Six months ago, Paige had been living in Philadelphia. She had a good job in the art department of an advertising agency. She’d shared a tiny two-bedroom apartment above a coffee shop with her best friend, Abby Fields. And she’d had Dylan, a man who she’d been very much in love with.
And then the rug got pulled out from under her and she’d fallen flat on her ass.
First off, Abby got a job at an up-and-coming PR firm. Which was good news, and Paige had been very excited for her, except the job was in Washington, DC, which Paige was not excited about. Then, before Paige could find a new roommate, she lost her job. The advertising agency was bought out and she was in the first round of cuts. Without a job, she couldn’t renew her lease, and was therefore homeless. So she’d moved in with Dylan. It was always supposed to be a temporary thing, just until Paige could find another job and get on her feet again.
But it never happened.
Paige had tried for two months and found nothing, and then the real bomb hit. She was either blind or just distracted by everything else that was going on, but either way, she never saw it coming.
Paige had been with Dylan for about a year and she really thought he was the one. Okay, he tended to be a bit of a snob when it came to certain things. For example, wine. Oh, was he ever a wine snob, rather obnoxious about it really. He would always swirl it around in his glass, take a sip, sniff, and then take another loud sip, smacking his lips together.
He was also a snob about books. Paige enjoyed reading the classics, but she also liked romance, mystery, and fantasy. Whenever she curled up with one of her books, Dylan tended to give her a rather patronizing look and shake his head.
“Reading fluff again I see,” he would say.
Yeah, she didn’t miss that at all. Or the way he would roll his eyes when she and Abby quoted movies and TV shows to each other. Or how he’d never liked her music and flat-out refused to dance with her. Which had always been frustrating because Paige loved to dance. But despite all of that, she’d loved him. Loved the way he would run his fingers through his hair when he was distracted, loved his big goofy grin, and loved the way his glasses would slide down his nose.
But the thing was, he hadn’t loved her.
One night, he came home to his apartment and sat Paige down on the couch. Looking back on it, she’d been an idiot, because there was a small part of her that thought he was actually about to propose.
“Paige,” he’d said, sitting down on the coffee table and grabbing her hands. “I know that this was supposed to be a temporary thing, but weeks have turned into months. Living with you has brought a lot of things to light.”
It was wrong, everything about that moment was all wrong. She could tell by the look in his eyes, by the tone of his voice, by the way he said Paige and light. In that moment she’d known exactly where he was going, and it wasn’t anywhere with her. He wasn’t proposing. He was breaking up with her.
She’d pulled her hands out of his and shrank back into the couch.
“This,” he’d said, gesturing between the two of them, “was never going to go further than where we are right now.”
And that was the part where her ears had started ringing.
“At one point I thought I might love you, but I’ve realized I’m not in love with you,” he’d said, shaking his head. “I feel like you’ve thought this was going to go further, but the truth is I’m never going to marry you. Paige, you’re not the one. I’m tired of pretending. I’m tired of putting in the effort for a relationship that isn’t going anywhere else. It’s not worth it to me.”
“You mean I’m not worth it,” she’d said, shocked.
“Paige, you deserve to be with someone who wants to make the effort, and I deserve to be with someone who I’m willing to make the effort for. It’s better that we end this now, instead of delaying the inevitable.”
He’d made it sound like he was doing her a favor, like he had her best interests at heart.
But all she’d heard was You’re not worth it and I’m not in love with you. And those were the words that kept repeating in her head, over and over again.
Dylan had told her he was going to go stay with one of his friends for the week. She told him she’d be out before the end of the next day. She spent the entire night packing up her stuff. Well, packing and crying and drinking two entire bottles of the prick’s wine.
Paige didn’t have a lot of stuff. Most of the furniture from her and Abby’s apartment had been Abby’s. Everything Paige owned had fit into the back of her Jeep and the U-Haul trailer she’d rented the first thing the following morning. She loaded up and was out of there before four o’clock in the afternoon.
She’d stayed the night in a hotel room just outside of Philadelphia, where she promptly passed out. She’d been exhausted after her marathon packing, which was good because it was harder for a person to feel beyond pathetic in her sleep. No, that was what the following eighteen-hour drive had been reserved for.
Jobless, homeless, and brokenhearted, Paige had nowhere else to go but home to her parents. The problem was, there was no home anymore. The house in Philadelphia that Paige had grown up in was no longer her parents’. They’d sold it and retired to a little town in the South.
Mirabelle, Florida: population five thousand.
There was roughly the same amount of people in the six hundred square miles of Mirabelle as there was in half a square mile of Philadelphia. Well, unless the mosquitoes were counted as residents.
People who thought that Florida was all sunshine and sand were sorely mistaken. It did have its fair share of beautiful beaches. The entire southeast side of Mirabelle was the Gulf of Mexico. But about half of the town was made up of water. And all of that water, combined with the humidity that plagued the area, created the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Otherwise known as tiny, bloodsucking villains that loved to bite the crap out of Paige’s legs.
Paige had visited her parents a couple of times over the last two years, but she’d never been in love with Mirabelle like her parents were. And she still wasn’t. She’d spent a month moping around her parents’ house. Again, she was pathetic enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, Dylan would call her and tell her that he’d been wrong. That he missed her. That he loved her.
He never called, and Paige realized he was never going to. That was when Paige resigned herself to the fact that she had to move on with her life. So she’d started looking for a job.
Which had proved to be highly unsuccessful.
Paige had been living in Mirabelle for three months now. Three long miserable months where nothing had gone right. Not one single thing.
And as that delightful thought crossed her mind, she noticed that her engine was smoking. Great white plumes of steam escaped from the hood of her Jeep Cherokee.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said as she pulled off to the side of the road and turned the engine off. “Fan-freaking-tastic.”
Paige grabbed her purse and started digging around in the infinite abyss, searching for her cell phone. She sifted through old receipts, a paperback book, her wallet, lip gloss, a nail file, gum…ah, cell phone. She pressed speed dial for her father. She held the phone against her ear while she leaned over and searched for her shoes that she’d thrown on the floor of the passenger side. As her hand closed over one of her black wedges, the phone beeped in her ear and disconnected. She sat up and held her phone out, staring at the display screen in disbelief.
No service.
“This has to be some sick, twisted joke,” she said, banging her head down on the steering wheel. No service on her cell phone shouldn’t have been that surprising; there were plenty of dead zones around Mirabelle. Apparently there was a lack of cell phone towers in this little piece of purgatory.
Paige resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to walk to find civilization, or at least a bar of service on her cell phone. She went in search of her other wedge, locating it under the passen
ger seat.
The air conditioner had been off for less than two minutes, and it was already starting to warm up inside the Jeep. It was going to be a long, hot walk. Paige grabbed a hair tie from the gearshift, put her long brown hair up into a messy bun, and opened the door to the sweltering heat.
I hate this godforsaken place.
Paige missed Philadelphia. She missed her friends, her apartment with its rafters and squeaky floors. She missed having a job, missed having a paycheck, missed buying shoes. And even though she hated the fact, she still missed Dylan. Missed his dark shaggy hair, and the way he would nibble on her lower lip when they kissed. She even missed his humming when he cooked.
She shook her head and snapped back to the present. She might as well focus on the task at hand and stop thinking about what was no longer her life.
Paige walked for twenty minutes down the road to nowhere, not a single car passing her. By the time Paige got to Skeeter’s Bait, Tackle, Guns, and Gas, she was sweating like nobody’s business, her dress was sticking to her everywhere, and her feet were killing her. She had a nice blister on the back of her left heel.
She pushed the door open and was greeted with the smell of fish mixed with bleach, making her stomach turn. At least the air conditioner was cranked to full blast. There was a huge stuffed turkey sitting on the counter. The fleshy red thing on its neck looked like the stuff nightmares were made of, and the wall behind the register was covered in mounted fish. She really didn’t get the whole “dead animal as a trophy” motif that the South had going on.
A display shelf on the counter held tiny little bottles that looked like energy drinks.
NEW AND IMPROVED SCENT. GREAT FOR ATTRACTING THE PERFECT GAME.
She picked up one of the tiny bottles and looked at it. It was doe urine.
She took a closer look at the display. They apparently also had the buck urine variety. She looked at the bottle in her hand, trying to grasp why people would cover themselves in this stuff. Was hunting really worth smelling like an animal’s pee?
“Can I help you?”
The voice startled Paige and she looked up into the face of a very large balding man, his apron covered in God only knew what. She dropped the tiny bottle she had in her hand. It fell to the ground. The cap smashed on the tile floor and liquid poured out everywhere.
It took a total of three seconds for the smell to punch her in the nose. It had to be the most fowl scent she’d ever inhaled.
Oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.
She was just stellar at first impressions these days.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, trying not to gag. She took a step back from the offending puddle and looked up at the man.
His arms were folded across his chest and he frowned at her, saying nothing.
“Do you, uh, have something I can clean this up with?” she asked nervously.
“You’re not from around here,” he said, looking at her with his deadpan stare. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, one that she got whenever she met someone new. One that she was so sick and tired of she could scream. Yeah, all the remorse she’d felt over spilling that bottle drained from her.
In Philadelphia, Paige’s bohemian style was normal, but in Mirabelle her big earrings, multiple rings, and loud clothing tended to get her noticed. Her parents’ neighbor, Mrs. Forns, thought that Paige was trouble, which she complained about on an almost daily basis.
“You know that marijuana is still illegal,” Mrs. Forns had said the other night, standing on her parents’ porch and lecturing Paige’s mother. “And I won’t hesitate to call the authorities if I see your hippie daughter growing anything suspicious or doing any other illegal activities.”
Denise Morrison, ever the queen of politeness, had just smiled. “You have nothing to be concerned about.”
“But she’s doing something in that shed of yours in the backyard.”
The something that Paige did in the shed was paint. She’d converted it into her art studio, complete with ceiling fan.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Forns,” Paige had said, sticking her head over her mother’s shoulder. “I’ll wait to have my orgies on your bingo nights. Is that on Tuesdays or Wednesdays?”
“Paige!” Denise had said as she shoved Paige back into the house and closed the door in her face.
Five minutes later, Denise had come into the kitchen shaking her head.
“Really, Paige? You had to tell her that you’re having orgies in the backyard?”
Paige’s father, Trevor Morrison, chuckled as he went through the mail at his desk.
“You need to control your temper and that smart mouth of yours,” Denise had said.
“You know what you should start doing?” Trevor said, looking up with a big grin. “You should grow oregano in pots on the windowsill and then throw little dime bags into her yard.”
“Trevor, don’t encourage her harassing that woman. Paige, she’s a little bit older, very set in her ways, and a tad bit nosey.”
“She needs to learn to keep her nose on her side of the fence,” Paige had said.
“Don’t let her bother you.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“Well then, maybe you should practice holding your tongue.”
“Yes, Mother, I’ll get right on that.”
So, as Paige stared at the massive man in front of her, whom she assumed to be Skeeter, she pursed her lips and held back the smart-ass retort that was on the tip of her tongue.
Be polite, she heard her mother’s voice in her head say. You just spilled animal pee all over his store. And you need to use his phone.
“No,” Paige said, pushing her big sunglasses up her nose and into her hair. “My car broke down and I don’t have any cell phone service. I was wondering if I could use your phone to call a tow truck.”
“I’d call King’s if I were you. They’re the best,” he said as he ripped a piece of receipt paper off the cash register and grabbed a pen with a broken plastic spoon taped to the top. He wrote something down and pushed the paper across the counter.
“Thank you. I can clean that up first,” she said, pointing to the floor.
“I got it. I’d hate for you to get those hands of yours dirty,” he said, moving the phone to her side of the counter.
She just couldn’t win.
* * *
Brendan King leaned against the front bumper of Mr. Thame’s minivan. He was switching out the old belt and replacing it with a new one when his grandfather stuck his head out of the office.
“Brendan,” Oliver King said. “A car broke down on Buckland Road. It’s Paige Morrison, Trevor and Denise Morrison’s daughter. She said the engine was smoking. She had to walk to Skeeter’s to use the phone. I told her you’d pick her up so she didn’t have to walk back.”
Oliver King didn’t look his seventy years. His salt-and-pepper hair was still thick and growing only on the top of his head, and not out of his ears. He had a bit of a belly, but he’d had that for the last twenty years and it wasn’t going anywhere. He’d opened King’s Auto forty-three years ago, when he was twenty-seven. Now, he mainly worked behind the front counter, due to the arthritis in his hands and back. But it was a good thing because King’s Auto was one of only a handful of auto shops in the county. They were always busy, so they needed a constant presence running things out of the shop.
Including Brendan and his grandfather, four full-time mechanics and two part-time kids still in high school worked in the garage. Part of the service that King’s provided was towing, and Brendan was the man on duty on Mondays. And oh was he ever so happy he was on duty today.
Paige Morrison was the new girl in town. Her parents had moved down from Pennsylvania when they retired about two years ago, and Paige had moved in with them three months ago. Brendan had yet to meet her but he’d most definitely seen her. You couldn’t really miss her as she jogged around town, with her very long legs, in a wide variety of the brightest and shortest s
horts he’d ever seen in his life. His favorite pair had by far been the hot-pink pair, but the zebra-print ones came in a very close second.
He’d also heard about her. People had a lot to say about her more-than-interesting style. It was rumored that she had a bit of a temper and a pretty mouth that said whatever it wanted. Not that Brendan took a lot of stock in gossip. He’d wait to reserve his own judgment.
“Got it,” Brendan said, pulling his gloves off and sticking them in his back pocket. “Tell Randall this still needs new spark plugs.” He pointed to the minivan as he walked into the office.
“I will.” Oliver nodded and handed Brendan the keys to the tow truck.
Brendan grabbed two waters from the mini-fridge and his sunglasses from the desk and headed off into the scorching heat. It was a hot one, ninety-eight degrees, but the humidity made it feel like one hundred and three. He flipped his baseball cap so that the bill would actually give him some cover from the August sun, and when he got into the tow truck he cranked the air as high as it would go.
It took him about fifteen minutes to get to Skeeter’s, and when he pulled into the gravel parking lot, the door to the little shop opened and Brendan couldn’t help smiling.
Paige Morrison’s mile-long legs were shooting out of the sexiest shoes he’d ever seen. She was also wearing a flowing yellow dress that didn’t really cover her amazing legs but did hug her chest and waist, and besides the two skinny straps at her shoulders, her arms were completely bare. Massive sunglasses covered her eyes and her dark brown hair was piled on top of her head.
There was no doubt about it; she was beautiful all right.
Brendan put the truck in park and hopped out.
“Ms. Morrison?” he asked even though he already knew who she was.
“Paige,” she corrected, stopping in front of him. She was probably five-foot-ten or so, but her shoes added about three inches, making her just as tall as him. If he weren’t wearing his work boots she would’ve been taller than him.
“I’m Brendan King,” he said, sticking his hand out to shake hers. Her hand was soft and warm. He liked how it felt in his. He also liked the freckles that were sprinkled across her high cheekbones and straight, pert nose.
Undeniable (A Country Roads Novel) Page 31
