Ready to Run

by Lauren Layne

  He made a rolling more motion with his finger.

  “Maybe I should start running five miles a day if it’ll help me eat like this,” she muttered.

  “Six. I run six miles a day.”

  “I hate you. Everyone does. Just thought you should know.”

  He merely grinned at her, and a minute later he flicked off the burner, stirred in the cheese and mushrooms, and pulled out the plate of toast and bacon he’d cooked earlier and left to warm in the oven.

  “Do I even want to know how many loaves of bread are on that plate?” she asked, taking a triangle from the top of the stack and nibbling the corner.

  “Doesn’t Bill feed you?” he asked.

  “No, I feed him. Although don’t tell him you guys eat like this here, or I’ll never get him to continue choking down the turkey bacon I’ve been pushing lately.”

  Luke set the food on the table, along with a stack of plates and a roll of paper towels to serve as napkins, before pushing open the kitchen door and ringing the bell that served as the Food’s up notice.

  “You have less than a minute to tell me what you’re after before the wolves descend.”

  “Hey, I come by at least once a week on Bill’s day off to say hi!” his sister said, punching his arm.

  “Sure, but you never agree to grate the cheese,” he said, picking up a piece of bacon—not the turkey kind—and devouring it in two bites as he pulled a carton of OJ out of the fridge. “What’s up?”

  “I think you should do it. The show,” Tawny announced.

  Luke couldn’t withhold the wince. His own sister wanted him to sell out? “Jesus, Tawny.”

  “Just hear me out,” she said in a rush. “It’s not for the spectacle of it, although for the record, how cool would it be?”

  He gave her a warning look, and she held up an appeasing hand, her eyes darting to the door as the sound of hungry male voices came closer. “I think it’d be good for you. You haven’t been the same since Eva—”

  “No,” he interrupted, voice curt, even for him. His sister knew full well that while he was pretty easygoing talking about his first two failed weddings, the third was off-limits.

  “Will you at least talk to the New York girl?”

  “Have you even met her? She’s a complete pain in the ass. She’d step on anyone and anything to get what she wants.”

  The door shoved open, Charlie first, as he generally was. Luke’s friend made a beeline for Tawny, scooping her up and hugging her as though he hadn’t seen her in months and wasn’t likely to run into her at the grocery store or the gas station or Tucker’s any day of the week.

  “Why’s he so grumpy?” Charlie asked, grabbing a plate and jerking his chin toward Luke.

  “I’m not grumpy.”

  “You look grumpy,” said Hank, one of the older firefighters, setting a handful of bacon between two pieces of toast and taking an enormous bite.

  “Well, shit, I am now,” Luke mumbled into his coffee.

  “Heard the hot New Yorker is staying awhile,” Ryan said, strolling in and giving Tawny a kiss on the cheek.

  “She won’t last through the end of the week,” Luke said, picking up a plate and spooning a pile of the eggs onto it.

  “How do you figure?” Charlie asked, dropping into his chair and picking up a fork.

  Because I’ll lose my mind if she doesn’t leave by then, that’s how I fucking figure.

  Chapter 7

  Simon twirled into Jordan’s room.

  Literally twirled. Arms out, spinning in a wide circle before flopping down on the newly delivered bed with a happy sigh.

  “I fell in love today,” he proclaimed, linking his hands together and laying them across his flat stomach.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, hanging up a cream blouse and putting it into the closet. “You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror again?”

  He rolled onto his stomach. “His name is Dale. He owns this adorable little bakery.”

  “Thought you said you were giving up carbs,” Jordan said, deciding she was bored of unpacking and, going to the bed, shoving him over so she could belly flop beside him.

  “I’ve decided this guy would be worth the paunch,” he said with a waggle of man-groomed eyebrows.

  “Uh-huh. Did Dean call you back?”

  Simon gave a defeated sigh. “Yes. The boss needs me in the office on Friday, but he agreed that I might be needed to talk to the locals while you work your magic, so I’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s all about helping me land our guy and nothing to do with your baker.”

  He grinned. “The way I see it, this will give you plenty of time to figure out my baker’s romantic inclinations.”

  “Sure. I’ll just be all I’ll have a cruller, and by the way, are you gay?”

  “If he knows what a cruller is, he’s definitely gay,” Simon pointed out.

  Jordan sighed and rolled onto her back. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me in a tiny town all by myself.”

  “I’m not even a little bit worried about you. These people already adore you. I know, because I asked.”

  “I’ve barely even talked to them.”

  “Yeah, but they can smell your small-town roots.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Yuck. And they’re just friendly. They like you, and you’re from San Francisco.”

  “They like me because I’m irresistible. They like you because you’re one of them.”

  “Um, hello?” Jordan said indignantly, lifting her leg to display the completely impractical red suede pump.

  Simon shoved her leg down. “Even Jimmy Choo can’t disguise your roots.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve gone around chewing hay.”

  “Don’t get cranky. I just meant that you’re nice, that’s all. You’ve always been nicer than us New Yorkers.”

  “Most New Yorkers are transplants from somewhere else. Like you.”

  “Yes, but you’re a transplant from Krypton, Ohio.”

  “Keaton, Kansas.”

  He waved a hand. “Keaton, Kansas; Krypton, Ohio; Lucky Hollow, Montana—they’ve all got the same vibe; the people all speak the same language.”

  “Hick?”

  He turned his head, his expression growing a bit more serious. “You really hate your hometown that much?”

  “What?” She glanced over at him in surprise, then turned away again to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t hate it at all, it’s just…as a teenager, I was so determined to leave it behind completely. And it’s weird looking back as an adult, all of a sudden realizing—”

  “That you miss it?”

  “I don’t know if I do,” she said.

  Simon rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “I love you, Carpenter, but you’re being super weird about this.”

  She let out a little laugh because he was right. So right. But how to explain that her panic wasn’t so much that she didn’t want to be here but that she felt oddly…comfortable.

  From the moment she’d learned that she got the cross-country scholarship to Tufts, Jordan had started planning on how to lose herself in her future. First it had been college, then it had been applying to the best internships, then it had been job searching in New York.

  Then she got to New York, and the chaos was exactly what she’d needed—the city’s constant energy meant that she was always on the go, always looking at the next thing.

  She liked that.

  Jordan was happy, successful….

  And if something was missing, so what?

  “Maybe I should take a lover when we get back to New York,” she mused.

  Simon gave a surprised laugh. “I’m sorry, what? Take a lover? Are you a nineteenth-century widow? But, yes, hun, you are absolutely overdue to get laid.”

  Her mind veered toward Luke Elliott and his big hands and rough voice, and…

  Nope. Not happening.

  She swung up into a seated position. “You want a drink? I picked up some wi
ne when I was running errands.”

  “Absolutely,” he said, standing and offering her a hand. “Don’t suppose you picked up any Saint André?”

  “Yeah, that’s a no on the über-fancy cheese,” she said, heading out of the bedroom. “How do you feel about Alouette in a plastic tub? Garlic-and-herb flavor.”

  “Did you get an English cucumber? I could slice it up, make low-calorie chips?” he asked, detouring into her bathroom.

  “You’re eating the cheese on a cracker like a human being,” she called back. “Your baker would want it that way!”

  “Gluten makes me puffy,” he called, before shutting the bathroom door.

  Jordan rolled her eyes and wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if he planned to use the claw-foot tub he was so in love with before he headed back to the city tomorrow evening.

  She hadn’t had a chance to buy decent sheets, much less figure out a sound system, so she settled for playing Lady Antebellum on her iPhone with the volume cranked up as she pulled a bottle of chardonnay out of the fridge.

  She was still digging through the various bags from the day’s shopping haul, looking for the corkscrew, when there was a knock at the front door.

  “Simon, can you get that?” she called.

  Nothing.

  As she headed toward the front door, she heard the sound of running water and realized that the weirdo really was taking a bath.

  Joke was on him. The new towels were still in the dryer.

  Apparently forty-eight hours of being back in a small town had completely undone eight years of living in New York City, because she opened the front door without seeing who it was first.

  A mistake.

  Not because she didn’t want to see him—he was the entire reason she was here in the first place. No, it was a mistake because she would have preferred a moment to compose herself, to prepare herself for the jolt of his…

  Glare.

  “Hey!” she said, smiling up into the scowling face of Luke Elliott.

  He was wearing the only thing she’d ever seen him in—jeans and a blue LHFD T-shirt and scuffed work boots, backward blue cap. A far cry from what the guys in her usual orbit wore, but…appealing. Very, very appealing.

  She couldn’t have designed a more perfect contestant for Jilted. At least, that was what she told herself was the motivation behind her appreciation.

  Luke lifted one hand to the doorjamb, gave her a once-over, eyes lingering on the shoes, almost resentfully, before he met her gaze. “So it’s true. You’ve moved in.”

  She crossed her arms and prepared for battle. “Yep, and I’ve got your ex to thank for it. Stacey’s a doll, by the way; you totally screwed up by leaving her.”

  His face revealed nothing, but, then, she hadn’t really expected it to.

  “I was just opening a bottle of chardonnay,” she said. “You want a glass?”

  There was a loud thump upstairs, and Luke’s eyes flicked toward the doorway, eyebrows raised when he glanced back at her.

  “That would be Simon,” she said. “He’s…You know, you don’t even want to know.”

  “You guys a thing?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked with a little laugh. “No. He’s…not interested in me.”

  Luke merely lifted a chin in acknowledgment, and Jordan sighed. “If you’re trying to scare me off with the rude-asshole routine, it’s not going to work.”

  He scratched his cheek. “Gathered that. Seems my attempt to do exactly that on Monday at the barbecue had the opposite effect.”

  She spread her arms to the side. “I’m a female. We’re ornery. Tell us one thing, we’re pretty much guaranteed to do another. Do you want a glass of wine or not?”

  “Got any beer?”

  “Yeah, but it’s probably not cold yet.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Jordan stepped aside, and he entered the house. Just an hour earlier, Jordan had been thinking how roomy the rental home felt compared to her SoHo apartment. But with Luke Elliott in the foyer, the house felt immediately smaller, the air warmer.

  “So, Stacey is sweet,” she said, deciding to rip that Band-Aid off sooner rather than later. She opened the fridge and reached for the six-pack of some local microbrew that had caught her eye.

  She wrapped a hand around the bottle. Not all the way cold, but cool enough.

  “Yup.”

  Jordan rolled her eyes, started to hand him the bottle, then wrinkled her nose. “Oops. Forgot that I don’t have a bottle opener. I mean, I do, but it’s…”

  She gestured toward the dozen or so bags that held the few items the house hadn’t come equipped with; there was a corkscrew and bottle opener somewhere in the mix.

  Luke took the beer, his fingers brushing hers, his eyes meeting hers at the contact.

  He looked away and, reaching into his back pocket, pulled out some sort of guy-ish gizmo. A second later the cap was off, and Jordan was suitably jealous. “Don’t suppose there’s a corkscrew on that?” she asked, half joking.

  Luke didn’t say a word as his thumb flicked something, a corkscrew appearing out of nowhere.

  “Now, that’s handy,” she said reverently, as he reached for the chardonnay she’d left on the counter.

  “My ex liked wine.”

  “Which one?”

  He glanced at her. “Third bride.”

  Eva. There’d been the least amount of information about her in the article.

  “She still live in town?” Jordan asked, going to the cabinet and pulling out a wineglass, which Luke filled.

  “Nope.”

  “She moved away after you—after the breakup?”

  Luke picked up his beer bottle, hazel eyes boring into hers. “Not doing this with you, City. In fact, it’s the very opposite of why I’m here.”

  Ah. So peacetime was over. She felt strangely disappointed, for reasons that had nothing to do with Jilted.

  “Let me guess.” She took a sip of her wine. “You’re here to tell me that I’m a horrible human being because I’m in your town, offering you a buttload of cash and a chance to fall in love with a beautiful woman, handpicked for you.”

  “I already tried that approach,” he said with a flicker of a smile. “Seems it backfired.”

  “It did indeed,” she said with an answering smile. “So what’s plan B?”

  Luke held her gaze. “Thought I’d ask you something.”

  “Sure, I’m an open book,” she said with a friendly grin that she knew from experience put people at ease.

  “How would you feel?” he asked.

  Jordan blinked. “Sorry?”

  He set his beer aside and braced both palms on the counter. “How would you feel if I came to New York? Hunted you down even after you’d ignored all my emails and phone calls? Moved in down the street, stalked all your friends—”

  “I’m not stalking—”

  “You got any ex-boyfriends, City?”

  Jordan nodded. She was thirty years old—of course she’d been through a couple of frogs by now.

  “What if I called them up? Dug into all the dirt on what went wrong.”

  “It’s different,” she said. “I wasn’t engaged to any of my exes, and—”

  “That’s my business,” he snapped. “Mine and those three women. Not yours. Not this town’s—”

  Jordan stood up straighter. “That’s what’s bugging you the most, isn’t it? Not that I’m here but that your town’s welcomed me with open arms. That they’re on my side.”

  “They don’t even know you.”

  “But they’re hardly chasing me off, are they? They’re not telling me to get lost. Why do you think that is, Mr. Elliott?”

  His jaw worked in irritation. “Maybe if you hadn’t come in here with your fancy looks and promises of fame—”

  “That’s crap. I mean, sure, they’re intrigued by the idea of knowing someone that could be famous, but they don’t want you to do this show for them; they want you
to do it for you.”

  “Spare me the psychobabble,” he said. “I care about these people, but it’s not about what they want. It’s about what I want, and I’m telling you that I don’t want to do this show. Why do you want it so damn badly, anyway? You get a promotion if I say yes?”

  She opened her mouth to deliver a tart response, only to realize…she had nothing.

  Why was she doing this? It was her job, yes. Her boss had told her to, yes. But was that what she was? A puppet who merely did someone else’s bidding?

  The truth was even more uncomfortable.

  What if she was doing this because she had nothing else to do.

  What if she was just going through the motions of her own life?

  Jordan shook the thought aside and directed her attention back toward him. This was about Luke, not her. She studied him over the rim of her glass. He was angry, definitely. She didn’t blame him. He was absolutely right that she’d pursued him hard, and if the situations were reversed she would have felt hounded.

  But there was something else lurking behind his hazel eyes, and it wasn’t just anger, it wasn’t just resentment.

  Pain?

  But that didn’t make sense. He’d been the one to leave those women. He was the bad guy here.

  And that, right there, was the very reason she didn’t feel that guilty over invading his life. A man who’d left three women at the altar wasn’t the hero of the story.

  It bothered her that he dared to play the victim card when, from where she was standing, he was very much the villain.

  Wasn’t he?

  “If I ask you a question, will you answer honestly?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “If I answer honestly, will you quit asking me to do this damn show?”

  She nodded, and his eyes narrowed as he gave her the same thorough study she’d just given him. “Yes. I promise.”

  “All right,” he finally said. “Ask your question.”

  “Did you really walk away from those three women on your wedding days?”

  He didn’t break eye contact. “Yes.”

  Jordan felt her stomach drop in disappointment. She didn’t know why she’d so desperately wanted it to be a different answer, but she had.

  “Okay,” she said quietly.