Wednesday morning, Zack set himself up with a cup of coffee on his back patio. He’d seen One-Two-Shelby come and go yesterday while he was working on his cabinets, but he hadn’t talked to her.
Mostly because the more he thought about threatening to kiss her, the more he wanted to follow through. Single mothers weren’t usually his thing. He liked kids and had a horde of nieces and nephews he loved to spoil rotten when he visited. But kids of his own? Nah. He’d let his sisters and brother have them.
Zack had plans. He was going to see the world. He was expecting orders to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska any day now. In another seven years, he’d have not only his retirement pension but the rental income from this house and the one he’d bought at his last assignment in Oklahoma.
And then he’d be off.
It had been his plan since the summer he was eight years old, when his parents had scrimped and saved to take the whole family to Colorado for vacation. He might’ve been only eight, but those mountains had spoken to him. There’s more to the world than the wheat fields of Illinois, those mountains had told him.
And they’d been right.
He would’ve gone into photo journalism if he could’ve afforded school and the equipment. Instead, he’d enlisted in the Air Force straight out of high school. Over the last thirteen years, Uncle Sam had paid for him to slowly earn his bachelor’s degree in business, along with helping him knock a few countries off his bucket list, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Zack had taken himself to a few other countries, along with nearly every state in the U.S.
In seven more years, he’d be off to conquer the rest of the world.
No room for attachments there, so he left single mothers alone.
But he’d broken this single mother’s arm, and ever since he’d threatened to kiss her, he’d had those lips of hers on his mind. So when Penelope came barreling out the back door Wednesday morning with her owner hot on her heels, Zack tried—and failed—to not smile behind his coffee cup.
The magnolia still looked funny with its lower branches gone. One-Two-Shelby was halfway through the yard when she stopped on a dime. Her lips parted, her head tilted at the tree as if she’d forgotten the branches were gone too, and then she shot a glance at his house.
His yard.
Him.
He lifted his coffee cup. “Morning. How’s the arm?”
“Still attached,” she said.
He wondered if she was as spunky when she was asleep as she was when she was awake. Wasn’t hard to picture her rolling over, mumbling a bless your heart over someone snoring beside her, or taking too many covers, or doing God only knew what in her dreams.
“Doc gonna put you in a cast?” Zack asked.
She gave him a jerky nod. “Once the swelling is down.” She looked at the dog, who was doing her business on Shelby’s other side. “Be good today, Penelope.” She turned toward the house.
Zack stood and ambled toward the fence, coffee cup still in hand. “You need a ride anywhere?” he called. “I’m off all week.”
“Aren’t you the sweetest thing,” she said over her shoulder, still retreating.
He heard the but I don’t need help coming before she said it.
For reasons he couldn’t fully understand, that irritated the shit out of him. “Don’t forget sexy too.” He settled his arms on the fence support between the top links and winked at her.
Two bright pink spots appeared high on her cheeks. “That may be, Sergeant Sugarbuns, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to your gentlemanly offer.”
“Now that’s funny,” Zack said. “My sisters say gentlemanly and sexy go hand in hand, and we’re not even Southern.”
Her lips parted.
“You think I should change my tactics?” he asked.
“To…to be sexier?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I meant to be more helpful, but if you think I could be sexier—”
“I have two little kids and I still remember where they came from.” She took a giant step backward and nearly tripped over a tree root. He lunged forward, as if he could catch her from half a yard away, but she pointed her good hand at him. “You stay on your side of the fence, and I won’t have to show you what my daddy taught me to do with a shotgun.”
First a chainsaw, and now he was getting half hard at the thought of her wielding a shotgun. “You shoot? For real? Or are you faking?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m Southern to the core, Sergeant Honey Muffins. We don’t fake anything.”
She was far from the first woman to tell him she didn’t fake it, but she was the first one off-limits. He shifted his stance in case her daddy’s shotgun was within easy reach of her back door. Even one-armed, he had a feeling she could hit her target. “You hunt, or just do target shooting?”
“I do what needs doing.”
“You fish too?”
“Hon, I don’t even do catch and release. Like I said, I still remember where my babies came from.”
“Didn’t mean that kind of fishing,” he said over his coffee cup.
“Sure you didn’t, Sergeant Sexy Strut.”
The woman was quick as a whip and funny as hell. And he needed to do his Sexy Strut to take his Sugar Muffins back safely inside his own house before he got any more intrigued by this single mother.
But her kids weren’t here. And he was leaving about as soon as he had orders in hand. So he turned his coffee mug and gave her as innocent a smile as he could manage. “All right, no hunting, no fishing,” he said. “What do you do for fun?”
“I yell at other people’s kids instead of my own.” She widened her stance and gave him a look that told him in no uncertain terms that she thought he was an idiot. “There’s no time for fun. There’s time for work, time for being mom, and time for sleeping. I tried playing softball for fun, and this is what happened.” She waved her splinted arm, still in the white sling, at him. “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to take myself up to Atlanta and see a show at the Fox. I’d like to go down to the beach with a stack of books. I’d like to go over to Savannah and take a trolley tour and watch the barges go up and down the river. But instead, I’m fixin’ to take myself to work, then go get a cast on my arm. All because I got myself pregnant two months before I graduated college and then I married the guy because I thought he loved me more than he felt responsible for me, and I’ve spent the last six years losing myself being married to a stranger to the point where I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore, and I can’t go anywhere because I have two babies who might need me. So you go on about your merry way and have a nice day, and thank you for asking after little ol’ me, but as you can see, I’m busy as a bee in spring.”
Zack straightened. “Shelby—”
But she was gone, dashing back into her house, herding the dog with her, and slamming the door shut.
This was exactly why he didn’t date single mothers.
The baggage.
But he stood at that fence, staring at her back door anyway, because it wasn’t his fault her marriage failed, and it wasn’t his fault she had children, and it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t go anywhere, but he wanted to take her somewhere anyway.
Maybe he felt bad because he’d broken her arm. Maybe because he’d seen her herding her kids enough in the last two months to know she worked hard and deserved a break. Or maybe because he’d want someone to treat his sisters to a night away if they were in Shelby’s situation.
But more likely, it was because she was strong-willed and funny and quick on her feet. She’d make a journey more fun.
Unpredictable.
Exciting.
New.
Zack couldn’t take a weekend away right now, and he hadn’t sought out a travel companion in years. Not since his high school best friend gave up adventures in bachelorhood for adventures in marriage and fatherhood. Zack had been good with doing things on his own.
But today, he was sad to see that door shut. Because even stripping and painting cabinets would’ve been an adventure with someone like Shelby overseeing it.
And that was a sad state of affairs.