On Pins and Needles (18 page)

“You're who I'm crazy about. Why would I not want you to be you?”

“Because it will embarrass you because you don't believe in the same things I believe in. Because we're
different and you don't want different—you told me so yourself.”

“I want you,” he said as if he knew it without a doubt.

But his certainty didn't override Megan's doubts. “It won't work,” she decreed, feeling as if her heart were breaking even as she did.

“How do you know it won't work until we try?”

“I know. I've been there.”

“You haven't been there with me.”

For the third time Megan shook her head. Only this time she let that be her only answer.

That and getting out of bed.

She kept the sheet around her and left Josh, going into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

“Come on, Megan. You can't mean this,” he called to her through that solid oak panel.

“I do mean it,” she managed to answer the same way.

“And what am I supposed to do? Just put on my clothes and walk out of here? Pretend last night didn't happen and just say hi, how are you, when I pass you on the street?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” she said, strongly enough to convey that she wasn't going to waver in her decision.

“You just want me to go?” he said in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“Dammit, this is ridiculous.”

“It's how I feel.”

“Well, change how you feel.”

The split-second right after that seemed to shout of the irony of that statement before she heard him sigh disgustedly and mutter, “Oh, geez,” as if he knew he couldn't take it back or lessen the impact it had.

“Fine,” he shouted in defeat. “If that's how you want it.”

“That's how I want it,” she barely whispered.

Megan listened intently to the sounds of Josh snatching up his clothes and storming out of her bedroom, out of her house, leaving behind him nothing but an empty, lonely silence.

Then she pressed the top of her head to the bathroom door and simply stood there, letting hot tears drop from her eyes onto her bare feet.

And as they did she couldn't help wondering how it had come to this, how it had come to this so quickly.

And what she'd done to screw up her karma so badly that she had to meet a man like Josh and still send him packing….

W
HAT HAD BEGUN AS A
spectacular weekend on Friday night became one of the worst Megan had ever spent after the argument with Josh on Saturday morning. And that turned into a week that was not much better.

Business picked up remarkably, which would have been helpful in keeping her mind off the sheriff except that it seemed as if every second or third of her new clients named him as the person who had recommended acupuncture. Those clients frequently went on to talk about their own relationship with him—whether it be as a relative or a friend or just someone who had known him or his family forever.

It was interesting for Megan to see how right she'd been in believing that a high-profile client like the town sheriff could be a big boost to establishing her business with word-of-mouth recommendations, but each mention of Josh's name, each anecdote, just defeated what she was trying so hard to do—put him out of her thoughts.

Not that she was having much luck with that even when she didn't have a client bringing him into the con
versation. It was as if he'd become for her what the latest cause became for her parents—an obsession. Because without a doubt, Josh was all Megan could think about.

Everything seemed to remind her of him. He was on her mind the minute she woke up in the morning. He was the last thing she thought about in bed at night. And many times in between she was so lost in the memory of him or some thing they'd done together or some thing he'd said, that she wasn't even aware of anything or anyone around her.

Which was exactly the case late on Friday afternoon as she stood in the break room with the teapot upturned over the sink, the tea long since having gone down the drain and Annissa saying her name in a way that let her know it hadn't been the first time her sister had called to her.

“Where is your head this week?” Nissa asked when Megan finally jolted back to reality.

“Sorry,” Megan muttered as her sister turned off the hot plate she'd for got ten about.

Then Nissa took the teapot from her, set it on the counter, stretched out her arm to point her index finger at the love seat, and said, “Sit. Right now. And tell me what's going on.” Megan purposely
hadn't
told her sister what had happened with Josh when Nissa had returned from Denver Sunday night. She felt foolish. It didn't seem possible to have gotten in so deep with a man she'd basically just met and she hadn't wanted to admit it to her sister.

But now, as she did as she'd been told and sat on the
love seat, she decided that confiding in Nissa the way she usually did might help clear some of Josh out of her system. So she opted for being honest and open about it, letting Nissa know to just what extent she and Josh had gotten involved the previous week and what had happened on Saturday morning.

“And you think he's just a repeat of Noel?” Nissa asked when Megan was finished.

“Well, maybe not a repeat. But it seemed like there were a lot of similarities.”

“Really? I wouldn't have thought so.”

That surprised Megan. “Why not?”

“For one thing, you got Josh in here for acupuncture. You never could get Noel to try it. And now Josh must be telling people not only that he had it, but that it worked because so many of your appointments this week can be traced back to him. Noel wouldn't even tell anyone what you did for a living. Or let you tell them.”

“True. But—”

“And for two, didn't you say when you met that couple on the street and you did your sex-of-the-baby prediction he just laughed about it? Can you imagine what Noel would have done? He'd have been mortified. He would have gone on and on about how he'd never be able to face those people again.”

That was true, too.

“So what are you saying?” Megan asked defensively. “That I was wrong about Josh?”

“I don't know. Obviously, I didn't get to know him. But from what you've said about him he doesn't sound like a Noel-clone.”

“So maybe I made a mountain out of a few molehills?” Megan muttered as it started to seem that way.

“Do you think that's what you did?”

“I think I better think about it.”

The bell over the office door sounded to announce someone and Annissa glanced in that direction. “That'll be my four-thirty. Guess I'll leave you to your thinking. But do me a favor and don't turn on the hot plate. I swear you're going to burn us out with that thing and your wandering mind this week.”

“Sorry,” Megan repeated as her sister left the break room.

Being alone again was all it took for thoughts of Josh to spring back to life for Megan. Only now the thoughts were on a different track as she wondered if she really had taken a few minor things about him and built them into condemnable flaws.

Annissa was right about the acupuncture and about the sex-of-the-baby prediction. Josh's behavior on both counts was very different than Noel's.

Noel had had severe pollen allergies. But he'd popped numerous pills with just as numerous side effects all the while adamantly refusing to so much as consider giving acupuncture a try. Certainly he would never have touted the benefits of it to anyone else either; that would have required him letting it get out that acupuncture was actually what she did for a living.

And mortified was a good way to describe what Noel would have been in the same situation with the sex-of-the-baby prediction. Mortified. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Rattled.

But when Megan thought about it, she realized that Josh hadn't seemed to be any of those things. In fact, he'd joked about it and said he was going to hold her to the prediction. But she'd never had any indication that it was the big deal to him that it would have been to Noel.

And to be honest, she'd believed Josh when he'd explained that while he'd been embarrassed to be left at the altar by his former fiancée and to have to explain why to people, he hadn't been ashamed of the woman herself. Which was some thing else Megan couldn't say of Noel.

No, she hadn't thought of Noel as ashamed of her until Josh had pointed it out, but once he had she'd known that that was precisely what Noel had been—ashamed of her clothes, of her hair, of her jewelry, of her family, of her job. Ashamed of her. Which was why he'd wanted so badly to change her.

And that was the bigger issue, wasn't it? A man wanting to change her.

But had she made more of that with Josh than was actually there?

Meat in the refrigerator and a chair in front of the television?

Okay, yes, alone those were small things. But—

But what? she asked herself as if she were in an argument with someone else. There were no buts about it, meat in the refrigerator and a chair in front of the TV were definitely small things.

But at the time she'd felt as if those small things were just harbingers of bigger things to come.

Only now that she thought about them with some perspective, she had to admit that he hadn't been asking for any changes in her personally, just in some accommodations for him.

Compromises—that's what he'd said he was suggesting and now that she re considered, that's
all
she thought he was suggesting. But she'd taken it a step further on her own and decided he was asking her to make the kind of sacrifices Noel had wanted of her.

So maybe that initial panic she'd felt Saturday when Josh had begun to talk about wanting to be with her every night, every morning, had colored what she'd heard from then on. Maybe that was more what she'd been reacting to than Josh himself or what he was actually proposing.

Because in truth, Josh himself was not the man Noel was. Yes, Josh was conservative and a little leery of things that were off the beaten track. But he wasn't intolerant. And wasn't that what was really important? Tolerance of what she believed in and not trying to change her?

It seemed like it was.

So why had she turned him away? she asked herself.

But she knew the answer. Fear. Plain old ordinary fear that he would hurt her again the way Noel had hurt her.

But did she really think she had anything to fear from Josh? she asked herself.

She didn't. Not when she actually thought about it.

And not only didn't she have anything to fear from
him, she missed him so much she was miserable. She was more unhappy even than she had been when she and Noel had split up.

And there was only one reason for that.

Because in the short time she'd been with Josh she'd fallen in love with him.

More in love with him than she'd ever been with Noel.

But what about Josh? Was that how he felt about her? Was that what he'd been alluding to when he'd talked about wanting them to be together?

What else could he have meant? Just that he liked her a lot?

Well, okay, maybe. But deep down she didn't believe that. She believed that he had the same feelings for her that she had for him and that she'd made it so hard on him on Saturday morning that he hadn't gotten around to saying it.

Or at least that's what she hoped.

But one way or the other she would never know unless she swallowed her pride and went to him. Unless she told him the truth about what an idiot she'd been and how she felt about him.

And if he didn't feel the same?

She'd be crushed.

But even the possibility of being crushed couldn't keep her from at least going to him, talking to him.

Because if she didn't go to him, if she didn't talk to him, then there wouldn't be any chance at all.

And as strong as her feelings for Josh were, they just had to have a chance….

 

Megan and Nissa had driven into town in Nissa's car so Megan opted for walking the few blocks from her office to the court house where she hoped to find Josh. But she walked it in a hurry, her heart beating triple-time the whole way and a sort of prayerful chant repeating itself in her mind for Josh please not to think she was as nutty as his former fiancée to have rejected him so out-of-hand….

When she got to his office there was no one at the reception counter or behind it at his secretary's desk. Megan hoped she hadn't missed him, that he hadn't already gone home for the day or out on police business. Now that she'd made up her mind, she wanted this hurdle over with.

So even though there was no sound coming from Josh's office and she couldn't see anything through the glazed glass in the upper half of the door, she went around the counter, passed Millie's desk and knocked.

“In,” came the command from the inner sanctum and Megan's pulse picked up more speed still.

She took a breath, breathed it out, and opened the door.

Josh was inside, his hips propped against the front of his desk, his legs stretched out and crossed at his ankles, arms folded over his uniform-shirted chest.

But he wasn't alone. In the two visitor's chairs were men Megan knew had to be his brothers from the re semblance she couldn't help but notice when they turned to look at her.

“Megan?” Josh said, shock in his voice but no warmth she could discern.

“Megan?” one of his brothers repeated with a hint of alarm in his tone as both of the other men sat up straighter and stared openly at her.

“Millie wasn't out front so I didn't know you were busy,” Megan said, feeling the beginning of that treacherous panic that had gotten her into trouble a week earlier as she faced three men, not one of them looking as if they were glad to see her.

“Did you come to stick more pins in him?” one of the brothers muttered sarcastically and without a trace of friendliness, clearly referring to sticking pins in Josh metaphorically and not in terms of acupuncture.

“Scott,” Josh said as a warning. Then, in a more normal tone, he said to both brothers, “We're about done here, aren't we? I can see you guys later, at home.”

“Sure,” the not-Scott brother agreed readily, while Scott continued to glare at her.

The not-Scott brother stood and roughly nudged Scott with a poke in the arm to do the same.

“We'll see you at home,” not-Scott said.

Megan wanted to crawl into a hole but since there weren't any avail able she stepped out of the doorway to let the two other Brimley men go past her.

And if she'd thought that Scott's scorn was un nerving, it was nowhere near as bad as when she was suddenly left alone with Josh, standing in the doorway once more, the recipient of navy-blue eyes staring at her from beneath a frown that was much darker and more sus
picious now that his brothers were gone and he was finished playing buffer for her.

“Hi,” she said, knowing it sounded silly but unable to think of any other way to begin.

Josh just inclined his handsome head in answer.

And it
was
a handsome head. So incredibly handsome that it struck her all over again just how great-looking he was and made her stomach do a sensual little somersault.

“Did you need some thing?” he asked then, all business.

“To talk.”

“Okay,” he said as if his agreement were conditional. “Do you want to come in to talk or do you want to talk from the door?”

Megan stepped into the office and closed the door behind her.

But that was as far as she went and Josh didn't ask her to come any farther, or to sit down. Instead he continued to study her from beneath that frown, waiting, she thought, for her to say her piece and unwilling to help her out in any way.

But she wasn't sure where to start.

“Don't play games with me, Megan,” he said then, a force to be reckoned with.

“I didn't come to play games. I just…I'm not sure how to say what I came to say.”

“Just say it.”

“You scared me,” she blurted out. “I mean, last Saturday morning, what you were saying sort of threw me for a loop and I think I misjudged you.”

Josh didn't respond to that. He merely went on studying her. Waiting still.