“Everything. Just follow me.” She selected a slice of prime rib, a fried chicken leg, and a piece of smoked sausage cooked with sauerkraut. After that she added mashed taters with white gravy, green beans and bacon, buttered sweet corn off the cob, and honeyed carrots, and topped it off with a big yeast roll and three pats of butter.
“Where you gonna put all that, Erma Jean?”
She turned and looked at Jasper’s plate. He had a chicken leg, a glob of potatoes, and three green beans on his plate. “Is that all you’re eating?”
“Yeah—”
Erma put carrots and corn on his plate, along with two rolls and a cornbread muffin. “There. Now that’s a meal.”While she was at it, she added three more butter pats to her own plate.
He stared at his plate, as if sizing up the food, the short gray whiskers on his cheeks sinking into the wrinkles around his mouth. But he didn’t say anything and let her go ahead of him as they went back to the table. The crowd was winding down, clearing a path for them to cross the dining room.
When they were a few feet from the BBs, she froze.
Every single woman was grinning at her. No, they were grinning atthem.
“What are y’all smiling at?” Jasper sat down next to Bea.
“Oh, nothing,” they all said in unison. Bea gave Erma a wink.
Now wait just one minute.Just because the Bosom Buddies were successful in getting Olivia and Kingston together didn’t mean they could target her and Jasper. She shot a glare sharp enough to cut steel at each one of them. There was no way she was going to be a victim of their monkey business.
Her dirty look worked, because they all dug into their food. She sat down, calmly opened up her napkin and placed it on her lap, passed two pats of butter to Jasper, and took a sip of her sweet tea.
“I want to thank you all so much.” Bea set down her fork, a rare occurrence for her so early in a meal. “Because of y’all, my Olivia is happy.”
So much for not being candid. Oh well. She took a bite of the sausage. Delicious.
“Karen did the hard part,” Myrtle pointed out.
“And I’ll thank her the next time I see her. I appreciate everyone’s moral support.”
Jasper set down the chicken leg bone he’d been chewing on. Not a speck of meat was left. “What’d y’all do?”
The women looked at him. “We, uh,” Bea said, turning to Erma for help.
“We got Olivia and Kingston together.” Viola squeezed some honey on her corn muffin. “Just like Bea asked us to.”
“As Myrtle pointed out,” Madge said, “his mother was chiefly responsible.”
Jasper leaned back in his chair and looked at all of them. “Y’all seem pretty proud of yourselves.”
Bea beamed. “We are.”
“Humph.” He picked up his roll and tore it in half.
Erma turned to him. “What do you mean, ‘humph’?”
He shrugged and crammed the roll into his mouth.
The BBs proceeded to ignore him and discuss other happenings in and around Maple Falls. But Erma only half listened. Why would Jasper have an opinion either way about Olivia and Kingston? The man remained silent during the rest of the meal, except to say thanks when Bea brought him back a bowl of chocolate pudding from the dessert section of the buffet.
They finished lunch, paid the bill, and walked up front together. Myrtle told Erma she was catching a ride with Gwen—they’d decided to see the latest superhero movie playing that afternoon at the cinema in Hot Springs. Gwen did like her muscled heroes. After telling her friends goodbye, Erma hit the bathroom before heading to the parking lot. As she walked out the door, she saw Jasper standing outside, his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans.
She pulled her keys out of her purse. They dangledfrom a purple key chain in the shape of a yarn ball. Riley had ordered them last year, and they were so popular that she had trouble keeping them in stock at the store. “Ready to go?”
“Naw. I’m just standing out here for my health.”
Ooooh. He had some nerve getting snarky with her since she was his ride home. She had half a mind to leave him here to get a cab, but she wouldn’t go back on her promise to Hayden and Riley. She turned to him, ready to shoot off a remark equally as caustic, when she saw that little lift of the corners of his mouth again, this time accompanied by a twinkle in his eye.Flut—
