A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

The waitress was back, beckoning for him to follow her. Her walk had a seismic wave to it, her hips sending the ruffle at the hem of her skirt left to right like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. “I’m Charlotte,” she threw over her shoulder. “You sure do look familiar.”

  “One of those faces.” He somehow knew that if she put a name with it, everyone else in the place would soon do the same.

  Stopping at the table, Charlotte cocked a hip. “Now there I’d have to disagree. We don’t see too many faces like yours around here. You new in town?”

  “Not really. Just back for a quick visit.”

  “Hope you decide to make it a longer one,” she said, adding a not-so-subtle wink to the assertion. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Sweet tea.”

  “Southern roots.” She gave him a nod of approval. “Back in a gnat’s blink, honey.”

  Again, Jack felt the glances being sent his way from the crowded dining room, most less than friendly. He heard his name mentioned once or twice.

  “Have you had time to decide?” Charlotte, true to her word, came right back, placed his tea in front of him, righting the lemon wedge teetering on the rim.

  “I’m waiting for someone,” he said.

  “That figures,” she said, not bothering to hide her disappointment. “The good ones are always waiting. Just let me know when you’re ready.” She sauntered off then with a regretful smile.

  Jack reached for a couple packs of sugar and emptied them into the glass. This was a mistake. Why hadn’t he just called Annie McCabe and cancelled this meeting? Even if he hadn’t had his own reasons for wanting to close this chapter of his life once and for all, Corbin Manufacturing was beyond saving. The company hadn’t made a penny since his father died. In fact, it had been losing increasingly large sums of money for the past six years.

  Ironic, really, that Jack had built a career around fixing broken businesses. Going into hopeless situations, finding the terminal wound from which a company’s lifeblood was seeping, and figuring out how to suture it up again.

  But in this situation, there was no point in trying to determine a cause when he had no intention of fixing it.

  Corbin Manufacturing’s demise was inevitable, whether he put it out of its misery by sticking it on the auction block as he fully intended to do, or let it die the slow death it had been dying for years.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LATE AND FRAZZLED, Annie pulled into the lot at Walker’s and parked her car beside a black Porsche that stood out among the other vehicles like a woman in a ballgown at a barbecue. Five dollars said it was his.

  “Mama, are you sure Cyrus is gonna be all right?”

  “You heard Doc Angle, Tommy. Cyrus will spend the night at the hospital, and we’ll pick him up in the morning. He’ll be fine.”

  “Do I get another cake?” he asked, beeps sounding from the handheld Nintendo game he had talked her into letting him bring. Maybe it would at least keep him occupied while she talked to Mr. Corbin of the black Porsche. Her bias against the car was personal. At one time, J.D. had owned three, red, white and blue. Patriotic, at least.

  “Absolutely.” She flipped open the driver’s side vanity mirror and gave herself a critical perusal in the waning light. Her lipstick had somehow worked its way to the corner of one lip. She dug inside her purse for a tissue and rerouted the errant color. She tucked her hair behind her ears and wriggled her skirt around so that the zipper was where it was supposed to be.

  She’d managed to get Cyrus to the animal hospital. But her hair was still damp, and the missing button on her blouse had not been replaced, concealed, at least, beneath her jacket.

  Far from perfect, but it would have to do. She darted a glance at the dashboard clock. Fifteen minutes late. Not good. This was not good. After all but begging the man’s lawyer for a meeting, this was not the impression she’d intended to make. She slid out of the vehicle and ran around to Tommy’s door where she unbuckled his seat belt.

  “Are we meeting Aunt Clarice?” he asked, hopping out of the car, his gaze still laser-focused on the game.

  “No, honey. Mama has a business dinner. Normally, you would have stayed at the sitter’s, but we ran out of time because of Cyrus.”

  “Oh. What’s a bizness dinner?”

  “It’s when people meet in a restaurant and talk about business,” Annie said, taking Tommy’s hand and hurrying toward the front door of Walker’s, her heels refusing to cooperate with the gravel parking lot. Not a brilliant answer, but it seemed to satisfy him. Making a quick vow to do better with the next question her son asked her, Annie attempted to collect her thoughts. She’d intended to be prepared for her meeting with Corbin, to have all her arguments neatly lined up in her head. Facts and figures. Names of people who’d been with the factory thirty years or more. So much for that. She felt as if someone had set up an industrial-size fan inside her brain, and there wasn’t a well-planned argument in sight.

  Inside the restaurant, Charlotte Turner greeted them, waving a menu at Annie. “Hello, Mayor McCabe,” she said with amused emphasis on the mayor part of the greeting. Annie half expected the woman to ruffle her hair and offer up an “Aren’t you cute?” to go with it. But then her attitude was no surprise. The biggest part of the town thought Annie’s stepping in as a replacement for her husband was one of those things to chuckle about over coffee and a doughnut at the Krispy Kreme.

  “How are you, Charlotte?” Annie asked with a deliberately sincere smile.

  “Fine. Busy. Hello, Tommy,” she said, bending down to tweak his cheek and lift his glasses from his nose. “If you’re not the spittin’ image of your daddy. Without the specs, of course.”

  Tommy’s smile fell. He hated wearing glasses. The comparison to his father, however, appeared to lessen the blow, temporarily suspending Annie’s desire to pour the contents of the water pitcher sitting by the register on top of Charlotte’s set-once-a-week hairdo.

  “You gonna play baseball like him when you get big?” Charlotte asked.

  Tommy nodded with absolute certainty.

  Annie bit back a grimace. She took Tommy’s hand and said, “I’m meeting someone for dinner. He’s probably already here.”

  “Tall, dark, mysterious-looking as heck?” Before Annie could reply, Charlotte pointed toward the back and said, “That who you looking for?”

  The man wasn’t facing the door. Annie had no idea what he looked like. “Maybe.”

  Charlotte shook her head and said, “No wonder you didn’t mind taking over as mayor, Annie. If this is the kind of thing you get to do, I might just run myself next term.” A big wink followed the assertion.

  Not trusting herself to respond, Annie put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder and steered him toward the back of the restaurant, waving at familiar faces as she wound her way through the tables.

  She stopped at the booth Charlotte had pointed out. “Mr. Corbin?”

  The man stood. “Mayor McCabe?”

  Annie nodded, momentarily struck mute. Charlotte Turner might need sensitivity training when it came to little boys, but she was right on this. Annie would never have put a face this good-looking on a man who was about to do to Macon’s Point what this one was about to do. In her mind’s eye, she’d penciled in something much more weasel-like, sinister, even. And, yes, he did look like the kind of guy who would drive a black Porsche, or closer still, head up the ad campaign for one. He had dark brown hair and the kind of lean, high-cheekboned face that spoke of good genetics and an athletic lifestyle. “I, ah, I hope you don’t mind, but my son Tommy is joining us for dinner. Tommy, this is Mr. Corbin.”

  “H’lo,” Tommy said, staring at the man with open curiosity.

  “Hello, Tommy,” he said, looking, to his credit, only a little taken aback. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “We had a little emergency at home,” Annie said, “and I didn’t have time to get him to the sitter’s.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope?”

 
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Just a St. Bernard, a chocolate cake and a trip to the vet’s.”

  He nodded as if he understood, but Annie suspected she might as well have spouted off a paragraph of Greek for all he would understand of that. Her own life was an unending series of such events, and for one un-maternal moment, she wondered what it would be like to have arrived on time with her hair dry and all her buttons in place.

  “May I take your coat?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling a little awkward as she slipped her arms free of the heavy garment and then helped Tommy slip out of his. He took both coats and hung them on the rack a few feet from their table.

  “Please, sit down,” he said. “I went ahead and ordered some iced tea. May I ask the waitress to bring you both something?”

  His manners surprised her. J.D. had been used to having other people scurry to do things for him, open a door, “Take your coat, Mr. McCabe?” As for Annie, she’d gotten used to doing things for herself. Hanging up her own coat. Ordering her own drink.

  “Your tea looks good, actually.”

  “Can I have hot choc’late?” Tommy piped in.

  “May you have hot chocolate,” Annie automatically corrected. “And yes, you may.”

  “One iced tea and one hot chocolate coming right up,” Jack Corbin said and went off to tell the waitress. Annie helped Tommy climb onto the booth seat, waited while he scooted toward the wall, then sat down herself.

  Corbin was back in less than a minute, sliding into the other side of the booth. Before Annie could say a word, Tommy raised his gaze from his Nintendo game and said, “We’re gonna talk bizness.”

  Unexpected though it was, the comment served as an effective icebreaker. The man across the table smiled and said, “So we are, but why don’t we order our dinner first?” He pulled three menus from the stand next to the wall and handed one to them.

  “I can’t read,” Tommy said, but appeared impressed that it had been assumed he could.

  “Maybe your mom can take a look at it then.”

  “Sure, honey,” Annie said, anxious to decide on something so she could focus on her speech. “Let’s find something you’ll like. How about the macaroni and cheese?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Annie ran her finger down the list of tonight’s specials. “Mashed potatoes?”

  Tommy shook his head again, this time with more emphasis.

  “A hamburger?”

  Another headshake.

  “How about some soup?”

  “No.”

  Annie heard the dissatisfaction in her son’s voice, recognizing where it was headed. For the most part, Tommy was an angel of a child. But ever since J.D. had left, temper tantrums had become a way of life. There was no predicting them, and Tommy’s counselor had told her that she should simply let them run their course, that they were the boy’s way of punishing her for the changes since his father had left. Another notch on life’s belt of unfairness since J.D. had made that decision all by himself, without any help from her.

  “Okay,” she said in a reasoning tone, praying that she could head this off, “how about a grilled cheese?”

  “No,” he said, his voice growing louder.

  This was not going at all as planned. Sitting across from her was the man who held the fate of this town in the palm of his hand. Annie figured she had one chance and one chance only to get him to at least consider not selling Corbin Manufacturing, and how on earth was she going to do that with Tommy throwing a fit beside her?

  “You know what my favorite thing here was when I was your age, Tommy?” Corbin’s question was casual.

  Tommy looked up, no doubt intrigued that a man as big as the one sitting in front of them could ever have been his age. “What?”

  “Pancakes.”

  “For supper?”

  “For anytime. In fact, I think that’s what I’ll have tonight.”

  Tommy pondered that for a moment, then looked at Annie and said, “Can I get pancakes, Mama?”

  “May you have them. And yes, you may,” Annie said. In another less-than-admirable motherhood moment, she would have let him order jelly beans if that’s what it took to head off the storm about to erupt.

  Tommy went back to his game, his bad mood dissipating as quickly as it had started.

  Annie breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Thank you for your patience, Mr. Corbin. I realize this isn’t what—”

  “It’s Jack. And this is fine.”

  Jack, then. His response wasn’t the one she would have expected. Her own self-painted portrait of Jack Corbin, playboy extraordinaire, did not include the ability to deter little boys from temper tantrums with the finesse of a conductor leading an orchestra through Beethoven’s Fifth. Guys who drove Porsches didn’t do that, did they?

  Charlotte appeared then with their drinks, an iced tea for Annie and a hot chocolate with an extra bowl of marshmallows on the side for Tommy.

  “Another of your favorites?” Annie asked, surprised and more than a little appreciative.

  “Hot chocolate’s nothing without the marshmallows.”

  Annie had no doubt that Jack Corbin had just moved up another level in Tommy’s estimation. Next to chocolate cake, marshmallows ruled.

  “Careful now. It’s hot,” Annie warned while Tommy filled the cup with as many of the gooey treats as it would hold.

  “What can I get for you?” Charlotte asked. “I’ll take you first, Mayor.”

  Food was the last thing Annie wanted, so she said the first thing that came to mind. “A tossed salad, please. Thousand island on the side.”

  “All right.” Charlotte scribbled on her pad. “And the gentlemen?”

  “We’re having pancakes,” Jack Corbin said as seriously as if he’d just ordered the two of them the best steaks on the menu.

  Tommy beamed.

  Charlotte looked at Annie and said, “Unpredictable, too? Two stacks of pancakes coming right up.”

  As soon as she’d headed off toward the kitchen with their order, Tommy said, “Do people always get to order pancakes when they talk about bizness?”

  “Not always,” Jack said. “But I’d have to say it’s a pretty good idea.”

  Annie smiled and smoothed down a wayward strand of Tommy’s hair. Her son had managed to defuse some of the nervousness she would have no doubt been feeling had she been here alone with Jack Corbin. She’d been lucky to get the man to meet her at all, and she couldn’t afford to waste any more of the limited time she had to make her case.

  “Jack.” She cleared her throat and willed her nerves to settle. “I know I mentioned this in my letters and calls to your attorney—”

  “All of them?” he interrupted.

  Was he teasing her? The thought tripped her up a bit. “Ah, yes, I’m sure. I would like to reiterate again just how much Macon’s Point would like to see Corbin Manufacturing remain in business. A great many of the people who live here rely on your factory for their—”

  “My daddy’s famous.”

  The announcement came from Tommy who had looked up from his game and was waiting for a reaction.

  “He is?” Jack asked with a raised eyebrow. “What’s he do?”

  “He plays baseball.”

  “Tommy, honey, Mr. Corbin and I are discussing—”

  “For what team?”

  “He used to be with the Braves, but he got hurt.”

  “Is your daddy J. D. McCabe?”

  Tommy nodded, so proud that Annie’s heart hurt.

  “He is famous,” Jack said, looking impressed enough to make Tommy light up again. “He’s quite a player.”

  “I want to be just like him when I get big. He lives in Los—” Tommy hesitated and then looked up at Annie. “Where is it, Mama?”

  “Los Angeles, honey.”

  “Mama and Daddy are divorced, so he has to live out there.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, the response admirably neutral.

  Annie drew in a
quick breath, put a hand on her son’s hair and said, “Tommy, we’ll have to tell Mr. Corbin about Daddy’s baseball career another time. We can’t keep him here all night, and he and I have some very important things to discuss.”

  “Do you like baseball, Mr. Corbin?” Tommy asked, completely ignoring Annie’s attempt at reason.

  “I like to watch it, but I never was very good at playing it.”

  Tommy considered this for a moment, and then said, “Not everybody can be a great baseball player.”

  Annie recognized the words her son had used in an attempt to console Jack. They were the same ones she’d used since Tommy had first started asking her if she thought he’d grow up to be a great baseball player like his father. One of her greatest fears was that Tommy would hinge his sense of self-worth on whether or not he could play like J.D., and this was the last thing she wanted for him. “Tommy, honey—”

  “You’re right about that,” Jack said. “Everyone is born with different strengths and abilities.”

  Tommy considered this for a brief moment. “What’s yours?”

  Jack rubbed a hand around the back of his neck and said, “Hmm. I guess I would say I might have a talent for putting things back together again.”

  Annie could see that the comment was as intriguing to her six-year-old son as it was to her.

  “Like puzzles?” Tommy asked.

  “Sort of, but with real-life situations.”

  “Oh.”

  Tommy let it go, and for once Annie wished her son would persist with another question.

  Charlotte appeared with their dinners.

  “Let’s see, one tossed salad for our mayor,” she said, placing the bowl of lettuce and vegetables in front of Annie. “And for our boys, pancakes.”

  She set the loaded plates in front of “the boys,” bestowing a there-you-are-sugar on Tommy and then landing a what-do-you-say-we-meet-up-later smile on Jack Corbin.

  “Mama, will you cut up my pancakes?”

  “Sure, honey.” Annie darted a glance at Jack who was waiting politely for the two of them to begin eating. “Go ahead, please,” she said.

  He reached for the syrup bottle and poured liberally until his plate was a pond with the pancakes floating in the center like a stack of lily pads.