Chapter 2
LITTLE LUNATIC
brIGGS
“All right.” The sound of dusty hands rubbing together grabs my attention as I signal into town. It’s Nash’s signature ‘let’s get to work’ move. Even though I can’t see him, I know him well enough to know he’s doing it. “We starting something here or what?”
“Early projections look promising.”
“Fuck, yeah.” I’m pretty sure he fist-pumps the air.
“I’m not sure how receptive the town will be.” I pause, wincing at the thought of yesterday’s lunch at Falls Diner, and the not-so-subtly unwelcoming way I’d been served my burger and fries. I wonder if they have a bowling league in Sunset Falls. If so, with the arm on Eugene, she should be on it.
Eugene is the waitress at the diner, and not one I see myself winning over anytime soon. Too bad for me, I don’t have the same easy charm that Nash possesses.
“They’ll get over it,” Nash says easily. “People always do.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“About people or the town?”
“Both.”
There’s a pause. It’s not long, but it’s long enough.
I pull into one of the few angled parking spaces in front of The Tasty Rise and turn off my truck.
If there’s one thing this town has going for it, it’s the long parking spaces designed for farm trucks.
The town might be small, but a large number of its population own homes on the outskirts of town with land that ranges in acre size and use.
There are more than a few hobby farms. Most supply the weekend farmers market, usually held in the Sunset Falls Hall, or the garden surrounding it under pop-up tables and tents.
It’s walkable from most anywhere in town.
On weekends you’re sure to see more than a handful of people making the trek through town with their wagons either to or from the market.
“We doing this or what?”
“It won’t be easy.”
“We don’t do easy,” Nash says honestly.
I laugh, but it sounds tired even to me. “Isn’t that the truth?”
There’s another pause, then, uncharacteristic for Nash, he says, “You can come home. Sell the winery, the house and land, and be a few million dollars richer.” He laughs. “God knows you don’t need it, but the option is there. Probably save you some headache, too.”
“Shit.” I let my head fall back against the headrest. He’s right, it’d save me a doozy of a headache. “I can’t.”
“You don’t owe the bastard anything.”
My jaw pops as an image of Daniel Alder flashes in my mind.
Tall and dark…Mom says it was what lured her in.
That, and his ability to smooth talk before the talk got whiskey-tinted and mean.
Oh, and she’d been young and dumb, something she often warned me away from in my youth.
It’s probably why I’m so levelheaded. Always assessing risk verses reward.
I’ve always been afraid of becoming him. Becoming less than she wanted me to be.
Becoming anything other than the good and solid man who raised me. The man I called Dad.
“I’m not doing this for him.” I make to nab the hat I’d tossed onto the front seat of my truck and freeze at the sight of her.
Words snag in my throat. I swallow the burn that rises at the sight of her dropping into a low squat. Frayed jean shorts hug thick thighs, and a tight white ribbed tank rides up to show smooth tan skin at the small of her back.
I feel a sudden and unexplainable urge to haul ass across the boardwalk, yank her up by the loop of those man-eater jean shorts, slam her against the lilac paint of Tara’s Trinkets, and taste her sharp mouth.
The visual in my mind pulls a curse from the depths of me. I scrub a hand down my face as something silver catches my eye.
Scissors. The little lunatic is cutting flowers from the pots of businesses for the bouquet I now see she’s assembling in her other hand.
She stands and I’m slammed with a full frontal. The woman has got to be the prettiest damned woman I’ve ever seen in my life. That only adds fuel to the flame of my already pissed off fire. As pretty as she is, she’s still bat shit crazy.
“Fucking woman.” I don’t realize I’ve spoken the words aloud until Nash’s unexpected, “Who?” echoes from the Bluetooth.
“Gotta go.”
“What woman?” Nash presses. “Is it the jumper?” He snickers. “Aww, man. It’s the hot jumper, isn’t it?”
Why did I tell him about her?
“I never said she was hot.”
“Got you to admit she’s pretty,” Nash drawls. “It was like pulling teeth, but I did it.”
I don’t reply as I stab my finger into the screen, ending the call.
I don’t know how I do it, but I find myself striding quickly across the boardwalk toward her.
Pretty brown eyes the color of warm spiced rum widen as they land on me.
And something—anger or attraction, I can’t be sure—spears my gut as her pink lips pop open into an O of shock.
I point a long finger at her. “You.”
She points the business end of the scissors into the center of her chest. “Me?”
Fucking woman. I swipe the scissors from her swiftly. I shove the little weapon into the back pocket of my jeans as she protests with an incensed, “Hey!”
“That’s not how you use scissors,” I snap, watching as her brows do the same. “Have a care for your god-damned life, why don’t you?”
“Ah ha!” She laughs, but there’s a flare of attitude in it that riles me up in a way that I don’t get riled up. “You’re just mad that I jumped and you’re too afraid of life to give it a go.”
How does she do that? See through me with those narrowed rum and burned butter-colored eyes?
Needles of heat nip at the back of my neck. I can feel the red-hot crawl of it up into my face. This woman is—
I’ve never met a woman who gets to me quite like her. Under my skin. In my blood.
I don’t even know why I’m pissed. I shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have spared the little flower thief a second glance.
“You jumped off a fucking cliff.” I lean in to growl the words but realize my mistake when a whiff of lilac blooms and that distinct bitter-sweet tang of pinched flower stems and rich earth invades my senses.
She smells like life. Like the messy chaos of it.
“A cliff I’ve jumped off more times than I can count.
” It’s her turn to lean in, and clearly, she isn’t fazed by my scent because she keeps right on yapping.
“Which you’d know if you knew anything about Sunset Falls.
But you don’t, because you’ve never been here.
You’ve never bothered to learn the lay of the land in this little town.
Never bothered to know the people or what they want—”
I cut her off as I dare to lean even closer. “Because you’re all so welcoming here in Sunset Falls, eh?”
We’re nearly nose to nose now. But while she’s standing with her spine snapped straight, little fists on flared hips and head tipped back, I’m bowed damn-near over her.
I didn’t realize it on the cliff that looked out over Fire Falls, but the woman is tiny.
She can’t be more than five-foot-three against my six-foot-four.
But she sure knows how to serve a damn potent dose of what-for.
Almost enough to knock me down a peg or two.
I’ve never met another woman capable of getting me going quite like this.
I need to cool it. Take a breath. Walk the hell away.
Why can’t I make myself move?
Her buttery brown eyes flick between my own as she stares up into my face. She wets her lips with a pink tongue—and I ache to taste them. For a moment, I almost forget I’m mad.
Then she speaks and I remember. “What are you going to do with Alder Wines?”
There’s no reason for the anger that flares inside me at the mention of my father’s business.
“What I do with Alder Wines is my business, not yours or anyone else’s in this town.” I know it’s the wrong reply as soon as the words are between us. I can’t take them back, though. Not sure I would even if I could.
She’s pretty when she’s mad. Right now, she’s spitting mad. Fuming. Fucking gorgeous.
“That’s why they’re not welcoming you, here.
You’re an arrogant rich boy playing with the livelihood of this town they love.
Alder Wines is nothing but a toy to you.
A plaything. A business you could dissolve without losing a wink of sleep, huh?
” She moves in even closer. This time I can taste the sweet scent of her.
She tastes like the warmth of a new sun spilling in through a window, and honey on buttery toast. She tastes like…home.
What the actual hell is wrong with me?
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I manage through clenched teeth. I’m still wondering where the fuck my ever-present cool calm is, and what it is about this woman that drags in the red-hot blood of a wild man.
“I think I do.” She tips her head back, eyes daring me over an edge I know I can’t cross.
I’ve never wanted to punish a stranger more with a kiss than I want to punish her now.
I’ve never wanted to kiss a woman more than I want to kiss her.
“You’re just like him. Like Daniel Alder.
You’ll make the town bow to you just to keep them afloat, and they’ll hate you for it just like they hated him. ”
Ice washes away the heat with her accusation. With the surge of ice, whatever binds that shackled me to her these last minutes finally release me. I take a step back, and then two more.
Lifting my hands between us, I wave her off. “I don’t need this.”
She laughs, but it’s bursting with bitterness.
“You’re right. You don’t need this town—” Her next words shackle me once more to the boardwalk.
“But this town needs you. It needs—someone who cares for it.” Then she goes and speaks again, this time without an ounce of that sweet vulnerability from a moment before.
“And I need my scissors, you big brute!”
Again, there’s a spark of fire in my blood, ignited by the match of her. Inspired to light my own little fire in the crazy little spitfire, I flash her a rusty smirk as I tap the scissors in my back pocket.
“Think I’ll hold onto these,” I call as I pull open the door of my truck, deciding to venture into The Tasty Rise for coffee another morning.
A morning I haven’t gone to battle with a particular brown-eyed beauty with a fall of thick hair the color of caramelized butter in a cast-iron pan over the flame of a back woods campfire.
“Briggs!” she yells my name in frustration, and I’m suddenly pissed that I don’t know hers. A string of violent curses follows my name. I cut her off as I slam the door closed behind me.
I’m grinning like a fool as I pull out of the parking space, eyes glued to a red-hot woman fuming on a boardwalk with a makeshift bouquet of stolen flowers in the fist on her hip.
I can’t resist the last word as I roll down my window, tipping my hat at her in a gesture that has an angry heat climbing up the column of her throat. “You have yourself a nice day, now, little lunatic.”