by Jeannie Watt
“I need to get to work.” She spoke in a suddenly serious voice.
“Me, too.” He followed the words with a smoldering look and Felicity had to remind herself to breath as he walked away.
Drat the man.
She adjusted her bandanna and headed back to the last eight feet of office where she’d left off. Heaven help her, he was stubborn. And attractive.
And not at all what she needed.
So why was he rapidly becoming what she wanted?
You need to back off.
For once she and her troublesome inner voice agreed.
*
Danny was running out of time with Felicity, who would be boarding a plane in a matter of days, which meant he had to get ready to punt.
Unfortunately, he was a little shaky on his field position. Where exactly was he? He was getting some serious mixed messages from her which indicated that she didn’t know either. Or she did and it wasn’t working with her overall game plan.
Actually, that was a given. She had a career and a life in Seattle, one that made her happy, and he had a warehouse in Holly, Idaho, and planned to become a real estate magnate there, one small step at a time.
But he could be a long-distance owner. Other people did it. He had Sandra to manage things.
He also had his sanity, which meant that he couldn’t just pack up and move to Seattle for the express purpose of being close to Felicity. Not without them seeing eye to eye, and it looked like that would be a long time coming.
Bide your time.
Right.
Keep in contact.
Uh huh.
Hope for the best?
Not his style.
Felix was driving him nuts.
He finished texturing the last office of the day as he worked through the conundrum, then used what would be the mayor’s washroom to clean the hopper and other equipment.
When he came downstairs after sealing bags and tapping lids on buckets, Felicity was waiting for him, her red bandanna in her hand. When the scarf was off, the workday was done.
They left the building together without a word, walking companionably down the stairs to their cars.
“Have a good meeting,” Felicity said as she unlocked her car.
“Thanks.” He got into his own car, feeling oddly unsettled by the civil exchange and the silent camaraderie. Then it struck him.
Felicity was doing it on purpose. No challenge, no repartee, no laughter, no connection.
Fine. He put his car into reverse after she pulled away from the curb. He’d simply have to challenge her.
Chapter Ten
Felicity overslept on Thursday morning, and by the time she topped the final step leading to the school entry, the donut box from Cakery Bakery tucked under her arm, she was out of breath. She pulled open the door and was greeted by the sound of the texture spray gun upstairs.
She was really late, and in a way, she could blame Danny, because she’d lain awake for an inordinate amount of time thinking about him, thinking about them, wondering what, if anything, to do next.
“Yes for now” had sounded good in theory, but it was so much harder to execute than she’d anticipated. What if she messed things up between them forever?
That was the question that had kept her staring at the dark ceiling.
Danny had been a part of her life since she’d been four, and yes, he had been wearing light-up sneakers when he’d made his way into her front yard, and she recalled being awesomely jealous of those shoes—and not very welcoming, as he’d pointed out. Things had evolved from there into a lifelong rivalry. Danny took challenges to heart, as did she.
There had been years when she’d pretty much hated him. Those horrible tween and early teen years when emotions were so strong and impossible to handle. The sensitive years, when being called Felix had truly grated. When he kept getting her locker combination and stacking her books at an angle, so they fell out at her feet when she opened the door, always a fun experience in a crowded hallway.
Their relationship had been so predictable, and while she might not have known what little scheme he was cooking up, she knew where they stood emotionally. She missed knowing what to expect from him in that regard.
Do you?
Felicity blew out a breath. That was a solid yes and no.
She had to admit that their current dynamic added a certain energy to her life, which she hadn’t felt since…
Don’t say it.
Sean.
She cringed inwardly, then drew herself up as she walked up the steps. She was older and wiser and had experience on her side. There was no need to worry about falling into that trap again.
Right you are.
“I have donuts,” she called up the stairs.
“I’ll be down in a while. I need to finish spraying this batch.”
“Gotcha.”
She grabbed her donut out of the box and headed into the office she’d finished the day before to begin sanding the seams in preparation for texturing. Then she’d head upstairs to start painting while Danny textured downstairs.
She heard him coming down the stairs as she finished the last seam. Still holding the sanding block, she stepped out into the hall. “I got you two lemon bismarks to make up for being late.” There’d been a run on Valentine’s cookies that morning, so she hadn’t been able to prove her open-mindedness concerning a holiday that meant nothing to her.
“Thanks.” He gave her a look that made her instantly recall why she’d lain awake that night.
“Not a problem.” She gave him a perfunctory smile, then ducked back into the office, feeling almost as out of breath as she’d been that morning after hurrying up the steps to the front door.
Danny had her on the run.
No. Her lack of faith in herself had her on the run.
The realization was hard to swallow, but that didn’t make it any less true.
This will not do.
She set down the sanding block and was on her way out of the room to meet this challenge head-on, in full winging-it mode, when her phone rang, bringing her to a stop. Tess.
“Hey,” she said in a distracted voice.
“Hi. I have a guy here who wants to talk to you.”
“What? At the animal shelter?”
“Cade Kincaid.”
“Really?” She didn’t like the sound of that. “Put him on.”
A few seconds later, Cade said, “Hi, Felicity. Sorry to contact you in this roundabout way.”
“Not a problem,” she said, hoping those words were true.
“I heard that you’re a financial advisor, and I was wondering if before you leave for Seattle, we could have drinks and discuss a few matters.”
“This sounds a little like a come-on, Cade.”
“Really?”
“It’s the drinks part.”
He laughed. “How many hours did we spend together in the library? If I’d wanted to come on to you, I would have done it then.”
“Good point.” He certainly hadn’t been shy around her, pretty much pouring out his love life wins and losses and never once hitting on her. “When?”
“Tonight or tomorrow? I’m leaving Saturday morning.”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“What time do you get off work?”
Good question. “Let’s play it safe. We can meet at eight at—”
She was about to say Pizza Bob’s, when he said, “The bar at Le Petit Holly? I went there last night, and it was quiet.”
She hadn’t realized that the new upscale restaurant had a bar, but if he wanted quiet, why not?
“The bar is beer and wine only,” he added.
“I hadn’t planned on knocking back boilermakers, so that works for me.” A glass of wine, some financial conversation. It would get her into the mood for going back to work in four days.
“See you there. Eight o’clock.”
She did not say, “It’s a date,” because she didn’t for one minu
te want him to think it was one.
She ended the call and pocketed her phone as Danny came into the room, a lemon bismark in one hand. “The sprayer jammed, but I got it going and I’m done up there.”
“Great. I’ll start painting upstairs.”
“I’ll move down here. We’ll once again have a floor between us.”
Felicity settled a hand on her hip. “You speak as if I need a floor between us.”
“All signs point to yes.”
“Meaning?”
He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb, exuding male confidence, which in turn made her itch to take him down a notch. Either that, or to wipe the smug look off his face by kissing him.
Felicity tilted up her chin, a movement she did so often with Danny that her neck sometimes felt stiff. “Meaning that I don’t need a floor between us. I can control myself quite nicely in your presence.”
As she was proving to herself at that very moment.
He lifted his eyebrows in a you-know-you-can’t-resist-me way, and she exhaled loudly, something else she did a lot in his presence, mainly to buy time while she thought of a proper response.
Today she was fresh out of proper responses.
“I’m officially inviting you to a celebratory dinner on February 14th.”
“Celebrating what?” she asked suspiciously.
“The completion of the project, of course. What did you think I meant?”
“Gee. I wonder what?”
“Does it matter what?” He hadn’t moved but it felt like he was closer. “A nice dinner. Say at Pizza Bob’s.”
She perked up. “Pizza Bob’s?” That she could handle.
“Only the finest. I promise I won’t bring flowers.” He tilted his head to one side. “It’s not an attempt to rewrite your V-Day PTSD. Just an evening out before you go.”
She gave a slow nod. “I’ll take it under advisement. The only rub is that my flight leaves late that night. I have to be at work the next morning.”
“Okay. If your schedule allows.” He pushed off the doorjamb with a half-smile. “I’ll start hauling equipment downstairs.”
Always leave them wanting more.
Danny disappeared into the hall and Felicity realized that she did want more. More conversation. More time.
More Danny.
It kind of made her feel like punching a wall.
*
Felicity was itching to engage. All he had to do was to draw a few more lines in the sand and she’d revert to form. He hoped. She’d already abandoned the cool demeanor she’d displayed when they’d walked to their cars yesterday, which was a small win. He couldn’t handle coolly polite Felix.
Although, truthfully, he didn’t know how long she could hold onto cool politeness. He had the trigger advantage. He knew how to punch her buttons. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to make her see him as something other than a passing fancy.
Why was fearless Felix so massively self-protective now? How had she messed up her life? And why did she find the possibility of developing a relationship with him as a potential threat?
He didn’t have time to get the answers in the time they had left—a sad fact he was having difficulty accepting, but he would go down swinging.
Thursday turned out to be a busy day, and it wasn’t long before there was more than a floor keeping him and Felix apart. Deke the city maintenance man arrived just after lunch and after warning them that he needed to shut down the furnace for a while, disappeared into the basement to take care of Bertha and the faulty lock.
Shortly after that, Bud and Pete stopped for another inspection on the way to a follow-up visit. And then Tess, who had a few free hours from the shelter stopped by to grab a roller and start slinging paint with her sister upstairs.
It somehow seemed fitting that Sandra would also arrive unexpectedly, but the expression on her face sent up some serious red flags.
“What happened?” Danny said, lowering the spray gun.
“Someone found out about the warehouse and Fork Horn and, well, everything. When I got the counteroffer on the lot next door, it was sky high.” She paused, then straightened the front of her jacket and said, “I didn’t tell a soul, Daniel. Someone from Fork Horn may have let their intentions leak out, but they’re not exactly local and they didn’t want the prices of the surrounding properties to rise any more than we did.”
“We can still get the lot, right?”
“We can. But it ticks me off that the price nearly doubled.”
“How about the lot on the other side?”
She gave her head a shake, and he muttered a low curse. The money spent on parking could be better spent on a heating system. “Go for it,” he said. “Before the price goes up again.”
“Will do. But…what if Fork Horn doesn’t lease from you?”
“It’s a gamble I’ll have to take, and regardless, I’ll need parking no matter who leases the space.”
“Right.” She headed for the door. “I’ll make the call in the car.” She stopped in the hall and looked back. “Did you tell anyone?”
“One person,” he said. And although he couldn’t imagine Felicity purposely ratting him out, it appeared that she’d been less than careful with the information he’d trusted her with.
And that kind of ruined his day.
*
There was something up with Danny. When they’d worked together on the main floor during the last hour of the day, he’d been oddly silent, and the silence continued as they cleaned their tools and shut down operations. Felicity attempted a couple of remarks, but he didn’t bite, instead answering succinctly and then once again going quiet.
This is what you wanted.
No. It wasn’t.
“What’s going on?” she finally asked when they reached the cars.
He looked down at her, keeping his hands in his pockets. The teasing light that usually shone in his eyes was gone, replaced by something distant and dark.
“I’m trying to buy the lot next to my warehouse. The price doubled.”
Felicity started to say that she was sorry that had happened when she realized where this was going.
“You think I told someone.”
His expression clouded. “It’s easy to let things slip.”
“I didn’t let anything slip.”
“You’re the only person in Holly who knows.”
Her lips parted, but she pressed them together again. She refused to defend herself against a bogus charge. “Good night, Danny.” She opened her car door, afraid to speak for fear of what might come out of her mouth. They might be nemeses, but they had a code of honor—or at least she did. He’d asked her to keep it secret and she had.
“Felicity—”
She got into her car and closed the door. Hard. Seconds after the key was thrust into the ignition the Audi was in reverse, wheeling out of there.
She caught sight of him in the rearview mirror, following her as they turned onto the street leading to their homes.
Why did he have to live next door?
She wasn’t going home. Not yet. She needed to burn off this angry energy before settling in for the evening with her dad. If she showed up like this, she’d become the happy participant in a game of twenty questions, because no one, not her sisters, and not Danny, read her like her dad.
And maybe she needed to ask herself why she was so angry.
Because Danny believing the worst of her smacked of emotional betrayal?
Or because being angry felt safe?
Both.
She drove to Tess’s Forever Home animal shelter on autopilot. Maybe feeding dogs would help center her.
Except that the lot was empty when she drove in.
The one time she needed Tess to be working late, she wasn’t.
As her car idled in the parking lot, she pulled out her phone and called her work associate, something she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do while in Holly.
“Hello,” Viv, her ass
ociate cooed into the phone. “How are you?”
“Great,” Felicity lied. “Just thought I’d touch base and see how things are going there before I show up on Monday.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes. It’s been a remarkably smooth week. Nothing out of the ordinary. You picked a great time to be gone. We’ve barely missed you—and I mean that in a good way.”
“Good.” Felicity cleared her throat. “Excellent.”
“I’m sure something will explode when you get back,” Viv said helpfully.
Felicity gave an obligatory laugh, then ended the call.
So much for work as a distraction.
She drew in a deep breath and stared out the windshield at the snowy park on the opposite side of the lot.
While it stung to be suspected of something she hadn’t done—especially when she’d been so careful to never mention Danny’s enterprise, even to her sisters—this might be exactly what she needed to cool things down between them. Being distant hadn’t worked because Danny hadn’t taken her seriously, but if he was angry with her, then distance would work.
But what if he never discovered the truth? What if he always believed she’d betrayed his trust?
When they were firmly ensconced in their normal lives and not spending hours together, they could discuss the matter, set things straight. All she had to do was to hang on for the next little while and finish the project without falling in love.
Because, heaven help her, she was tipping in that direction.
She tried to picture two and a half years of a long-term relationship, with Danny managing properties and running his repair shop in Holly while she put in her time in Seattle. Had she ever known a long-distance relationship that had worked?
Tipping her head back against the headrest, she plowed through the list of people she knew who’d tried and failed. A rift now meant that she and Danny could eventually go back to their old relationship after a cooling-off period.
But a rift after a long-distance romance was forever.
She wasn’t ready for that. Danny had been a constant in her life since she was four. How could she risk losing him forever?