“Let me get my apron and start working,” she told her father. She patted his arm and smiled at him. She loved her father dearly but wished he wasn’t so stubborn. One of their parents needed to cave into this madness and it certainly wouldn’t be her mother.
She went to the backroom and dropped her purse in a locker then grabbed an apron. She stopped by Seth and asked him to tie it for her. “I wrenched my shoulder working on a car this afternoon.” She couldn’t reach behind her.
He tied a perfect bow and kissed his sister’s cheek. “You should have stayed home tonight.” He was two years younger than her and the baby of the family. An oopsie baby, their mother always told them, but she loved Seth best not that any of them cared.
Seth was Rachel Hatfield ’s baby and still lived at home. He said it was to take care of their mother, since Simon had left home but they all knew it was, so she could take care of him.
“I can’t. Dad needs me.”
He rolled his eyes at his sister as she had their father and him. Then she went out to the main part of the pub and began taking orders. Danni went to the bar and gave them to her dad. She cleared a few tables and grabbed the drinks to give to her customers.
Old Sam, a man older than her father put his arm around her waist when she stopped by him to say hello. She smiled, slipped her arm around his neck and asked, “How are you Sam?”
“Better now that you’re here,” he teased her. His wife of fifty years was at home or over at Jed’s place. Jed sat next to him, both drinking. Both would walk home when they left Ike’s tonight. They lived that close to the pub.
“Let her be, Sam,” Jed grumbled at his friend.
“She don’t mind me teasing her,” Sam told Jed.
“I don’t Jed,” Danni agreed. “He doesn’t paw at me the way some of the younger ones do.”
Both silver-haired, scruffy, white bearded men. If they had visited the barber shop it was to bullshit not get a shave or a haircut. “Let us know, sugar if we need to put the youngins in their place.” The two men laughed with her.
“I will Sam,” she told him. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
She headed towards the bar to place an order for someone when the front door opened, and he walked in. The last man she expected to see in Ike’s ever again stood in the door looking around. Danni couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that she felt anything anymore it was just a shock that he was here.
At first, she couldn’t move. Her feet were stuck to the spot on the floor. What was Jackson Hand doing in Sherwood?
Then their eyes locked, taking each other in. Seeing the differences and noticing that nothing had really changed about them either but the inside. Time had made them grow up. Hurt had hardened Danni’s heart against Jackson.
He had filled out some, Danni noticed. His shoulders broader making his waist look leaner but still not as big as Walker. His hair still collar length and wavy. So dark like his eyes which were locked on her right now, like he couldn’t possibly look away from her.
She broke the connection first and ca
ught her breath. Then she headed straight to the bar. Her Dad saw him then. He met her where she picked up her drinks. “You okay, honey?” He asked knowing what seeing Jackson had to have done to her.
Danni met his eyes across the bar. She smiled at her father. A big, fake smile. “I’m just fine, Daddy.” She lied through her teeth with not even a quiver of her voice and she was proud of herself for it.
He was walking towards her. She knew he had to be. Her father’s gaze was focused just over her shoulder. “He’s coming this way, isn’t he?” Danni whispered.
“Yep,” her dad replied.
“Shit.”
“Simon,” Jackson said. His voice was just as soft and sexy as she remembered, “good to see you again.”
Her father smiled. He wasn’t a mean man even if Jackson Hand had broken his daughter’s heart, nearly breaking her, he wouldn’t let him know what he thought of it. Now Rachel Hatfield, she was another story. “Back in town?” Her father asked.
“Momma’s not doing so good,” he replied. “I had to come home for a while.”
Ah dammit. She swallowed hard. A while, she repeated the words in her head. The first year, she ate little, slept less and dated not at all. The second year she found a way to sleep again although Jackson haunted her dreams at times. She had loved him since she was fourteen years old then he left her, she reminded herself.
The third year, the hurt had faded to something manageable. She decided to try dating again. The boys in Sherwood were farmers, welders and they worked in the feed store loading and unloading heavy bags of feed and fertilizer. They were boys she had known her whole life, but she had come to realize they were now men and she started paying attention to them as dating material. The pickings were slim.
They drove big, trucks, went to the county fair to watch the tractor pulls and well they liked their girls to go with them. She hated tractor pulls. There was nothing wrong with them. It was her, she was sure. She just didn’t like them because they were loud, and Danni really couldn’t see the sense in them.
At age twenty-two she slept with only the second man she had ever been with. He was the son of the grocery store owner. Andy Hand, Jackson’s cousin. It couldn’t be helped. Sherwood was a small town. It was bound to happen. Maybe she shouldn’t have chosen his first cousin, but Andy was nice.