Page 11 of Jameson’s Salvation

It was none of my business but I felt a little sad for him. Likely a man like Jameson wouldn’t appreciate me feeling any sort of way about his private life, but it didn’t make the sadness any less true.

“You said, all of us live at Nixon’s old place. Who’s all of you?”

“Me, Holden, Chasin, and Weston. Though I don’t know if you saw it, but Holden lives in his Airstream. He has it parked up at the barn.”

“Why does he live in a trailer?” I asked before I thought better of it.

“Don’t let him hear you call his fully restored, prized possession a trailer. He can get snippy about the Silver Bullet.” Jameson was joking, I could hear it in his voice and it made him sound way more likeable.

“Noted.” I smiled back even though I doubted I’d be in the man’s presence again.

“And he lives in it because he likes his privacy maybe only a tad bit more than I like my own. There’s three bedrooms in the farmhouse, none of us were real keen on having to double-up, but even if it was a ten-bedroom mini mansion, he’d still prefer his Airstream.”

That was a little strange—opting to live in a trailer by a barn—but hey, to each their own. And I’d never had an issue with privacy, considering I was an only child and it’d been me and my mom since I was seventeen. Hell, some days I wished there was someone else’s voice or mess in my house. But then I remembered why it was that I still, at thirty-one, lived alone, and immediately redirected my depressing thoughts. No one wanted a tomboy who had barely enough time to shower every day, forget about making time to actually date or buy a dress.

Plus I was that tomboy and I had no interest in finding the time to buy a dress. If a man couldn’t like me in my work jeans with my hair pulled up, then he wasn’t worth the effort. So, why did I care that Jameson had seen me in my daily grubbies, and not freshly-showered at least?

“Where’d you go?” Jameson asked, pulling me from my thoughts of growing old alone with only the buzzing of my bees to keep me company.

“Huh?” I looked at him, and since he was stopped at one of the few red lights in town, he was staring at me.

“You looked like you were a hundred miles away.”

“Oh, I was just thinking about all the chores I have left to do tonight,” I lied.

Jameson nodded and went back to looking at the road. I had a feeling he knew I wasn’t telling the truth, but he’d said he liked his privacy so I suspected he was giving me mine.

It was a damn shame, too, because I figured it wouldn’t have taken much coaxing from him and I would’ve spilled my life story and how tired I was of always carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. That just for once I wished I had someone to talk to. Sure I had friends, and they’d take the time, but most of them were now married and had their own concerns. And my friends that were still single were only that way for short periods of time, then they’d find themselves a man and get lost in the newness of passion until they realized they’d picked another Mr. Wrong and go back on the prowl.

I wasn’t prone to feeling sorry for myself, I didn’t have the energy or time for it. But all this Reggie business, and being afraid that one more misstep or financial hit and I’d lose the rest of the farm my dad had worked so hard to give us, was wearing me down.

I just needed to sleep on it and tomorrow I’d be back to my old self. Strong. Independent. Resilient. That’s what my dad used to always say about me. He’d believed in me when his friends had chuckled at his daughter out working the fields with him. He’d always say, ‘My girl’s just as strong as any boy and she works harder.’ And I did work harder, I had to. In this small town, being a girl didn’t work in your favor, not if you wanted to do anything that resembled man’s work.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, we were walking out of the sheriff’s office after talking to Jonny Spenser. Of course, I knew him and he knew me. We’d gone to school together and with both of us never leaving Kent County, we’d had plenty of occasion to run into each other since graduation.

He was a good guy in high school and he’d grown up to be a good man. I couldn’t understand how he was still single other than to say, he seemed to enjoy his throne as KC’s hottest bachelor. He’d probably nailed every good-looking woman in the county and he was still well-liked and you rarely heard a cross word spoken about him. Said a lot about a man, when he could still be friendly with his exes. Or maybe it said he was great in bed and they were all hoping for another go-around so they were still nice to him in the interim.

“You hungry?” Jameson asked, and at the very mention of food my stomach growled.

“A little.”

“You want to stop for pizza?”

Pizza sounded great, but I had food at home and I hated wasting it. I guess it could keep for one more day—

“What’s wrong?” he asked, interrupting my internal struggle.

“Nothing.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Lying to me. I can’t stand liars.”

I jerked in my seat at the accusation.