Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set

by Grover Swank, Denise

  But he didn’t. He wasn’t there. At least I didn’t see him.

  My heart seized a bit when I spotted Cletus strumming his banjo in one of the rooms, providing accompaniment for his brother Billy on vocals. I decided to torture myself by staying in the room and listening to Billy Winston sing. The man could sing. Yet this was an exercise in torture because there was something about the way he moved that reminded me of Duane.

  Nevertheless, no music played that only I could hear when Billy walked by my chair during a break, stopped, and gave me a faint smile of acknowledgement. I felt nothing beyond friendly curiosity when he crossed to me, his hands in his pockets, and leveled me with his startling stare.

  As I stood, I decided if Beau’s eyes were the summer sky, and Duane’s volleyed between glittering sapphires and a swirling tempest, Billy Winston’s eyes were the color of glaciers. Even his warm smile couldn’t quite warm his gaze.

  “How are you this evening, Jessica?” It had been a while since I’d spoken to Billy, so I’d forgotten he’d lost quite a bit of his eastern Tennessee drawl. He almost sounded like a generic person from the United States, what most would consider lacking in discernible accent. Well, generic except his voice held a soothing, melodic quality when he spoke.

  “Just fine. And how are you, Billy?”

  “I’m well.” His gaze drifted to the empty seat next to mine. “Is Claire here with you tonight?”

  “Yes. We came together. But I think she’s up at the front with her father-in-law, helping with the donations.”

  He nodded, his gaze growing sharper in a way I couldn’t help but notice. I thought it was remarkably odd, almost like he was frustrated.

  But then whatever it was promptly vanished and was replaced with an unaffected air of controlled politeness. “How are things at the high school?”

  “Fine…real good, actually. We now have a system worked out for all the kids bussed in for calculus.”

  “All thanks to this little lady.”

  I turned my head just as Kip Sylvester, the principal of the high school and therefore my boss, shouldered his way through the shuffling crowd. Next to him was his daughter Jennifer, who I would forever think of as Queen of the Banana Cakes.

  This was not an uncharitable thought on my part. She’d literally won Best Banana Cake at the county fair for the last six years and worked for her momma’s bakery making the renowned cakes. Add to this her pale complexion, pale yellow hair, and bright yellow dress with brown polka dots, she might as well have been a banana herself.

  “Thanks to Miss James, we’re seeing lots of progress in our STEM numbers already.” Kip Sylvester gave me an approving nudge.

  It was somewhat strange, thinking of Kip Sylvester as my boss. I’d known him since I was two. He’d been the principal when I was in high school, too. I gave Jennifer a small smile of greeting, which she returned with sunny brilliance. But then I watched as she turned her gaze to Billy; it grew noticeably bemused and dreamy.

  “That’s good news,” Billy offered benignly, pairing his statement with a head nod in my direction.

  “Are you singing tonight, Mr. Winston?” Jennifer asked prettily, in a soft, sweet voice. Sweet as banana cake.

  “I am. Or, I guess I was.” Billy turned and glanced over his shoulder. “It depends on whether Cletus is staying for the next set. We drove together.”

  “Oh, I hope we’re not too late to hear you sing. I think I’d die if I missed it.”

  Billy’s expression grew a bit perplexed, maybe even a little rigid.

  My boss tried to cover his grimace with an indulgent smile—which only served to highlight his grimace. “What a silly thing to say, Jennifer,” he admonished his daughter, chuckling lightly and looking at Billy as though to apologize.

  I felt a pang of empathy as Jennifer’s face fell and her cheeks tinged pink. “I’m sorry, I’m always saying silly things I guess. I must’ve overdone it today in the bakery.”

  “See now, that’s a great excuse. I usually blame all the silly things I say on syphilis.” I started to laugh at my own joke before even finishing it. However, after seven seconds of dismayed stares and silence, I realized that maybe STD humor was lost on this crowd.

  I reminded myself what I thought was hilarious, like my ironic sexy Gandalf costume, was often the cause of censure and elicited abject horror from others. I was always going to be a circle peg in a world of squares.

  But then I heard someone laugh, or more precisely try not to laugh. I twisted at the waist and nearly lost my breath because directly behind me was Duane Winston. He was most definitely trying his best to contain errant laughter. His sapphire eyes were glittering down at me.

  And then I really did lose my breath because, if I wasn’t mistaken, Duane was giving me a hot look.

  His gaze moved from mine to his brother’s, then to Jennifer and Principal Sylvester’s as he handed out customary greetings to the small circle.

  I hadn’t at all recovered by the time his attention swung back to me. “Jessica, do you have a spare moment?” he asked in a low voice.

  I nodded.

  “Please excuse us,” he muttered.

  Without sparing a goodbye glance for our companions, Duane wrapped his long fingers around my upper arm and tugged me toward the open door.

  We were surrounded on all sides by crowds of people, music floating down the painted cinderblock and linoleum paved hallway. It was loud. But I was only aware of Duane. Halfway to the donations table, he slipped his hand into mine. We held hands for the remainder of our short walk to the cafeteria, causing my heart to take up residence in my throat. I was half expecting and hoping he’d drag me backstage again, but he didn’t.

  He steered us to one of the long lunch-room tables in the corner of the cafeteria where no one else was sitting. We were still in a room full of people, but the conversations elsewhere meant whatever words we exchanged would be indecipherable from the surrounding chatter.

  Duane pulled a chair out for me and claimed the seat adjacent as I sat. Or, I tried to sit. I didn’t know quite how to sit. Sitting suddenly felt weird. I was super-conscious of my limbs.

  Thankfully, Duane spoke before I could become too obsessed with the mechanics of sitting.

  “I’ve been thinking.” He leaned his forearm along the table to his left, (my right) and trapped me with his focused gaze.

  “What have you been thinking?” I missed the feel of his hand and wondered if it would be weird for me to reach out and take hold of his fingers.

  “You’re leaving, just as soon as you can. And you estimate that at being, what? Two years?”

  I felt a bit dismayed by his subject choice. I was hoping he’d want to talk about Saturday, give me an opening to apologize and explain in greater detail. I tried to figure out how to steer the conversation in that direction. I tried and failed.

  Instead, I answered the question he’d asked with honesty. “More like either one and a half, or two and a half at this point, depending on how much money I can save.”

  His eyes narrowed and he nodded, his hand coming to his chin as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. We sat that way—him studying me while stroking his beard, me watching him study me while he stroked his beard—for several seconds.

  Abruptly he asked, “What would you say if I suggested we date for the next twelve months, but only for twelve months?”

  Who? What? …Date?

  It took me a bit to work through his words. I liked the date part, but the only twelve months part sounded fishy.

  “I…um…why twelve months?”

  My question seemed to relax him and his eyes appeared to lighten a bit. “Because that way we’ll be split up well before the time you need to go. It’s a good stretch of time, long enough to have a bit of fun, get to know each other, but not so long that you have to be concerned about a lasting attachment.”

  My heart was doing strange things in my chest, but not anything I might have predicted. It sank, like a st
one. If I caught his meaning, and I was fairly certain I did, he wanted me to be his fuckbuddy for the next year. I’d gone from the girl he wanted to court to the girl he wanted to see on the side, one he likely no longer respected.

  I shifted in my seat, not because my body was uncomfortable but because my brain was uncomfortable.

  And my discomfort didn’t make sense because this is what I’d wanted…right?

  No. This isn’t what you wanted, a voice answered in my head, clear as a bell.

  Sometimes I truly didn’t understand myself.

  “So…we’d…” I licked my lips to stall answering. When I found my voice it was croaky and I felt the beginning of frustrated tears sting my eyes. “We’d what? Hook up a few times a month?”

  He shook his head, leaned a bit closer, and I was struck by how severe his expression seemed, almost like he was angry, but not quite.

  “No. That’s not what I want. You would have to go all in. We would go out to dinner, see movies, call each other, text. I’d work on your car—you know, the Mustang you left at my house earlier this week—install gadgets you don’t need ’cause you’re my girl. You might come to the Winston place and hang out with us boys. This would be both of us, all in for all twelve months—or less if we find we don’t suit.”

  My heart reversed positions halfway through his clarification of my misassumption and hurdled itself skyward. In fact, my entire body felt lighter, almost like I was floating.

  “So, you still want to court me?”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “For twelve months?”

  “Yep.”

  I didn’t try to hide my smile. “And we’d be a couple, a real couple?”

  A touch of softness entered his expression and his eyes drifted over my face, as though cataloging it. “Yeah, with presents on birthdays, and celebrating Valentine’s Day, and watching chick flicks, and all that other crap.”

  I gathered a deep breath, my lungs filling with both air and excitement. But then a thought occurred to me. “Wait, what if, after the twelve months, one or both of us wanted to continue? Does this thing, this agreement have an option for an extension?”

  At once the softness vanished, and again the lines of his face turned severe. He leaned away, just a few inches, but the distance felt much greater. I perceived a cold kind of resolve behind his eyes.

  “No. Absolutely not. The term is for a year. After that year is up, and as long as you’re in Green Valley, our relationship would be over.”

  “But, what if I’m in town for two and a half years? What if—”

  “No. Twelve months. That’s it. Take it or leave it.” His tone was unyielding. As though to drive home the fact that he wasn’t willing to bend on this point, he set his jaw and glowered at me. His glower reminded me of the Duane Winston I used to know, the kid who used to pick apart my arguments and challenge me to think about perspectives other than my own. That Duane had been irritating. That Duane had also been right nine times out of ten.

  I felt a spasm of some sort in my chest, like a spike or surge of panic, making breathing a bit more difficult. Absentmindedly, I pressed a palm to the center of my ribcage as I studied him and his stony features.

  I opened my mouth, determined to try one more time, because his granite resolve on the issue didn’t make much sense, but he cut me off before I could speak.

  “And, if we do this, you’re not to bring up the possibility of an extension again. You don’t even ask about it. It’s just understood. One year from today we’d be over and done and that’s it.”

  I studied him for a long stretch, saw he was completely serious, and seeing this made me feel out of sorts.

  Therefore I asked the first question my panicked heart wanted to know. “Would I still see you?”

  He shrugged. “You’d see me around I guess. This isn’t a big town.”

  “Would we still be friends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you talk to me? If you saw me after? Or would you ignore me?”

  “I’d be polite.”

  “But not more than polite?”

  “I don’t rightly know, Jess,” he whispered, and his whisper sounded a bit sad.

  Meanwhile, my voice lifted as I challenged, “Well, you need to know, Duane. Because I don’t think I could just date you for a year and then turn my feelings off.”

  “But you could leave me for Timbuktu and that would be no problem?”

  I huffed, my defensive hackles rising. “I don’t like being made to feel guilty for having dreams and goals. I already get enough sass about this from my family.”

  I saw his chest rise and fall with an impressively large and silent breath. His eyes moved between mine for a few seconds before he glanced to his right, shaking his head.

  “This. Right here. This is the reason for the twelve-month limit.” When he brought his gaze back to mine it was clear and sober, determined. “If we limit things to the twelve months, then we both know what’s up. We avoid having this conversation ever again—because you leaving won’t make any difference. We’ll already be done. You can go and not feel like you’ve left anything behind.”

  I considered him, his words, for nearly a full minute, seeing the sincerity painted all over his features.

  “You’ve given this some thought.” This came out sounding like an accusation and I didn’t know why.

  “Yeah, I have.”

  I felt…irritable. But then I realized his proposed plan meant he’d been thinking about me over the last week. He’d been thinking about us and what to do. And that realization made me feel gooey and sentimental.

  Therefore, inspired and touched by his consideration of the matter, I blurted before thinking about what I was going to say, “What if we—” then stopped when I realized I was about to say, What if we just do this for real, no time constraints, and I put my travel plans on hold indefinitely?

  And that was the moment I realized how much I liked—really liked—Duane Winston. I mean, I knew I liked him before. But my reflexive panic at the thought of a time limit with him, one set in stone, made me feel trapped by my dreams of world travel.

  Oh, my dear friend, Irony. How I have not missed you…

  I licked my lips then chewed on the bottom one, again as a way to stall speaking my thoughts. My daddy liked to say You can’t have fried pie and not get fat. It was a distorted and much cruder version of the popular You can’t have your cake and eat it too, but the sentiment was the same.

  “What if we…?” he prompted when I took a bit too long to continue.

  Looking at him, knowing he was serious about this time limit business, I decided to take a different approach: negotiation.

  “What if we did a trial period first? Before the twelve months started?”

  His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why would we do that?”

  I had no choice but to wing it, make stuff up. “Because…because it would…be weird and…depressing to pick a year from today, November fourteenth, as the day things end. Right before Thanksgiving and Christmas? No. We should do a six-week trial period and start the twelve month countdown on January first.”

  His eyes narrowed more, but his mouth twisted to the side like he was fighting a smile. “You’re just trying to get thirteen and a half months instead of twelve.”

  I shrugged. “You caught me. So what if I am? What’s six more weeks in the scheme of things?”

  The humor waned from his expression and was replaced with a contemplative frown. He was considering it, I could tell. He just needed a little push.

  I scootched my chair closer so my legs were between his, placed my hands on his knees, and leaned forward. “Two Thanksgivings. Two Christmases. Two New Year’s Eves. Think of it, this year I won’t even know what to get you for Christmas. But next year…” I hoped I was giving him a winning grin.

  He sighed, his almost smile returned, and I nearly jumped out of my seat to do the moonwalk when he conceded, “Fine. A
year from January first.”

  I didn’t do the moonwalk. Instead I squealed, jumped into his lap, threw my arms around his neck, and kissed him. I made it fast, just a quick couple presses of my lips to his, then leaned away so I could see his eyes.

  He was smiling at me now—full on, white teeth, happy face smile—and his arms had come around my waist, his hands on my hips. My stomach and heart were trying to out flutter each other as I grinned down at him.

  This was good. This was a good compromise. Sure, I might’ve been in denial. Sure, I might’ve been setting myself up for heartache in the long term. But…whatever. I could deal with all that later. Much later. Like, over a year from now later.

  Right now I was sitting on Duane’s lap, and had just been given a free pass to kiss him as much as I liked for the next thirteen and a half months.

  Chapter 13

  “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

  Marcel Proust

  ~Jessica~

  Yesterday we’d sealed our deal with a kiss at the community center, and this morning he’d texted me:

  Duane: I’m taking you out tonight.

  Me: Where?

  Duane: Someplace where we can go fast.

  Me: What time?

  Duane: 5

  Me: Sounds good.

  I was ready to go at 4:30 p.m. even though I’d changed outfits ten times. I might have been a tad excited. Just a tad.

  I decided on a white sweater dress with a built-in slip, long sleeves, and a short, flared skirt. Because of how fitted the slip was over my ribs and chest, the dress was a pain to put on or take off. Not helping matters were about thirty little buttons running down the back, but I loved how it looked on me. I paired it with my tan boots and wore my hair down and wavy.

  Duane was ten minutes early, and this time my daddy was home. Thankfully Jackson was not. Daddy invited Duane in, offered him a beer (which Duane refused in favor of sweet tea, because he saw the offer for the trap it was) and they discussed sports, local politics, and cars for about twenty minutes. Then Daddy waved us off, giving me a small smile, and Duane a firm handshake and squinty eyes.