Can't Fight This Feeling (18 page)

“You know.” Vaughn shrugged. “Local girl, knows all the back routes and every shortcut. Aware of who’s in town and who isn’t. Nobody looks twice at a Maids by Mac car cruising around.”

“Cruising around?”

“Casing joints,” Vaughn clarified.

Brett glanced at Angelica.
Did he say
casing joints
?
her big brown eyes asked. Squeezing her fingers, he returned his attention to Vaughn.

“Well, I hope no one repeats that suspicion in front of me,” he said, his tone mild. But deadly.

Vaughn flinched. “I’m not repeating it, Brett.”

“You just did—” Angelica started.

Brett sent her a warning look. “Anything else, Vaughn?”

“Well...” The other man took his time taking a swallow of his coffee. Then he straightened, both feet square on the ground. His gaze held a challenge. “Same story...”

“But a different Walker,” Brett finished for him.

“Have a nice day, Brett,” Vaughn said with a thin smile. He saluted Angelica with his cup. “You, too, doll.”

The minute the door closed on his back, Angelica turned her gaze on him, outrage written all over her face. “I can’t believe—”

“There are suspicions about everyone,” he said, realizing their hands were still joined and her fingers clutched his. “Take it easy.”

“I can’t. Mac’s almost a friend—will be, when we get to know each other better, I’m sure. I’m incensed for her.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“And then to mention you—”

“I’ve been accused before. Remember, I do have a history. And memories are long here.”

Her jaw dropped. Then she closed her eyes, tight, and seemed to be concentrating on something. Was it a wish?

“What are you doing?”

She looked at him, eyes still narrowed. “My great-grandmother was reputedly a
bruja
—a witch. In case I have my own latent powers I just wished ill on that girl who lied about you. If I have my way, she now has a furry tongue, scaly skin and a car with a wonky starter motor.”

He stared at her, fascinated. “A car with a wonky starter motor?”

“I had one of those once, and it took forever to get it properly diagnosed. Think how many times she’ll be late to work or to meet a date.”

His lips twitched. “You’d do that for me?”

“We’re friends, right? At least I hope that our one-time event hasn’t changed the friendship we’ve established. So as my pal, that means...”

As she continued on in a furious whisper, he continued watching her mouth move and her eyes flash without taking in a single sentence.
We’re friends. One-time event.
Her words.

Relief should be rolling through him. She’d done it, without him initiating the conversation. She’d put them, and all that had happened the night before when their limbs were entangled and their skin was fused by sugar and sweat, into her very own box.

The buddy box.

Terrific. Great.

He couldn’t be happier.

* * *

G
LORY
STOOD
BACK
from the metal stand she and Angelica had just moved to the southwest corner of the store to examine the new placement. “No, not here,” she said.

Her friend’s brows rose. “We’ve moved it five times.”

“Yes, yes, but the pressed wood fire logs are big sellers and also impulse buys...so I need to have them in the exact right place.”

“Your dad will tell you they should be located near the fireplace tools—where they’ve always been,” Angelica warned.

“I know. But now the business is mine and I want to make it feel like my own.”

“How about a compromise? We put the log holder where regular customers will expect to find it. Then we put a smaller stack near the register for the impulse buyers to discover.”

Glory stared at her friend. “Brilliant!” She grabbed her end of the stand. “Let’s do it.”

Angelica didn’t complain as they returned the contraption to its original location. She’d been fabulous that way, not pointing out that Glory had been in a frenzy since Kyle Scott had made his return. Not pointing out that Glory had been moving things around all over the store as if that might cure her malaise.

She still held hope that it would.

“What do you think about that display of rodent eradication products?”

“I try not to think of rodent eradication at all, Glory.”

“Ha-ha.” The sound of the front door’s bells chiming made her start. “Go see who that is, would you? Just in case...”

Just in case Kyle had bribed yet another local. First, it had been a skateboarding preteen with a pumpkin under his arm. Carved into its skin was a message: “Go out with me. —Kyle.”

She’d tossed it into the Dumpster out back.

The next day, a toddler had arrived, one hand held by his mother, the other clutching a steaming blueberry muffin. A paper flag attached to a toothpick was stuck in the center. “Please go out with me. —Kyle.”

She’d pitched the toothpick into the trash. After a moment’s consideration, she’d eaten the muffin in two big bites.

As Angelica headed off to the front of the store now, Glory called after her. “Beware of strangers bearing gifts!”

But it was no stranger who accompanied the brunette on her return trip. Glory’s oldest friend, Jules, came down the aisle, pushing a stroller that contained a snoozing two-year-old Becca under a kitten-print quilt.

Still, Glory cast a suspicious look at them both. “Is there anything hiding under that blanket? Did a tall, dark and handsome man ask you to bring something inside?”

Jules appeared confused. “Huh?”

Angelica answered. “Glory has an admirer.”

“Stu?” Jules guessed.

“Not Stu.” Glory frowned. Why did everyone think of her and then think of Stu? It was the rut, she decided, the rut she’d always been in.

Angelica was admiring the sleeping little girl. “How adorable she is.”

“I know,” Jules said, beaming. “Sometimes I pinch myself in the morning. I could have missed all this.”

“Missed it how?” Angelica asked.

“Jules was a famous actress in Hollywood,” Glory explained.

“Please.” The famous actress snorted. “I was in commercials for a local flooring chain.”

“Don’t forget you played the girl in the diamond store in that movie.”

“None of us can remember the name of ‘that movie,’” Jules pointed out.

“Still...” Glory remembered fantasizing about her and Jules trading places. Glory as wife and mother, Jules as the head of the hardware store. Now she played another little game in her mind. Glory in Hollywood—or anywhere besides Blue Arrow Lake, really—following a different dream...

“You’re sorry about your adventure?” Angelica asked Jules now.

“Not at all.” The young mother bent down to adjust the blanket around her daughter. “If I hadn’t gone down the hill, it would have been built up in my mind as ‘that thing I didn’t do.’ So I went, experimented, found it wasn’t for me and returned, happy to move on with my life here.”

“I read that the average person will have something like eleven jobs over their lifetime,” Angelica said.

Glory stared at her. “Really?”

“Well, not you,” her friend said cheerfully. “You have your lifetime job right here, right now.”

Of course she did. Glory was telling herself to be grateful for that, when the sound of distant snare drums caught her attention. All three women looked at each other, and then headed to the front of the store.

“What the heck?” Outside the store, the high school marching band was arranging itself on the street. Thirty of them assembled in rows, not counting a five-member squad of white-gloved, kicky-skirted girls at the front. When the band started playing “Call Me Maybe,” the young ladies in front danced under the mellow-yellow afternoon sun.

Glory stepped out the door and onto the sidewalk, one of the many spectators to gather and watch. Angelica spoke in her ear. “I wonder who had this idea?”

Telling herself not to do so, she glanced around the crowd to see if Kyle was among them. But there was no tall and rangy house painter in sight. Homecoming was approaching. Maybe the band was out for an impromptu practice. But the kids all seemed to be staring at her.

Prickles rose on the back of her neck. The people on the sidewalk were staring at her, too, as if they’d never seen her before. She glanced down. Was something wrong with her clothes? But she was in her same-old, same-old work uniform: khaki jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, her butcher-style apron. Self-conscious, she fluffed her short hair and bit at her lips to give them color. Had she worn lipstick today?

“You look great,” Angelica whispered in her ear.

Glory steeled her spine. She didn’t care how she looked. She didn’t care that other people were looking at her. To them, she’d always be Cutest Kewpie anyway.

The band was winding down. Soon, they’d be moving along, she supposed, continuing along the street or back to school. This unexpected, out-of-the-ordinary moment would be gone from her life...just like Kyle Scott.

Angelica had been pressuring her to give him another chance. Just because he’d done one disappearing act didn’t mean he couldn’t be trusted not to leave again, she’d said. But Glory couldn’t shake her unease, though perhaps that was due less to the man and more because of the strength of the attraction she felt for him.

It was unprecedented...so how could she trust it to last?

At the final crescendo, cymbals clashed and the dancing girls swept down in graceful arcs. Glory realized there were pieces of cardboard lying facedown at their feet, and they plucked them up, to hold them chest-high. Each was a letter, and spelled out Beautiful Glory, Go Out with Me.

Marching again to the single beat of a snare drum, the band split in two and fanned to each side, so that beyond the girls she could see the lone man seated on the bench across the street.

Kyle’s elbows were on his knees and he was studying her with that single-mindedness he’d warned her about. His dark eyes bored into hers.

A yearning spread inside her chest, but it seemed to empty her out, too, making her ache. Afraid of the feeling, afraid of everything but the familiar—her rut seemed so safe—Glory swung around and fled into the store. Behind her, the trombones let out a low, mournful call.

It echoed in her heart.

She immediately began tugging on a heavy cardboard bin of hoses. Aware that Angelica had come inside, she pitched her voice to her friend. “Let’s put these by the rakes and brooms.” It made no particular sense to relocate them. Nothing was making any sense.

“Glory—”

“I told you I need to make the store my own,” she said through her teeth, not looking over. “Can’t you understand that?”

“I’m not fighting you.”

“I’m sorry.” She straightened and put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you’re fighting yourself.”

A dozen thoughts were whirling through Glory’s head. The business; her father’s continued intrusions into it; the rut that was her life; Stu, standing in the offing until the calendar turned to January.

Kyle, who she’d rejected again.

Her feet acted of their own free will. One minute she was standing in the store, the next she was racing out of it, flinging open the door to call out, “Don’t go!” She looked wildly about, searching the sidewalk in both directions, trying to find him. To the right, no sign of him. To the left, the same.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he called out, from his seat on the bench directly across the street.

He hadn’t left.

Her pulse skidded to a stop like a galloping horse suddenly encountering a cliff. She rubbed her damp palms along the crisp fabric of her apron. “Why?”

“You know why.”

Because he wanted to be with her. She stared at him, trying to comprehend it. Like troubling to find out her favorite sandwich, he was willing to take the time to win her over. He thought she was beautiful, when everyone knew she was cute as a button.

Nobody had ever thought differently. No one had ever gone out of their way to be with her. Not even Stu, whom she’d been with—if you added it all up—longer than anyone. He just took for granted she’d be there at the store, willing to date again when the right January rolled around.

He’d never worked to have her. To please her.

“This is probably a bad idea,” she said.

Kyle came to his feet. Cars were going slowly between them. Gossip would be all over the mountains in an hour. “Are you still worried about people talking?”

They already were, Glory thought. They’d know Kyle had referred to her as “beautiful.” Her face flushed. “Maybe.”

“We can take a street survey, right here, right now. Find out if people will still stop in for their dowels and doorknobs if you let me take you on a date.”

“Only if she reports on the details,” a white-haired woman said as she emerged from the beauty salon next door.