by Julia London
Oh yeah, she thought, when the ramshackle old place came into view as she bounced down the pitted county road. Just a barrel of laughs.
When Ella learned she’d inherited the house, she remembered she’d last seen it when she was around six or seven. Since then, a life that was not in her control and painful memories had kept her from it. But her faded memory of her grandmother was warm, and she’d dragged her friends out at the first opportunity to have a look at the only real home she’d ever had.
Mateo, her ex, and Chrissy, a friend, had stared at it in disbelief. “It’s so far out,” Chrissy said when Ella parked at the end of the drive to have a look. Chrissy was scanning the miles and miles of untouched land around them. “You’re a city girl, Ella. You’re not cut out for the country.”
“What are you talking about?” Ella scoffed. “I was raised in Three Rivers. And it’s so quiet and peaceful! Wait . . . do you hear that?”
Chrissy and Mateo each leaned forward, listening. Hearing nothing, they’d looked at her.
Ella grinned. “Exactly. No sirens, no one arguing outside my apartment. No planes or guitars overhead.” They’d all looked skyward. Nothing there but some chemtrails.
“Yeah, but this house needs so much work,” Mateo said. He’d been firmly against the move. Even though they’d broken up, he liked to look out for her. It was easier to do that when she lived in the same complex as him.
“I’m not afraid of a little work, you know,” Ella said.
“Not until it comes to relationships,” Mateo muttered.
“So what if it needs a few repairs?” she’d said with a shrug and a flip of her long brown hair over her shoulder. But privately, she acknowledged that the house was not the gingerbread house of her dreams. It was smaller and shabbier than what she remembered. In her memory, a huge porch wrapped around the entire house. The porch didn’t wrap, and it wasn’t very big. The paint was peeling, the roof was missing some shingles, and weeds had grown up where a yard had once been.
“Sorry, Ella, but this place is a dump,” Chrissy had announced.
Ella couldn’t disagree. But still, Ella had not been put off the idea of home ownership by the sight of the dilapidated farmhouse. “I’m going in,” she’d said, and had gotten out of her car, marched up to the house, hopped over a broken porch step to the porch, and peered through a grimy window. She couldn’t make out more than some dark shapes. She fit her key in the door. “Okay, this is it!” she’d said brightly to Chrissy and Mateo, who were standing off the porch, eyeing the house as if they expected the Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy to come bursting out the door.
Ella pushed the door open and was instantly overwhelmed with a smell so foul she’d taken an involuntary step backward. “What is that?” she cried out. “Is that death?”
“There’s a body?” Chrissy had shrieked.
Turned out, there wasn’t a body. It wasn’t even death. It was a ham that had been left on a counter. The last renters had trashed her grandmother’s house and had left Ella to clean it up.
That day, she’d searched the house for the hooked rugs and worn furnishings she remembered, the two bedrooms with sheer drapes and chenille bedspreads. What she found was broken furniture. A heater than didn’t work. A busted window.
As was often the case with Ella’s life, what she envisioned and what was real were too vastly different things.
Nevertheless, this house, and the bit of land it sat on, was all hers. She had something that belonged to her, a home. A real home, and it was hers. But in her euphoria, several things had not occurred to her. Like the god-awful amount of work said house was going to need. Or that animals that had either been dumped out here or left behind would eat through her bank account at a nice little clip. Or how setting up a home office wasn’t as easy as it sounded when you were so far out in the boonies that you could only get satellite internet that worked about every other Wednesday.
Or how about the icing on her little cake, that after all she’d been through in her life, after all she’d managed to accomplish in spite of it, and after all the crap and disappointment she’d put behind her, she could not shake a stupid, ridiculous, out-of-her-league high school crush.
That was quite possibly the most maddening thing of all.
Stacy. If anyone would appreciate her private little hell, it would be Stacy, who would die if she knew Prince Luca was wandering around Three Rivers. Ella needed to talk to her anyway. Her band, the Rodeo Rebels, was one of two accounting clients Ella had, and they needed to make a tax payment.
Her other client was the Little Creek Funeral Home.
Yep, she was living large out here. Between those two accounts, Ella made enough to splurge on a fancy bottle of wine. Which she’d done. And already drank.
As she gathered her things from the car, the pig came wandering out of the weirdly slanted garage Ella was afraid to use lest it fall over. The pig had claimed it for its hovel and shared it with the cat.
Ella walked up to the porch, hopping over the missing step. She pulled open the screen door and pushed the main door open when something large and out of place caught her eye. She slowly turned her head to see that her handiwork from this morning—a beautiful set of crystal wind chimes she’d hung without instruction from YouTube—had fallen. She couldn’t actually see the wind chimes, because they were buried under the mound of rotted shiplap that had fallen from the porch roof along with them. “Are you freaking kidding me?” she said aloud.
She dropped her bag and picked her way over the debris to the end of the porch, where the Esperanza grew so high that squirrels would swing from its limbs to the oak tree. She peered up. The whole roof looked rotted. “Is it termites?” she asked herself. “Please don’t be termites.”
She looked around, found one of the boards that wasn’t too heavy, and with a grunt, hoisted it up. Balancing it precariously in her hands, she poked at the ceiling to explore the rot. There was a breeze, however, and her hair kept flying in her face, and she wouldn’t know termites if she saw them anyway. “Maybe I should Google it,” she suggested to herself, and dropped the board, which clattered loudly on the rest of the fallen soldiers, and fished her phone out of her pocket. She typed in termites.
“Hi.”
Ella shrieked. She jerked around so quickly she stumbled over a piece of shiplap and landed on her elbow against the railing.
Luca Prince was standing next to his open car door. That fucking silent Sombra! He’d snuck up on her again.
“Jesus, I’m sorry—I thought you heard me.”
It was a miracle there weren’t reports of electric cars killing and maiming pedestrians across America, because who could hear the damn things? She pressed a hand over her heart, took a breath, then began to pick her way over the remains of her porch ceiling. “What are you doing here?”
He answered that by backing up and opening the door behind him. Out hopped the dog. “You left your dog at Lyle’s.”
She glared at the dog as he trotted to an old tree stump in the front yard and lifted a leg. “First, he’s not my dog. Second, I didn’t forget him.” She’d definitely forgotten about him, no thanks to Prince Luca. “We have an arrangement.”
“Hmm,” Luca said dubiously. “Lyle said he was your dog.” He shut both car doors and sauntered after the dog as it sniffed its way to the porch. Luca stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, slipped his hands into his pockets, and stared up at Ella, as if he expected her to explain her poor dog management skills.
It was happening again, that tingly feeling she got when he was looking at her. “You really didn’t have to bring him. He would have found his way back.”
“Well, I’m a little particular about dogs.”
The dog, all pleased with himself, trotted up the steps to the screen door, nosed that open, and carried on inside like he paid the bills around here.
“I think he thinks he’s your dog,” Luca opined, then looked at her porch. “You’ve got a mess there.”
Captain Obvious to the rescue. “No kidding.”
He stepped over the missing porch step, totally uninvited, and leaned forward to have a look. “You’re gonna need to get that fixed.”
Oh, dear God, did he think she didn’t know that? “I kind of figured,” she said. “So listen, thanks for bringing Dog, although—”
“Wait, back up—your dog’s name is Dog?” he asked incredulously.
Ella hesitated. “For now. Thanks again, but I really need to clean this up before I go to work.”
“Why doesn’t he have a name?” Luca asked.
“Because he’s not really my dog.” She took a step backward, because the man was insanely magnetic. And she had an overwhelming urge to touch his plump lips with her finger.
“Then who does he belong to?”
“Good question.”
He tilted his head to one side and considered her. Which actually meant his eyes took a little trip over her face, checking in at her forehead, her nose and lips, and even her ear. “So you’re telling me that the dog that just went into your house is a dog you don’t know?”
“Well,” she said with a sheepish shrug. “I mean, I know him. Lyle said he was probably dumped out here. Maybe. Look, thanks again,” she tried.
“I get it,” he said, nodding. “You’re super busy.”
Ella blinked. “How did you know?”
“Seriously?” he asked with a chuckle. “Are you really surprised that I know you’ve been avoiding me? Look, Ella, we obviously got off on the wrong foot. But please don’t hate me because I didn’t remember you from high school. To be honest, I don’t remember much of high school.”
“What? I don’t hate you!” She laughed, too loud, too long.
He folded his arms, and all she could see were biceps bulging in his jacket. “Really? Because I think it’s pretty obvious you’re not a fan.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she protested, although clearly, she’d been avoiding him like he was the Grim Reaper. “It’s not that I’m not a fan,” she said. “It’s because . . .” Whoa there, was she about to confess to being ashamed he didn’t remember her?
“Because what?” he pressed her. “I haven’t been friendly enough?” He moved up another step on the stairs so that he stood just below her, his eyes level with hers. He leaned forward and said, “Because if there is one thing I can say about myself, it’s that I’m friendly.” His gaze dipped to the hollow of her throat. “And I’m handy.”
“How handy?” she asked.
“I could fix that mess,” he said with a nod in the general direction of her porch.
“Well, so can I,” she countered, puffing up a little. There was hardly anything she couldn’t fix with YouTube and a hammer.
“It would go a lot faster with a friend.”
“I have friends.”
A slow, sexy smile appeared on his mouth. “So what, you’ve bagged your friendship limit? Can’t take any more without paying a hefty fine?”
“Why?” she blurted. “Why do you want to be my friend?”
“For starters, you’re really pretty.”
A slow heat began to build in her cheeks. She knew what he was doing, and she was not one of those girls who could be had with a compliment. She was not.
“Also, if someone doesn’t want to be my friend, I want to show them they’re wrong.”
“It’s nothing personal,” she said.
“Oh, but it damn sure is personal, Ella,” he said with a lopsided smile. “And finally, if I may be allowed to finish all the reasons why I want to be your friend, I think you’re interesting. Plus, you have a dog.”
The familiar grunt of her pig caused them both to turn. The pig had ventured out of his Leaning Tower of Barn and looked at her expectantly, expecting its snack.
“And a pig,” Luca added. “Why do you have a . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind.” He shifted his gaze to her again, his hazel eyes flecked with bits of gold and dark green. “So have I given you enough reasons that you’ll consider giving me a chance?”
Teenage Ella was shrieking at her right now to accept his offer. Adult, distrusting, border-wall Ella was putting on her armor. Ella folded her arms. “Here’s the thing,” she began, and wondered what the thing was. “I can’t be played, Luca.”
Luca blinked. He cast his arms wide. “Is that what you think?”
“You don’t remember me, but I remember you. Vividly. And I can’t be played.”
“What you remember is a guy who was seventeen, eighteen years old with more hormones than brains. That was more than twelve years ago, Ella. And besides, I didn’t even know you. Sitting next to you in class doesn’t count. I had already checked out.”
“Oh really?” she said. She had on her armor and she was working up a good head of steam. “You kissed me.”
“What?” He laughed.
Oh yeah, she had him. Player. She nodded furiously. “Senior dance, right there on the dance floor, beneath the wild boar piñata that someone had hung upside down.”
Luca stared at her. Really stared at her. She could almost hear the memory gears clicking in his brain. He slowly began to nod. “Yeah, okay.” He smiled sexily. “No wonder you’re so pissed at me.”
Her skin was tingling. “You remember?”
His gaze slid to her lips and lingered there. “Mmm-hmm.”
Holy smokes, her blood was suddenly boiling. In an insane split of feelings, she wanted to kiss him right now, to lay one on him he’d remember this time. And then she wanted to drop-kick him off the stairs and watch him go sailing over the trees.
“And it wasn’t a piñata, it was a mirror ball. You were wearing a black dress,” he said, and his gaze traveled down her body, as if he was remembering that black dress.
How had he remembered that?
“Tell you what,” he said, slowly lifting a smoldering gaze to hers. “Let’s start over. Let’s be friends. I’ll fix this porch for you.”
Oh sure, Luca Prince was going to suddenly pop up in her life and fix her porch. “And in return?”
“Well now, Ella, real friends don’t have to do the quid pro quo thing, right? But maybe in return you let me start over with a redo of that kiss.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” she asked.
“You asked,” he said cheerfully, and touched his fingers to her jaw. “I’d like to make amends, because let’s be honest, that kiss was not my best. I’ve gotten much better at it. Now, if you don’t want me to, I won’t.” He stepped up onto the porch. He was tall and fit, and her blood was suddenly rushing so hard she could hardly hear him. “But if you do,” he said quietly, “I’ll make sure it’s a kiss neither of us will ever forget.”
The blush in her cheeks turned to sunburn. “You’re doing it,” she managed to whisper. “You’re doing it right now. You’re playing me.”
“Nope. Just clarifying expectations for purposes of friendship.”
“You’re so good at playing people you don’t even know you’re doing it,” she whispered.
He smiled lopsidedly again as if that amused him. “That’s not what I’m good at, Ella,” he said, and his eyes raked down her body, to the vee of her T-shirt just before he bent his head and touched his mouth to hers.
His kiss was so soft, so ethereal, that she had to grab his wrist to keep from toppling over. He teased her with his tongue, and she tipped right into some very serious sexual desire. Oh, but this kiss was so much better than the senior dance kiss. He kissed her so tenderly, and yet it was electrifying. It felt as if he was scarcely touching her, but he was touching her in all the right ways, and she was on fire, sizzling and breathless in her skin. He was luring her in, enticing her to some magical place that Ella very m
uch wanted to go. Right now. This instant.
He moved her back, pushing her up against the screen door. He braced one hand against it and leaned into her as he slid his other hand down her arm, to her waist, and around to her hip. He was kissing her in the way she’d fantasized he would kiss her, with sex bombs detonating and rainbows and glitter falling on her.
The kiss rattled her to her core, threw her off her game, made her feel all fuzzy and giddy. When he lifted his head, he smiled seductively. He knew how good he was. “Now that was a kiss, Ella Kendall.”
She was going to swoon all over the porch, right here, right now, and she didn’t care if he saw it. She looked at his lips, remembering the feel of them on hers, and imagined being an impassioned kind of woman who took what she wanted, because she wanted him to kiss her again, and she was so close to reaching for him and going for it—but her phone rang and destroyed the moment. She turned her head, spotting her phone on the railing.
“What do you say, Ella?” Luca asked. “Can we start over and be friends?”
She hesitated. She glanced at him sidelong. “I’ll think about it.”
Luca suddenly smiled, and that single, lopsided, sexy smile was probably the nail in her armor’s coffin. “I’ll give you a call,” he said.
“You don’t have my number, player.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to show up when you’re least expecting it, scaredy-cat.”
He was playing her like a violin! She put out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
He handed it to her, no questions asked. She tapped her number into his phone and gave it back to him.
He was still smiling, but his eyes had gone soft, and Ella was seriously on the verge of melting into an embarrassing puddle of delighted goo. “See you soon,” he said, and twined his fingers very lightly with hers for the briefest of moments. It was a small touch, hardly a touch at all, and yet it set off a million little electric shocks through her.
The next thing she knew, he’d vaulted off the porch and was in his Sombra. It drove away without any sound but the crunch of tires as he turned the wheel.