The Last Second Chance: A Small Town Love Story (Blue Moon Book 3)

by Lucy Score

  “Thank you, Jeeves,” she said. “Have everything under control?”

  “Rora and I are taking the demon hell spawn outside for a potty break, after which we are convening to the third floor for homework and video games. Evan should be home in the next five minutes or he’s grounded.”

  “God, you’re sexy when you know stuff,” Gia sighed. She took her husband’s face in her hands and gave him an R-rated kiss.

  “Ladies,” he said with a wink as he sauntered out of the room.

  The second the pocket doors slid shut, Joey found both Summer and Gia staring at her.

  “Well?” Summer prodded.

  Suddenly awkward, Joey cleared her throat. She wasn’t very comfortable talking about herself. It was easier to maintain a safe distance if she didn’t go blabbing about herself all the time.

  “I…uh…”

  “Slept with Jax?” Gia offered.

  “Joey shook her head vehemently. “No!”

  “Made out with Jax?” Summer tried.

  “No, well yes. But no.”

  “Definitely coming back to that one,” Summer said, fluffing her blond hair.

  “They made me a partner in the stables.” Joey blurted it out and shoved part of a muffin in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to say anything else right away.

  “What?” Summer said, trying to heave herself out of the chair. Gia, unrestricted by the weight of pregnancy flew at Joey, her arms outstretched.

  “Oh, my God! That’s even more exciting than Jax!”

  “It was the proposal, wasn’t it?” Summer asking, finally gaining her feet.

  Joey nodded and chewed.

  “So how soon do you get to start the breeding program?” Gia asked, releasing her to dole out the mugs.

  Joey swallowed hard. “I guess immediately, seeing as how Jax had a trailer full of perfect equine specimens delivered today.”

  “Jax bought horses?” Gia frowned.

  Here Joey paused because it was here that trepidation warred with excitement. “He bought me two horses. As an investment.”

  “Ohhh.” Summer and Gia got the implication immediately.

  “I made a mistake, didn’t I?” Joey flopped down on the floor pillow next to the sleeping Waffles. “Damn it. I knew it.”

  Gia placed a steaming cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Why in the world would you think you made a mistake?” Summer asked, helping herself to a muffin.

  “Because Jax,” Gia answered, delivering Summer’s hot chocolate.

  “Why does yours smell better than mine?” Summer asked, sniffing the rim of her cup.”

  “Because whiskey and Irish cream,” Gia grinned.

  “That’s going on the Things Summer Gets to Drink After Babies list. Now, back to this mistake nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense,” Joey argued. “Gia agrees with me.”

  “Uh-uh,” Gia said, using her parent voice. “I understand that you’re concerned with what Jax’s role is in all of this. That doesn’t mean I think you’re right to doubt yourself. Because you’re not.”

  “Why don’t you walk us through the whole thing?” Summer suggested.

  So she did, while stroking Waffles who had decided her lap was more comfortable than the pillow.

  “Okay, so to summarize—can you tell I married an attorney?—Carter was so impressed with your proposal for a breeding program that he put it up for a vote to make you a partner. And Jax liked the plan so much that he invested in a pair of horses levels above where you hoped to start.”

  Joey nodded at Gia over the rim of her cup, the hot chocolate warming her from the inside out.

  “I want props for not dropping any of the dozen ‘looking a gift horse in the mouth’ jokes I’ve thought of in the last five minutes,” Summer told them.

  “So what’s really bothering you?” Gia asked, watching Joey intently. “I mean, really this sounds like good business on all sides. Of course you should be a partner and of course you should start with the best stock possible. So what’s the real reason you’re crumbling your muffin into little pieces?”

  Joey looked down at her flannel now covered with muffin. She looked like she’d taken eating lessons from Aurora.

  “I’m worried that he’s serious.” Joey said the words before she could tamp them down again. “I’d almost talked myself into having a nice little fling with Jax. The sparks are still there and I’m not some wide-eyed eighteen-year-old kid anymore. I wouldn’t break this time. I thought it was only a matter of time before he packed up and left again.”

  She paused, took another fortifying sip of hot chocolate. “But he’s not packing. He’s building a brewery and helping out around the stables, and rescuing dogs, and buying horses.” Joey took a breath.

  “You’re worried Jax couldn’t handle something casual,” Summer said, her perfectly groomed eyebrows rocketing sky high.

  “He told me he loves me.”

  “Of course he does,” Gia smiled. “Anyone can see that.”

  “I don’t want him to love me. I want things to be simple, uncomplicated. I can’t seduce my business partner. I can’t keep things casual with a man who thinks he loves me and wants to have some kind of future with me.”

  “Sure you can,” Summer grinned. “It’s called being honest. Jax is a big boy. And if there’s a family resemblance down there, he’s a very big boy.”

  Gia snickered.

  “Sorry, pregnancy hormones. Where was I before the penis sidetrack?”

  “Honesty,” Gia supplied.

  “Right. If you’re honest with him about what you do want—like his hot body and impressive genitalia—and don’t want a long term relationship with said hot body, then it’s up to him to deal with that.”

  “Huh,” Joey said. “Are we just going to pretend that it’s not weird having Summer giving advice about honesty in relationships?”

  “Har har. Very funny. I’ll have you know I’m a reformed dishonest relationship haver.”

  “Joey, what Summer here is trying to say between penis jokes is that you could have everything,” Gia told her.

  “Hmm.”

  10

  Jax kicked back on the rickety desk chair and yanked his shirt over his nose.

  “Christ, Meatball. What did you eat?”

  The chubby beagle under his feet didn’t bother pretending to be embarrassed about filling Jax’s bedroom with a noxious cloud of dog farts.

  “Your brother is disgusting,” Jax told Valentina, who stretched her massive black and white great Dane body across the double bed before flopping back onto her side. The dogs enjoyed keeping him company whenever Carter and Summer were out.

  Jax glanced at the clock on his computer screen. It was after seven and the January sun had set ages ago. He’d purposely kept his distance from Joey for the last two days. With the new horses and the partner news, she’d need time to process.

  Otherwise she might be likely to take a swing at him.

  So he was using his time wisely and trudging through a draft of the screenplay that he wondered if he’d ever finish.

  He made a point never to get worked up about a project. Never bothered worrying about failure. Jax had been through enough option periods on spec scripts to know projects fell through more often than not. In his young career he’d been lucky enough to have a couple of notable projects make it to the big screen…and a dozen more rejected ones sitting in an archive file on his computer.

  Most of his work was done on assignment by production companies, which meant his teenage obsession with shoot ‘em up blockbusters was finally paying off. However, every once in a while, he snuck through a spec script. His very first green light had been on spec, and while it hadn’t exploded at the box office, it had caught the eye of the right executives at the right time. He’d built his career carefully, choosing projects that he knew intuitively were the right ones. He’d even begun branching out into producing recently, something he plan
ned to explore again with this project.

  This script, another spec, was personal. He had some nerves tied up in this one. Not for the industry’s reaction, or the critics. He could give a damn about them. But this time the critics that mattered would be his family, his town. Joey.

  Jax liked the process of writing screenplays. Liked the long, tedious hours of creation, the satisfaction of finishing a project crafted from your best effort, and then the practice of letting go once. Somehow, it reminded him of helping his father on the farm. The endless toiling. The gratifying last look through dirt and sweat at a freshly planted field. And the hope that the rains would come, the crops would grow, and the cycle would continue for another season, another generation.

  He’d learned so much from John Pierce. Absorbed more than he had been aware of, until his father was no longer walking the fields. Writers write what they know, however every time Jax had tried to take an unbiased look at his father, he came up empty on the man’s flaws.

  In Jax’s experience, everyone was deeply flawed. But his father had been a man above men. Quiet and calm, he dealt with the chaos of three boys with the patience of a saint. Finding words to be too complex to use to change minds and attitudes, he preferred to lead by example.

  And by example, he’d shown his sons how to live. Treading lightly on the earth, moving easily with the natural rhythms of the world. Honoring where you came from while always sharing what you were lucky enough to have.

  John Pierce was a hero to Jax. And his brothers had risen to the challenge, as well. Carter went to war to defend the land he so loved. And when he came home, wounded and fractured, he let the land and the people help him rise again. Beckett learned and led. He had his father’s patience and used it as mayor of Blue Moon. It was always family first with Beckett and that family was never limited by blood.

  As the youngest, Jax had always known the subtle pressure of a family tradition of goodness. His teachers remembered the older brothers’ accomplishments and expected similar results from him. Pierce men were men to be counted on, protective partners, loyal friends, and trustworthy leaders. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he started to realize the enormity of the responsibility of being a Pierce.

  At first it had irritated, then scraped, and by the time he was a senior facing his future it had dug deep. That feeling of less than, of never quite measuring up. While Carter deployed with the National Guard and Beckett set his sights on law school, Jax delivered pizzas in his third-hand Camaro and helped his dad on the farm.

  If he stayed in Blue Moon he would always be measured by his father, his brothers. There was no room to stand on his own two feet and be only himself.

  If he was going to be someone, something, it would have to be beyond this cozy community where history and blood defined you to everyone. If he didn’t leave, he’d always be known as the kid who replaced the principal’s car with a hay wagon on the last day of school. Or the ninth grader caught ditching school to fish and drink pilfered beer with a leggy junior in daisy dukes and an El Camino.

  Or the fuck-up who almost killed Joey Greer.

  When he tallied up his sins, sometimes he wasn’t sure he made the right call coming home.

  His phone vibrated at his elbow and he opened a text from Carter. A close-up of Clementine’s demonic goat face filled his screen.

  Your girlfriend misses you.

  Jax’s response was succinct.

  Asshole.

  But he grinned as he tossed his phone back on the desk. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to be home, he thought. Being here to see his brothers settle into married life? Watching his mother shed the grief she’d carried since his father’s death? It was good for the soul.

  But waking up in the bed that he’d spent the majority of his life fantasizing about Joey Greer was an entirely different story.

  It was time to stop dreaming. He wasn’t going to think about what would happen if his plan failed. Just like with a script. He’d give it his all, do his best. And if Joey never forgave him…well, that wasn’t going to happen, so he wasn’t going to waste any energy on that possibility.

  The screen of his phone lit up again. He yanked out the ear buds and with them the 80s monster ballad that had cycled to the top of the playlist on his laptop.

  “Nero’s Pizza. You want anchovies on that?” he answered in the thickest Jersey accent he could muster.

  “Very funny, favorite son of mine.” His mother’s voice carried a thread of easy affection that had the uncanny ability to untie his knots.

  “I bet you say that to all your sons,” he teased.

  “Only the handsome ones.”

  Jax grinned and shook his head. “You’re buttering me up for something.”

  “You’re not only devastatingly handsome, you’re also incredibly astute,” Phoebe cooed, laying it on thick.

  Staring out into the dark of a winter evening, Jax could imagine his mother in his mind’s eye pushing her glasses up her nose, an open book in her lap. “Uh-huh. How about you just come out and say what you have to say and we’ll save the compliments for later?”

  “Okay, so it’s two things. First thing is, can you change the oil in Franklin’s SUV? The garage is all booked up and I don’t want him to forget about it again.”

  “Sure—”

  “And since you’re saying yes to things, would you mind being the guest of honor at the Blue Moon Movie Club tomorrow night?”

  “Mom—”

  “We’re screening Awake in the Night, which my deeply talented and model-worthy son wrote,” Phoebe plowed on. “So it would only be the best thing ever if you were our guest of honor so Frieda Blevins will stop gabbing about her niece taking a selfie with that damn vampire actor.”

  “Mom—”

  “I mean seriously, it was a selfie in a bar. They weren’t on a date, they weren’t working on a movie together, she just stood in front of his table and made duck lips. Now, you actually write movies and you won’t have to do a thing. Just show up and smile. Maybe wave. Say you’ll do it, please?”

  Jax waited for a beat to make sure her word volcano was done erupting. The last thing he needed to add to his To Do list was a night out with his mother’s friends so they could nitpick a movie—and potentially him—to death.

  “Mother?”

  “Jackson?”

  “No.”

  “I refuse to accept that answer. And let me tell you why…”

  Four minutes later, head on his desk, Jax caved.

  “Okay. Fine. You gave birth to me and didn’t murder me at any point during my childhood, despite provocation on my part,” he said, reiterating her main points. “I’ll go to your movie night.”

  “Really?” Phoebe sounded surprised. “I had more material prepared.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with Beckett too much,” he told her.

  “It’s Evan. That kid can build a great argument when he wants something. Are you coming to his team’s debate next week?”

  “I didn’t realize how demanding family was on time,” Jax teased.

  “Well, let me remind you how I basically lived out of our car for three years shuttling you and your brothers to swimming and lacrosse and—”

  “For the love of God, Mom,” Jax groaned. “How are the house plans coming?” he asked, desperate to change the subject.

  “Oh! We finalized them with Calvin yesterday. I’ll show them to you when you pick me up tomorrow.”

  “So we’re driving together?”

  “That way you have to show up and can’t pull some fake ‘farm emergency’ situation,” his mom explained cheerfully.

  She knew him well.

  “Fine, but I’ll drive.” Of all her many positive qualities, being a decent driver was not one of them. Hell, she wasn’t even a passable driver. Growing up, he and his brothers had all experienced carsickness every time Phoebe Pierce took the wheel. Even on the seven-minute drive from the farm to the grocery store. Their vehicular-induced nau
sea had remained a mystery to Phoebe who insisted that they all just had sensitive inner ears.

  “Great! Pick me up at 6:30. And you might want to prepare some material for the Q and A.”

  “What Q and A? Mom?” Jax asked, but his mother had already hung up.

  He tossed his phone back on the desk. “Well, that sucked,” he said to the dogs. Unimpressed, Meatball opened a bloodshot eye.

  Jax ran a hand over his empty stomach. Maybe he’d head downstairs and start dinner for everyone since it looked like Carter and Summer were pulling a late night.

  With the dogs on his heels, he padded downstairs barefoot with the intention to rummage through the fridge and cabinets. Grilled cheese sounded like a winner. Maybe he’d stick some bacon in his.

  He flipped on the lights and made it two feet into the kitchen before the scene before him processed in his brain.

  “Oh my God.” Jax backpedaled and tripped over Valentina, landing on his ass in the doorway of the kitchen. His elbow made contact with the doorframe hard enough for him to see stars.

  “Oh my God!” Summer shrieked, making a grab for a too small dishtowel to cover body parts.

  “Shit!” Carter, who was at least clothed on his upper half, muttered. He made a dive for Summer’s discarded sweater and in the process tripped and went face first into the upper cabinet. He slid awkwardly to the floor. Meatball waddled around the island to investigate.

  Summer hopped off the counter and cowered.

  “We didn’t know you were home,” she said, still in shrieking volume.

  “Jesus! I can’t believe you guys are allowed to do that when you’re that pregnant!” Jax said, rubbing his eyes to erase the image.

  “The doctor said it was fine.” Carter’s muffled reply came from the floor.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Summer leaned over to wriggle into her shirt and look at Carter’s face. “Uh-oh. You’re bleeding.”

  Jax pulled himself back to his feet.

  “Oh, geez. You’re bleeding, too,” Summer said, nodding at Jax’s arm.

  “Crap.” He held up his bent elbow to survey the damage.