Chapter Twelve
Leighton
My face burns as I watch Holden and the rest of the MTF guys leave The Café. I guess I’ve been na?ve thinking he doesn’t know how I’ve been waking up ninety percent of the time.
It messes with me, since I’ve never really been a sexual person. But Holden? He brings out every carnal thought I’ve ever had as a woman and completely makes me wonder if I even know myself.
“They’re nice.” Violet has a seat next to me at the counter again.
I chew the tip of the pen I have in my hand, a nervous habit I’ve developed over the past few months. “Yeah, they are. One of the best group of guys I’ve ever met in my life.”
“How did you meet your husband?” She asks out of the blue.
It throws me off guard that she doesn’t know, but then I remember she’s new to town, and not everyone is privy to the history of Laurel Springs. I shift in my seat. “My maiden name is Strather, and he’s spent the last few years arresting various male members of my family for making moonshine.”
Her eyes are wide. “You’re related to the Strathers?”
Now I’m uncomfortable and borderline sorry I said anything.
Trying to be honest sometimes works for me, other times it gets me into situations like this.
“Yeah, my grandfather is Merle, my brother is Brooks.” I purposely leave my dad’s name out.
Our relationship has never been good, and I don’t want other people to think I belong to him.
“The one that hit the officer?”
Again I feel the weight of my family on my shoulders and wonder how in the hell Holden and I will ever be able to forget the past and move forward.
“Yeah.” I twist my hair around my finger.
“He’s paying the price.” I feel the need to stand up for my younger brother.
If anything, he had even less of a chance than I did to get out of our family business.
He’d been groomed for it since he could walk.
“I’m sorry,” she says as she puts her hand over her mouth. “I’m just in shock; you seem so normal and sweet. You and Holden seem to have such a great marriage.”
“I know.” I grin ruefully. “It’s weird, huh? The head of the Moonshine Task Force marrying a moonshiner’s daughter?”
I let that sink in for a second, reminding myself exactly who we are and why all of this is a bad idea.
“Yeah.” She nods. “But the two of you seem so happy, and you can tell you care for another when you’re together. Maybe you’re kinda like Romeo and Juliet.”
This is news to me, no one’s ever made commentary on mine and Holden’s relationship. “Do we?” I’m dying to know what it looks like from the outside to someone else. And I don’t bother to tell her that Romeo and Juliet died.
She grins, resting her chin on her hand as she looks at me.
“Yeah, you do. As soon as he walked through the door, you couldn’t keep your eyes off him.
Then after he convinced you to sit in the booth with him, he couldn’t keep his hands off you.
It’s sweet, and the chemistry between you is so explosive you can see it just looking at you two. ”
For the first time, in possibly ever, I’m going to allow myself to be the woman I’ve never allowed myself to be when it comes to my husband.
Since Violet doesn’t know much about my past, only what I’ve told her, and she came to town after we got married, I’m going to gush.
I’m going to be that girl. “My husband is a very good-looking man, and I’m lucky he chose me to marry. ”
“It’s the tattoos.” She giggles.
I giggle right back. “No, it’s the tattoos, the air of authority, the dark intensity of his eyes, and honestly just the way he carries himself.
” I keep going, because now I can’t stop.
I’ve lifted the gate on keeping my mouth shut, and now I have to share all the amazing attributes of the man I married with someone.
“The guys give him a hard time because he’s so cut, and he’s in such good shape.
” I lean in, lifting my eyebrows suggestively.
“But I get to watch him work out, and oh my God,” I fan my face, “I’ve never seen anyone as intense as he is when he’s focusing on his form and core for an average of forty-five minutes a day. ”
“You’re a lucky woman, Leighton,” she sighs.
“He’s hot, he’s a genuinely good man, and the way he looks at you says he wants to eat you up every second of every day.
Pretty sure if you two were alone much longer over there in that booth, you would have spontaneously combusted.
A lot of women would kill for a love like that.
” She grins ruefully before she gets up from the stool and walks behind the counter, starting on the last of what we have to do before the next shift comes in.
Does Holden look at me like that? Am I oblivious to it?
And why haven’t we been acting like a normal married couple?
We’ve never been out on a date, never gone to restaurant together, except on our wedding day.
Either we stay in and cook or one of us brings something home.
Deep down I know I’ve been scared of running into my family, but I’m beginning to rethink my position on that now.
Maybe I want us to have a more traditional relationship, and I know if that’s the case, the person who initiates it is going to have to be me.
It’s time to pull up my big girl panties and let my husband know what the hell I want.
Decision made, I hop off the stool, and start cleaning off all the tables, grinning to myself as I clean the one I sat at not two hours ago. I can still smell Holden on my clothes, and I realize with a startling clarity how happy it makes me.
Can this be more than a marriage of convenience? I’m not sure, but there’s only one way to find out.