Meeting Miss Mystic (21 page)

She was glad he didn’t ask any more questions about the accident. While she was relieved she’d been able to talk about it without getting emotional, she wasn’t anxious to share more details. Not now, anyway.

“Prairie Dawn,” she said, glancing up at him. He must have just shaved because his jaw was smooth. She was dying to touch the warm, soft skin, to run her fingers along the strong line. She shoved her hands in her back pockets instead, recalling the way he’d dropped his hands from her hips.

“You seemed pretty anxious to get out of there last night,” he said mildly.

She stopped walking and looked up at him. He stopped at the same she did, and gazed at her with worry and…tenderness? Oh, God, it was.
Does he even realize how he’s looking at me?

Her tongue darted out to lick her lips nervously and his eyes dropped to her mouth before he blinked them quickly and switched his gaze awkwardly to the mountains over her shoulder.

“Hey,” she started, “I owe you an apology for crying all over you. I was—I don’t know. Tired and jet-lagged, probably.”

“Lot of tears for jet lag.”

“Okay,” she said softly, opting for a little more truth instead. “I don’t know if things are going to work out with the guy I told you about.”

“He lives here?”

“Around here,” she said, resuming their walk.

“Have you seen him since you got to town?”

“He didn’t know I was planning to come,” she answered honestly. “He’s not expecting me.”

“Huh. Was he not home when you stopped by?”

“Things got complicated.”

“By me,” said Paul, and she heard the regret in his voice.

“No—” she started, but he cut her off.

“I’m complicating your life as much as I’m complicating mine. I had no business kissing you, Zoë.”

Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t say you’re sorry.

To her relief he didn’t.

To her frustration, he said something worse.

“I promise never to do it again.”

That’s great. Just great.

They walked the rest of the way to the Prairie Dawn in awkward silence and Zoë revisited Maggie’s words from last night:
You have to figure out a way to make this work.

Kisses or no kisses, that’s exactly what she still intended to do.

***

“If it isn’t the bonniest lass in Gardiner!” exclaimed Graham from behind the copper bar.

“Where’s Maggie?” asked Paul, feeling irritable at the sight of her disrespectful, foul-mouthed, redheaded cousin. The last person he was in the mood to see this morning was Graham.

“She’s not feelin’ so very well, laddie. Under t’weather.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Graham pantomimed throwing up. “Case of the heaves. Bloody disgustin’.”

Paul’s nose inched up in distaste, wrinkling at Graham’s colorful description. “Are you running things?”

“I am,” he said, looking away from Paul dismissively and winking at Zoë. “What can I get the lovely Zoë?”

Paul rolled his eyes. Zoë smiled back at Graham. He was pretty sure he could see her molars. “Cappuccino?”

Graham put his hand over his heart as though wounded. “Challengin’ me with special orders on my first day!”

“Black coffee’s fine!” she blurted out, her cheeks rosy from Graham’s stupid flirting.

“Nae, lass. Only the best for you. Cappuccino it is! Sit awhile and I’ll bring it over when it’s ready.” Zoë grinned at him and turned away. Paul and Graham watched her sit down on the window seat, one leg curled under her body as she reached for a newspaper and perused the front page. The two men faced each other, Graham’s smile fading quickly to a mocking smirk.

He leaned forward across the bar, toward Paul, speaking in a lower voice. “Just so as we’re clear, I’m aimin’ to hit that.”

Damn, but he hated this kid’s guts. He balled his fists in front of him and spoke in a low-toned, angry whisper.

“Just so as
we’re
clear,
laddie,
try it and the only thing that’ll get
hit
is your face.”

“But you’re not interested,” Graham said sarcastically.

“I’m not interested in someone like her getting seduced by someone like you.”

He stepped back, that idiotic smirk taunting Paul. “Oooo.
Seduced
. There’s a fine and fancy word for it. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not goin’ to seduce anyone. I was just plannin’ to knock boots with her ‘til I got bored.”

“I swear to God—”

“You swear what? I thought you had a virtual girlfriend to worry about. It’s none of your business anyway.” He sauntered away, pouring milk into a metal pitcher. He asked over his shoulder, “You want anythin’?”

“Cappuccino,” said Paul tightly.

He hated to admit it, but the kid was right. It was none of his business if Graham wanted to pursue Zoë or if Zoë wanted to “knock boots” with Graham. But it sat like acid in his stomach, the idea of Zoë with this guy. She deserved a nice guy. She deserved much better.

He turned his back to the bar, leaning against it as the familiar sound of steaming milk filled the otherwise quiet of the small, empty café. He couldn’t help but watch Zoë, the way her black hair gleamed in the sunlight streaming into the window, the way she turned the pages of the newspaper softly.

She’d been in an accident that maimed her leg, but somehow she still started her days dancing down the street singing pop music, hips swaying appealingly, face bright and alert and cheerful. So many people would have retreated from the world, hidden or run away. She was probably the bravest person he’d ever met.

He felt a surge of guilt remembering her words.
It got complicated.

Yeah, I’ll say.

The reality was that despite his pep talk to himself last night about staying away from Zoë, he had felt the leap in his heart when he saw her dancing down the street, singing a touch too loud for a quiet Saturday morning. She’d been singing the song “I Do,” a song Paul had discovered after meeting Holly. It was a sweet song—a young woman who hadn’t had much luck in love had finally met a man she wanted to marry, buy a house with, raise a family, and grow to be 80 years old together. He’d like the sweetness of it right away and had listened to it a time or two thinking of Holly.

Now he’d never be able to hear it again without thinking of Zoë. And the way her body felt pressed against his, her hips held tightly by his fingers.

She turned her head to look out the window for a moment and he could see the scar on her face, pink and shiny with the teeny, tiny dots on either side that would have been from the needle puncturing her skin, to pull it back together after it had been split open. He couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d been through.

And something else occurred to him. Some guy wasn’t treating her very well if she flew all the way out here to see him and things were “complicated.” What was the matter with that guy anyway?
For God’s sake, if she were mine—

He turned away from her, opening his eyes wide at the direction of his thoughts, his breath catching in his throat as he realized what he was about to think. He ground his jaw, feeling suddenly stricken. He had thought the words
If she were mine
, almost as if he wished she was.

Stop thinking about her like that!

He turned back to Graham, frustration and annoyance making his voice low and bitter. “Need some
help
? Takes Maggie half the time to make twice as many.”

Graham turned to Paul, holding two mugs of perfect cappuccino. He smirked at Paul’s tone, glancing at Paul’s crotch, then back up to his face.

“Sour mood, eh? I bet they’re blue,” he whispered. He raised his eyebrows at Paul in challenge then called out in a cheerful voice, “Cap’s ready, Miss Zoë.”

Paul took the mugs, giving Graham an ominous scowl. “I’ve got it.”

Graham’s tasteless comment wasn’t too far off, though. Paul’s body was having a hard time accepting his head’s no for an answer. It was only going to get worse if his heart started caving in too.

***

An hour later Paul unlocked the front door of the Gardiner Middle and High School, holding it open for Zoë, who followed him into the quiet building, openly gawking at his tight ass as he turned back to re-lock the front doors.

They’d had a nice conversation over coffee about Gardiner and how Paul had ended up there after growing up in Maine. He mentioned that his family had once taken a summer vacation to a dude ranch in Wyoming and Paul had been overcome by the beauty of the park; he’d known then that Wyoming or Montana would have to figure into his future.

It was surprisingly easy to act as though everything he told her was new; she loved listening to him tell her about going to Brown, opting out of the family business and choosing to go into education instead. And being able to ask questions made the conversation so much less one-dimensional than their texting conversations had been. There was nothing quite like staring into someone’s eyes, listening to the changes in their voice, watching them smile or shrug or grimace as the story demanded. Zoë loved that she’d gotten to know Paul over the internet and during a handful of phone conversations, but sitting next to him was infinitely more intimate, if distracting. As they sat together on the window seat, her knee had rested lightly on the edge of his thigh, but she had savored the contact, minimal though it was, and wondered if he had noticed it too.

“So,” he said, rousing her from her thoughts as they stepped into the cool, dark front hallway of the squat, brick public building. “Here we are. Zoë, meet my school. School, this is Zoë.”

She heard the note of pride in his voice, and peeked up at him, smiling at his handsome face as he looked right and left down the front corridor, as though making sure naught was amiss. And nothing was. The floors were buffed to a high shine, the display cases held several decades’ worth of school trophies and a banner over the double doors to the cafeteria read “WELCOME BACK STUDENTS!”

Zoë took a deep breath, the old public school smell making her miss her teaching days, even as she welcomed the familiarity of it.

“The smell, right?” Paul asked smiling. “How many years since you’ve been back to high school?”

“Oh, I used to—” she stopped herself just before blurting out that she used to be an art teacher. That would have been a little too close to Holly’s story. She had to think fast and she didn’t want to lie. “—sub.”

It was true. She had been a sub for six months out of college before finding a permanent position.

Paul’s eyes widened and his mouth formed an O. “I had no idea!”

“Well, how would you?”

“We have teaching in common,” he said, staring at her, a slight smile on his face. Then he chuckled lightly, leaning toward her and flicking on the hallway light on the wall behind her shoulder. His arm brushed her shoulder and he smelled like fresh air and coffee and she fought against letting her eyes close in blissful awareness of him.

“How long ago?”

“W-what?” she asked, her voice even breathier than it had been since arriving in Gardiner.

“How long ago? The subbing?”

“Oh! Um, right out of college.”

He gestured to the hallway and she fell into step beside him.

“Did you want to teach? Or were you just killing time as you found your way?”

“I love kids,” she evaded. “I loved the days I spent teaching.”

“So, why didn’t you stick with it? You’re patient and kind and easygoing. I bet more than one kid had a crush on his pretty sub.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks felt warm from his flattery. “I may go back to it at some point.”

“What lured you away?”

Her answer sat like a rock in her stomach, but she forced herself to tell the truth. “I’m a website designer.”

He nodded with a “nothing wrong with that” look on his face. “Well, that sounds interesting.”

She scoffed good-naturedly. “It’s not, really. My boss hired me to bring a more creative edge to his company, but it’s hard to be creative about pool cleaning and window treatment businesses, you know?”

“Sounds like you should go back to teaching,” he said, stopping beside a door neatly labeled “Art Studio A,” his hand on the doorknob.

“Maybe I will,” she said honestly, crossing her arms over her chest. Maybe she would. No, not maybe. She would. Stan had been kind to her, giving her a good job with a decent salary when she’d needed one, but she was sick and tired of the mind-numbing days under the fluorescent lights of his office. She missed being in a school. She missed working with kids. She’d call her old principal when she got home—

When she got home.

It hurt to even think it.

Would Paul have rejected her by then? Will he have told her he could never be with a liar and tell her never to contact him again? How would she bear it? How could she possibly stand to lose him? To lose this sweetness, this attraction, the most amazing connection her heart and mind had ever known in all her life?

“Zoë? Zoë?”

She looked up and he was staring at her, head cocked to the side.

“I lost you there for a sec. You okay?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I’m good. I’m fine.” She took a deep breath, offering him a tentative smile. “I was lost…um, in my thoughts.”

“Too bad you’re not still a sub,” he said, opening the door and preceding her into the room to turn on the lights. “I’d hire you from New Year’s to Memorial Day here in the art studio. Mrs. Kaye is leaving on a maternity absence. And while I totally respect the right for any woman to stay home with her kids, it sure does complicate staffing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Zoë, trying to ignore the way her heart fluttered wildly at the thought of staying in Gardiner with Paul
and
having the opportunity to teach again.

“A lot of teachers don’t come back. They take the three months’ leave, then extend to six, then break the news that they’re going to stay home for a few years and not come back, after all. Again, I am all for women making their own decisions about staying home with their children. But I have to hire a three-month sub, then see if the sub can extend her placement with us, and then I have to hire a full-time replacement after all.”