Mayor of Macon's Point - By Inglath Cooper Page 0,70
at Annie’s feet and galloped to the front door.
“Off, Cyrus,” J.D. said. “Down, boy.”
Annie pictured J.D. flattened to the foyer wall, Cyrus’s paws planted on his chest in greeting. Good boy, Cyrus.
The three of them straggled into the kitchen then, Tommy’s cheeks reddened by an afternoon outdoors, the look on his face one of such happiness that Annie teetered under the realization of how much he loved his father. Somehow, she had to keep her own agenda with J.D. separate from that. Tommy’s need for his father’s attention was something she was never going to be able to fill.
“Hey, you two,” she said.
“Mama, you’ll never believe what all we did today!”
“So tell me,” Annie said.
“We went to the Dairy Queen, and I got two orders of fries and an extra-large Coke!”
Annie smiled and raised her eyebrows, threw a look at J.D., who shrugged, innocent as ever. He looked a little rumpled around the edges. His short blond hair needed an appointment with a comb, and his white Hugo Boss T-shirt had a ketchup stain on the pocket.
Fatherhood did not come naturally to J.D.
Another image came to mind: Jack out in the backyard acting as pack pony for Tommy and his gang of friends. Don’t, Annie. Not a good place to go right now.
Annie put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, why don’t you go upstairs and change clothes before dinner?”
“’Kay,” Tommy said and sailed off.
J.D. came into the kitchen, leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Mmm, whatcha got cooking?”
“Beef and barley,” she said, picking up the spoon and giving it a stir.
Long pause. “Sounds great,” he said.
Wow. He really was trying. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“So have you thought about our talk last night, Annie?”
“A little.”
“And?”
“I think we should give it a try.”
J.D. smiled a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. He’d expected no less. Just the thought nearly made Annie toss the whole ridiculous farce just so she could tell him pigs would fly before she ever let him back into her life for good.
“That’s my girl,” he said, reaching out to twine a finger through her hair.
Annie stepped back, made a pretense of reaching in the back of a drawer for a spoon. “Don’t think this can just happen overnight, J.D.”
“I know we have a lot of water under our bridge, Annie. But you’ve always been the kind of woman who could forgive and forget.”
Doormat Annie again. The assessment made her steam inside and filled her with an urge to dunk his head in the pot of soup simmering on the stove.
“You had a visitor today,” he said.
Annie swung around, something in the tone of his voice setting off alarm bells. “Who?”
“Jack Corbin.”
Her heart did a three-sixty. She turned back to the stove. “Oh. What did he say?”
“Not too much. He didn’t look all that thrilled to see me here.”
Annie dipped out a spoonful of soup and sampled it, scorching her tongue, which she didn’t trust with words, anyway.
“I told him we were going to try to patch things up,” J.D. said.
Annie whirled around, soup flying from the spoon to splatter his ketchup-tarnished T-shirt. “You what?”
He glanced down as he flicked the spots off. And after a few moments, “Well, there’s no reason it should be a secret, is there?”
Annie put a clamp on her response while rebellion bucked inside her. Of all the absolute nerve! With his track record during their marriage, it surpassed all standards of arrogance for J.D. to go anywhere near the subject of her personal life when they were divorced. Divorced!
She popped open the cupboard door beside the stove and pulled out a bowl, filling it with soup. “Sit down, J.D.,” she said in a sugar-infused voice. “Dinner’s ready.”
* * *
JACK DROVE OUT to the factory feeling as if he’d walked into a stone wall.
Annie was getting back together with J.D.
How could that be?
After last night—
And yet he’d seen the man standing in her house with his own eyes. Heard him say the words with his own ears.
When he was with Annie, for the first time in his life, he’d been blindsided by proof that maybe he’d been wrong all these years. He had never felt for anyone what he felt when he looked at Annie. As if he’d been given new eyes to see the world with, as if he could do things that he’d previously had no ability to do and filled him with hope for things that had never before seemed possible.
He’d woken up this morning to the certainty that he wanted