by Melissa West
“Meeting with her in half an hour, actually. You planning on joining?”
Zac shook his head. “Nah, you might be pond scum with women, but you’re our numbers man. Plus, Franny’s always liked you best.”
Brady glanced at the door, hoping his brother wouldn’t delve into why Franny had always liked him. Or how much time he’d spent at Franny’s shop when he was a teenager. It wasn’t a part of his past that he liked to discuss or even think about, which was why he’d put off the meeting for nearly a month. He didn’t want to deal with all the questions that were sure to pop up from Franny—nor the questions he’d want to ask her about a certain goddaughter.
“Right. Well, I’m going to go check on Annie-Jean. You going out front?”
Brady nodded. “Yeah, hopefully it’s safe now.”
Zac disappeared out the back door, and Brady turned around to grab some coffee before going to talk to Franny. He needed all the liquid courage he could get, and Franny would give him the side-eye if he showed up smelling like beer. Coffee would have to do.
He peeked out the storage room door to find the shop empty except for Charlie.
“You’re safe to come out,” Charlie called. “All victims of your attention have left the building.”
“Funny,” Brady said as he pushed out the door, a box of keychains and magnets in hand to replenish the depleted stock by the register.
“Well, she did tell me to tell you not to call her and to lose her number.”
“Ah.” Brady went to work putting keychains on their rightful hooks on the front of the counter. “Probably deserved that.”
“Yeah.” Charlie paused long enough that Brady looked up.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just…”
“Just spill it.”
“Have you talked to her recently?”
Brady laughed sarcastically. Even his brothers wouldn’t use her name. “Recently? That suggests that I’ve talked to her at all since she left. Nah, man, she called a ‘see ya’ and never looked back.”
“Right.”
His eyes lifted to find his brother staring at him with the same pity he wore every time they talked about Brady’s one and only serious girlfriend. “Take those sad puppy dog eyes elsewhere. I’m fine.”
Charlie nodded slowly. “Sure you are. Hey, where are you going?”
“Gotta meeting with Franny,” Brady answered, already across the store to the exit.
“Thought that wasn’t for another half hour.”
Brady flashed his brother a grin to cover up how uncomfortable he felt inside. “Some of us prefer to be early.” The excuse was weak, but the alternative wasn’t an option. Thinking about her was hard. Talking about her? Agonizing. Why put himself through that shit?
“You’re avoiding the subject,” Charlie called as Brady slipped outside.
Damn straight.
* * * *
Kylie Waters tucked her brown hair back behind her ears, leaned down to grab a box of ornaments, and immediately the wild curls fell back into her face.
“Geez Louise,” she huffed, then shook her head to move the spiraling strands from her eyes, which they refused to do, because her hair cooperated with her about as much as her life these days. Hence her return to Crestler’s Key in the first place.
She lifted the box up higher and glanced down at the next three boxes, all filled with ornaments like the first, all purchased on credit. A sinking feeling swallowed her heart for a moment, but Kylie reminded herself that this was why she was here—to help her godmother, Franny, with the shop. To fix things. Even if being back in her hometown felt like walking out in the sun when she was already burned.
The perfect blue sky stretched above her, not a cloud in sight, and the temperature held at sixty-two. Which was another one of Merrily Christmas’s problems—shoppers didn’t love buying Christmas stuff when it was warm outside. But it was November, and any week now the temps could drop down into the forties and stick there through December, where they would dip down again and stick. It was a matter of time, Kylie knew, but that didn’t help the bottom line move into the green any faster.
She knocked on the back door to the shop and waited, but after another minute, when no one came, she figured Franny must have returned to sorting the other ornaments Kylie had brought inside.
“All right, box, I need you to stay together for another few seconds.” She set the box on the ground, ripping one of the corners in the process. “Damn, cheap boxes.” She opened the back door and propped it open with her foot, then bent down to grab the box. Another rip. Crap.
Edging inside the door, Kylie slowed her pace, careful not to squeeze the box or adjust her hold for fear that the bottom would fall out and all the ornaments would crash to the ground, where they were sure to break. Kylie’s luck ran that way these days.
It all started with her losing her teaching job back in South Carolina due to budget cuts. Who needed art class in an elementary school, right? Clearly, not Hampton Hills Elementary. Then her dental crown popped off while flossing and fell down the sink. And then, to add the final icing on the cake, while she sat in her dentist’s chair to have the crown replaced, her apartment building caught fire. So when Franny asked if she could come up for the weekend to help stock Merrily for the season, Kylie wondered if fate had toyed with her life once again.
“Franny? Can you help me with this box? I’m about to drop it and break every one of the—” She turned around and slammed to a halt, her eyes landing on her godmother, a warm smile on her wrinkled face, before sliding over to the man seated at the table beside her.
Suddenly the box fell from her grasp, slamming to the ground with a boom, followed by the distinct sound of glass shattering. A lot of glass.
“Fudge a monkey!” Kylie yelled.
Brady Littleton’s eyebrows lifted, a smile tipping his lips, and instantly, Kylie wished she could go back outside and come in again. Maybe some magic would happen, and he wouldn’t be there the second time around.
“What are you doing here?” Kylie asked, her breathing becoming shallow, her heart thumping in her chest. Tears burned her eyes at the mere sight of him, but Kylie refused to let them fall.
“Meeting with Ms. Franny. What are you doing here?” He leaned back in his chair, causing the front legs to rise off the ground, and crossed his arms. The crooked smile he wore around at eighteen flashed at her. It was the kind of smile that said nothing and no one could shake him, but there was a hint of something else in his eyes—something that looked an awful lot like fear. Kylie knew because she was feeling the same vomit-inducing fear that very moment.
“I asked you first.”
His eyebrows lifted again, clear amusement on his face. “You did…and I answered you.”
“No, you said that you were meeting with Franny. You didn’t say why.”
“You didn’t ask why.”
It took everything in her to keep from stomping her foot in aggravation. But she suspected that wouldn’t paint her as a put-together adult, which she was…sort of. Instead, she gritted her teeth together and forced a smile. “Fine. Why are you talking to Franny?”
“What, do you own her now? I’ve gotta go through you to get permission to talk to her?”
Clearly, that annoying trait of his was still intact. “She’s my godmother. And is it me, or are you refusing to be straight with me?” She shook her head and eyed the floor, then muttered under her breath, “I guess some people don’t change.”
His chair dropped to all fours with a clang, and he braced his hands against the table. “Want straight? Here it is, sweetheart: I’m here to buy Merrily Christmas so Franny can finally retire.”
“What?” Kylie’s hands shook at her sides, or maybe the whole room was shaking. It was hard to tell with this amount of anger erupting inside her. “Um, no you’
re not. I’m taking over this shop. Me. No one else. So you can take yourself right out of here.” Kylie pointed to the door, then crossed her arms, her eyes locked on Brady. She ignored the pounding in her chest, the way it felt as though her heart had dropped a few inches. The ache was almost too much to take, but now she had a new emotion to tie to Brady Littleton—rage.
Slowly, he stood up, like he knew a fight was coming and wanted to show off that giant height of his. But he could forget intimidation—she wasn’t backing down.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m leaving just because you asked me to,” he said, his tone far too relaxed for the moment. Didn’t he feel the temperature spike in the room? “See, I didn’t schedule a meeting with you, now did I? I scheduled it with Franny.” Brady cocked his head, and it was the first time Kylie noticed that his hair was buzzed short, very Channing Tatum or Bradley Cooper—very adult and different from the shaggy chin-length waves he had when they were teens. And yet…the look couldn’t have been hotter on him.
Somehow that angered her all the more.
“Well, seeing as how Franny asked me to take over managing the shop, your meeting isn’t with Franny. It’s with me. I’ll be sure to check my schedule to see when I can work you in, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I’m very busy these days. It’s the start of the holiday season, and, you might remember, that’s our busiest time of the year.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, that’s right. You decided to quit right before Christmas the last time I saw you. Probably don’t remember how things are then. So let me tell you.” She took a deliberate step forward, then two, until she stood in front of him. Her entire body shook now, but she wasn’t sure if it was from her anger or the surge of emotions swirling around in her stomach. How could he still have this effect on her? “I don’t care about anything you had scheduled before I got here. I’m here now. And this is my—I mean, Franny’s shop. We’re not selling.”
Brady squinted his eyes and stared back at her, and the tension in the room rose to the ceiling, a thousand memories mixing with her anger and frustration until Kylie thought she might scream.
“Right. Well, I’ll let you get to cleaning up that mess. I’d forgotten how clumsy you were.” He nodded to the box of broken ornaments, and Kylie cursed under her breath for dropping it. She needed to come across as cool and collected and, okay, super sexy. But instead, her curls were a mess around her head, and she’d forgotten whether she put on makeup that morning. And then there was the hole in her leggings and the oversized T-shirt she’d thrown on because she couldn’t find anything else clean.
Brady stepped around her and out the back door, which was supposed to be for staff only. He paused before leaving. “And just so we’re clear: you will meet with me. I’ll be here every day until you find the time. ’Cause I’ve got all the time in the world to close this deal.”
Kylie chucked a stuffed reindeer at the door, but not before it closed, the aggravating man who’d once been her everything long gone.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Chapter 2
Brady made his way into Captain Jack’s for dinner with his brothers. The restaurant sat along the shore of the Cherokee Lake, and like always, it smelled of fried fish, steaks, and beer. The evening crowd hadn’t filtered in yet, so Brady took his time walking inside—partially because he wasn’t in a hurry to be social, and partially because walking hurt.
His muscles were tight from his run and his hour-long weightlifting that afternoon. He’d intended to work off a little steam, all in an effort to get Kylie out of his mind, but after hours of pushing his body to the max, he discovered there was no denying the truth—his ex was back.
He thought of the look on her face when she first saw him, some combination of excitement and anger. It had been more than ten years since he’d last seen her, and yet she hadn’t changed all that much. Her hair was still perfect chocolate waves, her eyes still deep brown, and he knew if he’d been closer to her he would have caught the flecks of gold swimming in the brown.
But whereas seventeen-year-old Kylie had been short and small-boned, adult Kylie now had curves in all the right places.
“You a little distracted?”
Brady’s attention snapped to his right to find his two brothers seated by the windows. He’d almost walked right past them. “Guess so.”
“Here, ordered you a cold one.” Charlie slid a beer over to him, that pitying look of his flashing across his face before he could wipe it away. “Looks like you need one.”
Normally, he’d put on his game face around his brothers, but after the run-in with Kylie, he didn’t have the will to fake it. “I need a six-pack, and even that won’t get it done.” He ran his hands through his cropped hair, aggravated that he couldn’t yank on the buzzed strands the way he could his long hair. Yet another thing Kylie had taken from him.
“So what happened with Franny?” Zac asked, taking a long pull of his own beer. “You get everything settled?”
Brady laughed sarcastically. “Hardly. I ran into a roadblock.”
“Roadblock?” Charlie asked.
“She’s back in town.”
“She?” Charlie asked. “Ohhhh, she. Damn, really?”
“Yeah, apparently, she plans to take over the Christmas shop and keep the thing running so Franny can retire.”
His brothers shared a look, and Brady knew what they were thinking without either having to say it. This was trouble on so many levels he couldn’t decide what to focus on first. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“All right,” Zac said. “Then how about you tell us what you’re thinking. How are you after seeing her?”
Lost.
Sad.
So damn excited I almost kissed her.
“Fine.” Brady shrugged. “What did you expect? A meltdown? It was a long time ago.”
Charlie’s eyebrows lifted and Brady chucked a chip from the basket of chips and salsa on the table at him. “Stop.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Charlie said with raised hands.
“You were thinking it.”
It was Zac who answered. “So, what? We’re allowed to worry about you. How the hell can you possibly be fine? Kylie is back.”
Brady blanched at the name, but he refused to show any other emotion. Anything at all would reveal the truth—he was one Kylie sighting away from losing his mind. “I’m fine, all right? Now, forget that crap. Let’s talk about business. How are we going to convince Franny to sell us the shop now?”
The brothers exchanged another look and Brady sighed. “Fine, let’s get this over with so I don’t have to deal with calls later.”
“All right, I’ll play,” Zac said. “You’re all alone and the only girl you ever gave a damn about is back in town. Don’t you think that’s a sign or something?”
“So now you believe in signs? What has that wife of yours done to you?”
Zac’s wife Sophie was one of those insanely natural, organic types, so it wouldn’t surprise him a bit if she were into destiny and that crap, too.
“Beside the point.”
“Says who?” Brady pushed, eager to change the subject to anything but him. “You going all loony is all kinds of on point. We need you helping run this business, especially with the expansion. Which is going to happen, even if she thinks she can walk back into town and take over everything that’s mine all over again.”
Zac leaned back in his chair. “Right. She’s no big deal.”
With a long sigh, Brady ran his hands over his cropped hair, then got aggravated at the reminder of why he cut it and dropped his hands to the table. “Where’s Lee? I need another.” He pointed to the beer, then glanced around, eager to look at anything but one of his brothers. He felt their concerning stares without him needing to look over at them to confirm it.
“Maybe go over and talk to her. Just air it al
l out and then y’all can talk about the shop,” Charlie offered. He was always the problem solver of the family, but the thing with Kylie wasn’t something that could be talked out. What happened, the things that were said…you couldn’t undo those things, couldn’t unsay those things.
Some disasters couldn’t be repaired.
Still, before all that, before the actions and words and hurt, they’d been something else. Brady and Kylie were the couple everyone else watched, the ones people smiled at and said they wanted their own Brady or Kylie. They were perfect and so in love the word itself sounded stupid, because what they had was so much more.
Now it seemed even stupider to think that what they had was real. How could you find your soul mate at seventeen? That kind of love wasn’t real, everyone knew it, and yet…
“Y’all need anything?” Lee asked as he came over to take away their empty dinner plates.
Charlie eyed him. “You having another?”
But suddenly Brady no longer wanted another drink. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
“Nah, I’ll probably head on out. Gotta come up with a new game plan for Franny.”
Lee dropped their check, and Brady reached for it first, forever eager to prove to his brothers that he cared about the family. He screwed that up once, and he never intended to do it again.
“You paid last time,” Zac said. “I got this one.”
“It’s good. You got a family to finance. I’m just me.” And though the words were true, they were hard to digest. He was alone. Financially secure, sure. Free to do whatever the hell he wanted, yes. But alone, all the same.
Zac stared at him again, seeing through the simple words to the thoughts underneath, just as he had when they were kids and Brady had once again failed a test or shown up late to a ball game, only to be forced to sit in the dugout. He’d screwed up everything he touched for so many years that his brothers assumed he would disappointment them, so when he finally crawled out of his selfish ass and started being a decent person, it took them years to actually believe him.
