Lean on Me (5 page)

The sharp honk of a horn a few seconds later kicked her brain back into gear. She pulled away, only putting as much air between them as his strong arms would allow. She looked up into those blue eyes and ran her fingers over the sexy stubble on his chin because not touching him seemed impossible right then.

When her lungs finally sparked to life again, she found the air to breathe. “Was that to let the good people of Holloway know I’m with you?”

“No, that one was just for me.” So gentle and smooth, he lowered her chin and kissed her forehead.

“Mitch, I—”

“Are you staying at the Inn?” Breaking contact, he stepped back.

The shock of cold air and loss of his body heat had her blinking and her brain scrambling. “What?”

“I’m trying to figure out where to drop you off.” He reached behind her and opened the truck door. “I assume you don’t have a car, right?”

She stared at the seat and at him. The urge to tell him, to spill her guts and explain what her life was now, shook her. But she had nothing to gain. The idea of having one of the two people who weren’t related to her and still gave her a chance in this town look at her with pity, or worse disgust, stopped the words as they hit her lips.

“No car.”

“Okay.”

“The Inn.” That was all she could get out. The ability to form grown-up sentences abandoned her.

His eyes narrowed for a second then his smile returned. “Then the Inn it is.”

That would put her a few blocks from the nursery. The tiny burst of good luck didn’t stop the swirling in her stomach. She hated lying. Lying to Mitch made her regret she ever walked into the diner tonight.

She touched her fingertips to her lips. But that kiss? Yeah, she wasn’t sorry for that.

Chapter Six

Cassidy had stuck with the staying-at-the-Inn story right up to the front door. She’d jumped out of the truck and ran to the lobby before he could get her to confess the truth, whatever that was. Gave some excuse about Allan having an exterminator at the house to explain paying for a room when she had a free one nearby.

The story sounded fake. Another lie. Mitch wondered how high the stack of those would go if he piled them on top of one another.

Her stubbornness made him want to punch something. If the gym were still open, he’d go and work off some steam. Man, she was worse than his sister and Carrie had a gold medal in the sport of mule-headedness.

When the memory of Cassidy’s cheerful voice played in his head as she described her nonexistent room, he seriously debated parking the truck, going back and dragging her out of there, yelling at her until she told him the truth. But they’d had enough public drama for one evening. The news of the kiss would be all over town before he pulled into his driveway. He’d kick his own ass for that stunt if he hadn’t wanted her so much. He walked them right into the middle of that gossip, so he couldn’t blame anyone else.

Going back to the Inn would be a bust anyway. She was already gone. He watched her sneak out the side door and head down the street. The whole hiding under her jacket hood and ducking as if being doubled over somehow made her look like someone else could have been cute if it didn’t tick him off so much. She might be a star mountain climber but she sucked at covert maneuvers. Hell, she hadn’t even checked to see if his truck left the parking lot first before venturing out on her late-night walk.

Now he coasted well behind her, only tapping on the gas when necessary to keep moving, and ignoring the stares from the few other drivers on the road as they passed his bumping pace. People in Holloway took safety for granted, but that didn’t mean that he was going to let her walk around in the dark without any reflectors or means of protection. No, he’d watch over her from afar and try to keep from chewing through the inside of his cheek in frustration.

When she cut across the open lawn leading up to the nursery, he wasn’t exactly surprised. Made sense since all of her belongings were there. On his business property.

The truck rumbled to a stop on the road. Thanks to the safety light by the entrance, he saw her dark form go up and over the fence with ease. It happened so fast it was as if she flew over. So much for the office’s security precautions. If it was that easy to break in, they were lucky a busload of trespassers didn’t unload at the gate every evening. First thing tomorrow he’d look into a commercial alarm system. Until then he had bigger problems.

“This woman is going to be the death of me,” he muttered under his breath as he slammed the truck into park and pocketed his keys.

He grumbled during the entire walk up the driveway. So much for thinking the kiss might change things. The touch of her lips tonight made the blood drain from his head and race south. For her it was foreplay to her evening of skulking around the grounds.

Women.

He debated waiting a few minutes to see what she’d clean or fix or whatever task she’d complete, but the anger flowing through his blood fueled his steps. It was like an out-of-control beast writhing around inside him. The last time he’d been hit with this sort of sick buzzing in his head his fiancée had just walked out, claiming she needed a man with more drive.

Two years gone and the memory of seeing the moving van pull away still had the power to suck the life right out of him. He didn’t love Susan anymore. No, she’d burned through those feelings long ago. He knew from his parents what happened when two people had a marriage but not a love affair, and he didn’t want any part of that sterile life. But not being able to fix the problems with Susan, not having the chance, punched a hole inside him. The downward spiral of fury was not something he intended to repeat.

Really, women made everything so damn difficult.

When he reached the gate he slipped his fingers through the chain links and stared at the darkness inside. He knew his reaction was out of proportion. Cassidy wasn’t Susan and this wasn’t about a broken engagement. He didn’t even know Cassidy well enough to be this angry or feel betrayed by her sitting there and lying to his face about staying at the Inn. Yet he was. Figuring out she was living on his property was one thing but watching her not even flinch as she made up a convoluted story and tried to sell it to him sent his temperature spiking into rage territory. Lying had always been the one step too far for him in a relationship, not that this was one.

Still, something about the lie tonight, about the whole Inn fiasco, felt personal. Just that morning she’d stood over her mother’s grave marker and gave him a peek into the sadness and frustration of her life. She let him in. Now she was locking him out, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Breathing through his nose, he tried to control the mix of confusion and rage whipping through him. He’d confront her, get her to give up the real story and then they’d move forward from there. If the talk led to another kiss then to bed, he wouldn’t fight it. He’d wanted her as soon as he’d seen her hovering over those mums. Spence didn’t get that part wrong.

He used his key because the idea of climbing over the fence made his anger blow all over again. The gravel crunched under his boots as he walked. No need to hide his presence. The goal wasn’t to sneak up and scare her, though the idea had its merits.

He turned the corner and saw her hanging by the potting shed. She’d taken her insulated coat off, leaving only the slim sweater she’d worn to dinner. Interesting choice since the temperature hovered around thirty degrees. Mitch regretted not wearing a hat because of the wind and this woman stripped down to her lounging-on-the-couch outfit.

It was another reminder of the life she led before she returned home. Extreme temperatures—extreme anything—didn’t faze her. He’d remember that on their next date. And despite all this nonsense tonight, there would be a next one.

Pushing up her sleeves, she grabbed a pair of gardening gloves and pulled them on. Between the pile of fertilizer to her left and the pots to her right, her plans weren’t exactly a mystery. Spence had left a note with projects he wanted done in the morning. Mitch remembered seeing it on the work-assignment board before he locked up and left for dinner. Made him wonder when she’d seen it.

Regardless of the timing, it looked like Cassidy had decided to do some transplanting. Because that was a rational way to spend the evening.

Shame shoveling shit wasn’t on his agenda.

Terrifying her wasn’t either. He pitched his voice low, almost at a whisper. “Cassidy?”

He reached out to touch her shoulder just as she shifted her weight to the side. He grabbed empty air as momentum pushed him forward. His fingers just missed the potting workbench. Before he regained his balance her hip connected with his. The bump tangled their legs together. He outweighed her by a good eighty pounds and didn’t want to crash into her and hurt her, so he twisted his body and groaned as something wrenched and tightened in the small of his back. The move ended with a hiss of unexpected pain and the loss of most of his balance. Plus, she had surprise on her side and knowledge of a game he didn’t even know they were playing.

He never saw her face but he saw her body turn with her head down and hands out. Like a charging bull she came at him. Her palms simultaneously hit his arm and side. He felt the hard shove as her body knocked into his shoulder and the last of his balance vanished.

A flash of blond. The thumping of feet. He saw and heard it all as he kicked the pots at his feet and heard a crash as one broke. Before he could get his legs under him, his ankle rolled over a bag of something. He knocked his hands against the workbench, trying to grab on and steady his weight. But it was too late. He went down swearing and shouting her name, the back twinge forgotten.

He braced for a hard smack against the pavement. Instead, dirt kicked up on a soft landing. Fertilizer squished around him. He lifted his head, but it was too late; the smell of crap wound through his senses as his butt sank deeper into the pile. Scrambling and throwing his weight forward, he jumped out and up a second after he fell. Not that quickness bought him anything. What he decided to think of as dirt stuck to his jeans and blackened his hands.

He brushed off as much as possible but the stink remained. So did the red-hot anger clouding his vision. Looked like the time for being nice had ended. It was time to make plans. If Cassidy wanted to play dirty, oh yeah, he could play filthy.

Throw him in a pile of shit and run? Game on.

* * *

Cassidy glanced at her watch for the fifth time in twenty minutes. Allan was supposed to meet her at six for breakfast. No way would she have picked this ungodly time of the morning to get up even though she never went to bed. After last night’s activities she should be running out of town or at the very least hiding. She didn’t have the energy for either.

Mitch lying in a pile of fertilizer. It would take her months to shake that visual image from her mind. From all the yelling and profanity, she doubted he’d forget it any time soon either. She couldn’t imagine many men handled being dumped in crap all that well. Mitch was no exception.

She tried to put the memory pieces together and figure out how they went from dinner to what she viewed as the real The Fall of Holloway. It all happened so fast. She’d heard his voice and her body took over. Bolting and pretending he couldn’t see her had seemed like a smart plan at the time. She hadn’t meant to push him.

This is why she had so few friends. Actually, none at the moment. Her people skills were all mucked up. Nonexistent, if she were honest about it.

The reaction had been pure instinct and stupid and she’d spent all night awake and huddled in a dark corner of the Inn’s parking garage trying to figure out how to fix her newest mess. She’d left all of her stuff at the nursery, including the jacket she really needed to ward off the biting wind, and feared going back to find any of it. Mostly Mitch.

She didn’t have any explanations or answers for him. Skipping town was out, but the idea of facing him made her shoulders convulse on a shiver, and not the good kind.

The unraveling of her life continued. It started with the interview that upset her sponsors and everyone in Holloway, except those who were related to her and knew to ignore her babbling. That one was survivable. The sponsors grumbled but stuck with her until she got sick, really sick, and had to walk away from it all. She just never expected she’d walk away broke, with all her money stolen.

She’d been back in town a few days and already had people talking, her stepfather hiding and Mitch following her. All in all, not a stellar week.

Darla stopped at the table and leaned on a knee in the booth across from her. “Heard you snagged Mitch.”

Cassidy didn’t even let her mind go there. “Took less than twelve hours for that gem to get around.”

“Everyone is talking about it. There’s even a nickname for it.”

Of course there was
. “Please don’t say it.”

“The Kiss.”

Cassidy let her head fall in her hands and stared at the table. “I’m starting to remember why I left this town.”

“Honey, you are the most interesting thing to happen in Holloway in years.” Darla slid into the booth and stretched her hand across the table. “Heck, you have Mitch chasing his tail. Haven’t seen him this fired up since, well, never. Susan didn’t even yank his crank like this.”

Cassidy’s head shot up. “Who is Susan?”

If she’d been ready for that bit of information, she would have been more subtle. As it was, Cassidy had to stop from lunging across the table and grabbing Darla by the shoulders. If Mitch was married while he was kissing her like that, forget The Snub. She’d give the town a full view of The Killing and once she explained why she did it no woman for miles would blame her. Good luck to any prosecutor trying to seat a jury.

“She’s the ex.”

Cassidy wasn’t ready to unclench. “Ex what?”

“Fiancée.” Mitch appeared out of nowhere. “How ya doing, Darla?”

“I was just talking about you.” She stood up and rubbed a hand up and down his arm.

The move was friendly, not flirty. Almost big sister-like. But after the info bomb Carla just dropped it came off as more entirely too intimate for Cassidy’s comfort level.

“I heard but I have a feeling there will be a lot of talk today.” Mitch took Darla’s seat and stretched out his long legs beneath the table.

Cassidy tried to tuck her feet under her. Then his ankles slid closer, tapping against her and she knew lounging in the seat was really about trapping her there.

Darla missed it all. She was too busy waving off other customers who were trying to get her attention and chatting with Mitch. “It’s a good thing you came in to, you know, smooth everything over.”

“Exactly why I came in at this crazy-ass breakfast hour,” he said.

Between the touching and the clinking of silverware and dishes around them, Cassidy’s mind dropped out of the conversation for a second. She tried to leap back in. “Since you two know what you’re talking about, how about explaining it to me.”

“After the smooching in the parking lot there’s bound to be some talk.” Darla took her pen from behind her ear and tapped the end against her order pad. “No one will be mean, and I’m not judging you or the grabby-hands thing outside because I’m all for this relationship, but—”

He cleared his throat. “I think what you’re trying to say is that people will think we had a skanky one-night stand and moved on unless they see us together today.”

“Right, but in a nicer way because Cassidy here is starting to look a little green around the mouth.”

“You’ve both got to be kidding. We had dinner. We didn’t strip naked and crawl up on the counter to put on a show.” Cassidy wanted to bang her head against the table. The two pair of eyes staring at her—one concerned and one interested—stopped her, but just barely.