a while, Tara turned away, hiding a yawn behind her palm, and reached beneath her table for one of the boxes she’d used to bring in her load that morning. Not quite an hour had passed, but it was close enough for her.
She set the box on her stool and began taking down the unsold garments hanging on the display rack. Slipping them off their hangers, she folded them neatly between tissue paper before placing them in the box. The more careful she was, the less steaming she’d have to do when she hung the clothing back up in her shop.
She filled the first box and put it on the floor, then bent below the table again to hunt down the next box.
“Did you bury a bone down there?” The voice was low. Husky. Amused.
Painfully familiar.
Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest as she warily peered above the table.
She would have welcomed a nonstop procession of Clays, if this one would just disappear.
It was, after all, what he was good at.
Looking away from Axel, she dragged another box out.
Don’t look at the guy. That’s what got you into trouble last time.
Trouble.
It was almost laughable, if it weren’t so clichéd.
“What are you doing here?” She didn’t sound welcoming and wished she didn’t care. She would have far preferred to sound breezily unconcerned about his unexpected presence.
“We need to talk.”
“After four months of silence? I don’t think so.” Darnit. That didn’t sound breezy, either. She grabbed the rest of the hangers from the rack, clothing and all, and shoved the bundle into the box.
If she had to steam out wrinkles until the cows came home, she suddenly didn’t care. She just wanted to get out of there. She slapped the lid onto the box and dropped it atop the first.
“Tara—”
But she’d already crouched down to fish out another box. Beneath the cover of the table, she exhaled shakily.
He’s just a guy, she told herself for about the millionth time since that night in Braden that had turned into an entire weekend. More than forty-eight hours spent with each other in that little motel room, during which time she’d stupidly started thinking things she’d had no business thinking. Crazy things. Forever things.
All of which had come to a screeching halt when he’d been gone from their bed before she’d woken up that last morning.
The only thing he’d left behind was a note that he’d “call.” He’d scrawled the message on the flattened pink bakery box that had held the small chocolate cake he’d managed to track down after searching three different stores.
The cake that—after she’d made a wish and blown out the candles, all of which he’d insisted upon—they’d managed to share over those two days in shockingly creative ways that still haunted her dreams.
But call?
Right.
Not only had he been gone from her bed, but he hadn’t shown his face in Weaver afterward. Not the next day. Not the next week. Not the next month.
The thoughts they’d shared. The laughter they’d had. The love they’d made. None of it mattered.
One weekend was all they had in common.
Well, she was a big girl. She would live with the consequences.
She grabbed the storage box and drew it out, squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine in the same motion.
Axel, unfortunately, was still leaning atop the display case, his shoulders seemingly wider than ever beneath the nubby, gray turtleneck sweater he wore.
The last time she’d seen those shoulders, they’d been bare and golden and glistening with sweat while he’d made love to her as if he’d never wanted to stop.
She banished the painfully vivid thought and looked pointedly at the case. “Do you mind?”
He backed away slightly. Ignoring his solid chest only inches away, she flipped open the case and drew out one of the sliding trays from beneath.
“I can explain the four months.” His voice was quiet beneath the laughter coming from the nearby kissing booth.
“No explanation needed,” she assured him. “It was what it was.” There. That was breezy. She even managed to top it off with a careless shrug and a small smile. “When did you get back into town?”
“This morning. I intended to call.”
Too little, too late. Four months too late.
“No big deal,” she said, still breezy.
She was an adult. They’d had a “one-night stand” that happened to last an entire weekend, and the aftereffects were her business and hers alone.
The only thing that bothered her now was that she was bothered by his four months’ worth of silence.
Liar. Tell him.
She ignored the insistent whisper inside her head and with no regard for her usual order, dumped the contents of the jewelry tray into the box. She’d sort it out when she got back to the shop.
“Something important came up,” he said. She made the mistake of glancing at him and caught the grimace that crossed his unreasonably handsome face. “I know how that sounds.”
“It doesn’t matter how it sounds. It was months ago. No big deal. I hardly—” she said as her tongue nearly tripped “—hardly remember much about it.”
The corners of his lips lifted ever so slightly. “D’you know that there are five little freckles on your nose that only show up when you lie?”
She shoved the empty tray back in its slot and grabbed the second one. “You’ve offered the obligatory explanation, but as you can see, I’m busy.”
“I don’t think I explained anything.”
He hadn’t, and they both knew it.
What she didn’t understand, though, was why he bothered pressing the matter. “Let’s just save our breath and say that you did.” They’d spent a weekend together and she’d come close to losing her heart. He, on the other hand, had just taken a powder when he’d decided it was time to go.
He grabbed the tray before she could shake its contents into the box. “Tara.”
She wasn’t going to engage in a tug-of-war over a jewelry tray. Nor was she going to get into any sort of conversation about what had occurred between them when there were still too many people around who could overhear.
Gossip
