precious wedding floor covering to protect my car, she’s going to be annoyed. I don’t know that it can be used now for the purposes for which it was intended.”
“It’ll be good for Zach to have a bunch of females peeved with him,” Pansy said, taking Jessie’s coat. “Hopefully, it’ll smarten him up.”
“That’s for certain.” Helen set the kettle on the stove. “He’s been quite spoiled since we have so few males in town. So few reasonably intelligent males.”
Pansy giggled. “So much for our spies. They’re either terrible at their job, or conspiring against us.”
Jessie looked at the women. “Why would your friends not tell you if they knew my car was perfectly fine?”
“To be on the boys’ side,” Helen said simply. “This town has always been about the battle of the sexes. And we girls always win.”
Pansy giggled as the three of them sat at the table together. A pretty lamp with a cut-out shade sent warm light around the kitchen. Jessie relaxed, feeling like she was home for the very first time in her life.
Chapter Eight
Zach cooled his heels for as long as he could stand it—approximately ten hours—and despite the bad weather, drove over to Helen’s. He just had to see Jessie. Okay, she’d shocked the hell out of him. He hadn’t reacted appropriately—heaven only knew he hadn’t done anything appropriately.
But there was a lot of history in his life that forced him to seek appropriate action where Jessie and his kids were concerned. He’d had a major Christmas present tossed at him, and he was determined to learn how to keep it.
Fortunately for him, he was a Forrester, and so far, the Forrester family was one-for-one on figuring out when to keep their hands on their pregnant significant other.
Pepper would be too smart to let herself get ahead of the romance, he thought sourly. Younger sisters shouldn’t be so calm, cool and collected about everything—only the men in the family seemed to have a hard time with relationships.
“It should be the other way around,” he muttered, thinking about last night’s impromptu proposal which had brought him no credit whatsoever with Jessie, Duke or the Gang, either, for that matter. As much as they adored hearing about proposals, they’d barely paid his any attention.
They hadn’t taken him seriously—which seemed to be a theme in his life. He stared at Helen’s house, wondering how to approach the puzzle his world had become. Should he try romance?
“Little late for that.” Jessie wouldn’t take him seriously on the romance issue. He had to be very careful with his pursuit because she possessed a natural-born wanderer’s foot. She could take off any time, in any method of transportation, and it might be months before he laid eyes on her again.
Perhaps help was required in this matter. He pulled out his phone and dialed Holt, investor and civic-minded counterpart to the Gang. Holt sided with the ladies, but he also sided with the men sometimes, and was guaranteed to give a rational and unbiased opinion.
“Holt,” he said when he heard a brisk hello on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Zach,” Holt said. “I already know why you’re calling. I heard your little lady is back in town wanting her car, and that you told her I was supposedly fixing it. I don’t like being in the middle if I don’t know what’s going on.”
Great. Life wasn’t good when the only hairdresser in town was in a tizzy with him. “Sorry about that. It seemed like a good excuse at the time.”
“It didn’t work, though, did it?”
“No,” Zach said, sighing.
“So now she’s returned, and she wants her car, and you want some visitation. That’s what I hear through the grapevine,” Holt said.
“Grapevine’s right,” Zach replied. “I want custody of my kids if Jessie won’t marry me.”
Holt sighed. “The only way you can achieve that is through the courts, Zach.”
“I was thinking flowers, maybe some time alone together—”
“You called for my opinion,” Holt said. “Becoming a father with a woman whom you’ve greatly aggravated is not a position of equanimity, you know.”
He wasn’t sure what equanimity was, but it didn’t sound like he was in a good place with Jessie. “But if you met her—”
“I did.” Holt sniffed. “Not that you brought her by. Helen invited me to come meet the newest Tulips citizen.”
Zach frowned. “I doubt you’ll ever be able to call Jessie a citizen of Tulips.”
“At the rate you’re going, no.”
Everybody is a critic. Zach said, “Do you have any advice, or are you just going to ride the Zach’s-A-Louse bandwagon?”
“Legal documentation. And remember she has two legal eagle brothers. The deck may be pretty well stacked in her favor.”
“Legal eagle brothers?” Zach listened to the dial tone in his ear. “That was so helpful.”
Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he looked at the three small, two-story houses that so delicately hid the strength residing within them. Jessie did fit in with that group of strong women, he realized. He had been attracted to her strength from the moment he’d met her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who flirted. She didn’t put on airs around a man. With Jessie, he’d learned that what he saw was pretty much what he got, straightforward and honest.
That was some small comfort, but he couldn’t help mulling the rebound factor. She’d been in a vulnerable time in her life when they’d met.
He conceded that he might have come across as a bit ham-handed and perhaps even a bit horny. Those might be reasons she hadn’t taken his marriage proposal seriously.
“Like I just jump on every cute girl I meet.” He stared at Helen’s house through slivers of sleet bouncing off his windshield. He owed it to his children—and he and Jessie—to present himself and his plan one more time, even if he had to do it in Miss Helen’s living room.
He got out of the truck and went to the door. On the door hung a piece of paper that read, “At Liberty’s.” He went to the middle house and rang the doorbell. Duke answered, shaking his head at his brother. “Next door,” he said, while Molly-Jimbo barked a welcome at Zach. Duke closed the door. Zach headed to the final house, finding the front door open and about ten women standing in the entryway of Miss Pansy’s.
“Did I miss a party?” he asked, wondering how he could have missed seeing the parked cars or commotion or something.
The ladies went quiet. In front of the fireplace sat Jessie. At her feet were small gifts of welcome, ranging from knitted baby booties to decorated cloth baby diapers. There was even a stack of recipe cards.
Pansy came over to give him a hug. “We’re having a very tiny, most last-minute welcoming party. Holt’s been by as well.”
