Ready to Run

by Lauren Layne

  Jordan laughed into her wine. It was sweeter than she usually liked, but she needed a little something to deal with the enthusiasm of this group. “Does everyone know everything?”

  “Your rental’s right across from June Christiansen’s house. You think this town is nosy, she’s basically the mother of the gossip chain. She saw you and Luke, quote, set off serious sparks when you opened the door. Left about ten minutes later, looking pissed.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s just his face,” Jordan muttered.

  Everyone laughed, and Stacey pointed a mozzarella stick at her before taking an enormous bite. “I like you.”

  “Even though I’m trying to drag your ex-fiancé into a reality show where all his dirty laundry will be aired?”

  And yours?

  “Well,” Stacey said thoughtfully, swiping at a string of cheese on her chin. “We’ve all talked about it. Decided it’ll be good for him.”

  “He doesn’t agree.”

  “Well, no, he wouldn’t,” Bree said. “He’s been on emotional lockdown ever since she left.”

  Jordan sat up a little bit straighter, helped herself to an onion ring, and tried to play it cool. “She?”

  “Eva,” Bree said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

  “Bride number three,” Tawny explained, her tone indicating she was no more fond of the mysterious Eva than was Hailey. “Total bitch.”

  “Tawny!” Hailey scolded.

  “She was going to be my sister-in-law, so I’m allowed to say that.”

  “But he left her…right?” Jordan clarified.

  “Yeah. Because she was a bitch, like I said,” Tawny muttered.

  “We don’t know what happened there,” Hailey admitted. “Not like we did with the first two weddings.”

  Jordan noticed that Stacey and Isobel exchanged a glance at this before both looking at the table, and she wondered if Stacey and Luke’s breakup wasn’t quite as amicable and simple as it seemed.

  One bride at a time. She refocused on this Eva woman.

  “What happened to her?”

  Hailey shrugged. “Disappeared after Luke was a no-show. Nobody’s seen her since, but we’re assuming she went home.”

  “She wasn’t from around here?”

  Stacey shook her head and topped off glasses with what was left in the bottle. “Nope; from Texas. Passed through town on a road trip or something. Came into this bar, sat at that very stool.” Stacey pointed.

  “She met Luke, and just…never left,” Tawny added, her tone making it clear that she did not love this fact. “Well, at least until he got smart and stopped things before I do.”

  “And nobody knows what happened?”

  They all shook their heads no. Even his sister.

  “Is that why he’s so…”

  “Closed off? Emotionally barren?” Bree said with a smile. “Yeah, he was different after that.”

  Hailey nodded. “He’s always been a little quiet. Gruff more often than not, but he used to know how to be fun. He could be sweet.”

  Stacey nodded. “She ruined him. Then with what happened with Gil, happening so soon after she left…”

  The sadness at the table was palpable, so though Jordan had no idea who Gil was, she didn’t think it was her place to ask.

  “Okay, enough sadness,” Hailey said, shaking her head. “Let’s help Jordan figure out how to get Luke to say yes.”

  “So you guys do want him to do this?”

  “Absolutely,” Tawny said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think the chance of him meeting his one true love is, um, nil. But the guy needs to be woken up in a big way, and it’s not going to happen when he’s hiding out here in Lucky Hollow.”

  Jordan sat back and studied their eager, caring faces. “An odd stance for a small town. Aren’t you usually trying to figure out how to get your people to stay?”

  “Spoken as a small-town girl who didn’t stay?” Bree asked, lifting her eyebrows.

  Jordan laughed, realizing that Simon had been right. These people did seem to smell the small town on her.

  “That was different,” she said, deciding there was no point in denying her past. “The big city called to me ever since I was a kid and thought I wanted to be a Broadway star, then a supermodel, then a CEO, and so on. I don’t get the impression Luke feels the same.”

  “No, definitely not,” Tawny granted. “And we’re not saying that we don’t fully expect and want him to come back someday; it’s just…” She glanced around the table, looking for help.

  “He’s broken,” Isobel said, speaking up for the first time. “Luke’s been just a little bit broken for the past couple years, and we’ve all been patient, but whatever’s going to fix him…it’s not here in Lucky Hollow.”

  “Maybe not yet,” Stacey mused.

  “Um, what?” Hailey asked her friend, stuffing an onion ring into her mouth.

  “Whatever’s going to snap Luke out of his zombie state hasn’t been in Lucky Hollow yet,” Stacey said, leaning forward and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

  Bree mimicked her stance. “Explain.”

  Stacey’s smile was slow and victorious. “Well, our boy just walked in, and the minute his eyes locked on the back of Jordan here? Let’s just say he looks the most alive I’ve seen him in years.”

  The group of women spun around to get a look, but Jordan resisted the urge. Barely. She didn’t, however, manage to stop herself from asking Stacey for a bit more information.

  “When you say he looks alive…”

  Hailey patted her hand sympathetically. “She means that he looks ready to kill you, dear.”

  “Or screw you,” Bree added thoughtfully into her wine.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  Chapter 10

  “She’s pretty. Real pretty,” Gary James said, sliding a beer across the bar to Luke.

  Luke didn’t have to ask whom the bartender was referring to. He’d felt Jordan Carpenter the very second he walked into Tucker’s.

  Was there any part of his life this woman wasn’t going to infiltrate? She was buddy-buddy with his friends. Chumming it up with his sister, from the looks of it. Even Ken down at the hardware store hadn’t been able to shut off about her pretty manners when Luke had stopped in to pick up the pieces for the new railing he was looking to build.

  And now even his damn bar felt full of the sassy blonde. Luke had thought he’d be safer choosing Gary’s side of the bar over Benny’s. The aging bartender had been happily married longer than Luke had been alive, whereas Benny was twenty-something and chased after anything with tits and a smile.

  “Gary, you looking for a tip tonight, or you gonna talk to me about stuff I don’t want to talk about?” Luke asked, tipping the bottle to his lips.

  The older man laughed in understanding and held up his hands in surrender. “Won’t say another word.”

  Luke nodded in thanks, but not talking about Jordan didn’t stop him from thinking about her. What he should have been doing was walking right out the front door, after first giving the people who’d known him an entire life lectures for siding with an outsider instead of him.

  But, hell, that wasn’t really what was eating at him. These people cared about him, were doing what they thought was best in their meddling, clueless way.

  What was really bothering him was that he wanted to know what the hell shoes Jordan Carpenter was wearing tonight. If they were another of those sexy stilettos that put her nearly at eye level with him. Even more alarming, he wanted to know if her slim thighs were as toned as they looked.

  Most alarming of all, he wanted to feel those thighs around his waist, sexy shoes still on, as he tangled his fingers in that hair as he shoved inside her….

  “Looks like you’re just about the only one who’s not a fan,” Gary said.

  Luke let out an exasperated breath. “I thought we just agreed not to discuss her.”

  Gary shrugged as he untwisted a screw-top cap from a bottle
of white wine. “You think someone should tell her to steer clear of Travis?”

  “Ah hell,” Luke muttered, glancing over his shoulder.

  Sure enough, the group of women had scattered, as was their pattern after an hour or so of girl talk, when they decided it was time to mingle with spouses and cousins. But it had left Jordan alone and vulnerable to the attentions of Travis Olander, the town’s resident douchebag.

  Travis had been a year ahead of Luke in school, and back in high school, girls hadn’t quite figured out that he had exactly zero respect for females or fidelity.

  By the time he graduated, his reputation as a sleaze was well known, and smart women avoided him.

  But the man was clever, in a dirty, conniving kind of way. He knew that his best shots at a hookup were with women who didn’t know better—either because they’d had a drink or two and were maybe inclined to forget that he was a jerk behind all the skilled compliments…

  Or because they were newcomers.

  Jordan was leaning against the pool table, glass of wine in hand, laughing at something Travis said. Clearly nobody had warned her whom she was dealing with, but she looked happy. Not threatened in the least.

  Luke turned back to the bar. The last time he’d rescued a sexy newcomer from the attentions of Travis Olander, he’d ended up engaged to the woman.

  And look how that had turned out.

  Luke took a sip of beer and willed some other Good Samaritan to step in and rescue Jordan. He glanced over his shoulder.

  Shit.

  Jordan was still against the pool table, and Travis had moved closer, his hands just inches from Jordan’s hip. He was making his move.

  Luke moved off his barstool before his brain could start to list all the reasons why he didn’t like Jordan Carpenter and why, if she wasn’t smart enough to see that Travis Olander was a one-night stand, probably with a side of herpes, that wasn’t his problem.

  “Jordan,” Luke said in a low voice, when he was within hearing range.

  She looked over, pretty blue eyes blinking in surprise that he was acknowledging her. “Hey, Luke.”

  “Got a minute? Need to talk to you.”

  Luke didn’t acknowledge Travis. The two men hadn’t bothered to pretend to like each other since Luke had snagged the starting-QB position from under Travis’s nose. Travis had retaliated by unsuccessfully attempting to seduce Luke’s then-girlfriend, and they’d more or less ignored each other ever since.

  “Um, sure,” Jordan said with a smile. “It was really nice to meet you, Trevor.”

  “Travis,” the other man corrected in a slightly irritable tone.

  “Right, so sorry,” Jordan said.

  Luke had to hide his smile, because he’d bet serious money that Jordan knew exactly what Travis’s name was all along. Perhaps she hadn’t needed rescuing after all.

  He gestured for her to precede him to the bar. Told himself that it was to prevent Travis from checking out her perfect, denim-clad ass, then hypocritically checked it out himself.

  She turned toward him in question as they reached the bar, and Luke unceremoniously pulled out the barstool next to his and pushed her down onto it, before reclaiming his own seat and beer.

  “So—”

  “Shut up,” he muttered. “Just shut up.”

  She didn’t, of course, instead leaning forward. “So here’s something I’m wondering….”

  Luke reached across the bar and grabbed one of the plain, no-fuss white square napkins. “Got a pen in your purse? Write your thoughts there.”

  “And then you’ll read it?”

  Luke stared straight ahead, sipped his beer. “Then I’ll burn it.”

  She merely laughed. “Says the firefighter. But, okay, here’s what I’m wondering: how you got three different women to be interested in you much less agree to marry you.”

  Luke was surprised to hear himself laugh. “This is the thanks I get, huh?”

  “Thanks for what? Dragging me away from a decent conversation to a nonexistent one?”

  He turned to glare at her. “By all means, feel free to make your way back to Olander.”

  “Nah. You’re right,” she said, sipping her wine. “He had player written all over him. And for the record, I had zero intention of going home with him. But between the two of you, he was a better conversationalist.”

  “Yeah, well, most men will be chatty enough when they want to get in a woman’s pants.”

  “Should I be insulted?” she said with a little smile.

  He cut her a look, then glanced away. “You’re not my type.”

  It was both true and…not true. Jordan was tall, athletic, and blond, whereas Luke generally gravitated toward dark-haired women with soft curves. However, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t given some serious thoughts to Jordan’s lean curves, imagined digging his fingers into that hair as he explored every corner of her mouth.

  His comment had been meant to put some distance between them, but she merely laughed and turned to face him more fully. “Enlighten me. What’s your type?”

  “What’s it matter?”

  “It matters so that when you agree to do the show, I can tell the casting director what sort of candidate to focus on.”

  Her voice was light and teasing, but he saw right through it. She was trying to coax him into a conversation he didn’t want to have, based solely on her charms.

  He didn’t bite.

  Luke lifted his finger to Gary for another beer. Then glanced at Jordan’s near-empty wineglass, nodded for another for her as well.

  “Thought we agreed you weren’t going to ask me to do the show,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask. I’ve decided to just start treating it as an eventuality.”

  Luke shifted to study her. “Word games, City? Would have thought you were better than that.”

  Jordan merely lifted an eyebrow. “Would you really have? Because the way I see it, you’ve seemed determine to dislike me since the moment you met me.”

  “Convince me otherwise.”

  “You won’t even give me a chance.” Her voice was soft, and for some reason that bugged him more than if she’d been pushy and demanding. He didn’t want her to be soft and beguiling; he wanted—needed—her to piss him off so that he could keep her at a distance.

  “Is this your new ploy?” he muttered. “Sweet-talking people into doing your bidding?”

  “More like coaxing people to do things that scare them.”

  The hell…

  Luke glared. “That’s bullshit.”

  Her straight gaze was a challenge. “Is it? Look at me and tell me that the thought of putting yourself out there again doesn’t scare the crap out of you.”

  Gary slid a beer and a glass of wine their way, then hurriedly backed away even before they could say thanks.

  “Go back to Travis,” Luke snapped at Jordan.

  Her fingers touched his arm, and he had to stop himself from shaking her off—from letting on that though the touch was causal, his response was anything but.

  “Your friends and family are worried about you.”

  “Says the girl who’s known them all of what, three days?”

  “Are they right to be?” she asked, ignoring his sarcasm. “Worried?”

  “Don’t pretend you give a shit about me, City. We both know your interest in my mental stability has everything to do with the ratings of your show. You’re little more than a vulture in high heels.”

  The words were out faster than Luke could stop them, and the undisguised hurt on Jordan’s face told him she felt the full force of their cruel bite.

  Damn it. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the jerk that hurt women. Not intentionally…

  “Jordan—”

  She shook her head and held up her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The hell he wouldn’t. He’d been raised better than to speak to a woman that way, even the most vexing of women. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure yo
u did, Mr. Elliott. Please don’t apologize for speaking your mind, as I’ve done the same ever since I got into town.”

  Jordan smiled as she stood, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She pulled her wallet out of her purse, tossed down a couple of bills. “Drinks on me tonight.”

  She walked away without meeting his eyes. He felt the smallest twinge of relief that she walked out the front door instead of resuming her conversation with Travis Olander, but it did little to dull the regret.

  Nor did it ease the absurd wish that he and Jordan Carpenter had met under different circumstances.

  She’d accused him of speaking his mind—of meaning what he’d said. But she was wrong. He hadn’t meant it. Jordan was a pain in his side, yes, but not a bad person.

  Most alarming of all, Luke felt the strangest pang of regret at the thought of sending her back to her big city.

  It’d been forever since someone had bothered to shake up his life—since he’d bothered to allow it.

  Luke lifted the beer to his lips as he stared absently at her mostly full wineglass, wondering just what the hell he wanted to do about the most alluring woman he’d met in a long time.

  Chapter 11

  Jordan slammed her laptop shut and drummed her fingers atop the MacBook.

  Two.

  That’s how many new potential Jilted candidates she’d come up with after six hours of Internet research. One was a beefcake from Miami, who, if Facebook could be believed, had four ex-fiancées. He was good-looking, definitely, but he also went by Flash. No last name. And he seemed to have an obsession with his own abs. Six-packs were always a bonus for reality TV, but for this type of show, it’d work much better if the guys at least pretended to have some humility. They already had a strike against them with the runaway-groom thing. A huge ego might be too hard of a sell.

  The other candidate wasn’t much better. Jeff Marx from Philadelphia had a last name, so that was something, but he had six ex-fiancées. How was that even possible? There was something just not right about a guy who put an engagement ring on a half dozen different fingers. Even more damning, the guy had his own YouTube channel, where he liked to ramble on about the vixens who had proven unworthy of his love.