed her forehead against Duchess and an urgency that I hadn’t felt in years coursed through my veins. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d needed to take a picture. I didn’t want to. I needed to capture this like I needed to take my next breath. Since I didn’t have my camera, I pulled out my phone. The night sky was a dark backdrop but thanks to my mom’s newfound obsession with string and twinkle lights the exposure wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate.

  I was able to take a string of shots before the sound of galloping interrupted the sweet moment. I looked up and was not surprised to see Mr. Ed, the attention whore of the herd, heading straight toward the fence.

  Duchess sighed and trotted off as Mr. Ed approached.

  “Bye, Duchess.” Josie sounded sad to see the mare go but she enthusiastically greeted Mr. Ed, who neighed to announce his presence then forced his snout into her hand. “And who are you?”

  “This is Mr. Ed.”

  “Hello, Mr. Ed.”

  Mr. Ed whinnied once more and pawed the ground with his front right hoof. It was something he did when he was showing off. After a few minutes of her showering him with attention, telling Mr. Ed what a handsome boy he was, we continued along the property line.

  We walked in silence. The chirping soundtrack of crickets and branches and leaves snapping beneath our footsteps combined with the starry sky blanketing over us to cast a romantic hue on the stroll.

  “Growing up here must’ve been amazing.”

  My only response was a nod. I could see why some people would envy my childhood. I never complained about it, and I’d matured to the point where now I wouldn’t change it, but I’d been miserable at the time. That was the main reason I’d pulled all those stupid stunts with Holden when we were kids. We both felt trapped here and it was our way of rebelling.

  “Or maybe not.” Josie commented, picking up on my non-answer.

  “It wasn’t bad. I just felt…claustrophobic.” It wasn’t the most articulate way to express what I’d experienced, but in fairness, I didn’t talk about my childhood much. And I sure as hell never complained about it. I would feel like an asshole doing that.

  “Really?!” Josie looked out over the vast landscape. “Claustrophobic? Here?”

  “Yeah. I knew there was more to the world and I wanted to see it. I wanted to know what the Sistine Chapel smelled like, not just what the ceiling looked like. I wanted to float in the Dead Sea and touch the grass of the Serengeti. Wishing Well is great, but I’ve always had a restlessness inside of me. I felt like I was suffocating here. I know it sounds crazy but…”

  She listened, really listened, to my explanation. I could see the thoughtfulness in her eyes. “No, that makes sense.”

  “It also didn’t help that I’m a night owl, always have been. I come alive after the sun goes down, and work here started before the sun rose. The schedule didn’t exactly fit with my natural circadian rhythm.”

  “Yeah, that would suck,” she chuckled.

  I’d never met anyone that I felt so seen by. I’d also never met anyone that I felt like I could say anything to without any judgment. It was just one more thing that drew me into her and made me want to discover more about her.

  “What about you? What was your childhood like?”

  “It was good.” She continued on, heading back toward the house.

  The answer was vague, with absolutely no vocal intonation to give me a clue as to what “good” meant. Was it good? Or was that just what she told people? My gut told me that it was the latter.

  I wanted to find out more. I needed to find out more. I had to know everything about this woman. Just like I needed to take that picture of her.

  Josie had woken something up in me that had been dormant for so long. Inspiration. Passion. Desire. I felt more alive walking along the fence line of the farm than I had bungee jumping off Switzerland’s Verzasca Dam. And that scared me a hell of a lot more than diving 700 feet along a concrete wall had.

  Chapter 8

  Josie

  “The only thing better than everything going as planned, is nothing going as planned.”

  ~ Josephine Grace Clarke

  The Greasy Spoon.

  I stared up at the aging neon sign and couldn’t resist taking out my phone and snapping a pic of it. The last twenty shots in my camera roll were ones I’d taken of Wishing Well on my walk to the diner. Everywhere I turned, there was something worthy of a postcard.

  The rolling green fields dotted with cows lined with a weather-worn wood fence. The broke down pickup truck with peeling paint in the middle of stacks of hay. The crystal blue pond that sat in the center of mature oak trees.

  As a girl, I’d spent time between Manhattan and Los Angeles. I’d never lived in a small town. Maybe that was the reason that I’d always been so fascinated by them. Growing up, my favorite books were the Anne of Green Gables series. And it wasn’t just because Anne also suffered from the affliction of having red hair that she hated. It was because she was an orphan. And although both of my parents were alive, I related to her. I have no memory of my mother and my father wasn’t the most emotionally available person. And as much as I loved my grandmother, neither was she.

  I knew that in his o
wn way, my father loved me, but sometimes I did have doubts. I never doubted that my grandmother loved me, it was just that she didn’t express it in a very maternal way. And in fairness to her, she hadn’t ever wanted children in the first place. She’d only had my father to make husband number two happy. And she was working so much at the time that he’d basically been raised by nannies, and then was shipped off to boarding school at age ten.

  Which most likely explained why he was the sort of father he was.

  Since I hadn’t had a typical family dynamic, I’d spent every free moment I had pouring over the books, dreaming of one day going to live with Matthew and Marilla on Prince Edward Island. Wishing Well reminded me of what I’d imagined Prince Edward Island to be. In my mind, it was the perfect place to grow up.

  But I supposed the grass was always greener. From what Jackson had said last night, he would’ve most likely loved growing up in the jet-set lifestyle that I’d always felt was cold, impersonal, and lonely.

  Last night, after our walk, I’d spent more hours than I’d like to admit tossing and turning in bed trying not to think about how tempted I’d been to kiss him. There was just something so magical, so romantic about the moonlight, the crickets, the crisp summer air.

  It also didn’t hurt that Jackson Briggs was the sort of sexy that was universal. He had that something special that appealed to everyone. It wasn’t just his masculine frame, or his drool-worthy dimples, or his dreamy aqua blue eyes. It was the way he carried himself with the confidence and self-assurance of a man who knew who he was and what he wanted.

  I was beginning to think that the text I’d sent him was really just a psychic prediction, because I’d definitely been in a constant state of arousal since I met him. I still couldn’t believe that I’d done that.

  He’d offered to drive me to my meeting today with Mia, but I’d insisted on walking. I was a city girl and when I’d seen that the diner was only two miles from the farm, I’d been excited that I could get there on foot. Jackson and his parents had done enough for me.

  Also, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to be alone in the cab of the truck with him and not embarrass myself. It had been a long time since I’d been as attracted to someone as I was to him. Who was I kidding, I’d never been as attracted to anyone as I was to him.

  Hoping this meeting would get my mind back on track, I pushed open the glass door and a tiny bell rang over my head as I walked in. I was immediately greeted by a woman that reminded me of Flo from the TV show Alice. A beehive hairdo sat upon her head and her fire-engine red lipstick matched her long, acrylic nails. I half expected her to smack chewing gum and tell someone to, “Kiss my grits.”

  “Hello, there! You must be Josie.”

  “Yes, I am.” I had no clue how she knew that.

  “Tami Lynn, nice to meet ya.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I smiled.

  “Mia’s runnin’ a little late,” Tami Lynn explained as she grabbed a trifold menu from the wooden holder next to the register.

  She knew who I was and that I was meeting Mia. I assumed that it was a small-town thing as I followed behind a woman my grandmother would’ve loved to study. She loved people who were real-life characters. The quirkier the better.

  “Never be boring, darling. Whatever you are, don’t be that.”

  She’d given me that advice since before I understood what it meant. Sadly, I didn’t think I’d lived up to it. Except for the small blip of my scandal, my life had been the textbook definition of boring.

  The diner was packed. I assumed that it had something to do with the convention since most of the diners were wearing tiny homecoming mum name badges.

  We arrived at a corner booth that sat against the window overlooking the town square and the wishing well that sat in the center of it. As soon as the meeting was over, I planned on going over to see it close up.

  “Can I get you a sweet tea or pop?”

  “Sweet tea sounds lovely.”

  “Comin’ right up.”

  Tami Lynn had no sooner returned to the booth and set down two glasses of sweet tea than the bell chimed above the door and Mia rushed in. Her phone was in her hand and she was clearly speaking to someone.

  “Okay, thanks for letting me know. Yes. Okay.”

  I heard the stress in her voice and saw evidence of strain in her expression. My immediate thought was that she was on the phone with her doctor and there was an issue with the pregnancy or the baby.

  “I’m meeting with Josie now.” She turned the phone and I saw Randy, the agent that had sold the show, on her screen. A wave of relief swept through me, realizing Mia’s stress had nothing to do with anything medical. She turned the phone back so it was facing her. “I’ll let you know what we come up with.”

  I stood as she lowered the phone. “We have a problem.”

  When she noticed that my hands were held out to give her a hug, she shook her head and wrapped her arms around me. “Sorry. Hi! It’s so good to see you!”

  Mia and I had been friends since freshman year, which happened to coincide with the reality show and scandal. When I’d stopped going to classes, she had come by my dorm room every day and checked on me. Other kids on campus sold stories to tabloids, but Mia protected me. She lied to reporters about where I lived, or if she’d seen me. She brought me food, we watched movies together and she let me talk, or cry. Sometimes she just sat in silence with me. She was there for me at the worst time in my life, and I would do anything for her.

  “It’s good to see you too,” I exclaimed. When I pulled back, I looked down at her belly. “All of you.”

  “Yeah, I really popped these last few weeks.” She ran her hand over her protruding stomach.

  “How are you feeling? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” She avoided my stare as she slid into the booth.

  “Mia James. I know that yeah.” My tone was accusatory as I lowered onto the bench seat. “Is the baby okay?”

  She sighed. “The baby’s fine. I’m fine. But the doctor did say that I might want to slow down and try to limit my stress.”

  “Then that’s exactly what you need to do.”

  “You sound just like Travis.”

  “I like Travis.” I wasn’t just saying that. I did. Mia seemed so happy with him. I’d missed their wedding because my grandmother’d had a health scare, but I’d met him when they’d come to visit a few months after their wedding.

  They’d met when she’d come down to work on a reality show with her ex, who was an asshat. She’d recruited Travis Briggs to be her “fake” boyfriend. Obviously, things didn’t end up being so fake after all. It didn’t surprise me at all that she’d wanted her first documentary to be about love since she was living out her happily-ever-after.

  “I am slowing down, I promise. And I’m trying not to stress, but we have a problem.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “Seraphina is out.”

  “Seraphina Gold?” Our host. The heart of the show. The reason we’d pitched the format we had to the network.

  “Yes. She heard about the funding falling through at the same time she was offered a primetime gig.”

  I tried not to panic, but we were set to start filming in two days. “What about Violet?” I suggested our second option. She didn’t have the journalism background that Seraphina had, which was important for the interviews, but she could definitely host.

  “Violet isn’t available.”

  In production, things changed quickly and often. Being a producer was mostly problem-solving. Losing your host, the heart of your show, less than forty-eight hours before principal photography started was just something that happened. “Okay, what are our other options?”

  “Randy is sending us tapes in a couple of hours.”

  “Okay.” I nodded and took a sip of my tea, trying to re-envision what our show would be now that Seraphina was out.

  “But I have an idea. What if you did it?”

  I almost
spit my tea out, but instead inhaled it and choked. “What?”

  “I’m serious. Since Seraphina and Miles are both out—”

  “Wait, Miles is out?!”

  “Oh yeah, sorry. I got an email before Randy called.”

  “So, we don’t have a host or a field producer?” I honestly wasn’t sure which was worse. I was beginning to think that this entire project was doomed. In the span of three days, we’d lost three-quarters of our funding, and our D.P., host, and field producer had pulled out. And Mia was very pregnant and needed to rest.

  “No, we don’t have a field producer. Which is why I think you’d be perfect. You are a producer and the camera loves you. It’s in your blood. I know it’s a lot of work, but Jackson would help.”

  “Jackson?”

  “Yeah, it would just be the two of you. It’s a skeleton crew, but at this point, I’m not sure we have another choice.”

  So not only was Mia asking me to be on-air talent, which was my worst nightmare, she was also suggesting I spend the next week traveling across the U.S. with Jackson Briggs, interviewing people about love.

  No. That was not possible. I hadn’t even trusted myself to take a short drive in the truck with him.

  “I can’t. But I’m sure we’ll figure something out. I promise,” I tried to assure her.

  Mia didn’t look convinced by my words, and honestly, neither was I.

  Chapter 9

  Jackson

  “The best things in life are never free, they cost you your heart and your soul.”

  ~ Josephine Grace Clarke

  I sighed as I rested my forearms on the bed of the truck. After grabbing the dry cleaning my mom had asked me to pick up, I found myself lingering at my dad’s truck. I’d tried to convince myself that it had nothing to do with the fact that Josie was in the diner across the street and I wanted to offer her a ride home, but I knew I was full of shit.

  I’d spent the entire night staring up at the ceiling fan, willing myself to go to sleep to no avail.