“That which does not kill us, and all that . . .” She smiled.
“You should be able to shoulder a full-grown longhorn steer if that’s the case.” He held his bottle toward her. She retrieved hers and touched it to his.
“To nothing but good luck in the future,” he said.
“I agree.”
“Okay, then, looking toward the future. Will you go to dinner with me on Friday night after you get off work?”
Had she heard him right? She’d just been thinking about going out with him and then, less than a minute later, he asked. Could he read her mind?
“We are about to get knee-deep in wedding stuff. A rain check?” She needed a little more time to think, even if she had already let the idea flutter through her mind.
“After the wedding, we’ll celebrate getting through it all by going to dinner, then. We won’t get many more pleasant evenings like this. Pretty soon even the nights won’t drop below the nineties and it will be too hot to sit out here.”
“This old swing has seen me work out problems in the heat, too.”
“Then here’s to lots of evenings on this swing.” He smiled. “I really like spending time with you, Vicky.”
“Likewise,” she said.
“Good, that’s a step in the right direction.”
“For what?”
“Hopefully, a relationship when things settle down, but a friendship until then,” he answered.
“I’d like that.” She nodded.
He stood up and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “I should be going now. Please, call me if you want to talk or if you want me to drive up here. I’ll be on my way.”
“Thanks, Andy.” She smiled for the first time, and it lightened her whole attitude.
Shane wrapped his hand over Jancy’s in the middle of the wide bench seat in the 1958 Chevrolet he’d been restoring for years. He’d put the top down and they were both leaning back, looking at the twinkling stars circling around the faintest sliver of the moon.
“If they gave out crowns for the luckiest girl in the whole world, I’d be wearing it tonight,” she said.
“And if there w-was one—” he started.
She put her fingers over his lips. “You’d already have it.”
He captured her fingers in his hand and kissed each one. “Ryder says I don’t have m-much self-esteem, but wh-when I’m w-with you, I feel like I’m on top of the w-world.”
“Amen.” She grinned. “Me, too, when I’m with you. Can we leave the top down when we go?” she asked.
“Anything you want,” he told her.
With wrecked cars all around her and a sky full of stars above her, Jancy’s future had never looked so amazing. “I guess it’s time to take you home,” he finally said. “I don’t want Vicky or Nettie to get the wrong idea.”
“Which is?” She locked gazes with him.
“I respect you, Jancy, and I want to do things right by you.” He was as serious as a sinner on judgment day.
A man who treated Jancy Wilson with kid gloves. Well, that was sure the first in all her twenty-two years. “You are one of a kind, Shane.” She scooted across the seat and kissed him.
With one hand on the back of her head to brace it firmly and the other around her shoulders, he spun one kiss into another, each one getting hotter and hotter until they were both panting.
Finally, he pulled back and traced her jawline with his finger. “I think I just tasted heaven.”
“As hot as that was, darlin’, I believe maybe we’ve been singed by the fires of hell,” she laughed.
He chuckled down deep in his chest. “You got that right. Now let’s leave our limo and go get in the pickup so I can take you home.”
He said “our,” not “mine,” not “this” limo but “our,” she thought.
Nettie came in the kitchen door. One of her church friends had given her a ride home that evening. The kitchen light was on and a couple of empty beer bottles plus a dirty plate rested on the counter, which said at least two folks had been drinking. Probably Jancy and Shane had come home early and Vicky had let him have those last two tarts left over from the diner.
She poured a cup of cold coffee and heated it in the microwave. Carrying it through the living room and outside to the porch, she found Vicky on the swing and Jancy sitting on the porch with her back against a post.
Vicky motioned with a wave of her hand. “Have a seat. How did your meeting go?”
“Same-O, same-O,” Nettie said. “I’ll send half a dozen sheet cakes to the bazaar. They’ll cut them up in squares to sell for a dollar a piece. We decided to hold it after church on the first Sunday in September. Folks will stop by and buy on their way home, and we could make more for our scholarship fund that way. Everyone wanted to fuss over me like I was on death’s door. I was glad to see the evening end.”
“And the newest gossip?” Vicky asked.
“You know without askin’ that it’s all about the wedding. Haven’t seen this much juicy rumor stuff in years. Folks is wondering how you are doing with all this—her marryin’ Ryder and you bein’ a grandma.” Where had the time gone, anyway? It was only yesterday that Emily started kindergarten. In another six years, her child would be getting ready for his or her first days of school. Suddenly Nettie felt very old. “Then there’s the stuff with Jancy and Shane to top it off.”
“Me and Shane?” Jancy asked.
“Shane is the town sweetheart. Don’t hurt him or you’ll suffer the wrath of all the old ladies in town,” Nettie said. “Where is Emily?”
“With Ryder,” Vicky said.
“Andy came tonight,” Jancy said.
Nettie gave the swing another push with her foot. “So spit it out. What did Andy want?”
“To go out to dinner sometime after the wedding,” Vicky answered.
“And?” Nettie asked.
“We’re friends right now,” Vicky said.
“But he kissed her on the forehead before he left,” Jancy tattled.
Vicky rolled her eyes toward the sky. “Friends can give each other a peck on the check or the forehead. That’s all it was. Friends can go out to dinner together,” Vicky said. “I don’t have time for romance, Nettie. Besides, who wants a relationship with a grandmother?”
“You look like a bag lady. Please tell me that you changed into that after he left,” Nettie said, ignoring the question altogether.
“He caught me sittin’ in the swing just like this. Barefoot, shorts, and hair in braids. I couldn’t very well jump up and go change into a ball gown, could I?”
Nettie got so tickled that she nearly shot coffee out her nose. “I don’t imagine your senior prom dress would have impressed him any more than those skimpy shorts.” She wiped at the coffee stains on her shirt with a hankie that she pulled from the pocket of her jeans. “Jancy, tell me about your date with Shane.”