The Best Man in Texas (9 page)

“Yeah. Me, too.” His tone was sincere, but the set of his jaw made the proclamation more grim than grateful.

Since Giff was the common denominator between them, it seemed paradoxical that bringing him up had turned a playful conversation tense. Brooke sat quietly in her seat, regretting the strain she’d inadvertently created and not wanting to say anything to make it worse.

As he turned out of the parking lot, Jake broke the silence, his tone casual. “I don’t usually go for touristy destinations—sometimes I just go camping somewhere or look for obscure places other people might not know about. But there’s actually a lot of popular stuff around Chattanooga I intend to see. The aquarium, the Ruby Falls cavern. Thought we’d drive toward the city, find a hotel and go from there. You have anything particular you want to do while we’re here?”

“Thanks for asking, but this is your getaway. I’m just here to document it.” If it had been her vacation, she would have preferred the security of knowing they had hotel rooms reserved, but Jake had scoffed that playing it by ear was part of the fun. She took a small tape recorder out of her purse. “You have any objection to being recorded? If I try to take notes in a moving vehicle, I
won’t be able to read them later. My handwriting is atrocious as is.”

Jake did a double take, his head swiveling toward her for a moment before he looked back to the road. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Penmanship was the only bad grade I ever worried about getting in elementary school. With a lot of concentrated effort, I can now manage a decent cursive for a few lines, but I used to write stories when I was a kid. The ideas would come to me so fast, I’d dash everything down while it was fresh in my mind. The only people who could ever read it were my mom and me. Meg teased that it was why she never bothered trying to peek at my diary.” Brooke had figured the real reason Meg never bothered to steal a glance was because there was nothing in Brooke’s paltry entries that was half as exciting as Meg’s real life.

“I can’t imagine anything messy about you,” Jake said. “Not even handwriting.”

“Now you know my shameful secret, the dark truth people on my Christmas card list have only guessed at. I type and print a letter each year. All I handwrite is my name,” she admitted.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who dutifully recaps the year’s milestones and has all your cards in the mail right after Thanksgiving?”

“Guilty.”

He shot her a smug smile. “Well, when I get the card from you and Giff next December, I won’t be fooled.”

She thought ahead to Christmas, picturing a beautifully decorated tree, Giff carving the ham, Grace
bringing presents wrapped in color-coordinated paper. Yuletide perfection. She smiled to herself, the positive image making her serene.

When she’d been younger—upset that her parents might actually be on the brink of divorce this time or embarrassed that her friends had seen Didi at the local grocery store in makeup and clothes better suited to her showgirl aspirations than the produce aisle—Brooke had retreated to her storybook world. Mothers there did not wear sequined tank tops to PTA meetings and dads yelled only at football teams, not hapless sous-chefs who left the kitchen in tears. The more Brooke visited that alternate reality, the clearer her daydreams had become. And now, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, they were all about to come true.

She was smiling to herself, thinking ahead to what she might get Giff for Christmas when Jake cleared his throat and jolted her back to the present.

“Did I lose you?” Jake asked.

“I…yeah, I guess. My mind wandered. Pretty unprofessional, huh? So, no problem being recorded then?”

“Nope. Fire away.”

“Okay. When you got back to the States and realized you wanted to start this road-tripping project, where was the first place you went?”

They chatted easily for the next fifteen minutes as he followed the signs directing them toward the heart of Chattanooga. Finally he interrupted to point out a sign for a franchise hotel.

“What do you think?”

It seemed like one of their better shots at reasonable pricing without being skeevy. “Sure.”

Moments later, they were parking in the hotel lot. He held the door for her as they entered the lobby.

The pretty redhead at the check-in counter gave Jake an appraising glance that Brooke tried not to notice. It wasn’t as if she had the right to be jealous.
Still.
For all the woman knew, Brooke and Jake were a couple, which made her overly flirtatious smile a tad annoying.

But the woman’s smile faded to an apologetic frown after Jake had asked if there were any rooms available.

“No, sorry. Ya’ll don’t have a reservation? With the big gospel competition this weekend, choirs are comin’ in from all over the country. We’re booked solid. Most places are gonna be,” she added.

Sure enough, Jake and Brooke heard that same prediction at the second and third hotels they tried.

The bald man at the front desk suggested, “You could always try Bob and Erma’s up the road.”

“Bob and Erma’s?” Brooke repeated. “Is that like a local, family-owned motel?”

“No, ma’am. Bob and Erma are empty nesters. All three of their boys went off on basketball scholarships, so they’ve got rooms to rent.”

Stay in a teenager’s bedroom while he was away at college? Brooke had a picture of herself sleeping in a room that smelled faintly of gym socks and had posters of bikini-clad models on the wall.

“Uh…thanks for the advice,” Jake said, already drawing Brooke toward the door as he added over
his shoulder, “We’ll keep Bob and Erma in mind as a backup.”

Brooke smirked at him as he climbed into the car. “See,
this
is why some of us uptight folks like to plan ahead.”

Instead of acknowledging that she had a point, he chided, “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

She snorted. “As I believe I’ve mentioned, everyone else in my family had that part covered. I thought someone might want to give being sensible a shot. For a couple of years, I even tried to bring them around to my way of thinking, but it was like beating my head against a brick wall.”

He studied her for a long moment rather than turn the key in the ignition.

She began to feel self-conscious. “What?”

“Nothing, really. Just, I’ve been there myself. In fifth grade, sixth grade, maybe even as late as seventh, I tried everything I could think of to get my dad to sober up. I ran away once and left a note that I’d be back when he’d gone twenty-four hours without drinking.”

Brooke’s breath caught. “What happened?”

“He was passed out and never even saw the note. The Bakers made me call my mom, so that she at least knew where I was and that I was safe, and she talked me into coming home. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I think she might have been afraid of what my father would do if he got angry enough.”

Brooke’s heart broke for that long-ago boy; no kid should feel burdened with such adult responsibility.

“You can’t help an addict who won’t help themselves,”
Jake concluded. “I gave up on him. By the time I was in eighth grade, I’d redirected my efforts from trying to change my dad to trying to get my mother to leave him. She and I could have had a chance at a happy, normal life.”

Did he realize that even now, so many years later, he sounded wistful?

Jake shook his head. “But she was as stubborn as the old man, a brick wall in her own passive way. Kept insisting that the man she’d married, the man he’d been before he was shot, was still in there and that she couldn’t leave him after all he’d endured. Even if he
has
stopped drinking now,” Jake allowed, his tone heavy with doubt, “I can’t imagine that all the years she stayed were worth it.”

Brooke hesitated. “I noticed that they were on Grace’s guest list for the party.” They hadn’t been invited to the wedding itself simply because it would be so small, mostly family with a few exceptions like Jake and Kresley.

“I know. Mom’s out of town, and Dad decided not to come without her.”

“When she gets back into town, are you planning on seeing them?” Brooke didn’t know the McBrides, didn’t particularly care about them one way or the other, but she cared about Jake.
A lot.
His past had clearly left a mark on him, but if his dad was clean and sober now, maybe Jake’s visiting home would be healing. Or at least present an opportunity for closure.

Jake narrowed his eyes at her. “Did Grace put you up
to this? She’s been after me in both direct and sneaky ways to spend time with them.”

“No!” Brooke was insulted by the suggestion. “She didn’t ‘put me up’ to anything. I just thought that it might be good for you to—”

Through gritted teeth, he made a sound of frustration. “I would think that you, of all people, would understand my position. Doesn’t there come a time when you stop the insanity of trying to alter who people are and just take a step back? Live and let live?”

Brooke bit her bottom lip. To some extent, hadn’t she tried to distance herself—emotionally as well as physically—from her family when she left for college and when she accepted Giff’s proposal? Was she trying to replace her flawed family with the one she and Giff would build together?
The glossy, socially polished fantasy version.
The thought wasn’t as soothing as it had been an hour earlier; instead, it made her feel vaguely ashamed.

She was quiet as Jake drove. They backtracked a few miles, going farther away from downtown Chattanooga and its most popular sites. They got lucky at a hotel off the interstate that was undergoing renovations.

“Several floors are under construction,” the manager told them, “so we couldn’t offer a big block of rooms to the people coming for the choir competition. And I have to warn you, it can get a little noisy with the power tools and whatnot during the day.”

Brooke weighed the possibility of hammering and drills against the option of staying with Bob and Erma, and exchanged glances with Jake.

“We’ll take it,” he said as she nodded in vehement agreement. “Them, I should have said. You do have
two
rooms available?”

“Yes, sir. I can give you adjoining rooms on the second floor.”

“Sounds perfect.” Jake glanced behind the man at a stand of brochures about the local attractions. “And can we have a couple of those, too?”

Brooke pressed a hand to her chest, widening her eyes. “Surely you aren’t going to stoop to looking at information about prices and operating hours and directions? That sounds dangerously like planning ahead.”

He grinned at her. “Maybe just this once.”

Jake couldn’t get comfortable. He was fidgety in the too-hot hotel room and wondered if Brooke noticed that this was the third time he’d lowered the air-conditioning. As he walked away from the thermostat and back to the upholstered chair, his conscience picked a fight with him.
It’s only seventy-two degrees in here, and you’ve withstood blazing infernos and time in the desert. Your problem is not the temperature.

Then a small devil appeared on Jake’s shoulder and looked pointedly at the king-size bed that dominated most of the room.

I’m ignoring you,
Jake informed both his scruples and his baser instincts. He was certainly
not
going to make a move on his best friend’s girl. And since it was a nonissue, he had nothing to feel guilty about, either.
So, begone.

Brooke, thank heavens, was occupied reading a brochure at the desk on the other side of the small room and didn’t seem to realize that her traveling companion had lost his flipping mind.

She took her planning very seriously. After she’d
knocked on the door connecting their rooms, she’d suggested that since they only had one full day here—tomorrow—they rate the local sites in terms of priority.

“That way,” she’d lectured, adorably earnest, “even if we run out of time before we leave on Saturday, you know you got to do the stuff you most wanted.”

Not likely.
Every time he glanced at her, he wrestled with the realization that what he wanted most might well be right in this room.

“Damn it!” Hadn’t he just sworn that this wasn’t a problem? That he could recognize how attractive Brooke was without being attracted
to
her? That he could enjoy her company platonically without becoming addicted to it and wanting more?

For the first time ever, Jake empathized with his father’s alcoholism, with the self-destructive desire to have something you knew rationally you should leave the hell alone.

“Jake?” Brooke had glanced up, startled by his sudden oath.

“Sorry. Stubbed my toe.” It was the best lie he could improvise, but still pretty absurd considering he was standing squarely between the dresser and the foot of the bed with absolutely nothing in his way.
Yes, the big studly fireman stubbed his toe on carpet fiber. That’s plausible.
“Hey, are you hungry? We could run out and get an early dinner.”

“I guess.”

“You could bring all those brochures with us,” he
cajoled, “and tell me about what you’ve learned so far.” Food and facts. And more importantly, miles between them and this mocking king-size bed.

T
HEY FOUND A MODEST-LOOKING
building with a hand-painted sign that read simply Hamburger Shack. The paper menus bore out that description. Entrées included a three-cheese burger, buffalo burger, barbecue burger, veggie burger and “chopped steak” salad. But what the diner lacked in upscale decor or variety, it made up for in taste.

“Wow,” Jake said, surreptitiously double-checking to make sure he didn’t have mustard on the side of his mouth. “This may even be better than the burgers at Buck’s.”

Brooke blinked. “That’s where my sister works. For now, anyway. I’m surprised the two of you hadn’t met before the party. She
definitely
would have remembered you. And she’s not exactly forgettable herself.”

“Umm.”

“What?”

“Nothing, it will sound insulting and that’s not what I…”

She set her hamburger down. “Go ahead. I can take it.” She sounded oddly forlorn, rather than angry on her sister’s behalf.

After a moment, he laughed. “I’m not sure you understand. It’s just, I’m sure your sister…?”

“Meg,” she reminded him.

“Sorry. I knew that. I’m used to ranks and call signs. I’m not as good with actual birth names. Anyway, I
know I met her at Grace’s, and I recall that she was wearing something…bright. But that’s about it.” Nothing like his first meeting with Brooke, which he’d thought about in vivid detail afterward. He could still remember the stiff bearing of her shoulders that was so far removed from her casual, laughing demeanor as she’d teased him today or her fluid grace whenever she was on a dance floor.

He’d been trained to study situations and assess them for possible dangers; Meg, from what he could recall, was pretty, a bit flirty but essentially harmless, having no tactical impact on his life. Brooke, however, had been a threat to his peace of mind from the moment he saw her.

Sidestepping that explosive topic, Jake redirected the conversation to less personal matters. “Tell me about what you found in the brochures and we can start prioritizing.”

“Well, the Incline Railway—which is the steepest passenger incline in the world—is open until about nine during the summer, so we might have time to do that after dinner. If you’re interested,” she added sheepishly.

“I’m interested.”

“Tomorrow we could hit the aquarium or Lookout Mountain or try to squeeze in both. And I was reading about Ruby Falls—the cave with the underground waterfalls? The normal tour features music and theatrical lighting and geographical information, like the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite. But they also offer another, more limited, lantern tour on
certain nights. It’s quieter and darker, except for the lanterns, and includes folktales and legends. The literature described it as a night of natural beauty and an aura of mystery, beginning with a 260-foot descent into the mountain.”

“Sounds intriguing.” The tour sounded fine, Jake supposed, but he was having a much stronger reaction to the idea of being in such close quarters with Brooke, surrounded by potentially romantic lighting.
Get a grip. It’s a cave, not a candlelit four-star restaurant.
There was little chance she’d be overcome by the seductive atmosphere and throw herself at him.

Which left him simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

“I can call in the morning,” she volunteered, “and see if we’re too late to get tickets for tomorrow night.”

He grinned at her efficient tone and all the facts she’d apparently memorized in such a short time. “You’re very good at this. Ever think about becoming a travel agent instead of a journalist?”

She paused, as if debating her next words. “There was a time I considered both. Sort of. I wanted to be a travel writer, visit faraway places and bring them to life for other people who would never be lucky enough to see them. You know who Kira Salak is?”

He shrugged apologetically. “It’s possible I’ve heard of her, but…bad with names, remember?”

“She’s been all over the world, won writing awards. I wanted to be like her.” Brooke laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Which sounds ridiculous when
I say it aloud.
She’s
kayaked alone to Timbuktu, and you had to coerce me to get on a plane today just because it’s smaller than what I’m used to. It’s obvious I made the right career move, covering something safe like weddings and charity events rather than trying to chronicle a firsthand trip to the south pole or the Amazon.”

The hollowness in her tone was unsettling. She was too young, with far too much still ahead of her, to sound so resigned over the way her life had turned out. Most beautiful women on the verge of marrying the man of their dreams would be ebullient.

“Who’s to say you can’t still follow long-ago dreams?” Jake demanded. “Maybe you won’t go to the south pole. But that doesn’t mean Giff won’t take you to the south of France for your anniversary or some great Italian villa. Isn’t there some kind of freelance market for travel pieces?”

“I—”

“Just look at this weekend,” he interrupted. Granted, Tennessee might not have the same exotic cachet as, say, the African Serengeti or the Australian Outback, but everyone had to start somewhere. “You’re taking a trip and writing about it!”

“Technically, I’m writing about
your
trip.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “But I appreciate the thought. I didn’t mean to sound defeatist when I was talking about the travel writing. That was just a crazy idea I had when I was younger. I have other goals now and I’m on the logical path to reaching them. I am very happy with my life.”

Really?
Because Jake had once caught an arsonist,
still holding the gas can, and even
his
protestations of innocence were more believable than Brooke’s declaration.

A
FTER SPENDING SEVERAL HOURS
in the June heat, exploring Lookout Mountain on Friday, Brooke was blissfully appreciative of the aquarium’s cool interior.

Despite the escalating temperatures, however, she’d had an amazing morning. She’d been alternately awed by the natural wonders—such as the Balanced Rock, billed as weighing a thousand tons, perched on two tiny rock points—and charmed by the more fanciful elements of their tour, such as the local legends about gnomes. Knowing how amused her mother would be by the stories, Brooke had even purchased a decorative gnome for her parents’ yard, kind of a gag gift and the type of whimsical gesture Didi loved.

Brooke had been less charmed by Lovers’ Leap. Oh, the view had been spectacular enough, but she’d cringed at the accompanying “romantic” legend of a Cherokee woman who’d been thrown off the edge because she dared love a man forbidden to her. According to folklore, the man had then jumped to his own demise, presumably so that they could be together in the hereafter.

One woman in oversize sunglasses and a UNC Tar Heels shirt had sniffed loudly at the story’s conclusion. Brooke hadn’t been able to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

“I take it,” Jake had commented in a whisper, “that you’re not impressed with the legend of the star-crossed maiden and brave?”

“Stories like that always make me feel like the grinch who stole Valentine’s Day,” Brooke had grumbled. “I remember having to read
Romeo and Juliet
in high school and all my girlfriends thought it was
so
moving. I was the killjoy who didn’t get it. Okay, yes, Shakespeare had some great lines in that play and I’ve loved some of his other works, but…what was the takeaway, really? That if you truly love someone, you’d die without them? Melodramatic tripe.”

“So you’ve never felt that way about anyone,” Jake had concluded. “That you’d die without them?”

She’d had a fleeting impression of herself, at twenty, mooning over Sean the sexy poet. She’d definitely fallen under the delusion that she just
had
to be with him—idiotic, since he’d turned out to be a self-centered jerk who’d habitually asked her for loans and had caused her more disturbance than joy. She hadn’t died without him, she’d thrived, reminded anew of how to make intelligent choices in her life. Ultimately, perhaps she should be grateful to him for helping make decisions that led her to Giff.

“Let’s say I was thrown into an abyss,” Brooke had hypothesized. “I am confident that Giff, much as he loves me, is far too rational to leap to his own doom. Why would I even want him to do that for me? It’s inane. And I know that, should anything ever happen to him, he would want me to remember him well and move on with my life. Tossing yourself off a cliff or stabbing yourself with your lover’s dagger is really just the cowardly way out.”

Jake had stared at her for a long moment before agreeing, “Your outlook does sound more sensible.”

“Thank you,” she’d said uncertainly.

One could take his words as praise, yet something in his eyes kept them from being an outright compliment. She’d been curious to know what else he’d been thinking but had stopped herself from asking. Now, two hours later, they stood and watched frolicking river otters. The playful spectacle erased any lingering thoughts of her philosophy about lovers who threw themselves from precipices.

“I’ve always loved otters,” she said.

“Really? They seem pretty…frivolous.” Jake flashed her a teasing smile—she knew he was about to give her grief, but found herself grinning back rather than growing defensive. “I would have expected you to champion more serious, organized creatures.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Such as?” Nothing that she knew of in the animal kingdom carried appointment books or smartphones. “You’re going to say something like an ant or worker bee, aren’t you?”

“I was thinking more like a lioness. They’re smart, organized. They feed the pride, raise the young and take down animals bigger than themselves.”

She’d assumed he was setting her up for good-natured mocking, and instead he’d compared her to a fierce, majestic animal? Not for the first time today, she felt as if she were tripping over her own expectations.
That’s a man like Jake for you.

He’d always keep a woman on her toes, never quite sure what to expect. It might be fun for an evening out
or a road trip, but long term? It would be an unnerving, exhausting way to live, always trying to figure out the person you were with and never quite sure you had it right.

Then again, life with a man like Jake would have other perks.

Cheeks warming, she glanced away from him and toward the pond, making herself smile at the otters even though she wasn’t really seeing them anymore.

“We should move on to the next exhibit so we don’t cause a traffic jam,” she muttered.

He gestured toward the door. “Lead on, Macduff. Although, technically, the original quote was ‘lay on.’”

Brooke whipped her head around and stared.

“What?” He returned her gaze smugly. “You thought you were the only one to study Shakespeare in school? Most of A&M’s degree plans are ranked in the national top ten. Besides…”

“Yes?”

“That commonly misquoted line from
Macbeth
was one of the tie-breaker questions last week at a trivia bar where some of us from the station hang out.” Jake winked at her. “We got it wrong, but I always learn from my mistakes.”

“Trivia bar?”

He nodded. “I don’t subject myself to Karaoke on Saturdays, but I enjoy the trivia they do on weeknights. Plus they serve excellent buffalo wings.”

“You had me going for a minute. I pictured you reading the Bard between calls at the firehouse.”

“Truthfully, if I’m reading during my downtime, I
prefer a Jeff Shaara novel.” They made their way into the multistoried central room where fiber-optic lights rippled like waves—the effect both soothing and dramatic. Ramps wound downward past huge tanks of fish, turtles and colorful coral. “What about you? You read a lot?”