Chasing Trouble (Chasing Love 1)

“Shit,” he muttered.

The armor he’d put around himself years ago was being chipped away. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like having to deal with things. But for some reason, avoiding his problems didn’t seem a viable option anymore.

He’d had several drinks last night, trying to drown out the creeping memories. He hardly remembered what happened, just that he was three sheets to the wind at Penny’s BBQ and woke up in his pickup parked out in front of it at sunrise.

He’d driven straight to the cemetery while trying to get a grip on his life. The things he once valued most, like riding and the circuit, he hadn’t given a second thought to in weeks. He glanced at his shoulder and patted his ribs. “Maybe I’m done.”

Hell, he didn’t know. The only thing he did know was that every time he was with Jenna, he felt more complete and happier than he had in…

Ever.

There was an emptiness that had settled in his chest the day his parents died and had continued to grow every day since. When he was with Jenna, that cold hollowness ebbed and he felt like a man again, a good man. Afterward, when she left, that stupid ache came flaring back tenfold.

He was getting tastes of something he wanted, something he’d seen others have.

Something Mom and Pop had.

But JJ seemed to want something different, and for a long a time, Colt valued the idea of temporary. No strings. No attachment. No permanence. Hell, the only thing permanent was death. Colt learned that early on. To hope for more was useless.

So there he was, hiding out like a pussy, wrestling with himself and procrastinating.

He’d known this moment was coming. He’d avoided it every time he came back to visit.

Thirty-five years. He clutched the steering wheel. Today his parents would have been married for three and a half decades. He reached over to the passenger seat and snatched u

p his ball cap, slapping it once before shoving it on his head. He opened the truck door and began the long walk toward their graves.

…

“Hold your head still, honey.” Mrs. Tena Smith Thompson Dean Harrington, owner of Perm My Poodle, tugged Jenna’s head straight before continuing her snipping.

“Sorry, Miss Tena.”

The seventy-year-old stylist had been married and remarried so many times, everyone opted for her first name. She had always been kind to Jenna. After a stressful last week that started with Colt in the woods, only to be followed up by her mother’s rant, Jenna was happy to be sitting down for a little bit of girl time.

“Are you finally going to cut it all off?” Lily asked from the chair next to her, foils splaying from her head while she sipped her Diet Coke.

“Nah, just a trim.”

Miss Tena combed and clipped Jenna’s wet hair. “Lord have mercy, child, you have so much hair. Shame you don’t wear it down more.”

Jenna smiled to herself. She had let her hair down more in the last couple weeks than she had in a long time. Though her mother was back in town, which made her normal ease level not so easy, Jenna hadn’t heard from her since she dropped off the groceries, so that was a plus.

Lady Buttercup, a white Shih Tzu two chairs down from Jenna, barked.

“Hush now, we’re just getting these bows right,” Sue-Ellen Blackwell, the best dog groomer in five states, said. She tsked at the dog while her fingers tied pink bows in the pup’s ears. Only in Diamond could someone get their hair done while their dog got groomed.

“How’s Rachel doing?” Jenna asked Tena.

“Oh, she’s doing all right. I wish she’d move back home. She misses you, though. That doorknob she’s married to is another story.”

“Teeny! That’s no way to talk about your grandson-in-law.”

Tena stopped cutting, threw her hand on her meaty hip, and eyed Sue-Ellen. “That boy does not know his ass from a cold fart and treats my Rachel like stale leftovers. He doesn’t deserve to be called a man, and I’m too old to start lying now.”

Jenna laughed. Lily’s chin dropped.

Miss Tena whirled back around and motioned at Lily. “Gonna catch flies with that open mouth there, sweetheart.”