5. Not What She Expected
CHAPTER FIVE
Not What She Expected
“I do now,” Owen said, wrapping his arm affectionately around her shoulder. “You got anything stronger?” he asked, holding up his empty bottle.
“I do. At the risk of sounding forward, wanna come up?”
Paige nodded up to her apartment above her parents’ garage feeling every bit the naughty teenager. She wanted nothing more than to talk to, get to know, linger beside, Owen. If other things should come of that, then she wouldn’t complain. They were both adults.
He smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She led him up the stairs, both of them quiet. When they got up to the common area, she pulled up another chair from the small desk in the back and procured a second glass. They wordlessly clinked glasses before sliding into their chairs.
Before she could say a word, he waved her book in front of her with a smirk on his face.
“You read this crap?”
She threw him a pointed look, complete with arms crossed over her chest. His glance dipped to where the tops of her breasts peeked out from the top of her blue tank.
Men. Hating on romance novels but treating women like they were on the cover of one.
“I do. Unapologetically, actually. You should give it a try—this one’s actually a good read.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“We’ll see. If I get bored, I know where to find you,” he said, adding what she now considered his trademark wink. “Anyway,” Owen said, putting the book down where he’d found it, “we’d moved on to you. Spill.”
“Right, the answer to your question. I don’t mean to be vague, but I think it’s both.”
“That’s cheating,” Owen said.
“I know it seems that way, but hear me out,” Paige contradicted.
Owen waved his hand, telling her to proceed.
“I think it was the fact that this is a one-horse town, with no culture, no promise, no future, for me at least.”
“You know, lady doc, I’ve got two horses on my property alone, so I suggest you take another look.”
Owen’s smile turned up in the corner, giving him the look of a man conspiring for or against something. She wished she could suss out which since she had the distinct feeling she would be on the receiving end either way.
He sipped his rum, then licked his lips. Paige almost choked.
Damn. Her thoughts dipped into forbidden territory where his lips and tongue were concerned. The sun had set while they talked and drank, bathing them in a pink light.
*
Paige laughed. “Okay, okay. But that was the pushing part. The pulling is stronger. I think.”
“Again, I’m listening.”
“Whether or not this is a one or two-horse town, the world is big, an expanse that I couldn’t possibly understand in a thousand lifetimes, let alone one. So, I plan to see as much as I can, for as long as I can.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Hadn’t he heard her?
“Why do you want, or need, to see all that to understand it? I mean, if it’s all too much to accomplish in one lifetime anyway, why not get to know one spot, one place, as intimately as you can?”
Paige opened her mouth to answer but found she didn’t have anything to say. Once again, a man she barely knew asked her a question she had absolutely no idea how to answer.
Damn him.
“Because it seems to me you’d love to see as much of the world as possible, experience cultures, languages, foods that would otherwise be unavailable to you—which I get, believe me. Remember, I signed up for the world’s deadliest fighting force and not because I liked the day job.”
He paused, looked out at the farm while Paige nervously tapped her foot. She didn’t like where this was going. “But each time you get restless, you leave the culture, language, and food, people behind. Do you ever really give yourself time to intimately know a place you visit, because, if I’m being honest, you’re just a visitor in those places, aren’t you? You lived there, sure, but you don’t stay long enough to build relationships where people can count on you, where you can count on them. You never build or buy a home, or a practice. What happens to your patients when you leave?”
Owen sat back in his chair, his gaze never leaving hers. Paige was stunned silent. She hadn’t thought about that before because she’d never had to. She didn’t like needing to now.
She reached over to the small coffee table in front of the window, grabbed the rum, and refilled their glasses. Such heavy talk needed reinforcements.
“Um, well, this town is small,” she said, picking up speed as she talked, “and I want big things. Maybe not so intimate. I want to see more, not less. What’s wrong with that?”
She’d passed defensive a few stops ago. Her patients’ faces in Turks loomed over her, taunting her with Owen’s accusations.
“Nothing’s wrong with that.”
“But…?” she asked, knowing it couldn’t possibly be that easy. Nothing about this man was easy.
“But nothing. I will ask you to do one thing for me though,” he said.
Ah, there it is.
“Which would be?”
“Look out this window. Tell me what you see.”
The dusk in front of her wasn’t as dark as it had been the month she left. A full moon shone through the window and over the first three fields her parents owned and worked daily. It illuminated the fields, the animals, the fence that rode the line between properties on both sides. It was bigger than she remembered.
She shared this with Owen, who listened, an easy smile on his face.
She waited for something, anything, from him, and finally, when the silence got to be too much, she coughed.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well, I think you just showed me you know a place as intimately as anyone could. Look out at that land, that field, at each stalk of corn that shoots from the ground, reaching for the sun, at each mouse that tries to make its home in the shadow of the crops, at each cloud that covers the expanse of sky over the farm, and tell me again that where you come from is too small. It seems to me this big, broad expanse of land hasn’t gone overlooked by you. I just wonder why the places you travel do.”
Paige was frustrated by his answer. That was his point? That her farm was big? That she saw a place? Of course, she understood her farm. She was raised there. That didn’t mean she should stay.
“You don’t know anything about me, Owen. Or why I do what I do. Which, I might add, is none of your damn business.”
Owen kept smiling and sipping. It was maddening.
“I think you’re awfully pushy for someone I barely know, someone who’s got his own stuff to work through.”
When that just elicited a deeper smile from him, she threw her hands up in exasperation. “Jesus. Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Maybe I’m pushy, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“Ugh,” Paige exhaled, angry at him, at his unending questions. “It’s getting late. You should get back home. Farm life starts early, you know.”
“I do know. And I can handle it. Can you?” He looked right at her, unfazed, his stupid smile still plastered to his face. She forgot all about her earlier ideas of seeing him naked and discovering what his body could do. Now all she wanted was for him to take that body, fine as it might be, and walk it right back to his property, and stay there. Forever.
“I don’t have to handle it, remember? I’m only here for a week. You’re the one who’s stuck in this two-horse town now. Not me.”
“I’d be willing to bet my first sharecrop you aren’t going anywhere, Paige,” he said smugly.
“I thought you said the world is big, that I can do what I want?” Paige shot back.
Her arms crossed tight over her chest, cleavage be damned. Let him look—it was as close as she’d ever let him get to her. She was so frustrated, so consumed by heat, her skin burned. The last time someone had riled her this bad was when Paulo left her with a monthly rent she had to cover herself, and a broken heart that she worried would never heal.
“I did say that, and I believe it. But I don’t know that it’s the best thing for you,” Owen said. “Believe me, I’ve seen my fair share of people running from something, and it always catches them in the end. You take yourself with you wherever you go, Paige.”
Paige shook with fury. How dare this man, this stranger, come into her home, drink her liquor, and tell her she was running away.
Who the hell was he, anyway? Some sort of armchair poet? Some hippy with enlightenment that he lorded over the rest of humanity? He had some cajones to come at her like this when he didn’t know her at all.
“You need to go. I’m tired,” she said. Nothing could have been further from the truth, though. She wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. It would take half the bottle of rum to calm her down, and Owen Johnson wasn’t worth another sip.
“I’m not done with my drink,” he said, smiling bigger now.
“I’ll pour it in a to-go cup for you,” Paige offered, reaching towards him for the glass. He maneuvered around her, pulled her arm around his side, sliding her body close until she was pressed against him. Her breathing hitched in her chest.
She saw then that she’d drastically underestimated his strength. His scent. The power his gaze held.
“Let me—” she started, but before she could finish her sentence, he dipped his chin and kissed her. In mutiny, she pursed her lips tight, but her body betrayed her, relaxing into him. Her brain screamed at her to run, to kick, to scream—anything to get away from this ridiculous man who thought he knew everything.
Her hands fisted in his hair, her body in complete control now. Damn. He could kiss, even if he was wrong about the other stuff. His tongue parted her mouth and explored her. Passion built between her legs.
A hand planted on her waist, caressing her back, while his other tangled in her hair, pulling her into him. He tasted like salt, like earth and spice and the islands, and just as she released herself to him, to his bidding, he pulled away from her as suddenly as he’d started.
He plopped her down in the overstuffed chair, his hands encompassing both her biceps, and walked towards the door.
She stared after him, her mouth still open, her eyes wide in surprise and frustration.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, standing up. She was now completely torn over whether to pull him to her bed or kick him out on the streets and demand he not return. What the hell was that kiss about, anyway?
“Heading home. Gotta get up early to run my tiny farm in my tiny town. Need my rest.”
“You, you—” Paige began, her fists balled up, this time, hanging at her side.
“G’ night, Paige. Thanks for the rum,” Owen said, downing the remains of his glass, leaving the empty vessel on the table by the window. He gave a small salute, including a wink that made Paige’s hair stand on end, and headed down the stairs. He whistled out the door, then down the place in the grass he’d flattened between her parents’ place and his.
She didn’t know what the hell had happened, and try as she might, she still couldn’t wrap her head around Owen, or why his words irked her as much as they did. All she knew for certain was that her earlier assumption was right.
There wouldn’t be any rest for her that night.