Chapter 7 #3
“And I wasn’t all that drunk,” he continued. “I had a few, but it’s not as if I got trashed that night. I was alert enough to do”—he made a slow and deliberate perusal of her body—“things.”
He caught the way her chest rose and fell with her swift intake of breath, and he knew she was thinking of all the things he’d done to her that night. Things he’d wanted to continue doing to her, over and over, well into the morning.
If she had bothered to stay in his bed.
But she hadn’t. She’d run from him. And despite the small size of the town, she’d managed to avoid him for weeks after their night together.
When he finally saw her again, in the parking lot of the grocery store of all places, she’d quickly stuffed her packages in her car and peeled out of the parking lot.
If it had meant nothing to her, why in the hell had she run?
“You can lie to yourself all you want to,” he whispered softly. “But that night wasn’t just about sex, and you damn well know it.”
“Please, just stop it. Stop trying to make it more than it was.” She stared at him, her expression resolved. “You were hurting. You needed comfort. I decided to provide it. It was a pity fu—”
“Don’t you dare,” he cut her off. He crowded her, invading every inch of her space.
“Don’t ever reduce what happened between us to some kind of pity fuck.
” He pointed to his chest. “I was there. I felt it. I felt the way you shivered in my arms. I felt the way your body clenched mine, the way you clung to me as if it would kill you to let go. That had nothing to do with pity.”
Her chest expanded with the deep breath she inhaled as her eyes fell shut.
Sawyer captured her chin in his hand and tipped her face up. “It was more than just sex, Paxton. You know it was.”
When she opened her eyes, they were filled with accusation. “So why did you marry someone else?”
Sawyer dropped his hand. The hurt in her eyes knocked the breath from his lungs, as if it were a physical blow. He took several steps back, his hands falling to his sides.
“Why?” she repeated. “If that night was more than just a pity fuck, if it was this magical experience we shared, why did you marry someone else just a few months later?” She sucked in a deep breath before she asked in a pained whisper, “Were the two of you engaged when we slept together?”
“No.” Sawyer shook his head. He ran his palm down his face, suddenly hating everything about this conversation. “Angelique and I were…” He paused, unsure how to explain his marriage without sounding like a cold, indifferent jerk.
The problem was that his marriage had been cold and indifferent. It had been a mistake from the start, a complete mockery of that sacred institution.
If he explained it to her, would Paxton understand just why he did it, or would it make him look even worse in her eyes? Sawyer realized that he didn’t have a choice. At the very least, he owed her this explanation.
“Angelique and I didn’t have much of an engagement,” he started. He shoved his hands into his pockets and backed up against the beam he’d rested on earlier, knocking a couple of dead leaves from the arbor’s vines. “We didn’t have much of a marriage at all, if you want to know the full truth.”
He looked up at Paxton and found her watching him with a rapt, curious gaze.
“I married Angelique because it’s what was expected of me,” he said. “It’s what my dad wanted. It’s what her dad had wanted.”
“You make it sound like an arranged marriage.”
He shrugged. “In a way, that’s exactly what it was.
Our families have been friends for years.
Our dads grew up in the same neighborhood in New Orleans, one of the roughest in the city.
They both beat the odds and made better lives for themselves, and they remained best friends through it all.
Angelique and I attended Tulane together.
We dated for about a year back in college, and although we knew we weren’t compatible, our dads both thought it was a foregone conclusion that we would eventually marry.
“Her dad was killed in a private plane crash about ten years ago. He never got to see us married. When my dad got sick, we decided to just do it because we knew it would make him happy.”
“You married someone you didn’t love to make your father happy?”
“It worked,” Sawyer said. “At least for the last month or so that he was alive to see it.”
“But you stayed married for three years.”
His brow rose. “You were keeping tabs on me?”
“This is a frighteningly small town, Sawyer. You can’t help but learn other people’s business.”
“Very true,” he said with a humorless laugh.
“So?” she asked. “Why did you stay married if you didn’t love her?”
He hunched his shoulders. “It was convenient. I know that makes us sound like the most unromantic couple in the world, but it’s the truth.
Angelique accepted a job with the public defender’s office in Chicago at the same time that the army corps transferred me to Illinois.
We were more like roommates than husband and wife.
In the first year or so we were both too busy in our new jobs to recognize what was missing from our lives, but then Angelique met someone who she actually cared for. ”
“That sounds…horrible for you,” she said.
“Not really. The day she took me out to dinner to tell me, all I felt was relief. I was happy for her. She’s a good person. She deserved to find someone to make her happy.”
“So do you.”
“That’s why I came back to Gauthier instead of returning to my house in New Orleans,” he said. “But then I discovered that the one person I wanted—the woman I believed could make me happy—had moved away.”
Several moments passed between them. Sawyer pushed away from the beam and walked over to her again.
“You felt something for me that night, Paxton. It may have started out of pity, but that’s not the way it ended. You left because you were as shocked by what we both experienced as I was.” He cupped her chin again. “All I’m asking for is a chance.”
A shuddery breath escaped her lips. She glided her fingers along the nape of his neck, then cradled the back of his head, pulling him closer to her.
“It scares the hell out of me,” she admitted. “But maybe…maybe we can see how it goes. How’s that for taking a chance?”
A subtle smile drew across Sawyer’s lips. “That’s a good start.” His lips drifted across hers. “But this is an even better one.”
“Exactly why am I helping you make apple butter during my lunch break?” Paxton asked as she plucked another Red Delicious from the bag Shayla had bought at the new farmers’ market in St. Pierre.
“Because it’s a healthier alternative to regular butter or cream cheese as a spread for pastries,” Shayla said. “I’m thinking of maybe canning it and selling jars at The Jazzy Bean if I can get the recipe just right.”
“That health-conscious menu is still working for you?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Didn’t you see the chart on the community board I keep above the condiment bar?
A bunch of my regulars have a fitness contest going on right now.
They’re trying to lose a thousand pounds as a group by next year’s Founder’s Day Celebration.
” She sent Paxton a cheeky grin. “I would say ‘I told you so,’ since you were one of my biggest doubters, but I’m much too nice for that. ”
“That is so not fair,” Paxton said. “I never doubted you. It’s the people in this town that I doubted. You know most of them are stuck in their ways.”
“Well, I’m changing their ways one Zumba class at a time,” Shayla said.
When Shayla had returned to Gauthier to open her own coffee shop after working in the coffee industry in Seattle for years, Paxton thought it was both bold and brave but also the tiniest bit crazy.
And when Shayla decided that The Jazzy Bean would only serve heart-healthy food items, Paxton was certain that her friend’s grand ideas would go down in a blaze of glory.
She had been proven wrong. And she couldn’t be happier about it.
Shayla had turned The Jazzy Bean into the kind of place that people from neighboring towns drove out of their way to visit.
She was a marketing genius, which helped tremendously.
In addition to great coffee, pastries and café-style food offerings, The Jazzy Bean also hosted Zumba classes three nights a week and live jazz music on the weekends.
It was, without a doubt, one of the biggest success stories to come out of the revitalization of downtown Gauthier.
“I heard The Jazzy Bean was packed last Friday night,” Paxton said. “Did the high school’s jazz ensemble earn enough money for their trip to Washington?”
“They’re getting close,” Shayla said. “They’re going to perform again in a couple of weeks. Oh, did I tell you I landed Simone Thibodaux? She’s debuting her new album at The Jazzy Bean.”
“Seriously?” Paxton said. The performer was the daughter of famed jazz singer Madeline Thibodaux, whose French Quarter jazz club, Maddie’s Spot, had just been named the hottest new club in New Orleans by a local magazine.
It was a huge feat in a city with an endless number of hot spots.
“Will she be performing before I leave at the end of the month?”
Shayla shook her head. “Nope. You’ll just have to stick around longer.”
“Or I can just go to Maddie’s Spot and see her,” Paxton pointed out.
“But you would be so plagued with guilt for not supporting her show at The Jazzy Bean that you wouldn’t be able to enjoy yourself.”
Paxton’s head flew back with her laugh. “All joking aside, landing Simone Thibodaux is huge. Have I mentioned how proud I am of you?”
“Only a dozen times since you’ve been back,” Shayla said. “You’re slipping.”
“Well, I’ll say it again. I am so proud of you. I didn’t think Gauthier was big enough to sustain a coffee shop like The Jazzy Bean, and I am so happy that you’ve proven me wrong.”