Page 101 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love you too. Whatever,” I muttered.
Christmas was in four days and Jess was driving us to Wes Drummond’s funeral. I wanted to be baking cookies. Or wrapping presents. I did not want to be going to a drug dealer’s funeral.
But it was important to Jess, so Rowen and I were going.
Noelle was with us too. She’d known Wes quite well since he had been her son’s best friend and her daughter’s boyfriend, and his murder was taking its toll on her already fragile mind.
The whole town would likely be at the funeral, so it was being held in the school’s auditorium. There weren’t any churches large enough to hold the large audience.
I’d never been in the auditorium before, and much like with the football stadium, I was impressed by its size. There were two columns of seats in the middle of the room, another off to the left of the stage and a fourth to the right.
The casket sat center stage. It was a simple design, made of gleaming wood. Large framed pictures of Wes bracketed it on either side, some of him as a child with his family, some from his teenaged years. None resembled the man in his thirties I had known.
The service started promptly at two o’clock but before the pastor walked up to the podium, he escorted an older couple to seats in the front row. The woman’s face was red and puffy. The man’s face was blank and his skin was pale.
“Poor Jack and Annie,” Noelle whispered.
Jack and Annie. Wes’s parents.
My heart instantly hurt for them, and the ache continued to get worse as the service went on. Mostly the pastor talked about the good things in Wes’s life but I appreciated his acknowledgement that Wes hadn’t been a perfect man and had lost his way.
The funeral concluded and everyone started shuffling toward the cafeteria for the reception. The bottleneck at the doors gave me a chance to people watch.
Small groups of three to four people huddled together in the aisles, and a larger group stood around Wes’s parents up front.
One woman stood up front alone, looking at one of the picture collages. She was in profile but she was stunning. Her honey-blond hair was pulled back into a swirling bun at the nape of her neck. Her figure was perfectly silhouetted in a black pencil skirt and silk blouse. And even though we were inside, she was wearing a pair of huge framed sunglasses.
There was something familiar about her, like I’d seen her around town before but I couldn’t quite place her.
I was just opening my mouth to ask Jess who she was when a blond flash came out of nowhere and crashed into his body.
Andrea Merkuso.
Correction. Andrea Merkuso with her arms wrapped around Jess’s waist and her blond head burrowed into his chest.
I blinked a couple of times and clamped my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping open.
Did this woman seriously have the gall to plaster her body into his while I was standing right there?
Yes. Yes, she did.
I guess she was clueless after all.
Jess’s arms immediately flew up to the sides, like he was scared to touch her. But after the shock subsided, he unlocked her arms from his waist and picked her up, forcefully setting her down a foot away. She stumbled a little before she regained her balance.
“What the fuck?” he rumbled.
She seemed surprised. What had she been expecting? Jess to pull her into his arms and express his undying love?
“I just thought you might need me,” she cried. “We both knew Wes for a long time.”
Never in my life had I been the jealous or possessive type before. But when it came to Jess, I couldn’t help myself. I was the one who got to touch him. I was the one who got to wrap arms around him.
Me.
I pulled in another breath and closed my eyes, reminding myself that the last thing I needed was to become gossip fodder for starting a catfight at a funeral.
When I opened my eyes again, Jess was close to losing his cool too. He was leaning down into Andrea’s space with a look that was beyond frightening.
