Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (168 page)

He waited for the regret to crash into him, for the guilt of crossing the line with Haley to take over. But neither of those things occurred. He didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt or even a hint of regret.

A disarming smile spread across her face, and when her eyes met his, he felt as if he could see all the way down to her soul. His forehead was still resting against her soft skin as she simply said, “Wow.”

She didn’t ask what that kiss was about, question him about why he’d abruptly ended the kiss, or even make a move to continue it.

Instead, she took a step back and moved out of his arms. “Okay.” Smoothing her trembling hands down her blouse, she said with a professional tone, “Well, I guess I should show you what we’ll need done.”

Eddie nodded and listened as she went over the basics of the dressing rooms, front counter, and shelving he would be installing. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying as he typed in notes on his iPad, but he was having a much more difficult time than Haley seemed to be as she animatedly talked about the plans for the shop.

He shouldn’t be surprised. Her kiss, just like her response and reaction to it, had been an exact reflection of who she was. Real. Honest. Perfect.

CHAPTER TWELVE

HALEY PULLED OUT several more heavy photo albums from the plastic tub she’d stored them in. Her hunt to find the
Grease
pictures with Chase in them to show Em was not only taking her on quite the little trip down memory lane, but it was also making her realize that she hadn’t taken a photo and had it developed in
years
.

Sure, she had a ton of pictures on her laptop, dozens of albums on Facebook, and hundreds of shots on Instagram, but those were all digital images. Haley had forgotten how much she enjoyed holding and looking through physical pictures. It was just different. Somehow flipping the page of the album or feeling the smoothness and weight of a photograph in her hand connected her more to that memory.

She opened her yellow and white polka-dotted album and hit the jackpot. The first picture she saw was of a ten-year-old her and an eleven-year-old Chase Malone. She wore a pale yellow poodle skirt with a matching cardigan, a white collared shirt, ankle socks, and saddle oxfords. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail and she had a scarf around her neck. Chase wore jeans, a white t-shirt, and a leather jacket with his hair up and greased back. Em was going to love this.

Haley heard her door opening and looked up just as Krista was walking in.
Uh oh
. She quickly shut the book.

“Hey, I just got off the phone with—” Her sister stopped mid-sentence and looked at the mess of photo albums that was strewn across Haley’s white and blue down comforter. “What’s this?”

Trying desperately to keep her face as neutral as possible, Haley answered honestly. “Just looking for some pictures I promised Emily I’d show her.”

Krista’s green eyes narrowed into an assessing gaze. Haley was waiting for a follow-up but was spared when her sister thankfully dropped it and continued on with her original thought. “Oh. Anyways, I just got off the phone with Jessie and she’s coming home for the summer instead of taking that internship. So she
and
Becca will both be home in time for your birthday and the grand opening.”

“Seriously?!”

“Yep,” Krista confirmed happily, plopping down on the bed and picking up one of the albums Haley had already gone through, so thankfully she knew it was safe and Chase-free.

“Why isn’t Jessie taking the internship?” Haley asked.

It seemed like a very un-Jessie-like thing to do. She was all business all the time. After graduating with honors from Boston University, Jessie decided to stay in Massachusetts to work on her MBA. Her reasoning was that she was more focused in that environment than she was when she was home in Illinois. Hometown equaled too many distractions—her words.

“She didn’t say. You know how she is.” Krista shook her head as she flipped through the book.

That didn’t surprise Haley. Of all of her sisters, Jessie was by far the most private. She had been born with the belief that everyone was on a need-to-know basis, and in her opinion, most people didn’t need to know anything. In fact, before she started kindergarten, their mom had been worried that Jessie didn’t know her ABCs because she would never repeat them when asked. But after Jessie had been in Mrs. Garcia’s kindergarten class for only a week, the teacher had called their mom and said that Jessie not only knew her alphabet, but she was reading at a fourth grade level and could not only add and subtract but could also do multiplication and division.

Haley remembered sitting at the kitchen table when her mom had asked Jessie about why she hadn’t told her the alphabet if she knew it. Her sister had looked her mom right in the eye and simply said without any hint of backtalk in her tone, “I didn’t know why you were asking.”

That was really all there was to it. Even at the tender age of five, if Jessie hadn’t known why you wanted information, she felt no obligation to tell you.

A few years later, it came out that the only reason Jessie had answered all of the questions Mrs. Garcia had asked was because she’d thought it was an interview to see if you could pass kindergarten and get into first grade.

“I hope everything’s okay.” Haley bit the inside of her lip.

Jessie had been excited when she’d gotten accepted into the internship program in NYC. She’d been chosen from more than five hundred other applicants. Haley knew that it was a lost cause but decided that she would be giving Jessie a call as soon as she got back from seeing Emily.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Krista said, clearly not concerned. Krista was not a worrier. Haley was. “So how are things going with tall, dark, and brooding?”

Haley immediately jumped to Eddie’s defense. “He is not tall, dark, and
brooding.
” Other people just didn’t see the lighter side of him. He did, Haley herself could admit, tend to be serious,
but
he had a lot of responsibilities.

Krista tilted her head, looking at Haley as if she almost felt sorry for her and the river of denial she was floating down. “Yeah. He is.”

Haley dropped it. She knew it wasn’t her place to defend Eddie. Plus, someone saying that he was brooding was better than saying that he was an a-hole.

“How’s the shop coming?”

Butterflies flittered in Haley’s stomach every time she thought about the store. She was happy. Excited. But also, she had to admit, a little nervous. “Things are good. They’re almost done with the renovations.”

Krista wiggled her eyebrows. “Any more tongue action?”

“No,” Haley was sad to report. Since they’d shared that magical kiss over a week ago, there had been nothing.

At the shop, he was never alone, always with at least one other worker. Add to that the fact that Haley was pretty sure he’d been purposefully keeping his distance from her. Not metaphorically,
literally
. There always seemed to be a good six feet between the two of them. It was so strange that she figured it had to be on purpose. She’d even tested out her theory that the distance was intentional and not accidental or coincidental.

The night before, when she’d been setting up displays in the store and he had been finishing up the dressing rooms, he’d had a question about a curtain that needed to be hung. When he’d come out to the floor room to ask her, she hadn’t quite been able hear him. So she’d taken a step forward and asked what he’d said. As soon as her feet had moved, Eddie’s had as well, but he moved away from her, not towards her. So she’d done it again and received the same reaction. While they’d been doing their little dance, the lyrics of that old Ludacris song were playing in her head.
“When I move you move, just like that. When I move you move, just like that.”
It had been so comical she’d almost burst out laughing.

“I still don’t know why you just totally let him off the hook after he planted one on you and then had the nerve to act like nothing happened.”

Haley knew her sister would never understand. Krista was a confronter. If something was bothering her, she said so. If she wanted to know something, she asked. If she felt like someone had wronged her, that person
would
answer for it.

‘In your face’ had never been Haley’s style. After Eddie had kissed Haley senseless, her decision to move things along by returning the focus to work had been a strategic one. It had been a three-pronged strategy.

First, if she didn’t address it, then he couldn’t make any stupid statements like, ‘That should never have happened’ or ‘That can never happen again.’

Second, because deep down she truly believed it
would
happen again. Considering how things
had
been elevating between the two of them, she’d naïvely thought that they wouldn’t be able to be in the same space with one another without
something
happening. Kissing. Touching. At the very least
flirting
.

She’d been dead wrong. Her ‘let’s get back to work’ tactic might have saved her from hearing Eddie say the words ‘This is a mistake’ or ‘Nothing can happen between us,’ but that hadn’t changed the fact that that was obviously how he felt. His actions were living proof that that’s how he felt.

The last thing Haley wanted was for Krista to think badly of Eddie. Like he’d intentionally done her wrong. “He was excited about his promotion. I was excited about the store. It just…happened.”

Haley knew for a fact that, even though she might disagree with his logic, his actions hadn’t been selfish. In fact, they had been the exact opposite. Eddie wanted her. That much was obvious. But he wouldn’t act on it because he was trying to protect Emily…and Haley. Maybe even himself. He truly believed that if things became physical between them it would change
everything
.

Which was the third and final piece of the ‘let’s get back to work’ move. She wanted to show Eddie, to
prove
to Eddie, that no matter what happened between them, things could remain the same. And not to toot her own horn but—
toot toot
—she’d been doing an excellent job of treating him exactly as if there had been no kiss whatsoever. He, on the other hand. practically jumped out of his skin the second she walked into the room.

“How much longer does he have at Tempting?” Krista asked as she picked up another album and started flipping through it.

“Just a couple of days.”

“Well, if I were you, I would take advantage of that time,” her sister advised.

“What do you mean?” Haley felt like she
was
taking as much advantage of it as she could. She’d practically left drool marks on the inventory she’d been unpacking from watching Eddie in action. The man could
seriously
swing a hammer.

“I
mean
a kiss is nice. But you have been crushing on Hunky McHunkster for years. If you want more than a kiss, it’s looking like you may need to do something drastic.”

“More drastic than telling him I love him?” Haley asked. She’d thought that had been pretty drastic.

“I still can’t believe you did that.” Krista shook her head. “And yes, something more drastic than that.”

Haley was still pretty shocked she had told him as well. But she wouldn’t take it back. It was the truth. She really didn’t think she could get much more drastic than laying her heart on the line. But she was all out of ‘moves’ so she figured she might as well see what her sister had in mind.

“Like what?”

Krista looked at her in total and complete disbelief that Haley was so blatantly missing the point. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

Haley had no idea what Krista was talking about. “’Fraid so.”

“I can’t believe
you’re
the big sister.” Krista closed the album and brushed her long red hair out of her face and over her shoulders, sitting up a little straighter. “Okay, men are visual creatures. If you want to inspire Eddie to get down and dirty, you need to put something in front of him that’s
inspiring
.”

Haley looked at Krista with what she knew was a blank expression because she still had no idea what she meant. Did she mean show a little leg? Wear a low-cut blouse? Haley had tried that. She’d even washed her car—several times!—in booty shorts when she’d seen Eddie outside working on his truck. It hadn’t
inspired
anything.

In fact, the three times he’d seemed the most
inspired
she could not have been wearing more different attire. First, the dress she wore to the performance. Then sweats. Then slacks and a button-up shirt. Haley thought her sister might have been oversimplifying the mind of the man.

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Krista said flatly.

“No,” Haley answered honestly.

“I’m talking about wearing nothing but his tool belt and asking him to show you how to pound a nail,” Krista said like it was as innocent as asking him to coffee.

Haley grabbed one of her pillows from the top of her bed and threw it at her sister. “Stop it!”

“I’m serious,” Krista laughed as she dodged it. “How do you design such sexy underwear when you’re such a prude?”

“I’m not a prude,” Haley defended. She might be a little old-fashioned, but she wasn’t a
prude
. And when she designed a piece, it wasn’t about sexy in the hey-baby-come-and-get-it way. It was about making the person who wore it feel sexy and more confident.

Krista used the patented response she always did when she was bored with a conversation. “Whatever.” The bed bounced as she hopped off of it. Krista was almost to the door when she turned and asked. “What pictures were you going to show Emily?”

Shoot. Think. Think. Think.

“Just some of the ones from the plays that I was in in elementary school. Emily asked me about it after her
Annie
performance.” That was good. She hadn’t lied, so hopefully her sister would move along.