Loving Necessity: The Complete Necessity, Texas Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  The blunt question surprised a bark of laughter out of the younger woman. She ran a hand through her hair and blew across the top of her mug before taking a sip. “I don’t like being maneuvered.”

  “Humph.” Mrs. Jordan bit down into a peach pastry and nodded thoughtfully as she chewed. “You think that’s reason enough to run off the best man you’ll ever know?”

  Rolling her eyes, Clara followed suit, taking a moment to savor the cherry kolache Mrs. Jordan had put on her plate. “I like my job.”

  The old woman waved away that objection. “Your uncle told me all about your job. Said there wasn’t a thing about it you couldn’t do from right here. We got high-speed internet now. You don’t need to live in New York City.”

  Clara tilted her head and laughed incredulously. “You are a bossy old biddy, you know that?”

  Nodding her head, Mrs. Jordan took another bite of pastry, chewing and swallowing before she answered. “Yes, ma’am, I do know that. It’s one of the benefits of living as long as I have.” She shot a mischievous grin in Clara’s direction. “Along with knowing exactly what other people ought to do with their lives.”

  “Okay, then,” Clara said. “What should I do?” She leaned back in her chair, prepared to listen.

  MAC STOOD OUTSIDE GAVIN’S—CLARA’S—DOOR, a manila folder in hand, and took a deep breath, preparing to knock.

  It was later in the day than he had planned to arrive. But he had stayed awake until dawn, working through the things Clara had said to him and just ... remembering.

  He hadn’t come up with a plan until sometime after sunrise, and it had taken most of the morning to put that plan into action. Tracking everyone down had taken him well into the afternoon, and the previous night’s fire meant he had to spend part of the day filling out paperwork.

  At this point, he felt almost delirious with exhaustion. Somehow, though, that seemed like the right frame of mind to approach this particular meeting.

  Maybe, if he could exhaust himself enough, Clara wouldn’t be able to break his heart this time.

  Yeah, right.

  Raising his hand, Mac reached out to rap on the doorframe, but before he could complete the motion, Clara pulled the door open.

  “Come in,” she said.

  She looked beautifully disheveled, her blonde curls in disarray and her feet bare. Although they had clearly been through the wash at some point during the day, her jeans were the same ones she had worn all week, now streaked and stained beyond hope of repair. She again wore one of Gavin’s T-shirts knotted up around her waist.

  Just seeing her made him want to take her in his arms.

  No. He had a purpose here. And that purpose didn’t involve kissing her senseless, as much as he might want to.

  “We need to talk.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  They spoke at the same time, their words overlapping one another. Mac gestured as if inviting her to lead the way. “You first.”

  “Let’s go to the living room,” she suggested. When they were seated across from one another on opposite sides of the low coffee table, she leaned forward in her chair. “You go first,” she said. “I think I might need to hear what you have to say before I tell you what I’ve been considering.”

  “Okay.” Mac took another deep breath, then pulled several sheets of paper out of the folder he carried and spread them across the coffee table. “Here are the papers you asked for. They’re signed and notarized, and prove that you spent the required time with me learning about Aerio.” He leaned back into the cushions of the couch. “You can sell the company now. Many of us in town would prefer you not simply shut it down, but that is entirely your right.”

  He watched as Clara slowly picked up first one sheet, then another, staring at them and chewing on her bottom lip. His heart pounded as he waited for her response, and he sent up a quiet prayer that she wouldn’t put almost everyone he knew out of a job.

  “Tell me why you did this?” she asked, glancing up from examining the notary public’s seal stamped across the bottom.

  Mac rubbed his eyes and tried to find the right words. “Because,” he finally said, “you should have been angry.”

  Clara’s quizzical glance prompted him to continue.

  “You were right. I was trying to manipulate you. I always have. I told myself it was for your own good, or for someone else’s good—but in the end, it wasn’t fair to you. And I gave up any right to try to influence your decisions the night I decided that it was in your best interest to think I had cheated on you.” He shrugged. “Even last night wasn’t fair to you—though I didn’t mean to pressure you, that’s how it turned out. But what you do with your inheritance should be entirely up to you, a decision you make when you’re ready. Not one that you’re forced to when you’re still grieving, still figuring out what’s next.”

  Clara listened to this speech without speaking. When Mac fell silent, she went back to perusing the signed documents in front of her. Finally, she stacked the paperwork neatly, and dropped it on the table. “I don’t need that any longer.”

  She leaned down and pulled a folder out from under her chair, then handed it to Mac.

  “What’s this?” he asked warily.

  “I don’t want to sell the company,” she said. “But I don’t want you to be the foreman any longer.”

  Mac opened the folder carefully, as if it might hold a rattlesnake poised to strike. “Some sort of severance package?”

  She didn’t even owe him that much—and he was glad to know everyone else was going to be taken care of.

  “Just read it.”

  He skimmed through the first page, but then his eyes crossed and the words swam. “Wait. What does this say?”

  I must have read that wrong.

  As she watched him blinking in an attempt to process what he was seeing, a slow smile spread across her face. “That is someone acting in your best interest for once.”

  Standing, Clara came to sit on the couch beside him, where she threaded her arm around his and intertwined their fingers together. “That paper assigns you co-ownership of Aerio Oil and Gas. All you have to do is sign it.”

  With a negating shake of his head, Mac tried to shove the papers back into Clara’s hands. “You can’t make a decision like that based on less than week back at home.”

  Clara’s smile lit up her whole face. “You’re right. I can’t. But I have spent the last ten years doing everything I could to leave Necessity behind, and never really managing it.” Her voice dropped. “It’s time I came home. And I can make the decision based on that.”

  With her words, a tightness in Mac’s chest eased, like the loosening of a vise he hadn’t even realized had been clamped around his heart. As he bent down to claim her mouth with his own, she whispered, “I’m never leaving Necessity again—not without you.”

  Epilogue

  “I can’t believe I agreed to do this,” Mac muttered, tossing two suitcases into the back of the extended cab of the pickup Clara had inherited from Gavin.

  “Bobby will take care of Aerio while we’re gone,” Clara said, swinging herself into the cab on the passenger side. “He can cover things on the ground here—especially now that Duke’s been arrested for causing the Rittman site explosion.”

  “I know, I know.” Mac pulled away from the curb, waving at Mrs. Jordan, who was outside watering her garden. “But two weeks is a long time.”

  “I have to give my notice at work,” Clara said absently as she watched the tiny downtown slip past—Mr. Pritchard’s office, Maryann’s, The Chargrill, the single grocery store. In the rearview mirror, she could see the whole downtown rendered in miniature over the words “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

  Isn’t that the truth?

  It hadn’t been that long ago that she thought she would never see Necessity again.

  Now, she couldn’t wait to get back and start her life.

  Odd, what a difference just a few day
s could make.

  With one hand she reached over to twine her fingers through Mac’s, and glanced up to find him smiling at her.

  “Hi,” he said softly.

  “Hey.”

  The sudden thump of the truck on the road caused Mac to curse and grab the steering wheel with both hands. Slowly, he pulled over to the side of the road.

  “We don’t have time for a flat tire,” he said, glancing at the clock.

  “I’ll get it,” Clara said as she opened her door and prepared to swing down to the ground.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Mac said, tugging his own door open.

  “Absolutely not.” Clara’s wide, teasing grin stopped him as she shook her head. “Step off, cowboy. I’ve got this.”

  Beach Blanket Bridesmaid

  Prologue

  My brother is insane.

  Ava Jordan waited in line to have her passport stamped. A light breeze blew through the open walls of the Antigua airport, and she lifted her hair off her neck with one hand to take advantage of the cooler air.

  Why couldn’t Seth and Kristin get married in Cancun, like normal Texans who want a destination beach wedding?

  Maybe Ava would have been able to pay her own way, then. She wasn’t sure which was more embarrassing—having to tell her big brother that she couldn’t afford to go, or having his rich fiancée pay her way.

  At least Cancun would have meant a shorter flight. Dallas to Puerto Rico had been rough, and even the comparatively short hop out to the island had unsettled Ava’s stomach, especially after the combination bachelor-bachelorette party for Seth and Kristin at The Chargrill the night before, back in Necessity, Texas.

  I shouldn’t have stayed behind to help clean up.

  For that matter, Ava probably should have taken the chance to be only a guest, instead of a waitress.

  But working the party meant extra pay, and Mr. Tremont turned a blind eye when she joined her brother and his friends when they did tequila shots.

  Most of his friends.

  Pretty much everyone except the one friend who mattered—the best man, Grant Porter.

  The short line moved forward and Ava stepped up to the wooden booth, handing her passport to the bored man checking it, glad to have a reason to quit thinking about the one friend of Seth’s that she least wanted to see—and the one she would be spending the most time with over the next few days.

  MOVING INTO THE LINE to go through customs and enter the small island of Antigua, Grant caught a glimpse of the one woman he least wanted to see—Ava Jordan, the maid of honor in her brother’s wedding.

  His best friend’s little sister.

  The only woman who had ever touched his heart.

  The one woman he couldn’t have.

  He would have known her anywhere. She stood lifting her wavy brown hair off her neck, as he had seen her do hundreds of times before. Once, when they were kids, he had asked her why she didn’t just cut it off if it bothered her so much, and she had looked at him like he was crazy.

  Maybe he was crazy.

  He certainly wasn’t entirely balanced when it came to her, anyway.

  Nope. He wasn’t insane. But he wasn’t going to try to talk to her right now, either.

  Ducking out of line, he made a show of digging through his carry-on baggage to find his passport until Ava moved through the immigration line and took her stamped passport off into the rest of the airport, presumably to make her way to the resort hotel.

  It could have been worse. He could have agreed to Seth’s plan for the four of them to fly together, and been stuck in an airplane seat next to her for the last nine hours.

  Because that would be torture—the same kind that made him try to avoid her every time he ended up back home in Necessity.

  The kind that made his heart race, and his entire body come to attention.

  This time, though, there was no avoiding her—not once they all got settled at the hotel. He might not see her tonight, but he was going to have to figure out how to deal with her for the next several days as they helped Seth and Kristin prepare for what Grant hoped wouldn’t turn out to be the biggest bust of a wedding ever.

  I take that back. I clearly must be insane.

  Chapter 1

  “The wedding coordinator is looking for you.”

  A shadow fell across her, and Ava dug her toes into the heated sand at the end of her beach chair, imagining the glittering particles falling across her bright pink toenails.

  Twenty-four hours.

  She’d had twenty-four glorious, sun-drenched hours, during which no one had asked her for anything.

  In that entire time, she hadn’t had to fetch, carry, deliver, or clean a single item.

  No dirty tables to wipe. No menus, sticky with children’s fingerprints rendered in honey and decorated with biscuit crumbs waiting for her to scrub them. No napkins to roll, no silverware to sort. No coffee mugs to top off or extra gravy orders to fill.

  Not a single person had said “Excuse me, miss, but could you....”

  Until now.

  She counted the seconds in her head, waiting for Grant to speak again. That’s how much longer she had until she was back on duty.

  ... Eight. Nine. Ten.

  Grant cleared his throat impatiently. “You awake?”

  Finally, Ava cracked open one eye behind her sunglasses and peered up at her brother’s best friend. Best man, in just a few days. “Yeah,” she said. “Wedding coordinator. I’m on it.”

  When she had agreed to be the only bridesmaid at her brother Seth’s wedding to Kristin Rittman, Ava had known it would come with some obligations, some of them not that different from her daily duties at The Chargrill. But in the end, she hadn’t been able to resist Seth—or his offer of a vacation in Antigua.

  Not even after she discovered that Grant Porter was going to be the best man.

  NOT THAT GRANT BEING the best man should have come as any surprise, Ava reflected as she wrapped her batik cotton cover-up around herself sarong-style, self-consciously tucking the ends in around her waist, aware of Grant’s eyes on the expanse of skin between the makeshift skirt and her red bikini top.

  It was ridiculous to be embarrassed around him. He had seen her in bathing suits every summer for most of her life, at the city pool, in friends’ backyards, at the lake the summer they all learned to water-ski.

  Ava had yet to determine why it was different now that he had seen so much more of her than any bikini revealed, but she could feel him watching her as she trudged through the sparkling sand back up toward the resort.

  Along the way, she paused to pet one of the ubiquitous black-and-white cats that seemed to populate the entire island. It bumped its head up against her hand and she pretended not to take the opportunity to glance sidelong at Grant, still standing where she had left him on the beach, staring at her as she moved away. “Come find me at dinner,” she told the half-grown cat. “Maybe I’ll have food then.”

  Grant Porter. The bane of my existence.

  The thought was a little melodramatic, Ava knew. But it felt accurate at the moment, anyway.

  If only his job as bearer of bad news had been the only reason for her to loathe him. That, she could probably have dealt with, eventually.

  She even could have handled Grant kissing her at midnight one New Year’s Eve—and not even the friendly you’re my best bud’s little sister so I should be killed for this peck on the cheek kind of kiss, but the most passionate kiss Ava had ever experienced.

  It was following up that kiss with a night of amazing, mind-blowing sex, then going back to being as good as related themselves the very next morning that was more than Ava was willing to handle.

  It had been a year and a half since that asinine decision.

  Asinine on his part.

  The decision to return the kiss of the man she’d had a crush on for as long as she could remember? That part wasn’t asinine. At least, it hadn’t seemed it at the time.

  In re
trospect, following him without asking any questions as he led her to the bedroom had probably been a stupid move.

  Well, she had learned her lesson. No more kisses for Grant Porter. In fact, she hardly even spoke to him at all. He could just keep his kisses to himself.

  Not to mention the rest of it.

  She shook the thought off and headed up the winding path to the covered verandah that served as bar, restaurant, and nightclub, depending on the time of day. At the moment, one of its tables was serving as the workspace for the resort’s wedding planner, who sat alone in the space with three-ring binders all around her, a computer tablet in hand.

  Ava waited for her to finish making a note and tried not to let anxiety overcome her.

  Before Kristin and Seth had decided to elope to Antigua, their wedding had been the event of the season—such as the season was in a dusty little town like Necessity, Texas.

  “But that,” Seth said when Ava teased him about it, “is the price you pay if marry into the Rittman family.” His adoring glance at his fiancée took any sting out of the words.

  Then Kristin’s uncle, Duke Rittman, had been arrested for attempted murder after he sabotaged a gas well tank on his land so it exploded when the petroleum company owner was present. The scandal had turned Necessity society (again, such as it was) upside down.

  Kristin had gone from being the belle of the town to being a pariah, almost overnight. Most of her friends had deserted her. And she and Seth had decided to cancel the big wedding at the First Baptist Church of Necessity and run away to the West Indies to get married.

  So here I am, the last bridesmaid standing.

  Finally, the wedding coordinator finished what she was doing and glanced up, her dark eyes assessing Ava swiftly. “Ah, hello. You must be”—she checked the paperwork in front of her—“Ava, with the Rittman wedding?”

  Her voice was clear and cultured, almost British-sounding, with the soft lilt of the island Creole underscoring it.