Harlequin E Contemporary Romance Box Set Volume 2: Maid to CraveAll I HaveThe Last First DateLight My Fire
Page 39
Now she finally had something to be private about. She couldn’t help but smile. Shoot. It was too awesome for her to care who was poking into it.
She rushed through her chores, offered Dad an even more cursory goodbye than he usually offered. Back at home, she zoomed through the shower and pawed through Cara’s closet. Even though she’d bought a bunch of new jeans that fit, her wardrobe was still woefully void of date clothes.
Then again, they were going to Moonrise. A restaurant in New Benton where plenty of lifelong residents liked to linger over coffee. People would see them. People would talk. If she looked like she was going on a date, people would really talk.
She was used to being the butt of a joke, but she wasn’t used to being the source of gossip. She had a feeling this would be some juicy gossip.
She crossed the hall back to her room and looked in her own closet. Not exactly sexy. But, since she’d agreed to go home with Dell, she could pack a little overnight bag. Maybe she had some sexy pajamas.
She laughed out loud. Right. She’d never had a reason for sexy pajamas. She glanced at the clock, cursed. Without paying too much attention she pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She shoved a couple extra clothes, a toothbrush, and her glasses into a bag. Grabbing a few other essentials and her seed notes, she slipped on her tennis shoes and hurried out the door.
During the short drive over she tried to practice what to say. Focus on business first. That was the most important thing. He was being weirdly evasive about it and she didn’t have time for that. Either he took her favor or he didn’t.
And she would not be swayed or distracted by sex. Business first. Then he was free to distract her in any way he saw fit.
Giggling to herself, she pulled the truck into the parking lot of Moonrise Diner. Dell’s truck was already in the parking lot. Mia took a deep breath. This was somehow both exhilarating and one hundred percent frightening. What was she supposed to say to the guy she’d had sex with last night?
Probably the same thing she’d said to him this morning. Sometimes it was hard to remember because she’d been overanalyzing social situations for so long, but she’d pretty much only been herself with Dell, and he’d never balked at a thing.
So, when it came to him, she just needed to let the anxiety go. She grabbed her purse and seed notebook.
Dell sat in a booth with his back to her. He had his usual baseball cap on, blond waves sticking out the bottom. He wore a faded black T-shirt that somehow emphasized his broad shoulders. God, he was hot.
Mia bit her lip to keep from grinning and forced her feet to move forward. She slid into the booth, hoping it came off cool and confident instead of giddy and way too excited. “Hey.”
He closed the menu he’d been looking at and smiled. “Hey.” He glanced at her notebook and there was that weird…tightness about his expression. That thing she couldn’t figure out. He didn’t want to do this. So why the hell was he?
“So.” If he wasn’t going to start, she was. This was important. She couldn’t wait on him to figure out what he wanted just because he was good in bed.
Mia smiled to herself. Using terms like “good in bed” and actually having some kind of idea what that meant was just too new not to enjoy.
She smoothed open the notebook. “I have a couple ideas based on what I saw of your notes, but obviously you’ll need to see if they match up with your ideas.”
When she looked up from the pages, he wasn’t there. Instead he was sliding into her side of the booth. “Let’s see.” He took the notebook from her as his shoulder bumped hers.
Mia scooted a little to give him more room, but they were still pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, as he went over the pages of her notebook.
“I got you a Coke, Mia.” Mallory pushed a glass toward her. “Usual?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Dell?”
“Cheeseburger. Fries. Coke.”
Mallory hovered for a minute. So unlike her.
“You guys…working?” She peered at the notebook.
“Um, yeah.”
Mallory chuckled. “That makes a lot more sense. Get those orders in for you.” She disappeared.
Dell didn’t say anything, so Mia looked around the diner. More than one set of eyes were glued to them. The heat spread up her neck into her face.
“What do you think she meant by that?”
“By what?” Dell took the pen she’d placed on the table, started writing down a few things next to her notes.
“The whole, ‘that makes a lot more sense’ thing?”
Dell shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Dell.”
He shoved the notebook at her. “Most of what you had should work. I added a few things. You want to place the order and then give me a figure, I’ll write you a check.” For the first time Dell turned his head so she could see his eyes under the brim of his cap. “Now. No more business.”
Mia frowned down at the paper. He hadn’t changed much. Why couldn’t they have done that this morning? She looked back at him. “People are watching us.”
“You embarrassed to be seen with me, sugar?”
She scowled at the nickname, hated herself a little for starting to like it and the drawl he said it with. “No. I just…” Mia looked around again. Mallory was talking with Ed and Margaret and all three of them looked her way. Mia looked back at the table. “People will speculate. Why you’re with me.”
“Maybe they’ll speculate why you’re with me.”
Mia snorted. “Right.”
“Trust me. They will. Smart and dumb, remember? ‘Is that nice, smart Pruitt girl falling for the not-so-bright Wainwright boy? Why, I guess a pretty face can make a smart girl do a dumb thing.’ But what’s it matter? So they speculate. Doesn’t change anything, does it?”
He had a point. Hadn’t Cara and her dad already insinuated Dell was some kind of bad influence? “No, it doesn’t change anything.” That was the lesson she’d been teaching herself for years, right? It didn’t matter what other people thought, if she was happy, and this thing with Dell made her happy when it didn’t make her a little bit crazy.
Anything and everything she’d chalk up to life experience. Sure, let people wonder. Why the hell not?
Chapter Sixteen
Dell wasn’t sure how it had happened. Somehow, five out of the past six nights had found him with a houseguest, and he wasn’t the least bit tired of her yet.
She was sitting on his couch going on about the cold frame she wanted to build, and kept having to push her glasses up her nose. It had taken all of two nights for her to bust those out, saying she couldn’t keep wearing her contacts or they were going to end up in the back of her eyes and lodged into her brain.
He didn’t know why her weird little anxieties were so endearing.
“I love your glasses.”
She gave his shoulder a shove. “Shut up.”
“I do. They’re so nerdy. It’s like a fetish I didn’t know I had.”
“I hate you.” She wrinkled her nose. “And unfortunately, I have to bring out the big nerd guns tonight.”
“And that is?”
She pulled her overnight bag off the floor and retrieved a little plastic case out of her bag and opened it.
He looked at the bizarre instrument inside. “What the hell is that?”
“My retainer.”
“I’m sorry. We’re not sixteen. You cannot have a retainer.”
She flung her head back onto the couch. “I have a migrating tooth,” she mumbled, staring up at the ceiling.
“A what?”
“My tooth moves if I don’t wear my retainer. It will slowly inch its way back to the roof of my mouth and I can’t believe I just told you that. I’m never going to have sex again, am I?”
“You have a tooth in the roof of your mouth.”
“I had a tooth in the roof of my mouth.” She covered her face with her hands. “I have to go home now.”
“Yeah, that’s not what you were saying in high school.”
Ouch. When he’d apologized to her at the bar that night, he’d meant it. In high school he hadn’t thought about how she might feel being the butt of a joke. He’d just thought about how she was one of those people he’d never be. Good at school, tests. Charlie-stuff his parents had praised to high heaven and wondered why it’d skipped a kid.
“Hey.” She poked his chest. “Don’t get all frowny. I’ll have to start reminding you I deserved at least a little of it. Remember the talent show?”
“Oh, God. The cow-milking play?”
She nodded. “It was awful.”
“Please tell me your parents videotaped it. I need to see that again. Probably be a turn-on for me now.”
She shoved at his chest. “No.” But she was laughing, and everything about this felt right.
He was in trouble, but he couldn’t resist her. He cupped her cheek, thumb brushing across her earlobe, and looked at her, right in the eye, refusing to let himself chicken out. “I wasn’t very nice to you then.” It was uncomfortable, but it needed to be said.
“No one was.”
Christ, she killed him. All matter of fact, not all screwed up over it like he was. Infinitely stronger and wiser than him, and he didn’t even care, because her being here made him feel worthy of her. She’d chosen him, and she hadn’t had to. His fingertips touched her hair, his thumb grazing her cheekbone. She squirmed, but he didn’t let go. He didn’t ever want to let go.
“I was jealous, you know.”
“Jealous?” She scoffed. “Of what?”
“You were so smart…and I wasn’t very.”
She let out a shaky breath, meeting his gaze. “I think we both did okay.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.
The words hovered, weighted with importance. He didn’t let his eyes leave her face. “Yeah, I’d say we both did pretty damn good.”
She smiled and he managed one in return, leaning in to kiss her, to lose himself in her. But her phone went off.
“Ignore it.”
“I can’t. I can’t not answer a ringing phone. What if it’s important?”
He slid his hands up her sides, bringing her tank top with them. “What if it’s not?”
She shook her head and pushed him away. “Can’t. Can’t do it.” She hopped up, found her phone and flipped it open. Even from a few feet away he could hear the immediate onslaught of a woman’s voice.
“Mom. Mom. Jeez. Mom.” Mia held up a finger and disappeared down the hall. Dell scrubbed his hands over his face. What on God’s green earth was he doing? He was two bizarre idiosyncrasies away from falling for her completely and about ten bricks short of a load.
He looked up at the ceiling. What exactly was the harm in falling for Mia?
She’s your direct competition, moron.
Right. Right.
Why didn’t that feel right at all?
Probably because they hadn’t been to market yet. How was he going to feel tomorrow when customers lined up at her booth instead of his? Was it really going to be that easy to forget she’d been the one to start the battle of the sexes? That every customer at her booth meant one less sale for him, and each lost sale put him on increasingly crumbling ground.
And if she tried to help him again, he was pretty sure his man card would be revoked along with thoroughly imploding any chance he might have to earn his father’s respect. As much as he needed her help, as much as it seemed harmless on the surface, if Dad found out he’d be even more fucked than he already was.
Mia returned with the phone off her ear and a tight smile. His depressing thoughts stopped. When she slid onto the couch next to him any of her humor and ease from earlier was gone.
“Something wrong?”
“I guess word got to Mom that you and I…” She rubbed her tongue over her bottom lip, so he let his hand travel from calf to thigh. It was only fair.
“You and I?”
“Had dinner at Moonrise the other night. And I guess someone saw us kissing in the parking lot.”
“That was hardly a kiss.” He stroked his index finger up and down her leg from her kneecap to the hem of her shorts.
“Well, enough of a kiss for my mother.” She pushed off the couch and began to pace. Dell folded his arms behind his head and enjoyed the view.
Despite being short, she had long, pretty legs. She wasn’t wearing a bra under her tank top. A very nice view indeed.
“She wants me to bring you to dinner.”
Dell stilled. “Woah. What?”
“I didn’t say I want you to come to dinner. I said that’s what my mother wants.”
He straightened, the offhanded comment pricking at his pride a little. “You don’t want me to come to dinner?”
She blinked at him. “You want to?”
This conversation had gotten weird quick. “I… Let’s rewind for a second. Why does your mother want me to come to dinner?”
“Because, if I’m seeing ‘that boy’—that boy being you—’he’d better be willing to come visit with your family.’” Her imitation of her mother made him smile.
She shook her head, looking grave. “Yeah, you definitely cannot come to dinner.”
“Why not?”
“Because everything about that smile screams bad boy and my mother will flip.”
Dell upped the wattage of his grin. “I love to make mothers flip.”
“Dell, be serious. You don’t want to come to dinner with my family. They’re nuts.”
He leaned forward, grabbing Mia’s hand and pulling her toward him. “Do you want me to?”
She looked down at their joined hands, her expression pained. “No. Yes. Yes and no? Can my answer be both?”
Dell shook his head, then tugged until she was on his lap. She framed his face with her hands and he had the uncomfortable realization he’d do just about anything she asked him to. Including go to dinner with her crazy family. If it meant more of this…what was the harm?
He ignored the little voice that whispered, profits, money, farm.
“I’ll go.”
“Are you sure?”
His hands smoothed down her back. Not even a little bit, but apparently that wasn’t going to stop him.
* * *
Mia scarfed down a bagel with one hand while Dell helped load his truck with her market produce.
“How do you have so much stuff?”
“I had some canned stuff leftover from winter, some garlic, onion. I kept them up in case of emergency. Good potato crop.”
He frowned, finished shoving the last pallet into the bed of the truck. “Quite the planner.”
Mia’s stomach turned as she climbed into the passenger seat. The past week it had been kind of easy to pretend this stuff didn’t matter.
But it did. More varieties in crop to sell meant more people would buy from her where they could get different things all at one place.
It irked her that she felt guilty. She shouldn’t feel guilty for doing her job. It wasn’t her fault he didn’t have an emergency crop.
But the guilt didn’t desist, and the stomach-turning edged deeper. And deeper still when silence lingered as Dell drove toward Millertown.
Mia tried to think of a safe topic, but came up blank. Usually they talked about farm stuff. Didn’t seem like a good idea now. Or they’d talk about the people they knew, but she’d been with him every night but one this week and they’d pretty much exhausted all conversation there.
“The Cardinals won last night.”
“I know. We watched the game together.”
“Oh. Right.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His hands were tight on the steering wheel and his expression was…hard. Unreadable. Not pleasant.
“Oh. Here.” Mia pulled a
twenty out of her purse. “Here’s my share for gas.”
He glanced at the twenty in her hand, then nodded to his wallet in the center console. Somehow, though she didn’t think it possible, his expression hardened further.
She’d screwed up somehow, but…how? What had she done? Just having more stuff to sell? Well, that wasn’t fair. And it was kind of petty of him to get upset over that.
“Supposed to rain tomorrow.”
Mia looked over at him. There was nothing relaxed or easy about the way he said it, but he was trying, so she would, too.
“Yeah. Can’t say as we need it.”
“Nope. Sure don’t.”
Silence again. And the only thing that punctuated the silence on the thirty-minute drive was stupid conversation like that.
When Dell pulled into a parking space at the market, they both sat for a second, staring at the windshield. Then he patted her knee.
“Good luck today, sugar.”
Mia blinked, but he was out of the truck before she could respond. Cara and Charlie descended, yapping and complaining a mile a minute while they unloaded the truck bed.
What the hell were they doing?
“Isn’t it going to bother you when he takes his shirt off?” Cara asked, placing onions in a neat row.
Mia hadn’t given it any thought. Which, considering as much thought as she gave everything, was kind of strange. But she hadn’t thought about Dell and his flirting at the market.
Mia sneaked a glance at him. He still had his T-shirt on and he was talking to Charlie about something as he set up their booth.
“Mia?”
“What? No. No, it won’t bother me. He can do what he wants.” Which was true. As much as she wanted to read into him inviting her over every night but one this week, the bottom line was they’d always agreed what was between them was going to just be fun until things got too complicated.
Was this too complicated? The ride here seemed to point to yes.
Mia spent the morning on considerable edge. She kept glancing at Dell. Trying to discern what every little thing meant. Like, for starters, why it took him nearly an hour to take his shirt off when he normally whipped it off before customers even started arriving. Or why he didn’t seem to be smiling quite so much as usual. Or…