Chapter Six
S awyer wasn’t always comfortable with women, especially beautiful, smart, accomplished women. His mother and his sister were both lovely, talented, incredibly intelligent women who intimidated the living hell out of him. Annabelle Walker was clearly all those things and more, yet he couldn’t remember ever being more at ease as they’d chatted over supper. He contemplated that mystery as he paid for their beers at the register and caught sight of her waiting for him by Mario’s exit. Anna had already picked up the tab for the pizza.
Fact was he was rarely at ease on a first date, no matter who the woman was. Whether Anna believed it or not, in his mind, this was their first date. The first of many, he hoped. He turned toward her, and that little enigmatic smile she offered gave away nothing. Suddenly it occurred to him that the reason he’d been so relaxed with her was because she had made the evening all about him. She’d turned the conversation to him every time he started to ask her a question.
Realizing how easily he’d been led embarrassed him. He’d spent enough time around women to know when he was being redirected, yet he’d followed along like a damn puppy. And come to think of it, her questions were impersonal. He’d shared inconsequential details about himself. Where did he teach, but not why did he leave. Where was he born, but no other questions about his family. Had he ever traveled internationally? What kind of music did he like? Everything had been asked so casually as they munched on Mario’s fantastic pizza that he hadn’t even realized she’d barely offered anything about herself.
He shouldered the door open, holding it as she sauntered past him out into the chilly, starry night. Side by side, but with at least a foot between them, they walked toward the parking lot. He didn’t see the SUV he’d seen her in at the bike shop. Instead, she stopped at a brand-new wine-red pickup—its pearly finish glowing in the lights overhead. “You got a new truck?”
She ran her fingers lightly over the front fender. “Yup. Got it today. Waited six weeks because the dealership didn’t have the color I wanted on the lot.”
He walked all the way around the truck, admiring the curve of the rear fenders, lifting the hard folding tonneau cover, and opening the roomy the four-door cab to check out the leather interior. “Wow. That’s a big screen.” He peered into the truck from the passenger-side door. “Is it distracting?”
She shrugged. “Not so far, but I’ve only driven it for about an hour.”
“It’s…pretty spectacular.” Sawyer wasn’t a car guy.
Cars or trucks were merely transportation to him, something that had always made him a bit of an odd-man-out among his peers at the vet school. They would’ve been all over this particular truck, opening the hood, checking the… suspension ? Hell, he didn’t know. His truck was over twelve years old and barely had GPS, let alone a computer screen that looked like it belonged in some kind of futuristic cockpit. He inhaled that unmistakable new car smell, remembering his brother, Huck, saying once that if someone bottled that smell, they’d make a million bucks. It was nice—clean, new.
She had already slipped into the driver’s seat, and he didn’t see key or a place to put one. Neither was there a gear shifter, only buttons on the console next to a couple of cup holders. There was a red button labeled Start , which he recognized from his dad’s BMW, so same kind of ignition. All in all, a pretty fancy vehicle.
He tried to think of an intelligent question to ask her so she’d stay put. “Um…what kind of mileage does she get?” The question sounded false even to his own ears.
“You don’t really give a darn about my mileage, do you?”
She took him off-guard with that. “No, no, I-I really…” He met her direct gaze over the console and opted for honesty. In the long run, it was always the best choice. He straightened and leaned one forearm against the top of the doorframe. “You got me, I don’t. I just wanted to keep you here a little bit longer.”
“Why?”
“To ask you if you’d go out with me again.”
She pulled her head back. “Again?”
“This was a date, Annabelle.”
“Says you.”
“Says me and anyone else who saw us sharing a pizza.”
She chewed her lower lip for a second, and he noticed that she had a tiny space between her front teeth. It was…disarming.
“I’m not dating right now.”
“Really? Because I think you just had a date with me.”
She turned in the seat. “Look, Doc—”
“Sawyer.”
She sighed. “Okay, Sawyer . I told you, I’m not dating right now, and it’s because I don’t want to. That’s all you need to know.”
He furrowed his brow and plopped down into the passenger seat, not giving a damn about crumpling the paper cover or her sudden intake of breath. “You don’t want a dog. You don’t want to date, which I assume means you don’t want a relationship. What do you want, Anna?”
“Right now, I want to go home, take a shower, and go to bed.”
If he’d been a different kind of man and she a different kind of woman, he’d have taken advantage of that statement. Teased her flirtatiously, pretended it was an invitation, and maybe she’d have played the game with him. Teased him back and who knew how the evening would’ve ended. But he wasn’t that kind of man. He never had been. And as little as he knew her, he was aware she wasn’t a woman to be toyed with anyway. Instead, he slid out of the truck, smoothed his butt impression from the paper cover on the seat, and asked, “Will you go for a real bike ride with me on Sunday?”
He didn’t want to give up. All the flirtatious signs had been there earlier at the clinic, and even if he wasn’t the savviest man on the planet, he believed she was attracted to him. And he sure as hell was attracted to her. “Please? It’ll be my first long ride on the new bike. I could use a coach.”
She pushed the red button and the truck hummed to life. After pulling her seatbelt across her chest and snapping it at her hip, she tapped her fingers on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “Meet me on the corner of Pearl and Warner Drive behind the Warner mansion at seven thirty.”
His heart rose in his chest and he damn near shouted for joy, but her cool expression tamped down his excitement. “I’ll be there,” he said and shut the door.
*
“Maddie, are we going to finish this in time?” Annabelle leaned on the makeshift table in the middle of the huge kitchen of the mansion—there was no other word for it—that Walker Construction was building for the plant manager of the new Hiko automobile factory. Mr. Yoshida and his wife were moving in two months and the house wasn’t nearly ready for them. Supply chain delays meant that the fancy appliances Mrs. Yoshida wanted for her chef’s kitchen hadn’t arrived yet. Cameron was working his fingers to the bone building, staining, and finishing the custom Indiana hickory cabinetry that filled three walls and an island in that kitchen. The stone for the hearth in the living room had been on back order so long that Jack and Eli were threatening to go down to the river and out into the farm fields and collect it themselves, and the pool installation had been delayed due to rain.
Annabelle, along with the rest of the family, had been giving up her Saturdays to help Cam stain and finish the cabinets, which was why she was there with Maddie and Cameron and Harper Gaines, Cam’s fiancée. Her brother Joe and his girlfriend Kara were out in the yard building the pergola next to a giant hole that would, eventually, and hopefully soon, hold the fiberglass in-ground pool. If only it would get delivered, they could get the slate patio down and the gardens in.
Maddie set her rag on the plastic drop cloth that covered the sawhorse and plywood table, started to push her hair out of her eyes, stopping, hand raised, at Anna’s warning no! and shook it back instead. “Thanks, you saved me from another stain on my face. Yeesh.” She blew out a breath. “And to answer your question, yes , we are going to have this house done and gorgeous before the Yoshidas arrive. They’ll be thrilled and we’ll be thrilled and the whole damn town will be thrilled.”
Anna broke out into gales of laughter. “I do like how you think, Mads.”
“Hey, it’s either think positively or weep copiously. We’re all here because I can’t afford to pay crews overtime, every damn thing is on back order, and Jack’s nervous as a long-tailed cat in room full of rocking chairs. Thank God, he’s upstairs because I may have to smack him if he sighs one more time.”
“Hey, I might be late tomorrow morning.” Anna rubbed her rag over the cupboard door she was finishing. “I’m going for a bike ride with Sawyer Braxton, the new vet at Price’s.”
“Yeah?” Maddie sat down on the edge of the sawhorse table. “Do tell. Oh, and Jack says we’re all taking tomorrow off. We need a day.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s a bike ride with someone new in town.” Anna rubbed, keeping her gaze on the smooth grain of the wood. “A day off for all of us will be nice, but we both know that no matter what Jack decrees, Cam and Harp will be out here, so will Joe and Kara. Probably Eli and Jazz, because your future in-laws will want to take Leo to the church picnic and show him off.”
“I’m going to use all my womanly wiles to keep Jack in bed at least until ten, and if womanly wiles don’t work, I’ll make sausage and waffles.”
Harper, who was on a ladder supporting a cabinet box while Cam drilled, laughed. “Cam, any chance you’d be subject to my womanly wiles tomorrow morning?”
“Always a chance.” Cam’s voice was muffled since his head was inside the box. But then he popped out to grin at Harper. “Waffles would work, too.”
Harper merely rolled her eyes and focused on Anna. “Back to the bike ride… Actually, back to the new veterinarian.” She waggled her brows suggestively.
“He’s a nice man,” Anna conceded. “And okay, he’s…attractive.”
“Hot?” Harper asked from her perch on the ladder.
Again, Cam pulled out of the cupboard they were hanging. “Seriously, Harp?”
Harper batted her lashes at him. “I think your sister deserves a guy as hot as mine.”
“Sure.” He gave her a skeptical glance, then stepped down from his ladder “Okay, babe, this one’s secure.” He spotted Harper as she backed down her ladder, before ambling over to where Anna was staining a cupboard door the warm honey-brown color the Yoshidas had chosen for their kitchen. “That looks great, sis. So, are you interested in this new guy?”
Anna gritted her teeth for a second, then loosened her jaw. Her family loved her and worried about her and she appreciated them, but after the second-chance debacle with Daniel, the idea of another man in her life made her cringe. “No.”
Almost as if he’d read her mind, Cam said, “You can’t hide out from love forever, Anna.”
Anna dropped the rag. “I know that. Do you think I don’t know that?” The words came out brusquer than she intended, but she still met Cam’s blue-gray gaze with defiance.
“I think you know it, but you’ve been self-protecting for months now. Isn’t it time to get back out there?” He glanced around at Harper, Maddie, and Jack, who’d appeared from upstairs where he’d been checking out the newly installed master bathroom fixtures. “Don’t you agree?”
Jack nodded. “I agree completely. What am I agreeing to?”
“That Anna can’t hide from love forever,” Harper said, coming over to put an arm around Cam’s waist. “She needs to start dating again.”
“Oh, okay. Yeah, I agree.” With that he reached for Maddie, pulling her close and dropping a kiss on her rumpled hair. “I can recommend love, Anna.”
Anna’s heart twisted in her chest as she looked around at the others, including Joe and Kara who were in the yard, kissing and laughing rather than pounding nails into the pergola. A lump rose in her throat. She was delighted for her brothers and her cousins, glad they had all found The One . Once, she’d thought she had too. Daniel Bonetti, partner at Bonetti, Bonetti, Cassidy, and Franke in Cincinnati, had been the love of her life for so many years, even through the years they were apart.
She met him when they’d started together at BBCF as interns, right out of Ball State and eager to begin their careers. BBCF had been only BCF at the time—Daniel’s father was the owner and CEO. They’d dated exclusively for three years, even started talking about moving in together. But then Daniel was offered a plum five-year position in his uncle’s firm in Sorrento. It was mostly restoration work—Daniel’s dream job—so Anna moved with him although she had no job. But she’d been excited to live in Italy and confident she’d find work in a firm there, too, certain she could overcome the language barrier. She didn’t because she couldn’t. She’d never had a facility for languages, and the two years of high school French she’d barely passed were of no help to her on the Italian Peninsula.
She wasn’t crazy about working in the little interior design shop where she finally found a job, struggling each day to learn enough Italian to get by. She practiced with a language app every night, with Daniel sighing in frustration as he tried to help her. Italian was as natural to him as English because he’d grown up speaking it with his immigrant grandparents. She could handle herself in the shops buying groceries and managed to learn enough to keep Miss Isabelle, the owner of the design shop, from rapping her wrist with the pencil that held her chignon, when she made a mistake.
She’d wanted so much to make living abroad work out. She tried—oh, how she tried. Not only with the language; she tried to learn to love the country as Daniel did. But she made mistakes and she felt stupid and inept. She hated her job, she hated not practicing as an architect, and she hated living in Italy. She’d missed her family, and she’d been miserable. Daniel, on the other hand, had been gloriously happy.
After a year, she left, promising Daniel she’d visit as often as she could and that they’d email and text and FaceTime. She’d also offered him his freedom, aware that a twenty-eight-year-old man in Italy wasn’t going to stay home every night writing sad emails to his girlfriend an ocean away. He’d begged her to stay and turned down her offer to date others, but it came as no surprise that he ended up married to a woman from his uncle’s firm within a year of Anna’s departure. Her broken heart was unreasonable—after all, she was the one who’d left Italy, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d believed Daniel would miss her as much as she missed him and come home. It had never occurred to her that he’d fall in love with someone else.
But then this past summer, after eight years, he did come back, and she fell in love all over again. Only to get her heart crushed. Nope, falling in love was too hard and whether it was a man or a puppy, Anna was out.
She blinked and shoved Daniel Bonetti to the far recesses of her mind. “Look, you guys, I love you for caring, but I am all good just as I am. I don’t need a man. I’m glad for all of you”—she smiled, then pulled a face—“you’re sickening, but I am glad. I’m fine to date, but I can’t be stupid in love again. I refuse to do that to myself.”
Jack shook his head, turned to Cam, and pointed to the finished cabinet boxes lined up around the walls of the kitchen. “You need some help getting these up?”
Harper extended her hand toward the ladder she’d been on. “Take over, Jack. I’m starving, so I’m going out to the truck to get the cooler. You gals want to help me set up lunch”—she looked at her smartwatch—“er, supper…whatever we want to call this meal.”
Outside, as the three women unloaded a cooler and a picnic basket from the back of Harper’s truck, Anna decided to set the record straight. “I’m not interested in the new vet, okay?” she blurted, inwardly cursing the heat rising in her cheeks, but charging ahead. “Not in that way. Like I said, he’s a nice man, but if I were looking for anything at all, which I currently am not ”—she raised one finger in warning—“it would be purely someone to scratch an itch, not a full-on relationship.”
“How do you know that’s not all he’s looking for, too?” Maddie asked reasonably.
Anna considered for moment. Was it possible that was all Sawyer Braxton wanted? A friends-with-benefits arrangement? A woman who’d warm his bed for a few nights with no ties, no promises? For some weird reason, his hands came to mind—those long, gentle fingers stroking over Trixie’s fur, checking her healing wound, smoothing the curling fur between her ears. His deep voice softly quieting her as he looked her over. She recalled the intensity in his melted-chocolate eyes when he’d insisted they’d already had one date. No, Dr. Braxton wasn’t looking for a casual fling. He’d felt the same jolt of attraction she had, but he’d opted to deal with it.
“No, I think he wants more,” she admitted as she pulled the wicker picnic hamper from the back of the truck.
“Did he say that?” Maddie gathered up a plate of cookies and a pie while Harper tugged the cooler closer.
“Not in so many words, but he’s obviously a sweet, old-fashioned guy. And also there’s—” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s silly.” She grabbed the other end of the cooler. “Let me get that.”
Harper pulled it toward her. “I can get it if you’ll shut the tailgate. What’s silly?”
They walked slowly toward the unfinished house, which was really looking great from the outside. A low sprawling ranch of Indiana sandstone and cedar. Anna was justifiably proud of the design and very happy that the Yoshidas had fallen in love with her Frank-Lloyd-Wright-inspired creation. “There’s this puppy.”
“The one you found on your bike ride last weekend?” Maddie said over her shoulder as she led the way balancing the two desserts, one in each hand.
“Yeah. He hasn’t said so, but I can tell he thinks I should keep it.” She frowned. “I don’t want a dog.”
“Anna, you’re not seriously putting this hot dude off because he wants you to take in a stray puppy? Because if you are, then you’re right, that’s just silly. All you have to do is say no.”
Anna waved the idea away. “No, no. It’s one more thing, that’s all.”
“You can’t let what happened with Danny put you off men forever, Anna sweets.” With an oof , Harp set the cooler on the floor and swiped the back of her hand across her brow.
Maddie turned to Anna. “Harp’s right. Don’t let one Mr. Wrong keep you from finding Mr. Right, Anna. Maybe it’s the doggy guy, maybe not. But stay open. You deserve someone to cuddle up with at night. Someone kind and good.”
Anna yanked the stained drop cloth off the plywood table amid a cloud of sawdust and replaced it with the red-and-white checkered one she’d discovered in the top of the hamper. “I agree I do deserve someone kind and good, but does it have be a man?” Her mind went to Trixie all warm and furry as the little pup snuggled against her chest. “Maybe I do need a dog. A dog will cuddle with me at night, right? Plus, from what I’ve read, they love you unconditionally.” That really didn’t sound all that bad…