Burned by Love

by Erin Wright

  “Oh, pretty!” she exclaimed, and he squeezed her arm.

  “Wait until you see inside,” he said, and again, the boyish excitement was practically radiating off him.

  As they took the last few steps and she could finally see inside of the old mill, she realized that he had every right to be excited and proud. “Troy,” she gasped, somehow making his one-syllable name sound like two. “I…wow…who helped you with this?!”

  There were strings of lights crisscrossing overhead, making the cavernous room feel more intimate and cozy than it would otherwise. Old, decorative doors were set up, blocking off the rest of the mill from view, bringing everything in close. The flickering of the candles, the bouquets of flowers, an old farm table set for two…

  It looked Instagram ready.

  Truth time: She thought the world of Troy, but she’d seen his office at the mill. She’d seen his house. Décor was not his strong suit. There was no way he did this himself.

  And then she peered closer at the shabby chic doors.

  “Just a minute here,” she gasped, realization dawning on her, and then she broke out laughing. “My mother! I’d recognize those doors anywhere. She’s been storing them up in the attic for years. I kept telling her that there wasn’t a damn place to fit them in the house and she needed to get rid of them, but she kept insisting they’d be used one day, and here they are.” She shook her head. “No wonder Mom’s been so happy this week, even with the Dodgers losing. Give her a place to decorate and she just goes crazy. Wait!” She turned and glared at him, hands on her hips. “You knew my mom wore black and was in mourning this week! If you two were working on this together…”

  Troy grinned, totally unrepentant. “I couldn’t let the cat out of the bag too quickly. It would’ve ruined the surprise.”

  “Shit,” she groaned. “Do you realize that now I have to listen to my mother say ‘I told you so!’ for the next ten years, at least? She’s going to point to her using these doors as a reason to hoard even more.”

  “Honestly, it wasn’t only the doors,” he admitted freely. “Look around, and I’m sure you’ll recognize more. I bought the flowers from Carla at Happy Petals. Otherwise, this was all your mom.”

  Penny glared at him in mock anger. “This meal we’re about to eat better be damn tasty to make up for all of the trouble you just caused,” she warned him. “Otherwise, I might make you kiss me to make up for it.”

  “And that’d be simply tragic…” he murmured, pulling her up against his broad chest and giving her the thorough hello kiss he’d skipped when he’d picked her up. She realized now that he’d been so nervous, he hadn’t been able to properly kiss her, and she’d been so curious about where they were going on this mysterious date, she hadn’t even noticed the oversight.

  Well, she noticed it now. She felt herself melting into him as the fire roared stronger between them. The world narrowed to just the two of them and their lips and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, holding onto him as the world spun around them…

  In a daze, she finally registered that he was pulling back, and off balance, she pulled back a bit also, blinking as the world swam into focus. “Whoa,” she breathed.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, and brushed a stray curl out of her face. “We…uhh…better eat.” His voice was cracked and trembling a bit and even in the romantic, dim lighting, she could tell his pupils were blown. She wondered if she had that same look of naked desire on her face, and then cursed where they were. No matter how cutesy her mother had managed to make it in here, it still wasn’t overly clean, and there certainly wasn’t a bed in sight. “Carmelita will be very upset if we let her food get cold,” Troy added.

  “We definitely can’t make her angry!” Penny said with a forced laugh, smoothing down the front of her shirt, trying to regain her equilibrium. “Not if we want tamales again.”

  “Exactly my thoughts.” Troy escorted her over to the farm-style table set for two, floating white candles in a glass bowl adding to the ambiance. After she was settled in her chair, a posh affair with a linen slipcover that draped to the cement floor, Troy unzipped something – it was too dark for her to see what it was – and pulled two plates out, already loaded up with food. Carmelita had apparently gone Western tonight, with roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls on the plate, along with small salads in hand-carved wooden bowls.

  “You guys really thought of everything, didn’t you?” Penny said when Troy uncorked a bottle of wine and poured a glass for her, and then some water for him.

  “It’s the same wine that we drank at the arts fair in Franklin on our first-st date,” he told her. “I tracked it down. You’d seemed to really like it…” He trailed off and shrugged, apparently a little embarrassed by his sentimental gesture.

  She took a sip of the pink moscato and let out a happy sigh. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said softly, the dancing flames setting his green eyes ablaze. The warmth of the wine was already beginning to spread through her veins. “I can’t believe any of this.”

  He picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. “A beautiful date for a beautiful lady,” he murmured.

  A little bit of panic prickled the back of her neck then. Even as they picked up their silverware and began to chit-chat about life and how upset Sparky had been at being left at home instead of coming on this date, and how Wanda had struggled to keep this whole thing a secret, Penny worried.

  She didn’t want to. After all, who complained about a handsome man – who kissed better than Fabio – setting up a date like this, going through all of this work and expense?

  Answer: Penny Roth, that’s who.

  Even as Troy laughed, showing off his pearly white teeth and she smiled back, she was feeling…unsettled.

  Why? What’s wrong? Why can’t I just enjoy this?

  Because no man does all of this for someone he doesn’t love, that’s why.

  Sure, some guys might do this in order to “score” and get a girl in bed, but she was already a willing participant there. No reason to wine and dine her just to make that happen.

  They’d been floating along in this happy, blasé world, no commitments, no strings attached, and then he started impressing her mother, which made her worried. And now he was trying really hard to impress her, which made her even more worried.

  He isn’t going to ruin this. Not after all this time. He’s too smart for that. I’ve been too straightforward. He knows better.

  “So, big news,” he said, breaking into her thoughts.

  “Oh?” she said, taking a small bite of the rare roast beef. Heaven. She wondered for a moment if she could get away with kidnapping Carmelita and taking her to Seattle with her.

  “Bryce wants to st-st-stay here in Long Valley. He’s turning down the bonus and getting out of the Air Force.”

  She stared at him, mouth agape, fork halfway to her mouth. “No way,” she finally whispered.

  “Yes way,” he said, laughing, the joy lighting up his whole face. “He asked me if I’d hire him on at the mill, and—”

  Please tell me you did it. Please tell me you did it.

  “—I told him I’d do one better than that. I offered him the mill.”

  “Yes! I’m so proud of you!” Penny hollered, practically launching herself across the table at him. “You did it – you really did it!” She was covering his face with kisses as he laughed and settled her further down onto his lap.

  “I did,” he said when she finally quit squealing with joy long enough for him to speak. “I talked to Aunt and Uncle Horvath and we made a deal. For all of my work at the mill over the years, I get my inheritance now, and nothing later when they pass away.” He looked slightly ill at the idea of discussing his second set of parents dying, and hurried on. “They’re deeding this mill over to me, and a $50,000 loan at no interest-st, and no payments for the first-st five years, to give me time to make a go of it. I want to do what you suggest-st-sted – a farmer’s market every
Saturday in here. People can rent booths from me – it’s an indoor space so it’ll happen no matter what. No worrying about the weather. It’ll double as my leatherworking shop during the week. Oh, and my house on the back forty of my aunt and uncle’s property – they’re splitting it off along with five acres and giving it to me. It’s the other half of my inheritance.”

  “I cannot believe it,” Penny breathed, her mind spinning. “Honestly, I’m just in shock. Bryce wants to take over the mill?! The military really did change him!” She hadn’t known him before he joined, of course, and had only met him once on this visit home, but Troy had told her plenty of stories of him growing up.

  “I kinda want to send the Air Force a thank-you letter,” Troy admitted with a broad grin. “I never would’ve guessed it.”

  Penny finally slipped off his lap and sat back down in her chair, staring at Troy across the table. “You’ve been a busy little bee,” she said, a little wounded that he’d kept such huge news from her. “Working all of this out with your aunt and uncle and cousin, and then cleaning and decorating the mill…what do your parents have to say about it?”

  Troy shrugged. “My parents know Long Valley is my home. I visit them in Boise when I get groceries and things, but they never expected me to move back there, especially since I was supposed to take over the mill. So I don’t think they really care one way or the other, except that they want me to be happy. It’s been so long since I lived with them, they feel more like my aunt and uncle, and my aunt and uncle feel a lot more like my parents. It’s…weird, I know.”

  “I have a mother who wears black when her baseball team loses, and hoards old doors in her attic. I wouldn’t know how to relate to a normal family, honestly.” Not to mention Penny doing the books for her mom and making sure she didn’t spend her way into bankruptcy.

  No, her family was definitely not “normal” in the least.

  She settled into her chair and took another bite of her potatoes, savoring the homemade gravy drizzled on top, when she felt a little deflation in her joy bubble. She’d been pushing Troy to do something with this old mill and not take over the new one for what felt like months, but now that it was really happening, she realized a fatal flaw in her plan:

  This meant he wouldn’t be coming with her when she left.

  Somehow, without really thinking it through, she’d believed that he should take over the old mill and make it his, and also follow her wherever she ended up. Now that reality had slapped her across the face, she felt a little stupid for not putting those two thoughts together and realizing that they wouldn’t both work. Duh. He was going to be living his dream, and that meant staying right here in Long Valley.

  Right in the area that made her feel smothered alive. Panicked. Overwhelmed.

  Well then, it’s a good thing I knew the rules from the beginning and made sure not to fall in love, right?

  She felt slightly ill. She didn’t know why; she should be thrilled. But her stomach was twisting and turning and tying itself into knots.

  “Are you okay?” Troy asked, reaching out and taking her hand. “You look a little pale.”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she reassured him breezily, taking another sip of her wine.

  Or at least that’s what she liked to pretend happened. More likely that the tremble in her voice and hand was noticeable from the moon and Troy absolutely knew that she was full of shit, but ever the gentleman, he didn’t push it.

  “There’s one more thing…”

  “Yeah?” she said brightly, staring down at her plate, spending forever picking just the right green bean to spear with her fork. So many choices. So hard to choose. Whichever one was she going to eat?

  “Penny?” Troy whispered. “Are you—?”

  “I’m great!” she announced forcefully and speared a green bean at random. “What else is there?” she asked politely, staring at Troy’s nose, not quite brave enough to look him in the eye, as she chewed the bean into paste. She really needed to just take another bite but that meant making a choice – again – and suddenly, she felt oh-so-overwhelmed by the idea of choices.

  “I want you to st-st-stay here.”

  The words hung in the air between them, almost visible, like a brick wall that had slammed down out of nowhere.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he rushed on. “You could open a graphic arts company here. In this mill. It’s perfect. Then you don’t have to work for someone else. You would own your own business. There isn’t another graphics company in the whole valley.” The words were spilling ever faster out of him now, like a dam that had been breached, spilling over, smothering her alive. He could tell she was going to say no, and she knew he could tell she was going to say no, and he was fighting with words to keep it from happening. “You’re good with finances and anything you need help on, Jennifer Miller could be there for you. You don’t have to leave.”

  “I can’t stay here!” she cried, trying to push back against the wall of words, to stop him before he did something he’d hate himself for later, like beg her to stay. “You’ve always known that. I’ve never lied. I’ve never kept that from you. I have to leave. Don’t you understand? This town will smother me alive. I can’t breathe here. I can’t breathe…”

  She was hyperventilating then, gasping in the air but not getting any oxygen and she was going to die, literally die, and it was Long Valley that was going to do it to her. The world began to spin around her, and then Troy was shoving her head between her legs and telling her to take a deep breath, hold it, breathe out, breathe in, hold it, he was counting for her, and finally the tightness began to fade away, and the world began to come back again, and ashamed, she pushed herself upright.

  “Do you need some water?” Troy asked quietly, his eyes searching her face even as he held his glass out to her. Ever the gentleman. Ever the thoughtful guy she’d fallen in love with.

  No! She had not fallen in love with Troy Horvath. She knew better, dammit. She knew not to do that, so she hadn’t. She clung to that thought with all her might.

  “I’m good,” she said woodenly, shaking her head. “I think I’d like to go home.”

  Quietly, he stood up and helped her out of her chair, escorting her to the door. “You don’t have to decide right now,” he said quietly. “It will be a lot of work to bring this mill back to life—”

  “You don’t get it!” she spat out, yanking her arm out of his and storming towards the truck. “I. Can’t. Stay. Here. Do you want me to draw you a diagram? Tattoo it across your forehead? The only reason I haven’t gone stark-raving mad was because I knew I was leaving! I always knew I was leaving. And now you’re trying to take that away from me.” She yanked the passenger door open and struggled her way inside, realizing how much harder it was to get into his giant truck in heels and a skirt when Troy wasn’t helping her. All these months and she’d never once gotten in or out without his helping hand.

  He was such a gentleman. Such an Idahoan cowboy down to his well-worn boots.

  Everything she didn’t want in a man. Well, other than being handsome and kind and a hard worker and a good man, that was.

  The tears were blurring the world around her, and there was a part of her that was grateful for that. Then she wouldn’t have to see Troy’s face and the pain sure to be written there.

  He got into the truck silently and began heading back to Franklin. “I just-st thought you’d eventually warm to the idea if you could see how to be a graphic artist-st and stay in Long Valley,” he finally said in the painful silence. “I didn’t think—”

  “That everything I told you was actually true?!” she said snidely. “Yeah, I can see how that could be confusing for you. How many times, Troy? How many times have I said that I had to leave here?”

  She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to be in pain like she was in pain. It was too dark in the cab of the truck for her to see his expression, but what she did know was how the pain of it all was radiating through her like a stab wound. She
too had had a dream of him coming with her, and that dream too had died tonight. It was a dream that didn’t make much sense on the face of it, but that didn’t make its failure any less painful.

  “My mom…” she groaned suddenly, the full implication of what had just happened hitting her anew. “My mom knows all about this plan, doesn’t she? That’s why she helped decorate. Well, and because my mother loves to decorate. But she was hoping that I’d stay here, and you made her believe that it was a possibility and now I’m going to have to hear about it for the rest of my life, that I could have stayed in Long Valley if only, but no, I’m too stupid and rebellious to, and…do you have any idea how miserable you’ve made my life? She will never let this go.”

  “Only as miserable as you’ve made mine!” he shouted, cutting her off. She gaped at him. He didn’t have much of a temper but when it lit on fire, things got nasty. She remembered the last time it had, and the name he’d called her. “I’m sorry, okay?” he said bitingly. “It’s a terrible crime I committed, of falling in love with a gorgeous, funny woman who pushes me to live up to my full potential. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking! St-st-string me up from the nearest tree for that crime.”

  “I told you not to!” She was fighting back for her life, then, because surely this amount of pain would kill her. “I told you and told you and told you. Don’t take it out on me when you’re finally forced to deal with reality. I never lied to you, Troy Horvath. Not once. Don’t lay this at my feet!”

  “No, what I laid at your feet was my heart,” he said calmly. It was a strange, painful calm, like he’d just shut himself down. Like they were strangers passing in the street. “You used one of your high heels to crush it. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

  He pulled into the parking lot in front of her apartment, threw the truck into park, and then sat there, not moving. Waiting for her to get out of his life.

  It was strangely painful how much that hurt, she mused as she pushed herself out of the truck and to the pavement of the parking lot. She listened to the squeal of his tires as he peeled out and onto the street. She didn’t know what she expected – he wasn’t going to gently escort her to her door and kiss her goodnight. But still, he’d been such a gentleman all this time, helping her in and out of the truck every time, to the point that it was just natural. She’d thought it smothering and quaint at first – she was a grown woman and could walk on her own, thankyouverymuch – but now…