Chapter 4
“I’m not sure aboutthis,” Lily said as Gage laid out a blanket beneath a huge oak tree on the grassy bank along the river on the southern edge of Milltown. “I really should be getting back to Kingsmill.”
“Why?” Gage placed the food they’d bought at one of Milltown’s many cafés on the blanket. “You told me you took a leave of absence to come home and care for Nana Ruthie, but now she doesn’t need you.”
“That’s true. And I’m still annoyed about that. I just hope it doesn’t cost me my job.” Gage took her elbow and helped her sit without putting any stress on her broken hand. Then she motioned to the old mill that hugged the river not far from them. “This is just so... weird.”
He opened a ginger ale and handed it to her. “Weird how?”
She popped a pain pill and sipped the cold soda. When the sweetness hit the back of her throat, she closed her eyes. After leaving the hospital with a bag of medications, he’d insisted on stopping at a café for lunch and then announced he wanted to have a picnic. She’d agreed because she’d no reason not to.
And she needed to eat something before taking more pain meds.
“Weird in a way that’s hard to describe.” She opened her eyes and helped him lay out the paper dishes and small containers of barbecue pork sandwiches, coleslaw, baked beans, and a few other things he’d insisted on buying. Including chocolate brownies and oatmeal cookies.
Once they both had plates of food, he leaned against the tree’s trunk, crossed his long legs, and ate while he watched her. “Just tell me what’s on your mind,” he said around a bite of barbecue sandwich. “Let it all out before things get more tense between us.”
“First,” she held up her soda can, “it feels weird to do things with my left hand.”
He shoved the fork into the coleslaw and offered it to her. She hesitated a moment before eating it. ”Mmm.” She licked her lips. “I’d forgotten how good Virginia coleslaw was.” It was both sweet and sour and topped with honey-roasted peanuts.
He nodded and took a huge bite himself. “What’s next on the weird list?”
She released a deep breath and contemplated the lazy river in front of her. Then she deliberately changed the subject. “Sometimes I forget this river is the same one that runs through Kingsmill.”
It ran much faster and wilder through her hometown.
“Maybe the slower rapids are why Milltown’s mill is in better shape than ours.” He sipped his soda and took another huge bite of his sandwich. “I passed King’s Mill coming in this morning. It’s falling down.” He squinted at the gray mill which had a new roof and a fresh coat of paint. “I wonder if, three hundred years ago, there was as much competition between Milltown and Kingsmill when both mills were open for business.”
“I suspect there was even more. From what I hear, the eighteenth century was totally... rebellious.” She smiled before eating her sandwich. She’d always appreciated his easy-going demeanor and ability to veer off into totally unrelated topics. Even more so today when everything seemed strange and awkward.
And that wasn’t the pain medication talking.
He laughed and opened the bag of potato chips. “What’s next on the weird list?”
“Let’s see.” She shifted from her hip to sitting crosswise, with her skirt covering her legs. Then she grabbed a bunch of sour cream and onion chips that had always been her favorite. “For the first time in ten years, I’ve taken more than a week off from work and may have jeopardized my position. So I guess it feels weird to not be inside, baking all day.”
“Jacob told me you’re a pastry chef at Le Mistral in Paris. A Michelin-starred restaurant.”
“I am. And I love it.” She ate more of her sandwich. It, too, was delicious. “The third thing on the list is that I’m sitting here, on the bank of a river, with the boy I loved when I was seventeen.”
The boy who betrayed me.
He didn’t answer right away. He kept on eating, and eating, and eating until he’d finished his huge plate of food, two cookies, and a brownie. Then he put the plate aside, pulled up his legs, and rested his forearms on his knees. It was an easy, masculine pose that made her lower stomach melt. “Do you want to talk about it now? Or later?”
She was tempted to ask what he meant, but she was too tired to play games and a headache threatened. “How long are you in town for?”
“Does it matter?”
She shrugged. “If you’re leaving tomorrow, we don’t have to talk about it at all. But if you’re home for six weeks, like I am now, we probably should get it over with. That way things won’t be strained between us if we see each other in Harry’s coffee shop.”
“How long I stay is dependent on a lot of things.” His gaze dropped away, toward the river. “I’ll start. I left Kingsmill—and you—twenty years ago because I felt trapped.”
Her throat closed up, and she put her plate aside. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “Trapped by me?”
Their teenage relationship had been powerful, passionate, and volatile. It’d also been sexy and sweet in the way only teenage relationships can be. Filled with firsts of everything from holding hands to French kissing... and beyond.
He met her gaze, and the heat she saw in his eyes made her swallow hard. This wasn’t the boy who’d left her all those years ago. This was a full-grown man—an Army Ranger—who’d probably traveled the world and done things he could never speak about. “Lils, I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you.”
“You left the same night we were going to run away together.”
He started yanking dandelions out of the ground and made a pile between them. “Do you really believe that if we’d run away, the night after we graduated high school, we could’ve survived?”
“No.” She pursed her lips and focused on his small tower of yellow dandelions. “I doubt we’d have gotten past Milltown on your old motorcycle. But you could’ve left me a note.”
“The adult me now understands that leaving a note would’ve been a good and decent thing to do.” He stopped pulling flowers and wiped his hands on his thighs. “But at the time, the only thing I could think of doing was running.”
“From me? Or from your family?”
“I was running from Caleb. And the MC. I was just a prospect, but I knew if I stayed in Kingsmill I’d become a member. And I wanted a different life for myself. For both of us.” His gaze met hers with an intensity that made her palms sweat and her breasts feel tender. He broke their connection and brushed away the pile of yellow dandelion heads. “I’d never run from you, Lils.”
The conviction in his voice spoke the truth, but so much had happened between them—so many years had gone by—she wasn’t sure if his reasons for leaving even mattered anymore.
“Time is a funny thing.” She laid back on the blanket and stretched out her legs. With her broken hand on her stomach, she stared up at the dappled light coming through the oak leaves. The river rapids rippled in the background, and bugs chittered around her. Despite the overwhelming heat and humidity, the tree offered shade and a light breeze came from the west—the way it always had. “I spent so many years hating you and cursing you and making terrible decisions. Then one day...” She shook her head to dispel the memory, ten years after Gage left her, of Ryan ditching her at the church altar. “One day I decided to leave Kingsmill. I had no plan and little money. The only thing I had was a name of Nana Ruthie’s college roommate who lived in Paris. She offered me her chambre de bonne, and I jumped on a plane.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds charming.”
“It’s a tiny room, once used by a maid, at the top of a Parisian apartment building that used to be a mansion.” She relaxed her shoulders against the ground and took a few deep breaths. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a day off or spent time lying in the sun and having a picnic. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this relaxed. “My chambre didn’t have a full bathroom—that was down the hall—but it was small, private, and charming in a rustic Parisian way.”
Except in the summer. With no air conditioning, it was hotter than Hades.
“Then what happened?” Gage moved until he lay next to her, shoulder to shoulder.
He didn’t touch her, but she felt the heat rolling off his hard body. His masculine scent of leather and smoke filled her lungs and she closed her eyes. “I found a job as a dishwasher in a café and got into the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school where I earned le brevet de ma?trise patisserie. It’s a certification that tells the world I’m a Parisian patissier. A French pastry chef. After a few years of apprenticeship in patisseries around Paris, I ended up at Le Mistral.” She paused to find the exact words to explain what happened next. “Then one morning, while walking along the Seine near Notre Dame, with a baguette under one arm and drinking a chocolat chaud, I realized I didn’t hate you anymore. I missed you, desperately, but I wasn’t angry.” She raised her unhurt hand up, as if reaching for the rustling leaves above. “I was happy.”
Gage took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed her palm. “I am so glad, Lily Dunmore. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m grateful for it.”
She turned her head to meet his gaze. “Gage, one day I’d love to hear why you really ran away.” Because something in his tone of voice, the way he kept looking beyond her when he spoke, told her there had to be more to the story than Caleb’s abuse and threats from the MC.
He sighed heavily and released her hand. “I bet you make a mean chocolate croissant.”
She allowed him to change the subject. They’d once been best friends and teenage lovers, but she had no claim on him anymore.
Then she wondered if any other woman had claimed him. Her heart squeezed in her chest, and her vision blurred. To keep from crying she kept the conversation light. “Actually, my specialties are macarons and Paris-brest.”
Gage raised up on one elbow and waggled an eyebrow at her.
She used her good hand to hit his stomach. “B. R. E. S. T.” She shook her head. “You’re still a Neanderthal.”
“Only to annoy you.”
Their gazes met again, and they both laughed. She was grateful they’d fallen back into the easy rapport they’d had since childhood. If she had to spend time with him, it would be easier to do as friends than as a jilted lover from two decades ago.
“Time has been good to you, Lily Dunmore. It’s made you more beautiful, more elegant, and more accomplished.” He blew away stray hairs that rested against her cheek. “Who knew that paying attention in Madame Poitier’s high school French class would pay off.”
She tried hard not to glance at his hard, muscular body, but failed miserably as she drank all of him in. She hated the heat that inflamed her cheeks. A heat caused by a sudden rush of erotic thoughts. “Time has been good to you as well, Gage Mosby. You still have elements of the boy I loved, but you’ve grown up.”
He smiled, and she was sure his eyes reflected a certain smugness. But instead of capitalizing on the fact he knew she’d checked him out and found him attractive, he settled onto his back again. He put one arm behind his head and stared up into the leaves above their head. “Are there any other weird things on your list?”
“Besides taking time off work, which I never do, to lounge around with the motorcycle-riding bad boy I used to date?” She chuckled under her breath. “There’s the obvious.” She raised her cast in the air. It actually sparkled in the intermittent sunlight. “I hit a man to defend my best friend. I broke my hand, which means I can’t return to work—or to Paris—for at least six weeks and may lose my job. My aunt has lied to me for reasons I may never know. And my ex-fiancé has put out a call for my arrest.”
For some reason, saying it all out loud took away some of the worry that had tied knots in her stomach.
“Lily?” When she looked at him, his eyes were filled with shadows, void of the laughter or happiness she’d just seen. “Why did say yes to Ryan?”
She wasn’t surprised he’d heard about her engagement ten years ago. Gossip was Kingsmill’s major import and export, making up most of its GDP. “I was lonely.”
“I’m glad you didn’t marry him.”
“So am I.”
She watched his hard profile as he stared up at the sky again. The muscle in his jaw twitched, proving he was upset and trying to hide it. “Gage? Did you ever marry?”
He snorted loudly. “No.”
Relief filled her, and she didn’t question why. She was just glad he’d not given his heart completely to another woman.
Or maybe he had and not married her? She shook her head to release those thoughts. Their love affair ended two decades ago. And this day together still seemed unreal and... weird.
“Besides,” Gage spoke so softly she had to move in closer to hear him, “if I had married, you would’ve known about it. Even though I was in the army, I’m sure someone in Kingsmill would’ve found out and spread the word.”
“Most likely Nana Ruthie.” She shifted her body until their shoulders almost touched. “Everyone was against my engagement, including Caleb. He hated Ryan.”
Gage took her hand again, squeezed, and didn’t let go.
Minutes passed with them holding hands, and she fell into a twilight state with the light breeze keeping her cool. Gage’s breaths matched hers in rhythm and tone, and the buzzing bugs offered their summer song. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so safe, so at peace.
Just as she drifted off to sleep, her phone rang. Edith Piaf’s distinctive voice singing La Vie en Rose had her searching her skirt’s pocket. By the time she pulled it out, the ringing had stopped. Then a series of texts from Eve poured in.
Ryan arrested me!
Jacob and Nana Ruthie are arguing with Ryan.
Mr. Elmer threw a rock at Ryan. Mr. Elmer is in the cell with me now.
Don’t come back. He’s after you two as well!!!
Gage sat up and looked at the texts over her shoulder. “Ryan is an asshole.”
“Yes, he is.” She chewed her bottom lip as the screen showed Eve was typing again. “What should we do?”
Gage began packing up the food and put it in the grocery bags. “We’re going home to save Eve.”
“You’re not worried about Ryan arresting us?”
“No.” Gage threw the trash in an extra bag. “I’m not afraid of cowards.”
He took her arm and helped her stand. As he picked up the blanket, Eve’s text came through.
Did you know Caleb left you Daisy Mosby’s house on Spring Street?