Gin Fling (Bootleg Springs, #5)(3)



As a natural observer, I couldn’t get enough of the crowd.

“Did y’all hear that Moe Dailey’s bloodhound got loose again? Knocked up Lacey Dickerson’s purebred Shih Tzu,” Mrs. Varney shouted over the restaurant din. In deference to the sunny late spring morning, she was decked out in cropped black elastic waist pants that stopped just short of her boobs.

There were seven of us squeezed into a big corner booth at the back of the restaurant. I was the youngest by at least three decades.

“There’s something for your notes, Shelby.” Old Jefferson Waverly, the only male member of our gathering, poked a fork in my direction. “Bootleg Springs has a long memory and a fine appreciation for karma.”

“Mm-hmm.” The group nodded enthusiastically. They waited for me to write it down, and I obliged. I’d been adopted by The Breakfast Club—not to be confused with the Brunch Club—a collection of Bootleg elders who generally doled out advice and caused mischief. Especially on bingo nights.

I’d come to town with a very specific objective and quickly came to the realization that I wouldn’t be able to simply hang out on the sidelines and observe. No, this small town required full-contact participation before it would open its arms to an outsider. It was participant observation at its finest. I was Jane Goodall, and Bootleggers were my subjects.

They had tentatively accepted me as one of their own. Well, most of them had. There were a few outliers still holding out on me. But I’d wear them down. I always did.

By involving myself in town life, I’d gained more than just the insight I was looking for. These crafty neighbors took my original plan and narrow thesis, doused it with moonshine, then set it on fire.

At their behest, rather than conducting a few dozen or so face-to-face interviews, I’d built an online survey and made it available to the entire town as of two days ago. It included brief personality assessments, questions around how residents related to the larger community, as well as role identification tags and rating systems for compassion, social justice, and participation.

Essentially, my little nerd survey was designed to pick apart exactly who Bootleg Springs was made up of and why they worked so well together. The most recent shiny example of their community activism occurred when the town banded together to evict a crowd of overzealous, disrespectful journalists.

Those same residents were now helping me earn my doctorate one survey answer at a time.

“Guess they’ll have a litter of shithounds on their hands,” Granny Louisa mused. Her life partner, Estelle—black to Louisa’s lily white and genteel South Carolina to Louisa’s rough-and-tumble West Virginia—high-fived her.

“Better than havin’ bloodshits,” Jefferson cackled.

All around the table, good Southern ladies threw their napkins down and glared. Jefferson snickered.

“Anyway, serves her right for dumping that poor Jonah Jr. at the prom,” Gertrude, AKA Gram-Gram, commented while scooping up grits.

The rest of the table clucked their sympathy, voicing their concerns that the man would never find a decent mate. I made a few notes in my notebook. The elders of Bootleg Springs shared an interest in the love lives of what they deemed the “youngins.” Apparently with the pairing off three of the five Bodines, they were itching for a full house resolution.

The “poor” Jonah Jr. they were discussing was Jonah Bodine. Illegitimate son of the deceased Jonah Sr. and one of the holdouts who still didn’t think highly of me. He’d shown up in town days after his father’s funeral upon discovering from the obituary that he had four half-siblings. Jonah was, according to Myrt Crabapple, “the spittin’ image of his father and brothers.”

Which meant Jonah was very, very attractive.

He was tall. Lean. Strong. Muscular, but not in a steroidal way. He had an easy smile and eyes the color of the grass after a good rain. He was—here.

“Well, speak of the handsome devil,” Estelle said, pointing her bacon in the direction of the door.

My little nerd heart beat out an approving tempo.

He strolled inside in shorts and a sweaty t-shirt. I magnanimously decided not to take offense to the fact that my brunch companions had complained to high heaven about me showing up for our meal in my running clothes and my aches and pains that I tried to cover. They obviously didn’t have the same qualms about post-workout Jonah.

Every woman in the restaurant held her breath as he used the hem of his shirt to mop at his brow. That flash of abs had me bobbling my coffee cup against the saucer. The resounding clash tore eyes off Jonah’s very nice eight-pack and delivered them to my flushed face.

He dropped his shirt and looked at me. The friendly smile faded to stone. Strong jaw, subtle hollows under the Bodine cheekbones. Those eyes were cool, annoyed. My table mates took notice.

“Brrrr. Is it just me, or did it get real cold in here?” Mrs. Varney said in what she thought was a whisper.

I met Jonah’s blank stare with a bright smile. It said a lot for the man that he could dislike me intensely but still not bring himself to be rude.

Myrt waved him over, and I saw him hesitate for a moment. His negative feelings toward me seemed to be strong enough to make him consider avoiding the town elders. Interesting. The analytical part of my brain wanted to test which situations were more or less distasteful than a civil conversation with me. I scratched out a quick note in the margin of my notebook to consider it later.

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