“Drowned her out?” Noah supplied.
“Yeah, okay,” Cori agreed, a bit sheepishly. “But we promise that we’re going to work on that.”
Noah gave them both a look. “Yeah. You will.”
Ava didn’t look overly impressed with his firm tone, but she did nod. “Yeah. We will.”
“So, then, I need a favor,” Noah said.
“What’s that?” Ava asked.
“Stall her.”
“Stall her? You mean, make her stay in New York?” Cori asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I have a plan,” he said. “It’s something I really want to do, but it’s going to take a couple of days. And I really want to go to her. To go after her.”
That got a smile from Cori, and Ava’s shoulders at least relaxed a little. “Okay,” Cori agreed. “We can stall her.”
“Great,” Noah said, anticipation and a feeling of rightness coursing through him. He was going to do something, but it was something that he needed, something that would make him happy. And Brynn too, of course. “And hey, Evan?”
“Yeah, man?”
“I’m going to be cashing in those three hours of manual labor you owe me.”
Evan’s groan was just one more thing to love about this whole situation.
* * *
Brynn had tears in her eyes and she was holding her breath. For what she wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t make her lungs expand.
She heard some shuffling and footsteps and then the door shutting and then Cori’s voice come back over the phone line, “Did you hear all of that?”
Brynn nodded, then realized Cori couldn’t see that. “Yeah,” she croaked out.
She and Cori had been talking when Noah had come stomping into the pie shop. She’d heard everything thanks to Cori hitting the speaker button and Noah, apparently, not noticing the phone lying on the counter where he and Hank were sitting.
She’d been sitting with her heart in her throat throughout Noah and Hank’s conversation and then everything Noah said to her sisters.
I thought Rudy sent Brynn here so I could take care of her. But the truth is, he brought her here to save me.
Wow.
“Why didn’t you let me talk to him?” she asked. She was now physically aching to talk to him.
“Because he needs to come to New York after you,” Cori said.
“But I had this whole big thing planned for when I got back to Bliss,” Brynn protested. “I was going to show up on his porch with flowers and ask him to be my only date forever.”
“That’s nice,” Cori told her.
“Definitely,” Ava agreed. “But he needs to grovel and while groveling and apologizing to us was pretty great, he absolutely needs to do it to you. In person.”
“I would have been okay with it over the phone,” Brynn said, her heart actually hurting. God, she’d missed him. She’d been thankful for the excuse to head to New York because it had kept her from going to find him. She’d hoped he’d come around. She’d hoped he’d realize…well, all of the things he’d realized. But it had been a really long three days, and she had planned to show up and tell him that she was going to treat him like he’d treated Penn for these past few years—even if Penn didn’t give a lot of love back, Noah hadn’t stopped taking care of him and being there. She was going to do that for Noah.
“But you can’t have make-up sex if he’s apologizing over the phone,” Ava said.
Brynn grinned at that. “Well, that is on the list of kinds of sex I haven’t had.”
“Have you had phone sex?” Cori asked. “Because that can be pretty great.”
“I haven’t.” Brynn almost felt like she should start a list.
“Hey, we haven’t had phone sex,” Evan said.
Brynn giggled as Cori said something quietly that Brynn couldn’t make out. She did hear Evan clear his throat though, and she could only imagine how Cori had placated him.
“Anyway,” Ava said. “He’ll be there in a few hours and you can have New York sex. And not tell us about it.”
“Is New York sex really good?” Brynn asked, grinning.
“Hey, we’ve never had New York sex either,” Evan protested.
“Oh, Ava wouldn’t really know the difference,” Parker said. “Ava’s having Parker sex. It’s always good.”
“Well, I didn’t only have New York sex with you, you know,” Ava said.
The next thing Brynn heard was Ava’s shriek and Parker’s low voice and the sound of footsteps.
Cori was laughing when she said, “Okay, so they’re gone.”
Brynn rolled her eyes but laughed. It was amazing to hear her sisters so happy.
“So… how long do I need to stay here and wait for him?” she asked. “What’s he doing?” She just wanted him to get here if he was going to.
“I don’t know,” Cori said.
“Me either,” Evan added. “But I guess I’m going to find out. I’d really hoped he would have forgotten about that.”
“Why do you owe him manual labor?” Cori asked.
“From all the work he did on the golf course,” Evan told her.
“You didn’t pay him?”
“I tried! But then he said he’d just take payment in the form of services. I thought he meant legal services,” Evan said. “But after I agreed and the course was done, he informed me that he never intended to need a lawyer and he’d rather have three hours of manual labor.”
“Well, I can’t wait to see you all sweaty and working shirtless,” Cori told him.
“I’ll be working shirtless?”
“If I have any say in it.”
“Oh, you can have all the say you want…”
Brynn sighed, then put her fingers to her lips and gave a shrill whistle to get their attention again.
“Sorry,” Cori said, with a laugh.
“How about we get my love life back on track before you guys keep rubbing yours in my face?” Brynn asked.
“Well, just hang out. Go to lunch with Mom. Talk to your realtor in more detail. Go to Carmichael and pretend to be Ava.” Cori laughed.
Brynn rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help her grin. “Maybe I’ll just sit in my quiet apartment and read for hours and hours without being interrupted or distracted.”
“Hmm,” Cori said. “I give that about five hours.”
“What?”
“I bet you’re bored and wishing for some noise within five hours.”
No, Cori was totally wrong.
It would be more like three hours.
* * *
It had been four days.
Four of the longest days of his life.
But he was almost there.
Noah slammed on the brakes and stared at the car in front of him.
Holy shit, there were a lot of cars here. A lot of fucking cars. And people. And noise. How had Brynn stood this for twenty-nine years? The woman who loved quiet and being alone?
But she hadn’t really known any different. She’d found the solitude in her lab and had kept herself inside that bubble. It wasn’t until she’d come to Bliss that she realized that peacefulness could extend for acres.
Unless of course someone had some gossip to share.
A horn blared behind him and Noah looked up into the rearview mirror. The guy behind him was glaring at him. Noah gestured to the lineup of cars in front of the truck. Where did the guy think he was going to go? But the guy couldn’t see the gesture, and Noah didn’t think giving him the other gesture he was thinking of would be a good idea. The truck had a Kansas plate on it. It was already drawing enough I’m-not-from-here attention.
Please, God, don’t let Brynn want to live here again. Please let her want to come back to Bliss. He’d stay here for her, but damn, that would be a grand gesture for sure.
He patted the dashboard of the truck. Actually, as far as grand gestures went, he thought he was doing pretty well.
Finally, after wh
at felt like fourteen years, he pulled up in front of Brynn’s building. But there was nowhere to park. Because of course there wasn’t. Because he was driving a truck in New York City.
He dialed Cori’s number. “There’s nowhere to park,” he said as soon as she picked up.
“Just have the doorman do valet.”
He sighed into the phone. “So the valet—” Good lord, he was in love with a woman who had a doorman and a valet, “—will put it in a parking garage or something?”
“Right.”
“That kind of defeats the whole purpose,” he told her, starting to feel the hours on the road and the manual work he’d done before hitting that road. He was tired. So tired. Not just physically, but in his heart too.
He’d been going on adrenaline and caffeine for four days now and it was all starting to wear off. He’d been at the garage, just him and Penn, every day for almost six years and had been fine. He’d gone to the diner for lunch, to Maggie’s to work, even to Rudy’s pie shop once in a while. And he’d been fine.
Then Brynn had shown up. And everything changed. Maybe not immediately. It had taken time to change the pie shop. It had taken until a few days ago to really change things between him and Maggie. But everything, absolutely everything, in his life had been destined to change the moment Brynn Carmichael smiled at him.
And now she’d been gone, away from the garage, the pie shop, his life, and he was definitely not fine. Not just because everything felt empty without her, but because he’d realized that being fine wasn’t enough.
“Well, if you stay in the truck and double-park, they might come yell at you, but at least you won’t get towed,” Cori said. “Just call and tell her to come down.”
Noah sighed again. Dammit. He’d been so intent on just getting here that he hadn’t really planned all of this out. “Okay, fi—”
“Hey! Move your ass!”
He looked into his mirror. And sighed again. This guy was leaning out of his window and yelling. Noah waved what he hoped was a “sorry” wave, but he didn’t move his ass. And frankly, if the guy wanted to make something of it, Noah was fast approaching that mood himself. The tall buildings were giving him claustrophobia. The place smelled like a weird mix of exhaust, rubber, and tacos. And he hadn’t seen Brynn in a week. Fine wasn’t even on his emotional radar at the moment.
“What the hell, Iowa! Go back to the farm!” The guy laid on the horn.
Noah rolled his eyes. His license plate clearly said Kansas. What an idiot.
The car behind him blasted its horn too. A taxi swerved around them all, nearly scraping the side of the truck, then had to slam on its brakes almost immediately just past Noah’s front bumper.
“Why didn’t you talk me out of this plan?” Noah asked Cori. “What kind of idiot drives a truck into New York City?”
“This plan is amazing,” Cori assured him. “Just ignore them. If they’re not yelling at you, they’d be yelling at someone else.”
Yeah, he really didn’t want to live here.
“I just wanted to—” But he stopped midsentence.
In the midst of the honking and the yelling and the taco-exhaust smell and the fatigue and the emptiness, everything was suddenly very, very fine. In fact, it was right.
Brynn Carmichael stood on the sidewalk in front of her building. She was looking right at him. And she was smiling. And crying.
“I’ll talk to you later.” He disconnected with Cori abruptly and threw the truck into park.
He didn’t love noise and chaos any more than Brynn did, honestly. But at the moment, the entire city could start honking and yelling—nothing mattered but getting to his girl. The girl who made everything in his life better. Who quieted the noise and calmed the chaos. Who also stirred things up and made him care and get involved.
Noah shoved his door open, leaving it hanging wide as he stalked to where she stood.
“Noah, I—”
He wrapped his arms around her, picking her up, and covering her mouth with his before she could complete the sentence. He kissed her deeply, his arms around her waist, her feet dangling above the New York sidewalk.
And not all of the noise from the street quieted. But that was because the guy in the car behind the truck was suddenly shouting, “Yeah, buddy! Show her how the cowboys do it!”
Noah lifted his head, chuckling in spite of himself. But he wasn’t going to correct the guy. There were cowboys in Kansas. Somewhere.
Brynn grinned up at him. “Hi,” she said softly, putting her hand against his cheek.
“Hi.”
“You’re finally here.”
Yeah, he wasn’t surprised that her sisters had told her he was on his way. “It’s a bit of a drive.”
Her eyes sparkled with tears as she looked at the baby blue Ford behind him. “You drove twenty-one hours in the truck that doesn’t even run.”
Noah set her down on the sidewalk and glanced back at the truck too. He also noted that the two cars behind him were, well, still behind him. The drivers were both out of their cars and were now watching him and Brynn. Suddenly, they didn’t have to get going after all.
“The truck that does run. Now.”
“You fixed it.”
“I did.”
“How did you get the parts so fast?”
Noah turned to look at the truck, keeping one arm around Brynn, and her tucked securely up against his side. “I already had the only part it needed.”
She looked up at him. “But you never put it in?”
“Jared had the part. It took him weeks to track it down and then the price was astronomical. But he’d finally gotten it. He just didn’t have time to put it in. It was supposed to be a weekend project for us when we came home to visit from college.”
He felt Brynn tighten her hold on him.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. Then she asked, “So why now?”
He cleared his throat and turned to face her. “I kept that truck around as a reminder that it’s easier to fix things right away rather than wait. The older something gets, the harder it is to repair.” He moved his hands to her upper arms and looked directly into her eyes. “But you showed me that it’s still worth it. It takes more work, it might cost you more—emotionally, if not financially—but it’s still worth fixing.”
One tear spilled over her bottom lashes, and Noah wiped it from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“As much as I’ve loved having you sitting on this truck in my garage, I realized that it needs to be out on the road, in the sun. I’m not going to let it sit in the shadows and feel like I’m protecting it or saving it for Jared anymore.” Noah heard how gruff his voice was, but he didn’t even try to cover up the emotion. “Jared’s gone. And I miss him like hell. But I’m still here and I want to take road trips in that truck and load the back up with picnic supplies, or jars of Blissfully Brewed beer and cider. I just want to…enjoy it.” He paused. “If you’ll let me.”
Brynn sniffed and frowned. “If I’ll let you?”
“Well, the truck is yours,” he said. “You’re the reason I want to get out there and do more and be more and be happy. And I’m done keeping you to myself in the shadows too. I’m not protecting you for Rudy, anymore, Brynn. I’m just going to love you and enjoy you and make you happy. Not because Rudy asked me to, but because making you happy makes me happy.”
He stood looking down at her as several seconds ticked by. She looked overwhelmed. And a little dazed. But mostly happy.
“That’s a kick-ass truck!” the guy from the street called out. “Tell him thank you and kiss him for fuck’s sake!”
Brynn and Noah laughed. Then she went up on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and said, “Thank you.”
Then she kissed him with so much feeling that Noah’s heart swelled in his chest. He gripped her hips and brought her as close as they could get on the city street with an audience. Of course, this was New York…
He lifted his head. “Any
chance we could go inside and talk about your plans for Blissfully Brewed and I can tell you about my dinner with Maggie and about how Penn spends the night with Hank?”
Brynn settled back on her heels. And shook her head. “No.”
“No?” He lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t care about Maggie and Penn and Hank?”
“Maggie already told me about your dinner—though I do want to hear your side— and Hank already told me about Penn,” she said.
Noah rolled his eyes and smiled. “Of course they did.”
“And I can tell you all about Blissfully Brewed on the twenty-one-hour drive home,” she said.
That sunk in and he pulled her in for another kiss. But it wasn’t nearly as long and deep as he wanted.
She finally pulled back. “So right now, let’s have Tom put the truck in the garage.” She moved in closer and dropped her voice. “And you can teach me all about make-up sex.”
Heat, want, joy, and love surged through him and he gave a little growl, bent, swept her up into his arms, and started for the door. She laughed and looked over his shoulder.
“Hey! Keep an eye on that truck until the doorman comes out, okay?” she called. “I’ll give you five hundred bucks to keep it safe!”
The guy on the street yelled back, “You got it!”
“You know him?” Noah asked.
“No.”
“You talk to strangers on the street all the time? And offer them money and trust them with your stuff?”
They got to the door and the man Noah assumed was Tom opened it for them with a formal, “Miss Carmichael.”
“Will you put my truck in the garage?” she asked sweetly from Noah’s arms. “The keys are in it. And please pay the gentleman watching it five hundred.”
“Of course, Miss Carmichael,” Tom said with a little tip of his head.
But Noah caught the man’s smile as he turned away.
“In answer to your question,” Brynn said as Noah strode to the elevators. “I never used to talk to anyone on the streets, but since I’ve been back, I’ve been doing more of it. People can be so nice and interesting.”
Cashmere and Camo Page 26