“You are a brave, kind hearted and strong man Caleb Jameson. I couldn’t be prouder of you if I tried. That girl would be lucky to have you interested in her. She kissed you back, so she’s obviously got good taste. You be honest with her. Explain what happened and then just say sorry. No one can hold a grudge against you for anything you did while you were near enough unconscious.”
She stopped to take a breath. “And if she doesn’t agree to talk to you, I’ll go talk to her and make her see sense.”
Oh, hell no. I shuddered internally knowing Aunt Debbie would have no problems with tracking down the girl and forcing her to hear me out and apologise.
“I’ll sort it, Aunt Deb.” I reassured her. I decided I would make Trudy’s my first stop before going home.
“I know you will honey. I want her to come round for dinner too. And after you both get married, I expect your first child to be named after me.”
I sighed loudly and ran a hand over my tired face.
I realised that once this girl met my insane family members, I’d be lucky if she didn’t go screaming and running for the hills.
Chapter 8
Liya
I must have been temporarily possessed to have acted like that. I tried to reassure myself and failed.
There’s no other possible explanation for what just happened.
Then, why is it you can’t stop thinking about him? That evil little bastard voice spoke again.
“Shut up voice! I can stop thinking about him anytime I want, so shut the hell up. Don’t make me come up there.”
“Are you having full blown conversations with yourself now?” Niki asked. “Should I be concerned? Do I need to call people with butterfly nets and strait jackets?” she added teasingly.
“This is not a funny situation Annika Ray Abbott! Nothing about this is amusing. Am I laughing? Do I appear to be joking mood?” I said somewhat hysterically.
“Woah. Chill, drama queen. You are thinking about this way too much. So you kissed a total stranger. He was hot. It’s understandable.”
“He was hurt and lying bleeding on the ground. He didn’t have a little cut that needed a Band-Aid. He had a head injury. We were waiting for the ambulance to take him to hospital!”
“And you found a great way to kill time…” Niki said bursting out in a fit of giggles.
Bitch is asking for a smack… She’s lucky I’m such a lady…
“Arghhhh! I’m trying to get the evil voice in my head to behave itself; I don’t need you giving me crap about this too.” I yelled as I stormed out of the kitchen where I had been hiding for most of the day after the kiss or “The Act of Temporary Insanity” as I had renamed it.
Niki followed me out of the Staff Only area. “What do you mean by evil voice? Does this mean there is non-evil voice? How many voices have you got floating around up there?”
“A couple of course… If there is an evil voice in your head, there has to be a good voice too. It’s only natural.”
“You worry me.” Niki said picking up a cloth and a bottle of disinfectant spray.
The bakery had closed an hour ago and we had just finished cleaning when I knocked over a plate of samples that were left out.
“Fuckin’ fantastic” I muttered and began to clear the crumbs off the floor.
“You curse too much. I’m going to start a swear jar for you. Every time you swear, you have put a dollar in the jar.” Niki said spraying a table and wiping it down.
“I’d be bankrupt within a week.” I kept wiping, though somehow I seemed to be making the mess worse.
The bakery floor wasn’t large, but there was enough room for five small tables, which we had placed by the front window of the shop. We found that while most of our business was people buying food to take away, some customers liked being able to stay and eat in the bakery.
We had decided to look into possibly expanding the premises to fit more tables, if the bakery did well after the first year. Niki had done a great job of brightening up the dull interior and making the atmosphere feel more welcoming. The walls were painted a warm, cream colour and all the chairs were a warm chocolate brown that matched the wooden tables.
Pictures of pastries, cakes, cookies and other food adorned the walls in jumbled manner, which added to the charming atmosphere.
I was still attempting to clean the crumbs off the wooden floor when the bell over the door chimed.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed.” Niki said nervously. Judging from her voice, I guessed that the customers were probably male. Men had always made my little sister somewhat uncomfortable, especially the handsome ones.
I debated about standing up and helping her to get rid of them, but she had been having a lot of fun mocking me throughout the day, so I decided to let her suffer and stayed in my hidden spot behind the counter.
“You look like her, but you’re not her. You look similar. But… not.” A deep voice said in confusion.
Wait a minute. I know that voice. Oh crap.
“What the fuck you talking about, Caleb? Make sense when you speak, man. We’re looking for the lady from the accident. The one who helped him. That you?” a different deep voice said.
Even from my hiding place I could feel my sister freeze up at being spoken to directly by the gruff sounding man. I sighed and stood up.
“No. It was me.” I felt their gazes shift from Niki to me and from where I was stood, I saw Caleb mutter something under his breath. It was quiet, but I’m pretty sure I heard him mutter the word “Angel.”
I felt heat flood through me at the memory of our kiss and his gruff voice calling me his angel.
Who is this guy? And why does he have this ridiculous effect on me? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER GIRL! You are a grown arse woman. You can speak to a man coherently; you do it all the damn time.
The man next to Caleb was a feast for the eyes too. Not handsome in the conventional sense; he had dark hair, green eyes and a short, trimmed beard and sort of looked like a sexy lumberjack. He was as broad as Caleb, though maybe an inch shorter and his rough look fitted his deep, gravelly voice.
I noticed that there was slight bruising on Caleb’s face and there was gauze covering what I assumed were stitches on his temple, but apart from that he looked good.
Like, really good. His blue jeans were moulded to his legs perfectly and the blue shirt he was wearing stretched over his broad shoulders.
I realised that Caleb had been staring at me, with an unreadable expression, so I stared back at him. I realised that no one had said anything for about a minute when the guy with the brown hair finally cleared his voice and asked.
“You going to say anything, man?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked him.
“Uhm. Not you. I was talking to the statue over here.” he said gesturing to Caleb. The man’s comment seemed to shake Caleb out of his stupor.
“Oh, right. Can I talk to you?” he asked me.
“We are talking.”
He frowned slightly. “I meant in private.”
My pulse quickened at the thought of being alone with him.
Nope. Bad idea. Very bad idea. If you throw yourself at him, or maul him in any way, you are going to be sued for sexual harassment for sure.
“I think I’d like to stay here, thanks.”
Caleb sighed softly. “Yeah, okay fine. I guess I wouldn’t want to be alone with me either after the way I practically mauled you today.”
Wait. What?
“You didn’t maul me, I …” I started and then stopped because I didn’t think it was a good idea to finish that sentence.
“You what?” he asked
I kissed you back. And I liked it. A lot.
“Nothing. Just say what you came here to say.”
He cleared his throat lightly “Well I just wanted to apologise for kissing you like that. I know you’re new in town and I’m very sorry if that made you uncomfortable, what with other people not knowing you and all. I was kin
d of out of it. So, yeah. Sorry about that.”
He’s apologising for giving you the hottest kiss of your life? If he kisses like that semi-conscious, I wonder how he would kiss when fully conscious. Maybe up against a door. Or maybe on the floor.
Oh good grief. He hasn’t even touched you again and you’ve turned into Dr. Seuss.
I forced my attention away from that dangerous train of thought and back to Caleb.
His eyes scanned the bakery and he looked away slightly embarrassed. “Oh. And thanks for helping me earlier too. From what I can remember you were very calm and collected. People usually panic during accidents.”
“You don’t have to apologise. It’s kind of what I do. I’m a nurse, so just walking away and not helping you would have been a real dick move. Also, the balloons we were giving out were sort of indirectly the cause of the accident. So… yep. No probs dude.”
NO. PROBS. DUDE?! Oh My God. What is wrong with you, you moron?
“Name?!” Caleb spat out.
“What?” I asked, wondering if we were just going to start saying random words out loud now.
“What’s your name?” he blurted out suddenly, another look of embarrassment shadowing his face.
“Oh. I’m Maliya May Abbott. Well, you don’t have to call me Maliya May Abbott, people don’t usually. That would be odd, right? To be called your full name all the time.” I let out a small hysterical laugh.
Idiot. Quite simply. You. Are. An. Idiot.
“My sister calls me Liya. The girl frozen there is my younger sister, by the way. Annika. Well she goes my Niki.”
I heard Caleb mutter “fucking beautiful” under his breath.
“Pardon?” I asked him, drawing my attention away from his mouth and the naughty thoughts of what I would like that mouth of his to be doing to me.
“Caleb.” he said shaking his head. “I’m Caleb Jameson. This is my brother Nate.”
“Nice to meet you both.” I realised that Niki had been silent throughout this entire interaction. I was starting to get slightly concerned and wondered if she was still actually breathing.
“Niki! Speak!”
She startled and sprayed the bottle of disinfectant directly into the air in front of her. She stared in horror and then just waved the cloth in her other hand at the two men in our shop “Hi. I’m Niki.”
“Hey Niki. Nice to meet you.” Caleb looked over at Nate, who had also remained silent throughout our conversation, but looked vaguely amused at the show we were putting on.
“So, listen. Would you like to come round to my house for dinner? Well, not my house. My aunt’s house. When she heard what happened she wanted to extend an invitation to you for dinner. To say thanks for helping me.”
“Oh.” Family dinner doesn’t sound that bad.
Are you kidding? It sounds awful! Say no quickly! Make an excuse, before you do anything stupid, like agreeing to go.
“Sure I’d like to go, thanks.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. How did those words leave your mouth? Do you not listen to me at all?
Caleb had a relieved look on his face. “Thank God.” I heard him mutter under his breath.
Nate smirked. Caleb looked over at Niki.
“You should come too, I’m sure my aunt would love to meet you. She was raving about your cheese strudels and how much she likes what you’ve done with this place.”
Niki seemed unable to talk, so I answered for her. “Sure, she’d love to.” I said ignoring the glare she threw my way.
Oh great. Yes. Let’s add more witnesses to the train wreck this dinner is going to be.
“Can we bring anything?” Niki finally said.
“Nope. Just yourselves. How about dinner on Wednesday. Would that work for you both?”
“Sure, that should be fine.” I said sealing my fate.
“Great. I can come and pick you guys up, if you need a ride?” he offered.
“No thanks, we’ve been driving around in Aunt Trudy’s old Beetle.”
Caleb looked slightly disappointed. “I’ll text you the house address later.”
“Okay, good.”
“Great.” More silence filled the air between us and I felt a desperate need to end the awkwardness. “Okay then. See you Wednesday.”
“Right. See you then.” He turned around to leave the shop. He had opened the door and was about to leave when Nate called him.
“Hey Cal. Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?” he asked confused. I was confused too. I started looking around at where he had been standing to see what he could have left behind.
“Don’t you need her number in order to text her?” Nate said with a bored look on his face.
Oh, yeah.
“Fuck. Right. Sorry.” he said while pulling out his cell phone. I rattled off the numbers to him.
When he was done putting the number in his cell phone, the staring resumed.
Finally Nate said “Okay. We’re going now” and began to lead his brother out of the shop. “See you at dinner.”
“Bye.” I whispered behind them. As soon as they were gone I looked over at Niki.
“What just happened?”
“I’ve not got a clue. That was one of the most awkward interactions I’ve ever seen. But it was flipping hilarious. If dinner is anything like it, we’re in for a treat.” she said giggling.
“I hate you.”
Chapter 9
Caleb
I looked over at Nate, who had been silent since we left the bakery.
He started the engine of his car and looked at me. “What?”
“Tell me honestly. On a scale of one to ten, how bad was what happened in there?”
“Sixteen?”
“FUCK! I don’t know what happened. I’m twenty eight years old. I’m a firefighter; I deal with stressful situations every day for a living and have no problem keeping my head on straight. One conversation with this woman and she makes me feel like I’m fucking fourteen again. It’s like I had a stroke in there.” I exploded.
“She agreed to come, so you can’t have fucked up that bad. That has to mean something, right? The staring contest you guys seemed to be having was weird though. It was painful to watch but still pretty fucking funny.” Nate actually chuckled.
“You realise Aunt Deb is going to lose it. If don’t want her to scare this girl off, you’re going to have to sedate her.”
Hm. Not a bad idea. Aunt Deb talking to Liya about weddings and babies the first time she comes to dinner, would probably freak her out.
“Shit. I am so screwed.”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
--------------------------------
“She said she would come to dinner!?” Aunt Debbie said excitedly and clapped her hands.
“Ohh! What should I make? I’m thinking Tex-Mex.” She walked over to the shelf in the kitchen where her cookbooks were and started pulling various books off the shelf. “Hmm... maybe some fajitas. What meat though? Chicken? Beef? Fish?”
Aunt Debbie gasped. “What if she’s a vegetarian? Or a vegan? Did you ask her if she has any allergies?”
She looked at me expectantly. I opened my mouth to answer her, but quickly closed it again when I realised I didn’t have any answers to her questions.
I shrugged looking helpless as Hurricane Debbie kept blustering around the kitchen, opening and closing random cupboards.
She huffed at me “Honestly Caleb. That’s not helpful at all. Maybe I should go by the bakery tomorrow morning and ask her what she likes.”
My eyes widened in alarm.
Aunt Debbie and Maliya in a small space together, with no buffer between them? Can’t see that ending well.
“NO! I’m sure you’ll be busy tomorrow. I’ve got her number, I’ll just text her and ask.”
“You kids and your texting each other. Whatever happened to actually speaking to another person?” Aunt Debbie said flipping through a Mexican cookbook.
“
It went out of fashion in the 90s with crimped hair, neon colours and cargo pants.” Addie said as she walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.
“Not funny, Adelaide.” Aunt Debbie said and looked up from her book. “Oh, Munchkin! You look beautiful!”
Falling Completely (Starling Falls #1) Page 6
