. .” Joe Bob muttered as he strode toward the felt-top table. “Why you got a slot machine in the middle of our playing area? What’s the matter with you, woman?”
She’d just wanted to break up all that empty green space. And after all, every good party table had a centerpiece.
“As long as real money comes out of it, I like it,” Dick said.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen you turn down a buck.” Joe Bob picked up the slot machine and dropped it unceremoniously on the sofa, then turned to Anna. “Where’s the snacks?”
Anna’s heart started beating rapidly, her lower lip threatened to start trembling, and her eyelids started to sting. She didn’t want to admit she’d burned the cake in front of all of Joe Bob’s friends. “I was expecting you to be more thirsty than hungry at this hour,” she said. “I restocked the whole bar. Can I get you a drink?”
“Don’t tell me you burned the cake?” Joe Bob said.
Anna flushed.
“Never mind,” Judge Hooper said. “I already had dinner.”
“Me too,” Dick chimed in.
“Well I ain’t,” Joe Bob said. “Anna, you run on out and get us a pizza, all right?”
“All right,” she said.
She left just as Police Chief Scott, Mayor Fillion, and a couple of other men were arriving.
Once inside the safety and relative privacy of her car and surrounded by the open road, she let a few tears fall from her eyes. Just a few. It wouldn’t be a good idea to indulge in unseemly emotions out in public.
Of course Joe Bob wasn’t the perfect husband. But he had always given her so much—he always made sure she had the best dresses and the best house in the neighborhood, and he was always sending her into Houston for overnight spa vacations and shopping trips. All the other neighborhood ladies were so jealous. So if she didn’t often receive the affection from him she felt like she needed, she couldn’t really complain. After all, he was a man, and she couldn’t blame him for bottling up his feminine side.
Really, she figured she had done pretty well snagging Joe Bob. It was too much to expect to find an absolutely perfect man. They just didn’t exist. She and Joe Bob had been married and faithful to each other for over 30 years, ever since she was crowned the Kettle beauty queen her senior year in high school. Sure, maybe she sometimes longed for a man with a softer side, but she and Joe Bob had such a solid history, and she would never throw that away or betray his trust. Even if he sometimes hurt her feelings, her eye had never really strayed. She loved Joe Bob, and Joe Bob only, and she was sure he felt the same way about her.
All that notwithstanding, she’d have some strong words for him after all the guests left tonight. He’d been late to an event he knew she’d been planning and looking forward to for ages, and then he’d embarrassed her in front of his friends. That would never do.
CHAPTER 7
Nash walked me to my front door. I was unclear on the protocol. I knew it hadn’t been a date, but he was hovering awfully close. I thought maybe he might even lean in for a hug, if not a kiss, but given the fact that I knew I was about to break the law for the second time that day, I stepped back.
“Well,” he said. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “For nothing.” Nash had frustrated me to no end. It was hard on my already bruised ego. It made me feel like being rude. Not the best way to be, I’ll admit, but I hated feeling like an ineffective, pansy pushover.
“Nothing?” Nash ran his hands through his hair in a way that might have seemed self-conscious, if it were possible for Nash to feel such an emotion. “How about for dinner? If it weren’t for me, you’d be eating Ramen.”
“A temporary inconvenience,” I said.
“I have no doubt.”
He lingered. I could hear Lucy scratching at the door, impatient for me to come inside.
“Have a good night,” I said, shifting my weight back and forth on my feet uncomfortably.
“You too.”
We shook hands, and he left.
When I went inside, Lucy seemed unusually perturbed. She was always excited for me to come home, but tonight, she seemed more hyper than usual. She danced around, eyes bulging, tongue lolling out. She was shaking, kind of like she does when a