Alone with You

Chapter Seventeen

Gwen

“S o, how much do you think it’s gonna cost?” I asked, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

The older gentleman I’d found on Google under the search “People who hang blinds and actually show up in Belton, NJ” quirked a furry gray eyebrow. “Well, that depends. What kind of budget are we looking at?”

“Cheap,” I said flatly.

His tape measure snapped shut, and he looked at me with a curious smile. “How cheap are we talking?”

“Clearance that has been marked down at least a dozen times, because while they are super trendy and fit my vision perfectly, they are just taking up space in a warehouse and will soon be discarded and I can pick them up off the side of the road for free.”

He chuckled. “That’s a nice thought, but, baby doll, there’s no such thing as clearance when it comes to custom blinds.”

I let out a groan, and not only because he called me baby doll.

Just my luck. The restaurant’s windows were a patchwork of mismatched sizes, none of which were standard, so picking up blinds off the shelf at the home store and hanging them myself was out of the question.

“Look,” he said, lifting his clipboard and retrieving the pen from behind his ear. “If you want my advice, I’d spend a few extra dollars on something that will last. With these windows as thin as they are, you might be surprised how much blinds can cut down on your heating and air bill, especially if you plan to open for lunch.” He shuffled a few inches to the side, standing in direct sunlight. “The sun rises that way. If you stand right here for more than a second or two, it’s going to feel like dining on the sun. You planning to put tables here?”

I wasn’t planning to put tables there. I’d already bought them.I nodded.

“Now, we do offer sunshades that are pretty economical. A lot of the restaurants around here use ’em.”

I shook my head. “No, I need something that’s not see-through.”

“That narrows it down. Let me get back to the office and I’ll send over some options. When’s your opening date?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Who knows. Few more weeks at least. But I really need to get something up by next Wednesday.”

It was his turn to laugh, except I didn’t find any humor when he said, “A few weeks I can do. Next Wednesday? Not a chance.”

“Damn,” I whispered.

He was right. I could feel the rays of the sun penetrating through the windows.If it was already this warm during spring, I could only imagine how sweltering it would be at the peak of summer.

With one last hopeful smile, I asked, “And just to make sure I heard you correctly, you don’t have a dumpster out back that is unattended after dark and filled with blinds that could even remotely fit my windows?”

Mr. Budget Blinds shook his head as the corner of his mouth tipped up. “Doll face, if we did, I wouldn’t even make you wait until nightfall to go get ’em.” He tucked the clipboard under an arm and extended his hand toward me. “I’ll get this quote over to you as soon as possible.”

With an inward groan, I shook his hand before leading him to the door. “Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.”

“You too, sweets.”

I rolled my eyes at the term of endearment and turned to go back inside, but something down the street caught my attention.

“What the…” I muttered to myself, squinting against the sun.

Lumbering down the sidewalk, arms full of who knew what, a pack mule resembling Truett West made his way toward me.

Holy shit.

While I was frozen in place with the door half open, the cool air breezed past me. My instincts had me panicked. He didn’t leave his house except for on Wednesdays. At least that was what he’d told me. But his long legs took purposeful strides, far too slow for something to be wrong.

I waited until he was within earshot before shouting, “Have I been transported to an alternate universe?” I checked my watch to verify that it was in fact not only noon, but Thursday as well. “Truett, you do know yesterday was Wednesday, right?”

His stormy brown eyes narrowed from above what appeared to be a stack of dusty newspapers balanced on his forearms while two plastic grocery sacks hung from his hands. He grunted a reply I couldn’t begin to understand.

“Okay, so an alternate universe where you don’t speak English, apparently.”

Louder this time and enunciating each word, he repeated what I assumed he’d said the first time. “If this was an alternate universe, I’d have bought a wheelbarrow. Can I get a little help?”

I hurried toward him, meeting him in the middle of the street. “What’s all this?”

“Newspaper to cover the windows.” He waited for me to open the door and then unceremoniously dumped the stack of papers on a corner of the floor that had yet to be tiled. He stretched his back from side to side and then took the bags from my hands and made his way toward his booth. “Before you say anything, this cost me next to nothing.”

Sidling up next to him, I eyed him suspiciously as he began unloading the contents of the bags. The smell of garlic and ginger wafted up.

“Is that Chinese food?”

He turned and proudly presented me a wax paper bag. “That it is. These spring rolls were exactly three dollars. So your gift of the key cancels them out.” He dropped the bag onto the table and pulled out a round black plastic bowl crammed with food. “I got garlic vegetables with white rice for you. Sesame chicken and ham fried rice for me. All for the low, low price of buy-one-get-one-free.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I had a coupon. I’ll let you guess which item was free.”

I recognized the logo on the bag. “You went all the way to China Wok to get that?”

“Nah, I had it delivered. But I was stingy with the tip, so you can’t have that on your conscience, either.” He finished pulling the rest of the food from the bag and then flipped it upside down, dumping out the packets of sauce and chopsticks before sliding into his side of the booth. “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

My stomach growled, ratting me out before I had the chance to lie and tell him that I wasn’t hungry. Not counting the untouched club sandwich, it had been forever since we’d shared a meal together, much less from our favorite Chinese hole-in-the-wall. I’d avoided it like the plague since our divorce, unwilling to open Pandora’s box of positive memories. But damn, he knew me well. They had the best spring rolls, and my mouth watered just thinking about taking a bite.

I stood there for a beat, but he didn’t slide over so that we could share the same side of the booth again. A pang of disappointment hit me as I slid in across from him. Then he went to work opening the dishes and passing out the duck sauce he knew I couldn’t resist.

“Just so you know, I feel worse knowing some poor delivery kid got stiffed because of me.”

His shoulder raised slightly. “That might have been a lie. I tipped him just fine.”

I teasingly gasped. “A lie? Now I can’t believe anything you say. Was there even a coupon or did you”—I clutched my invisible pearls—“pay full price?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “See, I knew you were going to say that.” Digging into his back pocket, he retrieved a paper and then unfolded it. “So I brought the doorhanger they left last week as proof.” He pointed to the square missing amongst various other coupons. “No money spent on you, I swear.”

I turned, the vinyl of the booth squeaking as I looked to where he had dropped the stack of papers. “Okay, what about the newspapers?”

“They’ve been in my garage so long I’m scared to actually look at the date. This isn’t a man trying to rescue you with a fist full of dollar bills. Just a man who took the day off and needed some lunch. I figured, what better place to have lunch than across from you?”

I fought the urge to once again remind him that I didn’t need his help. But what would have been the point? Walking a fine line, he’d done as I’d asked and not spent any money. Worst case, I’d owe him less than twenty bucks. I didn’t like the idea of being in debt to him at all, but whether I understood it or not, I did like the idea of spending time with him.

“Fine,” I relented. “But I’m going to need you to share some of that sesame chicken with me.”

His neck snapped back, confusion furrowing his brow. “Well, now I’m the one convinced we’re in an alternate universe. Since when do you eat meat?”

I chuckled, snagging a piece of the sticky meat with my chopsticks and waving it in the air. “Since Dylan dragged me to a steakhouse for her birthday right after I had Nate. My hormones were crazy and I swear I must have been anemic or something because one look at her medium-rare steak was all it took for me to send my house salad back in exchange for a T-bone.”

I popped the chicken into my mouth, my eyes fluttering shut as I moaned, “God, I forgot how good their food is.”

After what could be considered an inappropriate amount of pleasure from a single piece of chicken, I opened my eyes to see what was definitely an inappropriate amount of pleasure staring back at me. Truett’s eyes were zeroed in on my mouth.

My cheeks heating, I let my tongue dart out to moisten my lips, not letting the way his nostrils flared escape my attention. “Ahem.” I cleared my throat, trying to find something to say, anything to ease the burn that was starting to bloom in my chest. Switching to a fork, I stabbed a broccoli stalk from my bowl. “I do still love veggies though.”

“Nate, huh? You named him after Nathanial?” His smoldering grin morphed into one that was soft, sweet, and damn if that wasn’t sexy too.

Most notably, Truett had said his name and managed to keep the color in his face all at the same time.

I chewed quickly, hurrying to answer him before he shut down. “Yes and no. I went with Nathan. I didn’t want him to ever feel like he was born with shoes to fill, but we call him Nate for short.” I swallowed hard, searching his face for any trace of pain that told me I should change the subject to something easier, lighter, like, I don’t know, capybaras or facts on otters holding hands. But there was nothing to be found other than love and a hint of nostalgia.

“I like it. He would too.” He cleared his throat, wiping his mouth with a cheap napkin, and then said, “He was the dark-haired boy that day I first ran into you, right?”

“Yep. The spitball king belongs to me.”

He chuckled. “Any of the other two kids yours?”

“God, no. Those other hellions belong to my two best friends, Angela and Dylan.” I grinned. “Don’t get me wrong. I love those monsters like they’re my own, but the three of them together is chaos.” Nerves fluttered in my stomach as I found the courage to ask, “What about you? Kids?”

He glanced down at his lap and patted a lump of keys in his pocket. “Just the one for me.”

I nodded. “Why mess with perfection, huh?”

“Right,” he said simply before digging into his food.

For several minutes, we continued to eat in comfortable silence, though it took a boatload of effort to stifle my reaction when I bit into the crispy spring roll. When I saw that there was only one piece of chicken left, I caught the lip of the bowl with my fork and pulled it across the table toward me, my lips pursing playfully when he shot me an incredulous look.

“What?” I quipped before popping the last bite into my mouth. “You said you’d share and then you went and ate it all.”

The napkin that was in his hand dropped onto the table and he leaned back, stretching his arms out to the sides before folding them behind his head. “If I’d known you weren’t a vegetarian anymore, I’d have brought more to share. Seems like there’s a lot I don’t know about you anymore.”

I pushed the empty containers away and rested one forearm on the table, using my other to prop up my chin. “I could say the same about you. You said earlier you took the day off. I don’t even know what you do for work.”

He shifted, his biceps flexing with the action, the tattoos moving almost like they were alive on his arms. My mind wandered to what they would look like without the confines of his shirt. Had he gotten more ink over the years? There’d been a day when I’d had them memorized and spent hours blindly tracing them in the dark as we lay naked in bed, sweaty and sated.

When his biceps flexed again, this time one after the other, I knew I’d been caught. I tore my stare away and sputtered, “You, uh, you were saying?”

“I hadn’t said anything yet.” He grinned wolfishly. “But you asked what I do. I’m a corporate recruiter. Specifically for veterans. I help them transition into civilian life, find jobs that suit them rather than based solely on what they did while they were in.”

It didn’t surprise me one bit that Truett had found himself in a career like that. He’d always been passionate about the military, even after he’d been medically retired. It sounded like the perfect job for him.

“You work remotely?”

He nodded. “What about you? What were you doing before you decided to revamp this place?”

I looked around at the mess. What had I been doing all the years before I dove headfirst into the sinkhole of restaurant ownership?

“I was being a wife. A mother. A cook. A maid. A chauffeur. A zookeeper for Nate. A punching bag for Jeff.”

“A what?” he growled, his aura no longer relaxed, but tightly coiled, ready to snap.

“No, no. Not a literal one. He never laid a hand on me. That was a poor choice of words. I only meant that my ex was, and still is, an ass of epic proportions. The very definition of a narcissist, and I was usually the target of his bad moods.” I reached across the table, resting my hand over his clenched fist, and squeezed his fingers, trying to bring his focus back to me, “True, I know that look. And I’m telling you I’m okay. I wasn’t for a while, but I am now. I promise.”

His eyes blazed with fury desperate to escape, but with nowhere for it to go, he unclenched his fist and laced his fingers with mine. “I know shit ended bad with us, but you wouldn’t lie to me about that, would you? You’d tell me if he ever hurt you, right?”

“He hurt me, True. We were together for ten years. Some were worse than others, but he didn’t hurt me in the way you’re thinking. I swear.”

His eyes searched my face, looking for any signs I was downplaying the truth. When he found nothing, he visibly relaxed. “Is that why you bought this place? After your divorce?”

“Yeah. When I realized that I needed a career and had a hole in my résumé over a decade wide, I decided to take a leap and used the mall settlement money to buy the place.”

His eyes widened as he sucked in a sharp breath.

“I know, I know. I vowed to never touch that money. But I figured using it to start over, for myself, for Nate, that couldn’t be wrong, could it? Now, I’m not so sure that it was the smartest choice, but what I lack in talent, I make up for in feral determination.” I let out a short laugh. “Or lunacy, not sure which.”

“You have more skills, more talent, more everything, than any person I know.” His voice was gravelly, the sincerity in each word painfully clear.

“That pile of tile over there would probably beg to differ.” I moved to pull my hand from his.

His grip tightened and he leaned in across the table. “Let me help you with this place.”

I shook my head, the spell almost broken. “No. I didn’t tell you any of that to garner sympathy. You asked what I’d been up to. Putting my life back together, one step at a time, was the answer.”

His frustrated breath blew across my face, but his hand still held tight to mine. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

I couldn’t properly explain it to him. I didn’t want to. So I went with the abridged version. “I don’t like owing people.”

His brow furrowed as he scoffed, “I’m not a loan shark. No money involved. I’m just offering my services.”

My stomach dipped at his words, although the services he was offering were probably not the ones that flashed through my mind. I wiggled my hand free from his and pushed to my feet, my tired legs protesting the move almost as loudly as my mind. “What services are you offering exactly?”

He slid out of the booth and wandered to the water saw. “For starters, I can finish this tile job. Hell”—he bent over and picked up a scrap from my pile of misfit ceramic—“I could probably salvage half of these.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s not as easy as it looks.”

“Don’t you remember when I redid Grandpa Jack’s floor in his fishing cabin? He said it looked so good he insisted I pull up the hardwood in Aunt Shelly’s house and replace them with his exact same tile.”

I groaned at the memory. “Those wood floors were gorgeous. I have no idea how he convinced her to rip them out.”

“They were rotting. Gorgeous wasn’t going to keep her from falling through to the basement and breaking a hip. Look, when you live in a house as old as ours, everything has to be fixed or replaced at least twice.”

I jolted when he called it our house.

It had been our house. After his mom passed away, he’d inherited it, but we’d been living there for years even before that. We’d had grand plans of raising our family in that house. Growing old in that house. Spending a lifetime together in that house.

Instead, uniformed military members had shown up to my door in that house, rocking my entire world.

I’d shed more tears than I’d thought a human could ever produce in that house.

My husband had told me he wanted a divorce in that house.

I had been gutted and forced to give up on my soul mate inside that house.

There hadn’t been our anything in almost two decades, but especially not that house.

I didn’t have the chance to correct him before he walked over, stopping directly in front of me.

“I’m not trying to rescue you. I know you can do this on your own and it will turn out absolutely incredible. But you mentioned you’re running behind schedule to open on time, and I’m offering free labor. Nothing more.” His body hovered so close to mine that it made a chill roll down my spine. His dark eyes held me hostage as I considered his offer—and how it would feel to press my lips to his.

“It’s going to take more than an hour on Wednesdays to get this place done on time.”

He smiled, and sweet Jesus, he swayed even closer. “It’s Thursday, Gwen. And I’ve got all night.”

I had so many questions.

What had suddenly changed, allowing him to venture out of his safe haven?

Was it only Wednesdays and Thursdays now?

Could he go other places too?

But most of all, why the hell was he so damn close, and why did I want him even closer?

“Okay,” I breathed, afraid to say more.

“Okay?”

I took a small step back, desperately needing to clear my head. “Yeah. I’m not in any position to turn down free labor. But just know that you helping does not obligate me to help you move, or do yard work, or shovel snow in the winter. You are volunteering and I’m not accepting it as much as just not kicking you out.”

A lazy smile split his lips, victory dancing in his eyes. “That seems fair.”

“All right, then. Where do you want to start?”

For the next several hours, we worked side by side. He spread the old newspapers, which we noted were from two thousand ten, over the windows while I handed him pieces of tape and made sure to point out all the areas that might need more adhesive. Once he was satisfied that Taggart wouldn’t be able to take any more pictures, we moved on to the floors.

He expertly cut the tiles on the first try while I tried not to stare as tattoos danced over his muscles.

As the day went on, we talked about nothing in particular. I filled him in on my farm-fresh, family-dining vision of The Rosewood, and he begged me to add my “world famous” tortellini ranch salad to the menu. It was only world famous to him, but it felt good that he’d remembered. I’d teased him when I found out he still had his old motorcycle in his garage, despite the fact that he no longer had a valid driver’s license. And then we fell awkwardly silent when he reminded me that Nathanial had helped him build it and that was the only reason he kept it.

After that, we kept things surface level. He told me about his job and some of the men he had helped find new careers, and I told him stories of my online shopping horrors.

He smiled—a lot.

I think I smiled more though.

Throughout the day, I’d caught glimpses of longing in his eyes, felt the magnetic pull between us, and heard the way his voice caught every time he said my name. I tried to ignore the way my body reacted, keeping my distance from him as much as possible. But it was a futile effort, and more times than I could count, he’d walk behind me, squeezing my hip as he passed.

Just as he’d promised, he managed to get almost the entire floor laid by the time the sun began to set. I rocked back onto my heels as I pushed to my feet, my knees sure to be bruised in the morning. But for the first time since I’d decided to take this on, I looked around and felt proud.

“Wow, that tile looks amazing.”

Truett finished bagging the trash and nodded as he appraised his work. “It does look good. You’re welcome.”

I laughed, the sound coming from deep within. “I don’t recall saying thank you yet.”

“That smile on your face is all I need.”

My stomach dipped in all the best ways. “Let me get my stuff and I’ll drive you home.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can walk. I need to stretch my legs a bit anyway. For a minute there, I forgot I’m not twenty anymore.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea? Just because we haven’t seen Taggart doesn’t mean he isn’t out there waiting for you.”

He shrugged. “My guess is he’s been watching me enough to know I only come here on Wednesdays. If not, he probably got tired of reading the Dear Abby columns taped to the windows and took off.”

“Maybe she had some advice about how to not be a dickhead and he took it to heart.”

Truett laughed, and the sound sent a rush of warmth through my bones.

“You have your son this weekend?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. It’ll just be me, a bottle of wine, and a few gallons of paint all weekend.”

He paused, one hand on the door, and turned to face me. “I have to work tomorrow. But I’m all yours Saturday.”

His words caught me off guard. “Saturday?”

“Yep, the day after tomorrow. Usually people’s favorite day of the week. Mine’s Wednesday, but Thursdays are already starting to grow on me. Maybe Saturday will too.”

“Is that something you want to do? Come paint and grout and run the risk of electric shock as I try to install the light fixtures in this dump? With your ex-wife? On a Saturday?”

His free hand cupped my chin, his thumb rough as it brushed across my cheek. “The Gwendolyn Pierce standing in front of me may not be the same Gwen I was once married to. She may eat steaks now, she may not be able to cut a fucking tile straight to save her life, and she may have an insulting amount of confidence in my handyman abilities. But the Gwen of the present is still singlehandedly the only person I would want to spend my Saturday with. And stop calling it a dump. You’ve done some amazing things here already. I have no doubt that, when we finish, it’s going to be nothing short of incredible.”

God, why did that feel so good?

His use of when “we” finish .

The fact that he wanted to be there.

The fact that I wanted him to be there too.

The smolder of desire that had been kindling in my chest all day ignited. Before my logical brain could douse the flames, I blurted, “Were you going to kiss me in that booth yesterday?”

His hand slid down the column of my throat, his thumb resting at the base, my heart beating wildly beneath it as I anticipated his answer.

What was I anticipating? I didn’t know.

What did I want his response to be? I didn’t know the answer to that, either.

All I knew was that, if he didn’t say something soon, it was possible I would spontaneously combust right there at the door of my restaurant.

“I don’t think you asked me the right question, Gwen.”

Out of all the possible answers he could have given, that wasn’t one I’d expected. “I’m sorry?”

“Yesterday in that booth was past Truett. He doesn’t exist anymore. The only person here with you right now is present Truett. Maybe you should ask that question to him.”

My lips parted; my throat suddenly dry as I realized what he was saying to me. We’d spent the whole day comparing and contrasting the past and present. We weren’t the same people anymore—for better and for worse. So it made sense that he wouldn’t want to answer a question that was aimed at a man who was no longer there.

I placed a hand on his chest, letting the strong thrum of his heart settle me, and whispered, “Are you going to kiss me now, True?”

“I’ve been waiting all fucking day for you to ask me that.” He hooked his arm around my waist and crushed my body to his, mere seconds before his lips came down over mine.

My body came alive as his tongue moved with mine, our mouths dancing together, synchronized in perfect rhythm. It was both so familiar yet so foreign.

My fingertips curled into his shirt, and I pressed up onto my toes so that I could loop my arm around his neck, pulling him closer to deepen the kiss. The taste of him, the scent of his cologne tinged with the saltiness of sweat, and the way his arm flexed as he held me tight were intoxicating and I found myself wanting nothing more than to get drunk on him.

Why had it been so long since I’d felt this? Better yet, what could I do to ensure that I never lost this feeling again?

He groaned, the deep timbre of lust and desire reverberating through me, and in that instant, I snapped back to reality.

I was kissing Truett.

A man I’d loved so fiercely.

The same man who had broken my heart, shattered it into a million pieces. Pieces I was still trying to put back together.

I broke our seal and stepped away, my lungs filling with the oxygen I’d deprived them, my mind swirling with indecision.

What was I doing?

Oh, God. What was I doing?

“I…uh,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “I’m not sure we should be doing that.”

His lips tipped in a grin. “Really? Because I was just thinking we should have been doing that every day for the last twenty years.”

Shit. I felt that too.

He gave my hip one last squeeze before turning to shove the front door open. “We still good for Saturday morning?”

I should have said no and nipped what would surely turn into a fiasco of epic proportions in the bud.

I couldn’t make out with Truett and then just casually hang out with him on Saturday.

Had I suddenly developed a case of amnesia?

Apparently so, because when I opened my mouth, a shaky, “Yeah,” came out.

He smirked. “Good. I’ll see you then.” He shut the door and then spoke a muffled command through the glass, “Make sure you lock up.”

Stunned and dazed, I stared at him, but he didn’t walk away until I finally flipped the deadbolt.