7. Charlie
The key is in the ignition, but no matter how many times I turn it, the darn car will not start. Again!
It’s my own fault. I should’ve gotten rid of this pile of junk by now. Well, getting it to a mechanic might be a less dramatic step. I just never seem to find the time. Besides, I need my car to get to my clients, which is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing this morning.
After multiple attempts at starting the car, losing my temper entirely, and finally concluding that I’m going to have to cancel on this new, very affluent client, I rest my head on the steering wheel and heave a massive sigh of frustration. Clearly, I was some evil fiend in a past life, and karma is only now catching up with me.
I gasp in shock at the sound of a sharp knock on my driver’s door window. Straightening in my seat, my heart thumps in my chest as I look out and up at Troy, who is currently peering in at me inquisitively.
Great!
It’s been five days since Milly conned me into attending his welcome home party, and apart from brief greetings whenever we happened to have seen each other, we haven’t really spoken. If I’m honest, the situation hasn’t been anywhere near as bad as my overactive imagination predicted.
It turns out that I didn’t have the first clue what Troy was doing in Paris, and thanks to Milly, I now know that he’s actually a fully qualified chef. Not just any old chef, either. He was trained by some of the most prestigious chefs in the city. I’ll admit, I was pretty impressed with that information.
I also discovered that he’s bought a place in Cherryville and plans to start up a fine dining restaurant, which is likely the reason he’s currently donning a white apron over his jeans and t-shirt. A t-shirt that emphasizes his bulging biceps.
While he’s been busy cheffing, if that is even a word, I’ve had my own hands full. My business has really taken off in the last two years, which has been both a blessing and a curse. While I absolutely love my job, I have little time to do much else.
“Are you okay?” Troy asks through the window.
Clearly, I am anything but, and yet, I suppose there’s little else he can say. There’ll be no flying out of the driveway to avoid him this time, so I have no choice but to get out and speak with him.
He takes a step back when I open the door. I’m still seething, and by his wary expression as he gazes at me, my emotions are written all over my face.
“I hate this piece of junk,” I spit, slamming the door behind me.
“Want me to take a look?” he asks, gesturing to the hood.
I shake my head in frustration. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m going to miss my appointment. I’ll just have to reschedule.”
Troy gives me a long look; then, half-turning toward his driveway, he points to his dad’s truck. “Take the truck,” he says casually, as if offering a forty-thousand-dollar vehicle to a complete stranger is totally normal. Okay, not a complete stranger, but you know what I mean.
“No way!” I blurt, gaping in disbelief. “It’s your dad’s pride and joy.”
Troy shrugs. With a wry grin, he says, “And? It’s not like you don’t know how to drive.”
I throw him a look as he once more refers to my tearing out of the driveway last week. “That’s not the point. I’d be scared to death of anything happening to it.”
And I would, but the idea of driving Mr. Heaton’s truck is not the only thing that’s causing me discomfort. Even counting our conversation at the bar the other night, this is the longest I’ve been in Troy’s presence since he left. He still smells awesome. He always did. But more importantly, I can slowly feel my defenses slipping.
I haven’t exactly put up a barricade, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with myself about not getting hurt again since Troy’s return. But the matters of the heart are never that easy, are they?
“Well, then, how about I drive you?” he offers.
Absolutely not!
Being in such proximity to him for such a length of time is asking for trouble, and as panic washes over me, I overreact. “That’s even worse,” I shriek.
He smiles then. It’s a knowing smile, and the even more awkward thing about it is that I know what he’s thinking. Milly has already given me the lowdown on what Troy thought when I drove out of the driveway like my house was on fire. He has concluded that I want nothing to do with him. And he’s right.
Really?
Yes. I am certain that this is what I want.
Right.
Troy looks me dead in the eye. “How important is this appointment, Charlie? I mean, I’m assuming this is for work, and that you’re going to see a client,” he surmises, just a little too astutely for my liking.
“It’s worse than that. It’s a new client, and this first impression might blow the contract,” I huff. “But then, stuff happens, right? Cars break down all the time. Surely my client will understand that.”
I’m trying to convince myself more than anybody else.
“Right,” Troy agrees. His tone has all the conviction of a wet paper bag.
I look at him, and he lifts his eyebrows and shrugs, telling me it’s my choice. A choice between a rock and a hard place. If I go, I go with Troy. If I don’t, I might lose this client, and any other clientele that her reviews and conversations with her affluent friends might have landed me.
“Charlie,” Troy continues, “giving you a ride is not a big deal.”
Maybe not for him, but it is for me. I throw a hand at his apron, which already, even at this ungodly hour of the morning, has smudges of food across it. “You’re busy,” I say lamely.
Without hesitation, Troy rips the apron off and chucks it over the fence. “Not anymore,” he says with a huge grin.
I can’t help but laugh. And in that second, I know I’ve lost.
The journey out to Mrs. Phelps”s house is a little awkward, at least for me. I just feel like I’m putting Troy out, no matter how many times he tells me that this isn’t the case. I’m not usually particularly relieved to meet a new client, but in this case, I can’t wait to get out of the truck and into her home.
I did warn Troy that I might be an hour, but thankfully, Mrs. Phelps is not much of a talker. In fact, she is brusque but knows exactly what she wants, which actually makes my job easier. We make arrangements for a second visit to discuss details, which will also give me some time to come up with ideas, and then I leave.
“I thought you were going to be ages?” Troy says when I climb back into the truck. He’s grinning teasingly at me.
“Thank you,” I say, mainly because I don’t know what else to say.
“Charlie, will you quit it?” Troy replies, pulling out into the traffic. “I didn’t donate a kidney, for goodness” sake.”
“Time is just as precious these days,” I counter.
He throws me a look, but I don’t know what it means. While there’s definitely a frown there, there’s something else hovering just underneath it.
“Is there anywhere else you need to go?” he asks as he continues to drive easily with one hand.
“I think you’ve done enough for one day, don’t you?” I reply.
“You’ve got to think logically, Charlie. If your car isn’t working, you can’t get to the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the liquor store. You know, you might need stuff.”
I give him a long look. His attention is on the traffic ahead, but my attention is on him. While I have the opportunity, I drink him in. His prominent cheekbones, his tight jaw, his slender neck, his well-formed shoulders and chest, his flat stomach. Just all of him.
He hasn’t changed much. He was nineteen when he left, so he was as grown as he was ever going to be. But now, there’s a maturity about him that I’m struggling to get my head around. He is nearly thirty, Charlie.
I know that. And maybe, if he’d stayed in Cherryville—if the changes had happened before my very eyes like they have with Milly, Kate Black, Dave Kilburn, and Sheila—I would hardly have noticed.
But it’s like Troy left Cherryville as a boy and returned as a man. A man who disconcerts me a little, simply because he’s a little calmer, he’s more put together and responsible, and he seems to have his head on straight.
But so are you.
My inner voice is not wrong in her reasoning. The difference is that I’ve spent the last ten years in my own presence. I know how I’ve changed. It’s just so very strange to see it in Troy.
But he still left you without a word.
Yes. There is that.
We get back to the house, and as Troy pulls into his driveway, I say, “Do you want to come in for a coffee?”
Clearly, my question astonishes him, because his head flies around to look at me. He’s so shocked that he rolls into the grass on the side of his driveway.
I’ll admit, the offer was not a decision I took lightly. In fact, for the final five minutes of the journey home, I battled with myself on whether to offer him coffee or not. But at the end of the day, he had just taken an hour and a half out of his day to chauffeur me to and from my client’s house. We’d also stopped at the grocery store so I could pick up a few things I thought I might need.
Coffee was the least I could do.
Troy has swiftly regained control of both his senses and the truck, and he brings the beast to a stop. Turning the ignition off, he turns to me again. “Are you serious?”
“Hang on,” I counter. “So you can offer to drive me around, but I can’t offer you coffee?”
Troy shakes his head. “It’s not that. I’m just… surprised.”
“As am I,” I reply, turning to open the passenger door. “Let’s hurry before I change my mind.”
I can hear Troy chuckling as he clambers out of his side of the truck, and a second later, we’re both walking up my driveway.