Page 25 of Don’t Go Stealing My Heart

“You look like you need more than a beer.” Marco clapped him on the back, matching his stride.

“You’re as astute as always.” Country music spilled over them as they walked inside.

The watering hole was more saloon than hot spot, the wooden walls and tables as scarred as a gnarled oak tree. The mostly full space hummed with post-work chatter and the snap of colliding pool balls. Perpetual Christmas lights hung over the small stage, the corner used for open mic nights or karaoke. Not on Fridays, though. Fridays were for half-price beers and darts and pool. Time to unwind from the work week.

Marco fell into a chair at their usual table. “You plotting world domination?”

“Something like that.” World domination seemed a less daunting task than saving David Industries and having a life.

“Word to the wise, you should rest while plotting. You look like you haven’t slept in months.”

“Bet I’ve slept more than you.”

Marco chuckled. “Lauralee says if she’s not sleeping, I should suffer with her.” He moaned lovingly about his wife, but Jack’s attention shifted to not sleeping. Specifically, not sleeping with Clementine. He hungered to not sleep with her and do a thousand things in that stretch of darkness. Love on her. Explore her. Sing songs against her skin.

Tami, who’d waitressed here for a decade, dropped off a couple of beers. No order necessary. Just a wave and a smile. “Y’all don’t be getting too serious.”

“It’s him you gotta worry about. Not me.” Marco hooked a thumb toward Jack.

Jack shrugged a shoulder, attempting indifference. “Nothing wrong with serious.”

“Except when you look constipated.” Tami cackled at her joke and sauntered off, ready to sass other patrons.

Marco was talking again, about a new sponsor for their Every Cent charity, how widening its scope to encompass affordable housing and traveling medical care was what the donor loved about the project. Jack offered a distracted nod, pleased their charity work was growing, but only catching key words.

Jack stared at the empty stage. It was the first place he’d sung in public, the night Aaron Axelrod’s older sister had taken pity on him and dragged him out back. She’d tutored him in the ways of women, that day and many afterward. He’d studied like a man searching for the Holy Grail. This, he’d thought back then. If I can master this, learn how to make a woman shake and moan, turn her boneless with pleasure, the rest will fall into place.

It hadn’t really. Not when it came to women. But he’d soaked up those lessons, refined his skills. Skills he ached to show Clementine.

Marco veered from prattling about Lauralee and their expected twins to last night’s burritos that hadn’t agreed with him, and Jack settled his forearms on the table. “I met a woman.”

“A real live one?”

Gotta love old friends. “Has a pulse and everything.”

“Does she speak English?”

“She does.”

Marco smirked. “Does she have hearing loss?”

Jack refused to laugh or acknowledge his teasing. “Not to my knowledge.”

Marco leaned back on his chair and squinted at the ceiling. “So you’re telling me, a real live woman, who can understand and hear you, actually found your abysmal flirting skills attractive and didn’t run screaming the other way?”

Jack frowned. “Not exactly.”

Marco raised an eyebrow, but Jack didn’t elaborate.

“Come on, man. Don’t hold back now.” Marco grinned wide enough to swallow his beer bottle. “Your painful love life makes you human. Otherwise you’d be this rich, smart, hot dude that even my wife drools over, and we couldn’t be friends.”

“We’d always be friends.”

“Stop stalling.”

Jack took a healthy pull on his beer and laid out the gist of it: the highway meeting…and Clementine running away, the Whatnot Diner meeting…and Clementine running away, then running with her and singing for her and how they both had bearded dragons named Ricky and Lucy. “She’s amazing and fascinating, but her job in the festival means I can’t even ask her out.”

“So don’t perform this year.”