He didn’t smile back.
He didn’t frown, but he didn’t smile either. Since the health department incident, he’d simply been sad.
She had to quit letting him down.
A phone dinged. Marilyn dipped a hand into her apron and pulled her phone out. She glanced down, the diamonds in her ears sparkling in the boutique light, and the semblance of a smile crossed her lips. “Well,” she said. “At least someone has come to his better senses. CJ Blue has agreed to play in the Golden Husband Games.”
You’re welcome. Natalie wanted to say it, but she just couldn’t push the words out.
The Queen General lifted her head and gave Dad a regal nod that had entirely too much determination in it. “We’ll speak again soon,” she said, and then she saw herself out the back door.
Dad took two steps out onto the shop floor. Natalie turned to face him. “You were going to sell to her?” Every word put another shred in the tatters of her heart.
“She made me a good offer a while ago. Wanted to expand the bakery.” His lips were still turned down, disappointment in Natalie still lingering in his eyes. He began to turn away, then stopped. “You won’t ever get where you want to be if you don’t fight for it, Natalie. She’s one woman. Stop letting her push you around.”
“I’m doing the best I can here.” But it still wasn’t enough.
“If you would stand up to her the right way once in a while, maybe—” he turned, head down. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I’ll get Noah tonight. Need some quality time with my little buddy.”
She wanted to demand what maybe was.
But she didn’t have the right. She’d given that up somewhere along the way.
Dad trudged out the back door too. Amanda was still lingering near the cash register.
“He’s selling?” she said. “It’s true?”
“I’ll have him put in a good word for you to whoever the new owners are.” Nat’s voice was wooden and pained in her own ears. “You’ve done a great job for my family. We’ll always be grateful.”
Amanda shot a look at the three bridal consultants on the floor—one working furiously on the computer, another searching through the rack of new winter dresses, the third poking through the display of tiaras and veils.
“Them too,” Natalie said quickly. “It’ll all work out. Just have a little faith in me.”
She had her work cut out for her. Because she still needed to find her faith in herself.
Chapter Ten
A WEEK LATER, Natalie got a phone call that should’ve been to her mother.
The Bliss-approved thing to do would be to call Bonnie and Earl Phillips and offer her assistance today. But the Phillipses would not only decline her offer, they would also report her presence to the Queen General, because there was no question where Natalie was going.
She had to see her mother’s sunflowers before the rest of Bliss knew what they were.
She told Dad she had to get to the shop early, asked him to drop off Noah—who had slept with CJ’s hat on last night, as he had every night the last week—and then drove across town, past the high school and Suckers and the civic center and beyond, to a patch of earth that sat a little ways past the boundaries of Bliss.
Where the first thing she saw was Duke and Elsie Sparks’ Lexus SUV.
A tingly, something’s not right shiver went up her spine.
She made a mental deposit in Noah’s college fund and drove past the farm. She passed a line of trees—a windbreak for the field—and whipped her car behind it.
These were Mom’s sunflowers, dammit. The farmer had specifically taken the time to tell Nat that they’d survived the recent weather. She had every right to be here to see them.
She parked the car in the dirt and snuck through the spring growth of weeds beneath the trees. Probably should’ve worn pants instead of a skirt, but she hadn’t planned on climbing around in the wilderness. Damn—dang weeds were taller than the sunflower sprouts she spied from the edge of the tree line, where she was hiding behind one of the thicker trunks to peer across the field.
Seven acres was what Mom’s contract with the farmer had called for. Nat could barely breathe for the beauty of it. The individual plants were straggly green sprouts spaced in regular rows, but they made a green gauze over the ground that stretched on and on toward a farmhouse across the field.
She inched closer. She wanted to see their individual little leaf buds. To touch their green softness. She couldn’t not experience Mom’s sunflower sprouts. This would be the most epic Husband Games opening event in the history of the Husband Games.
The edge of the woods opened up to a small grassy strip. Natalie squatted low, close to the ground, and crept out from beneath the shelter of the trees. “You beautiful little sunflowers, you,” she murmured.
“Tell me again how the maze will be cut,” Duke’s voice boomed out.
Immediately to her left.
Oh, shit!
Natalie jerked back into the woods. She tripped over a weed and went down.
“Did you see that?” came Elsie’s pinched voice. The woman could’ve been a girls’ boarding school principal.
Natalie scrambled deeper into the woods on her hands and knees. Branches and sharp early weeds dug into her skin.
“Deer?” a semi-familiar deep voice said. The farmer.
Closer.
Shit.
Natalie scurried to her feet, dodging trees, ignoring the wincing pain in her palms and knees and shins.
“It was a person,” Elsie said.
Natalie broke into a high-speed run. Dashed through the wet undergrowth, tripped and went down once more, but she kept running, all the way back to her car.
She dove inside and peeled out onto the two-lane highway.
Her chest was heaving, lungs burning, heart hammering.
Elsie and Duke would report her to the QG. The QG would cut her off the committee. Tell Dad she’d committed another egregious error.
No one was supposed to know about the sunflower field. Marilyn knew Natalie knew about the field, but Marilyn didn’t know Natalie would come out here. And it didn’t matter how the Sparks knew—if they saw Natalie, they’d tell Marilyn.
Shit.
Nat hung the first left she came to. There was a dull itch in her shins. A soft burn irritated her scraped palms. Her skirt and blouse were a mess, and a layer of dirt squished between her shoe and the gas pedal.
She couldn’t go home for fresh clothes or Dad would know she’d been up to something, and she doubted he’d approve.
But she’d needed to see Mom’s sunflower field.
A quarter mile down the road, her hands and legs began burning. A quarter mile after that, the burn had spread up her arms and down to her feet. Burning and itching and aching.
She rubbed at one hand, but it burned worse.
She circled back into Bliss, eyes stinging. Her skin felt like it had been pricked by a thousand flaming needles. Scratching made it hot and uncomfortable. She passed the civic center, but her vision blurred too badly to see it clearly.
She needed to pull over.
Get help.
But what would she do? Call 911 and say the Queen General had somehow found out Nat was visiting the sunflower field and given her fast-acting poison ivy?
There was an unfamiliar car in the parking lot behind Suckers. It looked like the kind of beat-up old car Jeremy would drive.
Maybe he was prepping for the lunch shift.
He could help her.
She didn’t hesitate, just whipped her car behind the building. She tumbled out and banged on the door. “Jeremy?” She banged again, then stomped her feet, hoping the sensation would distract her from the flaming itch spreading over all her skin. “Jeremy, it’s Natalie Castellano. I need help.”
The door flung open, but it wasn’t Jeremy standing there.
“Hell and damnation.” There went a nickel and a dime into Noah’s college fund, which she’d be raiding
to pay for cortisone cream at the gas station across the way. She turned away, raking her nails over her hands and rubbing her knees together.
The gas station was only half a mile away. She could make it.
CJ latched onto her arm and let out a low whistle. “Where have you been playing this morning?”
Let go. She needed to say it. Not because she was afraid the QG would hear she’d seen CJ again, but because Natalie didn’t trust herself with him.
But, dammit, her skin hurt. Raw welts were rising on her hands, worse on her knees and shins, and his grip on her upper arm was confusing her.
Because she didn’t want to break the physical connection.
Her breath came in heavy pants.
“You been rolling in poison ivy or itchweed?” He tugged her arm. “C’mon. Let’s get you hosed down.”
Hosed down?
He was grinning, a wicked, I’m-going-to-enjoy-this kind of grin. Distinctly lacking in that grin? Animosity.
For the first time since she’d seen him face-to-face, he seemed genuinely pleased to see her.
Probably because she was a mess.
Still, this was a bad, bad idea.
“You gonna stand out here all day and wait for someone to see you, or you gonna get in here and quit itching?” he said.
She was going to go. Go to the gas station.
Except her wobbly legs ignored her better judgment and followed him into the Suckers kitchen.
He gestured to an industrial-sized stainless-steel sink with a large sprayer hose hanging on a hook on the ceiling. “C’mon over. This ever happen before?”
She followed him, her movements jerky and itchy and painful, equally suspicious and hopeful that he knew what he was talking about. “Broken out in hives while driving my car?” Her jaw clenched. She hurt so bad. “Yeah. Happens every day.”
“You ever think of starting your day with a smile? Might help that grumpy-head thing you’ve got going on.”
Her chest inflated, and she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind—her hands and legs were on fire—but he grinned down at her with the orneriest, most self-assured, heart-stopping smile, and her tongue was suddenly as capable of forming sentences as Cindy the Stegosaurus was.
He held her gaze. His smile slipped—his lips still tilted up, but the spark of mischief in his eyes faded, replaced with a curious intensity that magnified with every thump of her heart. She squirmed.
He blinked, and easygoing CJ came back. One hand on the sprayer, the other gestured at her. “Take ’em off.”
“Mm-buh?” she said, with as much class and dignity as it was possible to put into gibberish. Which wasn’t any at all, but she’d made a life of living with her own delusions.
“Strip. Best way to get it all off.” His voice wobbled, as if perhaps he wasn’t as comfortable as he wanted her to think he was.
“Hell, no.” But he was right. She was starting to itch in places he couldn’t see.
Places she wanted him to—no. No.
Places she didn’t want him to see.
Obviously her brain was breaking out in hives too. She pointed to the door. “Leave.”
His eyes took on a stubbornness that reminded her of the man who had driven her father home two weeks ago. “You make a mess in here, I have to clean it up. We’re doing this my way.”
She squirmed. The itch burned higher and higher on her legs, rushing to meet another sensation traveling down her legs that she should’ve been worried about.
Nothing good could come of her attraction to him.
She forbade herself to scratch anything and glared at him. “I’ll go do it myself in the bathroom.”
His nostrils flared. “For God’s sake, Natalie, I have eleven sisters. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. You want to feel better or not?”
Oh, yes. She wanted to feel better.
She wanted to feel much better.
His eyes darkened. His gaze darted to her lips, then back to her eyes, and something else inside her lit on fire.
Something primitive and womanly and needy.
Something that made her see something primitive and manly and needy burning in his eyes.
As if he could feel it too.
As if he liked it too.
She was imagining things. She hadn’t given this man a single reason to like her. More, him liking her could cause them both more problems than he could understand or anticipate.
But she wasn’t imagining things.
He was looking at her as though he wanted to kiss the argument right out of her.
He broke eye contact to yank on the sprayer hose. He pointed it into the sink, flipped it on full stream, then snatched her hand and pulled her arm into the sink.
Warm water pummeled her skin, washing away the sting.
Half her body sagged in relief. “Oooh, that’s good,” she breathed. It did nothing for the other sensations prickling to life deep inside her, but her arm—oh, God, her hand and arm were better. She thrust her other arm at him. “Do this one too.”
He shifted behind her and guided her left hand into the water. “You should get some itch cream.” His voice was rough silk in her ears, his body rigid behind her, and if her legs didn’t hurt so badly, she would’ve gotten a few bad ideas about his proximity.
Who was she kidding? She was having plenty of bad ideas.
She should start charging herself for impure thoughts about CJ too. Double. At this rate, Noah could go to an Ivy League school on the IOUs in his college fund.
CJ pressed the hose into her hand. “Keep spraying.” He stepped away, then came back with a box of baking soda. He touched her shoulder. “Stop scratching.”
She hadn’t realized she was rubbing her legs against each other.
“Shoes off,” he said. “And ditch the skirt. It’s making it worse.”
He was evil. He’d given her a taste of relief, and now he knew she couldn’t walk away.
He didn’t look nearly as certain that he could handle this as he had at first.
Not as wicked either.
But he was right. Whatever she’d gotten into, it was all over her skirt. In her sweater too. She gulped.
Then gulped again.
Then surrendered the hose so she could strip.
Nearly naked.
In front of CJ.
“I need to text Lindsey.” If she kept up a stream of conversation, she could pretend she wasn’t unzipping her skirt or worrying about what underwear she’d put on this morning or if he’d notice her mostly faded stretch marks. “She’ll bring me clean clothes.”
CJ’s full concentration seemed to be on mixing baking soda and water in a bowl. “Nicer than my sisters would be,” he said.
“Doubt it,” Natalie muttered. Because now that she thought about it, she wasn’t so sure Lindsey would be helpful if she knew Nat was stripping to her Skivvies in front of CJ. She’d gone all lawyerly and danced around Natalie’s questions as to how CJ ended up with her wallet. Which wasn’t like Lindsey at all. She didn’t play matchmaker. Nor did she usually cause hell just for the fun of it, especially when she knew how important the Golden Husband Games were to Natalie.
Natalie’s skirt hit the floor. She made quick work of yanking off her sweater. One minute CJ was staring at the baking soda mixture, the next he was scooping Natalie up and depositing her at the edge of the sink. He thrust the water at her, and she got the impression he hadn’t taken a single glance at her body.
It was almost disappointing.
“Keep spraying,” he said.
With her legs bent in the sink, she turned the sprayer on them.
And once again, moaned in relief.
CJ’s shoulders bunched. He was staring at the baking soda again. “My sister Pepper snuck out to a farm party one night in high school. Wore sandals. She got itchweed so bad, she couldn’t stand socks or pants for a week.”
Nat’s hands stung again, so she alternated the spray between her
arms and legs. CJ’s green polo was getting damp from the mist off the sprayer.
“A week?” Natalie said. “I can’t wear clothes for a week?”
Damn the man and his adorable upturned lips. “Week or two, I’d say.”
A week or two? “Oh, hell, no,” she started, but then she noticed the vibration in his shoulders.
He was playing with her.
“You—”
He expertly flicked the sprayer out of her hands before she could turn it on him. “Hold still.” He picked up the bowl and brought it close, eyes trained on hers. “This’ll help.”
Before she could ask what would help, he slopped the wet mixture in both hands, and then, with slow, sure strokes, he rubbed it down her arms and over her hands. Her breath caught.
“My sister, Margie, could tell you the science behind this, but she’s as stuffy as Basil. I’d rather go to confession than listen to the two of them have a conversation. Makes your ears bleed.”
He didn’t flinch over the word confession, but she didn’t believe he’d slipped it in there completely innocently.
But with his hands rubbing her half-naked body down with gritty white goop, it was overlookable. Her skin pebbled into goose bumps, both from his touch and from the cool air around her. The man had talented hands. Competent, confident, warm.
She’d need to go to confession with all the ideas his touch inspired. “You like your family?” she asked. She needed something safe. Something normal.
If he noticed her teeth chattering, he didn’t comment. Simply piled more mix in his hands and went back to rubbing her down. “Most of ’em. Most days.”
“How do you keep them all straight?” Her head had swum at the conversations whipping around her when she’d fixed Saffron’s veil. She couldn’t imagine keeping all eleven of them straight.
“You don’t,” CJ said.
Natalie laughed. He grinned at her, then moved to rub the goo on her legs.
She shivered again. “Can you name them all?”
His hands stroked up and down her calves. “Nah, we just use numbers.”
This time her laugh caught in her throat, because his fingers were massaging the goop into her skin with tiny circles. The pressure had her on the cusp between needing to squeeze her thighs together to relieve the tension building there, and wanting to shove him away for tickling her.
Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) Page 15
