by Jen Doyle
He’d never been in her uncle’s store, though, 100% certain that if he’d ever even thought about it his grandmother would have found out. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Nor was the Maggie he was seeing today. And now there was another thing he was afraid of: the conclusion he’d come to if he thought too hard about what this all meant.
For all these years she’d been entirely off-limits—in terms of an actual relationship-type thing, at least. Her father had made that overwhelmingly clear. These few stolen nights each year were his secret as much as they were hers. The idea of it turning into…something…was almost too much for him to—
He stopped short when he came around the corner of the last bookshelf in the row. He even found himself looking back over his shoulder just to make sure he hadn’t somehow wandered into another building. It was like he’d stepped into a different world. Throughout the store books were haphazardly shelved, with stacks of magazines piled on tables throughout. There were also stacks of paper cups on every table as if inviting someone to grab a cup of coffee from the machine sitting on a tiny counter in the back. It was one big sneeze away from a disaster zone, and even Alejandro, who considered himself a pretty easy going guy, was practically getting hives what with everything leaning every which way; he could only imagine how Maggie felt every time she walked through the place. It was a wonder how the two had managed for all these years.
But in this moment Alejandro understood. He’d just been transported to a different place entirely.
The mural on the wall was so obviously Maggie that he almost laughed in sheer wonder. A picture of a fairy princess, her long black hair streaming behind her as she rode her pink unicorn over light purple hills and directly into an epic battle. There was a castle behind her, complete with a prince holding a tiny baby in the crook of one arm, his hand holding that of a little girl standing next to him.
“My uncle painted it when I was six,” Maggie said from behind Alejandro. “He said that as long as I still believed in unicorns, I could conquer the world.”
Hearing the tears in her voice, Alejandro wanted to turn around but wasn’t sure how Maggie would feel about that. She was a much more emotional woman than, possibly, even she knew. But she didn’t like for anyone to notice. God forbid she draw attention to herself.
“What happens when you stop believing in unicorns?” he asked.
There was a quick intake of breath, followed by a quiet, yet fierce, “I will never stop believing in unicorns.”
A quick glance back at her showed she was entirely serious.
And although Alejandro had always considered himself more the guy on horseback, racing off to take on the world, well… Yeah. If there were ever a woman he’d stay behind at the castle for, it would be someone like Maggie. A no-nonsense, charge-full-speed-ahead woman who believed in unicorns.
He loved that a little too much.
He walked further into the corner. There was a pale yellow wingback chair with a small white table next to it; here the books were neatly stacked. Even with the dust that had obviously settled in since her uncle’s death, this whole back corner seemed pristine.
“This is where you used to come, isn’t it?” Alejandro asked. “I always wondered where you’d disappear to.”
“In high school?” she asked, the surprise clear in her voice. “You thought about me in high school?”
“All the time,” he murmured, his eyes on the books themselves. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. And Little House on the Prairie.
“All the time?” she repeated. Snapped, really, bringing his attention back to her.
Did she really not know? “I asked for you to be my math tutor, didn’t I?”
She looked like she couldn’t decide between coming closer to him and running away. “You asked for me?”
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She was cute when perplexed; it was frighteningly attractive. Rather than give in to the impulse to demonstrate exactly how much he still thought about her—in intricate, often graphic detail—he forced himself to sit down in the chair. “I absolutely did.”
“You liked me?” she asked, as if the concept was only just occurring to her.
“My GPA was better than yours was.” He tried not to smile when she frowned. “Do you think I really needed that much tutoring?”
And now her cheeks were turning a little pink. He tried not to get offended it was maybe exactly what she’d thought.
“My GPA would have been better than yours if Mrs. Harrison hadn’t had it in for me,” she said.
This time he did laugh. “You turned in a short story that consisted entirely of the words, ‘This is stupid’ and ‘The End.’”
“Because she said nothing was ever wrong in creative writing!”
When he laughed again, she huffed, “It wasn’t my fault she didn’t mean it.” But then her eyes went down to the floor as she mumbled, “If I hadn’t come up to you at Reid’s party that night, would you have ever said anything?”
Considering he was thirty-five years old and had to actively tell himself his grandmother had absolutely zero say in things like this…
No. Probably not.
But for as far as he and Maggie may have come today, he was pretty sure they weren’t close to being ready to have that conversation.
He must have worn the answer on his face, though, because she stepped up into him, nudging his legs to either side of her. Her eyes went soft as she rested her hands on his shoulders. “Is that why you never talk to me at the bar?”
Right.
Because it wasn’t just about high school. It was also about every year since they’d graduated from college.
He pulled back far enough to look her in the eye. She seemed so unsure, which wasn’t at all how he saw her. He’d also never considered she saw it as him not talking to her. “You’re the one who doesn’t talk to me.”
“What?” she snapped, her hands dropping to her sides. “I don’t not talk to you.”
“You hide me away,” he said, just in case it wasn’t clear. He didn’t quite intend for the frustration to come out but he didn’t do much to hide it, either. “You leave your room key for me on the top of the payphone. After giving me the Fuck Me vibe from across the bar.”
“The… The what?” She took a step back, all the better to heatedly ask, “What exactly is the Fuck Me vibe?”
Really? He leaned back in the chair very deliberately, his hands tightening around the armrests. “That would be the I’m-running-my-finger-slowly-around-the-rim-of-my-drink-while-I-can’t-keep-my-eyes-off-your-ass-but-I’m-not-interested-in-an-actual-conversation look.”
Her hands went to her hips. “That is not what I do.”
He raised his eyebrow.
“Okay,” she muttered, her hands going down to her sides again. “Maybe it’s what I’m thinking about a little.” Then she gave what seemed to be a self-conscious smile. “You do have an amazing ass.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but found he wasn’t entirely sure how. “Thank you?”
She glared at him. “I don’t hide you,” she said. Then a faraway look came to her eyes as her gaze went back to the mural on the wall. “You’re the part that’s just for me.”
Well… Shit.
That wasn’t even close to what he’d expected her to say. Nor had he expected all the feistiness to seep out of her or for her whole face to fall.
“I thought you didn’t want to be seen talking to the weird girl,” she said, and his heart actually lurched in his chest. “I thought it was me.”
That was so far beyond what he’d attributed their whole don’t-tell-a-fucking-soul-about-us thing to that he could barely get his mind around it. Nor, honestly, would he ever have expected her to see herself that way.
It took him longer to reply than it probably should have. Long enough that her feistiness came back, only this time with a brittle shell of defiance. Her shoulders went back and her chin went up.
As much as he loved her show of strength, he wasn’t having any of that.
He sat forward in the chair, almost on the edge of the seat and held his hand out to her. He waited until she took it, ignoring she did so reluctantly. “I don’t see you as weird; I see you as confident.” He kissed her hand. “Un-apologetic and proud.” He kissed her wrist. “Passionate.” He kissed the base of her neck.
“You do?” She was breathing a little harder now. Her pulse was beating furiously in in the hollow of her throat. And yet she was still tense. “Why have we never had this conversation before?”
He pulled back and looked at her.
Because the only conversations they’d ever had went along the lines of, Yessss. And, Oh, baby, right…there. And one of her favorites, OhGodOhGodOhGodOhMY-FREAKING-GOD-GET-INSIDE-ME-RIGHT-NOW.
Also, however, because while he’d been entirely sure he knew why she hid him away, she’d apparently felt the same.
They’d both been wrong.
And that changed everything. Being with her each night was, yes, still overwhelmingly appealing. But so was shouting to the world that Alejandro Garcia wasn’t the man she hid away, but instead the knight in shining armor that she came home to.
Well, not home home.
He wasn’t quite sure what he expected to come of this; she lived in New York City, for one thing. And although he might have been thinking about her a whole lot this past year or so—and not hooking up with anyone else in the meantime—he wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue anything serious. He liked his life right now. He liked the freedom of it. If seeing her one long weekend per year threw him as much as it did, he had no clue what being in an actual relationship with her would be like.
No that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what it would be like and it freaked him out immensely.
Yet the more he thought about it, the surer he was that he wasn’t ready to walk away. He pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “Maybe we should go on a date.”
“A date?” She tensed again, but this time she didn’t pull away.
“How about I pick you up at the Buena Vista at three,” he asked. It was eleven-thirty now, so that would give them both time to get back to Santa Christa, with a little extra for him to stop by his house and grab a few things. “Don’t change out of the jeans.”
She looked at him suspiciously, but then she nodded.
“Is that okay?” he asked, belatedly realizing he should have thought of that first. “Do you have plans?” She was here during Crush; there was most likely a reason for that and it probably didn’t involve a lot of free time.
But she just shook her head as her eyes filled up. “I don’t…” She bit her lip and looked away, seeming entirely unsure. “I’m done here for now. And I don’t have any plans.”
Since she seemed a little bit at a loss, he made the decision for her. “Three it is.”
7
They were going on a date.
Maggie had been on dates before, of course. She’d tried the online dating thing in New York, and had done everything from Come Cook With Cupid! to Finance Flings. She’d even successfully managed to carry on two relationships at the same time, not realizing until far too late that it bothered her immensely to have not one, but two semi-serious boyfriends who enthusiastically embraced the dating-other-people part of the relationship. One had even gone so far as to express relief he only had to be “on” every other weekend.
Dating in New York, however, was an entirely different matter than doing so in the small town of Santa Christa. In New York, you could stand out in front of your apartment building for three days straight and not see the same person walk by. In Santa Christa, the same cast of characters paraded through at regular cycles. Plus they made no bones about paying attention to everyone and everything, something Maggie had forgotten until after she’d decided it was such a beautiful day out that she’d sit on the bench outside the hotel and wait for Alejandro. She was as much on edge about the possibility of Mr. Charlie, who had been wearing the same fedora with a Press Card in his hatband since 1943 and who had never met a Facebook post he didn’t emoji the heck out of, popping out from behind the bushes somewhere as she was about the date itself.
What if they had nothing to say to each other? They’d exchanged more words today than they had in the last fourteen years combined. And prior to that it had been all about math.
She had no interest in talking about her job—these days she could barely think about it without crying. So that was a no go. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to let him know that New York itself had lost its charm, and if she was going to live in a place crowded enough for it to feel like everything was about to fall down around her, she’d rather it be somewhere with a unicorn on the wall. And mountains out the window. Even vineyards. Chatting about family? Nope. But mentioning it was likely she’d be moving back to California for good—especially after the conversation they’d had earlier in the day—seemed like a one-way ticket to major freak-out. And that was just on her part; she couldn’t imagine what it would seem like to him.
Having half a mind to just head back inside and barricade herself inside her suite, Maggie turned when she heard the roar of an engine from down the street. Before she’d gotten all the way to her feet, the entire Senior Singles Walking Club had gathered around her, all of them with their phones out and poised to take pictures of the badass biker heading up Main Street.
“Oh, my,” one of them—she had a sneaking suspicion it was her best friend from third grade’s grandmother—said.
It was all Maggie could do to breathe, much less identify the voices of the people standing around her. She felt not a small amount of guilt considering she’d just had a somewhat momentous conversation with Alejandro about not being involved with anyone else in the past several years. It probably wasn’t a good sign she was practically drooling over some faceless man—well, over the faceless man’s Greek-statue-worthy-body—and his motorcycle boots no more than three hours later.
Who knew motorcycle boots switched the lady-part setting to humming?
Except just as one of the older ladies was saying, “My granddaughter’s divorce is almost final so I’m calling dibs!” Maggie realized it was Alejandro pulling up in front of the hotel.
Alejandro on the Harley.
Maggie had been plenty happy having him slip into her bed all those nights in the dark, but holy hell, had she been missing something. Him rolling to a stop, lowering the kickstand, and then dismounting was most possibly the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. Or maybe it was when he took off the helmet. Seriously, it was like he was Channing Tatum and Benjamin Bratt rolled into one. And almost enough to distract her from the next part of the equation, the other part of the whole thing making her throat go dry. “You have a motorcycle?”
Since, unlike her, Alejandro had moved back to Santa Christa after finishing grad school, he wasn’t in any way fazed by the crowd. “I do. And it seems you have an audience.”
Uh, no. “You have an audience.” Which, incidentally, she also wasn’t happy about—that whole hating-being-the-object-of-attention thing. Since they were clearly much more interested in watching Alejandro—and since he was sooooo worth watching—she was putting that part aside. “I’m just along for the ride.”
Or, well...
“Except I’m really not sure I want to go along for the ride,” she added. “I mean, not because I don’t want to be seen with you—” She still couldn’t quite comprehend he thought she’d been hiding him rather than the other way around. What woman in her right mind would want to hide him? “—I’m just really not sure about a motorcycle.” On the road. In the mountains. “Do you know that, statistically…”
He stepped up really close to her. And there went all that humming again. “I know that if you keep talking I might need to kiss you right here in front of the Santa Christa paparazzi, and I’m pretty sure neither one of us is ready for that.” He stepped back, the
clear implication being, Hop on the freaking bike.
She might have given an audible gulp. “That wasn’t about the kissing,” she hurriedly added, just in case he got the wrong idea.
He grinned, clearly not getting the seriousness of her objection.
“I don’t have a helmet,” she pointed out.
Still not fazed, he reached back around him and, voila, produced a helmet. His grin turned a little evil. “If I’d known you had a thing for unicorns, I would have had one painted on.”
“Had,” Maggie corrected. “I had a thing for unicorns. When I was twelve.”
Obviously trying to keep a straight face, he said, “I thought you said six back at the store.”
“Six is a factor of twelve. They’re practically the same thing.”
This time he out and out laughed. “I had a math tutor once who I’m sure would say differently.” He opened up one of the bags hanging from the motorcycle and pulled out a jacket.
Frowning, Maggie took it. “Do you make it a habit to carry around helmets and jackets for the ladies?”
The laughter disappeared from his face as his eyes went dark. She didn’t know that was a real thing until just now.
“These have been sitting around for a little while,” he said. “Never had the nerve to give them to the girl I bought them for.”
“Oh,” was all she managed. There was a lump in her throat when she put the jacket on and realized it fit perfectly.
He gave her a few instructions as he helped her with the helmet. Then, with an amused wave to the crowd, he got back on the bike and looked at her expectantly.
Eyeing the various smartphones pointed her way, she yelled, “I do not give permission to be filmed!”
“This isn’t film, Maggie,” Mr. Charlie said, having, yes, come from around the potted plant. “It’s live video. You get a lot more hits that way. And don’t frown so hard. It’ll make those lines on your face permanent.”
