by Liz Johnson
Okay, maybe Russell had talked him into it. But that wasn’t the point.
He was supposed to be upset. That was the point.
“You know what you did. You—you—you saddled me with you for the next month.”
“Whoa there, lady.” He kept his shoulder to her, never bothering to peek in her direction.
“Lady? Lady?” Fists clenched so hard her arms shook, she nearly stomped her foot. “You know my name. You know who I am. And you know perfectly well why this is a terrible idea.”
“First of all, of course I know your name. Doesn’t mean I’m inclined to use it when you’re yelling at me.”
First of all? Oh dear. Clearly this list could go on for a while.
Lips pursed and eyes narrowed, she tried to glare him into the cement floor. But he remained upright, his brush moving up and down. From one board to the next. The painting stopped only long enough for him to wipe a rag down the boards he’d just covered. It resumed again without a hint that he’d noticed her displeasure.
“Second, if you’re going to be here, you might as well put in some of that elbow grease I was promised when I kindly offered you the use of my barn.” Finally deigning to look in her direction, he nodded at the sawhorse table behind him. “There’s a roller and a cloth.”
Natalie looked down at her black ankle pants and cream-colored sweater set. She could feel Justin’s assessment following the same path. It was almost as tangible as the frown that he settled on her. But she ignored it, painting on that fake smile she used with hotel guests who insisted on being difficult. Sweeping her hand over her outfit, she said, “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
Before she could say anything more, he began tearing at the buttons of his oversize cotton shirt. His fingers moved with a smooth efficiency, revealing first his neck and then more.
For some reason, she couldn’t look away from the patch of deeply tanned skin at his throat, where his Adam’s apple bobbed twice.
Maybe his mouth had gone dry. Hers certainly had. Swallowing quickly, she took a quick step back. And then another to her side, jamming her hip into the corner of the table. When she let out an involuntary cry, Justin looked up from where his nimble fingers were still undoing his buttons.
He didn’t stop.
Something like a rubber band around her chest snapped into place, and she gasped.
Oh dear. Not good. The worst, actually.
Finally she waved her arms and found her tongue. “What are you doing?”
But she was too late. The shirt skimmed over his broad shoulders and down his brawny arms. Thank goodness for white undershirts.
But this particular T-shirt didn’t do much to hide the changes that she’d known had taken place. She’d been aware that he’d grown up. But now she was aware.
Once spindly arms had been filled out by manual labor and were covered with an easy smattering of dark hair. His neck looked twice as thick as it had been. And his wide chest tapered to a narrower waist. But even at his slimmest point, he was solid. Sturdy. Unyielding.
And utterly mesmerizing.
No. No. No.
She jerked her head down as he held out the shirt. She had no business thinking about how he had changed. Especially physically. That was bound to lead to bad news.
She’d never … Well, she knew how it ended up when eyes strayed.
Her dad’s drinking hadn’t been the only thing that made the O’Ryans a hot topic of conversation. Her mom had suffered the worst kind of broken heart. Again and again.
Russell deserved better than that.
So she stared at her sandals and prayed that he’d put the shirt back on—even if he was technically covered.
He did not. He simply shook it beneath her nose. “Put it on over your clothes.”
“Why would I do that?” Despite the way his direct order rankled her, she kept her head bowed and her voice subdued.
“So you don’t ruin those fancy pants.”
Her head whipped up at the snarkiness in his tone, her gaze locking with his, her lips already forming her defense.
But the left corner of his mouth rose a notch. Then another. And then his eyes flamed with mirth.
“You …” There were no words, so she settled for shoving his shoulder, which should not have moved. But he gave an exaggerated sway as though she’d thrown him completely off balance, complete with a feigned stumble.
When he was back on stable footing, he smiled. “Just wear the shirt. It’ll protect your clothes.”
“All right.” She snatched it away from him and, after shrugging out of her own sweater, whipped the shirt around her shoulders. Shoving her hands down the sleeves proved futile when her fingers didn’t pass the cuffs, so she raised her hands over her head until the light fabric pooled at her shoulders, her hands reappearing.
“Need some help with that?”
“No.”
He nodded. But his smirk said he was just waiting for her to fail.
Well, he’d be waiting awhile. Rolling the cuff on the left and then the right sleeve, she raised her eyebrows at him. As she pushed the buttons through their holes, he nodded his conceit.
That’s right. She didn’t need to be rescued.
It was an odd thing to be proud of, dressing herself in a shirt that nearly reached her knees. But at the moment, she’d take it.
Nothing else in her life was going quite right—what with Russell’s departure the day before and a call from a local decorator that she was unavailable to help with staging the event. Covered and capable was the best Natalie could do, so she’d do it.
With an approving nod, Justin turned back to his patch of wall. “Where were we?”
She ignored the question and picked up the roller.
The wind carried a burst of ocean scent through the barn door, and the waves below the red cliffs sounded their time-honored cadence.
Natalie leaned her head back to relish the familiar aroma. This close to the red cliffs, with her nose in the sea air, the memories were closer. Brighter.
It was the difference between vinyl and digital. Black and white and Technicolor. But she didn’t particularly want to watch either version.
Screwing up her face, she cleared her throat and set to work under Justin’s watchful eye. Giving him a hard stare, which she hoped said she could handle this, she tried to ignore the pinpricks that danced down her spine.
“So, tell me how this works.”
One eyebrow shot into a tight arch. “You’ve never used a roller before?”
She pursed her lips to the side as she loaded the stain onto the roller. “Of course I have.” Once or twice. “But what are you doing with that rag?”
“Wiping off any extra, smoothing out the drips. Like this.” He demonstrated again, and she followed his movements, mimicking them across the wide-open wall.
After a few solid stripes, she stood back to admire her work.
Suddenly he said, “Watch my shirt.”
“What?” She jumped, jerking her hand away from her waist, where she’d nearly added a cherry-brown stripe.
“Just because I lent it to you doesn’t mean I want it ruined. It’s still a good shirt.”
He looks better without it.
She clamped her mouth closed to keep from saying that out loud, hating as the words rang in her head. With forced nonchalance she managed, “Okay.”
“So … third …”
Third? Was he still on that silly list of grumbles?
“I think this is more your fault than mine.”
Apparently so.
“Ha!” The burst of laughter had begun derisively, but as it made its way to the open air, it changed shape and sound, turning lighter than air and floating toward the exposed beams above.
This he noticed. This was enough to draw the tangible weight of his gaze.
Forcing herself to keep her roller moving, covering wide swaths of the wooden slats of the wall and following side to side with the crunchy cloth,
she reined in her giggle and tried for a more serious follow-up. “How exactly did you come to such a very wrong conclusion?”
That earned her a full smirk and a shake of his head until his ponytail flopped. “I think you’re the one with wrong conclusions. With the grain of the wood.”
“Huh?” How had they jumped from his mistaken understanding of this terrible ordeal to lumber?
He waved his darkening rag. “When you wipe the extra stain off, go with the grain.”
“Oh. Sure. Of course. I knew that.” Actually, not so much. But what was one little white lie between former friends?
“Fourth—”
“Wait just a second. We haven’t cleared up your misunderstanding of point three. This is not my fault. I did not ask you to step in as pseudo wedding planner.”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head hard, sending that stupid ponytail dancing again. “Not a wedding planner. I’m more … more like a pseudo gr—” He stopped with a wince like he’d chomped on his tongue.
She nearly bit into her own. Anything to keep from picturing Justin at the end of the aisle. At the end of her aisle. Anything to keep from dwelling on why that was such a problem.
This wedding was already hard enough. No need to add never-going-to-happen scenarios to the pot.
“You didn’t have to agree, you know. You could have—no, you should have—turned Russell down.”
“The guy needed a favor.”
“The guy? You make it sound like you go way back.”
He shrugged beneath that flimsy little T-shirt, which was growing a bit damp and a little sticky while he labored in his corner. “Adam’s a friend of mine.”
He treated it like the end of his case, but she knew. “So the fact that Russell could connect you with the right people in Nashville has nothing to do with this?”
The broad expanse of his shoulders suddenly went stiff, and his arms stilled. She’d hit the nail on the head.
She just wasn’t so sure how she felt about it. The spark of knowing she was right should have burned warm in her chest. Instead she could nearly feel the wind whip through her.
He sucked on his front tooth for a long moment, his squinting gaze sending shivers down to the tips of her fingers. “We both had dreams. If yours is coming true, why shouldn’t mine?”
That was fair.
“Besides, I couldn’t give up the pleasure of your extended company, now could I?”
The laugh poured out of her before she had a chance to measure it. Even she could see the ridiculousness of continuing the volley of barbs if they were stuck together for the next month.
“I suppose not.”
“Well, we were friends once. Closer than friends.”
A toad settled into her throat, and something burned at the back of her eyes. Her only response was a gentle nod.
“And even though we haven’t been in a long time …”
He didn’t have to finish it.
He’d always been the quicker one to lay down a grudge. Maybe she wanted to carry hers for a little longer. The pain had become like a security blanket, and each resentment provided a certain amount of warmth on cool Nashville nights. She could tuck the fact that he’d let her leave without him under an arm and pull it out when she really needed it.
He cocked his head to the side, following the motion of his paintbrush once again. “Besides, if I stick around, maybe I’ll be there to see you throw a whole potato.”
“Ha! You should be so lucky.”
“I know. That’s what I’m saying.”
The bristles of his paintbrush scratching at the lumber was the only sound for a long moment as she worked up what she needed to say. She could come up with barely two words.
“Thank you.”
“For?”
“For saving me at Caden’s cooking class. It could have … It would have been awful. Without you there.”
For half a second they froze, eyes locked. Her breath bottled somewhere in the region of her sternum, and she prayed he’d say what he had as a child. Always. It had been their promise and their guarantee. Always they’d stand side by side against whatever the world could throw at them. Always.
But when he opened his mouth, he offered two very different syllables.
“Okay.”
Natalie was still chewing on her strange exchange with Justin three days later as she stepped into Grady’s. Marie said that Harrison had called the inn and asked about catering the reception. Natalie just couldn’t refuse him.
She also didn’t have any other local choices.
The smells of his fried cooking had baked into the walls over the years and hung thick in the air, leaving a fine coat of fish and chips on her as she squeezed between the full tables of the dining room.
From the near corner Stella Burke and her cronies shot Natalie hard stares. They made the hairs on her arms stand up and salute. But she refused to give in to the urge to search for her pockets or roll her shoulders against the battery.
Instead she marched forward, ignoring their icy appraisal and trying for all she was worth to forget the last thing Stella Burke had said to her before she left the island.
She couldn’t forget.
In fact, every time Natalie glimpsed the bottle-blonde bob, she heard the same words ringing in her ears, and not even the chatter bubbling up at the four occupied tables in the middle of the afternoon could block out that memory … those words.
You’re going to become just like your mother.
Just like your mother.
Your mother.
No. No. No.
She’d left to ensure she never did. She’d fled this town, this province, and even the whole country to make sure she never—ever—became like Connie O’Ryan.
But that didn’t shut off the taunting torrents every time she was in a room with Mrs. Burke.
Don’t look in her direction. Just don’t.
Maybe she couldn’t help herself. Maybe she missed the punishment.
Most likely she had to know if they were whispering about her. After all, she was old enough and capable enough to defend herself now. Maybe she hadn’t been at seventeen. Definitely she hadn’t been then. She’d been scared and embarrassed and too long the topic of town gossip.
Not anymore. She held an important—and visible—role at her work. She was respected and trusted. And she was about to marry a very successful, very handsome music producer.
A bead of pride rolled around her insides, easing her load.
She was no longer a child weighed down under the shame of her parents’ name. But what good did that do if she attempted to ignore the snide remarks and sideways glances?
Smoothing down the legs of her cuffed jeans and straightening her blouse, she breezed across the dining room. Before they could ignore her, Natalie flashed a winning grin at each of the ladies at the table, beginning with Mrs. Burke. “Stella, Dorothea, Lois.” With a condescending nod to each of them, she held their gazes as she drawled their names. She lingered on the last, praying that Lois was no longer the area’s only florist but certain that when she checked with Marie, she’d find no such thing. “Such a pleasure to see y’all today.” Perhaps she laid the Southern charm on a little thick. The accent wasn’t really hers. She’d just heard variations on the slow twang a hundred times a day, every day.
But what could it hurt to commandeer a sugar-sweet line or two? Besides, she hadn’t dropped a “bless your heart” yet. Even if that was the only reasonable response to someone like Stella Burke.
“Natalie.” Whether she’d been voted their leader or hadn’t bothered to pass around ballots, Stella clearly spoke for the table. “We didn’t think you’d stick around this long.”
Two weeks? They thought they could push her out of town in two measly weeks? “Oh, bless your heart!” She laughed, not even pretending it was anything but fake. “I’m here until I say, ‘I do.’ So we’ll be bumping into each other plenty, I’m sure.” With a flippant wave, she marched away.
Her only farewell was a quick “I look forward to it” tossed over her shoulder.
There. Let them talk about that.
She was going to get married here. And she was going to show them all that Rick and Connie O’Ryan didn’t define their daughter.
It wasn’t until she reached the pickup counter that she heard the slow, quiet clapping.
Harrison’s eye glowed as his hands came together. “Well done, Miss O’Ryan.”
She rolled her eyes. Even when she actively tried to stay out of the spotlight in this town, she failed. “Hi, Harrison. Marie said you had some things you wanted me to try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He motioned her toward the door behind the front counter, which led into the kitchen. “You’re going to love this.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Between whipping up meals for the incoming orders, he’d laid a spread out on a metal counter. Each plate was perfectly presented, the mashed potatoes shaped into a perfect flower and adorned with a sprig of basil, the julienned carrots a pristine pile beside a roasted Cornish game hen.
And that was just one plate.
“Did you go to culinary school while I’ve been away?”
Harrison’s belly shook with the force of his laugh. “Oh no. But a friend of mine taught me a few tricks.”
“A friend, huh?” With an elbow to his arm, she gave him a conspiratorial smile. She wouldn’t have thought that the big man’s ruddy, windswept cheeks could go any redder, but even under day-old whiskers, his face burned brighter than the lighthouse.
“Oh, it’s nothing like that.” His eye never straying from the plates in front of him, he said, “She’s just a friend.” But there was a light in his only eye that she’d never noticed before. Just like she had as a child, she wondered what had become of the other eye, and why the patch rather than a glass replacement.
But she knew not to ask. Unless it was a need-to-know question, she kept it to herself.
“Then you do have a special lady!” She tried—and mostly succeeded—to keep the surprise from her voice. She’d only been teasing. Harrison O’Grady had been the town’s most famous bachelor. Older than her dad, he’d never even dated, at least as far as Natalie knew. Then again, things could have changed.
