Inglath Cooper - A Woman Like Annie

She turned around so that her back was to Tommy. He got up and trudged into the living room with Cyrus lumbering behind him.

“So the little mayor’s staying busy, huh?”

The amusement behind the words made Annie wish for a voodoo doll with extra pins. Divorce rule number 54: ignore jabs deliberately meant to rile. “What do you want, J.D.?”

“What are you offering?”

Annie balked at the flirtation underlining the question. He was amazing. Truly amazing. “J.D.” she said, her voice sub-zero.

“To see my son. That’s what I want. Put Tommy on a plane and send him out here to visit, sugar-pie. I miss him.”

The command was issued with all the certainty of a man who never entertained even the notion of the word no. “I am not sending Tommy across the country by himself, J.D. He’s six years old, for heaven’s sake!”

“Kids ride airplanes by themselves all the time, Annie,” J.D. said in the same you’re-being-ridiculous voice he’d perfected when they’d been married, and she’d tried to explain why he couldn’t just write checks off their bank account without ever looking to see if they had the funds to cover them. “I have a right to see my son.”

“You know where your son lives, and if you want to see him, you can get on an airplane and come here.” The last two words took a leap toward hysteria, and she forced herself to draw in a calming breath before going on in a lowered voice. “You’ve made no effort to see him in nearly a year, J.D. Do you think you can saunter back into his life as if you just saw him yesterday? How am I supposed to explain that to him?”

“JaaayyyyyDeeeee, I’m still waiting,” a woman’s voice called in the background.

There. She had her explanation. Annie stomped across the kitchen floor and slammed the phone into its wall cradle, hoping the collision would blow a hole in J.D.’s faithless eardrum. But it did little more than rocket a bolt of pain straight up her arm where it landed in the center of the headache now pounding full force.

There had been a time since the demise of their twelve-year marriage when she would have shed a kitchen sink full of tears over that very audible reminder of her husband’s betrayal. But even had she cared to indulge the tradition, she didn’t have time for it tonight. She glanced at her watch. In twenty minutes, Jack Corbin would be waiting for her at Walker’s. Jack Corbin, who hadn’t been back to Macon’s Point since his father’s funeral six years ago, and who, according to Mary Louise Carruthers at the post office, traveled to exotic-sounding places such as St. Tropez, Lyon and San Gimignano (none of which had sounded all that exotic under Mary Louise’s pronunciation).

His track record for changing addresses rivaled even J.D.’s.

Annie’s stomach churned.

Somehow, she, pinch-hitter Mayor Annie Mc-Cabe, former housewife, a woman unable to figure out how to keep her husband from straying, had to persuade a man with enough money to live out the rest of his days on some private island sipping piña coladas, not to give Corbin Manufacturing the death knell.

And before she got around to that, all she had to do was finish drying her hair, change her blouse, drop her son off at the baby-sitter’s and deliver Cyrus to the emergency animal hospital. While she was at it, maybe she’d leap a tall building or two just for good measure.

JACK CORBIN PULLED INTO the parking lot of Walker’s Restaurant a few minutes before seven. He cut the engine to the Carrera, and it let out a throaty rumble before going silent.

September twilight gave the near-night sky a rosy glow. An easy breeze fanned the leaves of a giant old beech tree that hugged the right side of the building. Jack had ridden his bike by there the morning Mr. Walker had planted that tree. He must have been eight or nine years old then. He’d stopped to ask what kind it was, and Mr. Walker had told him when the tree grew up it would have roots that looked like gnarled old feet. They did, indeed.

Jack ran a palm across a cheek badly in need of a shave, then reached for his cell phone and punched in his office number.

“Corbin, Mitchell Consulting. Pete Mitchell here.”

“Hey, Pete.”

“You make it out to the boonies?”

“Just got here. And if you weren’t from Arkansas, I’d be offended.”

Pete laughed. “Fair enough. I just got an e-mail from Fogelman in London a little while ago. Wanted to know when you were coming. I told him you were going to be held up for a week or two. They’re anxious for you to get there. But if I had a business in that kind of shape, I’d be anxious, too.”

“Actually, I do have a business in that kind of shape. I just don’t plan to keep it.”

“Auction’s all set?”

“Yep. Wish I could snap my fingers and have it be over.”

“It’s a bummer, that’s for sure. Maybe this London stint will be good for you. British babes and—”

“Fogelman breathing down my neck?”

“That’s the needle across the record. ’Fraid he comes with the deal. It was a lucrative one so suck it up.”

“I knew there was a reason I asked you to be a partner in this firm.”

“Pep talks-r-us.”

“Everybody’s gotta be good for something,” Jack said, reaching for the notepad he kept in the center console and scribbling a reminder to e-mail Fogelman his best guess on when he would be arriving.

“So you’ve got the big meeting with the mayor tonight?”

“During which I’ll try to convince her that even after forty-seven phone calls, I haven’t changed my mind. And I’m not going to.”

“Have to give her an A for persistence.”

“Or aggravation.”

Pete chuckled. “Wonder if she’s hot.”

“Do you ever get your mind wrapped around any other subject?”

“I try to discourage it. You’d do well to borrow the philosophy.”

“Out of the market.”

“When are you going to quit beating yourself up about that, Jack? Lots of people change their mind about getting married. Better before than after.”

“At the altar though?”

“Okay, so right before.”

“Which makes me a very bad cliché.”

“No. Just a man who hasn’t found the right woman.”

Jack aimed the subject in another direction. “I left a file on my desk with some info I need for the lawyers on the auction. How about scanning it and e-mailing it to me?”

“Not a problem. They have phone jacks down there?”

“Watch it.”

“Do it before I leave.”

“Check in with you tomorrow.” Jack hit the end button on his phone, dropped it on the passenger seat.

Another car pulled up beside him. A man and woman got out, fortyish, headed for the restaurant holding hands. She dropped her head back and laughed at something the man said, her hair brushing her shoulders. A single glimpse of the two made it clear they were a couple of long standing, their ease with one another nearly tangible. A pang of envy hit Jack in the chest, surprising him with its lingering sting. Ironic considering that a year and a half ago, he’d broken off his engagement to a perfectly nice woman because in the end, he hadn’t been able to go against his own belief that it wouldn’t last.

Jack got out of the car, closed the door with a solid ka-chunk. He crossed the parking lot, fighting with the knot of his tie. What was he doing here, anyway? In addition to the pile of work stacked up on his desk back in D.C., he had about a thousand loose ends to tie up in Macon’s Point before he could leave for London. He’d driven straight down, still in his work clothes. What he wanted was a good hot shower, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. At least the meeting wouldn’t last long. He’d say his piece and be on his way.