One Hot Summer (20 page)

“You're accusing me of being boring
?”

That's the part of her rebuttal he latched on to? Fine, then. “You're being boring and assumptive and bitter. And you know what I've learned to say to people like that?” She smacked the counter with her open palm. “I say, bring it on, because I've been judged unfairly my whole life. When you grow up under a microscope like I did, you either develop a really thick skin or let it crush you. And I didn't let it crush me. I've lost count of the number of celebrities' kids I grew up with who became either addicts or vapid, morally corrupt losers dependent on their famous name to skate through life. That's not me. I won't let it be.”

He threw up his hands. “Are you looking for a blue ribbon for not ending up in rehab? You think that makes you special?”

“What I think is that I'm not going to let a prejudiced, angry man tell me who I am and what I stand for. I don't have some shady backroom deal with Ty Briscoe and I'm not here to exploit Dulcet. I'm here for a chance to start over with my life. Where I came from doesn't define me. What defines me is that I work my ass off and I'm a good person.”

He sucked in his cheeks. His eyes narrowed as though it was taking the effort of his life to hold back from blowing his top. Without another word, he stormed down the hall and through the front door, slamming it closed.

Allowing herself a moment of pure, melodramatic venting, she raised her fists to the heavens and growled. Loudly. Then she topped off her flute all the way to the brim of the glass and chugged it down with the speed of a frat boy during pledge week. “That glass alone was probably fifty bucks' worth of champagne!” she hollered at the door. “How's that for wasteful and entitled?”

Then she bit off a whole strawberry from its stem.

“I'm not going to apologize for who I am!” It wasn't her fault that her bank account rattled his alpha insecurities. She wasn't going to make herself appear less than she was for a man's ego.

She bit into another strawberry, barely chewing before she swallowed it down and grabbed another one. Nothing wrong with a little indulgence after a fight like that.

A knock on the door stopped her mid-chew.

Apprehensively, she walked to the door. Micah again, his hands on his hips and his eyes rolled up to look at the roof eaves.

She flung the door open. “Back for round two so soon?”

He stepped forward and took her shoulders in his hands as his mouth descended over hers, hard and demanding. She froze, processing the turn of events, then wrapped her arms around his neck. His fingers plunged into her hair. His tongue caressed hers. She could feel the passion and the frustration pouring out of him as he gave himself over to her, so she poured her passion and frustration right back into him.

How dare he show up at her door unannounced and ruin her morning with unfair judgments and accusations? How dare he drive her so mad with lust for him?

He opened his eyes and held her gaze. His eyes were stormy still, but the fury was gone. “Let's get out of here.”

Stubbornness prevented her from blindly agreeing to his command. “What makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?”

He didn't answer but brushed past her and strode to the kitchen.

“You don't have central air, do you? It's sweltering in here,” he said, nodding at her wall unit. “That thing even on?”

Remedy bristled. He didn't get to stomp around like an angry bear, criticizing her and her house, disregarding her wishes. “It's a bit temperamental, but it works.” Sometimes.

He grabbed the champagne bottle, then another from the box on the floor, and put them in a plastic grocery bag along with the rest of the strawberries.

“What's going on here? Why did you come back? I thought we were done,” she said.

He swallowed hard. “It's like you said the other night. Who am I without a little trouble to keep me in business?” He grabbed a lap blanket from the back of her sofa, then another from her reading chair, and handed them to her.

“That doesn't explain how you went from being furious at me to wanting to picnic.”

He held out his hand to her. “Because you're driving me crazy, that's how.”

She only hesitated for a moment before taking it. “You're driving me crazy, too.”

*   *   *

Micah drove them out of town like a bullet. He needed the balm of dirt roads and empty space to clear his head. Maybe they'd find a little solace out in the sticks, where he could simply be a country boy and she could be the girl he was sweet on. They could shed who they were and enjoy the heat of the day under the shade of a pecan tree along a riverbank.

As the miles of road faded behind them, his righteous indignation peeled away until he realized that he wasn't entirely sure why he'd gotten so blasted mad at Remedy. She was right that it was unfair to judge her background the way he had, except that every experience he'd had in life told him that it
did
matter. Who you were, who your parents were, and the values you grew up with mattered. A lot. But that didn't make it fair or just. Actually, she'd been right about a lot of points she hurled at him, including him not having a right to an opinion about her life.

He glanced her way. She'd been as quiet as he was on the drive, for the most part keeping her face turned into the wind from her open window.

The hell of it was, he wanted a right to an opinion about her life. He wanted her. It was a stupid choice, because he'd known from the day he'd met her that there was no way she was going to stay in Texas. Even if Ty Briscoe didn't drive her away with his conniving ways, Micah gave her another month, two tops, of lying low before she grew weary of small-town country living and packed her bags, heading back where she belonged.

His heart gave a squeeze. Would she give him the courtesy of telling him she was going? Was that a risk he was willing to take?

He stretched his arm across the seat back, and when she didn't protest he let his fingers brush lightly through her hair. Though he kept his focus on the road ahead, he watched in his peripheral vision as she shifted to study him. He let her look her fill until they'd left the final paved road and bumped their way along the dirt path to his favorite backwoods spot.

He had so many questions for her, he wasn't sure where to start. Maybe at the beginning. “What was it like growing up with famous parents?”

Her sigh seemed to well up from the bottom of her soul. As the silence stretched, he started to doubt she'd answer him.

“Not as strange as people expect, because I didn't know any other life,” she said finally. “I traveled a lot with one or both of my parents, going wherever their movies were filming or premiering, wherever their press junkets took them. I always went along. Until they divorced when I was twelve. And then…” She thought for a moment. “Actually, it wasn't that different after the divorce. They were still off filming and promoting movies on opposite sides of the earth, and I still tagged along with them as much as I could. My mom always said that our home wasn't a place but each other. I like that.”

Bitter memory welled up inside him. Home wasn't a place but your loved ones. It was true, but he hadn't figured that out until after the fire. After his mother had left the family and disappeared. He and Remedy had both lived displaced lives. He would've never thought they'd have that fundamental part of themselves in common. “I learned that, too, from the fire, that what really matters in life is family and faith and community. Nothing brings that into clearer focus than loss. When the fire destroyed our house, we lost everything. Photo albums, clothes, toys, electronics, neighbors, friends, people we thought we could count on who weren't there for us in our time of need.”

He swallowed back the resentment that had crept into his tone. At that moment, he understood why Remedy hadn't disclosed certain details of her past to him. There were some things that you just couldn't verbalize, some people you didn't want to waste one more iota of your energy on.

She turned and hitched her knee up on the seat to regard him. “You're a good man, Micah.”

After all the nastiness he'd hurled at her during their fight, for her to come back with a compliment was incredible. She was incredible. He wouldn't forget that again. “What did you do about schooling since you traveled with your parents so much?”

“Most years I had private tutors, and sometimes I attended private school in L.A. It was a great life, a great childhood. It really wasn't until high school that I realized what an oddity I was.”

He pulled the truck to a stop right on the edge of the road where the start of a thin trail cut through the wild grass. “You're not an oddity.”

“Yes, I am. And most of the time that was okay with me, because it had to be. I never fit in with my parents' friends' kids and I never fit in with normal kids. I mean, I had friends, some really good friends, even, but it's not the same.”

He'd heard that same sentiment before, from her and from Xavier. “You sound like Xavier when he talks about growing up, being gay and black in a mostly white town. He had it rough in school. Still makes me spitting mad to think about everything he went through.”

She touched Micah's leg. “You're one of those people who gather misfits around you like moss on a stone because of how stable and solid you are.”

It'd never felt that way with Xavier. Just the opposite, actually. “Maybe it's the other way around. Ever think about that? Maybe instead of misfits being drawn to me, I'm drawn to them. I think I must crave a little bit of unconventionality in my life.”

After a beat of hesitation, she leaned across the seat and kissed his cheek, soft and sweet.

He covered her hand with his. It was right of him to bring her here, to make this effort to reconcile. “Stay where you are. I'll come around.”

Once he'd helped her down, he grabbed the bag with the champagne and piled the blankets in her arms. “Follow me.”

He led her along the dirt trail through the tall dried grass that was so familiar to him, he could've traversed it blindfolded with nary a misstep. Only a few birds were braving the summer heat, but as he and Remedy passed into the thicket of trees that edged the creek they spotted more wildlife. An armadillo nosed through the fallen leaves, jittery lizards were doing push-ups on the rocks, and dragonflies and butterflies and other winged creatures darted all around them.

The trail led them straight to his special pecan tree at the edge of Barley Creek, the tree with his initials carved in the trunk. As ever, it provided a wide umbrella of shade that made the crisp heat bearable, an oasis for just the two of them in the middle of summer. “We have arrived.”

He took the blankets from her and spread them out one on top of the other for cushion against the hard ground, right to the edge of the riverbank's drop-off. Then he stuck the unopened bottle of champagne right into the water and lodged it in place between two twisted roots so it could cool.

Remedy's head was on a swivel, drinking it all in.

“Pretty, isn't it?”

“So pretty. Even more beautiful than the creek by my house.”

He nodded to the
MG
in the tree trunk. “This is my tree, since I was a boy. This is where I came to be alone with my thoughts and catch the occasional tadpole or two.”

She traced the
M
of his initials. “It wasn't affected by the Knolls Canyon Fire?”

“No. Isn't that a miracle? The fire crews set up a firebreak about five miles from here and were able to contain the blaze before it ruined this place. Wish I knew which fire crews made that happen, so I could thank them.”

Her attention roved over the trees and past the opposite bank of the creek. “Did the resort make restitutions for the fire?”

He released the deep breath her question dredged up. “In some ways. The Briscoes or their lawyers never acknowledged their role in the fire, but they did shovel out heaps of money to the forest service to improve fire roads and build wilderness fire response outposts.”

She rubbed her arms. “I don't know how I'd ever make peace with it if sparklers from a wedding I planned were the cause of so much destruction and pain.”

Victory achieved. For the first time in all his years as a firefighter he'd managed to impress upon a Briscoe Ranch executive how much was at stake when fire safety measures weren't heeded and why the resort should be an ally with Micah instead of treating him like the enemy. But Remedy's understanding of the stakes said far more about her compassion and selflessness than it did about Micah's efforts. All it said about him was that he'd made some pretty terrible assumptions about her based on nothing but his own prejudices.

He brushed a hand over her back. “Let's sit, drink this champagne before it gets warm.”

He'd forgotten to pack glasses, so when she'd settled on the blankets he handed her the open champagne bottle, then settled across from her, the strawberries between them.

They passed the bottle between them. The champagne wasn't that cold, but it was tasty. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had champagne. Probably at a wedding. He got invited to most weddings around town but was rarely able to indulge in more than a sip or two of alcohol, since he was usually on call for work.

“The firefighter ball is in three weeks,” she said. “Are you going?”

She sounded hopeful. He took that as a good sign that she was on the road to forgiving him. “Me and all my crew. Wouldn't miss it. Are you working the ball?”

She bit into a strawberry. The juice stained her lips pink and dripped down the side of her hand. She licked it off. “Not only working it. I'm planning it. It's my first solo event for the resort.”

“Are you nervous about that?”