by Kat Cantrell
“The fact that I don’t think of you that way,” he explained gently with nothing but sincerity radiating from his face. “You’re a great person and I like seeing you at the diner. But that’s all there is. When I catch sight of you, I don’t recoil in horror or anything, I just don’t get anything inside that means I could think of you as something more than a friend. Does that make sense?”
She sighed and tried to work up some more anger, but since she’d as recently as five minutes ago had a similar revelation about the lack of pinging, she didn’t exactly have a leg to stand on. “You mean, just for example’s sake, when you put your hands on my shoulders earlier, you didn’t get a zingy sensation where it counts?”
“Something like that.” Earnestly, he searched her expression. “I’m not trying to hurt you. But I have to be honest up front. This is a small town. I would hate to hurt you worse later on if I led you on. I hope you can forgive me.”
Geez. Tristan was a gentleman and a really nice guy underneath it all. How many women got that kind of speech before making fools of themselves over a guy who flirted as a default? Or worse, before jumping all in with their heart, only to have it blow up in their faces later when they figured out he wasn’t serious about all the compliments and stuff?
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she mumbled, still struck by the irony of it all.
Was there any worse time to realize there was no future with a guy than at the exact same moment you figured out he had unknown depths of character?
She wasn’t even upset. How could she be? She’d done exactly what she’d set out to do, or at least the trying part. She’d failed to get him to ask her out, sure, but in the process, he’d said some pretty complimentary things about her that weren’t his typical rehearsed lines. They weren’t right for each other, bottom line, and he’d managed to convey that eloquently.
“Still friends?” he asked and stuck out his hand.
She nodded and slipped her hand into his for what she thought would be a perfunctory shake, but it was Tristan. He raised her knuckles to his lips to kiss them and winked.
“Besides, we’d never work out anyway,” he told her and released her hand. “Not with Isaiah still in the picture.”
“Um, what?” Or at least that’s what she’d meant to say but it came out garbled with zero resemblance to English.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know he thinks you hung the moon,” he teased and then caught a clue that maybe she wasn’t pretending. “I mean…you don’t see how he looks at you?”
“You didn’t see the way I looked at you,” she muttered as her brains completely fried like a dropped egg on concrete in August. “So that’s not a valid test.”
Tristan just laughed. “Because there was nothing to see, as we just discovered. We don’t float each other’s boat. You might have admired my cut abs on occasion but you know, everyone does.”
Instead of his ego annoying her like it probably should, she had to laugh too. “I’ve never seen you without a shirt, so whatever. Get over yourself maybe.”
“Can’t.” He shrugged. “Born this way. Now about that hair band…”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly which hopefully covered the mild panic that had started to set in as she mentally examined all the possible meanings of hung the moon. “Sure, sure. Anything for a friend.”
At this point, she was so beleaguered, she couldn’t even care that Havana and Ember might still be in the kitchen. It turned out they weren’t, so she let Tristan cool his heels in the living area and fetched a spare ponytail holder from her room as fast as humanly possible. Then she shooed him on his way so she could have a minor breakdown.
Isaiah did not think she hung the moon, not the way Tristan made it sound, as if he had a thing for her. They were friends, nothing more. Kind of like the way she’d landed with Tristan. Nothing between them and no one got internal butterflies over innocent touches. The almost kiss? Probably complete conjecture on her part. He hadn’t been about to kiss her. She’d made that up because she’d never danced with a man before. Maybe that charged moment at the end was part of dancing.
And if she repeated that to herself a hundred more times, that would make it fact. Right?
But as the day wore on, it got harder and harder to convince herself that she did not want to march right downstairs to Isaiah’s door and demand to know what way he was looking at her that had evoked metaphors like hung the moon. It was ludicrous. The Almighty himself had hung the moon in Genesis, no humans need apply.
The problem was that she couldn’t confront him. If she did, she might blurt out that she had a thing for him too and then she couldn’t take it back. Cassidy would find out that Isaiah had almost kissed Aria last night, and then she’d have to face the horrible reality that she had utterly betrayed her friend.
No. It was better to ignore the butterflies, pretend she wasn’t falling for Isaiah, and let Cassidy have the happiness she deserved. Aria would never forgive herself if she did anything less. Besides, she could never be happy with a man knowing that it was her fault a woman sat alone in the dark, feeling abandoned and betrayed by someone who claimed to love her. That was not pain she’d wish on anyone.
Good thing the bet over Tristan was off. She had a legitimate reason to halt the roof hang outs with Isaiah. She’d send him a note or something to explain—oh, no. She’d just volunteered to help him out with the tourist draw project.
That was an even bigger disaster than the almost-kiss of last night.
Aria bit her lip. She’d have to decline after all, as much as that felt like weaseling out of a promise. Gah, this web had grown too tangled. No matter what she did, someone was going to be hurt or disappointed. She had a bad feeling she’d end up being the one who was both.
Thirteen
With the six-month timetable looming over the town, the barn restoration project could really benefit from some focused attention, but Isaiah slapped a paint brush over the wood without really seeing either one. His mind’s eye was too busy replaying the way Tristan had lifted Aria’s hand to his mouth as if he had every right to kiss the woman.
Isaiah really shouldn’t have stood there watching them this morning. But honestly, he hadn’t expected to stumble over such an intimate scene. He’d tromped up the stairs intending to go to his room, when bam! Voices. Aria’s first in a low murmur he couldn’t catch, then Marchande’s. The stairwell from the first floor lay on the opposite end of the one to the third floor where they were standing, so he’d ducked back into the shadows, easily staying out of sight.
With the entire length of the second floor hallway between them, he couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but there was nothing wrong with his vision. The image of them together had been burned across his retinas. It hadn’t been so easy to stop himself from bursting out of his hiding place with every intention of taking Marchande apart for breathing the same air as Aria. And his knees still hurt from how long he’d stood with them locked after they’d vanished up the stairwell to the third floor.
Looked like things had worked out between them after all. Great. That was what should have happened when Aria approached a man and laid out her interest. She was amazing and she’d make Marchande really happy, if he bothered to take the time to get to know her. Tristan was his friend, but that didn’t mean Isaiah was blind to his faults, and Marchande went through women pretty fast. Aria was definitely worth changing your stripes for.
The man himself strolled up the dirt path from the road a solid hour after Isaiah had arrived at the barn to start on the task of painting, which had been on their to-do list for a couple of days.
“You’re here early, mon ami,” Tristan commented and held up an apple. “Want one? I stopped by Voodoo on the way. Mavis J says bonjour.”
“No thanks.”
Isaiah kept his eyes trained on the side of the barn, where even the most casual observer might note that the quality of his painting job left a lot to be desired. He’d ha
ve to redo it, which might not be a bad thing. If he was painting, he couldn’t work on ideas for Hardy or dwell on how he’d just talked Aria into helping him with that, which would force him into her orbit again. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to work with her, but that was before he’d realized that she’d move so fast with Le Torch, who’d certainly lived up to his reputation. Who would have thought she’d blaze ahead after hanging back so long?
“What’s with you, Elmer?” Tristan asked as he bit into his apple.
“Nothing is with me,” he growled and tried to line up his brush strokes so that it didn’t look like a three year old with questionable abilities to stay inside the lines had taken over his body. “What’s with you?”
“I meant with you getting here so early, quoi.” Marchande wandered over to examine the side of the barn where Isaiah had been working, though some air quotes surrounding the term “work” might be appropriate, since he’d spent a lot of time seething instead of painting. “But now that we’re on the subject, why are you trying to take my head off? Are you mad that you’ve been here so long without help?”
“I’m not mad,” he ground out. “I’m painting. See?”
Isaiah swirled the brush around, but he’d forgotten to dip it in the paint can at his feet so the bristles didn’t do much other than streak what he’d already halfheartedly covered.
“I’m sorry anyway,” Tristan said with a laugh that demonstrated he had no clue how close Isaiah was to seeing how his friend looked with a broken nose. “I had to stop by Aria’s to borrow a hair band and we got to talking.”
Was that what the kids were calling it these days? “Lucky you.”
Marchande clapped him on the back with a little more force than was necessary. “Don’t be jealous. I’ll ask her to let you borrow a hair band too.”
“I’m not—” He swallowed the rest because yeah. He was jealous.
Far more than he should be. More than was fair. More than was right. He’d pushed Aria directly into Marchande’s arms on purpose, because he said he’d help her. But knowing that he’d had a hand in it didn’t help ease the sharp thing in his stomach that dug deeper with each passing second as he reimagined Marchande’s mouth molding to the shape of Aria’s hand.
And there’d be more where that came from. Tristan had women falling all over him for a reason, and it wasn’t solely because of his pretty face—he knew how to talk to them, how to treat them. Had some wicked words at his disposal that made woman swoon and he’d regaled the team with tales of his exploits enough times that it was pretty clear he knew his way around a woman’s body too. They tended to like it when a man had talents in the area of making them feel good.
That line of thought did nothing to cool the temper that simmered just under Isaiah’s skin.
How was he supposed to stand around and watch Marchande put his mouth on Aria some more?
Answer: he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. It was obvious that his time in Superstition Springs had come to an abrupt halt. Except he was right in the middle of not one, but two really important projects that he’d committed to doing for Hardy. If a man couldn’t honor his word even when the going got tough, he had little character. At least that had always been Isaiah’s philosophy and it had carried him through BUD/s training where he’d learned what true pain and difficulty meant. And then he’d become a SEAL, fighting for justice in some of the darkest corners of the world. Never once had he faltered in his mission. Until Syria.
The cherry on his craptastic sundae arrived at that moment as Aria and Cassidy came into view at the head of the dusty road leading from town to the barn. He stifled a groan. Both ladies were still on the barn restoration project, which he’d conveniently forgotten. Apparently today was the day they’d opted to come by for a long morning of torture.
To make it even more fun, Havana and Hardy were with them.
Marchande stiffened the second he caught sight of Cassidy and said something under his breath that would get him bleeped on any sort of broadcast. Apparently, Isaiah wasn’t the only one blindsided by the company. Though he did wonder why Marchande was surprised to see the woman he’d just been cozying up to in the stairwell—had they not gotten around to discussing Aria’s plans for the day?
“Hi, guys,” Havana called cheerily, her bright red hair a garish contrast to Aria’s muted shade.
Aria’s sister held hands with Hardy and neither of them seemed at all concerned about public displays of affection that might make other people suddenly long to have that kind of easy warmth with another human.
Apparently it was a day for jealousy. Isaiah swallowed against the burn in his throat. “Wasn’t expecting a crowd.”
Hardy’s gaze shifted past Isaiah and Marchande to examine the side of the barn, his expression decidedly underwhelmed. “Came by to see the progress. We’ve got to move on this schoolhouse. When do you think you’ll have it ready for Cassidy and Tallhorse to start setting up for classes?”
Tallhorse had long been the only teacher in Superstition Springs until he’d taken on Cassidy as his apprentice of sorts. They planned to run a charter school together that the renovated barn would house. The Native American resident was real character, the kind that could be thirty-five or ninety, and had a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Yale, an oddity Isaiah still didn’t get.
Isaiah glanced at Marchande, who was making a great show of ignoring Cassidy and didn’t give the slightest hint that he’d heard the question. So Isaiah answered on behalf of both of them. “Once we have the paint dry, we only have a few more weatherproofing things to do on the inside and about a day’s worth of work on the bathroom. We got that guy from Bastrop to do the majority of the plumbing, so it’s minor stuff. Easy.”
Clearly relieved, Hardy nodded. “That’s great. I knew I could count on you. The sooner we get this checked off, the better. Then you can double down on how to attract folks. We’re thinking of doing something big and splashy to generate interest in the town. Like a welcome to Superstition Springs party or some such. I’d like to put you in charge of that. A dose of Elmer would be stellar.”
An iron claw raked through Isaiah’s stomach. Obviously Hardy had gotten the wrong impression when Isaiah hadn’t categorically rejected his plea to handle the PR stuff. He should have just said no. There was no way he could handle responsibility for an entire kickoff party. It was too much pressure, too much opportunity to get it wrong.
But before he could utter a word, Aria piped up.
“Let us finish the barn first,” she said with a laugh that clawed at him in a much more disturbing way. “You don’t have to tell us that there’s more work to do. We get it. But we’ll do better working on one thing at a time.”
“That makes sense.” Hardy glanced at Havana and they exchanged a look that seemed to signal agreement. “I’m fine with reconvening on the welcome party, maybe later this week. Elmer, you come find me when you’re ready to talk.”
And with that, Hardy and Havana strolled off. In one fell swoop, Aria had read his mind and offered an alternative that allowed him ample breathing room. She’d rescued him.
That couldn’t have been an accident. Clearly he’d communicated more to her last night about his reasons for not wanting to handle the job alone than he’d realized. He’d have rather kept all of his angst hidden, but clearly he didn’t get that choice. Aria saw through him to his most visceral level. What was he supposed to do with that?
“What would you like for me to work on?” Cassidy asked in the sudden silence. “I’m not really dressed for painting.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you walked out of the door this morning,” Tristan said with a good bit of sarcasm. “We’re renovating a barn, not going shopping. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out you didn’t own any clothes that you’d consider painting in.”
“You don’t have to be obnoxious,” she retorted, hands on her hips as she faced Marchande down. “Oh, I forgot. You can’t help it.
You open your mouth and the obnoxiousness just pours out.”
Isaiah rolled his eyes and went back to painting as they continued hurling insults and criticism at each other, too unsettled over the way Aria had jumped in to save him from the mayor’s agenda to deal with someone else’s conflict. Which was as much a testament to his befuddled state of mind as anything. Usually he was the one who smoothed things over.
The back of his neck prickled as Aria leaned in to murmur, “Are they like, related or something? If I didn’t know better, I’d think they’d grown up sharing a bathroom. I mean, Ember and Havana fight like that too, but they love each other underneath. I don’t know what to do with this.”
That was only fair. Isaiah didn’t know what to do with the way his pulse had started jackhammering in his throat the moment he’d scented her hair, either. “I think the key is to keep them apart at this point. Maybe you should both work on something on the inside of the barn.”
That would benefit everyone, especially him. The less Aria had opportunity to lean into his space, the better.
“That’s a fantastic idea, thanks. I can’t take any more of the bickering.”
Isaiah nodded his agreement, willing her to disappear as quickly as possible. Apparently, that plan suited Cassidy to the ground, because the woman flounced through the door well ahead of Aria less than a minute later.
Good, now he could breathe.
Except his lungs wouldn’t quite expand like he’d have expected. Actually, he hadn’t thought much about his breathing lately, at least not when he’d been around Aria. She kept him so occupied with everything else that his lungs were the last thing on his mind.
“That woman is going to be the death of me.” Marchande’s expression was nothing short of black as the man picked up a paint brush from the pan in front of him.