Page 3 of Starting Our Chance

2 Duke

She’s back. The dizziness I had felt in the Forman’s kitchen was slowly subsiding as I sat on my porch, letting the evening breeze calm me down. My eyes kept flicking to her bedroom window. All I had wanted to do was return the pie dish, and instead, I had been smacked in the chest with Loretta’s presence, both literally and figuratively. And just as I had tried to grasp at her, to pull her close and ensure that she was really, truly here, she had danced out of my reach. In hindsight, that was a good thing. Otherwise, my gut reaction had been to grab her then and there and finish what we’d started, picking up after all these years as if nothing had changed since her junior year of high school.

Closing my eyes, I remembered the intensity of her gaze just a few moments ago. It brought back the older memories of our first—and only—kiss. Her eyes had been ablaze and her hands had snaked up my chest to latch onto the back of my neck, threading into my hair. Right before our lips had come crashing together, she had looked up at me just like she had tonight.

“Fuck,” I groaned. This could change everything.

Or maybe she’ll run away again.The self-depreciating part of my mind jumped into action, reminding me that she was the kind of girl to run. It was why I had let her go. It was hard, however, to let memories fade when just looking across the narrow pasture reminded me that if Lore had wanted to see me in the past few years, she damn well could have.

But she hadn’t come home much. In the beginning, she’d visited sporadically and I had never been able to catch her. Then, the flights south had stopped altogether, and her mama had to hop a bus north to see her only child. Lore never saw anything valuable in this town—but she did deserve something better, something worthy of her talents.

Was that something I could change this time? Lore needed a purpose, to see that we were worthy of her here . . . if she cared to carve a place for herself here in the red Georgia clay.

There was only one person I could think of that would entice someone like Loretta Jane to stay in Waynesboro Parish, because if she began to work for my friend Nikki, Lore might just be able to see that those of us who wanted a different life could, in fact, build one instead of chasing one.

I stood and grabbed for my phone, seeing that I had missed a call from my business partner. Dialing her back, I moseyed into the house as I said, “Nikki, I was actually just going to call you—”

Nikki’s clipped voice cut me off. “Get your ass over here, Duke Johnson, before I drive on out to your place and prod you with a cow stick thingy.”

“A cattle prod?” I smirked into the phone. “Coming, bossy pants. But I need to talk to you about—”

“Save it.” Nikki wasn’t mad, just on a one track mind. “Tell me when you get here.”

The drive to her apartment complex took less time than it usually did, owing to my lead foot. I played over and over the reasons why Nikki should hire Lore. This has to work. The constant reasoning in my mind pushed me forward.

I stepped down in front of the apartment complex we were currently renovating. It was our biggest project yet. We had completed other apartment buildings, but nothing of this scale. Looking at it illuminated by the giant light poles in the parking lot, I felt a twinge of pride waft through my chest. This was hard proof that I had made it, and part of me couldn’t wait until Lore found out about what I had done all these years we’d been apart.

“Duke, get your tight ass over here now!”

There she was—my partner in crime. Nikki had showed up to town a few years back, and after her first attempts at entrepreneurship, we had met over beers, discussed life, and instantly formed an inseparable bond. Now . . . we were freaking royalty in this town.

As she dashed over to me, I grinned down at the little imp—the little sister I never had. “Good evening, Ma’am.” I nodded my hat to her. She brushed off my attentions. We had never been romantic. And that was something that drew us together because each of us carried a flame for someone we couldn’t have.

“What’s the emergency?” I drawled.

Nikki smacked my arm before grabbing the sleeve of my flannel and dragging me by sheer force of will to the entrance. “We have to approve the work done today so that we can pay the plumbing company and move on to the next step.”

I wanted to protest that these things weren’t important, but Nikki had trouble with the construction companies before, and she refused to let work slide without approving it first. And since I was a heavy investor in this project, my approval was also necessary.

After I had given Nikki a half hour of my utmost attention while also giving her some valuable pointers, I decided that it was my turn to sway the conversation. “Nikki, I have someone who can help you.”

The pencil that normally rested behind her ear was in front of her face, tapping lightly on her rosebud lips. “Who?”

She wasn’t looking at me and I needed her to pay attention. So, I stepped in front of her and forced her gaze to meet mine. “A friend is in town. She needs a career change and is looking for quality work to put on her resume—”

“The fuck did she come here for? This podunk town has nothing to offer her.”

I sucked in a breath. “My thoughts exactly, but I think she’d be a good fit for you.” I gripped my hands on the side of the newly installed kitchen sink knowing that Nikki wasn’t going to put up with bullshit, and Lore was a flight risk. I needed to be upfront, so I added, “It’s the girl next door.”

“Oh.” Nikki stopped, the pencil in her fingers falling to the floor. She understood. A pained expression ghosted across her face, and she nodded once. “Tell her that I’ll give her a trial week. She shows up on Monday.”

And that was the end of the conversation.

~*~

IT WAS DAMN NEAR MIDNIGHTwhen I got back to my family farm. Even so, when I climbed down from my big King Ranch truck, my gaze immediately flitted across the pasture. A little shiver of pleasure rippled down my spine when I saw the light on in Lore’s window. Whipping out my phone, I chewed on my bottom lip as I climbed my front porch, but when I finally sat down and looked back to that beacon, I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say.

Don’t fuck this up.

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