Kiss Me Katie! & Hug Me Holly! (13 page)

H
EART IN HIS THROAT
, Bryan hauled Katie out of the plane. Before her toes could even touch the ground he had her buried in his arms and he was never going to let her go.

Never.

It shocked him, scared the hell out of him, but he could no longer deny the truth.

He loved her.

Because his legs were weak, he pressed his back against the other side of the hangar, the good side, on the steel wall that wasn't buckled like a tin can, and sank to the ground with her in his lap.

“You're shaking,” he whispered.

“No, that's you,” Katie whispered back, holding him tighter. “Bryan…”

“No.” Fear and anguish and panic all rolled together into temper that overcame him now that he was sitting. “What the hell was that, Katie? What got into you?”

“Well, I—”

“What were you doing up there taking a flying lesson, and from someone
else?
”

“It's—”

“Dammit, how could you risk yourself that way, in a plane that isn't mine, and then that—that
approach,
though I use the term loosely! What the hell was
that?
”

“My life is my own, Bryan.”

“Yes, but I want in.”

“You…want in. My life?”

“I meant it,” he whispered. “I meant what I said in the hangar. I didn't realize it, God who would have thought, but Katie, it's true. I love you. Enough to give up stunting, enough to know that I'll never want another woman, enough to promise forever. But please,
please
don't ever fly again.”

He shouldn't have asked it of her, he had no right to ask anything of her when she hadn't asked anything of him. Misery and regret washed over him. “Wait. That didn't come out right.”

“You don't want me to ever fly again,” she repeated slowly. “Interesting.”

“Katie—”

“Whoops,” she said, covering his mouth again when he would have spoken. “Still my turn.” Ignoring the commotion around them as everyone picked themselves up and took inventory of the
damage, she looked deep into his eyes. “I thought I wanted safety. Security. Stability.”

“The three
S
's,” Holly said with disgust, dusting herself off.
“Boring.”

Katie ignored both her and the baleful glance Matt shot her as he wiped at his filthy trousers. She looked only at Bryan. “I wanted everything I never got from my father as a child.”

When he softened with remorse, when his hands slid over her arms in a caress, she shook her head sharply and kept her hands firmly on his mouth. “Please. Let me say this, I have to get it out. I thought I wanted
safe
love. The quiet, reserved kind that isn't really love at all, but just a teaser for it.” She sighed and smiled into his eyes. “I was wrong, Bryan, that's not what I want at all. I want true, heart-pounding, butterflies-in-the-stomach,
real
love.”

He pulled her fingers away from his mouth. “I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that. But dammit, you risked your life today!”

“Exactly.” She grinned at him proudly. “So now I know I'm capable of taking a risk. I know I can do this.”

“Do…what exactly?” Damn, was he always going to be clueless around her?

“Silly man. Now I know I can love you.” She
cupped his face and kissed him softly, so very softly his heart caught.

“You…love me.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes filled. “I tried to save the best for last.”

“Katie, sweetheart, do me a little favor.” He could hardly speak. “Say it again.”

“I saved the best for last.”

“The other,” he said as patiently as he could.
“Repeat the other.”

Her eyes filled. One tear spilled over and as he gently swiped it away with his thumb, she said the words he'd been dying to hear.

“I love you, Bryan Morgan, with all my heart. Will you be mine? Forever?”

His own eyes stung, his throat burned. “That's supposed to be my line.”

“Well then, say it already.”

Another tear spilled over his fingers and he had no idea now which of them it belonged to. “Will you be mine, Katie Wilkins? Forever and ever?”

“I will,” she promised, and they sealed the vow with a kiss.

“I guess your Christmas curse is over,” Holly said behind them.

Julie was also there, and she smiled. “From this point on, she's Christmas blessed.”

Around them the rest of the staff gathered oohing and aahing over Katie's erratic—and expensive—parking job.

Katie looked deeply and lovingly into Bryan's eyes. “Next time, I promise to let
you
teach me to fly, in
your
airplane. Okay?”

He gazed into her beautiful eyes as he stroked her cheek. Behind them he could see the damage to the hangar, the torn wing on the airplane and quickly calculated the expenses. He thought lovingly of his own planes, and how much they were worth. Behind her back he crossed his own fingers. “Next time,” he said, and kissed her.

Holly gave him the once-over, her gaze lingering on his badge. “Is this town actually
big
enough for a sheriff?” she questioned.

Her voice was smooth and cultured, and everything about her screamed “city girl.” “We're big enough to court trouble,” he said lightly. “Can I help you find something?”
Like the highway?

“Is this really the Café…Nirvana?” She tilted back her head and studied the stark blue sky, then the wide open landscape. Finally she shook her head. “It's some sort of joke, right?”

She leveled those light blue eyes on him with what could only be described as hope. He slowly shook his head. “Nope. No joke.”

Briefly she closed her eyes. “Cosmic justice,” Riley heard her mutter.

Then she was walking away from him, but not out of his life. No, she went into the café, her look of determination as strong as her stride.

L
OST IN THE DEPTHS
of hell, Holly pulled over, tossed back an Evian water and contemplated her next move. She could consult the map that lay open on the passenger seat, but then she'd have to admit she didn't know how to get to Little Paradise, which was the same thing as admitting she didn't know where she was going, and she hated that.

Holly Stone
always
knew where she was going. Okay, and maybe because of that, she'd always been a tad bit stubborn, but she couldn't help it.
Much.

She could get out her cell phone and call…who? Her family? They'd get far too big a kick out of her being lost.
Oh, there's Holly, proving a beautiful blonde can't find her way out of a paper bag again.
That would be from her parents, who'd been patting her on the head, then shaking their own heads behind her back for years.

There she goes again, racing off without a plan
and blowing it before she even gets started.
That would be from her oh-so-loving siblings, who'd never taken her seriously, not once, not even when she'd really needed them to.

No, she wouldn't be calling her family.

She could try a friend, if she'd managed to keep any over the years, which she hadn't. Holly didn't open up easily. For years this had disturbed her, but she learned to at least pretend it didn't matter.

Bottom line—she didn't play well with others, and she'd probably known it as early as kindergarten. It'd been reinforced in every job she'd ever had, and there'd been many. She'd been a banker, a photographer, a bookkeeper and most recently, an office manager for a private airport. She'd even almost had a boyfriend there,
almost
being the key word, though she'd worked very hard to get him. But then the boss's daughter had caught the jerk's eye and he'd decided he had bigger fish to fry. That was fine, because so did Holly.

At none of her jobs had she been particularly popular, which all came back to that getting along with others thing. Maybe she tried too hard, always pushing in order to accomplish her own agenda. People, especially men, didn't seem to like that.

But she was who she was. With a fatalistic shrug, she got out of the car, stretching legs that
had been protesting the long drive from Southern California to this godforsaken part of Arizona over the past eight hours. Her heels crunched on the sun-hardened sand. The material of her clothes immediately stuck to her. Ugh. To avoid squinting in the unbelievable glare of the sun—why court wrinkles before she was even thirty?—she slid on glasses and considered her options.

Unfortunately, they seemed to be few and far between.

There wasn't another car in sight on the shimmering horizon.

The air felt thick with heat, despite the fact it was two days after New Year's. And her silk skirt was wrinkled, dammit. Time to get a move on.

A very large lizard zipped across the ground, far too close to her toes. She might have screamed and jumped back a little, but since there was no one around for what looked like a gazillion miles, Holly would have denied it to her dying day.

Just because she was out in the middle of the Arizona desert, with nothing other than lizards and cacti and rolling tumbleweeds for company—oh, and no one under the sun to call if she needed to—didn't mean she had to lose her cool.

She'd just do as she always did and take care of
herself. She was good at that. She'd consult her map and finish her trek. It shouldn't be far now.

Inside the car was much more livable than outside, and she cranked the air-conditioning again, spending a moment to lift some of the hair off her neck to cool herself down.

She'd always heard Arizona was hot, hot, hot, but this was a different kind of heat than she'd ever experienced in California. This was a weighted, dry sort that seeped right into her bones. It would destroy her skin in a week.

But she'd made a vow, and one thing Holly never did was back out on a promise, even if it was only to herself. She'd told her parents she'd be there, and though she knew they probably didn't really expect her to come through, she intended to do just that. This was a turn in the crossroads for her, a new leaf. All her life she'd been blond, decent enough looking that she wouldn't be cracking any mirrors…and seriously underestimated. She had to work hard to gain people's trust and respect, something she'd never been willing to do.

Until now.

Putting the car in Drive, she put her hands on the wheel, doubly determined to see this thing through.

And that was when she saw it, the small green sign that read: Little Paradise, population 856.

Seems she wasn't lost at all, but right where she was supposed to be.
Little Paradise.
The name must have been someone's idea of a joke.

Because Little Paradise looked just like her vision of hell.

W
HEN
S
HERIFF
Riley McMann's stomach rumbled for the third time in as many minutes, he finally gave in and looked at his watch.

Two o'clock. No wonder. He hadn't eaten since dawn, when he'd been called out of bed to help rescue a cow from a ravine.

Just one example of his fine, exemplary duties.

Actually, he preferred climbing down a sharp, rocky cliff, eating dust, and nearly being kicked in the head by a panicked cow that was going to end up as the Tuesday special than doing paperwork, as he was now. Maybe being sheriff in a ranching community like Little Paradise wasn't exactly challenging law enforcement, but he got to be outside most of his day, which he loved.

The slow-paced country life also gave him plenty of opportunity to work his own small ranch, which he also loved.

His stomach went off again.

With a sigh, he shoved away the mountain of
paperwork surrounding him, stretched his long legs and wished he'd remembered to pack a lunch that morning.

He could have asked Maria to do it. After all, it wasn't unreasonable to expect lunch to be a regular housekeeper's chore.

But Maria was no regular housekeeper.

So he was hungry. Very hungry. With longing, he glanced through his small office window across the street at Café Nirvana, the one and only restaurant in town.

It had been there since the beginning of time. At least since the beginning of Little Paradise. But after fifty years of feeding the town, Marge and Edward Mendoza were calling it quits. They'd put the place on the market for their retirement money so they could move to Montana and be with family.

It was rumored that their daughter, who cleaned house for some rich doctors out in California, had arranged for someone to run the café until the place sold. No one had shown up yet, but supposedly they were due to arrive any day now. Riley, who liked a change as much as any other guy, had to admit he wished this was one thing that didn't have to change.

Café Nirvana was the heart and soul of Little Paradise.

“Oh, stop staring at it and go on over there.” This from Jud, his sixty-five-year-old deputy, who came into the office. He hitched up his continuously falling pants. “I can hear your stomach growling from the front room.”

“I don't have time for lunch.”

“Yeah, you never know when another cow emergency is going to come up.”

“I have paperwork,” Riley said with dignity.

Jud stepped around the potted cactus that currently sported a string of popcorn, making it the office Christmas tree. He shook his head. “You've had paperwork since the day you set your butt in that chair two years ago when your dad retired. He spent twenty-five years fighting that paperwork. It's never going to change.”

True enough. Riley's stomach growled loudly. Pork chops sounded good. So did meat loaf. So did…anything. “What's the special over there today?”

Jud looked out the window and let out a long, soft whistle. “Looks like leggy blonde. Curves on the side.”

“What?” Riley moved next to Jud, and saw the older man was right. That was definitely a leggy
blonde pulling herself out of a red Jeep. Tossing back her perfectly coiffed hair. Smoothing down the blouse and skirt that screamed sophistication. Grabbing the small, elegant handbag that matched her ridiculously high heels.

She might have stepped right off the glossy pages of a magazine. Not that Riley had a problem with looking at a woman like that, no sirree. After all he was a very healthy, red-blooded, thirty-two-year-old American male, but she seemed as out of place here as a white, snowy, icy Christmas would have been.

“Well ain't she a fancy one.” Jud hitched up his sagging pants again.

Fancy
was hitting the nail right on the head. The woman walked like she owned the planet, with her bodacious hips swaying gently, her long, toned legs striding with unfaltering confidence.

Riley disliked her on sight. Not very gentlemanly of him, and it wasn't personal, but this woman had
big city, big trouble
written all over her, and he'd learned a woman like that and a place like Little Paradise didn't mix. He had his mother as a fine example. She'd lasted in this small town until he'd been a whole week old.

“What do you suppose she wants here?” Jud asked.

God only knew. “Maybe she heard about the good food at Café Nirvana.”

Jud laughed. “That girl don't look like she eats much. But there's gotta be a reason someone like that would come to a place like this. She wants something.”

Definitely. But Riley couldn't imagine what. “I'd better go see who she is.”

“Yeah.” Jud lifted an eyebrow. “She could be armed and dangerous.”

Riley shook his head and moved toward the door.

“Well, she could! Hey, better frisk her. You know, just in case.” Jud laughed at that, laughed so hard he had to bend over and wheeze for a bit.

That's how Riley left him, bent at the knees, pants sagging, breath wheezing in and out as he cackled to himself.

 

B
Y THE TIME
Riley got outside, blondie had walked around the Jeep and was staring at the front of the café. She was taller than he'd figured, and as Jud had pointed out, definitely leggy and curvy. Her body was hard to miss in that form-fitting skirt and blouse she wore, both in notice-me red.

At her feet sat Harry. Harry was at least ten
pounds overweight, ugly as sin and the town beggar, but everyone in Little Paradise loved him.

“Shoo,” the woman said to the huge orange tabby cat.

Harry just blinked at her and slowly lowered himself to the ground. With a grunt, he sprawled on the sidewalk, belly up. This was his demand to be stroked, but the woman just waved red manicured nails at him.

“Shoo!”

Harry yawned, and Riley grinned. “Can I help you?” he asked, coming up behind her. “Sheriff Riley McMann, at your service.”

She turned her head, allowing him to see for himself that she looked even more beautiful up close and personal. Her hair fell to her chin, accenting a stunning face and the most icy light-blue eyes he'd ever seen.

She gave him the once-over, too. Slowly, she looked all the way down his body, then back up again, her gaze lingering on his badge. “Is this town actually big enough for a sheriff?” she asked.

Her voice was smooth as honey. And cultured. Everything about her screamed city, and though he should have been deferential and majorly polite to the newcomer, he was far too hungry for that. Besides, he knew the type. Polite would only get him
walked all over. “We're big enough to court trouble,” he said lightly. “Can I help you find something?”
Like the highway?

“Is this really the only café in town?”

Riley glanced at the big, picture window. As far as places in town went, the café was Social Central. Proving the point were faces pressed up against the glass from the inside, staring at both him and blondie with avid curiosity. He could see Mindy, the librarian. Dan, the one-and-only mechanic for two hundred miles, maybe more. Lou, post office clerk and resident computer expert. Mike, the local contractor and wanna-be artist. All watching their exchange with great interest.

“Tell me there's another café,” she said, watching them watch her.

“Not for at least fifty miles,” he told her. “Café Nirvana is it.”

She let out a small choked sound that might have been a laugh or genuine distress. “Café…
Nirvana?
”

He didn't try to hold back his amusement at her shock. “That's right.”

“
Café Nirvana,
in the town of
Little Paradise?
”

She looked so horrified he laughed out loud. “Yep.”

Tilting back her head she studied the stark blue
sky, then the wide, open landscape. Finally, she shook her head. “It's some sort of joke. It's got to be.”

When she leveled those light-blue eyes on him with what could only be described as hope, he slowly shook his head. Nope. No joke.

He figured she'd go running right then, even though he knew nothing of why she was here.

Briefly she closed her eyes. “Cosmic justice,” he heard her mutter. “Fate. Karma. You name it, I seem to court it.”

Then she was walking away from him, but not out of his life. No, she went into the café, her look of determination as strong as her stride.

 

T
HE HUMUNGOUS
orange cat was following her. “Shoo,” Holly said again, but he dashed between her legs to beat her inside Café Nirvana, and nearly tripped her in the process.

“Gee, let me open the door for you,” she said to his quickly retreating hind end.

But then she promptly forgot about the rude cat as she was assaulted by the scent of food. Bacon, steak, eggs, onions, peppers…mostly things she would never consider putting past her lips.

Not that she was a food snob, though she'd been accused of that before, but because she had the
great luck of having a metabolism that worked with the speed of a snail. If she didn't stick to purely low-fat foods, she blimped up to the size of Miss Piggy. It didn't stop her mouth from watering helplessly as she considered the price her perfect size eight body cost her.

The audience she'd had a moment ago, the ones who'd had their faces plastered against the window while she'd gotten out of her car, shifted the moment she walked in the door. With unity, at each of their tables, they suddenly became busy with their own business, shoveling food into their mouths, talking, doing everything but look at her.

Small towns,
Holly thought. Granted, everything she knew about them came from old reruns of the
Andy Griffith Show,
but apparently she hadn't been far off the mark.

The café was exactly as she'd imagined from the outside—tacky and nothing like the posh, elegant restaurants she preferred. Stark white walls, faded red vinyl booths with rips in the seats that would irritate the backs of everyone's thighs, not to mention destroy her stockings, and old chipped tables with mismatched chairs. The decor was…nonexistent, unless one counted the cheap wood frames on the walls, showcasing pictures of
what looked to have been bought at a blue light special.

Lovely. Her worst nightmare. Her heels clicked noisily across the cheap but thankfully clean linoleum floor as she headed for the counter, and the waitress wearing the ridiculous hot pink uniform behind it.

“I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza,” she said, working hard at ignoring all the stares she was getting now that her back was turned to the room. Her spine tingled from all the blatant interest.

What was that about? Did she look like she was from Mars? She felt like it here, surrounded by nothing but dust and heat. She was used to Los Angeles, the land of palm trees, coconuts and friendly faces.

The waitress, an older woman with a huge gray bun piled precariously on top of her head, put her hands on her substantial hips—emphasized by that not quite subtle uniform—and gave Holly a serious once-over.

“Who's asking? Because if you're the I.R.S.—”

“No, I'm Holly Stone.”

“And that name should mean something to me?”

“I'm here because Mr. and Mrs. Stone, my par
ents, sent for me to run this place for them as a favor to their maid, and her parents, the Mendozas, until it's sold.”

“
You're
Mr. and Mrs. Stone's daughter?”

“Yes.”

The waitress burst out laughing and Holly cast a glance heavenward. She was used to this, at least. All her life people had been amused by the total and complete lack of things in common between her and her parents.

Just another fluke of fate. Her parents were doctors and had spent their entire lives helping others. Their latest charitable act had been to urge their housekeeper's parents to retire early, before this hole in the wall sold, so the couple could get their first break in nearly thirty years of working.

Holly's two older sisters had followed in her parents' footsteps and were currently bringing immunizations to some tribe in Africa, otherwise they would have come here instead. They always helped out. Oh, and then there was her brother. He hadn't wasted his life doing anything selfish, either. No, as a brain surgeon, he was the pride and joy of her family, one who certainly couldn't be expected to take the time to serve omelettes in this godforsaken southwestern town.

And what had Holly become?

The screwup.

At that moment, and just to brighten her already oh-so-bright day, the sheriff strolled in the front door. He was the picture of the American cowboy; jeans faded and soft from constant use, scuffed boots, hat shoved back on his head to show a face tanned and rugged from long days in the sun. She doubted he'd shaved that morning, doubted even more that his wayward, thick, light-brown hair had seen a comb.

He had a calmness about him, and seemed very different from the men she was used to, men who spoke just to be heard, men who were into how they looked, how they sounded.

And yet despite his easy air, there was a wildness, a toughness to him, a sense that he was always poised for action.

Oh, and he was gorgeous.
Seriously
gorgeous, with all that out-of-control sun-kissed brown hair, even browner sinful eyes and a smile meant to make a woman's knees weak—if a woman was so inclined. Which Holly wasn't.

It wasn't that she didn't like men, but more that she didn't trust them, not with anything important anyway. The sheriff's easy, long-legged stride might exude charm and a laid-back sex appeal, not to mention he had to be the sexiest, most physical
male she'd ever seen, but she was completely immune to it.

For the most part.

When he saw her, he didn't so much as falter, which might have been a direct hit to her ego. After all, men had been noticing her since puberty, but not this man. Still, something told her he'd come inside because of her. When she narrowed her eyes at him, wondering, he simply grinned and winked.