by Linz, Cathie
But he’d handled it all wrong. Instead of giving her encouragement and support, he’d thrown the money at her and walked out. Because he’d panicked. He had no experience with this love crap.
This was why he’d kept things light and carefree in all his previous romantic relationships. Because he’d always known that if he fell, he’d fall too hard.
Cole was in a bad mood even before he walked into his office the next morning to find the money he’d given Leena on his desk. No note, nothing.
“Where’s Leena?” he asked Mindy.
“She’s gone. She called me at daybreak and said she was leaving. She got Mrs. Petrocelli to fill in for her at the reception desk. Mrs. Petrocelli’s broken leg is healed now, and she has some experience since she used to work at a dentist’s office as the receptionist.”
“She’s gone?”
“Leena? Yes. She’s driving back to Chicago. She sounded really upset. Like she’d been crying.”
Cole’s stomach clenched. “When did she leave?”
“She dropped something in your office about an hour ago. Hey, where are you going?”
“To get her.”
“Traitor.” Leena kicked the tire on her Sebring. Not hard, or she’d have a broken toe to add to her troubles. Just a token kick. She’d only gotten an hour outside of town and the stupid vehicle had stalled on her. She’d forgotten to recharge her cell phone so that was useless. She’d eventually hitched a lift with a Doritos delivery truck. The irony there was not lost on her.
And here she was—back at the Rock Creek Gas4Less Mini-Mart.
Now what was she supposed to do? She’d arranged for a tow truck to go get her car, but she couldn’t wait around here for that to happen. And she couldn’t ask her sister for a ride to the nearest airport because Sue Ellen’s knee was still too bad off for her to drive. Lulu didn’t own a car as far as Leena knew. And Skye was engaged to Cole’s best friend, so that nixed asking her for help.
Leena had to come up with a new plan pronto. She had to focus all her attention on that. Otherwise she’d start crying again. No way that was happening. Big girls don’t cry. They hauled up their big-girl panties and sucked it up. They moved on. She’d wasted enough tears on Pet Boy Cole Flannigan.
He’d done her a favor by shaking her out of her romance-induced stupor. She deserved better. So she’d covered her hurt with a thick blanket of anger. She was woman, hear her roar.
She still needed a plan. How to get out of this damn town . . .
A school bus pulled in to get gas. Sister Mary got off and pumped it herself. “Leena.” She waved.
Leena looked away. No way she wanted to speak to Cole’s aunt.
Sister Mary didn’t take the hint and came over, delegating the gas-pumping job to the bus driver. “Anything wrong?”
“My car broke.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I was heading back to Chicago. It’s important I get there.” Leena needed to get out of town before Cole threw any more money at her.
“Well, you’re welcome to hitch a ride with us. We’re taking a field trip to Pittsburgh. You could catch a flight from there to Chicago. I hope everything is okay?”
“Yeah, just fine. Are you leaving now?”
“Yes. We have a few empty seats—”
Leena grabbed her suitcase and climbed onto the bus.
“Okay, then.” Sister Mary followed at a slower rate. “What about your car?”
“I’ll make arrangements for it and the rest of my stuff later, don’t worry.”
“I am worried. You seem terribly upset about something. Does that nephew of mine have something to do with your sudden desire to get out of town?”
Leena avoided answering by saying, “My agent called me with a wonderful job offer.”
“Is that what you want? To go back to modeling?”
“I was only here for the summer, to get enough money to go back to Chicago.”
“The summer isn’t over yet.”
“It turns out I can leave earlier than expected.”
“If that’s what you want, then I’m happy for you.”
“Why wouldn’t it be what I want?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh no!” Leena saw Cole out the bus window. “Don’t tell him I’m here,” she pleaded with Sister Mary. “Get rid of him. Please,” she begged before practically shoving the nun back out of the bus.
Leena crouched down in the aisle, out of sight.
“You’ll get hemorrhoids doing that,” an elderly woman with bright orange hair said.
Leena ignored her and tried to focus on the conversation outside the bus.
“Have you seen Leena?” he asked his aunt. “I thought I saw her as I drove by.”
“What’s going on, Cole?”
“I don’t have time to talk about it . . .”
His voice was getting closer to the bus’s door.
Leena scrambled into a seat near the back. She hunkered down and tried to be invisible. Impossible to do at her height and size. Especially given the fact that the other passengers on the bus were all senior citizens. Short senior citizens.
He found her easily and got right to the point. “Don’t leave.”
She shook her head. Her throat had clamped shut. Seeing him made the pain come rolling back.
“If you don’t get off this bus, I’ll have to pick you up and carry you off,” he said.
Just the thought of him struggling to carry her like a two-ton weight made her grit her teeth as rebel tears formed in her eyes. She refused to let them fall. She really should have gotten some sleep last night. Then she would have kicked his sexy butt right off this damn yellow bus!
Her vision was slightly blurred, but she was pretty sure Cole now looked totally panicked. A recalcitrant tear rolled down her cheek before she angrily scrubbed it away. She turned to face the window, expecting Cole to leave. Instead he dropped into the empty seat beside her. “Okay, then I’ll just go with you.”
“Go . . .” Hiccup. “Away.” Great. When Leena cried, or was on the verge of doing so, she got huge, honking hiccups. Backward ones.
Furious with herself and him, she wiped away another tear.
“Do you love me?” He tenderly cupped her chin in his hand.
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
She glared at him. The anger was coming back. “Beat it, Pet Boy,” she growled. Or tried to between hiccups.
“If you’d just get off the bus, we could talk—”
“I do not want to talk to you. Ever. Not even if we were the last two people on the planet.”
“Not even then, huh?”
“Sure, laugh while you can. You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
“I miss you already. I messed up.”
“Ya think? I’m not some slut you throw money at after having sex.”
He looked shocked. “That was never my intention.”
“Then what was your intention?”
“To be supportive.”
“Hah! You failed, big-time.”
“Yeah, I get that now.”
“Too late.”
“It’s not too late.”
“I want you off this bus!” she shouted at him. “Right now!”
“If you’d just calm down a minute—”
“I am not calming down! I’m not doing anything you say. You’re not my boss anymore. You can’t tell me what to do!”
“I never could.”
“You’ve got that right. So go away!”
“What’s going on here?” Nathan demanded as he boarded the bus. “I was in the mini-mart when I got a call that there was some kind of altercation out here.” Spotting them, Nathan rolled his eyes. “Not you two again. What’s your problem this time?”
“I love this woman and she refuses to listen to me,” Cole said.
“You don’t know the first thing about love,” Leena retorted.
“Then teach m
e.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t buying his declaration of love for one second. “Do not use that voice on me.”
“What voice?”
“You know what voice, Pet Boy. That everything-is-gonna-be-okay soothing voice. It’s not going to work on me. Not this time.”
“Then I’ll just come with you to Chicago.”
“Yeah, right. You’ve got a vet practice here. You can’t leave.”
“Dammit, Leena, if you’d just listen to me . . .”
She was really tempted to stick her fingers in her ears and sing la-la-la, but that would be childish. Rewarding but still childish.
The old woman with the orange hair tugged on Nathan’s uniform. “He called her a slut.”
“No,” Leena corrected her. “He just treated me like one.”
“I did not!” Cole looked around at the audience, mostly female, all seniors who were glaring at him. “Leena, we have to talk. Can’t we go someplace a little more private?”
“No.”
Cole tilted her up chin, forcing her to look at him. “When you told me you were leaving for Chicago to take a modeling job, I felt as though you’d yanked my heart out and stomped on it.”
“Welcome to the club. When you tossed money at me and told me to have a good trip, I felt the same way.”
“I had to get out of there so you wouldn’t see how upset I was. I didn’t want to stand in the way of your dream. You’ve told me from the beginning that you didn’t plan on staying in Rock Creek. The fact that I’d fallen in love with you was my problem, not yours.”
Leena stared at him uncertainly. Was he telling the truth . . . or trying to charm her? He sure looked like he was telling the truth. There was a grim determination about him that she’d never seen before. “You love me?”
He nodded and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“You hurt me.”
“I know.” He trailed his fingers down her cheek regretfully. “I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
“Life is short. Kiss her, for crying out loud,” the lady with the orange hair ordered Cole.
He did, his lips consuming hers. Leena tugged him closer. “I love you too,” she whispered against his mouth. “I’m not sure I want to go to Chicago right now.”
“If you don’t go, you’ll always wonder what you were missing. I want you to be as sure of this as I am. When you come back to Rock Creek, it has to be because you want to, not because you had to.” One last kiss, one final stroke of her hair, and then he was gone.
Leena blinked back the tears. He was right. She knew he was right. That didn’t mean she had to like it. She missed him already.
“You don’t look very thrilled,” Irene told Leena twenty-four hours later. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This client picked your photo out of all the other models he could have had.”
“I heard you. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.”
Irene stared at her in disbelief, her eyes wide behind her expensive Chanel glasses, her short, platinum white hair sporting the latest trendy haircut. She was aiming for Meryl Streep’s look in The Devil Wears Prada. “What did they do to you in that Podunk town? Brain-wash you or something?”
“I fell in love.”
“Well, fall out of love,” Irene said sharply. “This is your career we’re talking about here. Snap out of it.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Of course you can. You’re a pro. Don’t let some stupid guy distract you.”
“It’s not about him. Well, it is a little, but mostly it’s about me. I’ve changed.” Leena looked out the window of her agent’s office. While not on Michigan Avenue, it was near enough that if she leaned a little to the left she could see the traffic on the Magnificent Mile and even a bit of the Chicago River. Closing her eyes, she pictured the rolling green hills around Rock Creek and that poor apple tree struggling to survive next to the World War II tank in the center of town. Michigan Avenue had gorgeous landscaping with thousands of flowers compared to the few that Rock Creek had.
And yet . . .
“I have to figure out if modeling is shoe love or bag love,” she muttered to herself.
She already knew that Cole was bag love. He couldn’t have shattered her heart as badly as he had if he’d been only shoe love. He was the real thing. But there were still so many obstacles in their path. She needed some time to think about this.
So Leena sucked it up and for the next three weeks worked at trying to recapture her dream. Her former roommates hadn’t found a replacement for her, so she was able to move back in temporarily. They were off on a South American shoot for the month, so Leena had the place to herself.
She was busy from dawn until late at night. She’d been able to speak to Cole only a few times. She missed him terribly. No surprise there. The shocker was that she also missed her sister’s pythonlike hug. She missed Skye and Lulu with their outrageous comments. She missed Bart and his words of wisdom. She missed Mindy and her big heart.
Irene didn’t have a heart. Instead she had a plaque on her desk that read WICKED BITCH OF THE MIDWEST.
“Haven’t you ever been in love?” Leena asked her.
“You bet. I’m in love with my job. If you don’t have the balls for this job, then you should get out right now.”
“I don’t have balls,” Leena said. “I’m a woman. I have curves.” She pointed to her T-shirt, which had a picture of the Statue of Liberty and the lines GIVE ME YOUR CURVES, YOUR WRINKLES, YOUR NATURAL BEAUTY YEARNING TO BE FREE.
“Is this about your weight? All the client said was that your butt looked big in the photo yesterday. We can change that on the computer.”
Right. And yet again make women think they should look smaller than they were. Diminished instead of empowered. “Speaking of computers, did I tell you that I’ve been blogging? It’s been a real eye-opener,” Leena said. “There are hundred of thousands of women out there with body-image issues.”
“I’m only trying to deal with one of them right now. You.”
Since Leena had returned to Chicago, the self-trash talk inside her head had returned with a vegeance. Was it really smart for her to stay in a business that focused 110 percent on image and not substance? She felt like a stranger in her own life. She didn’t want to be judged by her butt size. She wanted to be judged by the quality of her character, not the shade of her lipstick. Okay, the reality was that she’d probably always care about both. Still . . .
“It’s not about your dress size. It’s about your health and happiness,” she said, finally.
“My health and happiness depends on you getting this job.”
“Maybe, but mine doesn’t,” Leena said. “I’m sorry, Irene.” She briefly hugged her stunned agent. “I can’t go back. I need to go forward with the next chapter of my life.”
“The county cadaver bloodhound looks happier than you do,” Nathan told Cole as they sat sipping their beers at Nick’s Tavern. “What happened to man rule number nine: No angsting over a woman? Angsting over sports teams winning is okay. Not angsting over women.”
“This from a man who doesn’t know when a woman is proposing to him in letters twenty feet high in the sky right over his head.”
“I said yes as soon as I figured out what she meant.”
“I’m not angsting over women. Just one. Leena.”
“I can’t believe you told her you loved her in front of a busload of white-haired old ladies.”
“One of them had orange hair. Anyway, I was desperate.”
“No kidding. Yet you let her take off for Chicago.”
“It wasn’t a matter of letting her. Leena does what she wants. I want her to want to be with me.”
“Instead of some glamorous job in Chicago? That’s asking a lot.”
“You really have a way of making a guy feel worse.”
“Aw, come on.” Nathan punched his shoulder. “She�
��ll be back. After all, you’re one of PA’s sexiest bachelors. How can she resist you?”
“Yeah, right.”
“You two mind if I join you?” Bart asked.
“Pull up a chair,” Nathan said.
“Cole, have you heard from Leena lately?”
“Not for a couple of days,” Cole admitted before defending her. “She’s really busy with this new ad campaign they’re starting.”
“Next time you talk to her please tell her that the information she gave me about the nonprofit group that helps build community playgrounds is paying off,” Bart said, his enthusiasm clear. “They were so impressed with the package she put together that they approved us.”
“Us?”
“Rock Creek. They’ve already got us scheduled for early October. It only takes the group one day, with help from local volunteers, to build everything. So that vacant lot on the north side of town will be a community playground by fall. Leena sure knows how to get things done. You’ve probably heard Vanessa bragging all over town how many hits her website has gotten since Leena became the guest blogger.”
“This is all news to me,” Cole said.
“I knew all about it,” Algee said as he pulled up a chair to join them. Unlike Bart, he didn’t ask for permission first. “Tameka filled me in. Not that I’m into bragging. My new motto is, ‘Stay humble or you’ll stumble.’ ”
“Yeah, mine too,” Luke said, hauling over another rickety chair. “What are you guys doing in this dive when you could be over at Maguire’s eating great food with your beer?”
Cole shrugged. “I believe in supporting local businesses.”
“How about supporting your friends?” Luke said. “You believe in that?”
“Yeah.”
“Then look at these great baby pictures.” Luke pulled a batch out of his wallet. “Have you ever seen such a beautiful kid?”
Algee grinned. “Not that you’re bragging or anything, right?”
Luke nodded. “I’m just stating facts here. Hey, when you talk to Leena next time, Cole, tell her that Julia said she’s doing a program at the library like she suggested.”
“On what?” Nathan asked. “Applying makeup?”