Never Been Kissed (23 page)

Her father had been a daytime drinker.

But The Pour House didn’t look like any other bar in the daylight that she’d ever seen. It … glittered. It shone like the leather and oiled wood had been wiped down with love.

And it smelled like coffee.

The two brothers at the bar making notes improved the view immeasurably.

They couldn’t have been any more different. Brody was tall and strong, his ass framed by a tool belt, looked like an ad for … asses. And all those deep waters were so very still.

Sean had a kind of manic energy behind the bar that she only saw when he was excited or getting into a fight. But his blue eyes were bright and that smile … that smile he flashed around at everyone like it was a watch
he was so proud of had a special warmth for Brody, something sweet and a little unsure.

It was surprising, since unsure was not something she’d say about Sean.

“Hi,” she said from the doorway. Great shafts of light came in through the back door and window and through the door leading out to the garage.

“Hey, Cora,” Brody said.

Sean put his smile away and his hands on his hips and nearly glowered at her, and for whatever reason his stony expression actually improved her mood.

What could go wrong in the world as long as Sean Baxter is frowning at me?

It was a constant in her life.

“What are you working on?” she said, putting a little swing in her walk because she was playing hooky on a sunny day.

Sean started to pick up the notebooks but Brody put his hand down on them. “Sean’s got big plans for the garage next door.”

“Big plans? Tell me more.”

“So you can make fun of them?” Sean asked. “No thanks.”

“I promise not to make fun of anything.” She lifted her hands as if to show she had no weapons to use against him.

Sean shot Brody a scowling look but then pushed his hand away from the plans. “It’s an extra room, a kitchen in the back. People can rent it, if they want. High school reunions, office parties, wedding rehearsals.”

Well, those were actually … very good plans.

“That makes great sense,” she said. And it did. There wasn’t much for rent around here except the VFW hall, and it smelled like old cigarettes and burnt coffee, and the Peabody, which was gorgeous but cost an arm and a
leg. “That was what you were doing in the permit office?”

He nodded, idly twisting the straw bucket. “Things are busier here. On the weekends. We could use the space. If we serve food—” He shot her a glittering look as if waiting for a snide remark and she pretended to zip her lips. “—we can fill that room on Friday and Saturday nights.”

“You going to hire someone to cook?”

“With the renovation … I can’t hire anyone seriously.”

“I cater, but that’s a serious commitment every weekend. You can’t afford me for that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sean said, rubbing a hand through his hair, making all those gilded curls stand up on end, and she wanted—she really did—to twine her fingers in them, wear those curls like rings.

“I’ll teach you,” she said, staring at his pretty hair.

Brody and Sean exchanged a look. “Teach me what?”

“To cook three things,” she said, loving and hating the idea in equal portions. “Chili, a beef brisket, and ribs. You can order in all the sides—beans, coleslaw, cornbread. With just those three things, you could do some great business.”

Her offer echoed through the empty room and all that was required to make the situation worse was the chime of crickets.

“Sounds good to me,” Brody finally said but Sean held his hand up.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I have no idea, really. But the sun is shining and I’m in a good mood. Take advantage before the offer goes away.”

“When … do you have time to do this?” he asked. “You’re always at the café.”

This was true and something she needed to change if she didn’t want to get old and dusty behind that cash
register. If her mother had the strength to move on, to expand upon on already full life, maybe she did, too.

“Nights. This week. We’ll start tonight, by Monday, you’ll have three foolproof menu items. Can you get away from the bar at night?”

“I can, but that’s not what I’m worried about. Is this a trick, Cora? Are you orchestrating some big practical joke?”

“You know, I’m actually a nice person,” she said.

“Not to me you’re not.”

Oh God, wasn’t that the sad truth. Her mother would be ashamed. “Well, you’re not very nice to me either.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“So … maybe we should change that.”

Silence filled the bar, and they were at the same impasse they’d been at since the moment they met. And she’d done her part, offering to teach him to cook, it was on him now, to lower that proud stubborn head of his.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Brody muttered. “He’d love it. I would love it. Please, Cora, teach Sean how to cook.”

“I’m going to need to hear him say it,” she said.

Sean did one better, he held his hand out over the bar. “It would be great,” he said, not the least bit begrudgingly. And his glower was turning into one of those bright smiles she’d secretly coveted. “Please, Cora, teach me to cook.”

The
please
was a nice touch, though saying that might be rubbing it in.

“Deal,” she said and slipped her hand into his palm. It was wide and rough, a man’s hand, and it did something to her lady parts. Gave them a shake and whispered,
Wake up, you don’t want to miss this.

She pulled her hand free. Her body didn’t quite know
what to do with desire, she’d been turning it into snide comments against Sean for a long time.

It was a strange change of affairs to just let the desire be.

“Where do we do this?” Sean asked.

“Your house,” she said thinking of the disastrous state of affairs in her own home. “Eight o’clock. I’ll bring the things you need.”

And just like that she had a date with Sean Baxter. Whether or not Sean knew that was irrelevant.

It was a date.

Ashley pushed open the apartment’s back door, only to run into Cora coming in.

“Hey,” she said, trying to make it sound like she wasn’t escaping. But the sunglasses and John Deere cap were a clear tip-off. “Cora? What are you doing here?”

“Why are you breaking out of the apartment?”

“I’m not … what?” She laughed but Cora crossed her arms over her chest, not believing a moment of it, and Ashley sighed. “I just want to take a walk.”

“A walk?”

“I’ve been cooped up for days.”

Cooped up with myself and my body and the memory of Tuesday night like a burning coal between my legs.

“Where you headed?” Cora asked.

Frankly, this was the interesting part, even to her. And she wasn’t entirely sure that she wasn’t making a huge mistake, muddying waters that had no business being muddied. And after Tuesday night, after he’d all but dumped her on the futon and run away, she had no doubt Brody would not appreciate her worming deeper in his life.

But she woke up this morning wanting to see someone else who lived on the outskirts of Brody’s life.

“I want to go visit Ed.”

There was a history of feminine knowledge in Cora’s dark eyes. Like she saw her mistakes and wasn’t going to warn her away from them, because she knew some of them just had to be made.

“I’ll go with you,” Cora said, slipping on her own sunglasses.

“You can’t tell Brody.”

“I suspected as much.”

Cora went first down the stairs and turned away from the open back door of the bar; at the end of the small parking area she waited for Ashley, who was moving slowly.

It wasn’t her ribs, or at least it wasn’t her ribs alone. It was her ribs in partnership with her inner thighs and lower back.

Can you pull a muscle having an orgasm?

“What are you doing here?” Ashley asked. “Not that it’s not great.”

“Brody asked me to stop by, said you might be going stir-crazy.”

Ashley tried not to be angered by that. He’d avoided her for two days, leaving before she woke up, not returning until she’d finally fallen asleep, despite all her efforts to stay awake to talk to him. She would have thought he’d been avoiding the apartment altogether if it weren’t for the fact that she woke up every morning in the bedroom, despite having fallen asleep on the futon.

She went down to the bar to see him, but he was so busy tearing things apart he barely glanced at her.

And now he’d sent in company because he couldn’t bear to be in the same space as her. “He’s right. I am.”

“How you feeling?” Cora asked as they walked slowly side by side toward the Baxter house.

Ashley blushed red hot.

“Better. I’ve stopped with the pain meds, so I’m sore, but that’s better than asleep. I understand Brody told you … who I am.”

Cora nodded, tilting her face up to the sun like a daisy pushing out of spring soil. Ashley waited for a bunch of questions, about the pirates or what it was like growing up as a Montgomery, but Cora was silent.

“You don’t have things you want to ask me?” Perhaps she should be getting some practice answering questions about the pirates. But Cora didn’t ask her about pirates.

“Is your brother as handsome in real life as he is on TV?”

Ashley laughed. “Women seem to think so. If you like that tall, blond, and rich thing.”

Cora smiled but didn’t ask her anything else. How wonderful, to not be some appendage of the Montgomery family tree, or worse, have her entire identity eclipsed by her three weeks as a hostage.

This feeling was why she’d gone to Africa. In Africa she was just Ashley. It was novel to feel this in the States, though, where her last name mattered.

“You taking the day off?” Ashley asked.

Cora laughed and shook her head. “A few hours. It’s nice. I almost forgot what middle-of-the-day sunshine felt like.”

“The café is amazing,” Ashley said and Cora glanced at her.

“That your way of saying it’s worth it that I don’t have a life?”

“You don’t have a life?”

“I have a café, a house without any furniture, and a dying cactus. Is that a life?”

Ashley laughed. “It is if you like it.”

“I’ve enjoyed the last three years more than I can say.
But … I’m tired. Not just in the I-need-more-sleep kind of way; my soul is tired. I need to feed it something different.”

“My soul … my soul is hungry for something else, too.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Good question. What are you going to do?”

“Cooking classes.”

“Doesn’t seem very different.”

“Oh, it will be.” Cora’s laugh was contagious and Ashley found herself laughing too, without knowing the punch line.

They turned the corner and walked up the small sidewalk to the Baxter house, which, thanks to Brody’s efforts on Tuesday didn’t look nearly so neglected.

“Are you feeding your soul by meddling with the Baxter men?”

“Maybe.” Was that bad?

“Good.” Cora nodded. “They could use it.”

The screen door was shut but the storm door behind it was open a few inches and through the crack they could hear a group of men laughing.

The screen door rattled in its frame as she knocked, making a huge amount of racket and the voices all stopped.

She and Cora shared a surprised look just before the door cracked open and Ed stared out through a haze of smoke.

“Ed?” Ashley started to smile, because Ed looked very much like a teenager caught having a party. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. What are you doing?”

Cora laughed. “We’re not checking up on you, if that’s what you’re worried about. We just wanted to visit.”

“Nobody wants to visit me.”

Ashley imagined that might be painfully true. “We do. You going to invite us in?”

Ed looked over his shoulder. “Only if you promise not to tell my sons anything.”

“Our lips are sealed,” Ashley said and beside her Cora nodded.

Ed swung open the door and shuffled back, letting the women into the living room. The smoke was definitely from a cigar—or multiple cigars—and it originated, along with the voices, in the kitchen.

Where there were three old men sitting around the kitchen table playing cards. Drinking in glass tumblers what she hoped was sweet tea, but she had her doubts.

“Cora!” one of them said, his eyes lighting up. “Tell us you brought some food.”

“Sorry, Josh, no food,” Cora said. “What are you fellas doing?”

“Friday poker,” another man said, not breaking focus on his cards.

“What happened to your face, honey?” The third man, tall with glasses thicker than he was, stood and approached Ashley.

“I got hit,” she said. Was that blabbing? Brody would no doubt not like her even saying that much.

“You been examined?” he asked, looking at her injuries and not particularly at her.

“I have. Are you a doctor?”

“Vet. Used to be anyway.”

“She’s not a cow, Tim,” Ed said. “Leave her alone.” He directed Ashley to the seat he’d vacated. “You two want anything? I put Sean’s beans in the slow cooker, they’re finally soft enough to eat.”

And now many days old. She hoped no one was eating them.

“I’m fine, thank you.” She sat and Ed pulled over another chair for Cora, who obediently lowered herself into it.

“I’m George,” said the man who hadn’t looked up from the cards he was shuffling. “You play?”

“What’s the game?”

“Five card, no wilds, aces high.”

“Then, yes, I play.”

George looked over at Cora, an eyebrow raised. “It’s been years,” she said. “I’m probably a little rusty.”

“Can’t be any rustier than Ed,” Tim said, putting his cigar between his teeth. “And he’s been playing every week for ten years.”

“All right,” Cora said with a shrug. “Then I’ll play.”

Ashley wasn’t entirely sure what kind of food this was for her soul, or if it tasted very good, but it was new and it was different and she was in no mood to say no.

“Deal, Tim, let’s see what you boys have got.”

Twenty minutes later, through no cheating, Ashley made a big show of raking the pot toward herself.