A Lot Like Perfect

by Kat Cantrell

  The Moons led the congregation through the last prayer, but Cassidy slipped out, pleading a headache. Aria let her go. There would be plenty of time to push her friend toward Isaiah a little harder, assuming she could figure out a way to stomach it.

  The noise level inside the pre-fab building rose as folks chatted or headed for the exit, depending on what else they had going on today. As if she’d conjured Isaiah simply by thinking his name, the man himself materialized in front of her, his different color eyes sparking with something she couldn’t fathom. But it was intriguing, beautiful and compelling all at the same time.

  A liquid warmth gushed through her insides and it didn’t matter how hard she tried to squelch it, she couldn’t. Fantastic. Now she had involuntary female reactions to contend with when Isaiah looked at her. Tristan had never turned her on with simply a look. What was wrong with her?

  “Hey,” he said and the sound of his voice did not help things in her southern regions. “You up for another session tonight? I know you don’t usually work at the diner on Sunday so I figured the timing was good. I thought of a few more things that might get Tristan’s head out of his rear end.”

  A little sigh slipped out before she could catch it. What did it mean that he’d remembered her work schedule? No one paid attention to stuff like that, just automatically assuming she’d be at Ruby’s no matter what.

  “That would be great.” No. No, it wouldn’t. It would be magical and fun and she’d get hit with another wave of enormous guilt about Cassidy again. “I mean… Maybe another time.”

  “Because why?” Concern evident, his expression lost a little of its sparkle. “You’re not upset about how he ignored you at the movies are you? Because I’ll talk to him—”

  “No! It’s not that.” Goodness, she’d actually forgotten about the movies. “It’s that I was thinking we should try something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Like not being alone together. Caught in the trap of her own making, she cast about wildly for something that might plausibly work to explain why she could not spend time with him. Her gaze lit on Tristan, who stood at the south entrance to the building talking to Ruby about something that had made her boss laugh.

  “Act like you’re interested in me,” she spat out as Tristan turned his pale blond head in their direction. Ugh, that was the worst idea ever and judging by the look Isaiah was giving her, he wasn’t so keen on it either. But it was already out there. Too late to do anything else but roll with it. “You know, to make him jealous. Right now. Put your arm around me or something.”

  “Uh, no.” Isaiah actually stepped back a few inches, which didn’t do a lot for her ego. “That is not a good plan. At all. Moving in on another SEAL’s woman is not kosher and he’d immediately back off.”

  “What, you mean he’d deliberately give me up for you, even if he was really interested? That’s ridiculous.” It wasn’t. She’d literally just had the same thoughts about how she couldn’t betray Cassidy, and yet here she was arguing with Isaiah that his friend shouldn’t worry about that. How had this gotten so complicated? Frustration grabbed her vocal cords and it was testament to her befuddled state that she blurted out, “Why can’t we all be honest about how we feel?”

  Isaiah’s otherworldly eyes fastened on her with far more intensity than she’d have liked in that moment. “You want honesty? Try this on for size. I think you’re scared of Tristan.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice as Serenity glanced in their direction. The last thing she needed was her aunt wandering over to get in the middle of this conversation, especially when it looked like Farmer Moon had gotten up the gumption to speak to her. Aria hoped he’d capture her aunt’s attention for a few minutes. The sweet old widower had been crushing on Serenity since forever but she mostly just blushed and changed the subject whenever anyone pressed her on it.

  In fact, Aria and Isaiah shouldn’t be standing in a church where half the town could wander within earshot at any moment. But she’d already flipped out about another rooftop venture where they could talk privately, so what could she do but see this off-the-rails conversation through?

  “I’m not scared,” she insisted. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve spent more time coming up with strategies to get him to ask you out than you have actually talking to him. Try that, maybe. You’re a great woman.”

  Her heart melted a little. That wasn’t good. She scrambled to hold on to the slippery edges but the stupid organ tumbled through her chest anyway. “You’re a small minority of one who thinks so.”

  He scowled. “That’s because you don’t give anyone else a chance to find out.”

  “That’s not true.” Dumbfounded, she stared at him as she filtered through his point and arrived at the conclusion that she was the one who didn’t have a clear picture of reality. Because he wasn’t wrong.

  She hadn’t come right out and expressed an interest in Tristan. Not to his face. To everyone else, sure. But she’d carefully shied away from anything that smacked of getting to know him on a deeper level. If she really wanted to succeed with him, she could just barge right into his space and demand that he notice her.

  She wouldn’t. But not because she was scared.

  Having a crush on an unattainable man was safe solely because it would never amount to anything. This bet had screwed up all of that, forcing her into a position that would expose how desperately she didn’t want to be abandoned again. How had Isaiah figured out she’d been avoiding anything that resembled forward progress with his SEAL buddy? No one else had.

  No, Tristan didn’t scare her because he didn’t matter. Isaiah did though, in a huge, impactful way. And that was something he could never be allowed to figure out.

  “Maybe I will go talk to him,” she announced, crossing her arms over her midsection. It felt like a million angry bees had buzzed down her throat, stinging everything in their path.

  “You should. Just be yourself. Tristan’s an idiot for not noticing you thus far. Every man you’ve ever met is.”

  Geez. He had to stop saying stuff like that, especially not with that velvety smooth voice that she heard in her dreams. She’d never be able to get that out of her head now.

  “You notice me,” she whispered, goodness knew why. She should be backing out of the church at full speed, distancing herself from this craziness.

  “Case in point. I’m not an idiot.”

  His smile did something simultaneously soothing and enlivening to her whole body. She never wanted it to end. She could stand here listening to Isaiah West talk for the rest of her life and never get tired of hearing what he had to say.

  Except that wasn’t in the cards. Of course she’d latched on to the one person who was guaranteed to leave her behind. It was like she couldn’t help but be attracted to someone who was bound to hurt her.

  It didn’t matter. She had no business still standing here when Isaiah had merely spouted pretty words that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t offering to replace Tristan in her heart and she wasn’t accepting even if he was. Cassidy came first.

  Besides, Tristan didn’t have a place in her heart. Nor could he. Isaiah had already climbed inside while she wasn’t looking and basically taken up all the room. She had to figure out a way to reverse that. Pronto. By asking Tristan out herself.

  Ten

  Isaiah spent most of the rest of Sunday in a horrible enough mood that the guys all stayed away from him. Which was both good and bad. The little room he’d taken at Serenity’s hotel was just quirky enough to fit him and it provided much needed sanctuary from both the heat of the day and his own revelations.

  He hated the thought of Aria being with Marchande. Where had that come from?

  He’d like to say it had been born out of seeing how his friend had acted at the movies yesterday and thinking that Aria deserved better. But Isaiah was afraid he’d started enjoying her company a little too much. When she’d hemmed and ha
wed about another rooftop session, basically rejecting an activity that had ranked high on his list of favorite experiences, it had cut deep.

  So she wasn’t feeling anything special between them. Good. It was better that way.

  She wanted Marchande. That much was clear, especially with the make-him-jealous routine. As if Marchande had ever been threatened by another man in the whole of his life. It was nearly laughable in a not so funny way that Aria had assumed Tristan would somehow register Isaiah as competition. Fortunately, she’d bought the deflection he’d cooked up on the fly.

  It was true that his friend would definitely step aside if he thought Isaiah had his sights set on a woman. But that wasn’t the reason he’d killed that plan.

  There was no way he could touch Aria like she’d suggested without something coming unhinged inside him. No way he’d have done it in a church in front of witnesses either. Because if he got Aria into his arms like she seemed to be suggesting, he would have a very difficult time stopping himself from kissing her and he had no interest in testing his will.

  Instead he’d fallen into a whole other battle of wills, the kind where he had to push her toward his friend, but he’d done it. She’d take his suggestion to show Tristan her multifaceted personality and that would be that. And Marchande was a good guy. Mostly. Deep down inside, where it counted. He was loyal and had charm to spare. Everyone loved him.

  The problem lay in how Isaiah wished this one time, a woman might overlook Marchande and settle her sights on someone a little less obvious and flashy. Like Isaiah. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Imagine that mess, when he was already halfway down the road. Except, it had been a while since he’d thought about leaving. He should do something about that.

  He sprawled on the bed and tried to watch something inane on his iPad but he’d had to route the internet connection through the hotspot on his phone and the buffering speed was so lousy there was literally no point in even trying to decipher the broken dialog.

  A knock at his door saved him from the game of Solitaire he’d just started. Bad mood aside, he welcomed the interruption.

  Caleb Hardy stood outside, hands in his back pockets in a misguided attempt to appear casual, but his former team leader had forgotten to remove the all-business glint from his eye. “Got a sec?”

  “Depends. How serious is it?” He was only half-kidding. Whatever Hardy needed, Isaiah would try to do, no question.

  “I need you to take over managing the PR campaign for Superstition Springs.”

  Except that. He laughed at what was surely meant to be a joke. “Is that how you lead up to the real thing you need? So the real thing doesn’t seem so bad?”

  Hardy waved that away, clearly not joking. “You’re the only one I would trust with this. You have a knack for figuring out what people need to hear. It’s awe-inspiring sometimes how you get the guys motivated.”

  The praise should have hit a couple of warm-fuzzy buttons inside but instead it just made his stomach turn. “Yeah, maybe in the Navy. Not so much anymore.”

  Hardy eyed him curiously. “Still. Even just recently. At the diner, you always smooth over the rough spots with ease. Marchande has a big mouth and you keep him in check before Rafferty takes him apart. You always have kind words for Rowe and I appreciate how you make sure he hears everything being said.”

  Only because Marchande didn’t always understand how he came across and Rafferty needed no encouragement to take care of something that irritated him, usually with very permanent results. Hardy’s brother, Rowe, couldn’t help that he’d lost most of the hearing in his left ear. It was no trouble to watch for pitfalls. Rowe would do the same for him.

  Isaiah would shuffle his feet in an aw-shucks kind of way if any of the above would have made an ounce of difference. It didn’t. He was the wrong guy for this. “Managing Marchande is already a full time job. I don’t have time for anything else.”

  “I’m not asking you.” Hardy hadn’t moved from his stance outside the door but it sure felt like the mayor was standing on his chest as his gaze drilled through Isaiah. “I can’t handle the PR piece right now, and it’s critical to start drawing people to the town. Superstition Springs needs people. New businesses. A doctor, like yesterday. The development company gave us six months to do three years’ worth of work. Figure out how to motivate people to relocate here. Come on daytrips. Something. Just get them into the town.”

  The enormity of what Caleb was asking him to do just about broke him. He could scarcely handle the responsibility of the barn renovations. Had spent a lot of time working out how to get the four people doing it to ditch work and go the movies yesterday. Most of his remaining energy went toward keeping his lungs from seizing up and even that wasn’t going so well.

  Like now. “I can’t.”

  Hardy pushed into Isaiah’s room and shut the door, turning immediately to put a concerned hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on with you? Stop feeding me BS lines about Marchande and be real with me. You’ve been a little off-kilter since we hit town. Do you hate it here?”

  “No!” That had burst out of its own free will and had the benefit of being the truth. “This place is great.”

  “Okay. I know I have a tendency to push people into things they aren’t ready for. But I think you’re tailor made for the PR job, and I need someone who will do it well. Plus, being honest here. You’re floundering.” Caleb’s warmth bled through his arm straight to his heart. “Tell me I’m wrong. I thought out of anyone, you’d be first in line to take a permanent role. Show the other guys how it’s done. When you didn’t—”

  “You’re not wrong.” No point in denying it. The jig was up. Caleb had figured out he was broken same as Tristan had. “You know you’re not. That’s why you shouldn’t be here asking me to do something you just labeled critical. I can’t do it.”

  “You can. Or I wouldn’t be here. Sit down.”

  Isaiah dropped to the bed instantly without question. He’d followed Hardy through some pretty rough circumstances, and it came automatically to do as ordered in the heat of the moment. If only he could conjure up some of that same will when stepping up to the plate Hardy had thrown down in front of him.

  Looked like Isaiah should have hit the road sooner. Before the mayor came looking for someone to fill a spot on his roster that felt too huge for someone who was indeed floundering.

  Hardy sat on the floor, back against the wall, a deliberate move that put him physically lower than Isaiah so it was obvious this was a chat and not his former team lead trying to pull rank. That’s why Hardy was a great mayor—he knew how to handle every situation, no fear, no hesitation. It was near poetic to watch sometimes.

  Not right now though. Because Isaiah had a feeling he knew what was coming.

  “Syria messed us all up,” Hardy threw out gravely. Yep. Exactly the script Isaiah had expected. “You included.”

  “Not a news flash. Naming it and claiming it doesn’t change facts. I led everyone into that crapstorm. Me,” he stressed but only because Hardy had to be crystal clear on this point. “You say I’m good at motivating. Well I did my job pretty well that day, didn’t I? Rafferty questioned the intel. He knew it seemed fishy. What did I do? I brushed it off because when had Rowe ever been wrong before?”

  That was a pretty bland recitation of the things that haunted his nightmares and sometimes his awake hours. They’d called Rowe The Ghost well before he’d turned into a shadow of himself. The man could become darn near invisible when the situation called for it, which made his intel-gathering skills legendary. Why would anyone question the coordinates?

  But Rafferty had. And Isaiah had told him to shut it because he didn’t want anyone balking right before a critical op.

  “It’s not your fault,” Hardy chided gently. “Did you have the authority to call off the raid?”

  “No, but that’s—”

  “It is the point. You did your job. I did mine. I could have called it off. Trust me, I spent mont
hs replaying those last few hours with a different ending, where I figured out in time that we had the wrong village. But that’s not how it went down. We have to move on, embrace this town that took us in when the Navy kicked us out. Find a new future.”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” he cut in fiercely.

  “Are you?” Caleb’s brows arched in counterpoint. “I see someone pulling away. Totally get it. But that’s what you’re doing.”

  “I’m not…” He was. Hardy knew him better than anyone, had easily sniffed out Isaiah’s defense mechanisms. “This is not going to last, Hardy. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  Nothing ever lasted. That’s why leaving was what he did best. And he’d failed at that too because Syria had turned him into a waffler of the highest order on top of breaking him into little pieces. Decisions were not his forte right now.

  Frustrated, Isaiah shut his eyes and massaged his temples for as long as he could, mostly so he didn’t have to see the disappointment in Hardy’s expression. Isaiah wasn’t stepping up to the plate like he should. Like he’d have sworn he would, given the opportunity. But this was the one time Isaiah couldn’t keep the team together. Didn’t deserve to. Didn’t have the will to, not anymore.

  “The thing is,” Caleb said quietly. “I’m putting one hundred percent of my energy into making sure it lasts. I was hoping you’d do the same. Thought maybe giving you something that would bind you to this town might help. Because if you want it to last, the best way to do that is to stop pulling so hard in the other direction, slow down and work for it. The better you are at this PR job, the more successful the town will be and then there’s no danger of it evaporating before our eyes. Make it happen for all of us, Elmer. I’m counting on you.”

  He let Hardy have the last word and nodded as the man climbed to his feet to leave.

  Slow down. It was Serenity’s prediction all over again, but with much broader implications than solely on his love life. Had he missed a critical piece of what she’d seen in his future?