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I did not make out with him again that afternoon. We made it to our destination a few hours later, and I was still sorting out whether I’d officially broken things off with Stephen the night before, or if I had been at all ambiguous. But it was very difficult to concentrate on driving and relationship status when my lips were still tingling with the memory of Jed’s.
I simply did not do things like kiss men in a panic on the side of a crowded roadway. Well, there was that one time with Neal Dunnigan after our graduation dance, but that was an aberration. A delicious aberration. What the hell was Jed doing to me? I was a mature, educated woman with the livelihoods and health of a whole village on my shoulders. And yet every time he got near me, I behaved like an addled, horny teenager. I had to nip this in the bud. I had to gain control of the situation.
I just didn’t think this was the place to do it.
Helton, Georgia, turned out to be a tiny village. There were no major retailers or restaurants. All of the homes and businesses were on one long stretch of street intersecting with a railway, with a box-shaped white church nearby. The houses ran the gamut from sturdy brick bungalows to dilapidated shacks.
Of course, we were heading for one of the shacks.
Jed had been told that I was reclaiming a valuable piece of merchandise that had been “misdirected” from Jane’s shop, but I hadn’t given him specifics. As we got closer to the address, I could feel the waves of concern rolling off of him, as if we were walking into a bad situation. Frankly, given the number of NRA bumper stickers on the early-model truck parked in the driveway, I was getting a little nervous myself.
“I think you should stay in the car,” he said, looking the house over.
I scoffed. “What?”
He gave me a look I can only describe as “focused” and said, “Do as you’re told.”
My jaw dropped. No one had ever talked to me like that before and walked away without a limp. Jed had never shown signs of this sort of command. He’d always struck me as the funny, goofy sort. But here he was giving me orders, and I wanted to do exactly what he told me to do. The tone of his voice and the smoldering expression on his face made me want to give him whatever he wanted.
Of course, I couldn’t tell him that. Instead, I exclaimed, “I beg your pardon! Like I’m supposed to fall to my knees at the sight of your freakishly large muscles? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Jed seemed to snap out of whatever bizarre alpha-male haze had prompted such a speech. “Right, sorry.”
I shoved the truck door open and slammed it in his face, or at least near his face.
“OK, so that was the wrong way to go about it,” Jed admitted. “I’m just—I don’t like the look of this.”
“Get over it,” I told him.
“Fine,” he huffed. “But at least let me do this.” Jed hooked an arm through my elbow and led me forward. “I’m about to devolve into some pretty serious Bubbaness. Don’t judge me based on what I am about to say or do. And no offense meant, but it would be best if you didn’t say anythin’ over the next few minutes. And try not to make those faces, OK?”
“Faces?” I asked.
“The ‘I am an alien explorer in a strange world, and I don’t like what I see’ faces.”
“I don’t—” I protested, but cut myself off when he gave me that grave, serious look. I grumbled, “I don’t see how that’s not supposed to offend me,” just as the door opened.
Hubert Lavelle towered over even Jed’s tall frame. He had some sort of handlebar mustache and was dressed in camouflage from head to toe. He was the most terrifying person I’d ever met. And I had several cousins who would head-butt complete strangers over a soccer match.
“Hi there! We’re lookin’ for a Mr. Lavelle,” Jed said, his accent far more pronounced than I’d ever heard it. “My girl here talked to your wife on the phone last night.”
“Who sentcha?” Hubert asked.
“Your aunt Ginger,” Jed said.
Hubert’s eyes narrowed. “She say anything about the credit cards? ’Cause it’s not our fault she left that application on the counter. Anybody could have picked it up.”
“No, just the wedding present,” Jed assured him.
After establishing that we were not door-to-door evangelists or salesmen, Hubert ushered us through the front door and pushed us onto the green velour couch. The key design element of the living room seemed to be the deer’s head mounted on the wall, with some sort of cheap garter around its nose. The garter had a little tag that read, “Helton High School Prom, 1992.” This seemed disrespectful both to deer and to cheaply made underwear.>“Why don’t you just ask if I’m seeing someone?”
“Get better answers this way,” I said, smirking at him.
“No, I haven’t dated anyone seriously in years. I haven’t had a real girlfriend since high school.”
“Why not?”
“No reason,” he said, his lips pressed together in a frown. “Why are you asking me all of these questions?”
