style="font-size:15px;"> “What do you think?” she asked, not even trying to stifle the eagerness in her voice.
He nodded. “It’s delicious, but didn’t you say it had barbecue sauce with it?”
“Oh. Yes, it does.” She glanced at the crowded contents of the table and saw that the barbecue sauce was, indeed, missing.
AJ got the sauce and turned around to find herself staring into the ice-blue eyes of the one person she’d hoped not to see today: her grandmother, Agnes Jane Sherwood. Grandmother’s steely gaze assessed AJ. Judging by the way the matriarch frowned down her aquiline nose, AJ knew her grandmother found her lacking.
No big surprise. She always had. The only thing AJ could do was shake it off.
This was the woman for whom AJ was named—her mother’s feeble attempt to get back into her estranged mother’s good graces after AJ’s mother had eloped with Joey Antonelli. A plumber. A man Agnes had considered so far beneath her daughter that she couldn’t even see that far down the social food chain. When her daughter came back married, Agnes quit speaking to her for years.
Even though her mother and grandmother were on better terms today, Agnes still liked to grouse, “What was I supposed to say? When my friends’ daughters were marrying into families such as the Connecticut Collinses or the Dallas Dashwoods, my daughter has married into the Antonelli Plumbing Antonellis. It was mortifying.”
Apparently, it had been a huge disgrace. One so grave that even after the young bride had saddled her innocent first born with a name like Agnes Jane Sherwood-Antonelli, grandmother hadn’t let AJ’s mother back into her good graces.
It was no help, either, that Agnes Jane Sherwood’s namesake had decided to become a chef. Cooking was a chore the hired help quietly took care of. Not something a Sherwood fretted over and certainly not something they found enjoyable. Grandmother said, “Obviously AJ has inherited her father’s working-class DNA.”
Today, what made matters worse was that Grandmother was the chair of A Taste of Celebration. Obviously, the chair in name only, because she seemed just as surprised to find her granddaughter part of the festival.
“Flipping burgers? Really, Agnes Jane, how could you embarrass me— How could you embarrass yourself like this?”
A sudden hush seemed to settle over the square as the eye of Hurricane Agnes settled under the Celebrations, Inc. tent. As ever, her grandmother’s energy was harsh and commanding, a presence that seemed to vibrate. Or maybe the vibration was simply the sound of blood rushing through AJ’s ears as she stood there mortified, watching Shane watch this embarrassing confrontation.
“Have you been reduced to serving fast food?” Agnes continued.
Pepper came up behind AJ and put a supportive hand on her shoulder. Something in that kind show of I’ve-got-your-back loyalty made AJ snap out of her stupor.
“Grandmother, I am test-marketing options for a football season tailgating menu that my company is going to offer.”
It was her company.
She hadn’t asked the woman for a penny of her millions to get Celebrations, Inc. off the ground. AJ had laid a careful plan, worked hard, scrimped and saved with the intention of gathering enough seed money to open her doors.
The opening had been put on a faster track after AJ’s fiancé died, naming her the beneficiary of his life insurance policy. But not until after the money sat in a savings account for a little over three years. At first, AJ couldn’t fathom spending a penny of it, paralyzed by the thought that Danny was gone and money was all she had left of him. It hadn’t seemed right. It hadn’t seemed fair that he’d had to die, and she was left here to try and go on without him.
For three years, AJ had lived in a daze, going through life’s motions—getting up, working long hours, coming home, sleeping only to get up and do it all over again. Sleep was the only place where she found peace... At night, when her head hit the pillow, she could lose herself in dreams where Danny was alive, her family accepted him and she was happy. As a result, during the waking hours, she shut down, living in her head. This didn’t escape her friends.
That’s when it had hit her. He would never have wanted her to sit idle. She needed to invest that money in making her career dreams come true—something Danny had been so supportive of.
After she’d done that, it was as if Danny were right there with her every step of the way.
So, even if she were “flipping burgers,” she’d rather be doing that, relying on herself and her own creativity to make or break her than living on her grandmother’s terms.
AJ knew it galled her grandmother that she was that solvent. Thanks to Danny, a man Grandmother had deemed beneath her namesake, AJ was free, and her grandmother didn’t have an ounce of control over her.
Her grandmother didn’t dignify the justification of AJ’s burger flipping with a comment. She just stood there with an expression so sour, AJ feared the old woman would suck on her cheeks hard enough to suck herself inside out.
As AJ stifled a smile, she realized she was still holding the bowl of homemade barbecue sauce she’d promised Shane. Why did he have to witness this ugly scene?
She turned away from her grandmother to set the bowl of sauce in front of Shane. As she did, the toe of her hot pink Dr. Martens caught on an exposed tree root. As if in slow motion, she lurched forward, splattering sauce down the front of Shane’s white polo shirt.
* * *
Shane knew the barbecue sauce mishap wasn’t intentional, and he tried to reassure AJ of that. He wouldn’t allow her to have his shirt cleaned, and she didn’t deserve her grandmother making an awkward moment worse by insisting that the Taste of Celebration committee would replace the shirt.
He declined both offers.
However, it soon became clear the woman—who he was tempted to call “the old battle-ax,” but refrained because she was AJ’s grandmother and that would be disrespectful—was a trying piece of work. But soon he realized Agnes Sherwood would not take no for an answer. He decided to give her his address just so she would shut up and go away.
At first he was going to give her the central address at Fort Hood. But then he decided he would give the woman a full-on dose of the working-class stiff he was. “I’m staying at the Celebration Suites, off of the highway. I don’t know the address off the top of my head, but it’s unit 201.”
Agnes sniffed and Shane swore he saw her bristle. “Are you referring to that place one rents by the week?”
Never before had he heard the word place said with such contempt. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was renting a place in Celebration’s Red Light District—if there was such a place in Perfectville, U.S.A.
“Yes, ma’am that’s where I live. For the moment anyway. I’m sort of...transient.” He looked her square in the eyes and smiled.
He loved messing with people who carried a superiority complex. This woman wore hers like crown jewels. For a split second, he wondered how someone like AJ could be related to Agnes Sherwood. AJ was humble and sweet, someone who wasn’t too proud to serve burgers and onion rings—or to roll up her sleeves and get the work done. Agnes Sherwood, on the other hand,
