Chapter 4
4
MEMPHIS
T ime to go to work.
I grabbed my tumbler of coffee and my lunch pail and headed toward the door. I stopped midway across the living room, eyeing the rifle propped against the wall. Damn it. If not for my truck breaking down, I would have grabbed that rifle and headed out to hunt that morning.
My beautiful neighbor didn’t want me to shoot deer. And despite the urge I had to fulfill my obligations, I couldn’t bring myself to go against her wishes. Not just yet, anyway.
Her white sedan sat in the driveway, empty. I couldn’t tell from the house itself whether she was up or not. What if she wasn’t? What if she accidentally slept in?
Maybe I could creep inside the cabin and sneak into bed with her. That would definitely be worth being late to work again.
Once I was on her porch, I shifted my lunch pail to the hand that held my thermos, knocked on the door, and stepped back. This cabin really should have a storm door. She was safe up here, of course, but nothing was guaranteed.
Whoever owned this cabin had her staying here for a reason. What if he thought someone might break in and steal something? What if I was the guy the cabin owner thought might do something to it?
It wouldn’t surprise me. I’d been getting the side-eye around this town since I arrived. Shaving and cleaning up my look might have an impact on that. It was too soon to know for sure.
The door suddenly flew open, and the brunette’s smiling face was on the other side. “Hi…” I paused. “We haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Memphis.”
It was something that had been bugging me. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, but I didn’t know her name.
“I know,” she said. Then she squeezed her eyes closed and smiled. “I mean, my best friend told me. She’s dating someone on your crew.”
I frowned. “Who’s your best friend dating?”
“Her name’s Cassady, and she’s dating Dane.”
Dane. I didn’t say anything, but he was the guy I’d run into at the bar a couple of weeks ago. He’d been acting weird all day at work, and then I saw him ordering a sweet tea. Not a gin and tonic or dirty martini but a freaking sweet tea .
He’d opened up—as much as any of us opened up to each other—about his woman troubles, and I told him they weren’t worth it. None of them. But the one standing in front of me might be. She just might be.
And she’d asked her friend about me. Did that mean she was interested in me? It had to, right?
“Mallorie,” she said.
I stared at her, unblinking, trying to place the word she’d just blurted. Mallard? Was she talking about the ducks she always wore on her robe? Maybe she was really into ducks. Mallards.
Those weren’t mallards on her robe, though. And she wasn’t wearing it right now anyway. She wore jeans and a pink sweatshirt that bore the name of a state college. Her hair was in a ponytail, and her face was freshly scrubbed.
She looked like a college girl. But she was in law school, she’d said, so she had to at least have an undergrad degree. That would make her twenty-two at the youngest. I was thirty-five. Was twenty-two too young?
“Mallorie’s my name,” she said, probably noticing the confusion on my face. “My friend Cassady is the one dating Dane. She works for the guy who rents these vacation cabins. We met when her boss sent her over to pick up a contract for a property he’d just bought from us.”
Mallorie was in law school and worked full time. Or was it part-time? I had so many questions. Luckily, we had a ten-minute drive to the worksite and dinner tonight to get to know each other better.
“Let me just grab my coffee,” she said. “Come on in.”
That last part was added almost as an afterthought. That made me wonder if I should just stay on the porch. But she left the door standing wide open as she turned to rush back inside, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t see everything from where I stood anyway. No harm, no foul.
I shut the door almost all the way as I stepped inside and stood politely in the doorway. There was a slight chill outside, like yesterday morning when I went out to hunt, but today I wasn’t wearing a jacket. Our work kept us moving around so much, I’d warm up pretty quickly anyway.
“Got it,” she said, rushing back across the floor.
She held a gigantic pink tumbler with a handle and a straw sticking out of the top. A stark contrast to the boring, gray tumbler with scrapes and scratches all over it that had been with me no telling how long.
I pulled back the door and held it for her, gesturing for her to exit. “You know, he really should put a storm door on this.”
“He doesn’t like the way they look on log cabins,” she said. “But it has a deadbolt.”
She pulled the door closed, then tapped in a code on the number pad above the doorknob. All the rental cabins around here had those. Mine even had one when I bought it. One of my first chores was taking that thing off.
“I’m not used to being driven around,” I said as I followed her to her car.
Her footsteps slowed a little at my words, then she picked them back up again. That left me rethinking what I’d said. Did I sound like a sexist asshole? Probably. It was ingrained in me that a man opened the door for a woman, took her to dinner, and yes, drove on dates. But this wasn’t a date.
The problem was, my head knew that, but my heart was in “impress her” mode. There wasn’t much I could do to change that.
“When are they coming to tow your truck?” she asked as we climbed in.
“They said sometime this morning.”
“Well, I’ll be home all day if you need me to come over and talk to them.”
She started the car and shifted into reverse. I settled my lunch pail at my feet and my tumbler between my legs as I fastened my seatbelt.
“Do you work at the cabin with the sign in front of it much?” I asked.
She braked at the end of the driveway, looking both ways, even though the chance of someone driving down this road was pretty slim. “Only in the busy season. There’s a sign on the door right now saying to call for assistance. If I get a call, I have to go down, but most of the time I can work from home.”
“You do that and your schoolwork at the same time?”
Mallorie nodded and backed out onto the street. “That’s the thing. He doesn’t mind me doing my schoolwork. This job started out as someone who just babysat the cabin in case someone dropped in, but these days, we spend more time responding to online requests and emails from existing homeowners. My job is basically to be on call in case I’m needed. He doesn’t really pay me all that much, but as you know, the cost of living here is pretty low.”
“And that’s why you moved back?” I asked.
I had to admit, being confined with her in this small car was doing a number on me. All I had to do was move my hand to the left a little, and I’d be touching her arm where it rested on the console. I wondered if she noticed.
“Sort of,” she said. “My mom moved to Boone after I left for college, so it’s not like I have family here. I stayed with her for a couple of months after graduation, but…well, I needed to be out on my own. I was invited to share a high-rise condo in downtown Durham with a couple of my college roommates, but I’m not a city girl. Seduction Summit is more my speed.”
I liked the sound of that. But it brought another question.
“What about your law degree? Do you plan to practice here in Seduction Summit?”
When she didn’t answer right away, I started to worry. And then I hated myself for letting it bother me. If she had to leave to take a job in a bigger city, that would be a good thing, right? What did I think was going to happen? That she’d get her degree, land a job at the Seduction Summit Courthouse, and date me until someday we got married and had kids?
I didn’t want to get married and have kids. I didn’t.
I didn’t .
Why was I feeling less certain about that than ever? Over what? This woman? Just because she smelled like flowers and had long, dark hair that I ached to run my fingers through? Just because I couldn’t stop thinking about her?
It was already becoming a problem. Last night, the guys noticed that I was distracted at our weekly poker game. They knew something was up even before I did.
“This is it,” I said when she pulled into the parking lot of this week’s job site.
My surprise was clear in my voice. I hadn’t even given her directions. It was like she’d already scouted out where we were working right now.
Then I remembered she’d mentioned her best friend was dating Dane. Of course she knew where we were working.
“I’ll see you around seven?” she asked. “Do you like spaghetti and meatballs?”
My stomach jumped to attention at the question. The oatmeal I’d slammed down before walking out of the house wouldn’t hold me over until lunch if I started thinking about spaghetti and meatballs.
“Love them,” I said. “I’ll see you at seven.”
And then I got out of the car, walking toward the guys. They were staring at its driver with knowing expressions.
I was going to get the ribbing of a lifetime for this, and I didn’t even care. I’d take it if it meant spending time around Mallorie.