Only now she was perfectly sober.
And under the influence of nothing but the man himself.
Chapter Six
“B etty next door told me at church on Sunday that she’s retirin’ and closin’ the quilt shop so that’ll free up all four of my places. I’m lookin’ to sell out the whole lot of ’em. I’m ready to retire, too, sit on my porch and play with my grandkids,” Arnie Newman said in response to Marti’s concerns that the three adjoining storefronts she and Noah were looking at on Wednesday afternoon weren’t enough space for the Northbridge Home-Max.
“What about weight-bearing walls?” Noah asked. “You said originally these four stores were two—you split them up yourself. So which separating walls can just be removed and which will have to be cut into and re-braced?”
Marti told herself to listen to the answer, to try to concentrate on that and keep her mind off of Noah.
But they’d come straight from his day’s work in her grandmother’s house and the man even managed to look sexy in grubby jeans and an almost threadbare chambray shirt. Plus there was a little sawdust in his hair that she was dying to brush out just so she could see if his hair was as soft as she thought she remembered. And, as with the entire night before and the rest of this day, the notion of him kissing her just kept haunting her.
He’s talking to you…
She yanked herself out of those other thoughts she’d drifted into when Noah began saying something to her about breaking through separating walls and using reinforced columns as support.
“Is that a job you could do?” she asked.
“Sure,” Noah said.
“You can trust ’im, too,” Arnie Newman contributed. “Time was, we all thought this one was no good. But he came out of it and now there’s nobody in town wouldn’t hand over the keys to their house and trust ’im to do the best work you could get done anywheres. He’s built whole houses from the ground up around here and done a job to be proud of.”
Arnie had turned to speak directly to Marti, and from behind him Noah made a face at what the older man was saying. Marti knew he appreciated the endorsement but the praise seemed to embarrass him.
Or was it the backhanded way the endorsement had begun that made him uncomfortable?
Reining in her wandering thoughts a second time, she said, “I’ll have to talk it over with my brothers, but the fourth storefront would give us enough square footage, the location is great and if Noah can do the construction, I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t be a perfect place for Home-Max.”
“And don’t worry about Hector Tyson swooping this one out from under you,” Arnie said—apparently Tyson’s deal had somehow become common knowledge already. “I wouldn’t sell that buzzard three quarters for a dollar.”
“I appreciate that,” Marti said.
“I gotta get goin’, though,” Arnie added in a sudden hurry. “I’ll leave you two here to look over anything else you might want to. Just lock up when you’re done, Noah.” Then, pretending that he was confiding in her, the older man said, “Like I told you, I can trust ’im now and so can you.”
“Good to know,” Marti said before they all exchanged parting amenities and Arnie left.
“Umm…are you a reformed criminal or something? Should I be worried for my safety?” she asked Noah to goad him when they were alone, not really believing he had anything too notorious in his past or that she was in any danger from him.
Noah shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You have to be careful what you do in a small town—you never live it down.”
Marti had been checking out the heating vents in the floor and ended up near the stairs that led to the upper level. She stopped there to turn and look at Noah. He was standing in the center of the vacant store and she couldn’t help appreciating the sight of him with his hands hooked nonchalantly in his pockets, his weight slung more on one hip than the other.
“What did you do that you can’t live down?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Adolescence came in with a bang. And pretty much went out with one, too,” he answered, that last part sounding like a double entendre but Marti didn’t understand why.
“You’re still trying to live down puberty?” she said with a laugh.
“I was a rebellious kid.”
“Really?” Somehow Marti hadn’t pictured him that way. “How rebellious were you?”
“Well, two of the three other guys in the group I hung out with are in jail now…”
“Seriously?”
“They robbed a gas station in Billings last year.”
“Oh,” Marti said, starting to wonder if he actually did have a notorious past. “Did you do things like that?”
“Not that bad. But there was some unlawful activity.”
“What kind of unlawful activity?” Marti asked, still finding it hard to believe of him.
“Things like mailbox bashing. We’d hang out the window of a car and see how many we could hit out of the park with a baseball bat as we drove by. Arnie’s mailbox was one of those and I was the hitter that night—it went flying through his living-room window. He was sitting in a chair right under the window, the mailbox grazed his bald head, the glass cut him up pretty good and he had to go to the emergency room for stitches.”
“That is kind of a big deal,” Marti said.
“Yeah,” Noah agreed. “We’d gotten away with vandalizing the mailboxes up to then because we’d been sneaking out about two in the morning to do it. But that night Arnie had fallen asleep in his chair and his wife had just come out to wake him up and make him go to bed when I hit their mailbox. She saw me. If Northbridge wasn’t a small town I would have been in for vandalism and assault charges, but Arnie didn’t want that and everybody else whose mailboxes we’d bashed gave us a break, too. We had to replace all the mailboxes and my family made me work at the Newman place doing chores for six months to pay off the window and Arnie’s medical bills, but we didn’t end up with a criminal record.”
“Was that the extent of your lawbreaking?” Marti asked, sensing that it wasn’t.
“There was some shoplifting—candy, gum, small things, but still, we stole them. There was some underage drinking and driving—yes, at the same time—and I was the one drunk and driving when we got pulled over. That kept me from getting my driver’s license until I was eighteen. There was graffiti on the side of a barn—again, my doing—so I had to spend the summer repainting it to make up for that.” He was clearly not proud of any of it and didn’t want to continue talking about himself even though she was reasonably sure he hadn’t told her everything.
“Sounds like a little more than basic teenage rebellion,” Marti pointed out.
“It may sound like it, but that was all it was. Don’t forget, I was the Reverend’s grandson. His fire-and-brimstone sermons at church every Sunday were nothing compared to what we had to listen to at home over dinner. We couldn’t just be good, we had to be better than everyone. We had to set the highest example—”
“And instead you decided to set the lowest?” Marti joked gently.
“Yeah, to be honest, that was what I decided to do—in my not-so-rational, definitely not-reasonable teenage brain. I went looking for trouble just to prove the Reverend couldn’t tell me what and who I had to be. I’d watched my father and my uncle bend to his will on everything and I wasn’t going to do it, too. I was going to show him and anybody else who was watching that the Reverend was not in control of me.”
“Wow. Is that what I’m in for when this baby hits puberty?”
Noah’s expression had been somber but he cracked a smile at that. “Hopefully not. But there were a lot of warnings about payback from my own kids.”
“Oh, good,” Marti said facetiously.
Noah crossed to her on long strides with a hint of natural swagger to his walk and stopped close in front of her.
“I never blew anything up,” he challenged, referring to her cherry bomb in the fridge story of the prev
ious evening.
He was so close. He was directly in front of her. He was looking down into her eyes. How could she not think about him kissing her?
Still, she tried. Even as she angled her chin upward. “I don’t have friends in prison,” she countered.
Noah laughed. “Neither do I—just former friends. The two in jail are brothers and we parted ways when they moved to Billings. Once they were gone I discovered girls were more fun.”
He was standing near enough that when he spoke she caught a whiff of clean, minty breath that only made thoughts of kissing all the stronger. And how could he still smell good even after working all day?
Marti’s chin rose another fraction of an inch. “Is the discovery that girls were more fun how your adolescence went out with a bang?” she asked with the same double entendre he’d used before.
But something about that sobered him again. “Let’s just say things happened and I finally opted to clean up my act.”
“You aren’t going to tell me what things happened?”
He seemed to reconsider. But then he shook his head again and spun away from her on his boot heels. “Always leave ’em wanting more, it brings ’em back,” he joked. “Besides, you wanted to take another look upstairs to see about putting the offices there, didn’t you?”
So he had a bit of a stubborn streak. That was the first Marti had seen of it. A stubborn streak and a strong will. He’d been so accommodating until then that it surprised her. And yet it didn’t make him less appealing, it made him all the more appealing. Or maybe she was just particularly hormonal today…
But she didn’t pursue the subject of his checkered past as they climbed the steps to the upper floor because he’d just told her to what lengths he would go in the opposite direction when someone pressured him. Besides, she hadn’t been forthcoming about her own history yet so she didn’t think she had any basis for pushing.
Plus she had something else she wanted to talk to him about and after counting electrical outlets on the second floor, with Noah assuring her he could add as many as she needed, Marti stopped to look through one of the windows, then turned her back to it and leaned her hips against the sill.
“Speaking of your grandfather…” she said.
“I thought we were speaking of adding a bigger breaker box to accommodate rewiring up here,” Noah said from where he was hunkered down checking an outlet.
“We were, but you said you could do that and I didn’t think there was any more to say about it. Is there?”
“No,” he admitted, standing again.
He headed for her once more and she decided that his biggest crime was how those jeans rode his narrow hips. It took all she could muster to keep from staring. And drooling.
When he got to her, he leaned a shoulder against the edge of the window and Marti turned a hip into the sill to sit facing him.
“Okay, speaking of my grandfather,” he allowed then.
“I talked to my grandmother about Hector Tyson today.”
“Now that’s something we can sink our teeth into.”
So he’d thought she was trying to get back to talking about his past.
“Is that why Theresa was upset when I came into the sunroom?” he asked.
“Yes. And by the way, thanks for getting her out of it. Usually only Ry can distract her like that when something sets her off.”
Noah had teased her grandmother a little, cajoled her a little, flattered her a little, and it had all worked to keep Theresa from hysterics.
“Sure,” Noah said in acceptance of her gratitude, as if it had been nothing when, in fact, Marti had not only appreciated it, she’d been impressed by it, too.
But she knew that saying more about it would only embarrass him the way Arnie Newman’s praise had, so she merely continued.
“Before I talked to Gram, I talked to my brother Ry. He met with our lawyers and they think we have grounds to sue Tyson since Gram was underage and under duress when she sold him the land. They think he owes her restitution—by not giving her an even remotely fair price for the land, he basically swindled her. He’ll be served an intent-to-sue notice as soon as it’s drawn up—in the next day or two.”
“He won’t like that,” Noah said matter-of-factly.
“No, I’m sure he won’t. But when I told Gram that’s what we were doing—that it was the best that could be done since the land and the houses on it belong to so many other people now, she couldn’t have cared less. She did something similar to this with Wyatt, too, a few weeks ago—she said Tyson had taken something more important than land from her. Wyatt couldn’t get her to tell him what she was talking about and I tried pressing her again today.”
“Did she tell you?”
“All I could get out of her was that it wasn’t about the land and that Hector told her she couldn’t tell anyone. But she also said that the minister and the minister’s wife told her the same thing—that’s the first any of us have heard about her taking her problems to a minister. Gram said the minister told her she had to do what was right even if it wasn’t what was right for her. I was wondering if the minister she was talking about is your grandfather and if he might be able to shed some light on this.”
Noah shook his handsome head again. “My grandfather is not a helpful guy. But you’re in luck—he wouldn’t be the minister your grandmother is talking about. If I’m up to date on the grapevine, Theresa left here in 1950, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, my grandparents didn’t move to Northbridge until just after that.”
“Really? For some reason I thought you were all natives.”
“Nope. My grandparents came here to take over when the previous minister died unexpectedly of a heart attack—that would be the minister who was here when Theresa was.”
“So how am I in luck if he died decades ago?”
“Because that minister’s wife is still alive and well and living right here in town. I just did some work for her a few months ago. And didn’t you say the minister’s wife told your grandmother something? She must have been in on whatever it was Theresa went to talk about.”
Pleased with that news, Marti smiled up at him. “Will you make up for keeping part of your misspent youth a secret by taking me to meet the former minister’s wife?”
Noah returned her smile with a wry one of his own. “I’m not keeping it a secret from you. I’m just not sure this is the right time to tell you about it. It’s a tough subject for me. I wouldn’t want you getting any wrong ideas about me.”
“A mystery wrapped in a riddle—what could you possibly tell me about your teenage years that could give me bad ideas?”
He didn’t respond to that with anything but raised eyebrows.
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know. It can’t be good for pregnant women,” Marti said then.
He smiled bigger and shook his head as if he were enjoying this.
Then, completely without warning, he swooped in and kissed her on the lips. But so quickly she didn’t even have the chance to pucker up and kiss him back. Or feel as if she’d actually been kissed. Again.
“What was that for?” she asked, wondering if she could get him to do a replay.
“I just felt like it.”
“It’s not going to make me any less curious, if that’s what you think,” she warned.
Noah laughed. “I’ll tell you what, some of us local guys have a sports team called the Bruisers. We play whatever is in season and tonight is the last basketball game. Come to that, come with me to Adz afterward for the last-game celebration—that’s our local pub. And maybe—maybe—we can talk about me and my dark part some more.”
“I can’t tonight—I felt guilty for upsetting Gram today and promised her a game-night tonight—board games, not basketball.”
“Okay,” he renegotiated, “skip my game to spend that time with your grandmother, meet me at Adz afterward. If you want to hear about my lost years—”
Marti lau
ghed. “There were lost years?”
“No, I just thought it sounded good. But if you want to hear about what got me out of being a badass kid, the only chance you have is if you show up at Adz tonight.”
Marti pretended to think it over. And it was only pretense because she already knew she was going to the pub tonight, not only to have her curiosity satisfied, but to see Noah again.
She wasn’t going to let him know that, though. So she stood and said, “I’ll think about it.”
Then she did what she’d been wanting to do since they’d left the house—she reached up and brushed the sawdust out of his hair, finding that it was every bit as soft as she’d recalled. And even that small amount of contact was enough to ignite something in the air between them.
Which was when Noah leaned forward and kissed her a second time.
Shocked yet again, at least he stayed long enough for the kiss to register. But just barely. Warm, supple lips touched hers and then were gone again a split second later—that was all she knew.
Still, it was enough to leave her wanting more.
But she wasn’t going to let him know that, either.
“Just because you felt like it?” she asked, repeating his earlier words but not expecting her voice to come out so breathy and quiet and affected by that brief kiss.
“’Fraid so,” he answered. “Is that bad?”
“I’ve had better,” she goaded him, clearly referring to the kiss itself rather than to whether or not he should have kissed her.
The goad just made him chuckle as if he knew something she didn’t know on that score, too. But all he said was, “I’ll try harder next time. Tonight, maybe…”
Marti laughed at his cockiness. “I’m playing board games with my grandmother tonight,” she countered as if there was still a chance she wouldn’t show up at Adz after his game.
“We’ll see,” Noah said as they headed for the stairs.
And as they each got into their vehicles outside, Marti was once more bouncing from feelings of disloyalty and guilt to eagerness to see Noah again later.
And maybe to also get a taste of what it was like when he tried harder.
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