Chapter 4 #3
“But here’s the thing,” he continued. “I don’t believe a word of it. You’re no more over that night than I am.” His voice dropped to panty-melting depths. “You think about it when we’re in that conference room together, with nothing but that table separating us.”
A rumble of panic coursed through her at the thought of his seeing past the facade she took such care in maintaining. Paxton steeled herself against the truth of his words and summoned the most cynical look she could muster.
“That ego of yours is astounding,” she said with a sneer.
“Cut the crap,” Sawyer said. “This has nothing to do with ego.” He edged even closer toward her.
“I don’t believe it when you say you’re over that night because I was there, and I remember every single time you screamed my name.
I remember how it felt when you clawed at my back, how you locked your legs around my waist. How your thighs felt against my face. ”
She squeezed her legs together and tried her hardest not to whimper with the want quickly spreading through her bloodstream.
Sawyer sat back in his chair and lazily twirled his straw around his glass of iced tea.
“I don’t care what line you try to feed me. I won’t believe it,” Sawyer said. “You may regret that it happened, but I’ll be damned if you’re over it.”
Paxton closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still staring at her with that look that said he saw right through her.
“I just want to know why you left,” he said. “Just tell me why you walked out that morning, and I’ll drop it.”
Paxton studied her hands for several heartbeats before returning her gaze to his and handing him the lamest excuse in the world.
“I realized it was a mistake,” she said. “Can we please just leave it at that? Please, Sawyer. We have three more weeks of working together. Please don’t make this uncomfortable for me.”
The intensity in his stare singed her skin, but thankfully he didn’t comment further.
A moment later, Shayla showed up at their table balancing a tray on her hip.
“I hope you two are staying for the homecoming parade,” she said as she removed their empty plates. “It started at the high school twenty minutes ago. It should reach Main Street in the next five minutes or so. The sheriff will be closing the road soon.”
“Oh no.” Paxton pushed away from the table. “We need to get back to the other side of the street before it’s blocked off.”
“Why don’t we just stay and watch the parade?” Sawyer said in a deceptively cool voice. “It’s not as if either of us will be able to concentrate on work with all the noise anyway.”
“He’s right,” Shayla said.
Yes, he was. And, honestly, Paxton wasn’t ready to return to the confines of that tiny conference room with him anytime soon, not with the tension still pulsing between them.
“Stay right where you are,” Shayla said. “You two have the best seats in the house.”
As if Shayla’s statement had heralded it in, the faint sound of drums began to fill the air around them.
The patrons who had been eating lunch inside The Jazzy Bean, along with others pouring out of the surrounding businesses, began to line the sidewalk.
Moments later, the Gauthier High School marching band’s drum major high-stepped her way down the street, her knees nearly reaching her chest.
As people crowded around their table, Paxton and Sawyer both stood.
She chanced a glance his way and found him staring at her.
She sent him a plea with her eyes, silently begging him to drop the issue of their one-night stand. She wanted them to return to that companionable atmosphere they’d discovered over the past seven days.
Paxton’s limbs went weak with relief when she saw the faint, accepting smile ghost across his lips.
Thank God.
She turned her focus to the parade, which had finally reached them.
It was hard not to be sucked in by the excitement of it all.
The marching band led the way, dressed in their green-and-white uniforms, their freshly polished instruments reflecting the brilliant sun that finally shone through the clouds after a week of overcast skies and off-and-on rain showers.
The dance team and pom-pom squad followed the band, and in a truck right behind them were the cheerleaders.
The double cab was decorated with garland made out of crepe paper, balloons tied to the antennae, and poster boards proclaiming that the Gauthier Fighting Lions would beat the Maplesville Mustangs taped to the doors and side panels.
Members of the homecoming court followed the cheerleaders, each in their own car. Paxton discovered that the trend these days was to rent fancy convertibles for the parade. Someone had even rented a bright yellow Lamborghini.
The stars of the homecoming parade were, as always, the members of the Gauthier High School football team. Like the cheerleaders, they rode in the back of several pickup trucks, all wearing their football jerseys sans shoulder pads.
Nathan Robottom, who stood alongside them, pointed out his grandson, who was a varsity wide receiver and already being recruited by several division one colleges in Louisiana and Mississippi.
As she watched the squad toss Mardi Gras beads, candies, and Moon Pies to the mass of people now crowding the sidewalks, Paxton waded through an odd sea of annoyed nostalgia.
On one hand, she was charmed by this unique slice of small-town living that was the hallmark of places like Gauthier, but standing there, watching the revelry and the reverence paid to the football players and cheerleaders, also brought her back to her unsettling high school days.
When it came to things like homecoming and pep rallies, Paxton had always felt as if she was on the outside looking in.
She glanced over at Sawyer. The smile on his face stretched from one end to the other as he caught a small plush lion that one of the football players had thrown his way. He handed it to Mya Anderson, who had come out of Claudette’s Beauty Salon with her two young daughters in tow.
“This must bring back fond memories for you,” Paxton said. He looked at her, his brow raised. “Seeing the football players in all their glory,” she clarified. “As I recall, you experienced a fair amount of acclaim back in those days.”
“You sound jealous,” he said in a teasing tone.
“I am not.” She huffed with exaggerated affront, relieved to see them return to a bit of the good-natured banter they’d found over the past week. Paxton shrugged. “Besides, this was never my thing.”
Sawyer turned to her. “Why is that?” he asked.
She was caught off guard by the genuine curiosity coming through his steady gaze. “It…it just wasn’t,” she replied.
“Is it because you were too cool to be bothered with all this silly homecoming stuff, or was there something else?”
“It just wasn’t my thing,” she repeated. “I never understood the hero worship when it came to football players. Everyone treated them like they were gods. It just made me less interested.”
“Because if the rest of the crowd found something interesting, you thought it should be ridiculed. That’s how you used to look at things back then, right?”
“Not everything,” she said, her eyes still focused on the parade gliding down Main Street. “Just football players.”
Several heartbeats passed before he said, “Maybe you should have given the football players a chance back in high school.”
Paxton whipped her head around to look at him. She didn’t know what to do with the unrestricted honesty staring back at her.
She wanted to ask him what he meant, but he had already returned his attention to the parade. She stood there with her eyes on the trucks that continued to slowly roll along the roadway, but her mind remained on Sawyer’s words.
It almost sounded as if he’d had a thing for her back in high school.
It was ridiculous to even think that. It may have been twenty years ago, but Paxton could remember those days all too well.
Sawyer Robertson hardly noticed her back then.
In a school with a little more than three hundred students, in a town that was small enough that everyone knew everyone, she still had never been on his radar.
The whirling sirens of the Gauthier Volunteer Fire Department’s red fire engine, also decked out in green-and-white crepe paper, brought her back to the here and now.
As the crowd dispersed, she and Sawyer returned to the conference room.
Paxton had already told him that she would leave a bit early today to help Belinda prepare for the grand opening of the River Road Bar and Grill, but there were a couple of things that she needed to finish before she could call it quits for the day.
If only she could concentrate on her work.
She fought the urge to bring up their conversation during the parade. Had he meant that she should have given all football players a chance back in high school, in the general sense? Or did he mean one player in particular?
“Shouldn’t you be heading out soon?”
Paxton jumped, even though he’d spoken in a normal tone. She looked at the time on her laptop.
“Yeah,” she said before putting the machine in sleep mode. “I need to stop in at Shayla’s. She has some special grand-opening cookies she made for tonight. Not your typical bar fare, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
He walked over to her and assumed his favorite position, his arms crossed while he perched on the edge of the larger table.
“Do you all have everything in place for tonight?” he asked.
She nodded, unable to keep the excited smile from creasing her lips. “We’re as ready as we can get. Just have to hope people show up.”
“They will.”
She slipped her laptop inside her briefcase and snapped it closed.