“Wow.” Sienna brushed stray hairs from her forehead “You were right. That was pretty relaxing.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She leaned over and planted both hands on his mat. “And strangely erotic.”
He barely had time to register the words before she kissed him. She tasted like lemons and the tang of salty sweat, and hot, base desire rushed over him. All his earlier vows fled, and for a long few seconds, he leaned in and kissed her back. He took her shoulders in his hands, bracing himself so he didn’t fall over on top of her. Not like that would be a bad thing.
Then he broke the kiss. What the hell was he thinking? Windows lined the fitness room, which meant anyone working out could peek in and see them. But he didn’t care so much about that. He absolutely, positively could not let this happen again. Not with Sienna. Not with anyone.
“Sorry.” He grunted as he jumped up. “It’s just not…” He didn’t know how to finish.
She sat back and looked at him. An injured expression crossed her face. Her hair dropped into her face, but he could still see the confusion and hurt in her eyes. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She gave a short nod, stood, and rolled up her mat. “Thanks for the workout,” she said. She didn’t look at him. “I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah. See you.” Idiot. Mike cursed himself as he watched Sienna go. Then he loaded a bar with the heaviest weights he could manage and lifted until his arms burned.
Zane walked into the gym a few minutes later. “Hey, how’s it going?” He peered at Mike’s face. “Whoa. You look pissed as all hell. What happened?”
Mike sat on the floor beside the incline bench. He’d just finished one hundred sit-ups. Now his abs burned along with every other muscle in his body. “Nothin’.”
“Bullshit.” Zane arranged his lanky frame on the bench and began to do crunches.
Mike drank some water. “You hear Sienna’s back in town?”
Zane stopped and braced his hands under his knees. “No. Really?”
“She’s taking over Lucy Foster’s class.”
Zane dropped back down. “Sounds like that should be good news.”
Mike didn’t answer. He mopped his face with the edge of his T-shirt. The peace he’d felt after meditating had long since fled. His heart beat raggedly, and his calves had started to cramp.
“So what’s the deal?” Zane swung himself to a seat. “She doesn’t want to see you? Is that why you’re pissed off?”
Mike shook his head. “She’s been in here twice.”
“But?”
“She’s only in town short-term. ’Til June.”
“Isn’t that what you’re looking for? No strings? No commitment?”
Mike shrugged again.
“You gonna let that shit that happened out in L.A. eat away at you forever?” Zane lay back down and started another set of crunches. A pair of young blond women walked by. The shorter and prettier of the two smiled and waved at Mike. He waved back. He couldn’t place her.
“It’s not eating away at me,” he said when the women wandered over to the treadmills. “I’m just taking it as a lesson learned.” He should have kept that in mind from the moment he met Sienna the first time. Forget the kisses. Forget everything. “I can’t spend any more time with her,” he said abruptly. She was wreaking havoc on his mind and body, and he’d only spent a handful of hours with her.
Zane stopped again, out of breath. He ran a hand across his brow. “So tell her that. She can’t blame you.” He thumped Mike on the back and walked to the free weights, where he started doing biceps curls.
Mike chewed his bottom lip as he headed for the locker room. So tell her that. Simple answer. He’d end things with her right here and now, before they went any further and he found himself half in love with someone who had no intention of sticking around. Been there, done that, he thought as he ran a hot shower. Nope, his only interaction with Sienna Cruz from this point forward would be a hearty handshake across the desk of Springer Fitness. Period.
Chapter Six
“What the hell was that?” Sienna said aloud. She sat in her car outside the gym and turned the heat to high. She’d caught Mike checking out her ass more than once as they worked out. They’d dated a handful of times last month. And he’d kissed her back, both today and last night. No mistaking the heat between them, his tongue meeting hers as he wrapped those strong hands around her arms. Her belly and all parts south clenched with the memory.
But then he’d pulled away from her like he’d been stung, or like he’d suddenly realized she carried the Black Plague. I thought we were getting along, she thought as she turned on her headlights and checked Main Street before pulling out. Thought we had some chemistry. Guess I read that wrong. She frowned as she slowed at the single traffic light in the center of town. You’re not interested in anything long-term, she reminded herself, but that didn’t ease the sting of his reaction. She liked Mike. She admired his hard work and growing business. Besides that, he turned her thoughts upside down every time she saw him. To be pushed away in the middle of a kiss—well, it hurt.
She drove by Zeb’s Diner and her apartment but didn’t stop. Last thing she wanted right now was to sit alone in an empty room and think about her day. Instead, she took a loop down Park Place Run, a new block of shops and office buildings and restaurants. Fifteen years ago, it had been farmland. Now sidewalks with miniature fir trees strung in twinkling lights flanked her. Clothing boutiques, an organic food store, and an upscale salon lined one side of the street. Two sleek office buildings, a bank, and a couple of restaurants lined the right. As she reached the dead end, something scurried across the street, and two yellow eyes blinked up at her.
Sienna stomped on the brakes as a skinny-looking cat bolted into a copse of frozen bushes next to Diva Designs. Poor thing. On a night like this one, it would probably freeze before morning. She peered into the dark, but it had vanished. Gently, she toed the accelerator and continued out of town, following Main Street as it turned into County Route 78 and then Red Barn Road. A few stately homes lined both sides of this road on the north side of Pine Point, though most remained in disrepair. One notable one, a gorgeous three story with a wide front porch, looked recently renovated. Thompson, read the name on the mailbox, and Sienna had a vague memory of a brother and sister with that last name back in school. So few people I remember. Even fewer she’d kept in touch with.
She left the town limits of Pine Point behind her as she climbed the mountain that led to Silver Valley. She wasn’t planning on going all the way to the next town, but if she remembered correctly, a secondary road up ahead cut across the mountain and looped back on the other side of Pine Point.
She slowed, made a left turn on the nameless road, and pulled to the shoulder. Below her lay all of Pine Point, from the new gated development to Main Street to the mobile homes that made up the town’s south end. A set of railroad tracks, no longer used, ran parallel to the interstate. The run-down area near the interstate had been the only place her mother could afford a second-floor, one-bedroom apartment. Her throat tightened as she recalled the constant smell of Chinese food from the restaurant below. Hong Lee, the owner, sometimes took pity on them and gave them leftovers at the end of the night.
“What is this?” her mother used to say in a sad, accented voice. “I should be making you empanadas and tortillas. Instead, we are eating fried rice and wonton soup.”
Sienna had never minded. Worse than the cold Chinese food had been the look of sadness on her mother’s face and the furrows in her brow that cut deeper every year. Only the last few months, she’d seemed happy again.
“I am making a better life for you,” she said one afternoon when Sienna came home from school. She danced around the tiny room and pretended to sprinkle fairy dust on Sienna’s shoulders. “All this is for you.” She pointed to the shabby couch, the TV, t
he table in the kitchen, and the steaming plate of rice and beans in the middle of it. “You will have a better life than I did.”
When she smiled, the years fell away, and she looked like she could be Sienna’s older sister, dark-eyed and dark-haired and dancing as salsa music played on the radio.
It wouldn’t be hard to have a better life than someone who had died in her early thirties. Sienna’s eyes filled, and suddenly the tears leaked out, over the hand pressed to her mouth, and down the front of her coat. Her shoulders shook, and for a moment her grief swelled so big it filled the car, pressed against the doors and windows and took away all the air.
She gulped in oxygen, her eyes and lungs burning with the effort. Not fair. She hadn’t allowed herself to think those words in years. No one’s life was fair. Everyone had troubles. Her mother had died, yes, but Sienna had moved on. She’d found another place to live. She’d put herself through school. She’d found friends and delved into research and vowed never to let her loss define her.
But on that lonely stretch of road, with the winter wind howling around her car and the tears continuing to fall, Sienna let herself ache. She missed her mother. She missed a life she’d never known, the security of growing up with a family and good friends and knowing where she’d wake in the morning and where she’d go to sleep at night. For a long time, she sat there, until she ran out of tears and the memories faded and her stomach growled to remind her it was well past dinner.
Can only move forward. Can’t go back. Her lips moved as she repeated the words. She descended the mountain, coming into Pine Point on its far south side. A dog trotted along the side of the road, its tongue lolling from its mouth. The few homes she passed had broken-down cars in the front yards and garbage strewn across the steps. A scrawny yellow cat crept under the body of a rusted truck in one driveway. A pot-bellied woman stood on the porch, smoking a cigarette and shivering.
I might have ended up here. Sienna slowed. If she’d stayed and graduated from Pine Point High, she might have taken a job waiting tables, or cleaning homes like her mother. After eight or ten years, if she was lucky, she might have saved up enough money for a down payment on one of these mobile homes. Everything happened for a reason. If her mother’s death had been the horrible avenue by which she found her way to North Carolina and a life of academics, then Sienna would focus on that.
A few specks of snow dotted her windshield, and she turned on the wipers. Time to eat. She didn’t have much in her refrigerator, but she didn’t feel like sitting alone in a restaurant either. She stopped at the end of the road, pulled a tissue from her purse, and blew her nose. Just past the interstate sat a row of fast food places. A burger and fries might not be the best choice, but it would hold her over until morning.
Food, then a shower, then she’d crawl under the covers and wait for tomorrow to come. Things always looked brighter in the morning.
Didn’t they?
* * * * *
Mike bounded up the front steps and into his mother’s house, bringing a swath of snow and cold air with him. “Hi, Ma.”
“Mikey.” His mother smiled from the kitchen. Plastic containers lined the counters, and she scraped the bottom of a pot on the stove. The aromas of beef stew and homemade rolls filled the house. “You’re home late tonight. I was just putting this away. Hungry?”
“Yum. Yes.” He kicked off his boots and hung his jacket by the door. He found a beer in the fridge and sat at the small, chipped kitchen table. “Need any help?”
“No. But thank you.” She patted his arm. “How was work today?”
“Good, fine.” If you don’t count my acting like an idiot around a gorgeous woman. “How was yours?”
“Very nice. Martha picked me up for lunch with the girls, and then we swung by the library so I could get some books.”
Mike glanced at the table in the narrow hallway. Five or six thick hardcovers sat atop it. “How long will it take you to read those?”
She laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. A week? Maybe longer?”
Mike took a long pull on his beer. He hadn’t gotten the book bug from his mother, that was for sure. As far as he knew, he got his looks and his stubbornness from her, and his dyslexia and business smarts from his father, who’d long since left Pine Point in search of greener pastures and younger women.
Abruptly, he stood. “Ma, I’ll be right back. Gotta change.”
“Of course, honey.”
He trudged up the back stairs and into his apartment, shivering. No prediction of snow tonight, but the temperatures were supposed to hit the single digits. He nudged up the thermostat as he peeled off his shirt and jeans and tossed them in the general direction of a laundry pile near his bedroom. He grabbed a clean T-shirt and sweats and was about to pull them on when he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. A streak of black grease covered his right cheek. His hair stood up on end. But that wasn’t what surprised him. Tiny lines at the edges of his eyes stood out in the yellow light. He took a couple steps closer to the medicine cabinet. Shit. Take a look at those. When he pulled on the skin, the wrinkles smoothed for only a second before returning.
“Shit. I am gettin’ old.” And he didn’t turn thirty until next year. Well, that was what eight years of drinking and eight months in jail did to you.
I should be one of those guest speakers at a school, he thought as he turned off the lights and headed back to his mother’s beef stew. This is how you don’t want to end up. He’d tell them what choices not to make and how to find friends and women who wouldn’t betray them. A harsh laugh left his lips. “Imagine me in a school.” He’d done enough to get by back in Pine Point High, and he’d seen his share of the principal’s office. School was the last place he would ever spend time as an adult, no matter how much life advice he had to give.
He stopped outside on the stairs and took a deep inhalation. Stars covered the night sky, and something inside him twinged, a longing for something he wasn’t sure he’d ever have. Be nice to have someone to look at the sky with. The thought, silly and dramatic, surprised him. He took another breath and let the frosty air burn his lungs.
He’d been screwed but good by his ex out in L.A. He hadn’t dated anyone seriously since returning to Pine Point, and he wasn’t about to start. You trusted someone, and eventually they let you down. That was the story of life. He’d seen it happen to more good guys than he could count. His breath ribboned out against the night sky as he trudged down the remaining stairs. As much as he liked talking to Sienna, fantasized about her naked, and thought about her when she wasn’t around, getting any more involved with her would only lead to a letdown.
Zane was right. Tomorrow, Mike would tell Sienna exactly how he felt.
Chapter Seven
Tuesday morning in Room Eighteen went better than Monday, if only because Sienna arrived before the kids and was prepared when they walked in from the bus. They made it through morning meeting, math, and half of reading before the meltdowns began.
“I wanted peanut butter!” Billy shrieked at the top of his lungs. He threw himself onto the rug and began to beat his hands and feet against the floor.
Sienna laced both hands over her eyes. They’d been reading the monthly school field trip guide, then the after-school movie list, and then the lunch menu. Today’s cold lunch was ham and cheese on wheat bread. Not peanut butter. Thus the tantrum.
Silas climbed into his chair and rocked so hard the books on the shelf nearby vibrated. Caleb sat at the table, head bent over his math sheets. Bailey watched his brother with wide eyes and red cheeks, probably about to join in the shrieking. Sienna glanced at Dawn, who was chewing at her fingernails and making them bleed.
“Silas, honey, let’s take it down a notch.” She reached for a wooden Jacob’s Ladder toy and handed it to him. “Here.” He clutched it in both hands and looked at her for a moment, confused. Then the rocking slowed
as he began to flip the pieces of the toy over and back.
Billy’s cries grew weaker, and she decided to risk letting him wear himself out. She patted Bailey on the back and handed him the alphabet coloring sheets he’d been working on earlier. “Bailey, please sit down here,” she said as she pulled out a chair across from Caleb. Caleb looked up in alarm, but she pointed at his worksheet. “Continue.” He blinked and then looked down without a word.
As Bailey climbed into the chair and took a red crayon in one fist, his brother looked over his shoulder, still prone in the middle of the room. “I wanted peanut butter,” he said in a mournful voice.
“I know, honey,” Sienna said, “but we don’t always get what we want.” Boy, isn’t that the truth? “You’ll have peanut butter another day.” She walked over and pulled him onto her lap, cradling him in a hug before smoothing his mussed hair and handing him a tissue. He left tear streaks on her blue shirt and what looked like a black handprint as well.
Without making a sound, Dawn began to pace in a circle around the room, following the pattern of the rug and then the tiles of the floor when the rug ended. She didn’t speak. She didn’t look at anyone else. She pinched her fingers together in a rhythm that matched her footsteps. Sienna didn’t follow her or stop her. Instead, she looked at her watch. Eleven o’clock. Thirty more minutes before Caleb informed her they had to go to lunch.
Sienna slipped her phone from her pocket. No calls or texts from Mike. She wasn’t sure she’d expected any, not after yesterday’s weird-as-hell kiss, but still. Silence was strange too. She put the phone away again.
The clock crawled its way to lunchtime, and she dropped off her class at the cafeteria and found her way to the faculty room. In her former school, the teacher faculty room had always featured some kind of food, either pastries dropped off by appreciative parents or leftover snacks from a fundraiser. She hoped the same held true for Pine Point Elementary. She still hadn’t managed to get to a grocery store, and all she’d had for breakfast was a granola bar and a large cup of coffee from Zeb’s.
Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 Page 4