What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho)
Page 23
“You let me freeze my nuts off waiting for you to come outside Wednesday.” He shook his head. “You’re brutal, Ms. Cooper.”
“Me?” She pointed at herself and took a step back. “I told you I love you and you couldn’t get away from me fast enough!” Her bottom lip threatened to quiver and she took a deep breath. “I dressed up in my stupid cheerleading uniform with nothing on underneath. While you said I confused sex for love, I was commando!”
“Wait.” He held up one hand like a traffic cop. “You were naked beneath that skirt?”
She ignored his question. “You said you would never love me.”
He reached for her but she took another step back. “I didn’t say I would never love you.”
“Maybe not those words, but you said you couldn’t return my feelings.” She swallowed hard. “I think that was your way of trying to let me down gently.”
He shook his head. “No, Sweet Cheeks. That was me lying. That was me trying to do the right thing.”
“You were running away.” She folded her arms across her heart.
“I’m not running now. I’m standing here.” He pointed to the floor beneath his feet. “I’m standing here, a man in love with a woman. A woman I want to spend the rest of my life loving.”
Her hands fell to her sides.
“And believe me, I never thought I would be this man. I never thought I’d be strong enough to embrace my weakness for one woman.” He cleared his throat and swallowed. “A wise man once told me, ‘Shit or get off the pot.’ ”
“Gross.”
He laughed and closed the distance she’d placed between them. “So that’s what I’m doing. I love you, Natalie. I love Charlotte and Sparky and I want to be worthy of you and Charlotte. I’ve been going to AA meetings. I gave up and gave in and gave it to a higher power.” Smile lines creased the corners of his eyes. “Mabel Vaughn wants to be my sponsor.” He took her hand, and his smile disappeared. “I love you and I’m kind of hoping you still love me.”
She nodded as his touch and the emotion in his eyes soothed the cracks in her broken heart. “I do love you, Blake. I tried not to love you, but I just couldn’t help myself.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m still a little mad at you, though. You really broke my heart.”
“I’m a handy man to have around if you need anything fixed. Like broken doors, wiring, and especially broken hearts.” He put his hand on her waist and pressed his forehead to hers. “I love you, Natalie. I love everything about you.” He kissed her lips, soft and sweet and filled with the same longing that filled her heart. “I love when you look at me like you are right now,” he said. “I love that you make me want to look at a future and not my past.” His soft, smoky eyes looked into hers. “You’re my here and now and my future. You’re my life and my love and my woman.”
She grinned. “I’m your whirlwind.”
“Yes, and I get to reap you forever.” His smile matched hers. “That’s what I love about you.”
Don’t miss the new
wedding novella from
New York Times bestselling author
RACHEL GIBSON
I DO!
Available October 14
from Avon Impulse
Read on for an excerpt!
At the age of twenty-three, Rebecca Ramsey found her artistic passion. While some artists worked in oil or fabrics or clay, Becca worked in hair. Since graduating from the Milan Institute of Cosmetology, she’d worked diligently at perfecting her art. Becca was good at cuts and blowouts, fabulous with highlights, ombres, peekaboos, and dip-dyes, but when it came to the up-do, she was a true master. She exceled at creating everything from simple French knots to complicated runway hair, complete with twigs and birds and working fountains.
Of course, there wasn’t a lot of demand for runway hair in Lovett, Texas, the small town where she lived. Or even sixty miles south in Amarillo, where she worked at Lily Belle’s Salon and Day Spa. But this was Texas, where special-occasion hair was in high demand. Proms, graduations, and her favorite, bridal hair.
Becca pulled her Volkswagen Beetle out of her apartment complex and headed across town to pick up the latest photographs of her work before driving to meet with her client, Sadie Hollowell.
Sadie was more than Becca’s latest bride client. She was engaged to Becca’s good friend, Vince Haven, and had become Becca’s friend, too. So much so, that Sadie had not only hired Becca to do her wedding hair, she’d included Becca in some of the planning. She’d sought her advice on flowers, the arbor, and the maid of honor dress. Vince had been no help at all. His favorite colors were brown and dark brown and talk of flowers made him fold his arms over his big chest and scowl. Sadie’s sister Stella wasn’t much help either. Stella was busy with school and her own fiancé, and frankly, Stella wasn’t a Texan. Like Vince, she didn’t understand that a simple wedding was never simple, and Stella’s taste ran more toward leather and combat boots than lace and satin pumps.
Bless her heart.
Becca had offered her help with the wedding, and Sadie had jumped on the invitation. It was a good thing, too, because even though Becca would never say it out loud, Sadie wasn’t very good at special-occasion planning, and neither was the event planner she’d hired. Which was ironic, given that Vince’s sister, Autumn, was a wedding planner. Too bad Autumn lived in Seattle.
Becca pulled her car into Parrish American Classics and parked in the empty lot. Several weeks ago, local photographer Daisy Parrish had taken promotional photos at the day spa where Becca worked, and she’d hired Daisy to take extra up-do photographs for her portfolio. There were several she thought Sadie would like, and she wanted to pick them up before heading out to the JH.
It was Saturday and Parrish American Classics was closed, but Daisy had offered to leave the photographs at her husband’s auto restoration shop rather than have Becca drive to Daisy’s home ten miles in the opposite direction.
The afternoon sun glinted off the gold frames of Becca’s sunglasses as she got out of the car. Sadie had just received the final RSVP for her wedding, and the guest list had risen to seventy-five. Most of those guests were Sadie’s family, but several were Vince’s military buddies. Big guys with big arms and egos, and Becca had briefly met two of those big guys last summer, twin brothers Blake and Beau Junger. The brothers were so identical it was freaky, but evidently not all women were freaked out by the big, muscular twins with cold gray eyes. Both men were engaged, and Beau’s fiancé had had to have her maid of honor dress let out due to her pregnant belly.
The front doors of the restoration business were locked, and Becca followed the sound of heavy metal music around the side of the building. The heels of her wedge sandals tapped across the concrete. She’d paid seventy bucks for the crochet-straps in scarlet tango. A big splurge for a girl on a tight budget, but she just hadn’t been able to resist.
Her last boyfriend liked to say that women who wore red didn’t wear panties, but Toby Ray had said a lot of things like they were facts instead of something he’d made up in his own dumb head. No one had ever confused Toby Ray with a deep thinker, but then again, no girl dated that boy for this mind.
Bless his heart.
Becca’s shadow followed her as she rounded the building and a warm May breeze ruffled the bottom of her white and red sundress. The slight wind tossed a few strands of her medium-blond hair, brightened with perfectly placed level-nine highlights. The heavy beat of music and screeching vocals assaulted her ears, and behind the lenses of her sunglasses, her gaze landed on a faded orange truck parked at an angle behind the garage. It had a blue door and fender and the hood was up, the Chevy emblem pointed toward the sky. A Beats speaker and iPod rested on the ground by the left front tire, and a pair of legs stuck out from beneath the old truck. Presumably the legs belonged to a man who wore faded jeans and gray Vans on his feet.
&nb
sp; Skater shoes? In Lovett, Texas, where men wore Justin boots? She continued past the patch-work truck and the skater shoes toward the two-story house several hundred feet behind the garage. She knocked on the front door several times, and when no one answered, she retraced her steps to the truck.
“Hello?” she called out over the horrible music.
Instead of an answer, the man beneath the truck sang along with the screeching. His deep voice was even worse than the lead singer/screecher, which Becca would have thought impossible. She bent down, unplugged the iPod, and yelled, “Hello!”
A painful thud was followed by a loud “shit” and the sound of tools hitting concrete. “Goddammit,” then squeaky little wheels rolled the rest of him from beneath the engine. Long legs led to a spiky belt and white t-shirt over a flat belly. A blue work shirt fell open across the t-shirt and two greasy hands grabbed the old bumper. Wide shoulders appeared just before his chin and strong jaw, covered in dark stubble.
Becca stared down into blue eyes the color of the Texas sky. Angry blue eyes beneath dark slashes of brows surrounded by dark lashes. An even angrier red mark on his forehead seemed to turn even redder by the second.
Despite the scowl and welt and spiky belt, he was quite possibly the hottest guy she’d seen in a very long time. “Hello,” she managed past her suddenly dry throat. He was the kind of guy who looked good in tight t-shirts and jeans. Good-looking, like the kind of guy she usually fell for and handed her heart. Hot guys with names like Tucker or Slade or Toby Ray. Guys who cheated and lied and were nothing but a heartbreak waiting to happen.
About the Author
RACHEL GIBSON lives in Idaho with her husband, three kids, two cats, and a dog of mysterious origin. She began her fiction career at age sixteen, when she ran her car into the side of a hill, retrieved the bumper, and drove to a parking lot, where she strategically scattered the car’s broken glass all about. She told her parents she’d been the victim of a hit-and-run and they believed her. She’s been making up stories ever since, although she gets paid better for them nowadays.
www.rachelgibson.com
www.avonromance.com
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By Rachel Gibson
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT YOU
BLUE BY YOU
RUN TO YOU
CRAZY ON YOU
RESCUE ME
ANY MAN OF MINE
NOTHING BUT TROUBLE
TRUE LOVE AND OTHER DISASTERS
NOT ANOTHER BAD DATE
TANGLED UP IN YOU
I’M IN NO MOOD FOR LOVE
SEX, LIES, AND ONLINE DATING
THE TROUBLE WITH VALENTINE’S DAY
DAISY’S BACK IN TOWN
SEE JANE SCORE
LOLA CARLYLE REVEALS ALL
TRUE CONFESSIONS
IT MUST BE LOVE
TRULY MADLY YOURS
SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE
Coming Soon
I DO!
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from I Do! copyright © 2014 by Rachel Gibson.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT YOU. Copyright © 2014 by Rachel Gibson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780062247407
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062247391
FIRST EDITION
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