Chapter 15
Twelve years ago
One week into Fake-Dating Noah, Olive jumped when someone pounded on Gram’s back door.
It was Katie, looking unusually ruffled. “What’s wrong?”
Olive asked. “Are you okay—”
Katie pushed past her, into the kitchen, and went straight for the ice cream in the freezer. “We’re going out on a date.”
Olive grabbed two spoons and they sat at the table to eat right out of the gallon container. “Who? You and me? I’ve got homework—”
“Joe finally agreed to go out with me.”
Olive stared at her in surprise. “But he said because he was your brother’s best friend, you two could never, ever, ever go out.”
“Yes, but I sort of forced—”
She stopped to grimace. “Okay, blackmailed, Noah into telling Joe it was okay with him. So now we’re going out. And you and Noah have to come with.”
Olive’s mouth dropped open. “But . . . but—”
“Listen, I’ve never been on a real date. I need you guys there so I can copy whatever you do. Joe said it was up to me where we go, and since we’re all poor, I’ve got this idea, and you have to back me up.”
“I’m not going skinny-dipping just because you’ve been dying to see Joe naked since middle school.”
“Fine, whatever, no skinny-dipping. What we’re going to do is go to that thrift store near the hospital—”
“Wow, you really don’t know how the whole dating thing works—”
“And,”
Katie said, starting to sound annoyed, “we’re going to walk the aisles until one of us says ‘stop,’ and whatever piece of clothing we’re the closest to, we have to buy and wear to the diner for burgers and fries.”
Olive laughed, but Katie just stared at her. “Oh, wait, you’re actually not kidding.”
“Your latest Cosmo mag swears it’ll be a good time,”
Katie said stiffly.
“Well, then, what could possibly go wrong.”
Katie, missing the sarcasm, smiled. “Right?”
Present day
Hell. Noah was in hell. Mentally, that is. Physically, he was at the family shop, working to help out his mom. So same same, really. “I hear you,”
he said into the phone for the twentieth time.
“Do you, boy?”
Mrs. Garrison asked. “Do you hear me? Because I need my tractor back before the next storm so I’ll be able to move snow.”
It’d been a long time since someone called him boy. The woman was somewhere between seventy and two hundred years old, and mean as a snake. He should know. He and Joe, who, granted, had been a pair of troublemakers, had once climbed the water tower adjacent to her property to drink a six-pack they’d pilfered from Joe’s dad. Mrs. Garrison had come out with her husband’s shotgun and threatened to “put a cap in their ass”
if they didn’t go home.
She’d never forgiven them.
“I understand, but your tractor needs a part that hasn’t come in yet.”
He was staring at the tractor in question, doing his best to imitate his mom’s soothing the-customer-is-always-right tone. “As you were told when you brought the tractor in, the part we need is still weeks out.”
“In my day, you’d improvise. Make your own part.”
He put a finger to his eye, which was twitching again. But before he could formulate a response, she disconnected.
Katie was standing in front of him. She held out the iPad they used for inventory management. “I just updated this thing, so why isn’t it working?”
He didn’t take the tablet because his hands were filthy. “Cuz you’re doing it wrong? I don’t know.”
“Wow,”
his mom said, coming up to them. “That’s the most brotherly thing I ever heard you say. Why are you such a grumpy bear this morning?”
He ignored them both and thankfully, they left him alone. This was really shaping up to be a shit day. First, Olive had gone off to the farm on her own, and though he’d tried to reach her again once or twice or a thousand times, she’d remained out of range, and he was worried.
Second, he was here. He looked around the shop that his dad had occupied for as far back as Noah could remember. This place hadn’t been his dad’s dream, at least not at first. Nope, that honor had gone to baseball. Unfortunately, the man had never made the cut. So he’d come home to take over his dad’s shop, doing his best to compartmentalize the disappointment.
Right now, Noah had never understood his dad more.
After his dad’s death, his mom had run the shop herself. But she’d gotten restless and had wanted to be free to travel with her friends and enjoy life. She’d hired a few people and had given their longtime mechanic a raise to manage the shop when she wasn’t around. Joe kept the books for her. He also backed up the mechanic whenever needed, which was how Noah had learned his best friend loved wrenching more than his day job.
Unfortunately, their mechanic was on a long overdue vacation, and with Joe still in the hospital, Noah was up at bat. And now, on top of wrenching, he also had a mountain of bookkeeping to get through. Noah hated paperwork with the power of ten thousand suns, but he couldn’t leave his mom to handle it all. So he got to work on repairing a damn tractor without the right parts.
An hour later, he was standing on the tractor’s front bumper, bent over the engine, a wrench in one hand, his hammer in the other, just in case he decided to bash his own head in. When he heard footsteps, he ignored them, thinking it was his mom checking on him.
“I know I’m probably the last person you wanted to see today.”
Olive. Jerking upright, he smacked the top of his head on the hood of the tractor’s engine compartment, lost his balance, and fell off the bumper to his ass.
“Oh my God!”
Olive rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”
“Only if I’m dead.”
Holding the top of his head, he looked up past a pair of beat-up red sneaks, jean-covered legs longer than the legal limit, a snug red sweater, and the pretty face of the woman who’d haunted his dreams too many nights to admit out loud.
She dropped to her knees, pushing his hand from the top of his head so she could get a look. This left him eye level with her torso. The V-neck of her sweater gaped out a little, revealing today’s lingerie choice. Not black silk, but the heart-stopping lacy pink revved his own engine just the same. That was when he realized her clothes were dirty and a little stiff, like they’d air-dried after being wet. And her hair had frizzed and gotten . . . big. She was a mess. A hot mess. And he loved it because it was a glimmer of the girl she’d once been. A girl he’d missed with his whole heart. “Did you go through a car wash without a car?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“What happened?”
She tossed up her hands. “Life.”
Well, she sure as hell wore life well, because even in her current state, he wanted to eat her up. “Did you find your parents?”
“No.”
Using one-word answers was his thing, not hers, and he frowned. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“You’re bleeding.”
She rose up, pulling him with her. Apparently, she remembered her way around because she led him inside the shop to the staff room, nudging him into one of the chairs at the small table. “First aid kit?”
“I don’t need one.”
“Uh-huh.”
She kept looking through cabinets, muttering under her breath about stubborn-ass men who don’t know enough to take care of themselves. “Aha!”
She pulled the first aid box from beneath the sink and washed her hands.
“Really, I’m fine.”
“Debatable, but you could be right given that your head is as hard as a rock.”
“Ha-ha—”
He broke off with a hiss when she dabbed at the top of his head with gauze that came away red. When she put antiseptic on the cut, he sucked in a breath, but that might be because she was standing between his legs, leaning over him, concentrating on what she was doing. He was concentrating too, on not looking down her sweater again.
“How you doing, you okay?”
she asked.
“That’s a broad question.”
She tilted her head to meet his gaze, then shifted hers southbound to where his hands had taken hold of her hips, bringing her close. He dropped them like she was a hot potato.
“I don’t think you need stitches,” she said.
“I definitely don’t. Tell me what happened at the farm.”
She hesitated.
“What?”
“Are we still friends?”
Her tentative tone made him ache. Or maybe it was the question itself. “Olive—”
Her phone rang and she looked at the screen. “I’m sorry, it’s the zoo’s assistant director, I have to take this.”
“I get it. Work comes first.”
Her expression said she’d like to disagree, but she stepped away and answered.
Noah turned to the fridge to see what he could scrounge up, going still when he realized Olive was talking about . . . cockroaches? Turning back, he caught her staring at his ass. He raised a brow.
She bit her lower lip and blushed a little, but didn’t break eye contact as she kept talking, something about zoo patrons naming their sponsored cockroaches after an ex, then getting a video of it being fed to one of the zoo’s amphibians or small mammals such as mice and shrews.
He grinned at the ingenuity of it. Damn, she was amazing, and as he listened to her laugh over something, he thought, And so was her laugh.
When she disconnected and turned to him, he didn’t even try to hide his amusement. “You’re going to make the zoo famous.”
“A girl can hope.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened to you at the farm?”
She looked down at herself, then turned to the sink to wash her hands again like her life depended on it. “The Mini couldn’t take me all the way in—I knew that. I walked the last two miles and got caught by rain on the way back out.”
He thought of her alone on that deserted road, with no cell service, and ground his back teeth. “You should have let one of us go with you. And by us, I mean me.”
“I didn’t want to take you away from anything.”
She still, even now, didn’t know how important she was to them. Him. He could tell her, but she wasn’t going to hear him. She didn’t trust words, she only trusted actions. He’d always known that, and he’d done his best to make sure to show her, but they’d been so young.
And dumb. “Are you okay?”
She let out a breath. “That’s . . . a broad question.”
He felt his lips twitch. “Do your best.”
She then told him about Buddy, both of them, and finally said, “I don’t know what to do next. What if something’s happened and the last time I talked to them, we parted on an argument?”
If there’d been one thing she could say to make him understand, it was that. He moved to her, taking her hand in his. “What did you fight about?”
“I was angry because they’d let their medical insurance lapse and haven’t seen a doctor in years. It was like fighting with a brick wall.”
She sighed. “You know what I mean.”
He gave a mirthless smile. “The brick wall? Oh yeah. My family always means well, but they’ve never understood some of the decisions I’ve made or how I choose to live my life.”
He cupped her jaw, letting his thumb gently stroke her cheek. “What did Buddy know about their whereabouts?”
“He said they were with some couple they met on Craigslist. Craigslist.”
She tossed up her hands. “The last time a friend of mine met someone on Craigslist, the guy showed up with handcuffs!”
“Just so you know,”
he teased, “I’ve got a work-issued pair. In case you’re interested.”
“I’m being serious!”
But she blushed and bit her lower lip.
Oh, she was interested . . . He took her hands again and squeezed them. “Do you have a plan?”
“No! I’ve never even seen a pair of handcuffs in person!”
He laughed again. “About your parents.”
“Oh my God.”
She covered her face and took a deep breath. “You turn me inside out.”
She dropped her hands. “No, I don’t have a plan. Well, not exactly, but you have to promise to listen before you throw it back in my face—”
“I always listen. And I’d never throw anything back in your face.”
“Oh really?”
she asked. “Because the first conversation we had in years, you brought up my Dear John letter. And the last conversation we had, you told everyone there was nothing going on between us—approximately thirty minutes after you kissed me stupid.”
She was right. And he was still an ass. “I panicked.”
“Right,”
she scoffed. “You never panic. You’ve got nerves of steel.”
“Not when it comes to you. Never when it comes to you.”
She stared at him, then shook her head. “Look, let’s just keep this about my parents, okay? My only plan is to give Buddy a few days and see if he hears from them, and if not, then I start looking at yurt rentals.”
“Why wait?”
“Because I’m hoping Buddy comes through. Do you have any idea how many yurt rentals there are near Mount Eagle? Hundreds. I googled it.”
She blew out a breath. “If this was your mom and it’d been two weeks, what would you do?”
“My mom’s allergic to irresponsible to the point of obsession.”
And though his mom drove him crazy, he hated how Olive’s parents had always left her feeling unimportant to them. What kind of a parent chose their lifestyle over the happiness of their only child?
Not that he was much better. At least according to his ex. He’d always assumed he could have the job and a family, but Molly had proven otherwise.
While he was thinking too hard, Olive turned to go. “All right, well, I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Wait.”
She turned back, her expression telling him she was braced for rejection, but the chin tilt told him she’d go it alone if she had to. Because she was used to that. Which he also hated. “I’ve got access to better search programs than you do. Let me do some digging. Let me see if I can narrow the field.”
There was a beat of surprise in her eyes, then a gratitude he didn’t deserve. “Don’t spend the time yet,”
she said. “I’m willing to give it a few more days. But thank you.”
Her eyes went suspiciously shiny. “Really.”
Again, she turned to go, quickly this time, but just as quickly, he wrapped his arms around her from behind, loose enough that she could push him away if she wanted. Instead, she turned to face him, fisted her hands in his shirt, and pressed her face to his chest.
They stood like that for a long few moments, neither moving while she struggled for composure. Giving her the time to do whatever she needed to do, he stared over her head trying to take his mind off how good she felt in his arms, because, hell, she was hurting, and even he wasn’t a big enough asshole to take advantage of that.
Then her hands were on the move, slowing sliding up his back. Up and down again, then her fingers jaywalked to his front, settling on his abs before she hesitated as if trying to decide if she wanted to go up or down next.
His body knew exactly which way he wanted her to go, but his brain knew better and he caught her hands in his.
Slowly, she lifted her face, her eyes no longer sad. Instead, they seemed lit with a new confidence, as if she knew exactly how much he wanted her. Hard for a man to hide it. A heat joined the confidence in her gaze, one that caused an answering fire low in his belly, quickly spreading outward. “What are you up to?”
She gave him a small, heated smile. “No good. I’m definitely up to no good.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “Killing me.”
“Tell me you don’t want me, Noah.”
He could have, but it would be a lie, and he’d never lied to her before. So instead he kissed her, a long, warm, intimate kiss that stole the breath from his lungs and every single thought from his brain, including the one that told him this was still a really bad idea.
“Does Oli have another cramp?”
Olive gasped as they turned to find Joey, cradling sweet little Pepper, faithful Holmes at his side. And behind the menagerie stood Katie, brows up.
“Are you guys married?”
Joey asked.
Katie choked on a laugh and tried to cover it with a cough.
Olive shook her head. “Um—”
Katie pointed at her. “You need to be very careful right now, because I just picked up Joey from school, and on the drive over here, he told me all about how he’s learning to not tell tall tales.”
“I think what Olive was going to say,”
Noah said, “is that it’s not what you think—”
“No?”
Katie asked, letting a smile escape. “So you didn’t just have your fingers threaded lovingly through Olive’s hair?”
She covered Joey’s ears and turned to Olive. “And you. Your hands seemed to be sliding to the south pole.”
Noah grimaced.
“It was an accident,”
Olive said.
Katie outright laughed. “You guys keep telling yourselves that.”
Joey, bored with the adults, was nose to the window. “It’s raining!”
“So, obviously, it’s time to go jumping in puddles,”
Olive said.
“Yes!”
Joey yelled.
Katie gave Olive and Noah a long look. “I’ll be outside with Joey while you two figure out why your mouths keep colliding.”
When they were gone, Olive turned to Noah, horrified.
Yeah, he got it. Because while he’d been operating under the notion they were a bad idea, kissing her brought him back to the time before their accident, before he’d lost his scholarship, before his dad had died . . . and it gave him a glimmer of an emotion that he hadn’t felt since she’d walked away.
Hope.
He had no idea what to do with that.
At his silence, Olive stepped back from him. “Okay, well, I’ve got some puddles to jump in.”
She went outside and he had to force himself not to follow.
A few minutes later, Katie came back in and gave Noah another long look. “What are you doing with my best friend? And let me be clear, you let me have your best friend, so I want you to have mine. Tell me you’re going to keep her.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh my God.”
She glared at him. “Are you seriously going to screw up the best thing to ever happen to you because . . . what? Because you’re an island? A fortress of solitude? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘It’s complicated.’ Get over yourself. For once, let yourself be vulnerable and you might actually make yourself happy while you’re at it.”
“You about done?”
he asked dryly.
“Not even close. Remember that time you saved that cat from the well and you stayed up all night with it, keeping her warm and fed? And then, in the morning, she bit you and ran off and vanished, and you decided that was it, no more pets for you?”
“Do you have a point?”
“Just that now you’re also turning your back on humans, and I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
She sighed. “You’re not ready to talk about it. I guess I can understand that since you’re not used to allowing your emotions any leg room.”
She pointed at him. “Just don’t be stubborn for too long. Wouldn’t want you to finally wake up and look around, and realize you’re all alone.”
“Like you’re ever going to leave me alone in peace.”
She snorted, but it didn’t sound like she had her heart in it. “Just don’t chase away something that could be really good for you,”
she said softly, and after dropping that emotional bomb, headed out of the room.
He wasn’t stupid. He had no doubt that Olive was good for him. In some ways, she had a few of her parents’ best qualities. When she felt safe, she was everything he loved in a partner: passionate, fun-loving, and adventurous.
Or at least, she had been.
When she’d first come back into town, she’d clearly buttoned most of that up, burying the old Olive deep. But here and there, little glimmers of the girl she’d been kept appearing in unguarded moments.
And God, he’d loved that girl. He’d needed her too. She’d balanced him out, helped to banish the serious teen he’d been molded into. He’d needed her spontaneity, her playfulness, the unique way she viewed life. Being with her had been the only time he felt free to let go.
Now, once again, he found himself being drawn in, felt his heart engaging. But they weren’t teens anymore, they’d grown up and moved on. Their time had passed. He’d found a freedom away from the daily demands of family, and he loved where he was. He couldn’t go back, not even for Olive.
Now all he had to do was keep remembering that.