What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(28)

Lolly put down her fork, raised her glass, and smiled in a way that made Laurel nervous. What now?

“Let’s drink to Laurel,” she announced. “She spent all afternoon preparing this delicious meal for us. Made everything from scratch.”

Jase and Maxie clinked their glasses together with Lolly’s.

Laurel had no choice but to say “thank you,” though she couldn’t help but wonder if toasts made with water were legitimate. Wine, of course, had been out of the question. It might be de rigueur at sophisticated dinner parties now that the county had gone wet, but all she was aiming at was adequacy. Besides, if anyone had seen her studying labels in Piggly Wiggly’s wine-beer-mixers aisle, it would have been all around town that the preacher’s daughter was drowning her sorrows in drink.

Directing the conversation toward her guests, she asked Jase about his career and hung on to his every word as he briefly outlined his climb up the ladder from parking attendant to lot manager, from employee to employer to investor. Laurel couldn’t be anything but impressed. Jase had worked hard. He was so different from Dave, who’d ducked out of work every opportunity he could to try out a new putter or play a couple of rounds of golf with his buddies.

“The turning point was when Jase bought his second lot,” Maxie interjected. “I could retire then and stay at home with Lolly. We thought that was important.”

Lolly grinned at her great-aunt. “I don’t know why. I had everything under control.” She turned to Laurel to explain. “We were living in a condo then, and the service people all knew me.”

Jase laughed. “You mean you had them all wound around your little finger. You were a spoiled brat.”

She gave him a look of mock innocence. “So?”

Laurel enjoyed watching the interplay between father and daughter. All was well in Redlander country—at least for the time being. Fifteen was a mercurial age, as she well remembered.

*



Jase could have kicked himself. He’d made a total ass of himself, as usual, when Laurel Harlow was concerned.

That white pants thing she was wearing clung in all the right places, which meant his dick immediately expressed interest, which also meant he hadn’t heard a word that came out of her mouth when she opened the door. Her lips were moving, so she must have been saying something, but the blood roaring in his ears drowned her out. Must have flooded his brain too, because he completely forgot about Maxie.

Damn. When he’d taken her hand, he’d wanted to hold it forever. What would she have done if he’d brought it to his lips and touched her palm with the tip of his tongue?

Sixteen years ago, Laurel had said she loved him, but what does a fifteen-year-old know about love? It shook him to realize that Lolly was now exactly the same age as Laurel had been then. If any boy tried to do to Lolly what he’d tried to do to Laurel, he’d beat him within an inch of his life. And Laurel had never told her father, which made Jase feel twice as guilty. Reverend Ed had been his lone supporter, and look how he’d repaid him—by rutting after his virgin daughter as though she were the same kind of slut as Marguerite.

He’d known the gig was up at midmorning when Mr. Nyquist announced over the intercom that a substitute would be taking over Ms. Shelton’s classes for the rest of the semester. The kids sitting around him glanced at him, smirked, and gave each other knowing looks, which meant the word had gotten around.

He’d sat through the rest of the period class with a glazed smile on his face—then headed for the parking lot. His school days were over.

Friday evening, Bert Nyquist appeared.

He’d been out front, working on his truck, when the school district car drove up.

Growler hoisted his longneck in greeting and gestured his visitor toward the rusty lawn chair. “Come to see me about something, Bert?”

Nyquist remained standing. “Mr. Redlander, I am here representing the Bosque Bend School Board. Your son has sexually assaulted one of his teachers, but she will not press charges if you make arrangements for Jason to leave town immediately.”

Jase’s heart stopped beating for a moment, then went into overdrive. Make me leave town? Could they do that?

Growler grunted, glugged his beer, and heaved himself to his feet—all six feet, six inches, three hundred pounds of him. His arms hung loose from his shoulders, ready for action.

“I already heard about it at the tavern, Bert, an’ the way I see it, it’s all a part of growin’ up, an’ that old cow was lucky to have had a young bull like my Jase servicin’ her for as long as he did.” He took a step forward, and his voice deepened past its trademark rasp into an even lower, more menacing tone. “Now, get off my property before I dunk you in the Bosque!”

Nyquist raised his hands, palms out, as if fending Growler off. “Now…now, Mr. Redlander…let’s not get carried away!”

Growler took another step forward, and the floorboards creaked as his weight shifted. Nyquist turned tail and scurried down the steps to his car.

Later that evening, Growler, pumped with adrenaline from the confrontation he thought he’d won, took Jase off to Beat Down, slapped him on the back, and called him a chip off the old block. “Been porkin’ that cute little number down at the high school the kids talk about,” he’d bragged to the Friday night crowd.

Every man jack in the place wanted to buy Jase a drink, and he’d been so miserable that he’d taken them up on it. He’d had occasional beers since he’d been in elementary school—even when the water was cut off, the beer kept flowing—but that night he went overboard. A turbulent stomach had awakened him soon after he went to bed, and he’d made it to the bathroom just in time.