Page 3 of Filthy Little Midlife Fling

The woman in question steps out from behind the van. The little ball of gray-haired evil levels the driver with a glare. “I’m Agnes, and you need your head examined. That’s unrelated to the car wreck, of course, but it needs to be done regardless.”

The index finger curls back into the fist, and the arm disappears back behind the mattress. Just a couple more steps and I’ll see the face of the woman who crashed into my magnolia tree. Anger still burns through me, but it’s been tempered slightly. Now, the white-hot fury is mingled with cool, clear curiosity.

It’s her voice, I realize. Sweet as syrup, so sincere, so sure.

A woman with a voice like that could bewitch a man with just a few words. She could have him on his knees simply by pointing one of those elegant fingers at the ground and using that witchy, honey-soaked voice to tell him to kneel. He’d fall so hard he’d have bruises on his kneecaps for the rest of his life.

Suddenly, my knees ache.

And just like that, anger blazes back to life again.

The woman who sounds like a temptress just crashed into my magnolia tree. She’s not getting away with that because of her voice.

I stomp the remaining few feet to glare at her—and oh, hell. The voice matches the face. The body’s hidden beneath a blanket, but the lumps are in all the right places.

Pale green eyes shift to me and widen slightly, then narrow. A lush pink mouth presses into a thin line. “Who are you?”

I grit my teeth. I could say, “I’m the man whose tree you just mutilated,” but my anger is still burning me from the inside out—anger and panic and decades-old hurt and inconvenient lust that just came up because of this woman’s voice, of all things—and her eyes are green like new spring shoots, and the words all crowd up in my throat and get stuck. The best I can do is a couple of words ground out between my clenched teeth. “Tow truck.”

Her shoulders droop. She smooths her hands on the blanket covering her thighs. “Oh. Right.”

I pass her a business card with the garage’s address on it. “That’s where I’m taking it.”

She takes the card, careful not to touch my grease-stained fingers. I try not to take it personally. She stares at the card for a moment, then nods. “All right. Thanks. I would come along, but I have to go get my head examined.”

“Thoroughly,” Agnes grumbles from my left.

I get the keys to the van from her, and then the paramedics wheel her into the back of the ambulance then close the doors, and I can finally breathe again. I turn to the tree. I don’t want to approach, but standing on the curb in front of my house isn’t going to make this any easier. Nodding to the ladies gathered near the edge of my lawn, I make my way to the site of impact.

There’s bark in the van’s grille and a sizable gouge taken out of the trunk. I’ll have to carefully trim the bark and watch the wound for fungus growth over the coming months. Two branches will have to be cut off, and I lost half the flowers, but as far as I can tell the roots are still intact. Magnolias have a large, shallow root system, so it would be obvious if they’d been damaged. It’s been hell for my pipes, but this tree means more to me than a few underground repairs’ worth of hassle. I think I can save it. I hope I can save it.

Please, please let me save this tree.

Turning to the van, I grit my teeth and get to work. The side of the van is covered in a fancy decal with the words “Organizing Goddess” written in swirly pink font. There’s a silhouette of a woman in Grecian robes leaning on the G. It’s ridiculous.

She’s probably one of those women who spends her time decanting seventeen types of dried beans into perfectly matched and labeled containers just so she can take photos of them to impress strangers on the internet, but she never cooks any of them because half-empty containers would ruin the aesthetic.

I would know. My ex-wife loved making sure our home looked picture-perfect. Looked even better when I wasn’t in it. There’s no room for a grease monkey in glossy, social-media-worthy photos. No room for the nephew that needed me when the worst happened, either.

I take a deep breath. I’m being unfair. I’m not mad at Rebecca anymore—not like I was—but damn if the remnants of my feelings don’t still mug me at the worst possible times. I felt inadequate and lost when she left me, still grieving and raw from my sister’s passing, but I had to pull myself together to be there for my nephew.

“You all right, Remy?”

I turn to see Mac getting off his motorcycle. The local potter and schoolteacher takes in the scene and grimaces in sympathy. “Is the tree okay?”

“I appreciate that you asked about the tree before the driver,” I tell him.

He grins, shrugging. “Figured I’d check on what was truly important to you.”

“The driver is a menace,” Agnes cuts in, waddling over to stand by us. She snarls at the front fender and clicks her tongue. “Nearly ran us down.”

Lottie, Mac’s mother-in-law, joins our little posse and gives Mac a soft smile. She squeezes his forearm and arches her brow at me. “Think you can save the van?”

“Who cares about the van? Look at the tree!” Agnes’s arm shoots out for emphasis. “This magnolia was spectacular. You would’ve won the walking tour, Remy. It was a shoo-in until that maniac showed up. Nearly killed us! She should be arrested.”

“The walking tour doesn’t have winners and losers,” Margaret answers as she walks over to stand beside Lottie. The elegant older woman gives Agnes a very bland side-eye and exchanges a loaded look with her twin sister, Dorothy. The two of them own the local hotel, although they’ve been slowing down in recent years. The grapevine has been whispering about a new manager coming in to help them out.

Dorothy’s kaftan flutters in the early-summer breeze. Her hair falls halfway down her back in silver waves as she leans close to the tree to inspect the damage. “Poor baby,” she says, patting the trunk. “You’re strong. You’ll survive.”

---