“More than likely, but I was thinking of the one that has us getting hitched. We’re not there yet.” She shrugged in a casual way she hoped would reassure him. “We might never be there.”
Instead of looking relieved, J.C. frowned at her determinedly light tone. “Then this is just a fling to you?”
“No,” she said patiently. “I told you I’m up for more of the same. I think that implies something that continues for an indefinite period of time.”
“Until someone better comes along?” he prodded.
For an instant, she was taken aback by the bitter note in his voice until it hit her that leaving was exactly what he expected the women in his life to do. It’s what his mother had done, what his wife had done. She reached for his hand.
“J.C., tonight was amazing. The past few weeks have been really good. I’m hopeful that there’s even more good, possibly even great, and a whole lot of amazing on the horizon. I’m not anticipating an ending before we really get started. You shouldn’t, either. That’s not to say it couldn’t end, but it won’t be because I’m not giving it all I have to give. If you can’t do the same, then maybe we should write tonight off as just one of those things.”
“I don’t want to write off anything,” he declared, a note of impatience in his voice. He drew in a deep breath. “I’m all in, for the duration.”
“Brave man,” she praised.
He frowned at her. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“When you want out, you’ll tell me. You won’t let me find out some other way.”
She knew he was thinking about the way he’d discovered his wife in bed with another man.
“I promise I will always be straight with you,” she said solemnly. “But I can tell you right now that you might have to wait a long, long time before I go anywhere, if ever.”
He smiled at that, his relief touchingly evident. “Sounds good to me.”
Laura was in her classroom after hours the next day when Sarah McDonald came charging in with Raylene and Annie right on her heels.
“You are not going to believe what Mariah Litchfield has been up to today,” Sarah said, practically quivering with indignation. “I’d have been here sooner, but I was tied up at the radio station, and then I had to track down Raylene and Annie to see what they’d heard before we came to fill you in.”
Laura sighed and set down the pen she’d been using to grade papers. “Tell me,” she said, resigned.
“She showed up at the radio station this morning and wanted Travis to put her on the air so she could talk about the vicious campaign being waged against her precious daughter. Want to guess who’s at the top of her hit list?”
“Betty Donovan and me, I imagine,” Laura said.
“Bingo,” Sarah said triumphantly. “I wanted to wring her scrawny neck.”
“What did Travis do?” Laura asked.
“Showed her the door, thank goodness,” Sarah said. “If he’d so much as cracked open the door to the studio, I’d have wrung his neck, too. He took one look at me and knew it.”
“I suppose she feels she has to try to defend her daughter’s inexcusable behavior,” Laura said. “She’s desperate to launch an offensive PR campaign before it’s too late to rehabilitate her daughter’s reputation. Catfighting that goes to the extreme the way it did with Annabelle is not an attractive trait. I imagine Mariah recognizes that the sympathy is all going to be on Misty’s side.”
“Don’t you dare defend her,” Raylene said. “Her next stop was Wharton’s, where she tried to put a bug in Grace’s ear. I heard every word, just as she’d intended. Everyone in the place did. It was all about how everyone was misjudging poor Annabelle, and Misty was the real culprit.”
“Was anyone buying it?” Laura asked, her heart in her throat.
“Not for a second,” Raylene said. “Especially not after Grace finished ripping into Mariah for turning her daughter into a spoiled, entitled brat.”
Raylene lowered her voice to mimic Grace when she got worked up. “‘Mariah Litchfield, absolutely nobody’s going to care if that child of yours has the voice of an angel, if she’s behaving like the devil’s handmaiden. You need to stop this nonsense right now.’”
Raylene grinned. “The whole place erupted into cheers after that. I have to say it made me proud to be a part of this community and glad for Carrie and Mandy’s sakes that we’re taking a stand against bullying. I’d hate to have something like this happen to either of my stepdaughters.”