One Lucky Deal (15 page)

Candace tried to gauge Tad’s reaction to this retelling of the story but she couldn’t get a read on him. She was on the verge of having a pulmonary embolism. If he’d brought her all the way out here to the boondocks just to ditch her while he worked on going home with an old flame, she was going to… She was going to… Candace clenched her fists while she thought about something truly horrible she could do to him.

“So where’s the hubs?” Tad asked Melissa, and Candace’s head jerked up to Tad so quickly it threatened to keep going a full three-hundred-sixty degrees.

Tad shot Candace a look that made her feel silly and embarrassed. What was wrong with her? She had no claim to this man.

“Uh…” Melissa started looking around the party. There were a lot of people out, many, many more people than Tad could possibly know let alone be buddies with. “Bobby O’Keef!” she called out loudly.

Then Candace noticed Melissa’s tiny little bump as she turned sideways and her poufy down vest slid away from her midsection. The fire also caught the label of her beer. O’Doul’s. She wanted to re-meet this woman with all the facts in front of her now. Married. Pregnant. A nonthreat. Out of sheer habit Candace still looked around the party and with her trained Tad-eyes she spotted at least thirteen women that he would find take-home attractive.

She looked up at him to see which ones he’d already noticed. Her heart tripped to find his eyes only on her. He was looking at her like they had a secret, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what that could be.

Melissa had run off to find her husband and the father of that O’Doul’s drinking bump. That left Max staring at the two of them. “So—uh—what’s with all the paint?”

Candace turned back to Tad. Their smiles grew exponentially and eventually bubbled into shared laughter. Especially as Candace looked down at herself and found very obvious handprints all over her; some of them were bordering on indecent, but then again, Tad had a pair of prints on his ass that matched the size and shape of her hands.

“Max, I think you just found a story she could tell you.” Tad slapped his friend on the shoulder. “You all right with Max?” he asked Candace. “If I go off and dig us up some beer?”

“Well, shit, Tad, I ain’t going to bite the girl.” Max laughed. “Of course she’s fine with me.”

Tad looked at Candace anyway as if just to double-check. She nodded and Tad waited for the second nod before he walked off toward a truck full of coolers and started shaking and slapping hands with a whole other group of guys.

“Come on, let’s go find you and I a log?” Max flagged her on. “Then you can tell me why you’ve got paint all over you.”

Candace looked down at herself again. “I guess I’m making quite the impression like this.”

“Hell, you made an impression just by showing up with that guy.” Max nodded to a girl who was approaching Tad over by the coolers. “That’s Molly Anderson.”

Candace knew the name but couldn’t seem to place her. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Max’s brows shot up. “Maybe not. Molly was Tad’s last serious girlfriend. Maybe the only girl he was ever serious about.” Max shook the hair out of his eyes again. “Except for some girl he fell in love with at camp about a thousand years ago.”

Candace scanned the crowd to find Tad. She watched him over the licking flames and crackling fire, talking to someone who had somehow at one time tamed him enough to lasso him up into a relationship. Candace eyed her, trying to figure out what kind of woman it would take to do the impossible.

She was cute. She was blonde. She was exactly Tad’s type to a T. If there were a template, she would be it. That cut so much deeper than she ever, ever wanted anyone to know. It was absolutely no consolation that Max seemed to think Tad was once, when they were teenagers, in love with her.

It also didn’t help ease her hurt that she was the only brunette in an entire entourage of blondes. She was also the only one who’d ever been sixty pounds overweight. Granted she wasn’t anymore, but when they’d actually been together she was.

She began wondering if Tad was still hung up on this Molly girl. Though, she’d only heard him talk about her because Reed had brought her up. She wondered if all these years and all these blondes had just been his way of filling Molly’s void. She thought she’d known Tad so well, and now that she was looking around at this party and at these people, she began to wonder if she knew him at all.

Her gaze slid back to him over the fire and she caught his again. That was some consolation, though, that recently he’d begun to look at her in a way that made her feel like the only girl at the party. Her heart skipped a beat and Candace tried to believe it was from the loud music, but she knew it wasn’t.

With all the jealousy she’d been feeling, with all the possessiveness, along with the achy, pent-up sexual frustration, and the googly eyes she’d started making, it could all only mean one thing. She was on her way to having it bad for Tad Dundee.

The very same Tad Dundee whose dirty socks she picked up off the floor. The very Tad Dundee who used the last of the toilet paper and didn’t put another roll on. The same guy who left the toothpaste unscrewed and didn’t rinse his plate as soon as he was done with it. She was developing feelings for the guy who, at the exact moment a romantic comedy gets gushy, cracks a totally funny but inappropriate and untimely joke, ruining the entire moment.

She found herself resigning to the truth. The only way to survive this challenge and preserve their friendship was by putting a cap on her strange feelings now. She was totally convinced this was doable until she watched Tad point her out to his ex and Candace’s stomach knotted and flipped.

She didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like she could wave. So she pulled her attention away and began explaining painted Twister to Max, who listened with rapt attention, loving every second of their conversation.

Chapter 12

Tad was talking to Molly and at one time he’d felt something real for her, but that was a lifetime ago. He couldn’t explain it, but seated across the fire from him tonight was his best friend talking and laughing to his childhood friend. The two of them getting along had his full attention.

He was hearing Molly but he wasn’t—not really. Candace was a showstopper. God, he ached to know what she was laughing at. Hell, when it came to Candace he just ached all the time. Tad looked beside him and saw Molly was still talking. Her tone seemed important. He tried to dial in.

“I mean, I can see you’re in a relationship and by how comfortable you guys are together, I just know it’s serious. But I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about the last time I was really happy and, Tad, that was with—”

“Hey, I’m sorry.” Tad held up his hand. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but…” Tad looked across the fire and found Candace looking at him again. He was encouraged by the color that kept rising high in her cheeks when he caught her staring at him. “If we could have this conversation some other time … I’ve got something I’ve got to get back to,” Tad said before he left Molly alone by the coolers.

Tad was stopped three more times before he made it back around to where Max and Candace were sitting having an animated conversation on two large cut tree rounds they were using as seats. Max was telling her some story that Candace found unbelievably funny.

“Hey.” Candace looked up at Tad. “Long time no see.”

Ah—
but that wasn’t true and he knew it because he’d felt her watching him at the party the entire time, and every time he looked over he found her looking back at him. “Sorry about that. I was talking to an old—” But before Tad could finish his sentence Candace was finishing it for him.

“Girlfriend? Yeah, I know. Max has been filling me in. On apparently both of your ‘serious’ relationships.”

“What?” Tad’s stomach sank. “And why did you put that in air quotes?” he asked her and then he turned to Max. “What does she mean ‘both’?”

“Oh, you know. Polly over there.” Candace nodded across the fire even though she was no longer standing there.

“Molly,” Max reminded her.

“Oh right! Molly.” Candace gave them her silly-me smile, but Tad knew without a doubt that she hadn’t forgotten Molly’s name at all.

“He was telling me about Molly and, uh, camp girl.”

Tad basically spat out his mouthful of beer. “What?” He coughed when he caught his breath.

“Sorry, Tad.” Max smiled sheepishly. “I couldn’t remember her name so we’ve been calling her camp girl all night. What was her name, anyway?”

Tad shot Candace a look that said
I can’t believe you didn’t let him off the hook
. She responded with a small shrug.

“Her name was Candy,” Tad answered. He figured Max would have put it together then but he didn’t.

“Weird,” he said looking at Candace. “Isn’t that what he calls you?”

Candace nodded. “Yep.”

“So how’d you two meet? You said you guys go way back?” Max handed Candace a beer from the six-pack in Tad’s hand.

“Hey, Tad, how did we meet?” She looked up at him with mischief in her eyes.

Max was looking on, seeming to be actually interested.

“Camp,” Tad said simply after a big laborious sigh.

Max looked back and forth between the two of them. “Oh shit,” he said and looked at Candace. “Why didn’t you stop me?” He laughed.

Candace looked up at Tad with laughter sparkling in her eyes. “I just had never heard the story from that perspective before.”

“Don’t hate me, Tad. I didn’t know.” Max winced.

“Hey, it’s fine. I don’t know what you could have told her that she didn’t already know.” Tad shrugged it off and pulled up a cut of log between the two of them.

Candace smiled. “The whole part where you thought you were in love with me. Yeah, I didn’t know that.”

“That was an exaggeration.” Tad rolled his eyes.

“Hey, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Candace joked. “If I were you I would have fallen in love with me too.”

Tad laughed. “Well, you’re not me and you’re still in love with
you
.”

“It’s okay, Tad. I won’t tell anyone you have
real
feelings.”

“I was a teenager. I didn’t know what love even meant.” Tad braced his arms on the tops of his thighs and kicked around some dirt and leaves by his feet.

“Yeah, like you do now?” Candace raised her eyebrows.

“Let’s be fair and honest here. I know just about as good as you do.”

“Are you two married?
Jesus
.” Max laughed before someone called his name and flagged him over by the coolers. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

Tad and Candace watched him go. She pulled her feet up to her seat and tucked her knees under her chin. Tad watched the wind blow past her and watched her imperceptibly shiver. He got up and sat the beer in his seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the truck. I’m going to grab one of those quilts stuffed behind the seat. I’m kind of cold.” Tad faked a chill.

“Oh, all right.”

“I’ll be right back.”

When he made his way back to her, Max was still over by the coolers. Tad scooted his log closer to Candace and put the beer on the ground. He sat down, wrapped less than half the quilt around him and offered the rest to Candace. “You want under?”

“Thanks.” Candace wrapped it around her shoulders and pulled it across her chest as well. Their thighs touched now and heat radiated up his leg to his groin. He felt like a teenager again. He racked his brain for when the last time was that he’d gotten so aroused by something so innocent, and it always came back to Candace.

He wanted her more than anything. Since the last time he’d had her, it had only grown. He’d been satisfied for maybe one measly second … and then he’d had to pull out of her. Ever since then, wondering and hoping that he could get back there had consumed his every thought.

“So why didn’t you ever tell me about Molly?”

“There wasn’t much to tell.” Tad finished off his beer.

“But Max said that—”

“Hey, I think I’d know better than Max. It wasn’t as big of a deal as everyone made it out to be. Yeah, the fact that she cheated on me sort stung at the time, but…” Tad lifted a shoulder. “In all honesty I was relieved. I’d been looking for a way out long before that. Relationships are stifling. It wasn’t for me.”

*

Candace didn’t know why Tad’s last sentence felt like a burst to her bubble. It wasn’t like it was anything she hadn’t already been telling herself. She knew that. She knew Tad. She knew that no matter how badly she wanted him, she could never actually have all of him.

Candace spotted Molly on the tailgate of a red Ford pickup truck. She was shooting daggers Candace’s way. She had no idea why. Molly had been the one to get out of him what no one else had—real honest-to-goodness commitment. Not that it mattered to Candace because she was trying to get over this little attraction she had for him, but Molly had sure done something to ruin it for the rest of them.

Tad laughed. “What do you say? Want to get out of here, Green Eyes?”

“Green Eyes?” Candace furrowed her brow. “My eyes are blue.”

Tad shook his head, and Candace got the impression that she was missing something. “Yeah, I know. Come on, let’s go home.” He let Candace have the blanket, and he guided her back over to the coolers so they could say good-bye to Max.

“Hey, man.” Tad slapped him on the shoulder. “We’re going to cut out.”

“Aw, you guys are leaving already?” Max frowned. “I was just getting to finally know the notorious camp girl.”

Candace embraced Max when he opened his arms for a farewell hug.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll bring her next time too.” Tad smiled at her and tugged on a lock of her hair.

“All right, sounds good.” Max smacked his hand against Tad’s and then pulled him into another back-whacking hug. “Drive safe.”

Tad walked shoulder to shoulder with Candace back toward the truck. “I hope you had an all right time.”

Candace smiled up at him. The night got colder the deeper into the darkness they walked. “I had a great time.”

“I hope so.” Tad escorted her around to the other side of the truck to the passenger door.