“It was you? Well, it all makes sense now. You bein’ a software developer.”
“Well, not me, but I’m guilty by association. I was in a bad place when he called me and asked me to help, so I referred him to a buddy of mine. I feel stupid for not making the connection. Swear it was all on the up-and-up, though. Caine just said he was doing something to win back the woman he thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. I didn’t pry.”
A bad place was all she garnered from his confession. “So you know the rest of the story, then?” Somehow in her excitement over retelling the tale, she’d moved closer to him, let her fingers curl into his.
Jax brought his fingers to his chin and rubbed them against the accumulation of dark stubble. “There’s more?”
“All that time we thought he was locked away in his office, building his clientele, he was really devisin’ a plan to win Dixie back. He was calling her line and pretending to be someone else entirely so he could get to know the newly changed, not so mean girl anymore Dixie.”
Jax whistled. “Wait. Dixie was a mean girl? Dixie Davis?”
She grinned, her eyes skimming his. It was so much easier to talk Dixie. “The meanest. Anyway, that’s how Caine reacquainted himself with her.”
Jax grumbled his approval. “Smooth. Very smooth. Gotta give it to Caine, he knows what he wants. Must have been something to see.”
“I can verify, as their court-appointed mediator, it was a sight to see. The two of them always trying to one-up each other. But it all worked out in the end, and they’re happy now.”
“Bet there was no funny stuff while they were on your watch. You can be pretty forceful.”
Her cheeks grew hot. She was a bag of hot air. All bluster, no substance. It was all just a show so people wouldn’t feel sorry for poor, divorced-by-her-cheating-husband Em. “The girls call it my stern teacher’s voice.”
“I never had a teacher that looked like you.”
“I’m convinced there was funny stuff from the two of those devils, and I just wasn’t clever enough to find them out. But make no mistake, Dixie and Caine were a handful.”
“And now they’re in love and getting married. It’s good to see Caine so happy.”
“Dixie, too. Life’s funny, isn’t it?”
“And Landon was responsible for all of that?”
“Did you know Landon?”
“Only met him a few times when he came to see Caine back in college. Nice guy. Bought us all a steak dinner and tickets to the Falcons game.”
“Landon was one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever known. Kind, loyal—”
“And a little eccentric, if I remember right.”
Em laughed with the fond memories Landon had left in his wake. “Yes. He was all that and more. Some people say he was crazy. But I choose to believe he was crazy about love, and life, and when he knew his was ending, he decided to ensure Dixie’s and Caine’s futures. So he threw them together in the one way he knew they’d never be able to resist just so they could find each other again. It’s probably the most romantic gesture I’ve ever witnessed. How many people do you have in your life that would go to such extremes, from the grave no less, to do something like that for you?”
“He sounds like he was something else.”
Em’s eyes grew watery remembering Landon. “I spent some time with him...in the end before he passed, taking care of things for him, getting Dixie here for the reading of his will. I can’t ever seem to put into words his kind of generosity. How...how hard he loved everyone in his life. I didn’t know him much growing up—he was two years older than me and always with Dixie and Caine—but it didn’t take long for me to recognize, Landon knew his heart. He knew how to love people, and he knew how to show it.”
Jax sat still, his eyes on her face, his fingers moving over her arm.
Too intense. Too intimate. Way to frighten the man while you’re just bein’ you. She drew her hand back, embarrassed by her obsession with a romantic tale. “Sorry. I’m just a silly romantic who loves a happy ending. Sometimes I get carried away.”
Jax pulled it back into his grasp and held it there. “Personally, I think it’s attractive on you. Especially the way your eyes light up when you talk about it. It sounds like you grew to love him as much as everyone else seemed to. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
His approval was so warm in her ears, so unlike Clifton’s disapproval when she found a cause she wanted to support, or became too loud in her defense of something, that was so intense she had to change the subject.