Harry Moreland, a dependable guy in his early thirties, managed the Waco-area locations. He arrived, hat in hand, with his own wrecker idling in the driveway behind him. Tu had answered the door, and when Mitch came to the door, it was to Harry was grinning like a jack-o-lantern, looking Tu up and down in the universal eye gesture of a man mentally undressing a woman.
Mitch gave the guy a pointed, stink-eyed glare, and Harry's face abruptly fell. He cleared his throat, fiddled with the cap in his hand, and nodded.
"Just letting you know, I towed your wrecker, boss!" Harry said brightly. Mitch thought Harry was behaving foolishly for a man his age.
Mitch kept right on glaring.
"Thank you!" Tu said warmly, reaching out a hand to shake Harry's. But Mitch put a staying hand on Tu's shoulder, then slammed the door in Harry's face.
Tu didn't like it. "Mitch, you can't just do that!" She blinked at him, perplexed at his rudeness. She opened the door, where Harry stood looking confused.
"Harry, please come in. Can I get you some coffee before you leave?" Tu had an inviting look on her smiling face, and it annoyed Mitch.
Harry stepped into the vestibule uncertainly. He looked from Mitch to Tu, trying to understand, Mitch thought, what the relationship was between his boss and his boss's houseguest, in order to determine whether Tu was a dating possibility. Understandable, but Mitch didn't think Harry was good enough for Tu. He let his glare speak for itself.
Harry paled visibly at Mitch's expression.
"I should...get going," Harry said. "Weather like this always brings out the stranded motorists." He grimaced, his face a rictus of forced cheer.
Then Harry turned on his heel and jogged down the stairs.
Tu gave Mitch a dismissive hand wave and stalked off.
"I'll get your car loaded up," Mitch called after her. She was moving fast, running up the stairs, presumably to collect her things. She never looked back.
They were soon on their way to town with Tu's little car and rented trailer loaded on the bed of the wrecker.
Mitch used his wide field of vision to study Tu out of the corner of his eye, looking for clues to her mood, but she ignored him. They went over Perdition Bridge, the span that had frozen over during the storm, and kept them marooned at Mitch's cabin for the past several days. The drive to town was awkward and... sad. He really was going to miss her.
"On the freeway, a truck spilled its cargo of strawberries," Tu said suddenly. "The strawberries were crushed by the cars following behind.
Mitch squinted at her, waiting for the rest of the story.
"It caused a traffic jam," she deadpanned.
He was going to miss her, but not her corny jokes.
It was early afternoon when they arrived at the cottage behind AJ and Jasmine's house. Tu's sister and future brother-in-law were away at work, Jasmine at her accounting job in Waco, and AJ at an image shoot that had been delayed due to the inclement weather.
The cottage was a smaller, cuter version of the rambling faux Tudor main house. There was a cute little brick pathway leading to the front door of the cottage, and plants in window boxes. It had a storybook quality to it. Tu had told him she'd stay at the cottage for the time being and planned to find her own apartment in town after the first of the year.
Mitch helped Tu unload her car and trailer, and then, the parting they had discussed in the most rational of terms was upon them.
Tu hadn't had much to say to Mitch since they left the cabin. Now, in the kitchen of the cottage, it seemed the moment had come too soon. It was awkward in the way of old lovers who meet by chance on the street after a bad breakup.
Mitch wished he could give Tu what she needed, what was right for her, but Mitch could never be that man. He could, however, give her his love, even though he would never tell her how he felt—that would keep her from getting on with her life. He could love her from afar, and always, always look out for her.
She gave him back his smartphone. "I'll get one in town," she told him, placing it in his palm and closing his fingers over it.
Of course, she would give it back to him. She didn't need it anymore. She didn't need him anymore.
Now what? It wasn't lost on him that the small door at the back of the cottage led to a bedroom. With a bed in it. And both her sister and brother-in-law were away.
He didn't look her in the face when he had that thought. He didn't want her reading his mind somehow and drawing this out any longer. The only problem was, now that the moment was here, he wasn't sure how to walk away...
"My sister is having a party the Saturday after next," Tu said into the silence.
They were standing face-to-face in her new, temporary kitchen. He had left the door open intentionally, and it was chilly. If they both stepped a couple of inches forward, they'd be touching again. Then they could be holding each other. Then kissing, then fucking...actually, making love.
"It's an ugly sweater party," she was saying.
"Ugly...sweater?" Mitch had never heard of such a thing.
"Yes," she smiled. "Everyone wears their ugliest Christmas sweater, then they stand around and drink and eat too much. It'll be fun!"
Yeah, it sounded like "fun" but that wouldn't be a good idea. A clean break was best. She kept smiling at him in that open, unabashed way of hers.
"I—I don't think—"
"Please don't just say no." Her eyes held a plea. “Please don't say no. Please pretend you can come to the party and not be afraid of other people. Please be the man I need.”
He opened his mouth to refuse the invitation, and she intensified her puppy dog eyes.
"Okay," he said. "I'll think about it."
He planted a kiss on the top of her braids, gave her a light hug, and left her in the cottage.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It's Christmastime in Perdition
The nice thing about living in a small town? People looked out for each other. The not-so-nice thing about living in a small town? If you're trying to avoid someone, it is nearly impossible.
Case in point: Mitch Wayne
Tu had told herself after Mitch had driven away from her cottage—away from her—after the most sex-saturated, blissed out, emotionally satisfying weekend of her life, that she was done being a nice girl. She was done being understanding of other people's shortcomings.
And she was done with Mitch.
She had come to this conclusion a week after Mitch left her at the cottage. She had cried, watched chick flicks, and eaten pint after pint of ice cream until Jasmine and Auntie staged an intervention.
The women descended on Tu, forced her to take a shower, dress, and slap on some makeup, then they dragged her to one of the malls in Waco. They took her shopping for hootchie mama clothes, then took her on a pub crawl in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas.
If Tu had let her girls completely have their way with her, they would have thrust her at the first good-looking, disease-free guy they ran into, maybe even got them a hotel room, because according to Jasmine, "Men are like trains—there will always be another one," and "The cure for a broken heart is a hard dick."
This said with lusty, drunken cackles in the back of the limousine as Auntie and Jasmine collapsed against each other in fits of giggles. Tu understood her female kin were just trying to cheer her up after the Mitch episode, but it was all a little much. They'd crashed at a downtown Dallas hotel and awoke the next day hung over. After a greasy breakfast and round of Bloody Mary’s, the three women returned to Perdition in style, and to nurse their headaches in their own homes.
After Tu and Jasmine's heart to heart during the snowstorm, Jasmine had become Tu's super-supportive cheerleader in all things, even more so when Tu announced her intention to find an apartment somewhere in town.
Tu decided it was time to get on with her life and to put the time with Mitch behind her. He was the town hermit, after all, so what were the odds she'd run into him, anyway?
It was in this spirit that
Tu threw herself into town life. She was an elementary school teacher, after all, and she would eventually meet many of the adults in the community. Tu decided to be proactive.
She volunteered at the Foundlings Thrift Store a couple of afternoons a week. On one of these afternoons’ Tu saw something—someone—she didn't expect to see.
Mitch.
She had a thought to duck under the table and hide, but decided that would be silly. It would make Mitch think she cared more than she actually did. Besides, the man was a minotaur with an extraordinarily wide field of vision. She had seen for herself firsthand how good Mitch's vision was. Therefore, hiding from him was not going to work very well as an evasion tactic.
Mitch stood on the sidewalk outside the thrift store. He had his back to her, and he was looking up and down the street.
Looking for her?
She was mesmerized by how beautiful his profile was, the manly set of his wide, powerful shoulders. And good gravy, the way his juicy ass looked in those jeans. She remembered how wonderful it felt to have that huge body covering hers, to have those beautiful shoulders propping up her legs to spread her pussy wide to sniff her aroma before diving in mouth first.
She felt her sex swell at the memory. She shook her head to clear her thoughts.
Mitch paused outside, then slowly turned his head toward the plate glass window of the thrift store. His eyes met hers, and panicked, Tu froze in the action of folding baby clothes. She tried not to look like she was ogling him.
Twyla Turner, who owned the Last Chance Café and volunteered on occasion at the thrift store, looked at Tu as if the pretty new school teacher had lost her damned mind. Twyla ducked down to get eye-level with Tu.
"What's wrong?" Twyla asked her, her blue eyes wide with concern. "Are you okay?"
"Um, yeah, I'm okay." Tu managed a wan smile, even though her heart was beating so fast she felt almost lightheaded.
"Okay, well, I need to stop by the Café for the lunch rush," Twyla said. "But I got someone to pitch in for a couple of hours, so you don't have to do all this alone," she said and gestured at the clothing donations that needed processing. It was nearing the end of the year. As a result, the Foundlings Thrift Store was awash in donations, and there weren't enough volunteers to process everything.
I got someone to pitch in...
Tu's eyes went from Twyla to Mitch, who was now opening the front door to enter. She frowned. "You did?"
"Yes," Twyla said, eyes on the pile of garments she was sorting. "One of my regulars."
Surely, it wasn't Mitch. Because Mitch was a hermit, and he did not come into town. Therefore, he could not be one of Twyla's regulars, and he was not coming to volunteer.
"Oh, that's good, but I really don't need the help," Tu said. "I don't want to put anyone out."
"Nonsense," Twyla said. "It's Christmas! People love to help out at charities almost as much as they love donating things at this time of year."
Twyla looked up just then, saw Mitch, then broke into a bright smile.
"Hope I'm not late," Mitch said in his deep, panty-dampening voice. Tu had to suppress the shiver that pricked her skin.
Dammit, of all the times the dude decided to be social...
"No worries," Twyla said. "Put your jacket anywhere. I'll show what to do."
The two of them disappeared into the back of the shop, and Tu let out a breath.
What should she do? Should she leave before they came back?
Looking around the shop and the piles of clothes yet to be sorted, Tu realized she couldn't leave.
She would have to pull up her big girl panties, wet though they may be, and get on with it. She reminded herself sternly that she was over him. O-V-E-R.
He'd said he wasn't right for her, that it would have to be a one-and-done thing, that there was no future for them. Yada, yada, yada.
She had cried for a week, eaten enough ice cream to empty out a dairy, and gotten drunk with her girls, all in an attempt to get over Mitch. She was not going to give the guy play, and potentially have to do that shit all over again. She kind of wished now that she'd picked up some dude when they had been running around in Deep Ellum drinking. Well, not really.
Something occurred to her. What if Mitch was volunteering at the shop to be close to her? What if Mitch had changed his mind?
Soon, Twyla and Mitch returned. He looked like his usual grumpy self, and Twyla looked distracted, no doubt thinking about getting back to the diner.
Tu's heart sank when the bell over the door jingled, signaling Twyla's departure.
Mitch leaned against the door frame that led to the back room, his arms crossed over his massive, firm chest. Tu thought about how she would brace her palms on that massive chest when she straddled him and fucked him. She pressed her lips together to avoid licking them. His pale green eyes bore into hers.
"I didn't know you were volunteering here," Mitch said. "Otherwise, I would have volunteered for something else."
Mitch was a good-looking bastard, even when she didn't want to see him. She hated that she was at once excited to see him, and dismayed he was there.
Mitch was a little terrified of jokes, she suspected because he wasn't sure when something was supposed to be funny. So, she greeted him with a corny joke.
"What do you call an elderly person who volunteers their time?" she asked, and received only a blank look in return.
"A dentured servant."
Mitch blinked again, perplexed. This was cute, but Tu ignored it. She shrugged.
"It doesn't matter if you volunteer here," she said, keeping her eyes on the pile of garments in front of her. "In fact, I think it's great that you're volunteering. I know being around a lot of people is difficult for you."
Mitch gazed at her with a wistful expression. "My...mentor. His name is Alan Blue. He suggested it would be a good thing for me. It's actually not as difficult as I thought it would be. I guess it was just habit that made me keep to myself."
"Well, just the same, it's good that you're helping out."
Tu let her eyes drop back to her work.
Mitch disappeared into the back room again, and Tu started on another pile of baby clothes that needed to be sorted and put away into the appropriate bins. The work was monotonous, and her mind wandered as she worked. She had an appointment to look at one of the apartments above the hardware store. There were only two units, and of all the businesses in town she could possibly live on top of, the hardware store was one of the quieter ones. The owner's daughter lived on the second level. Tu had met Athena Richards once.
Tu wondered if Mitch had dragged out any more of the Christmas decorations his mother kept. There were many more in the attic than she could bring down on her own. She wondered whether Mitch had rearranged his pantry to put it back the way it had been before she stayed with him. Not for the first time, she wondered whether Mitch had simply found her annoying and didn't want to say so. Was that the real reason he didn't want to have a relationship with her?
The sound of the back-door slamming shut interrupted Tu’s idle thought. She looked at the back door debating whether or not she should investigate the source of the noise. Eventually, she ignored it and went back to what she was doing.
After a few minutes, she heard it again. Curious, she put down her work and went to the back door where she found Mitch opening and closing the door out to the alley behind the shop.
His muscles flexed under the waffle weave of his Henley shirt. Tu soon found herself mesmerized at the sight, and nearly fainted when he stood and tilted his head this way and that as if assessing something. He opened the door a few inches, then let it go. It closed with a loud bang. He squatted in front of the door, and she was treated to the sight of Mitch's juicy ass. She shouldn't just be standing there, ogling the man, but she couldn't help herself. He was just so damned virile and male. As long as he didn't see her, what was the harm? What was wrong with admiring a good-looking man?
So, she stood there a
nd openly perved on Mitch, who seemed none the wiser. That was, until her smartphone warbled. She fished the device out of her back pocket. Mitch turned and stared at her, brows together. Tu silenced the phone. It was just her sister; she'd call her back later.
"How long have you been standing there?" he asked her in the gruff voice he used to intimidate people.
She rolled her eyes at him. He didn't scare her. His lips twitched, and for a moment there, Tu thought he might favor her with one of his rare smiles. But he stopped short of it.
"I heard the racket out here," she said. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Mitch was turning on the extra grumpy now. She scoffed.
"It looks like you're not sorting clothes like I am," she said tartly. "And don't take that tone with me. That angry loner persona is just that. A persona. You never have to be anything but yourself with me."
Something flared in Mitch's eyes. Heat? Interest? Tu couldn't tell. There was no way she could casually let her eyes jog down that long, powerful build of his and get a gander at his package to see whether she affected him sexually, much as she wanted to.
She could see in his eyes that she had struck a nerve. The knowledge pleased her.
Serves him right.
She smiled a secret smile, turned on her heel, and walked away.
Tu was smug for the rest of her volunteer shift. She was still smug when she left for the afternoon and viewed the Richards apartment. She decided to take it and agreed to move after the New Year.
Chapter Nineteen
Kissin’ by the Mistletoe
Tu volunteered several more afternoons that week at the thrift shop, and Mitch was somehow always there when she was.
On the third day, after Twyla again left to see to the lunchtime rush, Tu busied herself putting garments on hangers, then placing them on clothing racks. When she turned around to retrieve more garments on hangers, she ran right into what felt at first like a brick wall. But it wasn't a brick wall. It was Mitch Wayne's barrel chest, with Mitch Wayne's muscular guns folded over it.
Her Mistletoe Minotaur: A BWWM Paranormal Holiday Romance (A Very Alpha Christmas Book 1) Page 13