One in a Million (3 page)

C
allie was woken before the crack of dawn by a call from a panicked bride who’d decided she wanted to elope instead of face her elaborate wedding in two days.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Lacey wailed. “All this crazy fuss. I just want to cancel.”

Callie had a lot of experience with these sorts of calls. But up until yesterday Lacey had been over-the-moon ecstatic about everything, down to the color of the nail polish she planned on using on her Yorkshire terrier. “What happened?” Callie asked, stumbling to her kitchen for coffee before remembering she no longer had a coffeemaker.

“It started last night,” Lacey said. “Joe said all I ever talk about is the wedding and he’s sick of it. Can you believe it? All this work I’ve done and he’s over it before it even happens!”

Callie opened her freezer and stared at the ice cream. No, she told herself firmly. You are not having ice cream for breakfast. “Sometimes grooms feel a little left out, that’s all,” she said. “You could involve him in some of the decisions that have to be made. Maybe he could help arrange the flowers at the reception site or—”

“He can’t be trusted with the flowers!” Lacey cried. “He thought we could do without flowers, said he didn’t see the big deal. And then he tried to tell me that the seating arrangements are all wrong, that his Uncle Bob can’t sit next to his Aunt Judy because they’ll kill each other. But now’s a fine time to tell me that! Do you know how difficult it is to work with tables that only seat six?”

Yes, Callie knew exactly. With a sigh, she shut the freezer. “I’ll rework the seating arrangement for you.”

“Great. But can you give my fiancé a personality transplant?” Lacey asked. “No? Then I want to elope! You’re my virtual wedding planner, can you help me elope or not?”

Callie drew a deep breath. “Yes. But I want you to do me one favor. Remember how Joe proposed? It was just as you’d asked him to do, in front of all your family and friends on the beach at sunset. He even got you the exact ring you wanted, the one with the bigger diamond that he couldn’t really afford.”

Lacey sighed dreamily. “Yes. He did do that for me.”

“He’d do anything for you,” Callie said. “And if he’s voicing his thoughts to you, you’re already ahead of the game in the marriage department. It means you’re communicating. All you have to do now is listen and hear him. He’s feeling left out, Lacey, that’s all. Find a way to let him help you.”

“You really think that’ll solve the problem?”

“Absolutely,” Callie said. “Talk to him. And if you still want to elope afterward, we’ll make that happen. Call me tonight.”

“Okay. Thanks, Callie. You’re like magic.”

Yes. She was. She was magic at creating the illusion that romance lasted forever in spite of the fact that the statistics were stacked against Lacey and Joe making it to their second wedding anniversary.

God, she really needed a new job. And possibly a new life.

She showered and pulled on another “work” outfit—a pretty blouse and blazer and…comfy sweatpants for a few Skype calls. An hour later her stomach was grumbling loud enough for her clients to hear. Her famously bad instincts warred with her desire to go back to the bakery to feed her newfound doughnut addiction.

And maybe also to see if Tanner was there again. A mistake waiting to happen, of course.

She’d had lunch yesterday with her grandma. She’d met the boyfriend candidate, who’d turned out to be Mr. Wykowski, an eighty-plus retired rocket scientist who resembled a pipe cleaner with eyes. A stooped pipe cleaner. But he was warm and kind and very patient. He had to be, to be thinking of dating her grandma.

Lucille had filled Callie in on the latest gossip in town as well as what she knew about Tanner. Finding out that he’d been in an oil rig fire and had nearly lost his life had made it difficult for her to breathe, but he was okay now. She’d seen this for herself. Yeah, he still obviously had trouble with his leg, but from what she understood, he was lucky to have the leg at all.

She couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d been through, but hearing about his bravery had only fueled her curiosity about him. Which meant that she couldn’t trust herself not to act like that pathetic little bookworm she’d once been.

In any case, she couldn’t go to the bakery. She had plans for breakfast with her two neighbors, Becca and Olivia. The three of them were becoming friends, and Callie was grateful to have them in this town that no longer felt like home.

When she’d grown up here, she hadn’t had a lot of friends. Her best friend from school, Hannah, had died of cancer five years ago. Her loss had made it easier to stay away.

She left her apartment and knocked on Olivia’s, right next door. Olivia stuck her head out wearing a man’s white button-down and what looked like absolutely nothing else.

“A new look?” Callie asked.

Olivia laughed and stroked a hand down her definite bedhead hair. “Yeah. Um, was everything okay last night? You slept good?”

Callie leaned against the wall. “You mean did I hear anything coming from your love nest after you stuffed something in the pipes?”

Olivia grimaced. “Socks. I used socks this time. Better than the rolls of toilet paper.”

“Worked like a charm,” Callie said. “Even more efficient than the insulation we don’t have.”

“Good.” Olivia gave a relieved smile. “Didn’t want a repeat of the other night. I’m still sorry about that, by the way.”

Unfortunately, the warehouse was so poorly constructed they could hear each other sneeze. And more. And in Olivia’s case there’d been a lot of that
more
lately, thanks to her new relationship with Cole, one of Tanner’s business partners.

“No worries,” Callie said. “I put on my headphones as a precautionary measure.”

Olivia groaned. “We’ve really got to get the landlord to put in some insulation. Listen, about breakfast…I’ve got a…thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Callie said on a laugh. “Let me guess. A six-foot, gorgeous, green-eyed thing that goes by the name of Cole?”

Olivia bit her lower lip. “He didn’t dock until three a.m. and we need a few more hours of shut-eye.”

“Go for it,” Callie said. “I’ll just get Becca. We’ll make it a wedding planning breakfast.”

Becca was marrying Sam, Tanner’s other business partner, and Callie had promised to step in for this last month before the wedding and help however she could.

“You didn’t get her text?” Olivia asked.

“No, I—” Callie looked down at her phone. “Oh.” Indeed she’d missed a text from Becca:

Callie laughed. “Got it,” she told Olivia. “Go back to bed.”

“Thanks. Have a doughnut for me, will ya?” Olivia asked. “Try one of Leah’s old-fashioned chocolate glazes this time. You shouldn’t choke on those.”

Callie opened her mouth to ask how she knew, but Olivia shook her head. “It’s Lucky Harbor,” she said. “You know how it works. You can leave your front door unlocked and no one would ever touch your stuff, but you can’t keep a secret.”

“There’s no secret,” Callie insisted. “I just had coffee.”

“And doughnuts.” Olivia paused. “With Tanner Riggs.”

“The tables were full,” Callie said. “He sat down because there was nowhere else to sit.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Olivia said.

“What did you hear?”

“That he was smiling and laughing. Which is a big deal because he hasn’t had much to smile or laugh about in a while.”

“He was smiling and laughing because I made an ass out of myself,” Callie told her. “And to prove it, ask your source what I was wearing. Yoga capris and Uggs. Fake Uggs. That’s not a hot-mama look, in case you were wondering.”

“Yeah, I heard that too.” Olivia grinned. “And, um, not to be critical or anything, but today isn’t all that different.”

Callie looked down at herself—nice blouse, blazer, and sweatpants—and groaned.

Olivia laughed but then her smile faded. “Listen, Tanner’s been through a rough time. You’re going through a rough time.” She paused and waited for Callie to say something. When she didn’t, she said, “Do you really not see where I’m going with this?”

“It was coffee,” Callie repeated. “And you should know, even given what I do for a living—or maybe especially because of what I do for a living—I’m not at all sold on the male race.”

“I get that,” Olivia said gently. “But just think about it.” And then she blew Callie a kiss and shut the door.

Callie shook her head and started to head out of the building. She stopped short and once again looked down at her “work outfit.” Since Sam and Cole hadn’t gotten in until three in the morning and Tanner had probably been with them, she wasn’t going to run into him this morning. Right? Right. So there wasn’t a reason to change her clothes. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

She went back to her apartment to stuff her backpack with her laptop and wallet and rode to the bakery on the bike she’d bought on a whim the weekend before at a garage sale. She was crap on a bike, but in the name of getting herself a life, she’d decided that more exercise was a definite place to show improvement.

Her mission was threefold. Objective A: not thinking about her two friends, the both of them in bed with their big, sexy, hot men keeping them warm in their icy apartments.

She wasn’t jealous, exactly. She didn’t want a big, sexy, hot man to call her own.

But she wouldn’t mind one for a single night.

Or two…

Objective B: caffeine and a doughnut—chocolate glaze. Make that two doughnuts.

Objective C: not hiding out behind her computer in Lucky Harbor but getting out and living.

The morning was startlingly clear and bright and sunny. But true to November in Washington, her breath made little puffs of cloud in front of her face, and she couldn’t feel her fingers and toes as she rode.

She came to the pier and stopped, gazing up at the Ferris wheel jutting into the sky. She’d gotten her first kiss there from Jonathon Walters in sixth grade, but only because it’d been dark, really dark, and he’d thought she’d been the very popular Jessica Bentley.

“Well, look who’s back.”

Callie eyed the guy painting the closed ice cream stand. “Lance,” she said with a big smile. They’d gone to school together. “How’s it going? Are you a painter?”

“Nah. I run this place in the good weather months with my brother.”

Thanks to cystic fibrosis, his voice was thick and almost hollow sounding, and her smile faded. “You doing okay?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Hanging in,” he said simply.

She felt her throat get a little tight and was figuring out how to ask if she could hug him when he spoke again.

“Your granny’s been up to no good.”

Uh-oh. “Such as?” she asked.

“Meddling.” He grinned. “She’s pretty good at it too, running a gossip circuit between Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. She was on Facebook for a while but got booted for inappropriate pics. That woman’s on top of technology for being a couple hundred years old. How did she learn all that?”

Callie laughed a little but she was horrified as well. “I might have taught her.”

“Yeah? Well, you created a monster, babe.”

“Is it really that bad?”

He grinned. “She’s got a geriatric gang behind her and has armed them all with tablets that she got donated to the senior center. Mostly because they couldn’t navigate smartphones since they’re all over seventy and blind as bats. Anyway, they pretty much run the town.”

“This explains a lot,” Callie said.

“There’s even word that she plans to run for mayor.”

“Oh my God.”

Lance laughed, which sent him into a coughing fit. When he could talk again, he just smiled, though it was a weak one. “No worries, she can’t win. Most people think she has enough power as it is.”

This did not make Callie feel any better. She gave Lance a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and pushed off on her bike.

Five minutes later she was inside the bakery, which was once again crazy crowded. She ordered a coffee and stared at the doughnuts. Resist.

Leah smiled a greeting. “Hey. Heard you’re Lucille’s granddaughter.”

“Yep,” Callie said. “That’s me.”

“My grandma plays bingo with your grandma. Which is probably one of the more innocuous things they do. The seniors are all very excited you’re in town. They’re hoping you’re going to teach Lucille some new tricks.” She laughed at the look on Callie’s face. “Yeah,” she said. “And you probably don’t know even the half of it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Callie said. “I’m back in town to see how bad it’s gotten and if she needs help.”

“It’s probably a matter of opinion,” Leah said on a laugh. “But if you’re asking if she’s sane? Sane as Batman.”

Not helping. Callie slid another look at the doughnut case. “So how are your old-fashioned chocolate glazes?”

“Out of this world.”

Callie bit her lower lip. “I read that chocolate comes from a tree called cacao. Which makes it a plant. Which means it’s practically a salad.”

Leah grinned. “You want one or two?”

“I’ll be good and have just one.”

A minute later Callie took the only table available—by coincidence the same one as the other day. She pulled her laptop from her backpack and opened it, and kept her head down as she stuffed her face and pretended to be engrossed so that no one would bother her. It was okay to need to work up to being social, she told herself.

Someone pulled out the chair across from her with their foot and sat.

Crap.

She inhaled a breath for patience and lifted her head. And then stilled.

Tanner raised a brow. “You’re not going to choke again, are you?”

D
on’t you dare choke, Callie ordered herself. “No, I’m good,” she said to Tanner with what she thought was remarkable calm. “I must’ve been catching a cold yesterday or something.”

He flashed her a knowing grin.

Damn it. Deciding to look busy, she went back to her keyboard rather than let her eyes wander over him. Which wasn’t necessary since she already had him memorized. Battered boots, faded and ripped jeans riding low on his narrow hips, and a navy blue thermal, the sleeves shoved up on his forearms and stretched taut over his broad chest and shoulders. A build like that came from years of physical labor, and it had done a body good. His dark hair was damp and he smelled faintly of some really great-smelling soap. She found herself inhaling deeply just to catch another whiff.

“Yeah, it smells great in here, doesn’t it?” he asked.

She did her best not to give herself away with a blush. “Really great.”

“It’s the vanilla,” he said.

Actually it’s you, she thought but didn’t speak. Didn’t dare. She was already tongue-tied again. It was the way he had of focusing in on the person he was talking to, she decided. He gave his full attention, totally present. Rare in today’s electronic world. When Tanner Riggs looked at you, you knew he wasn’t stressing over his grandma driving everyone batty or whether his hair looked good today. Which, for the record, it did. It looked dark and silky soft to the touch— Her phone buzzed with an incoming text from one of her brides and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Oh boy. Callie hit
REPLY
and typed out her response:

While she was waiting on a response to this, already mentally preparing to figure out how to do the banner as tactfully as possible, a white bag appeared between her eyes and her screen.

Tanner, offering a daring smile if she’d ever seen one.

“A Boston cream,” he said.

“Are you trying to make me be bad?”

He smiled, slow and wicked, and Callie’s face heated. “You know what I mean,” she muttered, looking around to find no one paying them any attention at all. The fakers.

“Just eat,” he said. “Enjoy.”

“Why?”

“Suspicious thing, aren’t you?” He stretched out his left leg with a long, slow exhale as if he were in pain. She thought of what her grandma had told her about the guys losing one friend and nearly Tanner as well, and her heart ached for him. She wanted to ask him if he needed anything, Advil, or…a massage. But just before she could make a total fool of herself, he shifted and his right thigh bumped hers.

He didn’t pull back. She doubted if Tanner knew the definition of pulling back.

“Consider the doughnut a bribe to let me share your table,” he said. “And a thank you for doing so.”

“I didn’t say yes.”

“Take a bite and you won’t say no.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Everything you say sounds dirty.”

His head went back and he laughed softly. The amusement transformed his features, and she found herself staring openly at him.

Still smiling, he leaned in. “You know what this means, right?”

She had no idea, and still staring at him, she shook her head.

“It means you’re the one with the dirty mind.”

She bit her lower lip and when he laughed again, she took a bite of the Boston cream—in spite of already eating the old-fashioned chocolate glazed—and moaned in pleasure.

Tanner stopped laughing. He looked at her mouth and his eyes went black, and right there in the middle of the crowded bakery Callie felt herself go damp. It was crazy. She sat staring at him, mentally tearing off his clothes, when her phone buzzed with another text from her bride.

Callie smiled. She’d long ago discovered that most of her brides needed the ideas to be their own. Thinking she was in the clear, she started to set her phone aside but it buzzed again.

“Good Lord,” Callie muttered.

“What?”

“I’m dealing with a bride who wants me to design her three-D invitations to be delivered with three-D glasses, which I can totally do. But she also wants to be carried down the aisle. On a litter.”

He smiled. “Interesting job you’ve got there.”

“Yep. Always lots of fires to put out.” She went still as it sank in what she’d just said and how that would sound to a man who’d actually been in a fire for his job. Literally. “God. I didn’t mean…”

“I know.”

She met his gaze. “I realize that next to the jobs you’ve held, mine’s a piece of cake. I don’t even have to leave my house to do it.”

“Or wear pants,” he said.

Crap! She’d forgotten. She felt her face go hot. “Bad habit. I usually only dress from the waist up for Skyping clients,” she admitted.

“I’m liking this story,” he said. “Tell me more. Slowly. In great detail.”

Her face got even hotter. “You’re playing with me.”

“Yes,” he said, and flashed that killer smile.

Good Lord, he was potent. She had to shake it off. “Um, I should tell you I’m not interested in playing. My life’s…full.” God, she was so awkward. She’d like to think it was the clothes she was wearing but she knew better. It was her. “It’s just that I’m not interested in love,” she blurted out. “I don’t believe in it.”

He just sipped his coffee all calm and relaxed. “No?”

“No. Not at all. Not even a little, tiny bit.” God, Callie. Just shut up. “It’s not for me.”

“Makes two of us,” he said easily. “Eat your doughnut.”

She stared into his unfathomable eyes and found herself unwilling to let this go. She knew why she wasn’t interested in love. It was because love was a romantic fiction and, with the exception of her crazy parents, didn’t last.

But why wasn’t he interested in love? Was it his failed marriage? To keep herself from asking she shoved in another bite. Heaven. She licked the sugar off her lower lip and watched his eyes follow the movement of her tongue. She stilled, swallowed, and then was tempted to do it again if only to get another one of those delicious shivers his gaze had invoked. “If I gain a single ounce over this,” she murmured, her voice a little husky, “I’m coming to find you.”

His eyes gleamed, speaking as clearly as any words could have.

He’d be fine with that…

And she? Well, in spite of her ridiculous I’m-not-interested-in-love speech, she knew she was in trouble here. Big trouble. Because love she could resist. Lust, as it turned out, not so much. And she was sinking in lust fast, going down without a raft or life vest in sight. “We shouldn’t make a habit of this,” she said. “Sharing a table. I like to be alone with my coffee.”

“And your doughnuts.” He laughed again when she blushed. “And I disagree about making this a habit,” he said. “We’re providing each other a service by sharing a table.”

“How so?”

“If we sit together, you don’t have to pretend to be working to be left alone,” he said, “and I don’t have to answer the incessant questions.”

“Questions?”

“If my leg hurts, how come Troy’s bound and determined to be as wild and reckless as I was, why don’t I remarry, blah blah.”

She was afraid to admit she’d like to ask him all those same questions and more. “I wasn’t pretending to work to be left alone,” she said. “I really was working.”

He grinned, his teeth white against his tanned skin and stubble. “Good. Go with that. It’s almost believable.”

Yeah. She had a problem. Because her high school crush? Fully reinstated.