Dakota Cassidy - Talking After Midnight

“You don’t even know her, and you just laid one on her?” Jax pressed.

“I met her when I lit her pilot light for Em.”

“Is there some kind of magic involved in lighting a woman’s pilot light all these years I’ve been missing? I’d have lit one a long time ago.”

Tag grinned. “No, you wouldn’t have. You were waiting for Em to come along. And ya done good, brother.”

Jax smiled, that smile he always smiled whenever Em’s name was mentioned. Kind of stupid and head over heels, but nice. “Damn right I did. But that doesn’t explain how, after one light of a pilot, you were kissing Marybell.”

“I like Miss Marybell. She always makes me paper dolls when we go to Miss Dixie’s house for pool parties. Her hair is so cool,” his niece, Maizy, chimed from the playroom adjoining the kitchen where Tag was expending an infinite amount of time making bologna sandwiches for the date Marybell had never officially agreed to.

“She’s nice, right, A-Maizy?” Tag confirmed. He smiled and winked at her. He didn’t know why seeing Marybell was making him stupidly happy. But it was.

He’d woken up today with a smaller knot in his chest than usual. His financial worries, his life issues didn’t seem as daunting this morning, and when he thought about that, Marybell’s face had popped into his head.

“Does Em know you kissed her?”

Tag stuffed a sandwich into a Zip-Loc bag and frowned. “Why does Em have to know I kissed her?”

“Kissed who?” Em asked, floating into the kitchen to settle herself against Jax’s side with a sigh and a squeeze of his brother’s hand while her boys, Clifton Junior and Gareth, flew into the playroom to join Maizy. She dropped a plate of brownies on the counter for them. One of the many perks of Emmaline Amos.

He liked Em. She’d changed everything for Jax and Maizy. She was a pear-scented whirlwind of hugs and kisses, freshly baked pies, well-balanced meals for Maizy, and one of the biggest badasses with a band saw he’d ever seen.

Truth be told, he and his younger brother, Gage, were probably needed a whole lot less in Maizy’s case since Em had come into their lives. They’d both come to Plum Orchard for their own reasons, but the biggest one had been helping Jax take care of his best friend’s daughter.

Now Em did all the things they’d once done to help Jax, and she did them a damn sight better than the two of them ever had.

But Em wouldn’t hear of them leaving Georgia—even though a small part of the reason he’d come to Plum Orchard, to help Jax renovate their aunt’s old house, was no longer a valid reason. The house was mostly done, and this was due in part to Em who’d organized and planned until it was exactly the way Jax claimed he’d envisioned it.

He should be out trying to get some contracting work. Unfortunately, his tarnished reputation made that almost impossible, and here in Plum Orchard, there wasn’t a huge call for contractors. So he took side jobs that paid little but kept him doing what he loved to do more than most anything else. Building things.

He’d thought for sure now that Jax had Em, he and Gage would just be in the way of the eventual blending of their two families.

But Em had sat both men down and firmly said, with a teasing smile, “Ya’ll don’t become less important to Maizy and Jax because the house is finished. You’re all she’s ever known since birth. You’re family. Why should that change because of me and my interferin’? You both stay put until you want otherwise. I can work around you.”

He’d been surprised by her attitude. Thought for sure, even the nicest of women wouldn’t want two messy, loud roughnecks with more issues than a stack of magazines hanging around. But not Em. Em had embraced them as hard as they’d embraced her, but most of all, she’d brought all the things to Maizy’s life not one of the Hawthorne brothers could.

Hair ribbons and sparkly dresses and pink castles made out of life-size LEGOs. Nail polish, facials, bedtime stories of evil queens vanquished with the power of love, girl time once a week with Em and the women at Call Girls and a million hugs and kisses.

“So, who are you kissing, Tag?”

“He kissed Marybell,” Jax teased.

Em’s blue eyes went wide as she pulled off her coat and scarf. “My Marybell?”

“Did you have dibs on her, Em?” Tag teased, reaching for the bag of chips he’d dug out of the pantry.

Em made a face at him, her fingers going to her throat in a gesture he knew well. It was a signal she was concerned. “Oh, hush. I’m just surprised.”

“That she’d let a schlub like me kiss her?”

“That she’d let anyone kiss her. Marybell’s...”

Tag’s ears instantly went on alert. “Marybell’s what?”

Em sighed, her eyes thoughtful and cautious. “I don’t know. She’s very private. I just get the impression she’s had some troubles, though I don’t know what, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be tellin’ tales out of school. So you mind yourself, Taggart Hawthorne. I won’t have you upsettin’ my girl with your unspeakable charms.”

Yeah. He got that Marybell was private—closed off somehow; he just didn’t know from what. But he wanted to. “My unspeakable charms?”

Jax slapped him on the back. “It’s a Hawthorne trait. Ask Em. She couldn’t resist.”

Em gave his brother a flirty smile and a peck on the lips. “It was not, either. It was all the power tools you’re related to by familial connections that grabbed on to me and just wouldn’t let go.”

“Just ask me. Can’t get her to give up that darn belt sander to save my soul,” Gage joked, breezing into the kitchen to grab a brownie from the plate Em had brought over. He held it up after taking a bite. “Have I mentioned how much I love having you in our lives, Em?”

Em’s chuckle filled the kitchen. “That belt sander is almost better than a manicure.”

Tag packed up the last of his dinner, the only sort of dinner he could afford at this point, and stuffed it into a backpack. “Don’t you worry, Em. I’ll be on my best behavior. Gotta run, guys. Have a couple of things to do before tonight. Have a good one.”

“Wait!” Em yelled, a bottle of ginger ale in her hand. She caught him at the door and held it out to him. “Marybell likes ginger ale. Has it every night with her supper—which is what I’m assumin’ the bologna sandwiches are about? Supper—you and her?”

The words made his chest tight again. Damn stupid, but it took his mind off the other stuff. The bad shit. He was tired of the bad shit. Marybell made him think of good things—so he was going with it. “Guilty.”

Em’s eyes gleamed. “Then you be sure and wow her with your uncanny intuition and take the ginger ale. I won’t tell if you don’t tell.”

Tag looked down into her pretty face for signs of disapproval. “You okay with this? I know she’s your employee. I don’t want to cause trouble.”

Em grinned—the kind of grin she and Maizy shared when they were up to their eyeballs in something. “How could courtin’ Marybell cause trouble?”

Her heard the metaphoric skidding of brakes in his head. “Hold on there. I’m not courting anything. It’s just some bologna sandwiches.” He wasn’t courting. Was he? Hell, no. He was testing. Testing his social skills. Testing his ability to interact with the world again. Testing a connection that had made him feel good—as though there was life still left to live.

“I saw the way you slathered that mayonnaise on that bread like you were plastering a wall—you did it like you were da Vinci. That kind of care says courtin’ to me.”

“It’s just a sandwich,” he insisted. “I like my mayo to be even on all four corners of the bread. I just assume that’s how everyone else likes it. That’s not courting—that’s for the love of a good sandwich.”