by Jill Shalvis
And now being dressed nice was also her superhero cape. She figured if she looked well put together on the outside, people would assume the inside matched …
For the record, it didn’t.
Stretching after the long drive, she looked down at herself. Crap. She rubbed at the four suspicious stains on her blazer that might or might not be fingerprints directly related to an earlier Cheetos mishap. Note to self—give up Cheetos or buy some wet wipes to keep on her. She shed the blazer and eyed the sundress. Damn. There were two more Cheetos finger spots on a thigh. She licked her thumb and tried to rub them out, but this only made it worse. Apparently some things, like Cheetos finger stains and the searing pain of grief, couldn’t be fixed.
She was shedding her hard-earned urbanness moment by moment, transforming back to the rumpled, come-what-may, adventurous but oblivious mountain girl. She started to get out of the car, but stopped when her cell phone buzzed an incoming call from Jonathan, her childhood best friend.
“You here yet?” he asked.
Physically, yes. Mentally … well, she was working on that. “Sort of,” she said.
“What does that mean?” He paused at her silence. “You know you can do this, right? That you’re one of those rare people who can do whatever they need to?” he asked.
True, she’d learned this very skill at an early age, the hard way. But what she needed felt overwhelming and daunting—something that would get her out of the rut that was her life. “I might have come up against my limits this time,” she admitted in the understatement of the day. Hell, understatement of the year.
“Buck up, Lily Pad,” he said. “Things are about to get better. I promise.”
“Yeah.” She shook her head. “And how exactly is that going to happen again?”
“Because you’ve got me at your back now,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Trust me.”
She could trust him, she reminded herself, warming a little as she sighed. Besides, what choice did she have? “Okay, but you’d better be right.”
“Always am,” he said. “Always am. See you soon.”
Lily disconnected and started to get out of the car but realized her feet were bare. She looked around, but apparently along with her city shell she’d also lost one of her wedge sandals. Maybe it was wearing an invisibility cloak. The search led to some swearing and a lot of digging into the luggage in the backseat, and she finally grabbed the next thing she came to.
A pair of Uggs.
She had to laugh as she slid her feet into them. Uggs with a sundress. In San Diego dressing this way would have raised eyebrows, but it was par for the course in Cedar Ridge. Or at least it had been. Torn between hoping things hadn’t changed and that they had, she headed into the convenience store, planning on getting in and out without seeing anyone she knew.
There were a handful of other customers in the place, but no one looked familiar. Grateful for small favors, she grabbed an armful of her two favorite food groups—chocolate and salt—then made her way to the front counter to check out.
The convenience store clerk gave her a big eyebrow raise as she dumped her loot on the counter, but either he had sisters or a girlfriend because he didn’t say anything as he started to ring her up.
She didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t surprise her. Ten years was a long time. The thought brought a new wave of anxiety and had her grabbing one more thing that she didn’t need—a package of cookies from the counter display.
“Nice,” the clerk said without a smidgeon of judgment in his voice as he rang her up. “I especially like the way you’ve got the entire junk food pyramid represented here. That’s not easy to do.”
She had a pack of donuts, two pies—one lemon, one cherry—a pint of caramel delight ice cream, a family-size bag of chips, and now cookies as well.
“Bad breakup?” the clerk asked.
“No.” Only a little bit of a lie. Because there was bad and then there was bad bad. And hers had definitely been the latter.
“Smoking too much wacky-tobacky?” he asked.
She could one hundred percent understand why he might think so, but she again shook her head in the negative. No, she was attributing this junk food fest to getting fired from the upscale San Diego salon where she’d worked until three weeks ago.
Apparently she was going to eat her feels about that whole situation.
“Maybe you’re having a party?” the clerk asked and flashed a smile. “FYI, my name is Cliff, and I like parties.”
“Sorry,” she said. “No party.” She took a moment to eyeball the rack of candy bars on display.
Cliff laughed. “Listen, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but you have repeat customer all over you, so you should know that we’re open twenty-four seven. Which means you really don’t have to buy us out of stock right this very minute. Also, at midnight the candy bars go on sale—two for one.”
“Do I look like the sort of person who’d go out at midnight for a sale on candy bars?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
She sighed and handed over her debit card, aware that a line had formed behind her. Not glancing back, she said a quick little prayer that her card went through the first time and let out a breath of relief when it did.
Getting fired sure had put a crimp in her style.
“Do you want a bag?” Cliff asked. “We charge for them now. Ten cents each.”
She had at least a dozen bags in the back of her car. Not that she’d remember them. “Not necessary.” Since she always forgot her bags, she was an expert and scooped the loot into her arms. Everything fit but the bag of chips.
Cliff helpfully added them to the top of the pile. Lily thanked him, pressing her chin down on the chips so as to not lose any of her precious cargo. “Got it,” she assured him.
Cliff lifted his hands and she started to leave, sidestepping to avoid bumping into the customer coming up to the register. Lily was halfway to the door when something made her glance back at the line.
Which was how she saw the very last person on earth a woman wanted to see when she felt like roadkill, didn’t have on her good moisturizer or her lucky lip gloss …
The guy who’d once upon a time starred in all her fantasies as the man of her dreams: Aidan Kincaid, wearing cargo pants and a dark blue T-shirt with a Search-and-Rescue emblem on the pec, a radio on his hip, looking dusty and hot and tired and sexy as hell.
Her heart began a slow and way too heavy beat, and she whipped her head around to face forward again.
“Lily? Lily, is that you?” a woman just in front of her asked.
Lily blinked at her.
“Mrs. Myers,” the fiftyish woman said helpfully. “Your high school English teacher.” She beamed. “Why, I haven’t seen you in years. How are you doing, dear?”
Lily’s mind raced, leaving her unable to formulate a thought past her instinct to flee. She’d hated English. She’d paid her sister to read the books and write her papers, and in return, Lily had done all of Ashley’s math and science and taken on her work hours at the resort their dad had run. “Uh …”
“Is your mother still happily retired and traveling around?” Mrs. Myers asked. “I lost track of her after …” The woman trailed off and her face filled with sympathy. “After … everything,” she finished gently.
There Lily stood in a dress and Uggs and crazy hair, with Aidan probably watching this entire debacle, and Mrs. Myers wanted to casually discuss the single most soul-destroying incident that had ever happened to Lily.
Over a mountain of crap food that she was holding on to with her chin. And those Cheetos stains weren’t going anywhere …
Thankfully, Mrs. Myers’s cell phone rang, and she got busy searching for it in a purse the size of Texas.
Lily let out a breath and stole a quick peek at Aidan, nearly collapsing in relief because he didn’t appear to see her.
Miracles did happen …
Before her luck could run out, she sa
id a quick “Nice to see you” and hightailed it to the door.
Chapter 3
Lily Danville was most definitely back in town. Because he couldn’t help himself, Aidan watched as she rushed to the door balancing an armful of junk food. Nice to know some things hadn’t changed.
Clearly she was trying to avoid him—a plan he could get behind. He had no desire to take a walk down Memory Road either, especially when that road had ended in a spectacular crash with no survivors.
Just the walking dead.
Still, after all these years she looked the same, hauntingly vulnerable and yet somehow tough at the same time. It was that willowy, curvy body coupled with those drown-in-me green eyes that she so carefully didn’t turn his way.
She almost got away, too, and then neither of them would have had to face each other, but someone jostled her at the doorway. Lily staggered backward, right into a five-foot postcard display of the Colorado Rockies.
The entire thing began to wobble.
With a gasped “Oh, no!” Lily reached out for it, sacrificing her bag of chips to do so. The bag hit the floor and then a package of donuts slipped out of her arms as well, landing next to the chips.
And that was it. The domino effect came into play, and sure enough the cherry pie went next.
The very last thing to go was the postcard display itself, falling over with dramatic flair, scattering postcards and Lily’s armload from here to Timbuktu, leaving her standing there, a junk food massacre at her feet.
“Damn,” Cliff said. “That always happens.”
“I’m so sorry!” Lily bent and began to scoop up the postcards.
“No worries,” Cliff assured her. “Seriously, I’ll get it.”
Very carefully not looking at the line where Aidan stood, she shot Cliff a grateful smile and vanished so fast that Aidan had himself half convinced he’d imagined the whole thing. Except the postcards sprawled across the floor said otherwise.
So did the odd ache in his chest.
He moved to help Cliff, whom he knew from last summer, when the guy had accidentally set this place on fire.
Cliff grinned as together they righted the display. “She was kinda hot. A mess, sure, but a hot mess, right?”
Aidan made a noncommittal sound and pulled out some cash to pay for the soda he’d come in for.
“Wait,” Cliff said, and picked up a package of cookies Lily had left behind.
And a set of keys.
“Hot Chick forgot these,” the clerk said. “Could you run them out to her for me?”
Shit. The very last thing he wanted to do was go have a one-on-one. Especially since clearly she didn’t want to talk to him any more than he wanted to talk to her.
“I can’t leave the store, man,” Cliff said. “You’re a firefighter, you rescue people all the time. Go rescue the hot chick, she’ll probably be super grateful.” Cliff waggled his brow. “You’re welcome.”
Shit. Aidan took Lily’s keys and forgotten cookies and strode out of the store. As expected, Lily was still in the lot, sitting in her car, thunking her head against her steering wheel and muttering something he couldn’t hear through her closed window.
He shook his head, braced himself, and knocked on the glass.
Lily startled and smacked her head on the sun visor. Rubbing the top of her head, she turned and glared at him.
He lifted his hand, her keys dangling from his fingers.
She stared a moment and then thunked her head on the steering wheel again.
“How long are you going to pretend you don’t see me?” he asked.
“Forever?” she asked.
“It’s just a set of keys.”
When she still hesitated, he revealed the cookies in his other hand, jiggling them enticingly.
As he’d suspected, that did the trick. She opened her car door a little bit, just enough to stick her hand out for the goods.
Aidan dropped both the cookies and the keys into her palm and then made his move, quickly crouching between the opened door and the driver’s seat so that she couldn’t shut the door on him—though she did give it the ol’ college try.
Damn, Lily thought. He’d always been fast. Whether on a pair of skis on snow or water, or just on his own two legs, the three-time Colorado state champion short-distance runner knew how to move. “You’re in my way.”
“What are you doing here, Lily? Visiting?”
“No.”
“What then?”
No way in hell was she going to admit what had happened to her. Nope. Not saying it out loud. Ever. “Move,” she said instead.
Eyes locked on her, he gave a slow shake of his head.
He wasn’t moving.
He hadn’t shaved that morning, she noticed. Maybe not for a handful of mornings, and the scruff gave his square jaw a toughness that suggested the wild teenager had long ago become a man. She saw now that his T-shirt also had a Colorado Wildland Firefighter patch on the sleeve. The last time she’d seen Aidan, he’d been hoping to get into the fire academy.
Seemed someone had gotten his dream.
“Move or I’ll run over your foot,” she said, and to prove she meant business, she shoved the key in and cranked the engine.
“You’ll run over my foot?” he repeated, eyebrow raised, one side of his mouth quirking in a half grin that was filled with wicked trouble. No wonder half the population of Cedar Ridge had always been in love with him. The other half were either men or dead.
“Grew some claws in San Diego, I see,” he said, voice low and amused.
And that amusement got under her skin in a big way. She told herself she didn’t care what he thought, but that was a big lie. She drew a deep breath and went back to her “fake it ’til you make it” attitude. She would simply fake being unaffected by him. Easy enough, right? She released the emergency brake.
“And still impatient as hell.” Aidan stood up real slow, on his own damn time schedule.
Just as he did everything.
Once upon a time that had hurt her, deeply, and all because of that damn smile that she’d never been able to resist. But she’d grown up. Gotten smart. Surely she could resist him now as easily as she could resist the cookies he’d hand-delivered to her.
Except she wanted those cookies more than she wanted her next breath. And the worst of it? She had absolutely no illusions about her ability to resist him at all.
Which meant she’d have to avoid him like the plague.
Unfortunately that was a feat she’d never managed. Not the time she’d been a freshman and had come across him kissing an older girl in the alley behind the apartment building where they’d both lived—and not the peck sort of kiss either. Nope, they’d been really going at it, the girl moaning like she’d been eating the very best bag of chips she’d ever tasted.
Nor the time a couple of years later when he and his older brother, Gray—both shirtless and in low-slung jeans—had been working on a muscle car in that same alley all summer long, either fighting or drinking pilfered beers and laughing, their lanky bodies hot and sweaty.
And certainly not the summer after she’d graduated, when she’d finagled a dance with him at the annual festival on the lake, a slow dance—and even after the music stopped, they’d swayed to the beat, unable to break eye contact. She’d been shocked at the heat they’d generated and had wondered if he’d felt the same.
And then he’d kissed her, and it sure seemed like he’d felt plenty, because the kiss … Oh, the kiss. Magical, sensual, erotic … She’d pressed into him, willing to take whatever he could give.
But he’d held back, which at the time she had thought was so sweet. She’d thought he hadn’t wanted to pressure her, that they could take things slow.
Until the next day. Lily’s sister, Ashley, had come into Lily’s room all dreamy, confessing that she had the biggest crush on her assistant ski coach.
Who happened to be one sexy Aidan Kincaid.
Ashley had been sure he li
ked her back.
That had stung, but it was nothing compared to what followed.
