by Stacy Gail
Geraldine tilted her head. “See, that right there. That’s what I’m talking about when it comes to self-honesty. As long as you compare the present you and the present Coe to your past selves, you’re going to poison what’s happening in the here and now. You’re not the same person, Miranda, and neither is he. Or, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s lived in a time capsule and hasn’t evolved at all?”
“No, he’s...calmer. More solid. More reliable, I guess.” The younger Coe would never have apologized to her, she was certain of that. He wouldn’t have even seen there was a need for one. But the older, more mature Coe seemed to care about her feelings more, at least to the point where he wanted her to leave all the old grudges behind and find some peace. Erase them from her memory, like he’d erased her name from his body... “I don’t know. I don’t know what he feels now.”
“Forgive me, but again you’re missing the point. This isn’t about what he feels. You have no control over that, any more than you have control over the sun rising and setting. The only person you have control over is you. So be honest with yourself, stop hiding behind past hurts, and figure out what’s best for you, right now, in the present. You’ll be happier if you can do that, I promise.”
“I’m happy.” She frowned, irked she had to keep insisting that everything was hunky-dory. Why didn’t anyone believe her? “I couldn’t be happier if someone showed up at my door with a winning lottery ticket.”
A sudden knock on her door made her jump.
“I doubt that’s a winning lottery ticket,” Geraldine said, amusement threading through her tone. “But I’d be willing to bet it’s the landlord eager to lay some pipe.”
“Gotta go, Geraldine. Talk to you later.” With her heart catapulting up into her throat, she reached for the laptop’s lid.
“Oh, but—”
The snap of the lid closing was drowned out by the timpani drumbeat of her pulse as she all but flew to the heavy metal door and hauled it open.
“Hey there, new tenant.” The doorway was suddenly filled with what she’d been half expecting to see all day—Coe. And what a sight for sore eyes he was. Waving black hair loose and beckoning her fingers, leather jacket emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and dark eyes sliding over her like he couldn’t decide where to bite first.
Lord, she loved that look.
“Hey.” Amazingly enough, she sounded calm.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She waved him in, continuing to keep things casual so he wouldn’t guess her heart was trying to beat her senseless. “I thought the garage didn’t close until five-thirty.”
“I had some business to take care of in the Hill Country, so I closed up after lunch. I just got back.”
Somehow she managed not to facepalm. Holy crap. All that time listening for him and jumping at random noises, and he hadn’t even been there.
She really was a special kind of stupid.
Then she realized he was hauling various bags in from the landing outside the front door. “Whoa, hold on. What is all this?”
“We,” he announced, handing her a six-pack of cold longnecks, “are having our very own housewarming party.”
* * *
Coe wasn’t sure what kind of response he’d been expecting, but Miranda’s mouth dropping open wasn’t one of them. “A housewarming party? Since when did you turn into Martha Stewart?”
Ah, there was the smartass that lurked beneath the posh manners. It was probably crazy to think himself a lucky man to know that side of Miranda existed, but there it was. “I got the idea from Lucy and Sully. Thanksgiving over at their house is also an unofficial housewarming party to break in their new place.” He dropped a huge plastic bag from a home store by the futon and turned to nail her with a look. “You are going with me to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, right?”
She looked like she was trying not to grimace. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Lucy and I never really got along.”
“That was like a thousand years ago. You guys got along great yesterday, you even did that girly-hug thing that men never do, because it’d be creepy. I saw it.”
“Coe...”
“Say yes, Miranda.”
“I don’t respond to bossy.”
“Say yes.” Then he thought about it. “Please.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”
“Cool. You didn’t say no.” Not that that would have been a huge roadblock. He’d just bug the shit out of her until she agreed to go just to shut him up. “You hungry? I know it’s a little early, but I picked up some Mexican food on the way back—chicken and beef fajita stuff, mainly, but also chips and enough queso con carne to swim in.”
Her eyes lit up as she moved to the kitchen area. “I love queso con carne.”
“I remember.”
She turned from the task of opening a couple of beers and met him at the island, brows raised. “Really? I’m surprised.”
He dug into some of the bags for food containers and plastic-wrapped utensils, then grabbed for his phone. “Why wouldn’t I remember?”
“I didn’t think you paid attention to random little details like food preferences. You’re a big picture kind of guy.”
Did that mean she didn’t have huge amounts of faith when it came to him being anything but a selfish jerk who only cared about his own likes and needs? That might have been a perfect description of him when he was a kid, but it sure as hell wasn’t him now.
No time like the present to start proving it.
“You like queso con carne, but not too spicy because you have a wimpy mouth. You’re allergic to walnuts, bees and cats, and that last one’s a real problem for you. You love cats, so you went for allergy shots every month when we were dating, since you had one of those smashed-face Persian things that you refused to get rid of. You don’t like horror movies, because when you get startled, your first instinct is to punch the nearest thing you can get your haymaker on. You’ll eat anything chocolate-related, but you think vanilla ice cream is a sad waste of time, energy and freezer space. You like to play the guitar, though you’re the first to admit you’re not great at it, and you get all melty when you listen to it.” With that, he touched the right icon on the screen. Sultry Spanish guitar music flowed into the loft’s stillness. Setting the phone aside to let it play, he turned to find her widened eyes riveted to him. That absolute attention had him flushing all over in a heat that went way beyond lust. It was as though her gaze had some strange power to set his soul on fire.
“You...” A catch in her breath interrupted her, and the sound slid through him like a delirium-inducing fever. “You remember all that about me?”
“Of course I do. But you’re right about one thing. I don’t pay attention to random little details. What I pay attention to is you.”
“Coe.” She said his name as though she could taste it. And that she liked what she was tasting. “Just when I believe I’ve got you figured out, you unravel everything I think I know.”
“Good.” With one small bag remaining, he moved to the fridge, shucked the bag aside and held up the latest bottle of milk that the bag had contained. “I’m putting this away. Okay?”
A surprised laugh burst from her before she nodded, her eyes shining with such drop-dead beauty she didn’t seem real. “Please. And thank you very much for the milk.”
“Those classy manners.” He shut the almost-empty fridge and made a mental note to bring more grub, just in case she got the munchies. “Do you have any idea how sexy they are?”
“Manners couldn’t possibly be sexy.”
She was still looking at him with those shining eyes. Damn, but that was hot. “Hell yeah, they’re sexy. They make me want to get you so flustered you forget all about them.”
Her color heightened
as he rounded the island and closed in. “Considering I’ve never dreamed of kicking anyone else in the ass, I have to admit you’re probably the only person in the world who’s capable of making me that flustered.”
“Aw. That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, babe.” Without asking, he picked her up and plunked her on the island, all the while trying not to grin at her alarmed squeak. “Since we don’t have chairs or a real table right now, we’re going to have to Sixteen Candles it and make do.”
“Sixteen Candles, as in the John Hughes film?” She stared as he kicked his shoes off, hiked himself up on the island opposite her and sat cross-legged before turning his attention to the clamshell food containers. “I can’t believe you even know about that scene.”
“I blame Lucy. She thought it was all sigh-worthy when the redheaded girl and the idiot jock kissed over the birthday cake. But I distinctly remember freaking out over the dumbass move of kissing over an open flame. I kept waiting for that dress of hers to go up like a Roman candle.”
“Wow.” Nudging out of her own shoes, she too sat cross-legged on the island and reached over for a napkin. “One of the most iconic first kisses in movie history, and you just obliterated it. Well done, Mr. Romance.”
“Hey, I’m romantic. I remembered to buy chilled beer so we could have it with our meal, didn’t I?”
“How is that romantic?”
“Being thoughtful and being romantic can be the same thing.”
“You got me there.” A smile played around her mouth as she dug in. He wasn’t at all surprised that she attacked the queso as though she feared she might never eat again. “Our first kiss was pretty romantic, at least to me. Do you remember it?”
He paused in the task of dumping a mess of fire-roasted beef fajitas and peppers into a warm flour tortilla. “If I get this wrong, are you going to be pissed at me?”
“We’d just met,” she said, ignoring him. “Though to be honest, I’d been aware of you for a while. I mean, how could I not? You were the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on. I loved your pierced ears and the way you filled out your jeans...both in the back and the front.”
He nearly choked. “Miranda. You shock me.”
She grinned. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He leaned forward. “Keep going.”
Her low laugh was like a purr wrapped in velvet. He loved it.
“We were at the racetrack, and you were working on a car you were slated to race later that day. I was trying to help you, which is a lame euphemism for flirting shamelessly, when I got my hands dirty on one of the tools.”
“Those pretty little hands were never meant to be covered in grime.” He remembered it as clearly as if it had just happened. The dismay he’d experienced at her delicate hands being covered in grease was the same kind of dismay he’d felt when she’d moved into Garden Court. Maybe it wasn’t rational—okay, it wasn’t anywhere near rational, he’d admit it—but there were some things he simply couldn’t stomach. Miranda having to deal with the uglier parts of life when he was around to prevent it was one of them. Because...
Because she was his princess.
Always had been.
Always would be.
Whether she liked it or not.
“You dragged me over to the sink as though you thought my skin had been dipped in acid. You stood behind me and washed my hands in this goopy soap, your legs on either side of mine. You held our hands under the water, and I kept wondering whether you felt how hot it was getting wherever our bodies touched, or if it was just me.”
“I felt it. Oh man, did I ever.” His breath shallowed as the memory played through his mind—a smaller, younger Miranda sheltered in the curve of his body. So trusting. So dainty. Smelling like heaven while he felt too big and rough to even be trusted near her. It had been so weird, that moment in time. He hadn’t been thinking about her father then, or of bagging her as a trophy girlfriend to prove he was good enough.
All he’d been able to think was how perfect she was.
He hadn’t understood his feelings then, but the fact that she’d chosen to spend time with him, when she could have been with anyone, had filled him with a kind of reverent awe. “You turned your head to look back at me, and your eyes locked on mine so hard I swear I heard the click. And then...”
“You kissed me.”
“I had to kiss you. Kind of like right now.” He dropped the food back into the clamshell and pushed forward just as she did the same. When their mouths met, he was damned happy there wasn’t a flame between them, because he was positive that even a spark was all it would take for him to spontaneously combust.
Chapter Fifteen
Miranda’s blood heated up nicely the moment his mouth took hers, and the sweep of his tongue made her bare toes curl. Hungry and wet and deep, Coe’s kisses were hot enough to melt both her good sense and every single one of her bones.
Lucky, lucky her.
When they finally broke apart, all she could see was his dark eyes—a fact that had nothing to do with the deepening twilight beyond the windows, and everything to do with his magnetism. Just like when she’d first seen him all those years ago, he was still the most delicious man she had ever seen.
Was it any wonder she couldn’t see anything else? There was nothing else worth looking at, as far as she was concerned.
“I’m waiting for you to get after me.” His hand came up to cup her cheek, like it was something fragile that had to be held with the greatest care. “I’m guessing it’s bad form, going straight for the dessert before finishing dinner.”
“I won’t tell Ms. Manners if you won’t.” Then her stomach growled, offering its own opinion on what her priorities were, making her grimace and Coe chuckle. “Well, so much for that romantic moment. Did you enjoy it while it lasted?”
“It’s still going strong, inadvertent body noises and all.” He pushed the fajita meat her way, along with a bottle of beer. “Eat now. Dessert later.”
“Good plan.” Packing together her own fajita wrap, she savored the smoky chicken and peppers, and the cool smoothness of the avocado that put the spicy fire out. “Mmm, good. I can’t remember if I ate today.”
“Busy day?”
“Settling into a new place always takes time.” Certainly that was true enough, but it wasn’t like she’d had an entire household to unpack. Things simply didn’t move that fast when she was also wrapped up in fighting the need to go downstairs to see what he was up to. “How about you? Sounds like you were kept busy, too.”
“It started off with Sheriff Berry bringing in his car with the claim that the shocks I put in two months ago are already gone. That asshole had the gall to say that if I didn’t want to be investigated for fraud, I’d replace them for free.”
Her brows snapped together. “Your work is superb and above reproach—no one is better at what you do than you. He can’t abuse his power like that.”
“That’s what I said, but I sure as hell couldn’t have that bastard bad-mouthing my work around town, so I went over his entire car.” He watched her polish off the fajita wrap she’d made, a bemused look in his eyes.
“What?” Maybe she had food on her face.
“Nothing. It’s just really nice to have someone to get pissed off with. Makes all the shitty little things that happen on a daily basis seem...I don’t know. Less shitty. More funny.” Then he shook his head as if laughing at himself. “Turns out our well-nourished sheriff not only has a broken driver’s seat, but over time the car frame’s been bent and everything’s out of whack. As of now it isn’t road safe, so it’d be illegal for him to keep driving it unless he gets it fixed and custom-designed for his special needs. If he does drive it, maybe he can give himself a ticket.”
“Now that’s something I’d like to see.” She could only imagine
how well that news had gone over with Bitterthorn’s overweight sheriff. “Is that what you were doing in the Hill Country this afternoon? Looking for custom car sources to help him out?”
“Oh, that. No. My trip to Kerrville was for...another thing.”
There was something off in his tone, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. “Something to do with work?”
“No. Something to do with why you came back to Bitterthorn.”
Like a switch being thrown, everything went still inside her. Her eyes began to burn as she stared at him, because she’d lost the basic ability to blink. “And?”
He shook his head. “Look at you. From relaxed and happy to a hot knot of crazy anxiety in less than a second. That’s some kind of acceleration you’ve got going on there, babe.”
“I’m not crazy or anxious.”
“You are hot, though. Trust me on this.”
It wasn’t fair, the talent he had for knocking her sideways. “Coe.”
He loosed a short breath and grabbed up his beer. “You said you wanted to be free of what your dad did seven years ago, right?”
“Right. So?”
“So, has it occurred to you that your freedom is totally up to you, and has nothing to do with that stupid obstacle course of a will he dreamed up? Your dad is dead and buried. Your life can be whatever the fuck you want to make of it. From graphics designer to Sasquatch hunter, you can do anything you want and no one will look twice at you.”
“If I were a Sasquatch hunter, they might.”
He waved her words away. “Yet the moment I mention something about the will, you get all worked up because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re trapped. But you’re not. I swear to God you’re not.”
Miranda’s mouth tightened. That sounded ominously similar to what Geraldine had said earlier. If she wanted to make peace with the past, she had to let it go. But she didn’t know how to do that while still pushing to make sure everything that was taken from Coe was returned to him.
Though, if she were honest, she could see that making sure Coe reaped the benefits of his invention had nothing to do with the bitterness that turned her heart to stone every time she thought of her father. Her father and, to a much lesser extent, Coe. The stipulations of her father’s will had brought her to Bitterthorn to clean up his mess. There was no getting out of that. But maybe she could take the opportunity to clean up her own mess as well—the mess that was the tangled-up ball of emotions she’d never fully dealt with when she’d left Bitterthorn behind.