A Woman Like Annie. Inglath Cooper

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СКАЧАТЬ sex life he’d had with Annie.

      “I’m not fretting,” he said, planting his forehead on the chair and staring at the terra-cotta tile beneath.

      She click-clacked across the pool deck and squatted down beside him, one hand lacing through his hair. “You are.”

      “I’m not.”

      She sighed. “Why don’t you just go get him, J.D.? I wouldn’t mind having the little sweetkins live here with us. We could hire a nanny. Maybe one from South America. I hear that’s all the rage with the better families.”

      “The courts always rule in favor of the mother on custody, Cass.”

      She raised an eyebrow and sent him a silly-boy look. “But that’s with regular people. You’re J. D. McCabe.”

      A grin broke through his gloom. Cassie might be young, but sometimes she did have a point.

      THE DOORBELL RANG at two minutes past six-thirty on Sunday morning.

      Clarice. Annie knew it before she pulled back the living-room curtain and saw her sister’s green Explorer parked in the driveway. She went to the door in her worn white bathrobe (the one J.D. had called asexual, and she’d therefore kept just as a matter of principle). She opened the door with her hair still sticking out from where she’d slept on it—more like tossed on it—and mascara smudged under her eyes.

      “Lovely,” came Clarice’s raised eyebrow assessment.

      “It’s still dark outside. Not everyone falls out of bed looking like they’re ready for Star Search.”

      Clarice chuckled and sauntered past her, holding up two cups of Krispy Kreme coffee and a paper bag emitting the aroma of glazed doughnuts, her standard offering whenever she showed up on Annie’s doorstep at an hour most people would throttle her for. Looking great, of course. Shoulder-length blond hair just tousled enough that it was hard to tell if she’d come straight from bed or a very expensive hairdresser.

      People used words like striking to describe Clarice. Clothes looked great on her—all clothes. At thirty-four, Clarice could pull off even the kind that should normally be reserved for twenty and under. If she weren’t her sister, Annie could have seriously hated her.

      She followed Clarice into the kitchen, wiping a hand over eyes that still felt gritty from lack of sleep.

      “So, what? I have to hear from the local grapevine that you were at Walker’s last night with the infamous Jack Corbin?”

      “I was going to call you this morning.”

      “You could have called me before.”

      “So you could have one of your star reporters conveniently located at the next table over? Don’t think so.”

      “Would I ever—”

      “Yes.”

      Clarice laughed, making herself at home on one of the bar stools tucked under the island in the center of Annie’s kitchen. “So how’d it go? Have you saved the town yet?”

      Annie went to the sink, turned on the faucet and stuck the plate on which Tommy’s birthday cake had once perched under the running water. “I’m glad you can see the humor in it. I haven’t managed to locate any yet. Because I’m the last person who should be trying to convince Jack Corbin of anything.”

      Clarice bit into her doughnut, and in a less-than-Clarice-like moment of bad manners, said around a mouthful, “Tell me what you said. What he said.”

      “I said please. And he said no.”

      “Annniiieee. The long version if you will.”

      “He drives a Porsche.”

      “Hmm.” With interest. “What’s he look like?”

      “Like a guy who drives a Porsche.”

      “Hmmmm.” More interest.

      “Clar, you’re so deep.”

      “It’s one of my good points.” Clarice smiled. “So really. Could you be a little more specific?”

      “I don’t know. Good-looking.”

      “A detail or two would be appreciated.”

      “Dark-brown hair. Nice eyes.”

      “Fit or soft?”

      “Fit.”

      “Like a runner or a weight lifter?”

      “In between.”

      “Any rings?”

      “Didn’t notice.”

      “Did, too.”

      “Okay, no.”

      “Hah. So he was good-looking enough for you to look at his ring finger.”

      Annie rolled her eyes and pulled the doughnut Clarice had brought her out of the bag, taking a bite before elaborating. “Jack Corbin doesn’t need that factory or this town. He’s made up his mind. It’s not much more complicated than that.”

      “Did you explain how half the town is going to be out of work if he dumps that company?” Clarice’s pretty face drew inward with a frown, her doughnut acting as a pointer for accentuation. “How people have mortgages, and car payments and medical bills—” She broke off there, breathless with indignation. This was Clarice the editor talking, the Star Search beauty contestant having left the room. This was a woman who would gladly run a four-page expose on every awful thing the man had ever done (provided she could dig it up) if it meant convincing him to reverse his decision.

      “I did, Clarice. Specifics, examples, every solid argument I could manage to think of in front of a man eating a stack of pancakes.”

      “A what?” Clarice’s frown lowered a watt or two.

      “Pancakes. He ordered pancakes to keep Tommy from having a tantrum.”

      Clarice pondered that for a moment, then said, “That’s odd.”

      “You mean in keeping with the monster everyone’s made him out to be?”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      “No, but it’s true,” Annie said, leaving half her doughnut in the wake of the realization that she’d have to walk into town and back to work off even half those fat grams. She took a sip of her still-hot coffee, adding, “He doesn’t have a life here anymore. I can’t really blame him for not holding on to the company.”

      “Yeah, but to dump it at auction, just sell it off piece by piece. That’s not right. He could at least wait for a buyer. Then people wouldn’t have to lose their jobs.”

      Ever since she’d left the diner last night, Annie had been unable to shake the sense of failure СКАЧАТЬ