“I’m always hungry,” she said.
“Those food trucks over there are new to the area, but they have been getting rave reviews. I’ve always wanted to try them. Are you game?”
“I didn’t bring my purse,” she said. “Maybe another time?”
“Carpe diem,” he said. “My treat.”
Who said he wasn’t spontaneous? He wasn’t even irritated with Lucy anymore for calling him that. Sometimes the best cure was for someone to hold up a mirror so a person could see himself more clearly.
After his divorce he had allowed inertia to set in. He would own that. But things were changing now. Life was opening up.
He smiled at Chelsea. For the first time in a long time he wanted to step out of the box he’d been living in for the past five years.
They walked over to the food trucks, arms bumping, hands brushing occasionally. They laughed and talked about everything and nothing in particular as they sat on a park bench eating pulled pork and cinnamon doughnuts. It was nice just to be.
“Do your parents live in London?” he asked.
She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Just outside the city in a place called Longbridge. But they travel a lot.”
“You have what—three siblings, if I remember correctly?”
“Two brothers and a sister. All of them older.”
“What do they do?”
She frowned for a moment. “Um... My sister works in fashion. One brother is a doctor—he’s quite brilliant. The other is a...bureaucrat.”
“So you’re the one who should know how to work the system and all its red tape,” he said. “Since you have a bureaucrat in the family.”
“I don’t know about that. British and US zoning isn’t exactly apples to apples.”
“True. Are your parents retired? You mentioned that they travel a lot.”
She laughed. “Why are you grilling me?”
“I’m not. I just want to know you better. I want to unravel all the mysteries of Chelsea Allen.”
“I don’t quite know what to say.”
“I do. Chelsea Allen, you are an enigma.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it seems like there is a whole lot about you I still don’t know.”
Ethan shrugged and she smiled. Once again the image of an angel came to mind. But he knew angels didn’t kiss like that and they didn’t have curves that tempted him to touch her in a way that was anything but innocent.
No, Chelsea Allen was no guardian angel, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to believe that she might be the one who could save him from himself. She might be the one who could pull him out of this rut he’d dug for himself over the past five years and start living again.
* * *
“You know what I want to do?” she said.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to go swing on that swing set over there. I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
“Let’s do it.”
They got up and started making their way across the green, manicured lawn toward the empty playground.
She turned to him as they were walking. “I told you about me. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Their gazes snared for an electric moment and the corner of his mouth quirked up, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. It was a little mesmerizing. She realized even if she didn’t do much while she was staying in Celebration, Texas, she could pass the time looking at his dimple and be a very happy woman.
It’s the little things in life.
“I’ve been divorced for five years. I was a mess for about three years after we split up, but I’m sober now.”
They sat on adjacent swings but angled themselves toward each other.
“When did you become friends?” Chelsea asked. “Saturday at the wedding, you mentioned that you and Molly are good friends now.”
“Actually, we are so much better as friends than lovers and especially better at friendship than being married. We just didn’t want the same things in life, but we didn’t realize it until after we’d tied the knot. Things between us didn’t smooth out until after I sobered up.”
She didn’t quite know what to say. He was very forthright about his struggle, but she wanted him to take the lead in pressing further. So she walked the swing back and pushed off, pumping her legs to start the swinging momentum. It would give him an easy out if he wanted to move away from the subject.
She was surprised and glad when he continued.
“My drinking started getting out of hand when we moved to Chicago. We both traveled a lot for our jobs.”
“You mentioned that she was in pharmaceutical sales, but what did you do?”
“I worked for an agricultural company in feed sales. Not very exciting, but I had a huge northwestern territory. Like I said, it involved a lot of traveling.”
He got up and stood behind her, grabbing her around the waist. It was nice to feel his hands on her and she was a little disappointed when he gave her a gentle push. She stopped pumping her legs. She didn’t want to go too high because she wanted to hear every word that he was confiding.
“When I was on the road I would have a couple or three beers every night—sometimes four or five. When I was home and Molly was away, I would meet up with friends every night for drinks. When she was home and we were together we would drink. There was a lot of booze involved. I was holding a lot of anger and resentment inside and that’s how I numbed it. I hated living in Chicago, but I did it for her because it made her happy.”
They continued that touch-push rhythm as they talked. Each time his hands were on her back, a shiver of awareness shimmied through her.
She didn’t want it to stop there. She wanted to kiss him again to see if it really was as good as it had been at the wedding. Would she see sparks again?
“I don’t see you as a big city kind of guy.”
“I’m not, and moving away from Celebration wasn’t the life plan that Molly and I originally made when we got engaged. We’d been sweethearts since high school and we’d always talked about a future together. We’d planned on going to college together. Then we were supposed to come back to Celebration and I was going to work with my dad and eventually take over the ranch after he retired. She went to business school and was supposed to keep the books and manage the business end. We’d talked about raising our kids here and living happily-ever-after. I’ll bet that sounds pretty boring to someone who grew up in a place like London.”
She adjusted her grip on the swing’s chain, tipping her head back to look at him as she swung out. “No, not really. It’s nice here. I can breathe and hear myself think.”
“Yeah, but it’ll get old after a while. Trust me.”
“Are you over this place?” she asked.
“Me? No. I’m so deeply rooted here I can’t see myself living anywhere else. Wouldn’t mind traveling now and again, but this is home. Molly thought she wanted it, too. She thought that marriage and kids and family would be enough. But how could she know what she wanted when she didn’t even know herself?”
“People change, I guess,” Chelsea said, slowing down to a stop. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”
“Marriage is hard. It’s not the fairy tale people make it out to be. We’re all human. We screw up. We make mistakes and sometimes we end up wanting different things than we thought we wanted. That’s growing as a person. I get that. If you don’t grow you’re stagnant and that comes with its own set of tests. The challenge is when you’re married and you change in opposite directions. One day you wake up and realize you love someone, but never really knew that person.”
“Did you just wake up one d
ay and decide you didn’t want to live in Chicago anymore?”
“The path wasn’t that direct. We’d been in Chicago a couple of years when my folks were in an accident that killed my dad and left my mom in a wheelchair. Lucy was only fourteen. Molly and I left our jobs and came home to take care of everyone and the ranch. Molly was really good to Lucy and Mom, but I knew that wasn’t where she wanted to be. Then Mom died less than a year later.”
Chelsea dragged her feet, stopped the swing and turned to him.
“I’m so sorry.”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. She understood, because what was there to say?
“Did Molly go back to Chicago?”
He nodded. “We’d only planned on staying until we could get Mom to the point where she was taking care of herself. She still had use of her arms and she could get around in a wheelchair. Molly kept saying that we needed to give her as much independence as possible. She was right. No grown woman wants to be treated like an invalid. But Lucy was so young and Mom never fully recovered.”
With the palm of his hand, he thumped his chest in the area of his heart. “She was never the same after Dad was gone. Lucy swears she died of a broken heart.”
“It sounds like it.”
“After she was gone, I couldn’t leave Lucy—she’d just turned fifteen. She’d just started high school and both of her parents were gone. Jude took off to ride bulls. Frankly, I wanted to stay and run the ranch. It was selfish, but it was the truth. It was the only piece of normal I could grab. I wanted to make sure my little sister was okay and I needed to make sense of things. They offered Molly her old job back in Chicago. The short version is we tried living apart for about a year and a half before we knew it wouldn’t work and then we decided to split. There’s a three-year period tacked on the end that’s a little fuzzy and involves me nearly losing the ranch—you wouldn’t have liked me then. That’s why I got sober and haven’t had a drink for the past two years and that brings us to now.”
Tears welled in Chelsea’s eyes. She was speechless.
Ethan Campbell was a good man. He was strong and solid and kind. Sure, he was a little short on patience, but he battled his demons like a gladiator. He was the kind of guy who sacrificed and didn’t go all bitter martyr on everyone. He looked out for his family and neighbors and the community. He was even friends with his ex.
Here he was sharing his deep-hearted truth, but she’d only glossed over the surface of her life, which seemed so shallow by comparison. What was she supposed to tell him? I’ve dated a lot of men. The one I got serious about proved I’m a poor judge of character. When my parents discovered our sex tape was all over the internet, they told me they didn’t want to see my face again until I’d cleaned up the dirty mess. And, oh, yeah, Chelsea Allen isn’t even my real name.
That was rich. It was her life in a nutshell.
Would Ethan be as magnanimous toward her if she dug deeper and told him the whole sordid truth of what brought her here? Judging by what she knew of him, he might be.
Still, right now things were so good and he looked at her like she was some kind of goddess. She couldn’t bear the thought of him looking at her any other way—like she was tainted and dirty and done.
She would be leaving Celebration as soon as she’d put her life back together. In the meantime, Ethan Campbell made her want to be a better person. Was it so bad that she wanted to try to live up to that standard? Was it so wrong to want a fresh start without the permanent stain of her past fouling the future?
“I guess fate has a funny way of stepping in.” She stood up and turned to face him. “Do you believe in fate, Ethan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The next thing she knew, Ethan’s arms were around her waist, pulling her close. His lips were skimming her cheek. His eyes were an unfathomably dark shade of blue, like blue suede or a dusky sky, and they were full of desire.
Her heart hammered against her breastbone.
She wasn’t sure who moved first, but it didn’t matter. The world went away as his lips met hers and her hands fisted into his shirt collar, pulling him closer.
This time it was different than when they’d come together under the mistletoe. It felt all at once brand-new and like coming home. He tasted like hope and heartbreak, but it was over before it had a chance to blossom into more.
So how was it that in the span of maybe ten heartbeats a lifetime of possibilities flashed through her mind in living color so vivid they imprinted there?
This could be good.
How could this be so good and the timing so bad? Of course, she could make the bad go away. All she needed to do was tell him the truth about who she was and why she was here. But if she told him the truth, he might just get up and walk away.
Better now than later, she told herself. But somehow the pep talk didn’t ring true.
He’d rested his forehead against hers. A shadow swept across his features but it didn’t hide his desire. She breathed in his smell that was becoming so familiar—soap and leather, the citrusy scent of his aftershave—all male and intoxicating and so very arousing. Desire, heady and irresistible, engulfed her. She tried to ignore the contrast of clean male juxtaposed with the texture of his work-worn hands as he caressed the back of her neck. It was heavenly.
His mouth tempted her again and she leaned in for another taste, a taste that awakened a voracious hunger inside her. As long as they were kissing, they didn’t have to talk, and if they didn’t talk, she didn’t have to tell him the truth.
At least not yet.
His lips parted and he deepened the kiss. Chelsea wanted to consume him. She wanted their bodies to succumb to this intense heat and meld into one.
But all too soon they returned to earth, landing with a thud. She tried to assess how he was feeling. She bit her bottom lip, gaping at him. His blue eyes seemed to be amazed and even darker—almost pitch—with wanting. Or maybe she only imagined his desire because she wanted him to feel the same things she was feeling, to have been as affected by the kiss as profoundly as she had been.
Since Hadden betrayed her, she thought no one would ever be able to break through the wall that she’d built around her heart. A wall designed to keep people out so they never got the chance to betray her the way he had.
“Should I apologize for that?” he murmured, his hand still in her hair, their foreheads still touching, her lips still tingling and craving more.
“No,” she said.
“Good. Because I’m not sorry.”
“Then definitely don’t apologize. Because I’m not mad about it at all.”
She bit her bottom lip. “Well, actually, I was quite mad about that kiss. But not in an angry way. More like a crazy about it kind of mad. So don’t hesitate to do it again.”
* * *
Chelsea climbed up the ladder to sweep the cobwebs off the barn’s rafters. She’d attached an old towel that Juliette had bequeathed to the cause to a long-handled paint roller and voilà! Instant cob-swabber.
The height of the ladder coupled with the extension of the wooden handle gave her extraordinary reach, all the way up to where the high walls connected with the roof.
The barn hadn’t been occupied in ages. From the looks of it, it was entirely possible that these nether regions had never been cleared of cobwebs—even when the place had been in use. But the wood had to be cleaned before they could paint.
The guy they’d hired to help clean up had needed to leave before he finished the job so he could make it to his son’s lacrosse game. He’d offered to stay, but Chelsea had sent him on with good wishes to his son for a winning game.
Chelsea didn’t mind. Since they were paying him hourly, she would save Lucy a bit of money by finishing up the chores herself. Juliette was out of town on a job for the weekend. Chelsea had run home, f
ixed a quick bite to eat and let out Franklin before returning to the job site. A designer’s duties usually didn’t entail custodial services, but she didn’t mind. It was nice to keep busy.
Juliette’s house was lovely and warm and comfortable, but Chelsea had felt restless and cooped up. Better to expend her anxious energy on something productive rather than drive herself and the dog crazy by pacing about the place. This point was driven home when Franklin had tried to herd her toward the couch when she was pacing. If she was irritating the corgi, she knew she needed to get out and do something productive. So she’d come back to the barn. Plus, there was a better chance that she might run into Ethan at the barn than sitting on the couch watching the telly with the dog.
She hadn’t seen him since yesterday when he’d brought her back to Juliette’s after the park. It was clear that they were both a little confused about what to do next.
He’d excused himself, saying he needed to get back to the ranch to do his rounds. She’d welcomed the distance because she needed to put things into perspective.
She could still feel the power of his kiss on her lips. The lingering effects shot an arrow straight down to her lady parts, and they were begging her to get to know Ethan Campbell much better.
After she had a chance to step back and give her ovaries a chance to calm down, common sense stepped in and reminded her that it wasn’t a smart time to lose her wits over a handsome cowboy.
But her ovaries begged to differ. To hell with what she should and shouldn’t do. She was attracted to him. He was attracted to her. They were consenting adults. What was wrong with having a little fling while she was here? She’d said she wouldn’t allow Hadden to cast her in the role of victim. What better way to break out of that corral than to ride that cowboy until all her troubles fell away?
And where would you like him to send the souvenir recording?
Bloody hell! Decent people didn’t do things like that.
Ethan was friends with his ex-wife. He hadn’t sought revenge. He wasn’t inclined to slut-shame her because she hurt his feelings.
She remembered a saying in a needlepoint picture hanging up in Juliette’s house: I’m a grown-ass lady and I do what I want.
The Cowboy's Runaway Bride Page 11