“In the flesh.” Treble gestured toward the bar area and a row of tall narrow tables. “I passed him when I came over to say hello.”
Ronnie had to look twice to make sure, but, yes, there was Jason McDeere, standing at one of the tables. What was he doing here? She’d been doing her best to keep the blues at bay, but if Jason were here on a date…There were two drinks on the table in front of Jason, but to her somewhat embarrassed relief, he seemed to be here with Coach Hanover, a forty-something man she knew mostly through his restoration of a classic ’55 Ford F-100.
“This is your chance!” Treble nudged her. “In case I haven’t said so before, you have excellent taste. He’s gorgeous.”
Ronnie nodded. “None of the teachers looked like that when I was a sophomore.” Jason was somewhere between her height and that of her looming brothers. The lean, corded muscle was well defined in his arms, and the slim gold glasses he sometimes wore made his chiseled face even more masculine in contrast. He didn’t have them on tonight, she noticed.
“So?” Treble prompted.
Ronnie’s throat was so dry she could barely get her tongue unstuck from the roof of her mouth. “I wouldn’t know what to say.” With his quiet, reflective manner and literary profession, he was intriguingly different from her brothers and the other men she’d known all her life. My brothers! “Besides, Danny and Devin are both here. If they see me talking to Jason, they’ll be on him like white on rice, wanting to know his net worth and his intentions.”
Treble tilted her head, sending a cascade of dark spirals over one slim shoulder. “I know how protective they can be of you, but Danny seems nicely occupied with his wife and I don’t even see Devin anymore. It’s a thick crowd—seems like a good chance for a friendly hello without sibling interference. You want to know what I think?”
Ronnie grinned, despite the butterflies churning in her stomach like oversize mutant insects from an old grade-B horror movie. “Probably not.”
“I think that, given your home situation when you were younger—” the gentle empathy in Treble’s voice made it clear she was talking not just about the obnoxious brothers but about Ronnie’s mom being sick “—you missed out on some of the formative opportunities to flirt and date that most girls, myself included, took for granted. And now you feel so daunted at the prospect that you cling to Dev and Danny as an excuse not to learn.”
“That’s—” Ronnie broke off, closed her mouth, opened it again, then finally admitted defeat with a quick shake of her head. “That’s annoyingly insightful.”
“Well, back in Atlanta, I did have my own radio advice show, remember?” These days, Treble co-anchored a regional cable morning show. It would never make her famous, but she seemed happy with her life.
Ronnie blew out a puff of air. When was the last time she’d felt truly happy? She was content, but that wasn’t the same. Having lived her whole life in Joyous, she loved the town and the people in it—her friends, her family—but lately she’d had the growing, restless awareness of wanting more. Wanting…Almost involuntarily, her gaze strayed back to Jason McDeere. He looked up, and for just a heartbeat, their eyes met.
A potent zing went through her body. Then someone moved between them, and the moment was gone. Still, her reaction had been powerful enough to brook no doubt: she wanted Jason McDeere.
Ronnie squared her shoulders. “All right,” she told Treble. “Pretend I’m someone who called in to your show for advice. Do you have any magical secrets for making me more…” What kind of woman did a man like Jason even want?
Experimentally, Ronnie tried to imagine what his wife had been like, but no one in town knew anything about her—only that newly divorced Jason had moved here to live with his grandmother and pick up the pieces of his life for himself and his daughter. Unfortunately, Sophie McDeere, a woman liked by all who’d known her, had passed away this winter. A wave of sympathy washed over Ronnie, nearly as forceful as the attraction she’d felt.
“You want me to start with the bare basics?” Treble asked.
“Use small words. And, if you want me to be able to concentrate, you should probably stand in my line of vision.” She couldn’t help stealing another peek at Jason. Despite Treble’s can-do attitude, Ronnie suspected that any romantic involvement between her and Jason McDeere was nothing more than a pipe dream.
Yet, acknowledging that fact did remarkably little to slow her racing pulse.
“AHA!” COACH HANK HANOVER snapped his beefy fingers; he was the track coach for Joyous High, but his build was reminiscent of football. “I know the perfect woman.”
“But—”
“Becca Gibbons, two o’clock. She’s looked over at you a couple of times now.”
Jason McDeere wasn’t surprised the coach steamrolled over his objection. After all, Hank had once invited Jason and Emily for a barbecue that had turned out to be a blind-date ambush. Jason had overheard Caren Hanover just last month, insisting to her husband that they had to “find a good woman for that sweet man and his poor little girl.” With Gran gone, it was as if the townspeople of Joyous had adopted him and were determined to improve his life…whether he wanted their help or not.
“Becca’s the blonde in that group over there,” Coach was saying. “Real nice gal, damn shame about her husband taking up with that woman from Nashville. Becca’s a single mom, so y’all have plenty in common. Come on, you couldn’t ask for a prettier dance partner!”
“I thought we came to play darts,” Jason said. At least, that was the thin pretext used to get him here, though they hadn’t been closer than fifty feet to the dartboard since they arrived.
Earlier, there’d been a pizza dinner at the Hanover house for the boys’ and girls’ track teams. Jason was an unofficial chaperone who knew most of the kids because he sometimes ran with the teams for exercise. The teenage girls had fussed over how cute Emily was, and, as the party wound down, his daughter had fallen asleep in the study during a Shrek showing. Caren had thrown her husband meaningful glances and Jason had allowed himself to be talked into a quick drink and round of darts.
“She’ll be fine here for an hour,” Caren had said, tucking a quilt around his daughter’s shoulders. “Go out with Hank, take some ‘you’ time.”
It was true that he hadn’t indulged in much of a social life since Sophie’s passing: Yet now that he stood in noisy Guthrie Dance Hall, where it seemed everyone but him had known one another since kindergarten, he couldn’t believe he’d let himself get conned into another attempt to introduce him to eligible women.
“I’m sure Becca’s lovely,” Jason said, “but we’ve finished our drinks and should probably head back to your place.”
The coach looked crestfallen. “You haven’t danced with anybody yet.”
“Hank, I appreciate the thought, but there’s already a female in my life whom I love with my whole heart.” In the past year and a half, Emily had been abandoned by her mother and moved to a new town, where she’d lost yet another maternal figure when Gran died in her sleep. His daughter needed time for her life to stabilize—his starting to date probably wasn’t the best way to achieve that.
“A female?” Hank was a good man, but subtlety was lost on him. He squinted at Jason in confusion. “You don’t mean your ex? ‘Cause I thought that was done.”
“It is. Completely.” Jason had worked his way through the initial denial and shock of Isobel’s departure to subsequent fury and eventual, faintly pitying, acceptance. He had no desire to pick at that particular emotional scab. “But just because I’m over her doesn’t mean I’m eager to start the search for the future Mrs. McDeere.”
“Okay, okay.” The other man held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Had to try,