Love Is In the Air Volume 1

by Susan Stoker

  Those unfairly long-lashed eyes blinked. “Who?”

  Delighted that she’d managed to rattle the big, bad military man, Paisley grinned. “It’s good to see you again, Ty.”

  She disentangled herself with some reluctance and instantly regretted the loss of his warmth. “Thanks for the rescue. I apologize to your wife or girlfriend.”

  He cleared his throat, offering one of the flutes of champagne that he’d miraculously not bobbled. “None to apologize to.”

  So he was single. Wasn’t that…convenient? Had he been the perennial bachelor, or did he have some failed attempts at matrimony in his past like she did?

  Paisley accepted the glass, grateful to have something else to wet her throat and keep her mouth from running away from her brain.

  Ty lifted his own glass in a half toast. “You’re better at that than you were at sixteen. And you were damned good at it then.”

  She couldn’t quite hold in the unladylike snort. “Well, I’ve kissed a lot of frogs in my time. You, my dear Tyson, are no frog.” And damn if it hadn’t almost been worth the eighteen years to taste him again.

  “What are you doing here, Paisley?”

  She might have been offended at the question if he hadn’t looked so truly baffled by her presence. “It’s a wedding, sugar. The correct question is ‘Bride or groom?’ and the answer is bride.”

  “You know Ivy?”

  “We travel in some of the same writer’s circles in Nashville. Or did before she moved to be with Harrison. And you are clearly with the groom. Army buddies?”

  “We were in the Rangers together.”

  Rangers. So he’d gone all the way to Special Forces. “You always did want to be the best of the best. Congratulations.”

  Something dark and painful flashed in his eyes. Someone else might have missed it, but she’d once known every single one of his expressions.

  “I’m not a Ranger anymore. Left the Army a couple years ago.”

  When he’d enlisted, he’d planned to be a lifer. She imagined Garrett’s death had been the thing to change his mind. While she hadn’t lived in Cooper’s Bend in years, the death of one of its favorite sons had been big, tragic news that had reached her even in Nashville. She didn’t know the details and certainly wouldn’t ask. Garrett had been closer than a brother to Ty. His loss would’ve been devastating.

  Wanting to circumvent that conversational land mine, she sipped at her drink. “What are you doing these days?”

  “Law enforcement.”

  “I can see that.” He’d viewed the world as so very black and white. Did he still, or did his time in the Rangers make him appreciate the gray?

  Because she didn’t like the shadows creeping into his eyes, she set the champagne flute aside. “It’s been forever and a day. How about a dance for old time’s sake?” Holding out a hand, she wiggled her fingers. “C’mon, might as well complete the walk down memory lane.”

  Something else flashed in his eyes at that. Something hot and interested that told her she wasn’t the only one who’d been thinking about where that kiss could go.

  His strong fingers curled around hers. “Okay. But I’ve learned a few things in the past couple decades. This time, I get to lead.”

  Oh, yes please.

  Having Paisley Parish in his arms was a smorgasbord of sensory memories. The scent of her hair was somehow the same and different from the first time he’d danced with her, after she’d laid one on him that long-ago homecoming. He’d fallen a little bit in love and a whole lot of lust with her that night. She was bold and fun and fearless in a way he’d always admired the hell out of. And the two and a half years after had done nothing but sink him deeper.

  The silky feel of her skin where her slim hand wrapped around his made him remember those hands. Tucked in his as they took long walks down by the river. Skimming over his cheeks, his shoulders, his chest, and lower as they explored every inch of each other on a warm September night in the back of his truck, as the fireflies winked. He’d thought himself the luckiest bastard on earth, and even now he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been wrong. He’d jumped out of planes, run headlong through enemy fire, diffused bombs, and still kissing her was one of the biggest highs he’d ever experienced. As he swayed with her on the edge of the dance floor, close and yet not close enough, he couldn’t help but think of doing it again.

  “So am I correct in assuming there is presently not a Mr. Paisley who left you in the lurch tonight? Or do you kiss all your rescuers?”

  That painted mouth he’d all but built a shrine to and worshiped in high school curved. “The only one who’s ever rescued me was you. And anyway, there hasn’t been a Mr. Paisley in quite some time. Two unsuccessful attempts have convinced me that casual is the way to go.”

  Did she mean she was twice divorced? It didn’t fit with how he’d imagined her over the years. “That surprises me. I figured by now you’d be married with a whole brood of kids.”

  It occurred to him she might still have the kids.

  “Nope.” She said it simply. No bitterness, no sadness, just a statement of fact.

  It made no damned sense to him. Any man should’ve considered himself fucking lucky to have landed this woman. “What the hell was wrong with them?”

  Surprise and something that might have been wistfulness flickered in her eyes before humor drowned it out. “That’s a question I asked pretty often, as it happens.” She shrugged. “Life doesn’t always turn out like we expect.”

  He sure as hell knew that. But unlike him, life didn’t seem to have dimmed her natural optimism. She still felt bright and vital, like sunshine incarnate. Ty felt himself pulled in just as much as he had been at sixteen, desperate to bask in the glow of her ready smile. If there was a part of him that rejected that, he wasn’t strong enough to walk away because if Garrett had been the bass beat of his childhood, Paisley had been the sweet harmony. He’d loved her once—beyond reason. Enough that he’d let her go rather than risk doing to her exactly what Garrett had done to Bethany. Paisley wasn’t a girl who had ever been capable of being okay with sharing her life with duty. And he wasn’t the kind of man who could shirk his.

  Even as the familiar, dark thoughts crowded in, Paisley trailed a finger down his nape and smiled, chasing the shadows away like his own personal Patronus. A Patronus who just might be a siren in disguise. He shivered at the touch.

  “Still there,” she murmured. “Even after all these years.”

  He didn’t have to ask what. “Chemistry seems pretty basic and fundamental.”

  She huffed a laugh and pressed just a little closer. “We always had plenty.”

  That seemed the understatement of the year. She’d all but blown the top of his head off with that kiss, rousing parts of him he’d thought dormant, if not dead entirely. Ty found himself wondering what else she was even better at than she was at sixteen.

  “Yeah I’m wondering, too.”

  Had he spoken aloud?

  Her laugh bubbled over him like champagne. “You didn’t have to say a word. I remember that look in your eyes.”

  It did something to him to have someone read him so easily. Though maybe lust wasn’t that difficult to interpret. “You were gorgeous in high school. You grew up even finer. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t respond to that.” He was feeling very, very human just now.

  She paused, those rich coffee eyes searching his. “Curiosity is human.”

  “I seem to recall you always had a healthy sense of it.” She’d wanted to experience everything, hungry to feel and learn and do. Her thirst for life had been infectious. They’d had so many firsts together, and abruptly, he regretted losing touch entirely. But he didn’t know how he’d have survived the choices he’d had to make if he’d still had her as part of his life. He’d had to let go of her light to become one of the shadows.

  “Still do. I’ve been curious about you for years. Wondering where you were, what you were doing. How you turned out.” Sh
e stroked a hand across his shoulder, down over his pec, her eyes going impossibly darker in appreciation. “Can’t say I can argue with the end results.”

  The Army had forged him into a weapon and honed him to his physical prime. And it had left him broken.

  But they weren’t talking about that. Paisley didn’t know about the ghosts or the regrets. She didn’t know about his failures. Maybe, for tonight, he could just focus on the physical, on the nostalgia just being with her evoked. Assuming he wasn’t so far gone he was reading this wrong.

  As the song ended, Ty didn’t loosen his hold. “Do you want to continue this walk down memory lane? Maybe get out of here?”

  Awareness and delight swam into her eyes. She squeezed his hand. “I’ll get my purse.”

  “I’d like hash browns, smothered and covered, with two eggs scrambled and a side of toast.” Paisley stuck her laminated menu back into the condiment caddy.

  Ty smiled at their waitress, an older woman with a beehive of blonde hair that wasn’t too far off from the iconic yellow on the diner’s sign. Her name tag read Gloria, and Paisley decided she needed to go in a book. “I’m feeling adventurous. Hash browns, all the way, and two eggs sunny side up.”

  “You got it sweet cheeks.” As Gloria turned away, she met Paisley’s gaze, waggled her brows and blew out a silent puff of air in a message that clearly said, Oo, girl, he is smokin’, and you are one lucky woman.

  She certainly hoped to be before the end of the night.

  The sizzle between them hadn’t dimmed a watt since they’d left the reception. If anything, it had amped up when they’d slid in on opposite sides of a booth at Waffle House. Exactly where they’d come after the homecoming dance that night.

  Paisley wrapped her hands around the mug of coffee, enjoying the warmth between her palms. “I don’t think I’ve been in a Waffle House since high school.” Back in Cooper’s Bend, it had been the only place open after nine PM, and they’d spent countless late nights talking in a booth just like this one.

  “Why not?”

  She jerked a shoulder. “I went to college here in Nashville, so there were lots of other options. And I guess a little because they always made me think of you.”

  Another one of those shadows flitted through his eyes and had her reaching out to lay a hand over his. “That’s not a dig, Ty. I don’t think you made the wrong decision in breaking things off back then. It took me a long time to be able to admit that because I missed you like oxygen.”

  Ty turned his hand up to curl around hers in a gesture at once familiar and new. “If it helps, it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. It was never that I didn’t care.”

  “I know.” He’d broken her heart into a million little pieces. But with the wisdom of maturity, she understood he’d wanted to save her from the worst possible outcome of the job. She was glad she could look back fondly on that first love and not have it tarnished with the resentment that would have inevitably grown if she’d tried to share him with his duty.

  “We had different paths.” Stroking a thumb over the rough skin of his hand, she absorbed the sensation of his touch and yearned for more of it. “I can’t say I regret that they’ve crossed again.”

  His eyes searched hers. “I looked you up.”

  “What?”

  “A long time back, I got curious. Hunted you up on social media, and I found your books.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t know what to say about that. She hated talking romance with people she actually knew—at least the ones who weren’t confirmed romance readers. The genre caught so much flak from the uneducated, suffering insult and denigration. Even among certain segments of the writing community there was no respect. She didn’t think she could stand being dismissed by Ty. Not that he’d be a deliberate asshole about it, but plenty of people were hurtful in their own ignorance.

  “I liked them.”

  Paisley blinked, sure she’d heard him wrong. “Beg your pardon?”

  “Your books. I liked them.” He said it easily, without a hint of smirk. Like he was really serious.

  “You’ve read my books?” It was a struggle to keep her voice from sliding up an octave.

  “Yeah.”

  Oh. God. How many had he read? Did he realize she’d been writing the many shades of him all these years? Something that was the bastard child of panic and embarrassment lodged beneath her breastbone. Heat crept into her cheeks as she tried to figure out the appropriate response. “You...uh…aren’t exactly my target demographic.”

  Ty shrugged. “They were good to keep for downtime while I was deployed. Uncertainty was my normal, so having that guaranteed happy ending was…comforting. And you write like you talk, so it was a little like having a piece of you back.”

  The romantic heart she tried so hard not to indulge outside the pages of her manuscripts gave a full-on swoon. All these years, he’d been in the back of her mind, and she’d thought he’d forgotten her. The idea that he hadn’t, that she’d been a comfort to him, that he’d carried a piece of her, even when they weren’t together, healed a hurt she’d carried for a long, long time.

  Gloria arrived with their food, effectively interrupting the moment. And maybe that was for the best before Paisley said or did something to ruin this chance meeting and make it weird.

  They dug into their food, and conversation turned to easier things. They stuck to the past, reminiscing about all the wonderful times they’d had together. There’d been many.

  Paisley didn’t want the night to end, so when the meal was finished and he walked her out to her car, she turned into him, wrapping him in a hug and pressing her lips to his. He tugged her closer, enveloping her against the frigid January night. The kiss was sweet, nostalgic, and tasted too much like the goodbye she wasn’t ready for.

  “Come home with me, Ty.” Her words were a whisper against his mouth.

  He hesitated, lifting his head to look down at her, gaze searching.

  Knowing she’d only have one shot to make her case, when the girl he’d known would never have made such an offer casually, she pressed ahead. “I don’t have any expectations beyond the night. I’m not that girl with stars in her eyes and forever on her mind. I know your life isn’t here. I just want you.”

  She wouldn’t be ready for goodbye tomorrow either, but she’d take however much of him he’d give her, consequences be damned. She understood what this was. And what it wasn’t.

  Ty stepped back, skimming his hands down her arms until his fingers linked with hers. “Lead the way.

  Ty trailed Paisley into the house and, riding the wave of lust, turned to press her back against the door, caging her in with his body.

  She stretched up against him with a purr. “I like where this is going, but we’re going to have to press pause for just a few minutes.”

  “Why?”

  A volley of barking interrupted her response.

  “That’s why.”

  The dog came racing around the corner, a blur of tawny fur, its paws slipping on the hardwood floors as it scrambled to get to Paisley. Ty immediately backed off, not sure whether the animal would view him as a threat. With a joyful yip, it launched itself at him, planting its front paws on Ty’s chest and trying desperately to lick him.

  “There’s my total failure as a guard dog,” Paisley cooed. “Down. Down, Duke. Mind your manners.”

  Still vibrating with excitement, Duke plopped his ass down, his baseball bat of a tail wagging ninety to nothing. Definitely part lab. With maybe some shepherd and border collie mixed in. He fixed bright eyes on Ty, and when no pets were immediately forthcoming, he left his sit and butted his head against Ty’s palm.

  Giving in, he scratched Duke behind his floppy ears. “Guess I don’t have to worry about him trying to eat me.”

  “My boy has never met a stranger. He loves everybody. Don’t you, baby?” Paisley beamed at him, obviously besotted.

  Duke leapt up with another happy bark and turned a circle. Ty coul
dn’t help but think he had the same kind of sunny personality as his mistress.

  “He’s getting dinner late since I was at the wedding. Let me just take care of him, and we can pick back up where we left off. Make yourself at home.”

  She moved through the house, talking to the dog. Ty heard another door open and then the echo of Duke’s bark outside.

  Curious, Ty peeked into the room off the entryway. Clearly an office, one wall was covered in bookshelves. A treadmill desk took up a corner, and another more traditional desk held a sleek laptop. A big, comfy chair occupied the little nook by the front window, flanked by a small table, covered in more books. Instead of art, one wall was covered in a dry erase board covered in post-it notes.

  Wandering into the living room, he found a warm cozy space, full of color and comfort, with pillows and blankets and art that matched her boisterous personality. All of it bright, as she was. There were more books here and a dog bed by the fireplace. Built-in cabinetry held a flat-screen TV and an assortment of board games. Well-used by the look of them. The whole space said come in and stay a while.

  Everywhere he looked, Ty saw signs of her settled, happy life.

  His own cabin was such a counterpoint to this oasis of comfort. He’d been renting for more than a year, and he’d done next to nothing to make it his. Hell, he flat didn’t have that much stuff. He wasn’t used to staying put. To having a place of his own. His entire adult life had been about traveling light and being ready to go at the drop of a hat. It wasn’t a habit he’d been able to break. Not that he’d tried that hard. It hadn’t mattered. Not when all his effort was going toward getting out of bed every day and putting one foot in front of the other.

  He was past the worst of it, but he could admit, standing in her pretty living room, that while he had a roof over his head, he didn’t have a home. Not like this.

  The punch of discomfort took him by surprise.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should save her one last time and just leave.