Page 7 of Shake the Habit

I didn’t know what that was, either. There wasn’t much else about him, certainly no criminal history that popped up. “Just FYI, my uncle Dawson was a sheriff’s deputy,” I mentioned. “I can ask them to run a real background check, too.”

“There isn’t anything.”

Which might have meant that he was a very good criminal, I mused. He didn’t look like a financial server right now in his old canvas coat and jeans. But that outfit made sense due to what he’d mentioned about having a big farm.

“You don’t have your finance job anymore?” I asked, staring at his muddy boots. “Why do you live here?”

“It’s there,” he answered, pointing to my phone. “You’ll find it.”

I frowned at him and then tried his name with “Tennessee.” “Oh,” I said after a moment. “I’m sorry.”

I’d come across a recent obituary for a woman who seemed to be his mother, Lara-Lee Woodson, with the same green-blue eyes. The picture of her must have been from many years ago because her face was unlined and her hair was glossy, dark brown, but it stated her age and she’d been pretty old when she’d passed. It also mentioned one son, Caleb Woodson, who was lately of Florida. I didn’t recognize her at all but I bet that if I put her name and face out to my family, one of them would. Between us, we knew everyone.

“I came home about a year ago to help out,” he said.

“I’m very sorry.” Reading about him had seemed like a game, but once again, my fun had produced an unhappy ending. “I’m sorry and I don’t think that you’re a bad person. I would grateful if you’d drive us in your truck to get the dog checked.”

“He’s ready to go, and I’d also be happy to take you.”

I joined Sir in the cab, climbing up on a rusty running board to reach the seat. I wasn’t short and this was an old truck fromback when they weren’t all monster-sized. I appreciated that. I pulled out the seat belt and…

“Ugh,” I said, looking down at my coat. I had just managed to clean off the mud and now I had a diagonal black line of grease and dirt running across it. “What is that? Why was it so gross?”

“Hell, I’m sorry,” he said, also staring at my chest. “This was my mother’s car, and she never had any passengers. That belt didn’t get used.”

I was searching in my pocketbook for a makeup remover wipe, wishing that I had my aunt’s old pageant bag that had held everything that anyone might need in an emergency, as long as that emergency was beauty-related. “Not even you?” I asked. “You didn’t ride with her as a passenger?”

“No,” he answered briefly.

That was too bad. “I don’t care about the grease,” I said. I was going to have to wash this coat or get it dry cleaned anyway, and I could take it in when I brought my cousin’s dress. That really did have a distinctive skunk odor that Cassidy wouldn’t have appreciated.

Despite being lately of Florida, Caleb seemed to know his way around. I watched carefully to make sure that he wasn’t driving off anywhere weird, but he took us directly to the county animal shelter where we had Sir checked out. No chip, they said, but they remarked that his nails were very long, so no one had been clipping them. They also said that all the matting I’d worked out of his thick coat was another sign that he’d been on his own for awhile. He was underweight, which was a little terrifying. He was supposed to be bigger?

The good news was that Sir, whose name caused some smothered laughter among the employees there, was very friendly to everyone, which would make it easier for me when I took him to work. I mentioned that to both of my companions when we got back into the truck.

“Where do you work?” Caleb asked.

“I’m the office manager for one of my cousins. He’s just starting off as a contractor and he needs help, and I don’t care that he can’t pay me much. He struggles with organization, billing, keeping track of materials, and customer contact. He’s busy and he also just got engaged,” I mentioned. That had been the big news at our family party, that he’d asked Taygen to marry him. “I knew his fiancée when I was working at the loan office, my former job, and I introduced them. She’d been dating someone else for a while but they broke up this summer and when she met Marc, it was like you could see sparks fly. They’re going to be so happy.”

“Hopefully.” He signaled and the clicking noise was loud in this old truck. Everything was louder than in the car my nana had passed on to me, from the engine to the wind whistling in around the edges of the rolled-up windows.

“What do you mean, ‘hopefully?’” I asked. “I know they’ll be great.”

“Something like half of marriages end in divorce. It’s not a propitious sign that they didn’t know each other for very long, either. It’s much more likely to fail.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, and it’s not true. I introduced them because I know both of them very well, and I’m sure that they’re compatible. Sir, please! You’re squishing me.” He had been leaning hard against my side, and going around that turn had nearly pushed me right through the door. But he didn’t mind riding in this truck like he had in the cargo area of my small car. He sat proudly in the middle and I started wishing that he had a seat belt of his own.

“Come on over here,” Caleb told him, and the dog moved slightly across the bench seat so that I could breathe again. “Are you some kind of matchmaker?”

“No,” I said, “and I have a terrible track record myself, if that’s what you’re going to ask next. I’m awful with relationships.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding.

“You, too?Why?”

“Uh, I guess I’ve been too busy to put time into them.”

I slid a glance over, and thought again that he was a nice-looking guy. He must have been plenty busy if he’d avoided getting husbanded-up by a woman down in Florida. “Not me,” I mentioned. “I’ve never had a job that I was really devoted to, not until this one with my cousin. My problem hasn’t been time, it’s that I always picked the wrong person.”

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