Chapter 6
Chapter Six
MICAH
Ihadn’t slept more than two hours a night for the past three nights. The dull thud behind my temples had become a pulsing behind my eyeballs, and the florescent lights of the grocery store weren’t helping.
Between the Darrin Callo case, our other cases, keeping an eye on that asshole Cormack, and trying to make sure Charlie didn’t get herself killed, Leo and I were stretched so goddamn thin I could barely see straight.
As soon as I got off work, I headed for the grocery store.
I moved through the aisles with single-minded determination toward the refrigerated section.
I hadn’t had dinner—hell, I wasn’t sure I’d put more than coffee in my stomach all day—but I was at the point that I didn’t give a shit.
I hit the beer cooler and grabbed a six-pack, letting out a sigh of relief.
I planned to drink the whole thing, pass out, and, God willing, sleep for at least twelve hours.
Slapping the fridge door closed, I spun on my boot and started toward the front of the store when I spotted a head of wild, wavy, light red hair perusing the wine selection a few yards away.
“What the fuck?”
She stretched an arm to grab a bottle on one of the higher shelves, pulling my focus to her stunning curves and a lush, round ass. An ass I recognized. One that had been burned on my brain.
“What the fuck?” I repeated louder.
She turned just then and did a stutter step on her sexy-as-fuck wedges, nearly dropping the wine bottle as soon as she saw me. Her familiar gem-blue eyes went wide with shock. “Micah?”
“Hayden? What the fuck are you doin’ here?” The edges of my vision started to close in. “Jesus Christ, did you follow me here?”
Her chin jerked back in shock. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t think that was a hard question to comprehend, Red. What are you doing here?” I repeated, asking the question slowly.
The shock melted from her features and twisted into a furious scowl that I might have found adorable if I wasn’t currently worrying that the best sex of my life had been with a raving lunatic with stalker tendencies.
“What’s it look like?” she asked in a snotty voice while lifting the bottle of red in her hand. “I’m buying wine.”
“Not what I mean, and you know it. What are you doin’ in my town? How the hell did you even find me?”
“Are you serious? I didn’t find you! This is purely coincidental. How would I even go about doing that when all I knew was your first name?”
I threw my arms out at my sides, exhaustion and stress making me a tad bit irrational as I declared, “I don’t know! I don’t know how the hell stalkers think. Maybe you went through my wallet that night. Who the hell knows?”
“Oh my God!” she cried indignantly. “I’m not stalking you, asshole. I live here.”
“Bullshit,” I clipped, noticing from the corner of my eye that we’d gained the attention of the people around us with our loud argument. “I live here,” I stressed. “Lived here for years. I know every resident of this town, and you are . . . not . . . one of them.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared furiously. An expression so unlike all the ones I’d seen from her that night. “Well, apparently not all of them.”
I mimicked her stance, narrowing my eyes in a glare. “Yeah? Since when?”
“That’s none of your business,” she returned snidely before letting out a dramatic groan and lifting her hand to rake her fingers through all that long thick hair.
In spite of being in the middle of a yelling match, watching all that silky red fall made my dick begin to thicken.
“Should’ve known he was a jackass,” she grumbled to herself. “Jesus, I can really pick ’em.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Her face scrunched up in rage. “Again, that’s none of your damn business.
I’m so done with this,” she clipped. She whipped around and started to storm off before changing course and stomping back up to me, shoving a finger in my face.
“And you know what? You need to get over yourself. You weren’t even that good! ” she exclaimed loudly.
I let out a caustic laugh. “Sure, Red. Keep tellin’ yourself that. I had the scratch marks all over my back for days to prove otherwise.”
“Gah!” she shouted. “You’re such a prick!”
“A prick who rocked your world!”
“That night was the biggest mistake ever!”
My mouth curled into a smug grin. “Yeah? Bet if I offered you’d jump at the chance for a repeat.”
She threw daggers with her eyes. “Not on your life, asshole. I don’t sleep with men I hate.”
“Wanna put money on that, stalker? Hate sex is the best kind there is. Give me a few minutes and I’ll prove it to you.”
“Lick rust, Micah.” With that, she spun on her heel and stormed down the aisle, her round ass and curvy hips swaying enticingly as she disappeared around the corner, leaving me pissed and turned on at the same damn time.
How the hell was that even possible?
Hayden
I let out a deep, cleansing breath as I followed Sylvia into the next position, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t stop stewing over my encounter with that arrogant, narcissistic bastard from the night before.
“You know, yoga’s supposed to help calm you. You’re as tangled up as that piece of gum you had to get outta Ivy’s hair last week. You wanna tell me what’s going on? Is it ’cause Ivy’s gone this weekend?”
“No. I mean, yes—well, kind of . . . It’s not entirely that,” I admitted, letting out a deep sigh. “Of course I hate not having her with me. I don’t think that feeling will ever go away.”
“I wouldn’t imagine so. But if that’s not the crux of your issues this morning, what is?”
Pursing my lips, I blew out a long, slow exhale as I adjusted on my mat to face Sylvia.
She did the same, criss-crossing her legs and pulling her heels in much closer than I could pull mine.
From so many years of yoga, my eighty-three-year-old great-aunt was about a million times more flexible than I was.
“I met this guy in a bar back in Richmond one night a few weeks back . . .”
Her blue eyes began to dance in the sunlight beaming down on us. “Ooh, this sounds promising.”
I let out a laugh and shook my head. “Only you would think of admitting to a one-night stand as ‘promising.’”
She scoffed in affront and exclaimed, “Well, of course I would. I see no harm whatsoever in a woman knowing her desires and doin’ something about seein’ they’re fulfilled.
I’ll never wrap my head around these people who think it’s wrong for a woman to go in search of great sex while a man gets a pat on the back for the same damn thing. Speaking of, how was it?”
“It was . . . incredible,” I confessed, my shoulders slumping in defeat. “Hands down, the best I’ve ever had. Like, nothing before that even compared. And I had all these really great memories of that night that I thought I’d be able to look back on whenever I wanted.”
She lifted an inquisitive brow. “I don’t understand. Why do you sound so broken up about that?”
“Because I am. In a cruel twist of fate—since that bitch hasn’t already gotten enough punches in—I discovered he lives here when I ran into him at the market last night.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, right? It means you can have as many repeats as you’d like.”
“No! That’s just it. It’s a bad thing. As it turns out, the guy’s a massive dick. I mean, he actually accused me of stalking him. He thought I was in Hope Valley because I’d followed him or something.”
“The hell he did,” she snapped in outrage. And an outraged Sylvia was nothing you ever wanted to mess with.
“He absolutely did. We got into this big shouting match right there in the middle of the aisle with all these people I don’t even know watching like we were putting on a show or something.”
“That’s small-town livin’ for you, sweets. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. Don’t worry, you’ll eventually get used to it.”
I collapsed back onto mat with a pained groan, staring up at the gorgeous blue sky and puffy white clouds.
“This is just sad. I’m a thirty-three-year-old divorcee whose husband couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and threw me over for the other woman.
Then the best sex of my life turned out to be the biggest asshole I’ve ever met. Maybe I’m cursed or something.”
“Oh nonsense. There’s no such thing as curses.”
I turned my head and looked up at her, lifting a hand to block the sun. “Yeah? Then what do you think the problem is?”
“You’re simply crap at picking good men, that’s all,” Sylvia stated almost amiably before sucking in a gasp like she’d just had a lightbulb moment. “Oh! You know what? You should really meet my neighbor,” she insisted, like I wasn’t in the middle of a crisis.
“Sylvia,” I groaned, “another guy is so not the answer.”
“But I think this one may just be. He’s a great man.” She waggled her brows. “And I get a sense he’s quite accomplished in the sack.”
“And how would you have a ‘sense’ about something like that?”
“You get to be my age, you just know about these things.”
I looked back to the sky and let loose a laugh. It had started off slow and quiet but built in speed and sound until tears welled in my eyes and spilled down my temples into my hair. Man, did it feel good to laugh like that after the shitty twenty-four hours I’d had.
“You’re gonna be just fine, darlin’ girl,” Sylvia said, giving my knee a pat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna finish my vinyasa. And I could really use a glass of iced tea.”
My laughter trickled off into giggles as I pushed up from my mat and started toward my back door. “On it. Be right back.”
I skip-walked down the cobblestones, feeling lighter than I thought possible a few minutes ago.
The second I pushed the back door open, I heard my cellphone go off.
Moving to the counter, I pulled it from its charger and swiped to answer, holding it between my shoulder and ear as I moved around the kitchen. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe. It’s Nona. From the flower shop the other day?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember. How’s it going?” I asked as I grabbed a couple glasses from the cabinet then headed for the fridge to get the pitcher of iced tea.
“Everything’s good. I’m calling because there’s gonna be a live band playing at The Tap Room tonight, and I wanted to see if you’d be interested in going.”
“What’s The Tap Room?” I asked as I poured the tea and moved to put the pitcher back into the fridge.
“It’s the best bar in town. You’re gonna love it, trust me. Say you’ll come. I know it’s really last minute, but it’ll be a lot of fun. And Eden and I can introduce you to the rest of our friends. You’ll fit right in.”
Fitting in with a new crowd in my new town sounded nice, especially considering I didn’t have a single friend in the world to speak of. Who was I to turn down a shot at making some new ones?
“You know what? That sounds great. What time should I meet you guys?”
“The band goes on at eight. How’s that sound?”
The corners of my lips began to tilt upward and excitement bloomed in my belly. “Sounds awesome. I’ll see you there.”
“See you then, doll.”
I hung up and set my phone down so I could grab the glasses of iced tea.
“Sure did take you longer than I expected,” Sylvia said as I made my way to her through the garden.
“Sorry. Nona called while I was in there. She invited me to a ladies’ night tonight.”
Sylvia took one of the glasses from my hand and sipped while lifting a dainty brow. “Is that so? Well it looks like this day’s takin’ a turn for the better after all, huh?”
I sure as hell hoped so.
“Now help an old lady off the ground, would you? I still have a few miles in these hips of mine. Be a damn shame to break one now.” She shot me a wink as I grabbed her hands and pulled her to standing. “Know some gentleman who’d be real disappointed if I was put out of commission.”
God, my aunt was nuts. And I absolutely loved it.