She gapes at me. "You - you're the one who painted it?"
I laugh. "Yeah, I thought you might remember that conversation we had."
She crosses her arms. "I don't."
But she says it too quickly to be believable. My boots click across the worn floorboards. I see the AC unit and it reminds me. "I need to order a part for the AC in the clinic. Should be here in a few days."
"Well, then you can come back in a few days," Ella huffs.
"Nah, I'll be back tomorrow," I say confidently, throwing myself onto the sofa that I found on Craigslist. "You like the sofa?"
Ella's tapping her bare foot impatiently, her arms still crossed. "It's fine," she says. "Wait, did you pick it out?"
I nod. "Drove all the way to Ft. Worth to get it."
Her face softens. "You did that? For me?"
I laugh. "You've undoubtedly been told that I'm the only handyman here, woman. You think Tanya did all this? The town?" I hold out my hands to survey my work. "This was all me."
Ella goes quiet. "Thank you," she says. Then she points at the door. "Out. Unless you want to finally spill why in the hell you're in my living room at nine o'clock at night."
I laugh and stand up. "I brought you something."
"Not the part for my air conditioner, though," she spits at me.
I walk past her, making sure to brush my arm against hers as I walk out the door. "Put some shoes on. We cut the grass so the snakes should be gone but you never know when a scorpion might make its way across the ground and under your foot."
"You're treating me like I didn't live here for eighteen years," Ella yells at my back. I hear her pull on a pair of shoes and pad after me.
I stroll to my truck and lift the bicycle off the back with one hand. I turn to see Ella's face. "What is this?" she asks me.
"A basketball signed by the Mavericks," I say sarcastically. "It's a damn bicycle, Ella, and it's for you." I feel my blood pressure rising. Damn if this woman can't get me going with her stubbornness.
"For me?"
"For. You. Yes. I brought you a bicycle. For you to ride into town. Since you don't have a car that I can see and I seem to remember you're not much of a fan of horses." She wants to smile. I can tell. "It has a bell, and a basket. I cleaned it up for you; it's been in my garage for the last decade, but I've done some work to it. It just needed a dusting."
Ella crouches down and runs her pale fingers across the shiny red paint. Her eyes light up in recognition. "Is this the Schwinn bicycle we found that day on the side of the road?"
I nod. "I fixed it up. I thought one day you might find your way back here."
"I can't take this as a gift. It's too nice," she says. "I'll pay you. This bike, fixed up like this, it's a prize. I mean, someone would pay a lot of money for it. I can't take this."
I roll my eyes. "Stop being so damn stubborn and take the fucking bike, Ella. She's yours. She's always been yours. Finders keepers, and you're the one who found her rusted up in the bushes that day."
“You’re the one who found it in the bushes.” Ella stands up and grabs onto the handles. "It's been a long time since I've ridden a bicycle."
"I think that's something you don't really forget. Sort of like...other things," I say, my meaning in my metaphor blatantly clear. I reach my hands out to her waist. She jumps back.
"I remember a lot of things," she says. "But that's not one of them."
I smile at her. "One day I'm getting you back, Ella. You don't know it, but I am."
She flips me a middle finger and I slide back into my truck, starting the engine and heading off into the night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LUKE
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
“Stop eating my fries,” Ella says to me, scrunching up her nose from the seat next to me.
I reach across and grab another spicy curly fry anyway, despite her protests. “Finders keepers,” I reply.
“You have your own food. I don’t understand why you’re eating mine,” she retorts. But she’s smiling.
I’m having a hard time keeping my mind on food with her sitting there in the passenger seat of my truck. She’s only wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but she looks different. She might be wearing makeup. Or maybe it’s just being out in natural light instead of under the fluorescent bulbs of Buxwell Prep.
“Yours are better,” I reply. She has a dab of ketchup on her mouth and I reach out to wipe it off with my thumb.
She ducks away from me. “Hey!”
I laugh. “I was only trying to help. You’ve got ketchup, right there.” I point.
She blushes and wipes it off with a napkin. “Thanks,” she says, finishing off the last of the fries before I can get to them. She wipes her hands. “So where are we going now?”
“You’re having enough fun that you want to continue the evening?” I ask, looking at the sun setting around us.
She shrugs nonchalantly. “I still have a few hours left until curfew. I didn’t think you’d just take me out for food and food only.”
I smirk at her. “No, I get it. You’ve come under the spell of Luke Davis and you can’t get enough of me.”
She rolls her eyes. “You keep talkin’ about yourself in the third person and you can drive me right home.”
“I like when your accent comes out,” I say honestly.
She claps a hand to her mouth. “I’m trying to lose it.”
“Really?” I ask her, throwing our trash into the can outside the window and putting the truck into reverse. “Why?”
“Because I’m gettin’ – getting the hell out of here right after graduation,” she retorts. I’m not used to her sounding so saucy and definitive when she speaks. Normally her words come out tentatively. Unless she’s blowing me off. Then she’s pretty damn certain.
“And where are you going?” I ask, trying not to feel disappointment at her telling me this.
“California,” she says. “I’m getting into UCLA. Pre-med.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” I reply.
“I’ve had a plan for a while now. Since I was a kid. And I’m sticking to it,” she replies, pulling her gorgeous, thick legs underneath her as I drive through streets that glow under the setting sun.
“You not gonna ask me what I’m doing after high school?” I ask, pouting at her dramatically.
“I already know,” she says, shrugging. “Everyone does. You’re joining the Marines.”
“I like the fact that you know so much about me,” I say, turning down one of the old roads toward the Miller Estate.
“It’s hard not to know about you, Luke Davis,” she says. The words almost seem regretful.
“Yeah, well. People think they know me, but they don’t. Not really,” I reply. The light twinkles through the green trees of this February day, the rich blue sky fading into orange and yellow above us. I slam the brakes on the truck.
Ella screams. “What the hell are you doing?”
I unbuckle my seat belt and open my door, turning to grin at her. “Looking for treasure.”
She scrambles to get out of the truck, chasing after me into the overgrown bushes on the side of the road. “What?”
I look for the flash of silver that I was sure I saw from the truck, lifting up branches. Then I find it. “There it is,” I say, turning around to face her.
“There’s what? A rusted old bicycle?” she asks skeptically.
“It’s a Schwinn,” I reply. “It’s not just a rusted old bicycle.” I heave it out of the overgrowth. “It’s rusty, but I think she’ll run again.” I inspect every inch of it. Peeks of cherry red paint smile up at me.
Ella laughs. “You fix bicycles?”
I haul the bike up over my shoulder. It’s heavy, high quality like nobody makes anymore. “My grandfather taught me.”
We get back to the truck and I gently place the bike in the bed.
“It’s a lost cause, I think,” Ella says.
“You have no f
aith, Ella,” I reply. I lean against the truck. She’s inches away from me. I stare into her green eyes and she has to look away. I think she’s embarrassed. “I’m gonna fix that bicycle. And I’m gonna give it to you one day.”
She laughs. “What am I going to do with a bike?”
I shrug and step closer to her. An orange-tinted sunbeam falls across her creamy, freckled skin. She smells like summertime. I put my finger under her chin and lean down, my lips close to hers. Then I kiss her, taking her thick lips against mine, tasting her skin. She melts under my touch as I run my hands down her sides.
She finally pulls away and puts her fingertips up to her lips.
“You might need it out in California,” I reply quietly. “You never know.”
She nods, gazing far away, still in a daze from me kissing her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ELLA
PRESENT DAY
"He bought you a bicycle?" Alexa asks me the next day. Teddy is having a sleepover with a friend and I'm cooking a spaghetti dinner for the two of us.
"He didn't buy it," I explain, tossing the noodles in olive oil, salt, and pepper. "We found it one night back in high school, and he held onto it. And he restored it." I glance over at the shiny red paint. I wheeled it into the living room after Luke pulled away last night. It seems too pristine to even ride it. But I know I will.
Alexa lets out a low whistle and sips her wine. "That man is in love with you, honey."
I choke on my first bite of noodles. "He is not."
Alexa rolls her eyes. "You're delusional."
"I'm delusional? No. No way. I just got back here. We haven’t seen each other in eleven years, and we didn't exactly part on the best of terms," I remind her. Sadness pricks at my stomach, and the secret I’ve been keeping for a decade is threatening to spill out. But not here. Not now. It can’t.
“Luke goes to the city every week and spends the night. Adam went with him once, said that they went to a strip club and Luke pays for sex.” She lets the words hang in the air.
“Good for him,” I say, snippier than I mean to be. “He’s a grown man with needs. He should fulfill them.”
“He stopped going a few weeks ago when he found out you were the new doctor,” she says lightly. “Just thought you should know that.”
I pause, wishing my stomach didn’t do a backflip of celebration hearing that. “Well, that’s a shame. A waste of a good libido.”
Alexa sighs. "I don't know what happened between the two of you and honestly? I don't really want to know. I just know that you're stubborn and he's been pining over you since he got back to town three years ago and you weren't-"
"Waiting for him at the bus stop where he left me crying?" I finish for her. I feel heat rising in my cheeks, but this time it’s not from Luke. It's from me trying valiantly to hold back tears. Tears that I've been holding back since -
"He joined the army, Ella."
"Yeah, the one thing I didn't want. But he didn't care about that, did he?"
"You were eighteen. You were both just kids. Cut him some slack," she intones.
"Subject change, please," I say. My phone buzzes on the counter, and my eyes glance over to it. It's Jason. I hit the ignore button, my cheeks burning this time from guilt.
"Who's Jason?" Alexa asks, glancing at my phone.
"My recently ex-boyfriend," I explain to her.
She raises her eyebrows. "Really? Is he cute?"
"He's...Jason. I don't know," I demur.
"Ooh, sounds like there's more to this story than what you're saying."
"He wanted things I didn't want, that's all," I say.
"Like kinky things?" Alexa wiggles her eyebrows. "Tell me, please. I've been married for seven years and am desperate for news from the outside world."
I laugh. "No, not like kinky things. Like, marriage. And babies. And I don't want that."
"There's the Ella I remember so well." Alexa's eyes are kind as she gazes at me knowingly. "I like that you had a plan and you stuck to it. It's refreshing."
I swallow my bite of spaghetti. "Yeah, well, it didn't entirely work out, did it? I'm back here."
"You'll get used to this place, Ella. You might see it as the same, but you should poke around downtown when you get some time. Things are changing."
"Like what? Do we finally have our own postman? Do Mrs. Culver's cows no longer escape and block all traffic in and out of town?"
Alexa tilts her head. "For one thing, we have this great new doctor in town."
I roll my eyes and laugh at her.
"Give Buxwell another chance, Ella. You might like what you see after all."
***
The next day, I'm steaming wallpaper off of the bathroom wall in the clinic and I'm doubting Alexa's words mightily.
"It's so hot today, I don't think you actually need the steamer," Luke quips from the bathroom door.
Tingles glide down my spine when I hear his voice. I turn around to look at him. He’s leaning against the doorway, peeling an apple with his pocket knife. The skin is coming off in one single, even corkscrew.
"I never did figure out how to do that," I say with a smile.
"The heat must be getting to you," he replies, slicing off a bit of apple and handing it to me.
I take it gratefully, biting into the flesh with a satisfying crunch. "Why's that?"
"Because you just smiled at me for the first time in, oh, I don't know. Eleven years, give or take a few days."
I sigh. "It must be from staring at these kittens all day. I think I’m losing my mind." We both look at the hideous wallpaper covered in leaping kittens and laugh hysterically.
"Dr. Jackson's wife had terrible taste, honestly," Luke says. We sit in silence eating our shared apple. Then Luke wipes his hands off on his jeans. "You want to talk paint colors, by the way?"
I stare at him, surprised. "Paint colors?"
“Yeah, for the walls.”
I blink. “I know what the paint is for. I’m asking why you’re asking me about it. I’m not hiring you to paint.”
Luke laughs and tosses the apple core like a basketball into one of the trash cans. “I’m not asking you to hire me. I’m doing it no matter what you say.”
“I’ll lock the doors,” I reply.
He laughs. “And I’ll make new keys, then, and come in here and paint the walls electric orange.” He walks out of the exam room laughing at me. I’m furious.
But I’m also relieved. That’s one less thing I have to do. I follow him into the waiting room, which is looking better by the minute. “We’ll need stripper,” he says.
My stomach does a few backflips. “We need a what?” I ask him.
“Stripper.” His eyes glint at me. “Paint stripper. For the wood trim in here.”
“Oh,” I say.
Luke grins at me, leaning one gorgeous arm against the wall. “I mean, if you want to drive down to Ft. Worth, hit up a few places with some girls, I wouldn’t be opposed to that, either,” he says with a smile.
I toss a pile of dirty rags at him. “You drive, then,” I say, fuming.
We spend two hours at the tiny hardware store together and leave with arctic white paint for the walls and cherry red for the trim. I can hear people whispering as they see us perusing the aisles together, and the past is pawing at me. I try to push it away.
“It’ll match my truck,” Luke says on the drive back.
“What?” I ask him, grateful to be back in air conditioning after the brief walk across the parking lot.
“The red trim. It’ll match my truck perfectly.”
“Yeah, that’s why I chose the red paint,” I say sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
“I’ve got a house now, you know,” he says as a non-sequitur.
“Mm,” I reply, feigning disinterest. But I am interested. “You always said you’d die before you bought a house.”
He shrugs. “Lot of things have changed about me. You’d know that if you took the time to
get to know me again.”
“And why would I want to do that? I feel like I’ve heard plenty,” I say with spite.
“From who?”
“Doesn’t matter from who.” I realize I sound like a total child, but I can’t seem to stop. “I hear you’ve had plenty of women to be around since you came back to town.”
Luke guffaws at this. “I’m a red-blooded American man, Ella.”
I shiver at him using my name again. “Well I never said you couldn’t or anything,” I add lamely.
“Glad to know that I haven’t needed your permission all these years,” he says with a smile. His hands are so easy on the wheel of his truck. It makes me think about him touching me like that, running his strong hands and fingers down the sides of my back with a gentle, loving caress…I realize too late that I’m staring. And Luke’s noticed. He smirks at me. “It’s okay to peruse the merchandise,” he says.
“Right, like I’m doing that,” I say, turning my head to look out the passenger window.
I practically run out of the truck when it pulls up to the clinic. This is the first time I’ve been away from it since I got here, and seeing it with fresh eyes is a little shocking. The mown grass alone has transformed this place, but add in the newly-planted flowerbeds and clean windows and I might have driven past it entirely. Luke walks up behind me carrying the paint, and he whispers into my ear. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
I almost melt into him at these words said so close to me, but I collect myself in time. I clear my throat. “I’m thinking we might even be able to open up a week early at this rate.”
Luke strides past me into the house, easily carrying two five-gallon buckets of paint like they’re feather pillows. I try not to admire his ass in those jeans but I fail. Miserably.
And for the first time, I realize he’s walking with a bit of a limp. My mind flashes to Alexa telling me that he was injured in the line of duty. I find myself wondering what he looks like under those jeans.
I bite my lip and run after him into the clinic. I have work to do, and no time for daydreaming.
Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 5