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He grabbed his cell and dialed up his best friend. “Hey, Rene. I need to know what the word is about me and Jayna. What’s the town saying?”
A chuckle came over the line. “Are you sure you want to know?”
If he was going to convince Jayna that staying in Papillon might be a good idea, he had to remind her there was life beyond the office and the courthouse and the café. “Not at all, but hit me.”
Quaid petted Luna as his best friend gave him the lowdown.
chapter nine
“You should talk quickly because as soon as I’m finished with lunch, I’m going back to the courthouse, and you will not be allowed to follow me,” Jayna said as the waitress who’d replaced Sienna bounced away. She was likely in her late teens and looked so young and perky it hurt.
She was fairly certain she’d never once been that perky in her life.
Paul Havery watched the waitress, too, a smile on his face. “I forgot how nice this place is.”
“She’s barely out of high school. What do you want, Paul?” She’d ordered soup and half a turkey sandwich because they wouldn’t take long to make and she could inhale them both, thereby cutting down on the time she was forced to spend with Quaid’s brother.
He frowned her way, his brows meeting over blue eyes. “What has my brother been saying to you to put you off me? You know you can’t believe a word he says about me. We’re a bit estranged, you see.”
The trouble was Quaid didn’t say much of anything about his brother. Or his mother. Or his friends and family. When she thought about it, they talked a lot about her family andpast and not much about his. “Yeah, I got that, which is why I shouldn’t be having lunch with you. Is this some kind of setup? Your mom shows up wanting to talk to Quaid and now you’re going to put me in some compromising position?”
There was a part of her waiting for Marian Havery to walk in, followed by Quaid, and “catch” them in the act of not yet eating lunch. Jayna rather thought Quaid would see through that plan, but she could be wrong.
“Why would I do that?” Paul asked.
She could think of a hundred reasons they might give it a try, but she went with the most obvious. “So I can’t get my poor grubby hands on the Havery fortune. To save your mother the embarrassment of having her son date trailer trash.”
That insult had been thrown around when she’d first married Todd.
Her heart ached at the thought because Quaid had made her deal with the real truth of her marriage. She’d thought she’d been in love with Todd, and over the years as the marriage had disintegrated, she’d allowed that young, naive girl to morph into a mature, hardened woman who couldn’t acknowledge the girl’s heart.
It was weird. Accepting the truth hadn’t made her angrier. It had the opposite effect. It made her softer, more tolerant of her own past mistakes.
“Oh, she probably does think that way,” Paul agreed. “I love my mother, but she’s an unconscionable snob at times. I think you’re going to be good for Quaid. He needs someone who’ll challenge him. Also, I think you might be far more reasonable than he is about certain things, so I am going to be incredibly nice to you so you’ll put a good word in for me.”
“I’m not doing that. I’m walking away from this table and immediately telling your brother everything that happenedhere.” She was still suspicious. She wasn’t about to let Paul drive a wedge between them.
“You can tell him anything you like,” Paul agreed. “But I want you to hear me out. You owe me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
A smirk hit Paul’s face. “Sure you do. If I wasn’t here, Quaid would be living at home and then he wouldn’t have been at the office the night it rained, and you would have left town after your momma kicked you out because you’re trying to lead Sienna... I’m not clear on where you’re leading Sienna and why that’s wrong. Also, Sienna looks damn good. Did I hear she’s single?”
“Oh, you stay away from my sister.” She did not need an extra niece, and that was what happened when Sienna got involved with an attractive douchebag. “How do you know my mom kicked me out?”
“Everyone knows because your mom told Darlene Denis, who told the whole story to her sister who works at the Back Porch, and she was telling it to everyone last night,” Paul explained with obvious relish. “You came off as very full of yourself and elitist.”
“Says the guy who had his Porsche stolen,” she pointed out.
Paul shrugged that off. “Fine. That isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about anyway. I simply wanted you to understand that my mother can be on the judgmental side, and while I adore her, I do not carry the same prejudices as she does. Like I said, I think you’re good for Quaid. He seems happy.”
“How would you know?” From what she knew, the brothers hadn’t seen each other in at least a week. They certainly weren’t hanging out and talking about their love lives.
“Oh, I’m excellent at following people, and I watch him quite often.”
“You’re stalking your brother?” Now she was starting to understand why Quaid found the man annoying.
“I like to think of it as keeping up with a man who doesn’t want to talk to me.”
