Gus studied him, probably deciding if he should make a joke or not. He must’ve chosen not. “Yes. And she had some pretty insightful things to say, considering she kept insisting she didn’t know you that well.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, Nate was asking her some questions about you—as Nate does—and she answered him really thoughtfully. And besides totally agreeing with everything she said, I couldn’t help but get the impression that she sort of digs you, man.”
Mark shook his head. “Shut up.”
“I’m serious. I wouldn’t pull your chain about this. There was something.”
“What something?” Mark was sitting on a wall of frustration with reality on one side and hope on the other.
“I don’t know. She was just different. It was like she knew you better than I do.”
Mark leaned forward, his chin on his fists. “She is different. From anyone I’ve ever been around.”
“And she’s kind of hot.”
Mark shot him a look.
Gus chuckled. “Well, she is. Or have you not noticed from behind your hood?”
Mark was too tired to swing at him again. “Yeah, I noticed.” He’d noticed how she filled out a thermal T-shirt and a pair of jeans better than anyone he knew. He’d noticed how her cheeks blushed the same color as her lips. He noticed how one small lock of hair near her temple curled even though the rest of her hair was straight. And he remembered the touch of his fingertips on her palm, and again just in front of her ears when he’d put her safety glasses on. That had been a reckless move, but he couldn’t stop it.
“Hey, Ground Control to Major Tom.” Gus snapped his fingers in front of Mark’s face. “Come in, Major Tom.”
Mark swiped his fingers away and rubbed his face. “I’m meeting her at five for this project, and I’m bringing dinner.”
“Sounds like a date to me.”
“It’s not. It’s not that easy.”
“Uh, sure it is. You asked her to help you tonight. You’re bringing dinner—”
“Actually, meeting tonight was her idea.”
“Even better. But dinner was your idea, right?”
Mark hesitated, remembering his botched job at offering to bring food. “We need to eat. But Gus, this isn’t a date.” He frowned. “At least not the kind I’d like to ask her on.”
“So, you do want to ask her out.”
“I want to do a lot of things, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to do them.”
“What’s stupid about it? Just ask her. You’re already miserable, so you’ve got nothing to lose, right?” Gus elbowed Mark’s arm.
“I still have my pride.”
“Maybe that’s your problem. I’m telling you, you’ll be surprised when she says yes.”
Mark’s stomach knotted. “If I ask her, and if she says yes. Which I won’t, and she wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Mark stood and walked a few steps, filled with too much restless energy. “Because I’m not the kind of guy someone like her goes for.” Even as he said it, he remembered the way she’d looked at him in the woodshop, and the way—for a few minutes—he’d forgotten who he’d become while he was with her.
“My friend,” Gus said, “there’s only one way to find out if that’s true.”
“I don’t want to find out.”
“That is definitely not true.”
Mark let out the breath he was holding.
“If you don’t ask her out,” Gus said, “it’s going to drive you crazy.”
Mark turned away, his hands in his pockets. He was halfway there already. “I can’t do it.”
“Sure you can. Rumor is you’re some kind of hero, not that I listen to gossip. And while it’s mostly old ladies who have an unfortunate crush on you—sorry, dude, it’s true—the Mark Rivers I know never backs down from a challenge.”
Mark looked back over his shoulder. “You’re challenging me?”
“I’m not. But I think Dalton Gainer might be.”
Mark turned. “What?”
Gus folded his arms. “He’s been talking down at Jake’s. You know Dalton. Any woman who turns his head must be up for a piece of the Gainer. He’s all but taking bets on how easy it will be to divide and conquer. Not whether he’ll do it, mind you, but how easy it will be.”
Mark’s blood heated, recalling Dalton’s words in the school parking lot, territorial and competitive. Challenge accepted. “She’s not like that.”
Gus laughed. “Then what’s she like?” He raised his brow expectantly.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out.”
Mark stood there, torn between wanting to strangle Gus or remind Dalton of who broke all his records. Not just broke. Obliterated. “I can’t treat her like Dalton would. She’s not a prize. She’s the one—”
“The one?” Gus asked, grinning.
Mark wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. “She’s the one you want next to you on the field. The one you want to get the ball to. You just need to be enough to . . . to make her want to keep playing. Someone like Gainer—he’s not even playing in her league. He’s just looking for a pickup game.” Great. More sports analogies.
“And what are you looking for?” Gus asked.
Mark paused. He hadn’t seen that one coming. He wasn’t looking for anything.
Gus watched him, his grin fading. “Whoa, you are so gone.”
Mark grabbed an empty water bottle from the counter and flung it at Gus.
Gus ducked, his grin back. “Mark wants himself a tight end. For keeps.”
“Shut up, minivan.”
A couple of hours later, Mark left the Grill-n-Go drive-thru with two not-even-meals and a brick in his stomach.
What did he want?
Gus’s question echoed through his thoughts as he considered what Riley would do if Gainer made good on his talk. The jerk had already asked her to Seattle. For a weekend.
What could Mark do to compete with that? He parked in the empty school lot, close to the school doors this time. He sat back in his seat.
What do you want, Rivers?
He couldn’t get past the fear of what wanting brought with it. Wanting someone meant asking them to want you back, and he couldn’t let himself hope that much.
He wanted to help Riley get the nativity figures painted. That’s all. He had as much claim on her as he did the sky.
Mark wants Riley. For keeps.
A knock on the window jolted him, and if he hadn’t still been wearing his seat belt, he was sure his head would’ve hit the roof of the truck.
Riley stood, laughing and hugging her arms around her in the cold afternoon dusk next to his truck door. “I’m sorry,” she said through the window.
He undid his seat belt, grabbed the bags of food and the cup holder with their drinks, and opened the door.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Sure you didn’t.” He got out, and she backed up.
“No, really, I was watching for you because the school doors are locked, and I didn’t want you to be waiting in the cold.”
“Thanks. Sorry I’m late. Happy to see you left your bat at home. Hold these, please.” He held the food out for her to take.
She smiled and obeyed. “No problem. Smells good.”
“Not-even-fries,” he said as he opened the tailgate. “They fry them in not-even-fat.”
“Perfect.”
Getting a good grip around the bundled figures and sliding his arm through the handle on the can of black paint, he shut the tailgate. He glanced at Riley. “After you.”
She led him to the industrial arts building and unlocked the doors. He followed her down the hall past the shop.
“I haven’
t been in here for a while,” he said, stepping into the art room. “I took shop through high school, but I only took art my freshman year. Mom required it.”
Riley led him to the chairs she’d arranged to act as sawhorses with drop cloths draped over them. “She wanted you to have an appreciation for what she did?” she asked, moving a couple of chairs closer to each other with her foot.
“Something like that, yeah.” He set down the bundle and the paint on the closest table. He took the drinks from her and followed her into the office.
“Did it work?”
“Sure. It also proved that I did not inherit my mom’s artistic talents.”
“I’m sure you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“I was quoting my teacher.”
She looked back at him and smiled. “Have a seat.”
He took a chair across from the one behind her desk. She cleared a space and put down two lengths of that brown paper towel all schools had.
He took the drinks out of their caddy. Two Cokes, two milkshakes.
“I smell bacon,” she said, taking her seat.
He ducked his head, hoping he’d chosen right.
Her smile widened as she pulled out the burgers and fries. “Seems to be a recurring thing with us. You can never go wrong with bacon.”
He hated how much he liked how she’d said “us.” One stupid word and he felt like he could be anybody he wanted. “Especially on not-even-burgers.”
She nodded and pushed two fries into her mouth before he had the ketchup out. Mark took a long swig of his Coke. The joke had run its course, but it was good to be sharing a joke with someone you didn’t want to put in a headlock.
“I didn’t have lunch. Thanks.” Her smile made his middle drop.
He concentrated on unwrapping his food. How in the world was he supposed to ask her out? He hadn’t even been considering it until Gus mentioned it, and now it was all he could think about. “I wasn’t sure what kind of shake you’d want, so I got my two favorites, and you can choose.”
“Either way, you’re happy. Very wise.”
“Very risky. I didn’t think about what kind you’d like until the girl was taking my order through the speaker. This one’s strawberry banana with marshmallow, and this one is peanut butter caramel with hot fudge.”
She gave him an odd look. “You’re kidding.”
“Um . . . I sort of tweaked them from the menu flavors. They know what I like.” He left out that the restaurant had named the unique combinations after him: “The Markmallow Smash” and “Rivers of Fudge.” He didn’t call them that. Ever. “You don’t have to have one,” he said. “More for me.”
“I’m having one.” She grabbed a couple more fries, then closed her eyes and swung her finger back and forth between the cups, her lips moving.
“What are you doing?”
“Eeny-meeny. Hush.” She continued until her finger stopped, and she grabbed the hot fudge.
“Eeny-meeny?” he asked.
She nodded, looking up at him with those big eyes as she pulled a hard sip from the straw. After a large swallow, she sighed. “This is good. I mean, really, really good.” She took a big bite of her burger and gave him a thumbs-up.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He pulled in a deep breath. “I was wondering if you would help me with something next week. Something different, not big like this. After you’re not doing anything, I mean. That is, if everything is going well with the painting and the house, and you have time.” His leg bounced under the desk, and he forced it to remain still. “It would only be a morning thing. Maybe more.” The words spilled out as smoothly as potholes on a dirt road.
She swallowed her bite and took a sip of soda, her brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“You’ll see,” he said. You’ll see? Like she’ll accept that as enough to—
“Okay. But if it’s Christmas stuff, could you give me a heads-up? I feel stupid having to ask, but I have to get my head in the right place.”
“It’s not Christmas stuff,” he assured her, though in the back of his mind, he reeled from her answer. She’d said okay. Okay as in yes.
She dropped her eyes and nodded, taking another bite, then looked at his barely touched food. “Eat. We need to get painting.”
He picked up his burger, his appetite returning.
He’d just asked out Riley Madigan. Sort of. It wasn’t his best work, but it was the best he could manage.
He picked up two fries and crammed them in his mouth. He was counting it.
Riley watched Mark out of the corner of her eye. He dipped his brush into the paint and smoothed it along the grain of the shepherd cutout. He hadn’t met her gaze since he’d rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. When he’d turned away to take off his compression glove, she’d respected his need for privacy. But now he held the brush securely and only switched to his left hand when the angle called for it.
On the forearm that had been burned, a web of scars covered his skin like pink veins, traveling from the backs of his fingers to up under his sleeve, and she wondered again about how he’d been burned, and how he’d endured it—how much still hurt, and how much didn’t.
“Riley?” he asked. His arm was poised over the board, his face tight with apprehension.
She jerked her chin up, looking him in the eyes. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”
His voice was low, strained. “I needed to roll up my sleeves so I wouldn’t get paint on them. If it’s too much—”
“No. I like your forearms.” She immediately felt heat rising to her face, and she closed her mouth.
A smile teased at his lips, but his eyes remained tense.
She put her hand on her cheek and shook her head. “I mean I like both of them. I mean, it’s not a problem to have your sleeves rolled up. Forearms are attractive on guys, and I don’t think something like scars detract from that. Women like forearms.” Her voice trailed off. “Generally speaking, of course.”
His tense look turned into one of concern for her sanity, she was sure of it.
She straightened. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think you should be ashamed of your arm.” She went back to brushing paint on Mary. “That’s all. In case you were wondering. I mean we should be grateful we have arms, right?”
STOP TALKING.
“Yes,” he said, a trace of amusement in his voice. “We should definitely be grateful we have arms.”
She dipped her brush in more paint, laughing nervously. “Listen to me, telling you what to be grateful for. Between the two of us, I’m pretty sure you have a better handle on that than I do.”
“On arms?” he asked.
“On being grateful,” she said.
“Why is that?”
She stopped painting. “Because you’ve been through so much. And with your job, you’ve likely seen more.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s been easy to be grateful,” he said, his expression clouding.
“I didn’t say that.”
He nodded. “And for the record, I’m not sure that what I’ve been through can be measured against what you’ve been through. It’s different, sure. But it’s all pain.” He glanced at her but kept painting.
“You can’t mean that,” she said.
He shrugged and remained silent.
Riley went back to work, but what he said gnawed at her. The truth was, her heart had been broken a few times. With every move, with every fight, her grandma’s death. A string of adult relationships doomed by her fear of commitment, followed by the most humiliating breakup she’d ever experienced. She’d be lying if she said she’d never considered what her life would’ve been like if her dad had been an electrical engineer or a podiatrist. If her parents hadn’t fought. If they’d just stayed home.
It shouldn’t matter anymore. It shouldn’t still af
fect her this way.
She stabbed at the edges of Mary with her brush as her mind shifted unwillingly to the night they’d painted a nativity set as a whole family. Dad had brought home a ceramic set, the paints, and the shellac to make it shiny after the paint had dried. It hadn’t mattered that she was five and had barely mastered paint-with-water books. She got to help paint right alongside the grown-ups.
“Which one do you want to paint?” her grandma had asked her as Mom set out the paints.
“Baby Jesus.”
“Then you paint baby Jesus.”
“You help me.”
So, she and her grandma had painted baby Jesus. She was sure it was the best thing she’d ever attempted. It was important. She’d learned enough about this part of Christmas to know that Mary was the mother of Jesus, and Jesus would save the world. At age five, she wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew if the world she lived in with her family was in trouble, she’d want it saved.
And then her world had crashed. And nothing, or no one, had saved it.
“Riley?”
She composed her features into an expression she hoped would appear relaxed, then she turned. “Yes?”
He pressed his lips together, holding back a smile.
“What is it?” Was he mocking her? Had her inner turmoil manifested itself outwardly and he’d picked up on it? Did it amuse him?
“You have paint on your face.”
“Oh.” She rubbed at her cheek. “Where?”
“Well, now there. But here, too.” He brushed at the side of his nose.
“Here?” She tried again.
He chuckled. “Just—don’t touch your face.”
She looked at her hands. Wet paint had smeared along the inside of her index finger.
“Here.” Mark grabbed a roll of brown paper towels and tore off a couple big pieces. He got them wet at the sink and gave her one. “For your hands.” He held up the other piece. “May I?”
She nodded, swiping angrily at the smears of paint on her fingers.
He took the corner of his wet towel and dabbed it on her nose.
“I must have itched there while I was thinking.”
Miracle Creek Christmas Page 14
