Second Chances (Nugget Romance 3)

by Stacy Finz

  She stood up and huffed, “You’re just humoring me, aren’t you? You think by now my thief is long gone, don’t you?”

  He flashed a sardonic smile, fished his cell out of his pocket, and asked for her number. A few seconds later, “Sexy and I know It” played from the bathroom. He pushed open the door, followed the ringtone until he found her phone jammed under the latest edition of Hair’s How, and handed it to her, eyebrows up.

  “You must’ve forgotten coming in here with your phone for a little reading time,” he said.

  God, she wished the floor would swallow her up. And when the hell had Wyatt Lambert become so self-assured? Back in the day, he’d been a quiet, unassuming young man, not such a . . . know-it-all.

  “I guess you think this is hilarious?” she said, refusing to look at him.

  “No. I’m glad I got your phone back . . . and that we don’t have a burglar on the loose.”

  “Whatever.” She moved to the front of the barbershop like she had a million things to do and couldn’t waste any more time with him.

  “Darla?” He said it low, deep in his throat, making her knees go weak.

  “What?” She kept her back to him because it was easier than having to look at the man he’d become. The man she didn’t know anymore.

  “Have dinner with me.”

  “I can’t, Wyatt.” Before moving here, she’d convinced herself that she’d written him off. That he no longer meant anything to her because what he’d done was unforgivable. But she was weak. Without distance, he’d wind up crushing her all over again.

  “Okay.” Wyatt let out a sigh, sounding resigned. “I’ll go now.”

  She resisted saying, “You’re good at that.”

  “It’s a good truck,” Colin said, slapping the driver’s door.

  “You sure? You don’t think I made a mistake, right?”

  Harlee had asked him for a second opinion on the old Nissan Pathfinder. It was a 2000 with a lot of mileage, but tough enough to handle Nugget’s rough winters.

  “Griff said it’s in really good condition.” Her breath froze in the cold.

  Griffin this, Griffin that. Colin was really sick of hearing about Griffin. But he had to admit that Griffin had done well by Harlee, getting her a good price for her Mini Cooper and finding her an appropriate set of wheels.

  “You have enough to pay off the Mini and the Nissan?” he asked, standing close enough to smell her perfume. Something flowery that drove him crazy.

  “Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here,” she said.

  He opened the door for Harlee and motioned for her to go first. “Do you like the way it drives?”

  She immediately moved to the front room to stand next to the fire. Max lifted his head from his dog bed, licked her boots, and went back to sleep. “I’ve only driven it from Griffin’s garage to your house. It’s bigger than what I’m used to, but I’ll adapt.”

  He was impressed that she’d given in on the Mini Cooper, although it chafed him that Griffin had been the impetus. Honest truth, he was jealous as hell. The guy was richer than gold, had serious moves, and didn’t piss his pants at the thought of going inside an effing bowling alley.

  And the best one of all: Griffin didn’t have a parole officer.

  Colin had heard from Maddy that her sister-in-law, Lina, and Griffin had a thing going. But Lina was just eighteen and Griffin had to be in his late twenties. The age difference was kind of skeevy, if you asked Colin. He wondered if the relationship ended when Lina went off to college, and now Griffin was putting the make on Harlee. Even though Colin had no right to be bothered by it, he was. A lot.

  “Hey, Col, you want to go over tomorrow?” Harlee called from the fire.

  “What’s there to go over? A guy’s going to stick needles in me.”

  “You’re not nervous, right?”

  No, he wasn’t nervous. Small spaces and large groups of people terrified him. But needles, knives, guns? Not so much. “I’m fine with it, Harlee. You hungry?”

  “I could eat.” She wandered over to the kitchen, where Colin scanned the pantry. “Chili or soup?”

  She took the cans out of his hands and placed them back inside the cupboard. “What do you have that’s quasi fresh? I’ll cook.”

  Forty minutes later she served them up plates of pasta, a tossed green salad, and searched the fridge for something to drink. “Have you always stayed away from liquor?”

  By now he knew when Harlee was fishing. “I’m not a recovering alcoholic, if that’s what you’re asking. My mother was a hardcore drunk. Her husband, Fiona’s father, was a hardcore drunk. Watching them get hammered every night sort of killed my desire for booze.”

  That and the worst night of his life.

  “Do you still talk to your mom?”

  “She died five years ago.” He’d been notified by the warden and allowed to attend her funeral in shackles with a couple of escorts from the state.

  “I’m so sorry, Colin. Was it from the drinking?”

  “Nope. I mean who’s to say for sure, but she had breast cancer.”

  “That must’ve been awful,” Harlee said.

  “We weren’t that close.” That was the understatement of the year. In all those years the woman hadn’t come to visit him once. “But when my stepfather sold her house, he gave me the proceeds.” He suspected Fiona had pushed him into it. Not that Sam had been a bad guy, just an unreliable alcoholic.

  “Is that how you paid for this?” Harlee stared up at the skyscraper ceilings, then out the big glass doors to sweeping views of the Sierra mountain range.

  “Yep. My mom’s house was pretty modest—a cottage, really. But it was in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a desirable neighborhood.”

  “You didn’t live there?”

  “Not for a long time,” he said, wrapping strands of spaghetti around his fork. “This is good, Harlee. Where’d you learn to cook?”

  “My friends and I took a cooking class. It’s kind of a thing in San Francisco. Everyone tries to outdo everyone else in the kitchen. You’re really great if you can make meals with ingredients no one has ever heard of. And you have to know the farmer who grew it all, or people will run you out of town.”

  He laughed. “You miss it, don’t you?”

  “Uh, not San Francisco so much.” She let out a breath. “I just really miss my job.”

  “What about your business?” That investigative stuff she did scared the crap out of him. It would take her approximately ten minutes to find out about him with the right search terms.

  “I like it,” she said. “But it’s not the same as seeing your byline on the front page, above the fold. I’m looking, but there’s not a whole lot out there. Especially at large-circulation papers.”

  “Does it have to be a big paper?” Dumb question. Harlee was a go-getter. Ambitious.

  “If I want to pay my bills. Newspapers pay lousy to begin with. Starbucks probably pays better than a small-circ paper.”

  She took equal bites of her pasta and salad. Colin loved to watch her eat. She did it with the same enthusiasm she had for everything.

  “Where did you live before you came to Nugget?” she asked.

  “San Diego.”

  “I love San Diego. Were you in the military?”

  “Nope.” He picked up his empty plate and put it in the dishwasher. “Carpentry.”

  “Did you live near the beach?”

  “Uh, closer to Mexico,” he said. Donovan was actually on the border. “Tell me more about this appointment tomorrow.”

  “I think first he’s going to diagnose you to figure out the root cause of the phobias and what points he should stick the needles in. The whole purpose is to stimulate a reaction in parts of your brain and release endorphins and strengthen the nervous system. It worked for my friend who was trying to get pregnant.”

  “Pregnant, huh?” Colin said, making a face that caused Harlee to laugh.

  “I don’t think you have anything to w
orry about, Colin.”

  “You sure?” He winked at her and reached for her plate. “You done?”

  “Yes, but I’ll help with the cleanup. What do you have for dessert?”

  He pulled out the tin of shortbread cookies she’d given him and lifted the lid.

  “You still have these?” she asked, surprised. “If they were in my house they’d be gone in a matter of hours. I’d think you were a health food nut, but too much of what you eat comes from a can.”

  “I don’t eat a lot of sweets. But I like the cookies,” he added, not wanting to sound ungrateful for the gift.

  “Is your sister’s family still coming for Thanksgiving?” It was a week away.

  “We’re playing it by ear, depending on the weather. They can’t afford to get snowed in. The kids have school and Steve has a big job to finish on a deadline.”

  “My parents are having the same dilemma. They were planning on coming up, but if there’s another storm . . .”

  “Your brother too?” Colin tried to sound casual.

  “No. They’re going to Leslie’s folks’,” she said. “Hey, Col, if your people can’t make it, you should come to my house. Even if my mom and dad come, we’re only three. That won’t bother you, right?”

  “We’ll see.” Which was the universal code for no way in hell. But Harlee seemed to take it as a yes.

  She got up from the table to help him with the dishes and they worked in companionable silence. A couple of times he brushed against her, feeling the soft curves of her body. He was finding it more and more difficult not to touch her. In every way a man could want a woman, Colin wanted Harlee. And for no reason he could understand, she wanted him too. He could see it in her body language and the way she looked at him.

  In the three years he’d lived in Nugget, Colin hadn’t gone without. He was a thirty-one-year-old man with a healthy libido. But his hookups had been limited to just sex. No dinner, no dancing, not even much talking. The women had all tacitly agreed to the setup. Everyone got what they wanted out of the deal and no one got hurt.

  But with Harlee that kind of arrangement would never fly. The woman was all heart. She embraced everything she did with gusto. Her work. Her friendships. Her projects. Fixing him.

  Especially fixing him.

  For someone like Colin, whose life had become so solitary and private that it wasn’t unusual for him to lock himself away in his wood shop for days without hearing another person speak, she should’ve been too much. Typhoid Harlee.

  Instead, she made him question his limitations. She made him feel worthy, instead of an outcast living on the sidelines. She made him feel like a man. A desirable man.

  But when she found out what he really was, he’d go back to feeling like himself again. A convicted criminal.

  Chapter 10

  Darla eyed Colin’s hair in the mirror before dropping his chair down two or three feet. Her last customer must’ve been a child.

  “Maybe I should wait for Owen,” he said, already having second thoughts. Darla didn’t look like she knew what she was doing. And if Colin was going through with this, he wanted it to look good. He’d grown pretty attached to his long hair and frankly didn’t know what he’d look like without it.

  “I told you already, my dad’s on a fishing trip. If you want it done now, I’m it.” She fluffed his hair with her hands, pulling strands this way and that, feeling the shape of his face like she thought she was a freakin’ sculptor. “I’m thinking a little less Duck Dynasty and a little more Charlie Hunnam.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Darla.”

  “Sons of Anarchy. Don’t you watch it?”

  “Nope.” Colin fidgeted nervously in his seat. The ceiling in the barbershop hung low. It felt like the white acoustic tiles were closing in on him. He tried his breathing exercises, but it was difficult to be inconspicuous while inhaling and exhaling with his hand on his diaphragm.

  His appointment with the acupuncturist had been a bust as far as Colin was concerned. But Harlee kept telling him he couldn’t expect miracles from one visit. Thankfully, there wasn’t a pack of people in here today. He’d made sure of that, circling the barbershop at least six times before coming in. The only reason he finally did was because Donna Thurston came out of the Bun Boy and gave him the evil eye. She probably thought he was casing the place.

  “It’s a television show about an outlaw motorcycle gang,” Darla replied.

  “I don’t want to look like a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Just give me something clean-cut.”

  “Charlie Hunnam is hot and you look like him—same bone structure. High cheekbones. Strong jaw. Trust me on this. If you don’t like it, I can always go Tom Cruise/Top Gun.”

  When Colin didn’t say anything, Darla pressed, “Colin, I’m really good at this.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But if I don’t like it, you can change it, right?”

  “Uh-huh. You’ll look great. I promise.” She grinned at him in the mirror and Colin could see that she was ecstatic at the chance to get her hooks into him. She got him up out of the chair and walked him over to the shampoo bowl. “So you’re having Thanksgiving at Harlee’s tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” Why he’d finally relented was a total mystery. But Harlee had a way of wearing a person down. Colin thought she might have some kind of reporter voodoo.

  Darla adjusted the temperature of the water before leaning his head back into the sink. With a dollop of girly-smelling shampoo, she lathered up his hair, scrubbing his scalp and massaging the back of his neck. “Relax, Colin. Jeez, you’re over-the-top tense. This is supposed to be enjoyable.”

  She put more glop in his hair and made him sit with it on for ten minutes. “This is a conditioner. It’ll work out all the tangles. I might come over after dinner, for dessert.”

  Great. More people. Just what Colin needed. But right now he was focusing on getting out of the barbershop without having a full-on anxiety attack.

  “Is that why you’re getting your hair cut, to look good for Harlee’s folks?” Darla rinsed him and wrapped his head with a towel, making a turban.

  “No.” What did she think, that Harlee and he were an item? Well, they weren’t. “It was getting too long and out of control.”

  She led him back to the chair. “When I’m done with you, you won’t recognize yourself.”

  Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of.

  Swishing a cape around his neck, Darla turned the chair so his back was to the mirror and began clipping away. “You have great hair, Colin.” His locks fell to the floor, making him cringe.

  “Thanks, I guess. When is Owen coming back?” He figured if she screwed his hair up that bad, he could always have the barber fix it.

  “Tonight, so he’ll be back in time to help me cook. We’re bringing the green-bean casserole to Ethel and Stu’s.” The couple owned the Nugget Market.

  “Is he really serious about retiring?”

  “He says he is.” Darla turned the chair sideways so she could focus on the back of his hair without him seeing himself in the mirror.

  “Who will run this place?” Colin looked around the barbershop.

  “Moi. Who else? Now hold your head still.” She grabbed his chin and straightened his shoulders. “Why do you think I moved back?”

  Colin shrugged. “It just seems like a guys’ place.”

  “Well, times have changed.” She continued to clip away, lifting sections of his hair with her fingers. He couldn’t see what he looked like, but already he felt lighter.

  “Darla, why is Wyatt pacing in front of the barbershop?” The dude walked back and forth, back and forth until it made Colin dizzy. The Nugget police officer had always been courteous, more than likely oblivious to Colin’s past. But he was starting to worry Colin.

  “I don’t know,” she said, annoyance tingeing her voice. “He comes around whenever I have a man in my chair.”

  Colin started to turn his head, but she held hi
m still. “Don’t move.”

  He wondered if they were a couple. If so, he hadn’t heard. Every drop of news or gossip was telegraphed in Nugget like a twenty-four-hour cable broadcast. Even a loner like him usually got looped in on the doings and rumors of the town.

  “We have some history,” she said. “But it’s over and done.”

  Obviously not, if Wyatt kept coming around. But he didn’t say anything. Not his business.

  “He wants me to go to dinner with him.” She let out a sigh, and Colin got the distinct impression Darla wanted him to weigh in. “Nine years ago, he left me at the lowest point of my life. Both of us should’ve been mourning. But he went off and joined the army. Didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye. Now, all of a sudden, he’s all over me. Weird, right?”

  Why the hell was she telling him this? “Maybe he realizes he made a mistake, Darla. Maybe he wants to make amends.”

  “So you think I should give him a chance?”

  “I think you should do whatever is right for you,” he said, wondering how she was able to concentrate on his hair with all the chitchat. “Talk to Harlee about it. She’s probably a better sounding board.”

  “Maybe,” Darla said. “But DataDate has made her a hard-ass. You should see the lies she’s caught people in. It’s enough to make you become a cynic for life.”

  Colin could feel another wave of anxiety coming on. “You almost done?”

  “Not quite.” She started strategically trimming his beard. “You’ve got a lot of hair, Colin.”

  “Just shave it off, Darla.” He needed to get out before the room closed in on him.

  “Remember, you said I could have my wicked way with you. Now just sit back and get comfortable. Let me work my magic.”

  She wrapped a hot towel around his face, and he had to admit that the heat relaxed him somewhat. Not so good when she removed the towel, lathered him up, and started scraping at his facial hair with straight razor.

  “Be careful with that thing, Darla.”

  “I’ve been doing this since I was ten. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” She finished with the razor and took another thirty minutes, snipping and trimming. Then she wrapped his face in another hot towel and aimed a blow dryer at him.