Page 13 of Home Town

“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked, fast and with concern.

“Corey Jacobs, that’s what’s wrong.”

“Corey your neighbor? He left home while we were still in school, right?” Bailey asked.

“Yeah, well, he’s back.” And currently shirtless.

Josie scowled at the muscles of his back and arms glistening with sweat as he mopped the perspiration from his face with the T-shirt he must have just taken off after a run.

He always had been a runner. Winter. Summer. Freezing cold, or withering heat. It didn’t matter.

He’d sure run fast enough away from her after they’d been together…

“He must be home to visit his mom,” Bailey suggested.

“Great,” Josie growled out.

“Why do you hate him so much anyway? What did he do to you?” Bailey asked.

Josie narrowed her eyes in hatred but didn’t turn away from the window until Corey finally went inside. “Nothing. I just don’t like him.”

Bailey might have been her best friend all through high school, but Bailey had left for New York City early that summer to get settled in for college. She’d missed Josie’s entire relationship with Corey—if she could even call it that. And Josie hadn’t shared.

“It must have been something,” Bailey argued. “He seems to really get to you.”

“Not at all,” Josie lied as she realized her hands had begun to shake just from seeing him again. Jeezus. How could he still have power over her all these years later?

The meeting for the committee her mother had volunteered her to be on was in half an hour, across the street, in the Jacobs’ house—where Corey currently was.

A little detail she hadn’t known when she’d agreed to attend. She silently bit out an obscenity.

“I don’t know…” Bailey began. “It seems like something’s up between you two.”

“Nope. It’s nothing. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” With that, Josie realized that maybe fine was a useful word after all.

Chapter Seven

“Mom. Stop. What are you doing?” Corey dropped the sweaty T-shirt he’d carried inside in his fist on a chair and leapt forward.

He reached up to brace one hand on his mother’s lower back as she balanced on top of the counter in the kitchen.

“I have to get the coffee pot down from the top cabinet.”

“There’s a coffee pot right on the counter,” he said as he tried to figure out how to safely get her down.

“Not that one. The insulated server that keeps it hot.” His mom, not quite five feet tall, reached for a shelf over her head. But as Corey’s level of panic reached a new high, she emerged triumphant with the item in her hand.

He took the pot from her, dumped it into the sink and then went back to bracing his mother where she stood. Where she shouldn’t be standing.

“Will you please get down now?” he begged.

He’d lost his father to a heart attack when he’d been on base, waiting for word of his first deployment. When he’d still been feeling like he’d barely gotten his feet wet on his first assignment after finishing up boot camp.

He still had trouble accepting there’d been nothing he could have done about that. But he’d be damned if his mother got hurt while he stood right there and watched.

“Goodness. Since when are you such a worry wart?” she tsked as she finally let him help her step down onto the chair she’d used to climb onto the counter.

At six foot and one inch tall, Corey had inherited his father’s height, but his mother didn’t let her size stop her.

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