Charming the One: (Meadowview Heroes # 3) (The Meadowview Series Book 7)

by Rochelle French

  She’d spat out the words with determination, but her lower lip trembled and she wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  Neva didn’t believe what she’d said. And neither did he.

  For a long while, he was silent. Seconds stretched to a minute, which felt like an hour captured in time, stuffed into a bottle. Finally, he spoke. “Neva. Are you sure all you want from me is sex?”

  She still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you want more?” he asked. “Do you want us to be best friends again? Do you want a relationship? Do you want me to stay in Meadowview?”

  Her mouth opened. Shut. Opened again. Shut once more, then finally she spoke in a small, quiet voice, so high pitched it was almost like the voice of a girl. “It was supposed to just be sex.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that’s what it was supposed to be. But things change. That’s what happens, Neva. Things change. People change. Desires and wants and needs always—”

  She put a hand to her ears. “Don’t say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That stupid word again—change.”

  Peter sucked in a breath. Around Neva, the world had transformed, as it always did. The people around her grew, expanded, opened themselves up, became new and fresh variations of themselves as people always did.

  But Neva hadn’t. She wouldn’t.

  He felt an empty ache form in his chest, like a ball of cold steel that grew and grew and grew, expanding and pressing against his ribs from the inside. Breathing suddenly seemed so damned difficult. He swayed on his feet, uncertain why his body was reacting so violently to Neva’s inability to grow beyond her past.

  Then it dawned on him. He’d wanted her to change—needed her to grow.

  From that very first moment he saw her in the canal, when he realized he was staring down at Neva Tipton, his heart had ached for the friend he’d once had. The girl who’d argued over which punk rock band had the longest lasting influence, the girl who would sneak him into her parents guest room in the dead of night and let him sleep there when his dad was on one of his rampages. The girl who was so funny and beautiful and loyal. The girl he’d fallen head over heels in love with her when he finally got his head out of his ass and saw her for who she was.

  Neva had been his best friend…until she wasn’t.

  When she dumped him all those years ago, the pain had been like a sledgehammer to his chest. A sword in his heart. He didn’t want that kind of loss again. And if Neva couldn’t figure out how to revise her bullheaded attitude, if she couldn’t figure out how to tear down the walls she’d built up, how to eradicate the assumptions she’d made, well…

  No. He didn’t want to risk being with someone who would leap to conclusions and then let others do the hard work to figure out the truth. Someone too stubborn to change. To grow.

  “I think it’s time I headed out,” he said quietly.

  Neva jolted. “Wait—what? I thought you were spending the night. That we’d have morning sex.”

  “I can’t be just a sex buddy.” He fumbled about, gathering his clothes, stuffing his feet into pant legs, jamming his hands through armholes. He couldn’t get out of her bedroom fast enough.

  “I don’t get it,” Neva said, hollowly. “Why are you leaving? What did I do? What did I say?”

  He looked up, zipping his jeans, finally connecting his gaze with hers. “I’m usually the one saying the wrong thing. This time, though, I don’t know if this is the right or the wrong thing, but I’ll put it out there anyway.”

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

  “I can’t be with you…because I’m in love with you. And I don’t want that.”

  “Don’t want what…to be with me?”

  “To be in love with you. I do not want to love you, Neva Tipton. I can’t say it more clearly.”

  He cut off their connection, turned, and walked out of her bedroom. Out of her house. Out of her life.

  Aching with every step, he pushed himself forward. Because that’s what people did. Pushed themselves forward. Always forward, never looking back. People didn’t stay stuck in the past.

  Unless that person’s name was Neva Tipton.

  What was Peter even thinking? Neva stormed around the kitchen, grabbing pots and pans out of the dishwasher and tossing them with loud thuds and clangs into drawers, not much caring if she woke her sister. The kitchen needed to be cleaned. Who cared if it was midnight?

  Peter was not in love with her. He couldn’t be. They were having sex, that’s all. Great, fabulous, multi-orgasmic sex, but still. Just. Sex.

  Peter proclaiming his love had to be one of his blurt-it-out moments. He wasn’t really in love. He only thought he was in that minute. He always said whatever was on his mind without stopping to figure out if those thoughts were true.

  “You need a filter, dude,” she whispered under her breath, surprised by hot tears that formed in her eyes. Why would she be crying? She should be throwing things against the wall, not getting all weepy.

  “You’re no wimp.” Her father’s words tumbled out of her mouth before she could hold them back.

  “Are you talking to me?” Carla stumbled into the kitchen, a sleepy smile on her face and her arms out stretched for a hug.

  Neva was in no mood to have a Kumbaya moment with her sister. Or anyone. What she wanted was to wring Peter’s neck. How could he drop that bomb on her and then walk out of her house?

  Carla dropped her hands down by her sides. “I take it Peter is no longer here.”

  “He took off a few minutes ago.”

  “And not on a good note, it seems,” Carla said. “Looks like you two had a fight. Maybe you should go take a bath. Or pour yourself a glass of wine. Have some pie.”

  “I hate pie.”

  “You love pie.”

  “Not any more I don’t. What is it with this town? People are always dropping off baked goods. Does no one have better things to do with their time?”

  “Neva. You clearly have something going on. Go relax, and I’ll finish cleaning up the kitchen.”

  “No, you won’t. You never do. I’m always picking up after you, cleaning up your messes.”

  “Wait a moment.” Carla grabbed at the heavy cast-iron pot in Neva’s hands. “I’ll apologize for whatever it is I did, but first, tell me what I should be sorry about.”

  “It’s a little late for that.” Neva hung onto the pot as if her life depended on it.

  “Communication can never happen too late. All it takes is for one person to start talking. Then the other joins in. And soon…problem solved.”

  Neva yanked on the pot. At that moment, Carla let go, and off-balance, Neva stumbled, dropping the heavy cast iron onto her foot. As she yowled and hopped around the kitchen on one foot, the other (rather mashed one) held in her hand, Carla simply made her way over to the refrigerator, pulled out a bag of frozen peas.

  “Sit,” Carla ordered.

  Neva sat.

  “Now tell me what happened.”

  Neva winced when her sister placed the cold peas on her throbbing foot. “He thinks I need to get over the past.”

  “We all do,” Carla said dryly.

  Maybe Peter was right. Not about the being in love part—surely that wasn’t real—but about the part where she needed to talk to Carla about that night. Neva sucked in a deep breath. She’d give Peter’s way a try. Because really, what else could she lose?

  “Why’d you do it?” Neva asked her sister, the words barely escaping her mouth on a light breath. “Why did you seduce my fiancé?”

  “Do you still think that?”

  “What else am I supposed to think?”

  Carla twisted away. She stood up and sagged heavily against the kitchen counter, as if in need of the support. “People aren’t always as they appear to be. You might want to think about that.”

  “This is the second time this week I’ve heard someone say that to me. Am I so close-minded?�
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  “I think you’re just not that trusting.”

  Neva barked out a laugh. “I have reason for that, though.”

  “Maybe. But you also let that be an excuse.”

  “What kind of excuse?”

  “You’ve always see what’s on someone’s surface. You make assumptions about who people are and how they look, how they act, the things they do and say. You categorize all those bits you see and put them into a neat little box. You never think to look deeper.”

  “How else do you judge someone’s character except by looking at who they are, or the choices they make? And certainly by examining the actions they take?”

  Carla stood and strode to the window. “We’re all products of how we’re raised. Our environments in which we grew up shape us. So we act in ways people expect us to act, and sometimes, those actions aren’t what we really want to take.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “I never wanted to be a beauty queen. Mom made me do that. I never wanted to sabotage any of my fellow contestants, either. But again, Mom forced me to. I hated it! Absolutely hated being a little shit, but I was too afraid of Mom to say no. So I took actions that went against who I was but that were expected of me. I didn’t know how to break free.”

  “Peter pointed out to me how Mom and Dad used to manipulate us. He said they would use us to get back at each other in some sort of sick marital game they played. Some weird one-upmanship.”

  “It makes sense.”

  Neva’s thoughts swirled around, fluttering like leaves in the wind, until they settled, coming to rest back on the surface of her mind. “Are you trying to tell me that your actions in seducing Joel were because Mom and Dad made you into a bad person?”

  Carla sighed “No. What I’m trying to tell you is that because you’d seen me be a jerk all during our childhood because of the things I did, you grew to believe I was a cheater. But you didn’t look beyond my actions to see my heart.”

  Neva tried to make sense of the jumbled thoughts. “You told me back then you thought Joel wasn’t good enough for me. Are you saying that you were seducing Joel out of kindness to me? Like, your actions were bad but your motives pure?”

  Carla blew out a breath. “No. What I’m trying to say, is that I wasn’t seducing your fiancé that night. At all.”

  “But I saw…”

  The pain in Carla’s eyes was evident. “You saw what you thought was real. What Joel told you was real. But you didn’t see the truth.”

  Neva gasped. She clapped her mouth over her hand and sat there, frozen.

  Carla twisted her ring on her finger. “Now you get it?” she asked quietly.

  Bile filled Neva’s throat. She nodded, still unable to speak. Anger and rage at her former fiancé ripped around inside of her like a dogfight in the streets. She’d been wrong. So very wrong. “Was he trying to…?”

  “Rape me?” Carla shook her head emphatically. “No. That first day I was at your place, he kept telling me how pretty I was. And he kept looking at me, watching my every move. His behavior was totally inappropriate for a brother- and sister-in-law relationship. The second night he made what I thought was maybe a pass, but I couldn’t be sure. I got creeped out.”

  “That’s why you warned me against him.”

  “Yep. The next day I’d gone for a run. When I came back I stripped out of my running clothes and was about to hop in the shower when he walked in on me, naked. I think he assumed I’d go for his sexual advances because he thought I was a dumb blonde nitwit who used men.”

  “Because that’s who I told him you were.” Neva could barely get the words out of her mouth.

  “Maybe. I was about to knee him in the balls when you walked in.”

  How could Joel have lied to her? How could he have allowed her to blame her own twin sister? How could he have caused the separation between twins—the separation that had gone on for six years because of her own inability to see beyond the surface?

  She would never, ever forgive Joel, but she would never forgive herself, either.

  Because how could she have chosen to believe the lies of a man she’d only known for less than a year over the truth of what the sister—her other half—could have told her. If she’d only listened. God, Peter was right.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know those words don’t mean much, but I am really, truly sorry I let my insecurities get in the way of seeing the truth when it was in front of me the whole time.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “It can’t be that easy.”

  Carla gave her a soft smile. “Actually, sis, it is. You say you’re sorry, I accept the apology. Then we open up a bottle of wine and dig into a pie. We get drunk and fat all in one night.”

  “That’s really all it takes? After a lifetime of regret, a bottle of wine and pie will make everything better?”

  Carla just grinned. She reached over, grabbed a bottle of merlot in one hand and the pie in the other. Then she looked back over at Neva and said innocently, “We don’t need forks, do we?”

  Neva collapsed as a wave of laughter swept over her like a happy tsunami, sweeping her under in a swirl of relief, joy, and love.

  And she worked really, really hard to ignore the pain in her heart when she thought of Peter’s harsh words.

  Telling Peter she was sorry wouldn’t be good enough.

  Peter jolted up, sending the Adirondack chair he’d been sitting in tumbling into the pond. There he’d been, hanging out with Maude under the willow tree by the pond, enjoying the fresh air and each other’s company while Roberto was inside making business calls, when Maude had thrown him a doozy. “What do you mean, you’re selling the farm?”

  “Well, I would hope the sentence would make sense in and of itself,” Maude said.

  “I understand what you said.” He searched the surface of the water to pinpoint where the chair went under. He’d have to come back out another time in swim trunks and fish the thing out. No sign. He gave up. “What I meant was, why? And why now?”

  “You didn’t want to move here when I asked you to be the caretaker of the farm while I was on my volunteer expedition, but I forced your hand a bit. Here, use this chair.” His aunt patted another chair and gave him a bright smile.

  “You didn’t force me,” he argued, dropping heavily into the seat. “When I was a kid, you gave me a safe place to stay when life got rough. I wanted to give you a place to come home to. But now…this isn’t home to you anymore?”

  “After I met Roberto, I realized something. Nothing is worth anything unless it’s attached to someone you love.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Maude regarded him, her eyes warm and full of love. “The land has stayed in our family for over a hundred years. Each generation has had someone who loved the land, and loved Meadowview, too. That’s changed, though.”

  His mind reeled. “But you love this place. That’s why I’ve been here, taking care of it, while you were gone.”

  “I did love the land. And I still do. I grew up here, climbing the trees, swimming in the pond, fishing in the irrigation canal—”

  “Is that legal?”

  “I don’t know. I did it anyway,” Maude said primly. “The point, Peter, is that I’ve grown to love something more. Well, someone more, really.”

  “Roberto.”

  “He’s a good man. I had no problem with the idea of being single for the rest of my life, but the two of us were like magnets—completely connected from the moment we met. He has my heart. And I have his. And the two of us have dreams and desires—traveling, mostly. Roberto can work from anywhere so long as he has Internet. I don’t need the land here anymore.”

  He gazed out over the pond. With the drought, much of the property had grown brown and dry, but the banks of the pond were still bright green, covered in vetch, clover, and wild grasses. He, too, had learned to swim in this pond during the summers when he’d escape his father and spend thr
ee blissful months with Maude in Meadowview. He let his gaze drift to the orchard. There, red, almost ripe apples hung heavy on sturdy branches. Overhead, the breeze gently brushed the willow branches, the sound of leaves a soft hush in the air.

  Maude wanted to sell this place? “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I hope you accept my apology,” she added.

  “For what? Selling the farm? It’s yours to do with what you want.” He’d meant the words, although they’d felt strangled in his throat.

  “I saddled you with the responsibility of this place for too long. You were wonderful to take over running it while I was gone, but in retrospect, I realized how selfish that was of me.”

  “You weren’t being selfish, so don’t—”

  “You’re free, Peter. I never should have tied you down the way I did. Your dream was to travel the world, and I held you back for two whole years.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for. I was glad to help. And if selling is what you want…” Peter cleared his throat. “So, do you have a new owner already? I haven’t heard about the land going in escrow.”

  “As a matter of fact, the property is being sold privately. I’m selling it to Roberto.”

  “Hold on.” Peter put a hand on his aunt’s arm. “This makes no sense. You want to sell the property to your husband? But I thought you said you were getting rid of it so you and he could travel.”

  Maude patted his hand. “Roberto is a developer. I’m selling to him so he can develop the property. ”

  Worry began a slow creep up his spine. “What do you mean, ‘development’? As in, some new farming technique for the orchard?”

  “No, as in large lot residential. The land will be subdivided into two-acre lots. Unfortunately, as much as I’ll hate to see them go, the pond and orchard will have to come out—”

  “The orchard?” Shock hit his midsection.

  “Yes. The farmhouse, the pond, and the orchard will all be torn down. Roberto’s company will be putting in new homes on all the lots as soon as the permits clear. Then we’ll sell those homes and make a rather substantial profit.”