Taken With You (18 page)

“I didn’t think so.” He chuckled and handed over her helmet. “We’ll head back now. We’re not too far out.”

“Okay. And if you could not hit any bumps, that would be great.”

* * *

T
HE
FOLLOWING
DAY
,
it didn’t take a lot of coaxing on their part to talk Hailey into closing the library for lunch and heading to the diner to see Tori and Liz.

On the off chance she would come, Hailey sent a text to Paige, too, telling her the plan. Surely four women could handle one baby in public, even if one of them was supposed to be working.

When she arrived at the Trailside Diner, Liz and Paige were already in a booth in the back, with Sarah’s baby seat on the bench beside her mother. Hailey slid in next to Liz and waved at Tori.

“I’m starving,” she said, reaching for a menu, but changing her mind. She knew everything on the menu already.

“Great sex will do that to a woman,” Liz said.

Tori set four empty coffee mugs on the table with a thump. “So will skipping breakfast.”

“Yeah, but she’s smiling and you’re slamming cups around. Hailey’s having sex.”

“If this is the only reason you talked me into coming, I’m going back to work,” Hailey said, though she wasn’t sure she’d follow through on the threat since she now had a cup of coffee sitting in front of her.

Tori poured decaf for Paige and then fixed the fourth mug for herself. “I’m going to leave this on the edge of the table and drink it as I can. I might also eat off your plates. You’ve been warned.”

They ordered food and then sat back to catch up. It quickly became obvious they were a lot more interested in what Hailey was up to than sharing what was going on in their own lives.

“Not pregnant,” Liz said.

Tori shrugged. “Work. More work.”

“I have an almost two-month-old daughter,” Paige said. “She is pretty much the sum total of my life at the moment. Although I did take a shower without Rosie being there. Progress.”

Then they all focused on Hailey, who tried to play dumb. “Fran’s agreed to sponsor the ice cream party for the summer reading program.”

“That’s funny,” Liz said. “How are things between you and Matt? Really?”

She shrugged. “Well, as you said, I’m a smiling, starving woman. Other than that, nothing’s really changed.”

Liz shook her head. “Sex changes things, whether you think so right off or not.”

“He’s fun. He’s hot.” Hailey stirred her coffee. “Is he Mr. Right for me? Still no.”

“I heard you and Matt went out four-wheeling yesterday,” Paige said. “Be honest. Did you have sex in the woods?”

“No! Really? In the woods would be like the last place I’d want to have sex.”

“Public bathroom,” Tori said.

“Supply closet,” Liz suggested.

Paige added, “Walk-in freezer.”

“Fine. It could be worse, but it’s on my personal bottom five places. I think this is the Saturday his parents are coming to visit.”

They all leaned toward her, disbelief on their faces, but it was Paige who spoke. “His parents are coming to meet you?”

“No. His parents are coming to see his new house and have a barbecue. It has nothing to do with me.”

“But you’ll meet them?” Tori asked.

“I doubt it. I’m just his next-door neighbor, and I may or may not even be around on Saturday.”

“I have to go take care of my customers,” Tori said. “You’re boring me.”

They laughed as she walked away, but they knew she’d be back. They had her coffee.

“Is she always this cranky?” Paige asked, and Hailey remembered that, while she simply viewed Paige and Tori as her friends, Paige was Tori’s boss.

“No, she’s not. And she’s only being like this because it’s us. If you watch her, you’ll see that she’s nice to everybody else.”

“It’s true,” Liz agreed. “Everybody loves Tori. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Okay. I’ll stop worrying then. Now, back to Hailey.” Hailey groaned, wishing their food would come so she could shove it in her mouth and not have to talk. “Why aren’t you going to meet his family? You’re his girlfriend, so—”

“No. I’m not his girlfriend.”

“It sounds more polite than describing yourself as the neighbor lady he’s banging,” Liz said.

“Which is the reason I probably won’t meet them. And the word girlfriend doesn’t apply here. Girlfriend implies a journey. Girlfriend to fiancée to wife.”

“To ex-wife.” Tori was back.

“You’re too young to be so cynical,” Paige said.

“You haven’t met my parents.”

When she disappeared again, Hailey hoped it was to get their food. She’d had a toaster pastry for breakfast and she was pretty sure she’d burned that off just walking to her car. She desperately needed to take the time to make a trip to the big grocery store and stock up. Maybe Saturday, so there would be no chance of awkward introductions to Matt’s family.

Tori delivered their lunches and, since it wasn’t very busy and everybody was happy, Liz and Hailey scooted close so Tori could perch on the end of the bench and pick from their plates. Sarah made a couple of squawking noises, as if she had a baby radar that told her Mom was going to try to eat, but then she quieted again.

“So back to Matt,” Paige said. “You’re dating him and having sex with him, but we’re not using the word girlfriend?”

“It’s more like hanging out than dating.”

Liz pointed a fry at her. “You went moose watching, which I still have a hard time believing. And you went riding on the four-wheeler.”

“Exactly.” Hailey wasn’t sure she could make them understand. “Seeing the moose and the twins was cool, and the four-wheeling wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but they weren’t really
dates
. Not my kind of date, anyway.”

“Go into the city. Dinner and a movie or something,” Liz said.

“But then I’d be more like...his girlfriend.” There was silence for a few seconds and she caught them making
what is she talking about
faces at each other. “Look, the fact that we’re totally wrong for each other doesn’t matter as much if I’m just the neighbor lady he’s banging, as Liz put it. We’re just burning through the sexual tension.”

“Um.” Paige gave her a pointed look and nodded her head toward the sleeping baby. “So were Mitch and I.”

“You guys are perfect for each other, though.”

“We didn’t think so in the beginning.”

“You should give it a chance,” Liz said. “Go out on some real dates.”

Hailey wasn’t sure if she wasn’t explaining the stumbling blocks well enough or if her friends didn’t want to see them, but she didn’t see any point in dragging the conversation out. She was afraid, to Matt, those
were
real dates and that was a problem for her. The other women might be convinced they had a shot, but Hailey knew when the sparks settled, they’d just be two people with nothing in common anymore.

* * *

M
ATT
PULLED
A
grocery cart free from the line and pushed it toward Hailey, and then he got one for himself. “Want to race?”

“My list is longer than yours. And there are more fruits and vegetables on my list, which take longer to pick out.”

“Got your excuses all ready to go, huh?”

She gave him a look and pulled her list out of her back pocket, along with a pen. “I don’t need excuses because I’m not racing with you.”

With a shrug to indicate it was her loss, he went into the store to see how fast he could conquer his two-page list. He not only needed staples, but he needed stuff for the barbecue the day after tomorrow. His mother and sisters would bring side dishes and probably at least one dessert, but he needed meat to throw on the grill.

After work, he’d been using bungee cords to secure empty coolers in the bed of his truck when Hailey pulled in her driveway, so he’d asked her if she needed anything at the grocery store. When she grimaced and admitted she’d been putting it off for so long she needed a
lot
of things, he’d suggested they go together and save gas. He’d also thought it would make the shopping more fun, but since she didn’t want to make it interesting with a race, that remained to be seen.

She paused when they were inside. “Which end do you start on?”

“The first thing on my list is mustard.”

“Really?” She leaned over to look at his list. “What kind of order is that?”

“It’s the order that things popped into my head.”

“You’re going to do a big shopping and the first thing you think of is mustard?”

He pulled his list away so she couldn’t see it anymore. “Mustard is important. Let me guess, your grocery list magically comes to you in alphabetical order?”

“I have an app on my phone for groceries. I took the time to arrange the aisles the way they are in the store, so now as I add things, they’re in the order I’ll find them on the shelves. I still print it out, though, because I hate when I have to keep unlocking my phone over and over while I shop. But it’s all in order.”

“You sound very smug about that.”

She grinned. “Maybe I should agree to that race, after all.”

“Ready, set, go.”

“I’m not really racing,” she called after him, but he didn’t look back.

Only three aisles in, he made a mental note to ask her which app she was using for her grocery list. He spent more time scanning his list to see if any of the items matched the aisle he was in than he did putting things in his cart. And he’d already backtracked twice in three aisles, so it was probably a good thing they weren’t racing.

He ran into her in the pasta and rice aisle. She was looking at boxes of flavored rice, and he leaned over her shoulder. “I like the chicken flavored.”

After tossing two boxes of pilaf into her cart, she gave him a sweet smile and looked at his cart. “If we
were
racing, which we’re not, you’d be losing.”

He snorted and kept going. By the time he’d loaded up on boxes of macaroni and cheese, because a guy couldn’t have too many of those, she was gone again. He grabbed spaghetti fixings, then what looked like a lifetime supply of egg noodles. It was easy to throw meat in the Crock-Pot, then dump it over noodles at the end of a long day.

When Matt turned the corner into the canned vegetables and baked beans aisle, he saw Hailey again. She was talking to a guy who was seriously overdressed for a trip to the grocery store. Looking at his suit and tie, with the leather shoes and perfectly styled hair, Matt knew this was the kind of guy Hailey had been waiting for.

She laughed at something the man said, and Matt’s fingers clenched around the cart. Then he turned and went back the way he’d come. He could get baked beans once Hailey was finished trying to pick up Mr. Perfect in the grocery store.

His mood soured, he went about checking off everything on his list as fast as he could. He ran into Hailey a few more times and managed to give her a wave and a smart-ass comment each time, but he couldn’t shake the image of how she’d been smiling at the guy in the suit.

A guy in the woods with a beard and flannel shirt must be a serial killer, but put on a suit and hit the grocery store and you were Mr. Wonderful.

Hailey must have gotten held up thumping melons or whatever in the produce aisle, because he had three-quarters of his bags in the back of the truck before she wheeled her cart out of the store.

“I guess you would have won if we’d been racing,” she said.

“Yup. Since I’m already up here, just hand your bags up to me. And there’s room in this cooler for your milk and the meats.”

She handed the bags up to him a few at a time. Since he was standing in the bed of the truck, he had a perfect view when she paused to wave goodbye to the man in the suit, who was pushing his cart a few aisles over.

“Did you get his number?”

She handed him the last few bags, frowning. “What?”

He hopped down off the tailgate and slammed it closed. “I saw you laughing with him in the canned goods aisle, and he looks like your type. With a suit like that, he must be a great guy.”

“He
is
a great guy. He’s been married to one of my best friends from school since the summer after we graduated and I was laughing because she has a cold and sent him to get some groceries after work, but he doesn’t know where anything is.”

“Oh.”

She gave him a look that clearly broadcast her feelings about him being ridiculous, then walked away to return her cart to the corral. Cursing himself for an idiot, he got in the truck and fired it up.

The awkwardness faded as they argued over which fast food drive-through to hit. It was late enough so neither of them would want to cook by the time they got home and unloaded all the groceries. She won, of course, and he ate his burger as they drove back to Whitford.

“This is the weekend your parents are coming to visit, right? And the reason for the big shopping?” she asked, once all the wrappers were crumpled up and shoved in the bag.

“Yeah. Drew’s going to make sure somebody’s out on the department ATV to cover for me, which was what I was hoping would happen when I told Mom we’d barbecue.”

“That’ll be fun. Are they all coming?”

“Yeah. I’m fielding a little guilt over moving so far away. What about you? Is the library open?”

“No, it’s my Saturday off. I was planning to go to the grocery store, but now I’ll find something else to do.” She paused to take a sip of her soda. “I’ll probably visit Paige or see what Tori’s up to.”

Too late, he realized there had been an opening to invite her over for the barbecue and he’d missed it. Had she been fishing for one? He could casually throw an invitation out there, but how would he introduce her to his family? As his neighbor? He wasn’t sure how Hailey would take that, seeing as how they were sleeping together, but if he used the word girlfriend, his mother was going to be all over that like frosting on a cupcake. He didn’t think Hailey would take kindly to the kind of speculative glances and probing questions his mom and sisters would start pestering her with.

Then Hailey changed the subject, asking him about the ATV club and how things were going, and he shoved thoughts of introducing her to his family to the back of his mind. Work was something he had no trouble talking about, and they discussed it until he pulled into her driveway.