He glanced up. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry it hurts.” His palm cradled her cheek and he brushed away an errant drop with his thumb. “But it’s clean now. Want some pain relievers?”
She shook her head. “They won’t help.” They wouldn’t stop the shrouding ache of sadness.
“I owe you a couple of things,” he said, his attention focused on the first-aid supplies he was packing back into their case. “First, an apology.”
“It’s all right—”
“Let me finish.” He stowed the plastic box into a drawer in the vanity. “I shouldn’t have said no one has ever loved you.”
She gave a shrug. “But it’s true.”
“I saw the interview you gave.”
Her eyes widened. “You did?”
“This morning.” He dropped to the edge of the tub, pushing the shower curtain away so they were seated knees to knees. “I was very impressed.”
Not even the hem of that shroud lifted. Still, she pasted on a smile. “Thanks.”
“And you know what I thought at the end of it?”
She shook her head.
“That you for damn sure should love yourself, Angelica Rodriguez.” He nudged her leg with his. “You’re a beautiful person, inside and out.”
You for damn sure should love yourself. Staring at him, the words echoed again and again in her head. You for damn sure should love yourself.
Her spine straightened. Even though her heart remained heavy, a new vigor infused her. She should love herself. Of course she should. She did.
Wow.
“Thank you, Brett.” She found his hand, gave it a quick squeeze. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
It was his turn to shrug. “And speaking of truth...” He shifted his gaze to his knees. “I think I’d better explain what happened out there.”
“You don’t—”
“I think I do if I don’t want you approaching my sisters about their crazy brother, Brett.”
“I don’t believe you’re crazy.” But she did want to know what had made him so anxious. Though he wasn’t trying to hold her back from leaving Blue Arrow, that didn’t cut off her feelings about him. Her loving him.
He still sat, eyes downcast. “Brett?” she prompted.
He ran his palm over the top of his head then seemed to force his hand away. “I had a bad experience in Afghanistan. Well, Afghanistan was a series of bad experiences, but my deployment didn’t begin well.”
Reaching out, she grasped his hand again.
“Shay knows a little about this,” he continued, absently beginning to play with Angelica’s fingers. “But the other girls are not aware of anything beyond the basic details.”
Did he mean not only Mac and Poppy, but every other woman he’d ever let into his life? It was another wow moment to imagine that big bad Brett Walker was going to let Angelica in on something private.
“Not until then did I fully appreciate how things can go bad, so very bad, and so very fast. You’d think, after a swift-moving fire destroyed the ski resort and how quickly my father’s health deteriorated following that, I would have already learned the lesson.”
Ah. The roots of his distrust.
“The choppers dropped us off in the mountains...a remote-as-shit place. The bad guys always like to give the new guys a little welcome party. We had to sprint from the helicopters to the gates of the forward operating base as mortar rounds were dropping around us.”
“Oh, God.” Angelica put her free hand to her mouth, remembering how he’d been distressed and worried about blood in the woods. “Were you hurt?”
He shook his head. “Not me. Some villagers were heading into the base at the same time that we landed. Just...bad luck on their part. A woman went down right in front of me.”
She could see that he’d squeezed his eyes shut.
“It was instinct. I...I scooped her up in my arms and kept running. But I knew it was bad. I could smell the blood. Feel it running down my arms, feel my uniform soaking it up. When I got her to the triage area...” He shrugged.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “On your very first day.”
“I saw her die,” he said. “She was looking up at me, moaning. I told her to hang on. I willed her to hang on. But it was no use.”
He stood up, turning so she only had his back. “I can’t forget the life leaving her eyes. The smell of blood. I was trying to wipe it off my hands.”
One hand went to his head, and she realized now what was behind his habitual gesture...Brett trying to clean his hands, likely on the only place free of someone else’s blood. Angelica moved, coming up behind him and putting her palm against his back. He didn’t seem to register her touch.
What irony, she thought, that this was coming out in here, a room where a person went to be washed.
“I closed off after that,” he spoke as if it was something he’d come to terms with long before. “The only way to survive was to build defenses around your emotions. Shut down anything soft.”
“You had feelings for Lorraine.”
“My one attempt after I returned. That experience shored up any chinks in my guard I might have had left, believe me. Now...I’m hardened through and through.”
Glancing to the side, Angelica found her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Her face was pale, her eyes dark pools of trouble. “You had to protect your heart.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, his mouth turned in a frown. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, honey. I don’t have one anymore.”
Oh, Brett, she thought, further dismayed. Of course he had a heart. There was evidence of it everywhere in how much he cared about his family, his town, his mountains. In how he’d been devastated by a stranger’s death and stung so deeply by a later betrayal.
But that certainty didn’t bring her any relief from sorrow. He was so intent upon keeping his heart armored, it was, actually, the same thing as having no heart at all.
* * *
THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE opening time. Glory was moving the coiled straw wattles from the bin she’d dragged to Aisle B back to their original bin in Aisle P one at a time. The scratchy fibers bothered her hands and wrists, but she took it as fitting punishment.
She kept screwing up.
First, she’d fallen for a lying—though not dickless—bounder from down the hill. She didn’t exactly know what a bounder was—
“Hey, Angelica,” she called to her friend who was working on a laptop at the counter beside the register. “What’s a bounder?”
“A cad,” Angelica called back.
Glory grunted. Yep, she’d formed a stupid attachment with a bounder from down the hill, just like some silly mountain nineteen-year-old falling for a filthy rich university dude bro summering on the Blue Arrow Lake beaches.
Except it was autumn and that was supposed to have saved her.
“You need help, honey?” Her mother stood at the end of the aisle in jeans and a smock, since this was her morning for watercolor class.
“Thanks, but no, Mom.” I like being miserable all by myself.
Her mother didn’t seem to sense her mood, because she smiled at Glory. “I love the email newsletter idea Angelica came up with for the store. I’m going to sign up for a computer course at the community center so I can learn to do one myself.”
“Fabuloso, Mom.” She pitched the wattle toward the bin from seven feet away.
Missed.
Her footsteps clattered on the linoleum as she stomped over to retrieve it.
“Would you like me to bring you back a coffee from Oscar’s? I’m meeting Dad to show him some cruise brochures I picked up.”
Glory straightened, squeezing the wattle between her fingers. “Mom, you know he’s not going to take a vacation.”
“Well...”
“He doesn’t feel comfortable leaving me in sole charge of the store. He doesn’t trust me to make the decisions.” Not that she’d been making any good ones lately. The
wattles were a case in point. The construction guys who came in for them pulled their trucks around back as a loading point. When she’d moved their location, it had made that process longer and less convenient.
“I still believe,” her mother declared, turning toward the front exit. “And if not, there’s always Temari!”
When the bells announced her mom had left, Glory called once again to Angelica. “What the hell is Temari?”
There was a moment’s silence during which Glory figured the other woman was putting her search-engine chops to use. “Japanese thread balls.”
Huh? “Do you eat them?”
“It looks like you make them. An ornament of some kind.”
Glory pushed at her hair, felt pieces of straw stuck in the strands and tried picking them out without the aid of a mirror. Knowing her mom, she’d make Temari into some kind of mountain cottage industry and next week Glory would be selling Japanese thread balls alongside the portable heaters and masking tape.
Her life sucked.
“You know what?” she yelled to her friend. “I used to love playing with steel wool and sandpaper. How sick is that?” Sicker still was that it held no allure for her anymore.
“I never liked dissecting earthworms and frogs,” a voice said.
Male voice. His voice.
She looked up, glaring. “We’re not open.”
“Just turned nine,” Kyle Scott said.
Today, he wasn’t bothering to be fake housepainter/home repairman. But he didn’t look any less delicious in a pair of dark gray dressy jeans and a pale blue dress shirt, tails out. Expensive leather boots on his feet. Big-data-dude chic, she supposed.
“Go away. Go home.”
Kyle sighed. “I’ve got a few things still to do at the house.” He pulled a list from his pocket. “I need some door hardware and a couple of insulating strips.”
“Get them at Murphy’s.”
“All right. Fine. I came to see you.”
“I’m too busy to talk.” She stomped to the wattle bin and snatched up another two. He followed as she walked them to the correct aisle.
“What’s this all about?” he asked, eyeing the violent manner in which she slam-dunked the coils.
“Me, giving up on my dumb notions.”
“Don’t do that,” Kyle said, catching her arm as she marched past.
She tried shaking off his hold. But he was stubborn, just like the grip he had on her heart. This close, she could smell him, an expensive smell she should have realized right away was out of her league.
“Glory, don’t give up on your own ideas.”
“You don’t know what I’m up against,” she muttered, staring at his shirt pocket. In thread the same exact shade as the cloth, was a tiny monogram. An S with a K and J cuddled close.
God. The only thing guys she knew had monogrammed were their beer cozies. Out. Of. Her. League.
“I know you have to follow your heart,” Kyle said now.
Oh, no. Hers had made a very stupid choice.
“Particularly about work,” he continued. Then he hesitated.
She frowned up at him. “Does this have something to do with the dissection you mentioned?”
He glanced around. “Is there someplace we could talk privately?”
Glory opened her mouth to tell him no. But before she could get that out, Angelica called from her spot by the cash register. “The back room is free.”
Grr. “Oh, fine,” she conceded with ill grace, slipping her arm from his loosened grasp to lead the way. As she passed her friend, she shot her a sidelong look. “We have a male-bashing date at Mr. Frank’s tonight,” she muttered.
Angelica’s gaze flicked from Glory to Kyle and back. “If you’re free.”
The cramped back room smelled like sawdust, WD-40 and now Kyle’s expensive cologne. Hell, she had to admit it was miles better than the body spray of the last guy she’d dated. Stu had always used Ivory soap, which might explain why being with him always made her feel as if she were fifteen.
So high school.
While Kyle made her feel like a woman. No. Upset. No! Angry.
She slammed her arms over her chest. “Say what you have to say.”
He winced. “I screwed up.”
“I think we covered that.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
His hand shoved through his hair, disheveling it in that way she found so sexy. Glory sucked in a quick breath. “Honestly, spit it out. I don’t have all day.”
“My parents are doctors,” he said. “As are my brother and my sister.”
“Okay...” He’d said he didn’t like dissecting. “And you didn’t want that for yourself.”
“Exactly. It didn’t go over well with the family.”
“But you’re a successful businessman, right?”
He nodded. “We hit the marketplace at the right time. My partner is a genius.”
“So aren’t your parents proud of you now?”
“Doctors...or at least my family of doctors...” He forked his hair again. “Healing, working with your hands to do good for people, that’s what they put supreme value on.”
“But not everyone can do that.”
“I could have. I got into med school. I just...didn’t want to go.”
“Oh.” She grimaced. “Did they disown you or something?”
“No.” He shook his head. “They just...disapproved. Silently. So when I had the chance to buy the house, I thought it would be a nice idea to show them my hands could still be used for good.”
“And you needed a break.”
“And I needed a break.”
“Okay... I get that.” Glory glanced down and saw her Hallett’s butcher apron was dotted with pieces of straw. She started brushing at them. “Why didn’t you tell me this right away?”
A smile flitted across his face. “Don’t hit me, but it was because you were so sweet. Open. Kind. You offered to buy me a drink and help me get work.”
Glory’s face heated. When the rich guy didn’t need anything she had to offer. “I feel foolish,” she muttered.
“No!” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I told you I haven’t had a lot of time to date and when I do it’s been some sort of fix up where the woman knew the score.”
“Hot, desk-bound businessman desperately seeking female companionship.”
“Ugh. More like, guy with his head lost in data dragged by his friends to some event or other. I’m sure they were very nice. But it always felt so contrived. Me and you...we came to the table with just a couple of smiles.” The one he gave her now was rueful. “And we discovered chemistry I don’t have the analytics to measure.”
Damn him for making his reticence seem reasonable! And wasn’t “chemistry I don’t have the analytics to measure” pretty much geeky but also...great?
Then she hardened herself against him. Why be soft when this was going nowhere? She had to be as tough as her pioneer ancestors, as hard as the mountains. Granite to the core. “Okay. Explanation shared. You’re absolved. Go forth...and data away, or whatever.”
“You could go forth with me.”
“What?” Her eyes went wide.
“Come down the hill. Be in my world. Try it for a while, at least.”
She still stared.
“I have to get back. I’m determined not to be that guy who works a hundred hours a week, but I still have to check in with my people. Put in a normal day at my desk.” He swiped a hand over his mouth. “We employ eight hundred. I say that not to boast but so you’ll understand I have responsibilities that go beyond myself.”
“Kyle...”
He leaned closer to pluck a piece of straw from her hair. “I’d say more, ask more, give more, but that’s probably not fair to you.”
“Not fair at all, because I have responsibilities, too,” Glory said, commanding herself not to cry. “Hallett Hardware, the family business. The mountains, my home.”
“I don’t want a long-distanc
e romance, Glory.”
“I don’t want a long-distance romance, either.” She turned away, staring sightlessly at shelves stacked with no-parking signs and steel padlocks and heavy-gauge extension cords. “You’ve ruined everything!” she said, the words dragged straight from her soul. “You were supposed to be my reward for running the cash register for the past seventeen years!”
She sniffed and felt the burn behind her eyes. “You were supposed to be my belief in love!”
“Glory...”
Now she whirled on him, getting toe-to-toe. “Did you know that people have an average of eleven occupations in their lifetime?”
Bemused expression on his face, he shook his head.
Emotion roiled inside her: disappointment, resignation, anger, loss. It made her voice ragged and rough. “You were supposed to be my ten other jobs!”
Instead of responding to that, he trailed a finger over one of her eyebrows. She tried not to shiver. “What have I done to squelch your belief in love?” he asked, his voice soft.
Hers was nothing of the kind. “You could have said you loved me back!” Then, aghast, she slapped her palm over his mouth. “No, don’t! You lied, and that’s answer enough.”
His fingers wrapped her wrist and he pulled her hand away. “I’m in love with you.” She tried yanking free, but he held firm. “I want you to come down the hill with me. Try life there.”
Then he hauled her into his arms and they were kissing the kisses of the desperate. Of those hopelessly in love. Oh, God, Glory thought. Hopeless love.
She tore her mouth away from his. “That isn’t helping.”
“How about persuading? Is it helping with that?” he asked. “I want you. I want you to come live with me.”
“How can I?”
“You get in a car and point it downhill, darling. I’ll even do the driving.” He pressed his mouth to her forehead, her cheeks, her nose. “Come live with me and be my love.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I might be from the mountains, but I’m no hick. I recognize poetry when I hear it.”
He grinned. “Christopher Marlowe. ‘Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove / That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yields.’”
Glory thought, A man is quoting poetry to me! He thinks I’m beautiful and he’s quoting poetry! Still... “I’m not sure what it means, exactly.”
Can't Fight This Feeling (Cabin Fever) Page 28