by Kat Cantrell
“So do I,” he said after a long enough pause that it had become a toss-up whether he’d actually respond. “Where we clash is on how to do that.”
“We shouldn’t be clashing at all! This is not your fight. It’s mine—” She cut herself off before she admitted how important it was for her to change the dynamic she’d started eight years ago. “There’s no fight here. I’m trying to promote progress and give people fair payment for their land. And maybe get a career boost at the same time.”
His expression didn’t change. Did he not have any emotions in his cold, hard chest?
Of course a man like him could never understand what it was like to feel so suffocated and desperate that there was no other way out than to slough off all your responsibilities and just… flee. Or what it meant to grapple with guilt over it on a daily basis. Or how a man’s unfulfilled promise could devastate a woman’s psyche late at night when she had no resources to staunch the crippling emotion.
If she didn’t have this shopping center project, she had nothing.
“I’ve been here long enough to know that people don’t want a shopping center plopped down in the middle of their land. Why don’t you find somewhere else to put it?” he suggested mildly like she was a simpleton who had never considered how much easier it would be to do exactly that.
But Damian’s investors didn’t want the failing, falling-apart town near their resort; they wanted a chic shopping center. Her role was to guide the residents into seeing the benefits to them, namely money and lots of it.
“Because the whole point is to buy the land from the townspeople so they have resources to start over somewhere else if they want. Or stay if they want.” She’d given this speech so many times she could do it in a dead sleep, and the constant repetition had only infused the message with her passion for the project. “It’s about giving them choices. I need the locals to be champions for this, or we’re just hostile developers coming here and building up around them without their say.”
“Funny, seems like that’s happening anyway,” he drawled, which put her back up even worse.
“I have a degree in urban planning,” she informed him. “Which means I know a few things, mister.”
At that, he swung around to face her, leaning one hip on the railing and crossing his arms to mirror her but in a maddeningly casual pose that drew attention to the hard swell of biceps that had burst out below his T-shirt sleeves. A slow smile spilled onto his face, which hooked her inside, way down deep.
She liked it better when he was ignoring her.
“Well, now. Did they forget to write the definition of ‘urban’ on the board while you were earning that fancy degree?” he asked, and one side of his grin kicked up into an infuriating smirk. “Because I don’t see anything urban around here. Missy.”
She blinked. Had he called her Missy? “My name is Havana.”
His gaze made a round trip down her body and back up again, laying down trails of heat as it went. “Oh, I’m aware. It suits you.”
She rolled her eyes, hoping against hope that would prevent him from seeing that he had any effect on her whatsoever. Because he didn’t. Shouldn’t. Which wasn’t the same thing at all, and holy cow, why did he have to be so confounding? “Yeah, that’s original. I’ve never heard that one before. Havana is all about hot Cuban rhythms and spice, right? You wanna salsa, let’s salsa.”
“Actually I was going to say it’s ruled by a dictator.”
She stared at him, and he stared back, the corner of his mouth twitching, and for who knew what reason, she burst out laughing. Tension release. Or something. That was a new one, and she had to hand it to him. “Touché. Can we call a truce please?”
Peacemaking was a first for her, though she doubted he’d appreciate the significance of someone who lived on the front lines taking a step back. Holding her position had been an art form for so long that even she didn’t know what came next. But it was painfully obvious she couldn’t win this battle by staying crossways with everyone, least of all this man who seemed to have touched down in the middle of Superstition Springs without a how-de-do.
“Yeah.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, looking as baffled as she felt. “But only because a woman who can laugh at herself is a huge turn-on.”
Mayday ! That was not anywhere close to what she’d been aiming for, and she didn’t like the pleased little hum that had started up inside as she internalized his attraction to her. “I’m engaged.”
He snorted out a laugh of his own. “Relax. I meant that in the rhetorical sense.”
“That’s a fancy term. Do you always backpedal using twenty-dollar words?” she asked him sweetly, thrilled to have finally gained the upper hand.
“I never backpedal.” The balcony shrank down in size as he treated her to the full force of the heat he seemed capable of producing at the drop of a hat. “And I never misspeak. If I say you’ve turned me on, take that to the bank. Stop throwing your fiancé in my face like it’s some kind of barrier to a man finding you attractive. It’s not. All that means is I’m not going to act on it.”
Her mouth flapped a bit before she could figure out if she wanted to open it or close it. What was she supposed to do with him? The whole point of having a fiancé was to avoid this exact thing. Well… no, it wasn’t. Not at all. More to the point, she’d been angling to avoid Serenity’s prediction, and that factor was still in play. He’d said he’d respect that she had a fiancé, which meant she could take his advice and actually relax. Caleb wasn’t even flirting with her, not really, just stating facts so she knew where she stood.
That warmed her up faster than anything else he’d done. Who didn’t enjoy a man who told the truth and made his position completely transparent? That was one of her biggest turn-ons. But instead of flipping out about it, she let it ride. So what if she found him attractive back? She could keep that under wraps as she changed strategies. Again.
“Great,” she said with false cheer, determined to get on some kind of track that led to results. “Now that we’ve got all that established, as the first order of business under the new truce agreement, let me show you something that will help you understand the vision Damian and I have.”
His eyebrows lifted in mild curiosity as he spread his hands toward the street below. “Show away.”
“You have to come with me. It’s a little ways outside of town.”
“Sure your fiancé would be down with that?”
His lazy drawl curled through her as the trap sprang closed, and his meaning took shape in her gut. Caleb had admitted he was attracted to her, and any man worth his salt would not like the woman he intended to marry hanging out with a rival. But if she held fast to that premise, then she couldn’t continue her campaign to win Caleb over to her side, which seemed not to have materialized like she’d have hoped in the first place. Neither did she think Damian would be a good addition to the party, or she’d have to spend all her time faking like they were a couple instead of focusing.
Ugh. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Because that was her life, or more to the point, she seemed destined to make it that way.
“He trusts me,” she told him, which was so lame there was no way Caleb would let that go.
He didn’t. He didn’t move at all, but she felt his presence crowding her in a very non-hands-off kind of way. “It’s a matter of principle, not trust. If you were mine, I wouldn’t want you within ten feet of another man unless I was right there by your side.”
“Well, Damian is not a Neanderthal who thinks an engagement ring means he owns me,” she countered with a smirk. Thank goodness. He’d finally revealed something she could latch onto that decreased Caleb Hardy’s attractiveness quotient. Possessive, jealous men did not do it for her.
Shaking his head, he let a wicked smile spread across his face. “You’ve never been with a real man, I see. Otherwise, you’d understand that I’m not talking about staking a claim. If you were mine, I’d be by your side a
lways, reminding you how beautiful I think you are. Telling you what things I admire about you, holding your hand because I could never get enough of touching you and that’s the only publicly approved way to do it. Basically I’d be doing whatever it took so you never wanted to look at another man as long as you live.”
The rush of liquid warmth inside should not have been so strong. But holy cow. She shut her eyes for a moment, which did no good because his smile had emblazoned itself across her brain. Probably she’d be seeing it in her sleep tonight.
She had no experience with someone like Caleb Hardy. The last man she’d let into her life had run away from her as fast as he could.
She’d like to order him not to say stuff like that, but doing so would tip him off that it had affected her, which had probably been the whole reason he’d done it—not because he really was that romantic but strictly to mess with her.
“Since I’m not yours, we have nothing to worry about,” she informed him primly. “Damian and I have a great relationship, and it doesn’t require us to spend twenty-four/seven in each other’s company.”
That didn’t even sound like fun. She liked her space. A man hanging around all the time? No thanks.
But rationalizing it didn’t seem to stop a sudden ache inside that wouldn’t ease. What would it feel like to have a man want you that much? And what did she do with the sudden, unexpected,
secret
craving for exactly that?
Seven
Caleb followed Havana down the stairs to the narrow alleyway between the hotel and the boarded-up clinic, opting to keep his mouth shut for once.
What had possessed him to agree to go anywhere with the Dictator? She might be easy on the eyes, but that was the only body part he could say that about. Sometimes just looking at her was a slug to the gut, and that in turn jackhammered at his conscience.
She was engaged, as she loved to tell him. And a pain in the butt. None of that seemed to be getting through to his Neanderthal brain. So of course, they were en route to someplace that would not fix any of the above and had all the hallmarks of sending him to the loony bin instead.
“Do you mind driving?” she asked.
Without waiting on his answer, she headed for the Yukon that she’d no doubt figured out was his either by the California plates or because that information had made the rounds via the Superstition Springs gossip train earlier today.
“Sure, why not?” he muttered. Probably she’d throw down a few more requests before the sun set, and he had a feeling he’d comply with those too, strictly in the name of honoring the truce they’d somehow fallen into. Caleb prided himself on being a man of his word.
Besides, if he was going to stop her from convincing everyone in town to sell, he had to stick closer to her than a flak jacket, no matter how hard it was to stop imagining his hands tangled up in her hair. He’d promised Serenity. So he couldn’t have exactly refused to go on this field trip anyway.
The moment Havana slid into the passenger seat, Caleb discovered that sin did indeed have a scent and she’d taken a bath in it. The punch took his breath, and his eyes crossed with the effort to keep her effect on him from being broadcast in a very graphic way. Never had he had such a physical reaction to the way a woman smelled. Maybe it was a simple matter of replacing Rowe in that seat, who had called shotgun for the entire drive from the base in Coronado. The lady constituted a class A upgrade over his brother, that was for sure.
“Where to?” he wheezed and cleared his throat as he started the engine.
“Just over the hill. Drive down Potter’s and take a left.” When he cocked a brow at her, she laughed. “You’re going to want to learn your way around if you aim to stay, city boy. All our roads are named after the family who owns the house built on it.”
“Let me know when we get to an actual road then, okay?” he said tongue in cheek as the Yukon bounced over three deep ruts in a row. Improvements to the thoroughfares wouldn’t be out of line before anyone did a thing to the town itself.
Two women stood outside of Voodoo Grocery gabbing, both of whom stopped in the middle of their sentences to stare at the Yukon as they rolled past. Havana waved. The women did not return the gesture, but she took it in stride without comment.
“It’ll smooth out in a minute,” she said instead and rubbed at her temple almost absently.
There was something in the set of her jaw that told him the women’s snub had bothered her, but as she’d mentioned, he hadn’t been here that long and still wasn’t sure how to handle anything except the redhead in the next seat. Havana, he got. The rest of the town? His raging uncertainty after screwing up so badly in Syria gave him more pause than he’d like. He didn’t know how to do this thing where he hesitated half the time.
The last boarded-up building at the end of town slipped by as he drove, and then there was nothing again but scrubby trees and tall grass that looked to have been hacked low by either a machete or one of those industrial-sized mowers with a dull blade. Landscaping was not a concept embraced by Superstition Springs apparently. Was that something that should be changed?
Caleb headed north, opposite how he’d driven into town, so this was new terrain. Though it looked pretty much the same. As he took the curve in the road and the SUV rolled over a hill, the land spread out beneath the road, shimmering in the sun. A ribbon of dark blue water snaked through a bed of earth, and as he got closer, the water got clearer.
Not the same. Not the same at all.
“That’s the Colorado,” Havana murmured. “Not the Grand Canyon one. The Texas one, but it has some pretty cool things about it too. Park over there and I’ll show you.”
The landscape grew greener and denser the closer to the water they got, popping with color against the blue sky that stretched in all directions for a million miles. A rock formation the color of sand jutted out of the ground, and without hesitation, she clambered up onto the smallest one, then the next until she’d almost scaled it. No fear in that one. Not to be outdone, he followed her easily, drawing up next to her where she had perched on the tallest rock.
A large, clear pool had formed where the river had cut away limestone, creating a perfect, well-hidden swimming hole. The water was a gorgeous color, almost the blue of the Caribbean or Thailand, and with sunlight glinting off the surface, it wasn’t hard to imagine you’d been transported to someplace else. As if you’d been cut off from the real world and sent to a… a fairy realm. Or something that sounded less dumb.
The light breeze caught a lock of Havana’s bright red hair and flung it over his arm, binding them together as they surveyed the outcropping from their high vantage point.
Something grabbed him by the throat, and it got hard to swallow.
Beyond the pool, the landscape sloped away to become slightly hilly but also stark in a way that made you think about your place in the world. Some areas in the Middle East were like that too, but Caleb had always felt like an outsider there. Here the land welcomed him, embracing him in a way he couldn’t quite put into words.
There was something… extra. Something he couldn’t deny.
That mystical element he hadn’t wanted to believe existed—this was it. He could feel it seeping from the stone through his soles and up into his bones. From the moment the teams had decided they were done with a few extraneous SEALs who’d become a liability, he’d needed a place to land where he could believe again. Havana had unwittingly given that to him.
“Welcome to Superstition Springs,” she said and spread her hands wide to encompass the entire pool. “This is what gave the town its name. The water is fresh and stays cool even in the summer when it’s a hundred and ten. We don’t know why. It’s part of the lore of this area. Imagine a resort built on the river with a view of this place.”
And along with that, the crowds who would spoil it. But he was still too caught up in the beauty of the springs for his voice to work, and that alone barred him from interrupting the vision she spun.
“Damian wants to build a golf course to the east, with the river woven through it to form water hazards.” Hands fluttering as she shaped the air to illustrate her point with imaginary pictures, she continued. “We’re going to work with the land, become a part of it. Honor it. Can you unbend enough to see it?”
“I can see a lot of room for error with that approach,” he told her with a shrug because honesty was as much of an ingrained piece of his makeup as his drive to change the future for the better. “But I’m just here for the ride, so sell me on it.”
The lock of hair slipped from his arm as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, savoring. “I love this spot. I came here a lot as a teenager, dreaming of getting out of here once and for all. I never in a million years thought I’d be back trying to save the town that didn’t welcome me home.”
Like the women who hadn’t reciprocated when she’d waved. He tore his gaze from the landscape and fixed it on the redhead, who had brought him here for what were still nebulous reasons. Her expression bordered on grave, and this was too beautiful of a setting to be so serious.
But that was not something he knew how to fix. The concept of home wasn’t his area of expertise either. “You’ve been gone what, six, seven years?”
“Something like that.”
This was not the conversation he’d prepped for, and all at once, she’d clammed up instead of working on the hard sell he’d expected. “But you still think of it as home?”
“Yeah, of course.” Surprise flitted across her face as she answered him. “Austin never felt that way, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe you should treat it like a home then,” he suggested gently, still not sure why she’d brought him along if all she planned to do was some soul searching. “Show people that you care about the things that are important to them. Shopping centers don’t seem to be it.”
Her brows drew together. “I do care. That’s why I’m doing this. Having choices is what’s important to people, not strong-arming them into leaving piles of money on the table because Aunt Serenity wants it that way. The town is falling apart. A total eyesore.”