Fall in Love

by Anthology

  Mama harrumphed as she passed her on her way out the door, and then scowled when Chelsea only grinned at her.

  And then she set off to face her fate.

  The long drive down into town from Crawford House was stunningly beautiful that morning, the way it always was, with the mountains and the sky and the clear air in all directions, and Chelsea put her windows down despite the chill of the morning and breathed it deep into her lungs.

  She’d never been involved in one of Marietta’s scandals, except by default. She’d been the pitiable creature who that otherwise nice Tod had betrayed, the sad sack girlfriend who couldn’t hold on to her man—never the scarlet woman. She found that on some level, she was looking forward to it.

  At least it was something new.

  And unlike what had happened on Tod’s back deck in July, this time, it was actually about her.

  She didn’t expect to see Jasper again. She told herself she was fine with that as she pulled into the parking lot at the high school. She was a grown woman—she knew how things worked even if she’d never worked them herself before. Hadn’t most women her age collected a number of these nights by now? The good news was, she didn’t have to go to any great lengths to avoid Jasper in the aftermath of their night together. She’d never spent much time in Grey’s Saloon, so their paths were unlikely to cross aside from the usual nod and wave in public spaces.

  You can handle this, she told herself briskly. People do it all the time.

  Chelsea jumped slightly when she heard a car door slam nearby, jerking back into the here and now to see Gemma Clayton, a fellow teacher in the history department, heading toward the school building. She waved and smiled with genuine pleasure, and knew it was time to get on with the rest of her life.

  She doubted she’d have to interact much with Jasper Flint ever again.

  Chelsea got out of her car and started across the parking lot toward the smiling, waiting Gemma and the school doors, telling herself that what she felt then was nothing more than the cool morning air, the crisp fall weather, and not a sharp shot of something hollow, straight into her heart.

  ***

  “Do you have a minute?”

  Chelsea smiled automatically as she glanced up to see Sharla Dickinson, the high school principal, standing in the door of her classroom.

  “I was about to head home for the day,” she said, packing up her bag as she spoke, shoving a whole stack of student essays in with rather less care than she usually took. “But sure, I have a minute. Even two.”

  She wanted nothing more than to drag herself home, crawl into her bed, and sleep until her alarm went off the next morning, but she didn’t say that. She thought she’d done a decent job of pretending not to be dead on her feet all day—surely she could hold on for a few more minutes.

  “I wonder if we need to talk,” Sharla said, and the strange note in her voice made Chelsea pause, then search her boss’s face.

  “About?”

  Sharla looked more uncomfortable than Chelsea had ever seen her. “I just think it’s worth reiterating that while this is a small town, it’s best for everyone—for the students in particular—if we keep our personal lives private.”

  Chelsea let out a startled laugh. “I agree completely, Sharla. Has there been some kind of incident?”

  If she wasn’t mistaken, Sharla, who had once faced down the angry father of a pregnant high school junior toting a shotgun without so much as breaking a sweat, was blushing. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but instead waved a hand at Chelsea. Or, more specifically, at her dress.

  “Just look at you,” she said, and then shook her head. “I don’t like to listen to gossip, Chelsea—”

  “Then don’t.”

  Sharla sighed. “Is this going to be an issue?”

  Chelsea straightened, and felt her chin tip up, which was never a great sign.

  “If you mean, will I wear perfectly conservative dresses to work, then the answer is yes. I very well might. Unless there’s a new dress code that applies only to me?”

  “You don’t look like yourself,” Sharla said gently.

  She was about twice her age, now that Chelsea thought about it, and was wearing an outfit eerily similar to the one Chelsea had been sporting yesterday. Jasper had hit that nail on the head, she thought wryly. With his usual hard, unerring accuracy.

  But she wasn’t thinking about Jasper. That was an exercise in futility, and she was determined to be the kind of adventurous woman who had no time for the futile. She wanted to act the way she thought a woman like that would act: like she did such things all the time and it was all no big deal.

  She kept chanting those phrases in her head, like they might stick.

  But Sharla was still talking, a frown etched between her eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Because I’m wearing a dress?”

  “Because the Chelsea Collier I know never would have made a spectacle of herself in the middle of Main Street yesterday evening,” Sharla said, and her voice wasn’t at all accusing. It was concerned.

  Which Chelsea found was maybe the most insulting of all.

  “Sharla,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm, and happy that all her years of teaching teenagers made her able to do that to some degree, “correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Lewis own a motorcycle?”

  “You know he does.”

  “And didn’t I see you riding on the back of that motorcycle all the way down Main Street on the Fourth of July? The high school principal on a Harley, hanging on to her boyfriend’s waist for everyone to see?”

  “That’s not really the point, and I think you know it.”

  Chelsea fantasized about her bed. The soft pillows, room to stretch out—God, she wanted to close her eyes for a while. A long while. She rubbed a hand over her face instead, and hoped that if she pretended she didn’t have that pounding at her temples, it would go away.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea what your point is,” she said honestly.

  “You,” Sharla said simply. “My point is you. When all of that unpleasantness happened this summer—”

  “My boyfriend cheated on me and I caught him in the act.” It felt liberating to simply say that. Not to mince around it with all of those euphemisms and significant looks for once. “I won’t faint if we call it what it was.”

  “This is what I’m trying to say,” Sharla said then. “When it happened you were horrified that you were suddenly the name on everyone’s lips. But today, it’s like you’re proud of it. That change concerns me. It concerns me more that it doesn’t seem to strike you as odd at all.”

  Chelsea wished she could say what she actually thought—which was, simply, that comparing Tod Styles to Jasper Flint was like comparing a flashlight to the summer sun, and what did she care what people said about it? She wasn’t horrified. At all.

  But she doubted Sharla would understand that when she wasn’t certain she did.

  “He comes from a very different world,” Sharla was saying, still frowning at Chelsea, her gaze direct and intent. And still so concerned.

  “And I’m a simple, hometown girl who’s easily made a fool of,” Chelsea finished for her.

  “I didn’t say that,” her boss said calmly. “But you had a big disappointment this summer and I’d hate to think this was some kind of reaction to that. Or that you threw yourself into something only to find you’re in over your head.”

  It was one thing, Chelsea realized, for her to think that Jasper was out of her league and to caution herself against holding out any hope for anything more than the one night they’d had. It was something else entirely to have someone else think all of that and worse, that she was a naïve idiot who Tod had so destroyed that she’d tossed herself into the path of the romantic equivalent of a speeding train.

  It took every bit of willpower she had to keep her temper under control. And to keep her mouth shut on a selection of inappropriate retorts, from a breezy Oh, I wa
s just using him for sex to a snappier The only thing that disappointed me this summer was that I’d ever suffered Tod’s company in the first place.

  There was no point and anyway, this woman was her boss as much as she was a friend, it would behoove her to remember. Chelsea waited until she was sure she could control herself before she let herself speak.

  “Maybe,” she said kindly, very kindly, because she could see Sharla only wanted to help—that Sharla thought she needed help and was trying to give it despite the fact it made her uncomfortable—and that came from a good place no matter how it made her grit her teeth, “you don’t know me as well as you think you do. Maybe no one does.” She picked up her bag and looped it over her arm, then started toward the door, a silent announcement that she was done with this conversation. “And maybe that’s something it’s high time I changed.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jasper didn’t know what the hell he was doing, lurking around outside the high school like some kind of obsessed, insane stalker. But baffling though he might find his own behavior, he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  Besides, he told himself, stalkers would hide. Conceal themselves behind the hedges or something. They wouldn’t stand there out in the open, leaning up against his Range Rover like he wanted everyone in Marietta to see him, would they?

  But as he did just that, with the crisp fall afternoon gorgeous and gold around him and that snap in the breeze, it occurred to him that he had no experience when it came to chasing women. They’d always chased him. The naughtier ones had followed him around boldly when he’d been a boy, while the good ones had confined themselves to longing glances they’d thought he didn’t notice. When he’d grown older and started making all that money, there’d been more women than he could count whenever he turned around. Wherever he went. At some point, the competition to get in his bed had slid into a fight to get his ring, and he understood, now, that he’d grown complacent with all that relentless attention. He hadn’t been nervous about a female in as long as he could recall.

  One more way Chelsea Collier was turning him inside out, he thought wryly. He supposed he’d just have to get used to it.

  The parking lot was nearly empty when she finally appeared, and he thought his heart actually stopped in his chest at the sight of her.

  She was so damned pretty. It snuck beneath his ribs and lodged somewhere underneath, like a stitch in his side, making it hard to concentrate on anything but the flirty swing of that dress around her lovely legs, the clever little buckles around her ankles that managed to be demure and sexy at once, and all of her gleaming blonde hair down around her shoulders today, so bright and something like joyful in the sunlight. She marched out of the double doors with a frown on her face, like she was leading a charge straight into some or other battle, and he knew the very moment she saw him there. Waiting for her.

  It was satisfying in ways he couldn’t articulate even to himself to see the hitch in her step, and then the way her walk changed, turned into more of a languid saunter, all hips and intent, like she could still feel him the way he still felt her. The way her pretty face smoothed out, and her lips twitched in the corners, inviting him to think some more on the stunning wickedness of that mouth of hers, all that carnal promise right there on her face for everyone to see.

  How had the men in this place kept their hands off of her? Idiots, he thought.

  “Have you been standing out here all afternoon?” she asked when she drew closer. He could see the sleepless night around her eyes, and thought it made her that much prettier. That much more his.

  “Not all afternoon.”

  “You look like you’ve been here a while.”

  A delightful possibility occurred to him. “Are you trying to keep me your dirty secret? Oops. You should have made that clear, probably.”

  She eyed him for a moment, shifting the band of her bag higher on her shoulder.

  “I think that specific cat leapt from that particular bag when I jumped on your motorcycle last night right there on Main Street in front of the entire town,” she said, and then looked surprised when he laughed.

  “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t, really, but she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen and talking to her was the most exquisite torture he’d ever suffered. He wanted to be deep inside her again. He wanted to see if he’d ever conquer this craving for her that seemed to gnaw at him from deep in his own gut. “Do people really care what you do? Is this that whole small town thing? I thought that was a myth.”

  She smiled, and he loved it.

  “The prevailing wisdom is that you’re taking advantage of me, as a matter of fact,” she said, leaning in closer as if imparting a deep, dark secret, and he could smell that almond scent on her hair. It made him hard, that easily. “What with your worldly, wealthy ways. I’m nothing but a small town girl, you know. Easily led astray.”

  “Am I the big, bad wolf in this scenario?”

  “Of course.” Her smile was very nearly wicked, and he wanted to lick it.

  “Despite the fact that was you lounging around outside my house yesterday morning, tempting me to stray from the path of the righteousness? If anyone’s the wolf, Triple C, it’s you.”

  She liked the sound of that. He saw it in that flush of pleasure that moved over her, lighting up her eyes and her whole face, then down into the v-shaped neck of her dress. The dress he admired deeply and couldn’t wait to peel right off that delicious body of hers.

  “What about my virtue?” he asked lazily. “Why doesn’t anyone care about that?”

  “That’s not how the story goes, I’m afraid,” she told him with a happy sigh. “You don’t get to change the role you’ve been assigned. Besides, I had the misfortune to date an idiot, and since I caught him cheating on me a few months ago, I must be broken hearted. That’s the story, so that’s the truth.”

  But she sounded amused by that, he noted.

  “I caught my wife cheating on me,” Jasper drawled. “Do you know what I am?” He waited until her brows edged up. “Divorced.”

  Her eyes crinkled in the corners, and he thought he could watch that forever.

  “I’ll confess to you that I liked the idea of him more than I liked him,” she went on, cheerfully. “And realizing I couldn’t live with myself if I ignored the cheating was actually a bit of a relief. But that’s not an interesting story. So, obviously, I must be acting out my feelings in inappropriate ways. That’s where you come in.” She shook her head. “Tempting me into letting my hair down. Literally.”

  “I had no idea,” he said, and then he couldn’t take it anymore, he had to touch her. He reached over and took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. “I usually prefer to cause a commotion on purpose.”

  “You did that by moving here, especially into the Crawford Rail Depot, which everyone has heard my mother rant on and on about for years,” she said, but she was staring at their linked fingers in a kind of wonder, and he didn’t know what it was that clamored inside of him then, like church bells on a long Sunday morning. And he didn’t care.

  “FlintWorks Brewery,” he corrected her, and grinned when she frowned at him. “That’s what I’m calling it. But if you want, I can name a beer after you. Triple C has a nice ring to it. Or maybe Black Bart Ale?”

  She kept frowning, and then she cleared her throat, and he went still like that was foreshadowing to an attack.

  “I assumed last night was a one night stand,” she said, matter-of-factly, and for once he couldn’t read her expression even when she continued to stand there and hold his gaze so directly.

  “I don’t recall setting any restrictions.”

  “So… An affair, then?”

  “Do we need a label?”

  It didn’t escape his notice that neither label she’d chosen suggested much in the way of longevity, but he only filed that away. For now.

  “Sometimes,” she said quietly, “labels can be helpful. They set out expectations ahead of time. They
prevent confusion.”

  “If I plan to take advantage of you,” he replied in the same tone, “I’ll let you know, without any confusion at all. Like tonight, Chelsea, I plan to take extended advantage of you. Just as soon as I can get you naked. Do you need more than that?”

  “People will talk,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper, but he saw all the heat and fire and need from last night in her blue eyes, and he grinned.

  “Sounds like they already are,” he replied. “And there’s no point letting all that speculation go to waste, is there?”

  ***

  September bled into October, the town started showing signs of the rodeo, the wind started to smell of the coming change of seasons all the time, and Chelsea simply surrendered to the delicious madness. To all of it.

  There was her mother’s continued silence, which she couldn’t do a thing about, so she simply ignored it. There were whispers behind certain hands when she walked into the faculty lounge at school or particular shops in town, but there were far more open smiles of approval and even the occasional thumbs up from others.

  “Have you seen those pictures of his house?” Tricia Larssen asked in the checkout line of the supermarket. “I mean, his old house.”

  “He hasn’t sat me down with any photo albums, if that’s what you mean,” Chelsea had said, not sure where this was going. Tricia was older than Chelsea by some fifteen years, and was known to prefer her dogs to most people.

  “It had three indoor pools. A fifteen car garage. A sauna and its own bowling alley.”

  Chelsea had waited for the put down, the implication that she was too naïve or too small town to appreciate a man like Jasper. But Tricia Larssen had smiled.

  “You go, girl,” she said in her three-pack a day smoker’s voice. “You go.”

  And the truth was, Chelsea didn’t really have any time to analyze what was happening. Her life was always at a fever pitch this time of the year, and would have been crazy even without Jasper. There was school, Mama, and all the rodeo volunteer committees she always wished she hadn’t agreed to take part in before signing right up again the minute it was over.