I was flushing again, and as I checked to see if Jadyn had caught the sure giveaway, I heard a truck’s horn blaring from the road.
I looked toward the sound, and the wind picked up, belting me. I pushed my hair out of my eyes in time to see a red, show-offy Ram Laramie Limited pickup with a painted T-Rex claw zinging down the side. A bunch of kids were in back, dressed in swim gear and pumping their fists to the loud metal music coming from the cab, where Rex was leaning out the window and steering the truck into the gas station.
Spotted once again.
“Oh, no,” Jadyn said, and I got the feeling she was about to disintegrate back to her car.
“Don’t you go anywhere.” I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me so we were standing side by side.
Rex’s truck squealed to the end of my gas lane as cheerdevils and football cronies catcalled to us from the truck bed.
“What’s this? A meeting of the slut club? Who’s president?”
Rex yelled at them to shut up. He kept his motor running as he reached over to turn down the music and looked at me and Jadyn. Were his eyes a little unfocused?
He’d been drinking, and his slur proved it. “Hope you two aren’t relivin’ good times without me.”
Evie would’ve called him a dick. Lord knew the word was kicking at my teeth. Jadyn only lowered her head, and I wished she wouldn’t.
I spoke evenly, impressing myself with my calm. “You should have someone else drive, Rex.”
He laughed, hitting his horn in amusement. “She still thinks she can boss me around!”
It was hard to believe that this was the guy who’d been at the lake yesterday, giving me a sorry look that had made me wonder if he missed me. Now he was being as studly and callous as he’d been that day when he’d confronted me outside my biology class.
He pointed at Jadyn. “Cozying up to the only friend that’ll have you? Good move, Princess. You’re a real pair.”
“And you’re boring us, Rex,” I said. “Leave us alone. Go drink some more.”
Everyone hooted, even Rex. Jadyn pressed closer to me, which seemed odd since she was seemingly stronger than I was, with arms that testified that she stocked shelves most of the day. Skinny but solid.
“Baby,” Rex said to me, “you’ve developed a mouth on you. I heard Micah Wyatt intends to find out how good you use it, too.”
More vile gestures and comments from the peanut gallery as we stood there and took it.
Rex raised a finger to quiet them again. “I lied. Isn’t it Jadyn who’s the expert on Micah? Aren’t you, baby? Is that why you two are in cahoots, ’cause Jadyn’s givin’ Lana Peyton tips on how to work that mouth on someone real?”
I could feel Jadyn shriveling into herself. Neither of us had Evie here to advise on how to get rid of him once and for all, so I took inspiration from what she’d told me yesterday.
Are you going to let them control you all summer?
I said, “If you were enough man to keep us around, Micah Wyatt wouldn’t have to take up the slack.”
The flatbed crowd went silent. I could see a ruddiness rising up my ex’s neck, embarrassment covering him.
Finally, one drunk cheerdevil from the back beat the silence. “Bitch!”
Someone threw a beer bottle at us, and it missed, sailing to my right. But Rex was already out of there, putting pedal to metal, and the truck skidded out of the lot, leaving me and Jadyn.
She turned to me, her gaze sad. “I’ve never been a bitch before now.”
I touched her arm. “Sticks and stones, right?”
I was doing a pretty good job of showing that words didn’t hurt me as much as they used to, but they actually had. They’d left a latent bruise that was just now growing under my skin, because every word Rex had just said was right on target.
Especially the ones about Micah.
***
Rain opened the sky for only about fifteen minutes, but since it was still long before dinnertime, our hopes for a busy night at the café didn’t die. While Evie and I prepped the front of the house, I told her about the confrontation at the gas station. She was damned proud of me for giving some sass right back to Rex and his followers, and for making strides with Jadyn.
“She made a gesture to you,” Evie said. “That took some balls, you know? It sounds like she’s desperate for friends, so let’s be her friends, Shel.”
I agreed, but there was one thing I left out with Evie.
Micah in the theater.
I’d have to work up to that and, frankly, I didn’t need to hear her good-for-you, he’s-so-hot, you’re-so-not-a-blob encouragement right now. Sure, Evie’s whole philosophy was about embracing our womanly powers and not being ashamed of who we were, but sometimes sex was more trouble than it was worth. Especially today.
It ended up that we did very good business that night: the rain had never come down hard enough to keep people away, especially one table of out-of-towners who were just passing through. They’d seen the Angel’s Seat website that I’d designed during spring break, thought the place looked quirky, and had come on in, buying enough pricy local wine to keep themselves and us happy. As for this being Evie’s first night, it was like she’d been serving at the café for months as she’d waited on tables filled with regulars. She kicked butt with her tips and just about skipped out of the café at closing.
“What a godsend,” Mom said before scooting me out the door so I could go home, too. “Both of you girls are.”
Feeling useful, my spirits were higher than usual when I walked into the pool house, then put on a button-up linen camisole and matching, baggy pajama shorts and brushed my teeth. I was hardly tired—adrenaline from tonight’s better-than-usual business was still singing in me—so I opened the sliding glass door to get all the air I could and turned on my circa ’80s TV set to The Tonight Show.
As the ceiling fan whipped around, stirring the warm air, I decided to finally unpack my suitcase. I kept tripping over it, anyway. Also, the task would keep me away from going on my computer to see what Rex had e-mailed to Lana yesterday. Was he going to harass me some more about Micah?
I put that fiddling devil out of my mind, concentrating on fishing my clothes out of the suitcase and folding them into drawers. I’d only gotten started when I heard a sound outside.
Footsteps?
“Evie?” I called out.
No answer, so I crept to my bed, starting to reach under it for the knife. Cold panic writhed in me.
“Not funny, Evie!”
I waited to hear her voice, but instead, I realized that the footfalls were heavy—boots on cement. I grabbed the knife handle.
And even when goddamned Micah Wyatt appeared at my sliding glass door, leaning against the wall, I didn’t let go of the weapon.
“Unbelievable,” I said through gritted teeth. Unfortunately, my sex drive wasn’t so unhappy—it was jigging around like it’d just scored for the win. It was also very aware that I had my pajamas on, and my nipples had gone hard under the thin white linen.
“Saw your light on,” he said, his gaze lowering to my chest, then back up. He smiled like he’d struck gold. “So I thought I’d see if you were okay. You left the theater in a hurry, Sunshine.”
“Don’t Sunshine me.”
“Aw, now, Shelby, you’re severely limiting my expressions of endearment. You don’t like ‘Angel’ . and now ‘Sunshine’?”
“Why’re you here? In my pool house?”
It looked like he was about to say that he’d just explained that to me, but I nixed the small talk.
“Do not tell me you were just driving by, that you happened to be in the neighborhood, blah-blah-blah. You can’t even see my room from the street.”
“You can if you’re walking by and crane your neck real hard, looking over the side gate. That’s how I s
aw you opening the window. Besides, it’s dark next door, so I doubt anyone’s home to see me over here. We’re as private as private can be.”
“Did you say you were walking or stalking?”
He thought that was funny. “If I had your phone number, I wouldn’t have to go to such extremes.”
I shook my head, my hand loosening on the knife handle. I wasn’t sure if he was dangerous enough for a cut, even though he was dangerous in other ways.
“Why were you walking in my neighborhood?” I asked.
“Why does anyone walk anywhere?” Without further explanation, he strolled right inside.
My mouth dropped open. The cojones on this guy.
He stood in the middle of my room in faded jeans and a sexy T-shirt, his hair tied back and an approving look on his face as he planted his hands on his hips.
“Nice paintings,” he said.
“Evie and I did them.” Why was I explaining anything to him? “I didn’t say you could be in my room, for God’s sake.”
“Rooms have a lot to say about a person, which is more than I can boast about the conversations we’ve had so far.” He wandered over to my desk, motioning toward the computer. “I’m guessing this is the scene of the crime with old T-Rex, where Lana Peyton had her way with him.”
Yup, he felt comfortable enough to just come right out and say things like that. But I didn’t see the point in denying it. “I used a laptop for her. It’s dead now, bugged out on me during the last week of school, like it held on for as long as it could.”
He jerked his chin toward me and the bed. “You hiding something under there?”
I decided it might not be a bad idea to bring out my weapon of choice.
“Well, look at that.” He laughed. “You’re full of surprises.”
And he wasn’t? I shoved the knife back in its place, letting go of it, and he ambled toward my TV, ignoring Jimmy Fallon and leaning against the wall. “You should’ve had a knife under your bed when you were dating Rex. Maybe you’d have a whole lot less problems.”
Hah. “It’s a habit when I’m home. I have it nearby, like a security blanket.”
“You seem to have more than a few bad habits, Angel.” At the reminder of this afternoon, he winked at me, grinning in that lopsided, über-sexy way that always got me going.
And now was no exception. My heart pinged, my belly whirled.
“Why are you here?” I stood. “To tease me about this afternoon? Or maybe you want to poke fun about how you made such progress on that bet of yours? Whatever the reason, you’d better do it before my mom and her friends get home.”
He tucked his hands under his armpits, still leaning. “The bet doesn’t exist anymore. Remember?”
Sure.
I waved him on. “Feel free to gloat. Get it all out.”
“I’m not here to gloat. Why would I have to when you enjoyed every second of that movie as much as I did?”
He was too much. “Did I mention that my mom doesn’t care for you—or should I say, your reputation? You don’t want to be here when she is.”
“Your mom loves me. Me and the twins are good customers at the café.”
“You overestimate your likeability factor. When it comes to her daughter, Mom will fight you off. And she has three live-in friends who’ll back her.”
Micah cocked one of those wicked eyebrows. “Just what is it with those friends, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Maybe he’d leave if I answered.
“You’re wondering if they’re all lesbians?” I knew what the town thought. It was just one more thing for them to talk about. “I can only speak for Mom, and the answer is no. They all meet on artsy-fartsy boards and Mom invites anyone who needs some ‘time away’ to work at the café and live the gardening artist life for as long as they want. Some are divorced, some are having a midlife crisis, but that doesn’t mean they’re all loving up one another.”
“I heard your mom hasn’t really dated anyone since your dad . . . whoever he was.”
He was dangling bait, as if waiting for me to grab onto it. When I didn’t, he went on.
“Truthfully, I don’t know about your dad firsthand. But I wasn’t lying when I said there’re ways to get you the story on him.”
Nope, still didn’t believe him.
God, I had to get him out of here, and it wasn’t just because I didn’t want Mom to discover him. I didn’t trust myself around him, with my pulse chopping through me and my lips feeling swollen again, remembering that kiss.
Just like he remembered it also, he moved away from the wall, sauntering toward me. With every step, my heart hopped.
“You gonna kick me out of here, Shelby?” he asked in the same whisper he’d used in the movie theater.
The nearer he got, the more I backed up. I stumbled back onto the bed, retreating there as if that was going to get me away from him.
When he came to the mattress, he braced his hands on either side of me, his face so close to mine that I could see the true color of his eyes now—gray with green flecks. I could smell his skin and the mint on his breath.
His voice traveled through me, a string of low shivers. “Tell me to leave, and I will.”
It didn’t come as a surprise to me when I didn’t.
10
My heartbeat was shredding my eardrums, playing them like a wild song I’d never heard before, as I leaned away from Micah.
But still so, so close to him.
“If people knew you were in my bedroom,” I whispered over the low murmur of my TV, “I’d never hear the end of it. And I’m not just talking about from my mom.”
“You worry too much.”
He ran a slow look from my face to my chest, where my camisole wasn’t hiding much. Then his gaze meandered back up again. Damn, that smile made me think this didn’t have to be such a bad idea after all.
He continued. “You saw me handle Mrs. Holland at Jimmy’s. I know what to say to women, and your mom would let me get away with a lot of monkeyshines, too, if I could just have a word with her.”
“Could you be any less modest?”
“Probably, but I couldn’t be more right.”
He stayed there, inches away from me. I could hear him breathing, and that familiar, sparking tension started to press against me—in me—so hard that I closed my eyes, then forced them back open.
I must’ve had some kind of new determination in my gaze, because Micah laughed, rolling to his side on the mattress, where he rested on his elbow, stretching out and watching me.
Had I zinged him enough to make him back off?
I went right on zinging. “I see you’ve made yourself right at home now.”
His gaze was on my chest again, and my nipples beaded even more, if that was possible. “This is a comfortable bed. Maybe I’ll stay for a long while.”
When I scooted away slightly, backing against the wall and crossing my arms over myself, he laughed again. Then, in a move that confused me more than anything, he reached over and grabbed a chenille blanket from the footboard and shook it out, laying it over me.
I didn’t know what to do for a moment. He was covering me up? This had to be some kind of trick.
But he rolled to his stomach, getting more comfortable, his long legs hanging partway over the bed. I tucked the folded blanket below my arms, hugging it.
He said, “Here’s the real truth about how I came to be here. I walked blocks and blocks tonight, left the Camaro at the shop. Told my cousins I needed some peace and quiet away from them since we’ve got people in the house.”
He meant girls. “And you didn’t stick around for that?”
“Wasn’t in the mood.”
That had to be a new one. Or was he playing the devoted Romeo right now, showing me that I was the only one for him—for the time being?
/>
I have to say his strategy was kind of working. I mean, on a base level, what girl doesn’t like to think that she and she alone has won over the impossible heart of a player?
But I wasn’t nearly won. “Let me translate what you’re actually saying. You had a plan. You walked over here so no one would recognize your car in the neighborhood, then you snuck into my side yard where you could peek past the gate to see if I was home. Subtle. And maybe even a little creepy.”
“Creepy is for guys who pursue uninterested women.”
How could I argue about that?
“Also,” he said, “I figured I’d only cause a spectacle driving to your curb and blowing my horn to get your attention.” He traced a cherry blossom branch on my bedspread, his fingers long and sturdy, a hint of grease under his nails. “And that wouldn’t work because I promised secrecy to you.”
Well, he was keeping up his end of his own bargain. “What would it take to get you to stop?”
“For you to tell me that you genuinely don’t want me around. But the thing is, Shelby, every time I think you might say it with conviction, you don’t.”
He was right. And I couldn’t say it now. He made me feel so good after months of feeling bad, made me feel like I was special in a way, that I mattered enough for him to go out on any limb for me.
But that was the problem with Micah in a nutshell—he was catering to my neediness, just like he’d sniffed it out in me.
He’d started skimming the bedspread pattern with his fingertips again, but this time, he was closer to my bare thigh. My skin prickled, as if he was drawing pictures on me and not the cloth.
I cleared my throat. “So basically, I can’t say anything you would believe about leaving me alone.”
“I’d suspect they were only words.”
“And what do words mean, anyway, right? Rex said plenty of words to me he didn’t mean.”
He acted like I’d splashed cold water on him. “Rex again?”
It occurred to me that Rex might be the one subject that would eventually push Micah away, so I went with it. “I saw him this afternoon, at the Texaco. Jadyn stopped by to have a word with me and—”
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