Can't Fight This Feeling (29 page)

But that certainty didn’t bring her any relief from sorrow. He was so intent upon keeping his heart armored, it was, actually, the same thing as having no heart at all.

* * *

T
HIRTY
MINUTES
BEFORE
opening time. Glory was moving the coiled straw wattles from the bin she’d dragged to Aisle B back to their original bin in Aisle P one at a time. The scratchy fibers bothered her hands and wrists, but she took it as fitting punishment.

She kept screwing up.

First, she’d fallen for a lying—though not dickless—bounder from down the hill. She didn’t exactly know what a bounder was—

“Hey, Angelica,” she called to her friend who was working on a laptop at the counter beside the register. “What’s a bounder?”

“A cad,” Angelica called back.

Glory grunted. Yep, she’d formed a stupid attachment with a bounder from down the hill, just like some silly mountain nineteen-year-old falling for a filthy rich university dude bro summering on the Blue Arrow Lake beaches.

Except it was autumn and that was supposed to have saved her.

“You need help, honey?” Her mother stood at the end of the aisle in jeans and a smock, since this was her morning for watercolor class.

“Thanks, but no, Mom.”
I like being miserable all by myself.

Her mother didn’t seem to sense her mood, because she smiled at Glory. “I love the email newsletter idea Angelica came up with for the store. I’m going to sign up for a computer course at the community center so I can learn to do one myself.”

“Fabuloso, Mom.” She pitched the wattle toward the bin from seven feet away.

Missed.

Her footsteps clattered on the linoleum as she stomped over to retrieve it.

“Would you like me to bring you back a coffee from Oscar’s? I’m meeting Dad to show him some cruise brochures I picked up.”

Glory straightened, squeezing the wattle between her fingers. “Mom, you know he’s not going to take a vacation.”

“Well...”

“He doesn’t feel comfortable leaving me in sole charge of the store. He doesn’t trust me to make the decisions.” Not that she’d been making
any
good ones lately. The wattles were a case in point. The construction guys who came in for them pulled their trucks around back as a loading point. When she’d moved their location, it had made that process longer and less convenient.

“I still believe,” her mother declared, turning toward the front exit. “And if not, there’s always Temari!”

When the bells announced her mom had left, Glory called once again to Angelica. “What the hell is Temari?”

There was a moment’s silence during which Glory figured the other woman was putting her search-engine chops to use. “Japanese thread balls.”

Huh? “Do you eat them?”

“It looks like you make them. An ornament of some kind.”

Glory pushed at her hair, felt pieces of straw stuck in the strands and tried picking them out without the aid of a mirror. Knowing her mom, she’d make Temari into some kind of mountain cottage industry and next week Glory would be selling Japanese thread balls alongside the portable heaters and masking tape.

Her life sucked.

“You know what?” she yelled to her friend. “I used to love playing with steel wool and sandpaper. How sick is that?” Sicker still was that it held no allure for her anymore.

“I never liked dissecting earthworms and frogs,” a voice said.

Male voice.
His
voice.

She looked up, glaring. “We’re not open.”

“Just turned nine,” Kyle Scott said.

Today, he wasn’t bothering to be fake housepainter/home repairman. But he didn’t look any less delicious in a pair of dark gray dressy jeans and a pale blue dress shirt, tails out. Expensive leather boots on his feet. Big-data-dude chic, she supposed.

“Go away. Go home.”

Kyle sighed. “I’ve got a few things still to do at the house.” He pulled a list from his pocket. “I need some door hardware and a couple of insulating strips.”

“Get them at Murphy’s.”

“All right. Fine. I came to see you.”

“I’m too busy to talk.” She stomped to the wattle bin and snatched up another two. He followed as she walked them to the correct aisle.

“What’s this all about?” he asked, eyeing the violent manner in which she slam-dunked the coils.

“Me, giving up on my dumb notions.”

“Don’t do that,” Kyle said, catching her arm as she marched past.

She tried shaking off his hold. But he was stubborn, just like the grip he had on her heart. This close, she could smell him, an expensive smell she should have realized right away was out of her league.

“Glory, don’t give up on your own ideas.”

“You don’t know what I’m up against,” she muttered, staring at his shirt pocket. In thread the same exact shade as the cloth, was a tiny monogram. An
S
with a
K
and
J
cuddled close.

God. The only thing guys she knew had monogrammed were their beer cozies. Out. Of. Her. League.

“I know you have to follow your heart,” Kyle said now.

Oh, no. Hers had made a very stupid choice.

“Particularly about work,” he continued. Then he hesitated.

She frowned up at him. “Does this have something to do with the dissection you mentioned?”

He glanced around. “Is there someplace we could talk privately?”

Glory opened her mouth to tell him no. But before she could get that out, Angelica called from her spot by the cash register. “The back room is free.”

Grr. “Oh, fine,” she conceded with ill grace, slipping her arm from his loosened grasp to lead the way. As she passed her friend, she shot her a sidelong look. “We have a male-bashing date at Mr. Frank’s tonight,” she muttered.

Angelica’s gaze flicked from Glory to Kyle and back. “If you’re free.”

The cramped back room smelled like sawdust, WD-40 and now Kyle’s expensive cologne. Hell, she had to admit it was miles better than the body spray of the last guy she’d dated. Stu had always used Ivory soap, which might explain why being with him always made her feel as if she were fifteen.

So high school.

While Kyle made her feel like a woman.
No.
Upset. No! Angry.

She slammed her arms over her chest. “Say what you have to say.”

He winced. “I screwed up.”

“I think we covered that.”

“Shit,” he muttered.

His hand shoved through his hair, disheveling it in that way she found so sexy. Glory sucked in a quick breath. “Honestly, spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

“My parents are doctors,” he said. “As are my brother and my sister.”

“Okay...” He’d said he didn’t like dissecting. “And you didn’t want that for yourself.”

“Exactly. It didn’t go over well with the family.”

“But you’re a successful businessman, right?”

He nodded. “We hit the marketplace at the right time. My partner is a genius.”

“So aren’t your parents proud of you now?”

“Doctors...or at least my family of doctors...” He forked his hair again. “Healing, working with your hands to do good for people, that’s what they put supreme value on.”

“But not everyone can do that.”

“I could have. I got into med school. I just...didn’t want to go.”

“Oh.” She grimaced. “Did they disown you or something?”

“No.” He shook his head. “They just...disapproved. Silently. So when I had the chance to buy the house, I thought it would be a nice idea to show them my hands could still be used for good.”

“And you needed a break.”

“And I needed a break.”

“Okay... I get that.” Glory glanced down and saw her Hallett’s butcher apron was dotted with pieces of straw. She started brushing at them. “Why didn’t you tell me this right away?”

A smile flitted across his face. “Don’t hit me, but it was because you were so sweet. Open. Kind. You offered to buy me a drink and help me get work.”

Glory’s face heated. When the rich guy didn’t need anything she had to offer. “I feel foolish,” she muttered.

“No!” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I told you I haven’t had a lot of time to date and when I do it’s been some sort of fix up where the woman knew the score.”

“Hot, desk-bound businessman desperately seeking female companionship.”

“Ugh. More like, guy with his head lost in data dragged by his friends to some event or other. I’m sure they were very nice. But it always felt so contrived. Me and you...we came to the table with just a couple of smiles.” The one he gave her now was rueful. “And we discovered chemistry I don’t have the analytics to measure.”

Damn him for making his reticence seem reasonable! And wasn’t “chemistry I don’t have the analytics to measure” pretty much geeky but also...great?

Then she hardened herself against him. Why be soft when this was going nowhere? She had to be as tough as her pioneer ancestors, as hard as the mountains. Granite to the core. “Okay. Explanation shared. You’re absolved. Go forth...and data away, or whatever.”

“You could go forth with me.”

“What?” Her eyes went wide.

“Come down the hill. Be in my world. Try it for a while, at least.”

She still stared.

“I have to get back. I’m determined not to be that guy who works a hundred hours a week, but I still have to check in with my people. Put in a normal day at my desk.” He swiped a hand over his mouth. “We employ eight hundred. I say that not to boast but so you’ll understand I have responsibilities that go beyond myself.”

“Kyle...”

He leaned closer to pluck a piece of straw from her hair. “I’d say more, ask more, give more, but that’s probably not fair to you.”

“Not fair at all, because I have responsibilities, too,” Glory said, commanding herself not to cry. “Hallett Hardware, the family business. The mountains, my home.”

“I don’t want a long-distance romance, Glory.”

“I don’t want a long-distance romance, either.” She turned away, staring sightlessly at shelves stacked with no-parking signs and steel padlocks and heavy-gauge extension cords. “You’ve ruined everything!” she said, the words dragged straight from her soul. “You were supposed to be my reward for running the cash register for the past seventeen years!”

She sniffed and felt the burn behind her eyes. “You were supposed to be my belief in love!”

“Glory...”

Now she whirled on him, getting toe-to-toe. “Did you know that people have an average of eleven occupations in their lifetime?”

Bemused expression on his face, he shook his head.

Emotion roiled inside her: disappointment, resignation, anger, loss. It made her voice ragged and rough. “You were supposed to be my ten other jobs!”

Instead of responding to that, he trailed a finger over one of her eyebrows. She tried not to shiver. “What have I done to squelch your belief in love?” he asked, his voice soft.

Hers was nothing of the kind. “You could have said you loved me back!” Then, aghast, she slapped her palm over his mouth. “No, don’t! You lied, and that’s answer enough.”

His fingers wrapped her wrist and he pulled her hand away. “I’m in love with you.” She tried yanking free, but he held firm. “I want you to come down the hill with me. Try life there.”

Then he hauled her into his arms and they were kissing the kisses of the desperate. Of those hopelessly in love. Oh, God, Glory thought. Hopeless love.

She tore her mouth away from his. “That isn’t helping.”

“How about persuading? Is it helping with that?” he asked. “I want you. I want you to come live with me.”

“How can I?”

“You get in a car and point it downhill, darling. I’ll even do the driving.” He pressed his mouth to her forehead, her cheeks, her nose. “Come live with me and be my love.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I might be from the mountains, but I’m no hick. I recognize poetry when I hear it.”

He grinned. “Christopher Marlowe. ‘Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove / That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountain yields.’”

Glory thought,
A man is quoting poetry to me! He thinks I’m beautiful and he’s quoting poetry!
Still...
“I’m not sure what it means, exactly.”

“I can’t know for certain what Marlowe intended, but for me it means I believe we can find this magic we have in the mountains anywhere we go. Anywhere we go together.”

“Say it again,” Glory whispered.

He framed her face with his hands. “Come live with me and be my love.”

“What’s going on here?” a blustering voice demanded.

Glory tried to spring away, but Kyle didn’t let her get far. Holding her hand, he turned them both toward the back room’s doorway, now filled by her father and mother.