Chapter 2
2
BEAU
D id this count as kidnapping? In a town full of people looking for a reason to criminalize me, I was pretty sure it did, even if she was a willing passenger in my full-size pickup.
“There’s a diner here in town,” I said. “But if you really want to escape, we should head to Adairsville. That’s the next town over.”
I didn’t look at her, just kept my face forward. My left hand gripped the steering wheel so hard, my knuckles were white.
“Let’s go to Adairsville,” she said. “I need a glass of wine and I’m told your town doesn’t have it.”
“I wouldn’t call this my town.”
She looked over at me then, and I resisted the urge to return her stare. “You don’t live here?”
“Oh, I live here,” I said. “I’ve lived in Seduction Summit all my life. Pretty much got kicked out of town as a teenager. Joined the military. One of my neighbors on the base told me a bunch of vets were relocating to my hometown for logging work. I can operate equipment and chop wood with the best of them.”
So here I was, back at home, where I couldn’t walk into a building without people whispering. I was the guy who stole a pack of cigarettes from the gas station near the exit ramp more than two decades ago. I’d been thirteen at the time, and it was a dare from one of my buddies, but it didn’t matter. I was basically a criminal who’d never lived down that reputation, even after graduating high school and doing two tours overseas.
“No liquor in Seduction Summit,” I said. “Well, except for the lodge.”
“I could’ve gotten my glass of wine there. I just can’t handle the vibe.”
The vibe. Apparently, that was a thing now. As my coworkers had begun coupling up with younger women, that saying had spread through our still-developing logging crew. I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but I could guess.
“You won, though,” I said. “Don’t you want to celebrate?”
“The problem is, only three of us are finalists and the rest have to stick around and watch us celebrate. That kind of sucks, right?”
I narrowed my eyes but continued to stare out the windshield. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It sounded like she felt guilty for actually reaching her goal.
“I know I shouldn’t worry about what other people think,” she said. “It’s just awkward, you know? We’ve all worked equally hard to get where we are. No one is more deserving than anyone else. And I may not even win tomorrow. I could come in third, at which point I’ll feel like crap on a stick.”
She let out a sigh, and the silence stretched between us. I should say something here, but I wasn’t exactly known for my people skills.
Normally, I was decent at getting women into bed if I set my mind to it, but I’d gotten bored with that. I needed a connection —a woman who wanted to get to know me rather than just get me naked.
That went both ways. I wanted a woman like the one in my passenger seat. One who got my dick hard just looking at her but also interested me. I couldn’t say why, but when this woman talked, I wanted her to keep talking. I couldn’t seem to get enough.
“I was watching you,” I said.
Wait, that sounded stalker-ish. The truth was, I’d homed in on her from the first time I saw her sitting at the big table in the restaurant with a bunch of other women. Nobody at that table—or in the entire restaurant—existed as soon as I saw her. I’d watched from the bar, where I grabbed dinner every night after work.
I’d thought about her last night as I lay in bed, my erection growing as I remembered the generous swell of her breasts under that black sweater. I’d come twice thinking of her—once before bed and once in the shower this morning.
That was why it had been such a shock to see her in the lift ticket building the logging crew used for the bathrooms. It was like she’d stepped right out of my fantasies.
“I saw your group,” I corrected when I noticed her once again watching me. “There were a lot of you.”
“Just a dozen bakers.” She laughed. “A baker’s dozen. But only twelve of us. The judges are staying at a different hotel to avoid mixing with everyone. They want their decision to be based only on our baking, not on how we acted at dinner or on a conversation they might have with us in the elevator.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
Truth be told, I hadn’t heard much of what she just said. My mind had drifted to the way she’d looked in that lift ticket building, her cheeks still red from the outside chill, that long skirt tapering to pink snow boots that matched her pink coat…
I’d never seen a woman like her, and I was pretty sure I never would again. I had to find a way to keep her in my life.
That thought shocked me. It wasn’t like me at all. The last thing I wanted was someone permanently in my life. I was a loner. I kept my distance from people. Even my logging crew buddies. I’d joke around and do what it took to get the job done, but if they wanted to pal around after work, I was not their guy.
If you trusted people, they let you down. I learned that lesson early in my life.
“You were at the bar,” she said. “I saw you.”
Now, I looked over at her. It was the first time I’d taken my eyes off the road, even though I knew these streets like the back of my hand. I could probably close my eyes and drive it if there weren’t other vehicles on the road.
“Yeah, I have dinner at the bar every night,” I said. “Beats going home and…”
I didn’t finish that sentence, suddenly aware how pathetic it made me sound. Going home and eating a warmed-up frozen dinner or leftover pizza in front of the TV wasn’t something to be proud of. It’d never bothered me before, but all of a sudden, it did.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t as much a loner as I thought. I didn’t want to let people in, but I also didn’t want to be completely cut off from the rest of the population.
“Welcome to Adairsville,” she read as we sped past the sign. “I’ve lived in Boone all my life. You ever been there?”
“Nope,” I said. “Heard of it, but I’ve never been.”
She looked over at me again and my heart did a little jump. That was a first. Well, maybe not the first time in my life, but the first time a female had brought that reaction in me since my teenage years.
Was that what this was? Some sort of adolescent crush? But I was a grown man, so that didn’t make sense.
“You know what I could go for?” she asked.
She reached down and unzipped each of her boots, then removed them, baring her socked feet. They were thick socks, and bright pink like her coat and her boots. The weird thing was, she didn’t seem like the type of person who’d be all that into hot pink. She seemed down to earth. Chill. Hot pink was for overly cheerful women like cheerleaders and the employees at the ski lodge.
“What’s that?” I asked, distracted by her bare feet.
Why was the sight of her in socks doing things to me? I definitely wasn’t a foot man, but with this woman, I could be into just about anything.
“A burger and some fries from one of those stands,” she said.
“Stands?”
“You know, like a hot dog stand, but with burgers.”
I’d been running through a mental checklist of the nice restaurants in town, figuring a woman like this deserved to be treated to a gourmet meal. Burgers and hot dogs were definitely more my speed, though, so I wasn’t going to talk her into a fancy restaurant to impress her.
“I know just the place,” I said.
A few minutes later, my pickup was parked in front of The Patty Shack. It wasn’t anything fancy—it was really more food truck than burger stand—but I’d stopped by here more times than I could count over the course of my lifetime.
“Two Shack Stack burgers,” I announced as I climbed back into the truck, a bag with two foam containers in my left hand. “It’s their best. Double burger, loaded with all the good stuff.”
I handed the bag to her and started up the truck, hightailing it out of there before someone from Seduction Summit could see me.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Somewhere that will let us enjoy these burgers in peace.”
She’d been staring straight ahead, but now she looked over at me. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. She was wondering what I meant, but no way was I going to tell her my destination was a place I’d taken girls to make out when I was a teenager.
Yes, being a bad boy hadn’t hurt me when it came to dating. I just had to deal with most girls sneaking around behind their parents’ back to do it.
“I’m Macy, by the way,” she said. “I guess we haven’t even introduced ourselves yet.”
Macy. A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. And yeah, we hadn’t even introduced ourselves. I was usually a gentleman, but social conventions tended to pass me by.
“I’m Beau,” I said. “So, you’re a baker?”
“Want to be. I work in a grocery store bakery at home, but everything comes in frozen. We just thaw it out and decorate it.”
“I guess there’s some creativity in the decorating,” I said.
“Not really.” She sighed. “It’s all the same. Rosettes along the edges. ‘Happy birthday, insert name here.’ Don’t misspell the name and box everything up so it doesn’t get damaged on the way home. That’s my life.”
It was clear from the tone in her voice that this wasn’t a life she would have chosen. That was no doubt why she was in Seduction Summit, baking cakes or whatever in a tent at the bottom of a ski slope.
“So, you want to run your own bakery?” I asked. “Or is this more something you’ll do out of your house? Catering?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed and stared dreamily through the windshield. “I like the community of running a bakery, but in a beautiful place like this, not in the suburbs. That’s probably a dumb goal, isn’t it?”
I frowned. Actually, the idea of her running a bakery in my town sounded damn good. I could get to know her, maybe ask her out on a date.
Or would this qualify as a date? It certainly would have when I was a teenager, and it wasn’t like I routinely took women out to fancy restaurants.
But Macy deserved better. She deserved candlelight and roses and tables covered in white tablecloths.
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” I said.
“But bakers need to be where the customers are. Probably not a huge demand for kids’ birthday cakes around here. Are there even weddings…or parties?”
“Yep. Especially at the lodge.”
She seemed to think about that quietly a minute or so before saying, “I’m sure they have their own bakers.”
I knew nothing about that. I’d never seen a baker in this town. I’d definitely seen my fair share of parties in the ski lodge restaurant, though—birthday and otherwise.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” I said. “But there’s a huge tourism industry during the winter months in this town. And not a bakery in sight. If you want doughnuts, you have to come all the way to Adairsville.”
“Really?”
She looked over at me, and the hope in her expression went straight to my heart. I flipped the turn signal to take the road that would lead to the lake and tried to ignore the subtle tug at my heart.
Yes, this woman was getting to me in a way no one had in a long, long time. And if I wasn’t careful, she might just work her way past that concrete block I’d built around my heart.