I stumbled, having trouble keeping up with him, both his long stride and the rapid subject changes. He opened the door and guided me inside, keeping our hands linked as he pulled the door shut behind us and turned the bolt.
“Shelly said she’d close up the garage,” he called to Beau, who was just setting three coffee mugs on the counter. “She doesn’t want any of these mystery muffins and I didn’t try to talk her out of her poor decision.”
“More for us,” Beau agreed with a grin.
“Exactly.”
I shook my head at the two brothers. “Y’all need to learn how to share.”
Cletus turned his gaze on me, his eyes darting from my chin to my forehead before moving between mine. “Sharing is overrated.”
“I agree,” Beau approved cheerfully. “Who wants coffee?”
Cletus brought us even with the front of the counter, whereas Beau was standing on the other side. He pulled the plate of muffins to the center of the tabletop. “Is it decaf? I don’t want to be up all night.”
“It is,” Beau confirmed, already filling his cup.
“Jenn?” Cletus prompted, “Do you want any?”
“Yes, please.”
“How do you take your coffee?” Beau set out a bowl of sugar.
“Black is fine.”
Beau and Cletus exchanged a glance, then they both turned identical questioning looks on me.
“You don’t take anything in your coffee?” Cletus asked.
“No. I’m surrounded by sweets all day. I like my coffee black.”
“Huh . . .” Beau studied me, like I’d revealed something important about myself. Then, out of the blue, he said, “Jennifer Sylvester, you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”
I stared blankly at Beau, frustration and disappointment warring with feelings of being flattered. During my date with Billy, when he had called me gorgeous, I experienced similar emotions. Like any normal person, I appreciated compliments about my exterior, but they also just felt like confirmation that my father was right. My outside was what people were interested in, and that my face and body determined my value.
Cletus stiffened beside me but said nothing. When I glanced at him his expression was carefully blank.
“Oh, thank you, Beau,” I said, trying to focus on the positive. It had been a very nice compliment, even if it had been in reference to something that wasn’t even really about me. I had no control over the color and shape of my eyes.
“No, thank you.” His spreading grin was both sweet and seductive. “You should come with us on Saturday. I’ll drive you.”
“Where are you going?”
“Cletus and Claire tried out over the summer and made it to the semifinals in a big-deal talent show. Saturday is the last round. There’ll be record labels, the whole nine yards.”
I eyeballed Cletus. He maintained his air of determined inscrutability and took a gulp of his coffee.
I couldn’t read Cletus’s thoughts on the matter, and I didn’t want to overstep. “I appreciate the invitation, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be imposing.” This assurance came from Cletus and he paired it with a soft smile. “If you want to come, you should come.”
“Good.” Beau nodded, grinning at me happily. “It’s a date.”
“It’s not a date,” Cletus contradicted, casting a frown at Beau.
I didn’t know if he realized it, but Cletus was still holding my hand and his grip tightened as he challenged his brother. He’d linked our fingers together and held my palm pressed against his thigh. His hands were magnificent, strong, and beautiful. A thrilling current of energy raced up my arm at the contact.
“Not you, dummy. Me.” Beau wrinkled his nose at Cletus and grabbed a muffin. “Jenn and me.”
“Jenn and you?” Cletus looked and sounded mystified.
“That’s right.” Beau spoke around a bite of muffin, then moaned, looking at me. “What the hell did you put in these things?” He chewed, finished the first muffin with one more bite, then grabbed a second. “When we get married, you should make these every day.”
I smirked at this, because years of people watching meant I knew how Beau operated. He was a shameless flirt.
“Slow your gourd, Beauford.” Cletus pulled the plate farther away from Beau, his voice rising with irritation. “Don’t eat the whole plate, greedy britches.”
“There are at least twenty muffins here, Cletus. Slow your own gourd.”
“I want them to last,” he argued.
“Or, she could just make more. Because, I have to tell you, Jenn, I’ve never had a muffin this good before.” Beau pointed a remarkably attractive and flirtatious smile at me; it was one I recognized well from every time he attempted to put the moves on Darlene Simmons. His voice was deep with lurid suggestiveness.
However, and sadly, his suggestiveness—the real meaning behind his words—mostly flew over my head. I hazarded a guess, but decided to look up how a muffin might be a euphemism for intimacy.
“Hey, hey. Switch off the high beams, Beauford Winston.” Cletus snapped his fingers in front of Beau’s face. “Jennifer isn’t one of your lady prospects.”
Beau lifted a dismissive eyebrow at Cletus, then slid his eyes back to me, mischief written all over his features. He winked. “I was just complimenting her muffin.”
“That’s it.” Cletus grabbed the plate of muffins, administering a severe glare of disapproval to his younger brother, and turned back to the office door, bringing me along with him where our hands were linked.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
“You’ve lost the right to these muffins.”
“Cletus,” Beau’s shout was ripe with strangled frustration, “you can’t have all the muffins.”
“I can and I will,” he called over his shoulder, then tilted his chin toward the bolt. “Jenn, unlock that for me, please.”
Flustered, I obliged and he pushed the door open with his elbow.
“When you get home, you and I are going to have words.” Anger seeped into Beau’s tone and the unexpectedness of it had me turning back to Cletus’s brother. His usually friendly gaze was harsh with fury.
Cletus hesitated, a deep crease appearing between his eyebrows, and then he turned his glare on his brother. “Beauford Fitzgerald Winston, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. But you need to sort it out. I’m giving you a month.”
With that, Cletus steered us out of the office and left his brother to stew.
CHAPTER 15
“But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within.”
Paulo Coelho, Adultery
~Jennifer~
Cletus and I spent a long twenty minutes in complete silence.
We left the auto shop in my car, but he drove. He drove north on the Parkway for about fifteen minutes. The autumn colors streaked by in a blur of yellows, oranges, and stubborn greens against a crisp blue sky. Less often, I’d spot a sourwood with leaves that appeared purple.
They weren’t purple; they were burgundy. But few people took the time to really look, so the leaves were called violet and that was that.
Eventually, he took an unmarked turnoff and another five minutes passed. At first, I was quiet because he was quiet, and the events of the late afternoon deserved contemplation. But after contemplating and finding all my conclusions reached nonsensical dead-ends, I broke the silence.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
His eyes cut to mine, then moved back to the road. He readjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “There’s this spot up here I want to investigate.”
“Oh. What kind of spot?”
“A stream. Jethro told me about it. It’s a short hike, but since you’re in sneakers I thought we’d check it out.”
“Sounds good.” Despite feeling excited, I arranged my features into a mask of polite interest. My brother and I used to go hiking when we were kids, but I hadn’t been hiking in years.
“Afterward I’ll take you home,” he said, though it sounded like he was talking to himself.
“How will you get home?” I asked just as the small paved road became a gravel one.
“I have my ways,” he said.
Cletus’s middle name wasn’t “Evasive”, but it should have been.
Another few hundred feet and Cletus pulled us to one side and parked.
“Do you have any room over there? Can you climb out this side?” He eyeballed the foliage pressed against my window.
“Yeah, I can climb out the driver’s side.”
I made quick work of it, glad I was in my sneakers and jeans so I didn’t have to worry about inadvertently flashing him.
Once we were both out of the car and he’d locked it, Cletus pointed to a trailhead some thirty feet away. “It’s just there. I’ll go in first. Jethro said the ground can be uneven.”
“I see it. That’s fine.”
I walked alongside him, turning once to look back at my car and our hands bumped. I jerked mine away instinctively, earning me a frowning side-eye from Cletus.
“Are you sure you want to come along? I can come back later on my own.”