Gin Fling (Bootleg Springs, #5)(9)

“I emailed you yesterday,” I said dryly.

“A lot can happen in twenty-four hours. You could have met a girl. You could have finally given up trying to speak Southern and decided to move home. You could have saved an elderly grandmother from a purse snatcher.”

“Zero of those things happened, Mom.”

I came to a stop for Mona Lisa McNugget, who sashayed her way across Rum Runner Avenue. I lived in a town with its own free-range chicken. The novelty still hadn’t worn off.

“What are you doing right now?” she asked.

“Watching the town chicken cross the road.”

She laughed. “I can’t decide if you’re pulling my leg with half the things you tell me or if Bootleg Springs is as crazy as it sounds.”

I watched as Minnie Fae, dressed in a green sweatshirt embroidered with cross-eyed kittens, dashed after a stray cat as it skirted two parked cars.

“Come back here, you fluffy feline,” she yelled, puffing past me.

“I heard that,” Mom said. “And I don’t even want to know.”

“A wise decision. What do you want to know?”

“Your email said you moved again. Where to this time? A cardboard box with a hobo on the town square? Into a mansion with an eclectic millionaire who only speaks Pig Latin?”

“Funny, Mom. I have my own place this time,” I told her. I didn’t tell her that I was living out of boxes. There was no point unpacking when I’d just be packing them back up for whatever reason.

“No roommate?” she asked.

“Just me, myself, and I. I can floss naked at the dining room table if I want to.”

“Dental health is important,” she said mildly. “Send me pictures so I can be sure you’re not living in a locker in a bus station. Of the house. Not you flossing naked.”

“Will do,” I promised. “What’s new with you?”

She told me about the customers who came into the diner today and filled me in on the new yard decor her across-the-street neighbor Phyllis put up in honor of Flag Day.

We spoke once a week either by phone call or video chat and by email more often. My mother was funny, smart, and, in my opinion, entirely too good for the life she’d been saddled with. My father, may he rest in peace as they say reflexively in Bootleg Springs, left college student Jenny Leland pregnant and partnerless. She’d given up her dreams of a degree in psychology and started waiting tables. She shopped garage sales and thrift stores, clipped coupons, and built a happy paycheck-to-paycheck existence for the two of us.

She’d ended up waitressing at a diner where the owners treated her like family. I’d spent a good portion of my childhood tucked away in a booth or curled up in the closet-sized office. She was an assistant manager now but still took shifts to keep her regular customers happy. It was a respectable living. But I wanted more for her. She deserved more.

And as soon as I landed wherever it was I was supposed to be, I’d see about getting that more for her.

We hung up after she extracted another promise from me to send her a picture of my new place. I grinned to myself knowing how she’d fall for the Little Yellow House. Scarlett Bodine was quite the real estate mogul and shrewd negotiator. I’d had to check to make sure I still had my shirt by the time we were done arguing over the lease.

The arguing had made me feel like family. And so had the invite for ring shopping, I realized as I turned onto the gravel lane that wound its way through the woods. Devlin and Bowie had picked out rings with diamonds big enough to compete with the idea of Jameson’s custom design. The jeweler had chipperly rung up the sales while Jameson showed off a sketch of Leah Mae’s ring. Gibson and I, finding common ground of being happily unattached, grunted and nodded our approval.

Commitment wasn’t something I actively avoided. But looking at my lifestyle—a business with no home and a three-month lease on a rental I’d negotiated down from six—it did make a man think.

Most of my half-brothers seemed hell-bent on planting roots. To marry, settle down. But I was still waiting for… something.

The house came into view through the trees. It was a two-bedroom cottage with tiny rooms and big windows that invited the woods inside. On a breezy day, I could catch glimmers of the lake through the foliage. The best part was the lakeside trail that cut right through the property, making it convenient for my runs.

I thought about hosting a post-run cookout here for the trail running group I’d organized. Decided it wasn’t a terrible idea. Some beer, a grill, good times, and good people.

When I pulled around to the house, I realized I wasn’t alone. The front door was wide open, and there were two vehicles parked on the gravel circle by the porch. One of them was Scarlett’s pickup truck.

I pulled in behind her and got out just as she skipped down the steps of the front porch. She waved cheerfully. “Hey, Jonah! Was wondering when you’d get back.”

She pulled a box out of the bed of her truck, and I took it from her. “You moving in?” I asked.

“Not me. Although if Devlin thinks he can bring one more pair of shoes into the house, I might give him the boot until construction’s done.” She winked, and I knew there was nothing but love behind her teasing. I had a feeling she’d be ecstatic over that diamond he’d pocketed today.

She hadn’t answered the question I hadn’t asked directly.