“What look?”
“Son, the lady just anti-eyed you.”
Thirty years of living with sisters, and CJ had no clue what Huck was talking about. “English?”
“She don’t disapprove of you with that wallet’s owner. Ain’t saying she approves, but her not disapproving means something round here.”
This whole town was nuts. “I’m honored.”
“Should be. Usually she sticks to breaking ’em up. She goes to the effort of putting you together, she’s feeling extra good about something. Wouldn’t do that if she didn’t like you.”
“Or hate me.” That made more sense. He thrust the wallet at Huck. “How about you take care of this.”
But Huck shook his head and backed up. “Don’t go listening to everything you hear. Nat made a mistake. Didn’t burn down a bunch of houses, didn’t drown a bunch of kittens, didn’t sell drugs to any middle schoolers. Just made a mistake with who she married, ’cept unlike the rest of us commoners in Bliss, she gets to pay for it over on The Aisle every day. Got some respect for that.”
CJ caught himself off guard when he realized he’d bit his tongue to keep from letting a Me too, slip out.
Despite her crazy-ass homewrecker accusation, he did have some respect for Natalie. She looked as though she hadn’t slept since last Christmas, she was pretty high up there on at least two big shit lists—her father’s and Marilyn Elias’s—and yet, from what he’d heard, she kept pushing through.
Making things work. Keeping her family’s business going. Helping other small businesses around town.
All while being a single parent.
“Might have a point,” CJ said. “Doesn’t mean her sister isn’t wasting her time.”
Huck chuckled again. “You say you got eleven sisters of your own?”
“Yep.”
“Then I reckon you already know your opinion on the subject don’t add up to a hill of beans.”
Wasn’t that the unfortunate truth.
“NOAH! TIME TO GO!”
Natalie tossed two bowls into the dishwasher. Milk splattered everywhere. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from thinking that nice four-letter word she desperately wanted to think, but she didn’t have the money to put in Noah’s college fund today.
She’d used up more than she had already, cussing all night over CJ and the QG when she should’ve been sleeping.
At least she’d made progress on Gabby’s dress.
“Noah,” she called up the stairs again. “Are your teeth brushed yet?”
Her answer was a little voice shrieking the Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
She went upstairs and peeked in the bathroom.
Noah stood on a stool at the sink, his dark hair matted in record-setting bedhead, his orange pullover clashing with his red track pants. His eyes were closed, nose scrunched and his head tilted back while he bellowed the song off-key with all his little might.
Dam—darn kid was adorable.
“C’mon, Pavarotti.” She ruffled his hair. “You’ll miss second breakfast at Mrs. Tanner’s.”
He stopped mid-word. One eye scrunched open. “Is it pancake day?”
“I don’t know, sweetie, but if you don’t hurry and it is pancake day, you’ll miss it.”
It was amazing how one shoulder shrug could make him look so grown up and so small all at the same time. And he usually loved pancake day.
So long as he didn’t start throwing fits over staying with Mrs. Tanner, Nat could survive his not loving pancake day. Mrs. Tanner was a godsend. She’d watched Noah since the floodwaters receded. After Mom died, she’d been the normalcy he had desperately needed.
“Mrs. Tanner says growing dinosaurs need fruit and protein,” Noah said. “Did you know she can make bread from flour, Mom? When I grow up, she’s going to teach me how.”
So Mrs. Tanner made Natalie feel inadequate when it came to mealtime. But she got Noah two square meals a day, so that counted for something. “Great. Finish brushing. Time to go.”
Noah went back to his singing.
Nat shook her head. She had the janitorial committee meeting this morning at the Rose and Dove. Plus, it had been raining since she got home from Suckers—the Queen General proving a point about being displeased with Natalie, no doubt—and unlike last week’s weather, this time the rain had brought temperatures that had dropped near freezing.
That poor sunflower field wouldn’t survive—the plants should be sprouting soon—and she had no idea what she’d suggest to Bonnie and Earl as a backup plan.
Or how she’d go about making that suggestion.
“C’mon, Noah. The roads aren’t pretty today.”
“You should get them a dress, Mom. That would help.”
Leave it to a four-year-old to put life in perspective. She pivoted so he wouldn’t see her laugh. “One minute, Noah.” God, she loved that kid.
She went downstairs and finished the dishes, mopped up her mess, and grabbed her leather parka and Noah’s blue ski jacket. He finally moseyed down too. She hustled his arms into his sleeves and herded him out the door.
He came to a complete stop. “Mama—snow!”
She clamped down on her first reaction—to tell him to keep moving, they’d be late, he’d miss breakfast—and took a moment to stop and stare in wonder herself.
Snow.
In freaking April.
The sunflower field was doomed.
Last year’s brown grass stood above the meager accumulation. What was there would melt before noon. But they probably wouldn’t see the white stuff again until December or January, and by then, they’d be gone from Bliss.
Possibly in an apartment.
Without a yard.
How could a little boy make snow angels or build snow forts or snowmen in an apartment complex parking lot?
Natalie’s heart clenched. “C’mon, kiddo. Careful.” She nudged him. He dragged his feet down the stairs, then turned toward her car, longingly brushing his hands over the snow-dusted evergreen bushes beneath the windows.
Natalie let him get four steps in front of her. She hesitated, remembering his terrified screams in the fountain, but then he paused.
Looked over his shoulder with a guarded hope.
She grinned at him, then leaned over, balancing on her heeled boots, scraped together a handful of snow, and lobbed it at him.
“Hey!” His shriek melted into a giggle. He dropped to his knees and raked at the ground until he had a half-formed snowball that he threw to get back at her.
She dodged it easily, but when she bent to scoop another pitiful snowball, Noah launched himself at her and dumped a puny handful into her hair. She snatched him in a hug, knocked herself off-balance, and they both fell laughing to the ground.
She checked her skirt to make sure her panties weren’t showing, but she didn’t care that her knee-high suede boots would probably never recover, or that she’d just ripped a hole in her tights.
These moments were rare and precious and they’d be gone too fast.
“I’m gonna get you, Mommy!”
“Not if I get you first!”
Noah’s breath hung in puffs like little clouds of happiness. His cheeks were rosy and his giggles and shrieks echoed through the neighborhood. Natalie struggled to keep up with him. She eventually settled for laughing on the ground while he dumped snow in her hair. “I got you, Mommy! I got you!”
She snagged him and pulled him down. Wet coldness seeped through her skirt, but she had a warm little boy squirming and giggling in her lap. “Now I got you,” she said. She’d just found his perfect tickle spot when a shiver went down her neck and shoulders.
CJ stood ten feet away on the sidewalk, dressed in jogging shorts, a long-sleeve T-shirt and a ball cap. And just like the other day, he wore an inscrutable expression. Lips flat, eyes clear but scrunched, the same rosiness in his cheeks that Noah was sporting.
Judging her for being an immature, irresponsible mother, undoubtedly.
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After what she’d done last night at Suckers, this couldn’t be a friendly visit.
She had some crow to eat.
He blinked, and suddenly he was the quirky-smiled, goofball bartender who might’ve been the kind of guy she’d like to get to know better, had they both been someone else.
Her breath caught.
“Missing something?” he asked.
What an ego. And she had a problem if she thought that was endearing. “No.”
“So this isn’t yours?”
“Hey!” Natalie slid Noah aside and sprang to her feet as quickly as her modesty would allow.
CJ had her wallet.
“Somebody turned it in after you left.”
She took it and unzipped it enough to peer inside but not cause any other embarrassing scenes.
Yep, definitely her wallet. “I don’t understand how this happened.”
He stared at her like the how should’ve been obvious. She hadn’t dropped it. She’d paid, then she’d handed it over to—
Lindsey. She’d handed it to Lindsey. Lindsey had taken all the purses and coats in her side of the booth.
This wasn’t an accident. This was all Lindsey.
Sneaky little bi—brat.
“Thank you,” Natalie said. She needed to add I’m sorry. He’d been nothing but decent to her entire family since he’d come back, and she needed to let go of what had happened between them.
CJ wasn’t the type of guy to intentionally kiss the wrong woman. And Derek hadn’t been the type of guy who was cut out to be an Aisle husband.
Natalie’s problems had never been CJ’s fault.
Lindsey was right about something else too.
Natalie needed to convince CJ to play in the Golden Husband Games. To make a point to the QG. Have some kind of psychological victory.
More, though—it was what Mom would’ve wanted.
“Hey, I remember you.” Noah stepped out from behind her, one hand tucked around her knee. “You saved Cindy.”
Natalie put a protective hand to Noah’s shoulder, which earned her another inscrutable look from CJ. He squatted down to Noah’s level. “And how’s Cindy doing?”
“She’s fair,” Noah said, as if he were forty instead of four. “She’s sad that we couldn’t save her dress, but Mommy’s going to make her a new one.”
“Better give her a few extra hugs until then,” CJ said.
Natalie’s heart might’ve gone a little soft at the edges.
Noah pointed to CJ’s head. “Is that a Cubs hat? I only like to be friends with Cubs fans, but the Cubs are blue, and your hat is gray. Why’s it pointing backward?”
“Noah—” Natalie started, but CJ twitched another eye at her.
He pulled his hat off and handed it to Noah. “You like the Cubs, little dude?”
Noah inspected it, wrinkling his forehead and squinting at the letters. “Yeah, but I wish they won more. They like to fall apart after the all-star game. If they were my team, I’d rename them the Dinosaurs and give them all dresses if they played good.”
CJ smiled easily. “You like dinosaurs?”
“And dresses. And the Cubs.”
“You like planes?”
Noah gave a body-moving shoulder shrug. “They’re okay.”
“Not every boy likes planes,” Natalie said.
CJ ignored her and touched this hat. “Well, this is an Air Force hat. They fly planes and have a football team.”
“A dinosaur team?”
“Sorry, little dude. They’re the Falcons.”
Noah’s whole face scrunched up. “What’s a falcon?”
“It’s a big bird.”
Noah rolled his eyes as only a four-year-old could. “Dinosaurs can eat birds.”
CJ chuckled. He brushed a few errant snowflakes out of Noah’s hair, then abruptly stood. “Good kid.” His gaze focused somewhere beyond her, and there was an unfamiliar note in his voice that almost made him sound simply human, rather than Celebrity Poster Boy for Knot Fest.
The idea of considering CJ normal among mere mortals caused a pinging sensation beneath her rib cage, and the pinging made her stop for an extra breath, which gave him time to look back at her.
Into her.
“You’re lucky to have him.” The raw sincerity in his words impacted her chest stronger than the pinging and deeper than her core.
She squeezed Noah’s shoulder, as much to ground herself as to acknowledge CJ’s sentiment. “I am.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, then turned away with a ruffle to Noah’s hair. “Have fun in the snow, little dude.”
“Here’s your hat.” Noah held it out to him.
CJ’s grinned a grin that had probably given his mother a thousand heart attacks. “You keep it, so your dinosaurs have something to practice stomping.”
“Cool!”
Natalie nudged him.
“I mean, thank you,” Noah said. He shot a sly glance up at her. “And cool.”
Natalie took a long, slow, deep breath, and willed her pulse to slow. Noah might’ve had a point.
It wouldn’t change anything, but he still had a point.
Chapter Nine
CJ HAD PROMISED Bob and Fiona he’d stop by today to investigate a noise in Fiona’s car. Instead of driving to Willow Glen, though, he was crouched in the breeze on top of the wedding cake monument.
Felt nice to release some pent-up energy, but working out the physics of racing from the ground to the top tier with nothing more than rope and the columns between the layers hadn’t worn him out. Muscles, maybe. Brain, no.
He couldn’t shake Noah out of his head. Kid had his mother’s eyes, but without the wariness and weariness. Noah offered the nonjudgmental, no-history, innocent kind of acceptance that made CJ ache for what he’d lost and for what he’d never have.
A family. Kids.
Friends.
Huck and Jeremy and the regulars at Suckers were great, and much as CJ complained about Basil, hanging with his brother again was nice, but none of them got it. Neither would Noah, which didn’t explain why the kid made him want a friend.
Climbing up here, breaking the rules, taking in the view, it was all supposed to clear CJ’s head. Remind him he was here temporarily, just a stop on his grand tour of life. Instead, he was leaning against a mutant statue of a bride on top of a concrete wedding cake, his thoughts ricocheting from one unfortunate memory to another, with the occasional thought of a dark-haired pain in the ass.
He dropped his head back against the bride’s dress and stared at the perfectly manicured courthouse lawn way down at the opposite end of The Aisle. At the white gazebo peeking through the bare trees to the left of the classic Federal-style building.
Seemed a hundred lifetimes ago that he’d stood there and said his vows.
Reality was, it was only Serena’s lifetime ago.
She’d died for her country, and what had he done since? Basil liked to rib him about needing to grow up, but aside from the lessons he’d learned traveling the world, CJ had grown up, once upon a time. He’d put himself through college and then he’d had a steady accounting job in a small government contract firm near Scott Air Force Base in southern Illinois.
Then Serena had come to town, an Air Force lieutenant on official military business. They met over dinner with a mutual friend.
CJ’s world had stopped the minute she walked in the door. She’d had dark crescent eyes over round, dimpled cheeks, and the bounce in her step only added to the self-confident way she carried herself. She’d given him a disarming smile and offered to arm-wrestle him for his menu. He’d let her win. She’d called him on it. But one touch of her soft skin, and he was a goner. He’d asked her out before their drinks arrived.
She’d said yes.
They had gone into St. Louis for a Cubs-Cardinals game after work the next night. Night after, he took her up in the Arch, then accepted her invitation to join her in her hotel room. He proposed over stale biscuit
s and chewy bacon in the hotel lobby the next morning. After her meetings were over, she called her boss to get leave approved. He told his boss he needed the rest of the week off to get married, and they drove up to Bliss that night.
Let’s start our adventure with a bang, she’d said.
Knot Fest had been the best days of his life. He’d thought it would only get better.
But two months later, he was unemployed, living hundreds of miles from his family at Gellings Air Force Base in southwest Georgia, and being invited to work at the base thrift shop and join the Officers’ Wives Club for their monthly bunco-babes-gone-wild get-togethers.
Not his thing.
Any of it.
At first, when Serena was home, when it was just the two of them making dinner or playing board games or going out to the movies, life was good. The rest of the time he was either holed up in a silent house or handing out résumés to companies that all suggested he come back for temp work during tax season.
He started looking for jobs Serena could do when her commitment from her ROTC scholarship was up. Jobs in Chicago, so she could be near her hometown and he could be close enough to his own. Where he could find a job without employers asking when his wife would get orders to move somewhere else.
She suggested he enjoy being a man of leisure. That her next assignment would be longer, and he’d have a better shot at getting work then.
In another year or two.
They started fighting. Over her hours at work. How many video games he played while dishes sat dirty in the sink. The honeymoon she wanted to take when he couldn’t see where they’d find the money to afford it. Her refusal to understand why their smartest financial decision was for her to get out of the service.
Because Serena didn’t want to get out. She lived and breathed being an officer in the Air Force. She didn’t have a job with a paycheck, she had a mission. And she was good at it.
He thought she could serve her country some other way. Some way where his life, his training, his career didn’t have to suffer.
She disagreed.
Then he’d gotten the phone call.
His old company had a job opening in their Atlanta office.
Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) Page 13
