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“She prefers to keep to herself. Lives out in the woods in the Barnes cabin that was abandoned for years. She fixed it up really, nicely.” Simon didn’t tell him about Walker Wild spending time out there, watching over her or that he thought his daughter had feelings for the young man. It was none of his business. Walker, he had his chance once. If he got another one, well that was up to his daughter.
Jackson nodded, half listening, half watching the woman he wanted to see when he came home. He felt her green eyes on him and turned as her father did. She didn’t like it that her dad was talking to Jackson. She was glaring at them both.
Simon cleared his throat. “I’m going to get back to work, son while I’m still able to.”
Still quiet and reserved but with a look she could bring a man, to heel, her father, her six brothers and hell, him at one time. He watched her in her too short, cut-offs. Her shirt too tight even for her slender curves. Jackson’s eyes never left her as she bent over tables, clearing them of empty beer bottles and glasses.
Her beautiful body still like it was when she was eighteen. Slender at her waist
and curvy at her hips. The woman had a butt a man could hold onto. A man had his hand on her butt right now. He cleared his throat. Not liking that much at all. Then she straightened, the man laughed, and she shoved his hand away. She could take care of herself but then she always could.
A slap on the back startled him. He swiveled the chair and faced her brother, his best friend, Ben and with him was Elijah two years older than them.
“Dad, can I have a beer?” Elijah shouted. He brought two and charged them both for their drinks. They grumbled but paid their father.
“What’s the benefit to your father owning a pub if you can’t have free drinks?” Elijah teased his father. Simon just shook his head at him, muttering about his sons freeloading off him for eighteen years and that was enough for him.
Then Ben turned to him and the same green eyes of his sister intently gazed at him. “What the hell, man? What are you doing home? Have you talked to Danni?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “She said welcome home.”
“That’s it?” Ben asked.
“That’s it,” Jackson repeated.
Elijah laughed. Jackson didn’t think it was so funny. He knew he had hurt Danni but at the time he had no choice. This town broke a man without a job. They ended up here every night spending what little paycheck they had on alcohol before their wives divorced them. He didn’t want that to be him and Danni.
He worked in construction in Louisville. Then he went to Tampa and worked some there. He was a Project Manager now in Baton Rouge. He had worked hard and studied harder. He managed large, multi-million, dollar deals, and he made good money. He could give Danni whatever she wanted, more than she had here.
For the next ninety days he was taking FMLA to care for his ailing mother. He was all Selma Hand had. His two other brothers were in the military. They couldn’t come home and care for her like he could. The doctor didn’t expect her to make it much more than thirty at most sixty days. Then he would wrap up her affairs and do what?
Head back home to Louisiana, his head told him. That’s where he lived now. He was still single because his heart was still here in Sherwood. It belonged to that woman, pretending that he didn’t exist in this room, breathing the same air as her. She hadn’t changed so much that he didn’t know her well enough to know what she was doing.
“What’s she doing these days?” He asked.
“Still fixing cars for Grandad. She’s made a name for herself, you know. People bring their cars to him, just so she can work on them. He can’t work anymore because of his arthritis.”
“Maybe I’ll break my truck,” he replied.
Ben chuckled. “Better wear a cup man. I think beneath that quiet façade is a woman who one day will explode and if she does…” Ben glanced at his sister. “It will be on you. You might want to protect your balls, brother.”
Jackson scratched his cheek. “That bad?”
Ben took a gulp of his beer. Elijah glanced where both men did. He answered for Ben. “That bad,” Elijah agreed. “She’s having a dry spell right now. Prefers to stay out at her cabin, alone. Reading and writing, I’m sure.”
“She still writes?” Jackson asked still interested in what Danni was doing now and had been doing in the years that he had been gone.
“She does,” Ben agreed.
The three men watched her approach her father with another order. Then she slipped into the back with the empties on her tray.
He twirled the beer bottle in his hand and stared at it not really seeing it all. “She’s still as beautiful as the day I left Sherwood.”
“What am I supposed to say to that?” Ben asked. “She’s my sister. She’s always been little Danni to me.”
“Or shorty,” Elijah added.
“Tell me about you,” Ben declared changing the subject on him. “What have you been doing?”
