Untouchable_A Small Town Romance

by Talia Hibbert

  Luckily, Hannah had years—a lifetime—of experience in hiding her baseline rage. Which is how she managed not to fly across the counter and commit a murder when the blonde pouted like a child and said, “No, actually. Everything’s not okay. This person is being extremely rude to me.”

  Well. Extremely was laying it on a bit thick.

  Ant grimaced sympathetically at the customer, then glared at Hannah. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?”

  “The lady would like to change her order,” Hannah said with as much sweetness as she could manage. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

  “You got my order wrong,” the woman snapped.

  I am Hannah fucking Kabbah. I go to the supermarket every week without a shopping list. I once memorised an entire psychology textbook the day before an exam after realising I’d been revising the wrong module for weeks. And guess what? I got an A. I spent the first few years of my professional life keeping multiple toddlers alive. Do you know how hard it is to keep toddlers alive, Ms. Chai Latte? It’s really fucking hard. And I was good at it. I do not get things wrong. I do not make mistakes. I do not fuck up FUCKING CHAI LATTES. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

  This was what Hannah thought. But what she said was…

  Oh. Wait. Shit.

  Judging by the looks of utter astonishment on the faces of Ant, the blonde, and the elderly couple sitting over by the window, what she’d said was…

  Every single word that had just run through her head.

  Out loud.

  Oh dear.

  “Hannah,” Ant choked out. He sounded like he was having a heart attack. She didn’t blame him. She should be feeling the same way. She should be drowning beneath a tidal wave of shock and panic and embarrassment, frantically grasping for ways to take all of that back and, you know, not lose her job.

  But she wasn’t. Instead of terrified, Hannah felt peaceful—relieved, actually.

  And elated. And free.

  Once every few years, Hannah experienced what she privately referred to as a break. Whether one chose to interpret that as a pleasant, holiday sort of break, or the more negative oh-dear-I’ve-snapped sort of break was neither here nor there. It didn’t matter what she called it or why it occurred, because the outcome was always the same: Hannah’s tightly leashed temper broke out, she did something extremely ill-advised, and in the aftermath of her terrible behaviour, she experienced the sort of carefree, unconditional happiness that was usually out of her reach.

  Her last break had arguably been the most extreme: she’d smashed a fancy vintage car to pieces with a cricket bat, been arrested, lost her career…. Yeah. That one had come at a pretty high price.

  But she didn’t regret it. Which meant, Hannah realised, that she probably wouldn’t regret this, either. And as long as she was riding high on a wave of euphoric adrenaline… might as well enjoy the ride.

  Both Ant and the blonde’s mouths were hanging open so wide, she could see their fillings. Trying not to smile, Hannah reached beneath her apron and undid the button on her culottes.

  Oh, that felt great.

  Then she reached beneath the counter, grabbed a little takeaway bag, and unscrewed the jar of marshmallows on the counter. They were good fucking marshmallows. She shoved as many into the bag as she could—which turned out to be a decent amount—and popped a few in her mouth, too.

  “Hannah?” Ant’s smooth, round face was caught comically between astonishment and fury. His pale skin had turned a rather fascinating sort of raspberry colour. “What on earth are you doing?”

  He sounded like a school teacher preparing to scold a naughty pupil. But Hannah had never been a naughty pupil, and she’d never been scolded at school. Maybe that was why she didn’t have the constitution to take it.

  “Catch,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?!”

  She tossed a marshmallow directly into his mouth. What an excellent shot.

  The blonde gave a little shriek and stepped back, as if she expected a sugary projectile to come her way, too. Smart girl. The elderly couple in the corner, meanwhile, let out an adorable cheer. Hannah loved old people. They were almost as sensible as children, but far more fun. And that was saying something.

  “Mumpf aft orffff?!” Ant fumed around the marshmallow wedged in his gob.

  “It was a good shot, wasn’t it?” Hannah was quite proud of herself. Which made a nice change, actually. She hadn’t been proud of herself in a long bloody time.

  The feeling grew when she walked around the counter clutching her bag of stolen marshmallows and headed for the door. The old man who’d ordered the teacake winked at her as she passed, and—rather scandalously—she winked back. Good gracious. Perhaps she’d been possessed by a demon with a sense of humour and a spine of hell-forged iron.

  “I quit,” she called over her shoulder. “You probably gathered that, but men can be rather dense.”

  “AFFA! TOPF FA—”

  “Ant, darling, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Don’t speak with your mouth full.”

  The poor man spat out the marshmallow and shouted, “Have you lost your mind?!”

  “Not exactly,” she said pleasantly. “It’s a free-range sort of arrangement.”

  “Joshua Davis,” Nate said, “you spit that out right now.”

  Josh did not spit it out.

  Probably because his older sister, Beth, was giggling helplessly at the sight of the tulip in his mouth. It was Beth who’d told him to eat the damned thing in the first place, and five-year-old Josh thought his seven-year-old sister was the queen of the world, so of course he’d done it.

  Perhaps that was the key. Maybe if Nate appealed to the mastermind rather than the loyal solider…

  He turned his best parental glare on his daughter and said, “Bethany. Don’t feed your brother random plant life.”

  Beth stuck out her tongue.

  Sigh.

  The problem was, Nate decided grimly, that his kids weren’t scared of him. Not even a little bit. Probably because he sucked at discipline. Like right now, for example—it was 6:30, so they should be in bed reading. Instead, they scurried off deeper into the meadow with squeaky little laughs and shouts of “Bye bye, Daddy!”

  Ah, well. At least they were happy. They’d been through a lot, recently—finding out Grandma was sick, moving across the country, starting a new school. Nate was so happy to see them laughing again, he didn’t even notice the stranger walking through the meadow.

  Until Josh, and then Beth, barrelled into the distant little figure like a pair cannonballs. Nate watched for a second, frozen, as they all collapsed into the tall grass.

  And then he ran.

  He’d been loping after the kids like some cartoon monster before, but now he actually sprinted, carving through the distance between them in seconds. It still didn’t feel fast enough. He reminded himself that this was Ravenswood, not London, and the person his kids had just bumped into probably wasn’t dangerous…

  But that didn’t really help. For one thing, no matter who it was, they’d all fallen over. The stranger and the kids. What if someone was injured? What if Beth had broken her arm again? Or what if the person they’d bumped into was frail or old or something, and now they’d cracked their head open and were currently bleeding out into the grass, and it was all Nate’s fault because he couldn’t keep his damn kids under control—

  “Daddy!” Josh popped up out of the grass like a teary daisy and launched himself into Nate’s arms.

  Beth picked herself up with far more dignity—she was seven, after all—before scurrying away from the person in the grass with a wary look. The kids had this whole ‘stranger danger’ thing down. Nate’s wife had always been firm about that.

  He sank to his knees and wrapped an arm around Beth, his other arm busy holding Josh. Nate ran his hands over all the vital parts—heads, limbs, and so on—while he asked questions. “You hurt yourself?”

  “No.” That wa
s Beth.

  “Yes!” That was Josh, using a tone of voice that actually meant, No, but I need attention.

  He held Josh closer and kissed his head. “There you go, kiddo. You’re okay, right?”

  Josh sniffled reluctantly.

  “Good. Missing any teeth?” He poked at Beth’s cheek.

  She swatted his hand and giggled. “No. You’re silly.”

  “You sure? Show me.” She grinned wide, and he faked a gasp. “Where’s your front tooth?”

  “It fell out, Daddy!”

  “It fell out? Well, where is it? Let’s look!”

  Josh chuckled. “The other day, Daddy! And we left it for the tooth fairy, remember? Not now!”

  “Ohhh.” Nate slapped a hand over his chest and sighed. “Phew! You had me worried!”

  The kids shared a look of exasperation. They did so pity their oafish father. Josh wiggled out of Nate’s arms and stood, holding Beth’s hand as always—and then, as if by agreement, all three of them looked at the stranger on the ground.

  She was looking right back, watching their antics with a slight smile on her face—and what a face. It thrust Nate’s mind instantly into photographer mode. He saw her as if through a lens, his focus flitting from the way shadow and light danced over her dark skin, to the smooth sweep of her round cheeks into a broad nose, the curve of pouting lips into pointed chin. She was wearing fuchsia lipstick and her eyes were dark and hot and startling as a shot of espresso.

  Everything about her was practically daring him to pull out his phone—God, where the fuck was his camera?—and take a picture. Just one. That wouldn’t be too weird, right? If he explained that she was walking art and it was his job to capture it.

  Actually, that would definitely be weird.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the kids. “I didn’t see you coming. Would you like some marshmallows, to make you feel better? If you’re allowed, I mean.”

  The kids perked up, all supposed injury to person and dignity forgotten. “Can we, Daddy?” Beth asked. “Can we can we can we—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nate said absently. But the truth was, he’d barely heard the question. Recognition had just hit him in the chest. He’d seen that face most days since he started pre-school for Christ’s sake—only back then it had been softer, smaller, childishly undefined. Even when they’d hit their teens, she’d still looked like a little kid. She didn’t look like a kid anymore.

  But he knew those sharp eyes. The full lips, slightly parted by those too-big front teeth. That steady, strident tone…

  And the energy snapping about her like an electrical current, as if all that cool composure held back something more intense than he could imagine.

  “Hannah,” he said, suddenly certain. “Hannah Kabbah. Right?”

  “Hello, Nate,” she said calmly, as if they bumped into each other on a regular basis. As if this wasn’t their first meeting in—God, almost fifteen years? When had he last seen her? The final day of school, maybe? He had no idea. Long enough that it had taken him minutes to recognise a face he’d once seen every day.

  Although, he admitted, she did look different now. The same, but… yeah. Different.

  Over the past week or so, he’d gotten used to bumping into people he’d once known. None of them had ever been his friends. Every single one had fallen all over themselves to act is if they were long lost buddies.

  But Hannah… he’d actually liked her. She hadn’t known it, because he’d never told her—and there’d never been any indication that she liked him, of course. But still. He had the oddest urge to ask her some clichéd, bullshit question like How’ve you been? or What are you up to these days? yet she was busy helping his kids pick out the biggest marshmallows, barely sparing him a look.

  Which, now he thought about it, was just like her.

  If she was still the same Hannah he’d known—or even slightly similar—she wouldn’t speak to him until she’d finished what she was doing. So Nate sat there, and waited, and watched. He studied the way she smiled at the kids, noted the calming effect that her voice seemed to have on them. She spoke so slowly—not in a boring way, but as if she had control of everything around her. As if the world could very well wait until she finished her sentence. And the kids reacted like they’d just been pumped full of Calpol and put down to bed for the night.

  He wished any of the nannies he’d been interviewing recently had been half so effective. Christ, he wished the nannies he’d been interviewing had actually talked to his kids at all, instead of talking at them.

  But he noticed other things, too. Like the hummingbird flutter of her lashes, and the slight dimple in her chin, and the careful precision with which she held herself. It was a precision that spoke of hesitation, of restraint. It made him wonder.

  Once the kids were laden down with marshmallows, she finally looked up. At him. It felt sort of like being electrocuted. He had no idea why. Maybe that was why he blurted out, “We should catch up.”

  The kids shared a meaningful look at those foreboding words. Beth mumbled around a mouthful of marshmallows, “Daddy, can we go and play?”

  “Sure. Don’t go past that tree, okay?” He pointed to a nearby beech, close enough that he’d have them in his line of sight, well-lit by a streetlight.

  “Okay!” They ran off together, sticky hands clasped, cheeks stuffed full of marshmallows like hamsters with grain.

  Leaving him and Hannah on their knees, Nate suddenly realised, staring at each other like lemmings.

  “Catch up?” She repeated faintly, with the sort of tone he might use to say “Eat mould?”

  “Uh… Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. Christ, he needed a haircut. He stood, and she followed suit, which made him realise how short she still was. Or maybe she just seemed that way because he was tall. Whatever. He should’ve stayed on his knees. He felt like some kind of ominous, oversized thing, looming over her in the half-light.

  She cocked her head slightly as she looked at him, like a bird considering an unsuspecting worm. The shadows shifting over the smooth planes of her face were giving him ideas. He hadn’t shot anyone professionally in years, but all of a sudden he could see a thousand images in his mind’s eye. Something about her…

  “I don’t think we have much to catch up on,” she said.

  Nate forced himself to focus on the conversation, since he’d basically started it. Sometimes it was hard to drag himself away from the images in his head, to concentrate on the real world. This time, though, it was relatively easy. “We don’t?”

  “No. I know everything there is to know about you.”

  Chapter Two

  “I know everything there is to know about you?” Why in God’s name had she said that?

  Well, it’s true, Hannah’s mind offered up. But it seemed to have missed the part where true did not mean appropriate. Nate was staring at her with an odd expression on his face, as if he wanted to frown and raise his eyebrows at the same time, but was struggling to manage the feat.

  She didn’t blame him. How the hell had she blurted out something so utterly embarrassing? Oh, but she’d almost forgotten. She was having a break. Tomorrow she’d be all wrapped up in her own self-consciousness again, like an inescapable set of handcuffs, but today she was a wildcard. Typical. According to her sources—her sources being his brother, Zach—Nate Davis had been in town for a week. But of course she’d bump into him now. Of course.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. It wasn’t I’m backing away and calling 999 in my pocket slow, though. It was more, I’m a complete badass and nothing can faze me, so I’m happy to calmly question my stalker slow.

  And he was a complete badass. He’d been a complete badass when they were kids, and now he was all grown up and absolutely enormous with tattoos peeking out from the sleeves of his shirt. He gave her a lazy grin, one that softened the harsh lines of his face into something achingly handsome and slightly less intimidating. He pushed back his silky black hair with one hand an
d she realised that he had a tattoo there as well—on the back of his hand, like some TV gangster.

  Usually, when Hannah saw that sort of thing, she rolled her eyes. But for some reason, the swallow inked into Nate’s skin seemed less horrifying/comical/pathetic and more…

  Sexy.

  Oh dear.

  She thanked God it was growing too dark for her to see his eyes—but she remembered them anyway, ice blue with that dark ring around the iris. Even though it had been years since he’d left, years since she’d been freed from the daily torture of his casual confidence and tightly leashed, oh-so-enticing anger.

  How she’d envied him that anger, soaring wild and unrestrained while hers festered inside.

  Now here he was, back like acid reflux, twice as sharp and thrice as unwanted. A thirty-year-old woman should not look at the man who’d once been her teenage crush and feel the horrifying stirrings of that sweaty-palmed, heart-pounding, baffling attraction. She totally did, though.

  If God was still punishing her for staring at Emma Dowl’s arse in church, He was frankly being petty.

  “If you know everything about me,” Nate said wryly, “we definitely need to catch up.”

  She blinked, her usually rapid-fire mind suddenly stopped up with concrete. “We… do?”

  His smile widened, and a dimple appeared in his right cheek. That dimple had caused enough heart palpitations before he was capable of growing facial hair; now that it peeked out from beneath stubble, Hannah might actually be in danger of feeling… something.

  How absolutely heinous.

  “Sure we do,” he said. “You—” He broke off, his gaze focusing on something behind her. “Bethany! Stop feeding your brother plants! You’re gonna make him sick!” And then he calmly returned to the conversation. “You know everything about me, I know nothing about you.”

  Apparently, he wasn’t going to pull her up on the supreme creepiness of her earlier statement. Maybe God was on her side.

  Then Nate said, “So what’ve you been up to since school?” and she realised that God had nothing to do with this day after all. It was quite clearly the devil’s work.