by Lauren Dane
He packed quite a treat behind his zipper. Her belly and regions south tightened at that memory.
She snapped her gaze from his cock and tried not to blush.
“Have a seat.” He pushed the chair across from him away from the table with one booted foot. Not cowboy boots, worn work boots she figured cost more than she made in a month.
She wanted to go over and sit. Wanted to flirt and chat and let it lead right back to her place. Something about the man had gotten under her skin right from go. He was dangerous. Wanting too much was dangerous.
“I have to go to work.” With sheer force of will, Natalie turned her attention back to the bakery case.
Bobbi gave her a single raised brow but then got started on the Americano. The sounds and scent of the coffee-laden steam settled Natalie a little. “Ooh, I want one of those banana chocolate chip muffin things.”
“Here’s the thing, Natalie.” Suddenly, Paddy was standing very close. How had he done that? “That muffin is on hold. I’m a nice guy, though, so I’ll happily let you have it if you’ll sit and have coffee with me while we catch up.”
In her head, her sigh was wistful, but on the outside, she added a little annoyance to keep him back. Natalie had a weak spot for charming men, and boy, did Paddy have that in spades.
She was careful not to turn to look at him. He was so close, she probably couldn’t have kept her little resolution and stay on her Paddy Hurley–free diet. “I’ll have the blueberry one instead, then.”
Bobbi, clearly confused about the entire situation, shrugged and handed over the Americano and the muffin. Natalie thanked her and paid before heading toward the door.
Paddy caught up to her before she’d gotten more than a few steps. “Natalie? I was under the impression that when we parted ways before, things were okay between us. I guess I got it wrong. I’m sorry for whatever I did.”
Natalie paused. She might know it was best to keep him at a distance, but she didn’t want him feeling guilty or to come off looking disgruntled. “It was fine. There’s no need to apologize.”
His expression was smug for a moment, and then he caught himself with an easy smile. “So you do remember me.”
There was no way she could stop her smile in response. “Yes. You’re pretty memorable.”
“So what’s the deal?” He leaned a little closer. “You like being chased?”
With an annoyed hiss, Natalie stepped away. “No. I’m not interested in this...whatever it is. I don’t want to play games. I’m not being coy. I have a nice, quiet life. I like it that way.”
“There’s no whatever it is. Not yet. We already had that. I just think we could get to know one another again. I promise not to trash your living room or put a guitar through your television or anything.”
The charisma flowed off him in waves. It wasn’t something he put on. It wasn’t an affectation. It was impossible not to be attracted to him. They’d clicked all those years before, and it was still there, that chemical pull that made her a little sweaty and dizzy.
She stood a little straighter. “I have to go to work. I’m glad things are going well for you and your career. Have a good life, Paddy.”
He grabbed her hand, twining his fingers with hers, and a shock of connection rang through her. She could not want this.
The heat of him sort of caressed her skin, and it wasn’t even gross and sweaty because it was a thousand degrees outside. Was he some sort of sorcerer or something?
His attention shifted from where their hands were together to her face. “Wait. Let me walk you over. You’re at the library, right?”
Using all her will, she slowly pulled her hand free, their fingers still connected until the very last.
“No. Really. I can’t. I don’t have room in my life for you and all that comes with you.”
He flinched a little, but she had to give him credit for doggedness. “You don’t even know me now. How can you know what comes with me?”
“I’m truly happy to see your success. You worked for it. But come on, I’m no dummy. I know what comes with a life like yours.” She took a step away and then another until she was far enough to get a breath that wasn’t laden with him. “Enjoy your Friday.”
She left him there on the sidewalk as she kept going until finally, after she’d turned the corner, the squeezing pressure in her belly eased and she could breathe again.
She’d made the right choice.
She liked him. It wasn’t like she could lie about that. But she’d spent years of struggle to make herself a life she wanted, too many to let her ladybits take over. Truth was, she let that fear remain. The fear that his wild life would be one cringeworthy experience after the next; the fear of all that chaos and insanity kept her steadfast.
The library beckoned, and she kept moving toward it. She had a direction, and it was forward, not back. There was room for pleasure; she certainly hadn’t left sex behind, after all. But fleeting pleasure wasn’t stable or strong. That’s what he offered, and so she needed to pass on it.
* * *
BUT WHEN SHE walked into the coffee shop on Tuesday, he was there. Natalie ignored him and once she got out to the street—and man, was she glad she’d driven that day so she could put a closed door and a bunch of steel between them—she saw he waited just on the other side of her car.
“What? God, I told you, I’m not interested.”
His smile was slow, easy and effortlessly sexy. “You’re not interested in Paddy the rock star.”
Natalie frowned. “Is that so hard to believe? Not everyone wants to latch on to you for your fame, you know. I’m happy for you and your brothers. I like your music. But I don’t party like that anymore.” Hell, she didn’t live like that anymore. “I’m not that girl.”
He leaned against her car like a cat. “Darlin’, none of us are those people anymore. If I drank like that now, I’d be seriously fucked up the next day. When I’m not on tour, I’m here in Hood River. Not exactly known as a place to do blow off a hooker’s ass now, is it?”
She groaned. “I have no idea. It could be, and there could be a huge hooker-cocaine thing going on, and I wouldn’t know it. This is my point. Why are you so set on me, anyway?”
“You’re so suspicious. It’s sort of sexy. I’m set on you because I like you. Let me take you to dinner. Somewhere low-key. Hell, I’ll make you dinner at my house. No photographers. No keg stands. Just Paddy and Natalie.”
“Patrick, just leave it be. There are a million women who would be happy to have dinner with you. I’m a librarian living in a small town. I don’t have dinner with rock stars.”
“I won’t be a rock star at dinner. I’ll be Paddy. Anyway, I love books. Come on. Give me a chance. While I’m impressed you’d think a million women would be interested in me, I’m only interested in one woman. You.”
She got in and closed the door. After she’d started the car, she opened her passenger window a little. “Look, I’m flattered, I really am. But I’m not the woman for you.”
She pulled away, and he gave her a cheeky wave.
In retrospect, it was right then that she knew she was in very big trouble when it came to Patrick Hurley.
CHAPTER THREE
“SO REALLY, HE’S JUST... It’s like I keep telling myself I need to lose ten pounds before my high school reunion, but he’s a dozen doughnuts. Ooooh, Natalie, you know I’m delicious. Just one bite. I’m so good with coffee.”
Tuesday, Natalie’s housemate and best friend, broke out laughing. “I know how much you love doughnuts, too. So why not eat one? Or six? My point is, who freaking cares if you get a taste of Paddy Hurley? This isn’t Little House on the Prairie. You’re not going to get fired for premarital sex by the town elders.”
“It’s not that.” She made no bones about liking sex. Natalie considered good sex as important to her life as doughnuts and coffee. Paddy came with too many complications and too much noise. He had complicated written all over him.
“Then what is it?”
That wasn’t it, either.
“It’s just...” Natalie licked her lips. “He’s messy and complicated. He’d take so much time to handle, and I’m over handling other adults. I don’t want to be a nursemaid, a psychologist, and I sure have no desire to parent him while I’m fucking him, too. Ugh. I spent years and years stepping over people passed out in my house. I had to call the paramedics more than once because some random stranger, or my dad for that matter, had overdosed. I’ve had enough cleaning up puke and pretending not to smell liquor on breath at nine in the morning.”
She’d lived a life utterly out of control until she’d finally left home at seventeen, and even then it wasn’t until college that she finally got her shit together. Control meant everything. It meant you lived a life of your own choosing and not at someone else’s mercy, and it meant not being responsible for keeping grown-ass people from driving off a cliff.
It was the leaving that had been the key. The ultimate act of taking control of her life was walking away from that house. That pretty, solidly upper-class shell that was rotting inside. Just like her childhood had been.
“He comes with too much shit that pushes my buttons. Hot in bed or not, I just don’t want to chance it.” Paddy was a walking-talking advertisement for out of control.
Tuesday was careful to keep pity out of her eyes, but she sighed heavily. “All I’m saying is that life is made from chances you take. How do you know he won’t be worth it?”
Easy for Tuesday to say. Then again, her best friend sat in the house making gorgeous jewelry or hiking instead of going out on dates for her own messed-up reasons. Still, being someone’s friend meant knowing when to call bullshit and when to leave it alone. Tuesday wasn’t ready to confront those demons yet.
“I can’t deny knowing he lived here. I found out about six months after I bought the house here.” The fact that the dudes from Sweet Hollow Ranch lived in town and were locals who continued to make the city their home was a point of pride to Hood River. The town tended to be protective of the entire Hurley family. People didn’t call the paparazzi when one of them ate in their restaurants or shopped in their stores. There weren’t pictures sold to the tabloids of them going about their daily business.
When she’d discovered it, she’d been mildly worried, but she’d already begun to put down roots. She had no plans to run off simply because some old lover was in the same area.
And then Tuesday happened upon a storefront on Oak that she’d decided to run a business from and share half of Natalie’s house. Hood River had been a new start for both women.
“All this time I’ve lived here, and I never bumped into him or caught sight of him. I guess I had just hoped our paths wouldn’t cross.”
Tuesday made a dismissive sound. “Well, they have, and he’s clearly looking for a taste. I’m gonna guess he’ll eventually give up if you keep ignoring him. But what I’m saying is, why not see what he’s got to offer?”
Natalie wasn’t ready to admit out loud that maybe she was curious.
“Hand me the potatoes, and let’s change the subject please.”
Tuesday rolled her eyes but passed the bowl. “You did a pretty good job with these, by the way.”
Natalie’s cooking was an utter disaster, but over the years since she and Tuesday had roomed together in college, Natalie had developed a few not-awful dishes. Mainly easy stuff like sandwiches and soup, but she’d been working on mashed potatoes for a year or so, and she’d gotten to the point where nothing caught fire, and they actually tasted good.
“Now I can make canned soup, ham sandwiches and mashed potatoes. Maybe that’s what Paddy is after. He’s been waiting for a woman to make him mashed potatoes his whole life.”
They both cracked up.
“At least between the two of you, you have enough money to get takeout every night. Or maybe he can cook. That would be a bonus to the good looks and success stuff.”
“He’s probably spoiled. He lives up there on the ranch with his family. Maybe his mother cooks for him or something.”
“Maybe. But somehow I doubt it. But you won’t know unless you let him in.”
“I don’t need to know to mock him, duh. Just let me have my fun imagining him eating overcooked Hot Pockets or clinging to his mom’s apron strings.”
* * *
“SO HERE’S THE THING,” Paddy said as he sidled up to Natalie the next morning at the coffee shop. “I dig that you don’t have to be at work until nine.”
“Why?” She handed some money to Bobbi, who took in the daily Paddy show with apparent glee. “So you don’t have to get up so early to come down here and pester me?”
He laughed at that. “I’ll have you know I’ve been up since six-thirty when I helped my oldest brother deal with a fence problem. Have you ever dug a post hole? It totally sucks. Ezra is sort of insane because he seems to actually like it.”
Natalie moved to grab some honey for her latte, but he kept talking. “It’s good because I can get my work done and come down here in time for you to actually have breakfast with me sometime.”
“See you tomorrow, Bobbi.” Natalie waved and started for the door, which Paddy now held open for her.
“I don’t like getting up early. Also, I don’t eat breakfast very often.”
He took up beside her, and she didn’t stop him. “You have a muffin in that bag.”
“That’s not breakfast. Bacon and eggs with toast and maybe hash browns, that’s breakfast.”
“You’re serious about breakfast.”
“Not really. If I was, that’s what I’d be eating. Mainly I have doughnuts or muffins or a toaster-pastry thing.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Really? Those are like cardboard. Also, you don’t look like you eat doughnuts all the time.”
“I’m serious about doughnuts. But my favorite kind I have to go to Portland for. Which is why I don’t eat them all the time. And my housemate is sporty. She drags me to hike and bike and windsurf. It’s gross, but it enables me to keep my doughnut habit.”
“You cut your hair. It was long before.”
“You’re good at the non sequiturs.”
He snorted. “I’m not sure when you’re going to run off, so I’m trying to get in as much chitchat as I can before that happens.”
She stopped, turning toward him. “Why are you so persistent? I’m not even that nice to you!” It was hard for her not to be friendly to him. She liked him, for heaven’s sake.
“You don’t want me for my status.”
She shook her head, trying to understand. “Status?”
“The celebrity thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t have any status when I met you.”
He grinned. “Nope. Just a shitty van that broke down a lot and some instruments my brothers and I played.”
She paused for long moments and then started walking again. “I cut my hair years ago. Tuesday, that’s my housemate, she went through a phase when she wanted to be a hairdresser. It lasted half a quarter. But she cut my hair, and I liked it short. Plus, I look great in hats, and short hair works that way.”
“Did that hurt? You sharing that little fact with me?” He winked, and it was cute, and she ruthlessly tried not to show how amused she was but probably failed.
“So you two have been roommates since college?”
“No. We shared an apartment in college, and then she got married and I went to grad school. But three years ago, she came to visit and wanted to set up a business here, so I offered her a place to live for a while. She never moved out. Which is good because I can’t cook, and she does and thinks it’s fun.”
“Like hiking?”
Natalie curled her lip. “Yes. Ugh.”
“No husband?”
“I would not be allowing you to walk me to my job if I had a husband, Patrick Hurley.”
Paddy’s laugh made her tingle a little. It was a bawdy laugh. “You said that like you were g
oing to paddle me or slap my hand with a ruler. You should know that’ll only encourage me.”
She pressed her lips together and then gave up, laughing.
He kept pace, but she noted his smile from the corner of her eye. “I meant your friend.”
Duh. Of course he did. “She’s a widow.”
“Oh, damn. That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” They approached the library, and she handed him her coffee. “Hold that, please.” She rustled through her bag until she found her keys. “Thanks.” She took the coffee back and tucked the pastry bag into her purse.
* * *
PADDY REALLY DIDN’T want that moment between them to end, but he’d enjoyed a victory nonetheless, so he’d take that small step forward and get more next time. “Wow, I feel like we’ve turned a corner here, Natalie.” He bowed. “Thank you for letting me walk you to work.”
She appeared to be looking for something to say, and he didn’t want her to say something about him not doing it again.
“Will you let me take you to dinner?”
She sighed, but it was a sigh of longing, so he pushed ahead.
“I mean, I was aiming for breakfast since it’s the least datelike of the meals—unless you slept over, of course—and if that happens, I’ll make you bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast. Maybe even biscuits. But since we’re not at that stage yet, and you don’t eat breakfast, dinner is a good alternative.”
“Not lunch?”
Was she teasing him? That was a good sign. “I’ll take what I can get. But usually during the days when I’m here in Hood River, I’m working. Either on music or on the ranch. Summer is a crazy busy time and my brother does so much when we’re on tour, I like helping him out.”
Natalie sighed long and then shook her head as she looked him over. “Why you gotta be so human, Patrick Hurley?”
“Is that good or bad? I don’t know with you.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure yet, either. You can pick me up from here tomorrow night. I’m off at six.”
With that, she unlocked the door and went inside. “Have a good day, Paddy.” She waved one last time, locked the door once more and disappeared into the building, leaving him standing there with a dumb smile on his face.
