A Week Till the Wedding

“The tax man? Really?”

“Shoo,” she said, waving her fingers in his direction.

He ignored her dismissive order and took two long steps to catch up with her. “What’s your problem with the suit?”

She didn’t look at him. Her chin was in the air, her hair whipped as she glanced in the opposite direction. “I have no problem with what you wear. I don’t care at all what you wear.”

“Then why have you mentioned the damn suit so often?”

“It’s summertime in the Deep South,” she said. “Unless you’re headed to church or a funeral, the suit is downright unnatural.”

Daisy stopped in front of her porch steps, then spun around to face him. She was no longer trying to avoid him. No, instead she looked him in the eye, unflinching. She was stronger than he remembered. Tougher. “On second thought, wear a suit every day for all I care. It will serve as a constant reminder that you don’t belong here.”

“I don’t need a constant reminder that I don’t belong here.” No, he’d felt it every second of every day.

“Neither do I.” She took a step back and up, onto the bottom step.

Jacob matched her step, moving forward but not up. He wasn’t ready to let her move away. They were nose to nose, now, eye to eye. “Then who am I supposed to be reminding?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“You’re not making any sense at all….”

“I don’t have to make sense if I don’t want to.”

Jacob shook his head. “When did we start arguing?”

“Seven years ago,” Daisy snapped.

Jacob reached out, took her face in his hands, stepped into her space and kissed her. He wasn’t sure why, he just couldn’t help himself. He had to kiss her; he had to press his mouth to hers. He’d thought her scent was maddening, but her taste … he had forgotten … how the hell had he forgotten this …

She tensed for a moment then she melted. Her lips molded to his, her eyes closed and they kissed. Long and soft and easy.

He never should’ve let her go.

She tasted so good, so warm and right. Her face in his hands was soft, and he loved holding her almost as much as he loved kissing her. She kissed him back, well and deeply. She leaned toward him, into him and when he swept his tongue just inside her mouth she gasped and moaned and deepened the kiss. The years melted away, the miles that had come between them no longer mattered.

Daisy pulled away from him sharply. Her lips were swollen and wet, her eyes wide and surprised. Was she surprised by the kiss, or by her response?

“Don’t do that again,” she ordered, backing up the front porch steps, toward the front door and escape.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a very bad idea.”

He didn’t follow her onto the porch; he’d pushed his luck enough for one day.

“Tomorrow night,” he reminded her. “Lemon cake and chicken and dumplings.”

“Surely Miss Eunice will forget all about those plans by tomorrow morning,” Daisy said as she stopped by the front door and grabbed her house keys out of her small purse. “I hope,” she added beneath her breath.

“If she doesn’t …”

“She will,” Daisy said, almost as if she was commanding it to be so.

“Maybe. Probably.” Jacob stood on the walk for several minutes after Daisy had closed the front door. When he’d heard about his grandmother’s condition and decided to come home for a long visit, he hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t expected to have the past come to life again, to look at Daisy and suffer a deep regret for what he’d lost.

He shook his head, as if he could shake off unwanted thoughts, and turned around sharply to make his escape. Coming home had been a mistake. He’d had his reasons, and it was too late to turn back now. But the truth of the matter was, his life was no longer here in Bell Grove. It hadn’t been for a very long time. Daisy and the reactions she elicited were a part of another life, and no matter how pleasant—and frustrating—it was to see her again, he had to remember to leave her in the past. Where she belonged.

Daisy didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, after everything that had happened in the past twenty hours, but after Jacob dropped her at home she slept amazingly well. She dreamed about the kiss, which was very annoying because in her dream that kiss didn’t end too soon. In her dream she got a lot more than a kiss from Jacob. She woke with a start, sweating and shaking and most of all angry with herself for allowing her badly neglected physical needs to wipe away every ounce of common sense. First the kiss, then the dream. Where was her self-control? Why couldn’t she just be angry with him and leave it at that?

She should’ve bolted when he’d moved in for a kiss. She could have. Should have. But she’d wanted that kiss so much, and at that moment the want had been a lot stronger than her sense of what she should do.

Her dad had always been philosophical. Everything happened for a reason, he’d said on numerous occasions. There was a purpose in every heartbreak, in every decision, in every coincidence. She’d dismissed that way of thinking for a long time, because she hadn’t been able to believe that her parents had died for some lofty reason that she didn’t understand.

But as she walked to work she convinced herself that Jacob had returned to Bell Grove for a specific purpose, that Miss Eunice had lost her mind to put Daisy in this very position. Why? Easy. So she could get over Jacob once and for all and move on with her life.

They’d never had it out, had never really ended their relationship. They’d simply drifted apart, fallen into lives so different there was just no way to make them mesh. If she ever wanted to move on she had to get over Jacob, once and for all. Oh, she’d insisted to anyone who would listen that she’d gotten over him years ago, she’d even convinced herself, for a while. But now she knew that was a lie. If she’d really gotten over him, the unfortunate kiss wouldn’t have affected her the way it had. Looking at Miss Eunice’s wedding dress wouldn’t have given her shivers. As well as a bout of unexpected nausea, if she were being completely honest.

She should have a few days to come up with a plan. As bad as her memory was these days, Miss Eunice had surely already forgotten about chicken and dumplings and lemon cake. What were the odds that she’d also forget that her grandson and Daisy were “engaged”? Daisy could hope, but the engagement seemed to be a thing Miss Eunice had grabbed on to, and she likely wasn’t going to let it go easily. There was such joy on her face as she planned a wedding that would never take place.

Jacob seemed to think he was humoring his grandmother by playing along—and by dragging Daisy into the family mess—but what would happen if Miss Eunice’s fantasy didn’t fade? Did he really expect that she would go through with a fake wedding ceremony at his family reunion? No, something had to break before that happened. This charade couldn’t go any further.

Much as she wanted to get Jacob out of her heart once and for all, Daisy knew very well that pretending to be his wife would shatter that heart beyond saving.

The morning was an easy one, until her eleven o’clock cut and color started talking about Jacob. She supposed it was inevitable that everyone would find out he was back, but you’d think people would have better manners! Not Amanda Williams, who had never met a silent moment she liked.

She started while Daisy was applying color to her hair.

“I hear Jacob Tasker is in town.”

Daisy made a noncommittal humming noise that sounded affirmative enough to her.

“I also heard that he was in your shop yesterday. Did he need a haircut or did he just stop by to chat? I’m sure none of the Taskers handles their own engine repair—they have people for that sort of thing. And really, why on earth would he want someone from Bell Grove to cut his hair?” She laughed, not realizing that she’d just insulted Daisy—Daisy, who had scissors and a variety of interesting hair dyes within reach. “Oh, you two were such a cute couple, back in the old days.” She barely took a breath, much less leave spaces in the conversation for Daisy to actually respond. Which was just as well, in Daisy’s opinion.

“Everyone always knew Jacob would light out of town as soon as he got the chance. He was always so smart, so driven to succeed. I didn’t think he’d go without you, though.”

Well, he did. Daisy wondered if it was too late to add some purple to the color she was putting on Amanda’s honey-blond hair. Maybe a Mohawk …

“I hear he looks good. Is he married, do you know? Still working for that same company that hired him right out of college? I haven’t heard much about him for a couple of years, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

He looks damn good, I don’t know for certain if he’s married or not but I don’t think so and last time I checked he was still working for that soulless money-hungry company that stole him out from under me. “I need you to sit under the dryer, now,” Daisy said.

Sadly the noise of the dryer didn’t shut Amanda up. She raised her voice and continued, thankfully moving on to the other Taskers. Sure, a beauty shop was a great place to gossip, but Amanda’s rambling made Daisy wonder what the residents of Bell Grove had been saying about her lately. All gossip concerning Daisy Bell probably began with “That poor girl, bless her heart …”

She didn’t want to be a poor girl, didn’t want people to bless her heart behind her back. What the hell had she done to herself? Mari and Lily didn’t need her anymore. Well, they needed her as a sister and she’d always be there for them, but her years as guardian were behind her. She loved Bell Grove, loved her job and her friends, but she no longer had her sisters as a barrier keeping her from pursuing romance. Maybe there wasn’t exactly a glut of handsome, available, appealing men in town, but not every man in the county was an ogre or a jerk. Why was she alone after all this time?

Jacob’s return was making her question everything! Just what she didn’t need: a man to screw with her head.