“Got any better shoes?” he asked.
“Yeah, some flat ones upstairs. I hope they’re dry.”
“Dry? Were you fly-fishing in them?”
Why did his humor make her heart hurt? “I was supposed to stay at the Thistle but a water pipe burst and”—she waved a hand—“here I am.”
“Ah,” he said, as if the whole world made sense now. He ran a hand through his hair, distributing some of the sweat gathering at the roots, making it slick and gleaming. “Owen over there now?”
“You know about that, too?”
“Everyone does. Been going on for about a year now.”
“What is that all about? I wasn’t about to ask Ainsley, and I really don’t know how to deal with it.”
He shrugged in much the same way Ainsley had. “Word is he and Melissa have been talking divorce, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”
“Listen to you. You’re like one of those women who used to do crosswords at the Kafe every Sunday.”
He flashed her a grin, ignoring her comment and continuing about Owen and Melissa. “They fight less now that Owen has Aimee, believe it or not. The whole town is thankful for that. I guess Melissa’s loaded? Maybe they’re still working it all out; I don’t know. Melissa’s with some guy over in Westbury.”
“Wow.”
Jen dropped the subject there. She’d never told Leith about her mom’s issues with Frank. Actually, she’d never told Leith anything about her terrible life back in Iowa. There’d been too much shame back then, and whenever she’d come to Gleann she’d wanted to forget. Here, she could be someone else.
“So.” He rubbed his thighs with the heels of his hands. “You, uh, want some company at the fairgrounds? I’ll give you a tour.”
Leith threw his long legs over the front seats and fell into the back. They were both laughing so hard, Jen could barely see through her tears. “Why don’t you come on back here?” he said, running a hand in a circle over the Cadillac’s white leather seats. “I’ll give you a tour.”
Jen blinked, the memory overlapping with reality. But Leith was just looking at her as though he didn’t recognize his old words, what they’d started that night. Chances were, he didn’t.
Workwise, she didn’t need him or his “tour.” She knew the way, and the fairgrounds lay just on the other side of the trees lining the backyards of the Maple houses. Personally, she . . . well, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted from him, just that now that she’d seen him again, she didn’t want to walk away yet.
“Sure,” she replied, and tried not to read into the way his chin lifted or the way his massive chest expanded. “Let me go up and grab those shoes.”
He nodded. Though she didn’t turn around, she could feel him watching her, even through the brick walls of the house as she climbed the stairs and threw on the ballet flats that were now just slightly damp. When she came back down, Leith was still leaning against the truck, arms across his chest.
He gestured to her purse. “You carry that suitcase everywhere?”
“It’s got my laptop in it. So, yes.”
He grunted. “Mind if I go back to my place so I can take a shower first?”
His place? This was moving too fast again, but she wasn’t about to let her minor panic show. “Not at all.”
He went around to the driver’s side door and nudged his chin toward the passenger seat. “Get in.”
“I can’t believe your dad is letting you drive his car when you just got your license last week.”
“He’s not.” Leith waggled his eyebrows. “Get in.”
So she did. Both back then—before he’d been grounded for a week for taking out the Cadillac without his dad’s permission—and today.
She clicked on the seatbelt, settled in. He threw the huge truck in reverse, backed out of her driveway with more speed than necessary, swerved the vehicle around, made a huge arc, and aimed it . . . right into the driveway of 740 Maple.
The truck stopped with a screech. He put it into park and whipped out the key. She sat there, mouth agape, looking first out the window at the tiny brick house with the metal window awnings, and then back at Leith.
With one arm crossed behind her seat back, he gave her the slowest, sexiest grin she’d ever seen. “Hey, neighbor.”
Chapter
4
The look on Jen’s face was absolutely priceless as she sat in his passenger seat and hugged that gigantic green bag to her chest. She looked like she’d been lured into a stranger’s windowless van with the promise of candy. Leith threw back his head and laughed.
“Relax,” he said. “You can wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”
But it took him a few moments to actually pull the door handle and swing his legs out, because he’d been sitting next to her for about 3.6 seconds, and he didn’t want to move away quite yet.
Shower. Yep. That’s what he needed to wash away the surreality of this whole situation.
He left her there in his truck, with those bright green eyes he’d almost forgotten about impossibly wide, and her mouth slack and open, ready to . . . say something. He’d probably get it when he returned to the truck; Jen had never been one to back down from saying anything she wanted to say.
He jogged into Mildred’s house and took the stairs two at a time, stripping off his grimy shirt as he went. He kicked his boots and socks and jeans into a pile in the hallway, and ducked into the cramped bathroom that looked like a bushel of peaches had exploded inside it. The shower curtain was frilly and dusty, but the water that hit his chest was refreshingly, wonderfully cold on such a hot, strange day.
Jen Haverhurst was outside. Sitting in his truck.
Jesus.
Watching her walk toward him on the driveway, the way her legs moved under that dress . . . He’d never seen her wear high heels before. When they’d been together it’d been all shorts and flip-flops and sneakers. She’d smelled of sunscreen and sweet girl sweat after a long day waiting tables. Whenever they made out or had sex, the ChapStick on her lips would transfer to his, and he would spend half the night lying in his bed, rolling his lips together to bring back the flavor.
Today—even though he’d glimpsed her half-naked through the window last night—she looked exactly as he’d expected, and yet entirely different. Better.
But the truth was, he had no idea what sort of person she’d become. Likewise, she couldn’t claim to know him anymore, either.
How much had he changed, when it came down to it? How much could he have been allowed to change, given the fences that had been erected around his life in this valley? The thought threatened to level him as he pulled on a clean T-shirt and jeans, and shoved his feet back into his mud-caked boots.
The second he opened the truck cab door, she started in on him, just as he’d predicted. “You live here? Right next to the house I’m renting? How the hell did that happen?”
He slid behind the wheel, averting his face so she couldn’t see his shit-eating grin. Then he turned to her and shrugged. “Fate is weird.”
She tucked a glossy piece of dark hair behind her ear and stared back at him with that wide-eyed look of hers. “Is that what this is? Fate?”
He had one hand on the wheel. The other, holding the truck key, froze halfway to the ignition. It was just a split second—a flicker of a fly’s wings—but there it was. That. That shuddering, overpowering, nameless thing that had overcome him one night a thousand summers ago. That thing about her that had flipped his brain from, “Hey, I can’t wait to tell my best friend Jen about that,” to “Wow, Jen is amazing and gorgeous and you want to be a lot more than just her friend.”