picture sharing a child with her, if it comes down to it." He jabbed his finger in Cherry's direction. "I can't imagine sharing so much as a rabid honey badger with that woman."
I would have laughed my ass off if I wasn't so ready to cry. I pushed away from him. "You're getting up and walking away from this table, Hawk McKinley." I drew a shuddering breath in, my voice trembling and the tears building to the point I couldn't contain them much longer. "If you really, really meant what you just said, you'll leave me alone right now--"
Hawk had no intention of relenting. A hand around my elbow kept me from retreating any further. "If I meant what I said, and I do, walking away is the last thing you can expect from me. Just not happening, baby girl."
I stared at him, all my words and fury abandoning me. My lips started to quiver and I felt the first slide of a tear falling hot and fat down my cheek.
"Ginny…"
Hawk tried rubbing his palm along my arm to calm me. I shrank inward, refusing to look at him any longer. He looked sincere. Bobby Jackson had looked sincere, too. I could still hear the cow bells ringing if I cut out all the noise from the crowd around McKinley and me.
"I'll go, for now." Hawk jumped up from the table. "If it'll settle you, I'll go. But we're not done discussing this, Ginny. We'll take this at whatever pace you're comfortable…"
His hand brushed my shoulder. My whole body stiffened at his touch.
"Just go," I whispered and he did.
**********************
Telling Beau I needed to talk to Roy first and that the offer wasn't as good as it sounded because I had to factor in lost tips, too, I managed to keep my big brother mostly off the topic of my accepting Hawk McKinley's job offer the rest of the weekend. He still tried to argue McKinley's case, assuring me there was room for a bigger salary because Red Addams, the site foreman, had sent all of his former clerks home to their mommas crying like little girls, and every last one of them was a man. But Beau didn't bring the job up with momma and daddy or offer me more than the occasional, quizzical look.
Certain I could handle Beau without having to take a job with McKinley, I walked into the steakhouse Monday morning to find myself unemployed.
All thanks to Hawk McKinley if I understood Roy correctly.
"I hate to lose you, Ginny, but he was real convincing." Roy had tossed an arm around my shoulder and gave me a paternal squeeze as I stared at him, my mouth working like a guppy freshly pulled from its fish bowl. "I can't hope to pay you that kind of money and he's right when he says the office job will look better on your resume once you finish classes up."
Roy stuck a fat, padded envelope in my hand. "He said you'd need this before heading out to the site."
Thus ended the job I'd held since high school, one that had helped keep the utilities on while daddy was laid up and helped get them turned on in the first place when the Kelly family's world had been turned upside down eighteen months ago. Pulling into the H-E-B Foods parking lot to sit and mull things over for a spell, I tried not to think about the storm that had knocked out the power at the garage daddy worked at, short circuiting the car lift he was working under. Tearing open the envelope, I tried not to think of how, ten miles away from where daddy was trapped for six hours under a car that day, a tornado blew through the Kelly homestead, obliterating the building and every last stick of furniture and personal articles in it. Good-bye to my parents' wedding photos, the baby blankets Gran had quilted for me and Beau, the china daddy's great-great grandmother had brought over from Ireland. Good-bye everything.
Money spilled from the envelope, a thick wad of hundreds with a piece of paper wrapped around it. Bracing myself for another Hawk McKinley negotiating tactic, I unfolded the paper and started to read.
Ginny,
I know you're pissed as hell at me right now. I also know if I let you