Tanya Michaels - [4 Seasons 02] - Mistletoe Cinderella p.03

He spread his hands in a nonchalant gesture, a horizontal shrug. “You obviously
don’t know how superstitious athletes can be. I guarantee I’ve heard far more
off-the-wall notions than anything you’re going to say.”
“‘Superstitious’ like lucky socks, or pagan idols in the locker rooms?” she
kidded.
“A little bit of both. One guy I knew was dating a woman named Diane Denton when
he got called up to The Show. Weeks after they broke up, he was with Amy Ash
when he hit his first major league homer. Apparently his high school girlfriend
fit the pattern, too. So it’s a rule with him now.”
“You’re not telling me he only gets involved with women whose first and last
name start with the same letter? You’re putting me on,” Chloe accused, unable to
imagine a rational adult acting that way.
“He proposed to Leigh Ledbetter on their second date because it’s tough to find
women that meet the criteria and he had a major contract negotiation on the
line.”
“Did she accept?” Chloe asked incredulously.
“No.” Dylan grinned. “She advised him to look into extensive counseling.”
Chloe began to see his point. Rearranging furniture for a more harmonious living
environment sounded far more logical than proposing to a near stranger because
of her initials. “What about you? Any superstitions?”
All the humor left his face, and she regretted the impulsive question.
“If I had been the superstitious type,” he said, “it wouldn’t matter now, would
it?”
“So on-air personalities don’t have their own quirky habits?” she coaxed.
“You drove all this way for a consultation, and I got you off topic. Tell me
more about how feng shui works,” he said firmly.
She sighed, then crossed her legs and sat straighter, hoping to project
authority. “There’s a ba gua, energy map, for your house as a whole and within
each individual room. The terminology varies depending on the source, but
essentially the areas are travel, health and family, reputation, career,
knowledge, children and creativity, wealth and love.”
“So you can help me improve any of those areas?” he drawled, the gleam in his
eyes suggesting that buying tablecloths was not what he had in mind.
“First and foremost,” she said briskly, “is intention. If you want to improve or
change something, rather than stressing over specific feng shui rules, picture
what you want.” Good advice for him, not her. She needed to stop picturing what
she wanted, which was him kissing her again.
Dylan nodded. “Positive visualization. Coach Burton was a big believer in that,
too. I have to admit, it worked pretty well for me. Up to a point,” he added
softly.
Chloe was glad she was seated too far away to touch him. Every time she saw how
much it hurt him not to be playing ball anymore, she wanted to comfort him. She
wanted to stroke his shoulder, hold him, kiss him until he forgot his
disappointment.
Think platonic thoughts. No stroking the would-be client! Since he’d introduced
the coach in conversation, she asked, “How’d the banquet go?”
“It was…surprising.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she teased, “Don’t tell me, a woman jumped out of a
cake?”
“Since my mother ended up being my date, I’m happy to say, no, that was not the
case. Actually, the coach made some suggestions about what I might do
career-wise now that I’m not pitching.”
She tilted her head. “You don’t plan to stay with sportscasting?”
“It’s a good job.” He fidgeted, averting his eyes. “I’m lucky they wanted me.”
There it was again, that latent insecurity that had tugged at her heart in her
kitchen when he’d called himself “just a jock.” Didn’t he know he had plenty to
offer outside the baseball diamond? She inched closer before she could stop
herself.
“Dylan.” Her voice came out low, not much more than a whisper.
He jerked his head up, startled, but his gaze quickly heated. She could feel an
answering warmth thrumming through her body. He, too, was clearly remembering
the kisses they’d shared the other night. And he was just as clearly planning to
do it again.
Her pulse leaped. “I…”
He’d slid down onto the couch cushions, leaning toward her. “Yes?”
I think you’re amazing, fastball or not. I want to hear you say my actual
name—Chloe—because you would make it sound so sexy. I can’t remember ever
wanting a man like this.
“N-nothing.” She told herself to put more distance between them, but his eyes
possessed an almost hypnotic pull. “No, there is something. It might be
presumptuous of me to mention this, but I should let you know that I do not get
romantically involved with customers.”
He reached out, trailing a finger over her cheek. “I haven’t hired you yet.”
Dylan hadn’t planned to kiss her.
While he had, admittedly, first asked her to decorate because he’d been grimly
amused at the thought of watching her hoist herself on her own petard, he would
never toy with a woman sexually. But the attraction to Chloe was as potent now
as it had been when he’d first glimpsed her sitting in the Mistletoe Inn.
More so in spite of her confusing behavior and his infuriated humiliation when
he’d learned she’d lied to him. To his surprise, he genuinely liked talking to
her, loved the slow break of her smile. He knew details about her she didn’t
even realize, and he hungered for more.
Cupping her face, he bent forward and claimed the kiss he’d wanted ever since
she’d bolted from his hotel room. He traced the seam of her lips with his
tongue, pulled back just enough to grin down at her. “Tart.”
Her eyes were wide amber pools. “You kissed me,” she protested.
He frowned, then threw his head back and laughed as her meaning set in. “Your
lip gloss is tart.”
“Oh. Pink lemonade,” she informed him.
“It’s different.”
“Different, bad?”
When she would have wiggled away, he gently tightened his hold. “Not sure. I’m
still forming an opinion.” He lowered his mouth to hers.
She kissed him back thoroughly. Trustingly. It would be so easy to keep going,
to lay her down on the couch and explore her delectable body. At the back of his
mind was the dim echo of Nick’s words, that Chloe didn’t know how lovely she
was. I could show her. Dylan could make her feel every inch a sexy goddess,
deserving of lavish adoration.
At least, he could if she ever told him the truth about herself. She owed him
that. Now that his initial anger had abated and he was enjoying her company so
much, he was starting to genuinely care for her. Did she care enough about him
to admit what she’d done? Regretfully he let his hands slide from her shoulders.
“Does this mean you’ve formed your opinion?” she asked, her voice low and
entirely too tempting.
“Yes. In my opinion, you’re addictive.” He stood, not trusting himself to look
at her because he’d probably reach for her again. “I should probably give you a
tour of the rest of the place.”
“Okay.” She rose, too, and he hid a grin when he noticed she seemed a bit wobbly
on her feet. Whatever else he might be confused about, he loved the idea that
his kisses weakened her knees.
Dylan lived in a four-story building that had been erected in the late 1920s and
had been revamped in recent years to make each story its own condo. An elevator
from the parking garage led to interior entrances, but there were also back
doors to the individual apartments, available by outside stairs. He had the top
floor. The view wasn’t that exciting since his windows just looked out at the
sides of taller buildings, but he liked not having to worry about upstairs
neighbors tromping around overhead.
His apartment was a big space, bisected by a slim foyer. On one side was a huge
master bedroom. The kitchen, full bath and living room took up the other half.
He led her to the kitchen first, and watched her scrutinize the stainless-steel
appliances and gleaming white cabinets and counter.
“I have to hand it to you—you don’t suffer from clutter. But don’t you find it a
bit…sterile?” she ventured. “A plant in here would do wonders, even if it was
artificial. You know Nat runs the flower shop in town? I’ll bet she could make
some great suggestions. Or a few color accents would help. In feng shui, all
colors have meanings, usually tied to the five Chinese elements—earth, fire—”
“Wind?”
She frowned at the interruption, looking adorably like a librarian shushing a
rowdy patron. All that was missing from the picture were a pair of wire-rim
glasses perched on her nose and maybe a pencil behind her ear.
“No,” she corrected. “Earth, fire, metal, wood and water. Also known as the five
transformations.”
What the hell had she done? Memorized a feng shui textbook? Four days ago, he
would have sworn she didn’t know the first thing about the topic. Irritation
flared. She was supposed to be backing down, floundering over her head and
confessing her ruse. Once she apologized, he could magnanimously forgive her.
Instead, she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into the charade.
Waxing philosophical about colors, she didn’t realize she’d temporarily lost her
audience. “And then there’s red, which is often thought to be the most
powerful—”
“I’ll say.” Even annoyed he couldn’t help admitting, “Seeing you in the hotel
lobby, in that red dress, stopped me in my tracks. The fact that we were both
there for the reunion was sheer luck. I would have been compelled to come talk
to you even if I’d never seen you before in my life.”
She swallowed, her throat rippling with the motion. His eyes trailed downward.
Had he ever found a woman’s collarbone sexy before Chloe? He didn’t let himself
dwell on any of the tantalizing places lower. He wanted this woman. But not
until she owned up to what she’d done. Growing up with a learning disability,
with Michael Echols for a father, Dylan had been made to feel like a fool far
too many times. Chloe had deliberately deceived him, made him feel stupid, and
there had to be some kind of consequence for that.
“No one’s ever been moved to cross a room just to get to me,” she said.
He would have pegged her words as more guile than truth if not for that jackass
Petey Grubner’s comments. Klutzy Chloe? A book nerd who never left her computer
monitor? Was the male population of Mistletoe freaking blind?
“Men have noticed you,” he told her, thinking of his friend Nick. “Maybe you
just weren’t sending the right signals to encourage their approach.”
“Signals?” She cast him a dubious smirk. “You mean like tight tank tops or
asking a guy what his sign is?”
“Please. Has anyone actually used a line like that since the seventies?”
Although he wouldn’t necessarily complain if she wanted to wear a skimpy top. “I
meant body language. It’s not that different from feng shui. You have to decide
what your intentions are, what you’re open to, and put that energy out there.”
Instead of mocking what had sounded far lamer out loud than it had in his head,
she nibbled at her lower lip, pondering his advice. Funny. He’d never been the
type of person people came to for personal guidance. Jokes, yes. Pitching tips,
maybe. Anything resembling wisdom, no.
“Your body language right now?” He met her eyes. “Very inviting.”
“How so?”
“An open stance, angled ever so slightly toward me. Parted lips. Frequent eye
contact, dilated pupils.”
“Could just be the lighting,” she quipped.
His mouth quirked in a half grin. “Could be.” He lowered his gaze briefly to the
rise and fall of her chest. “A change in your breathing.”
“Could be a respiratory condition.”
He shook his head at her even as he chuckled. “And you wonder why some guys
might not have the courage to pursue you?”
“Point taken. But didn’t we establish that, as a client, you—”
“Potential client. You know, just to keep the boundaries clear, we should settle
that once and for all.” He reached for a kitchen drawer, pulling out the
checkbook he kept there. Time to take this up a notch. “How much is your
retainer fee or whatever decorator’s call the initial deposit?”
Alarm flared in her eyes. “Oh, it’s too soon for that. What if you hate my
ideas? You—”
“I insist. Like you said, my space, my decision. So what’s the name of your
company? Or do I just make this out to Candy Beemis?” he challenged.
“C. W. Designs.” Since she said it without a trace of hesitation, he figured it
really was the name of her self-owned business.
“Not C.J. or C.B.?” he pushed. Or C.M., Ms. Malcolm?
“It’s C.W.,” she repeated, seeming unaware of the faint sarcasm in his voice.
“So what’s the W stand for?”
She looked past him, her gaze unfocused as she smiled. “Wheezy. I actually did
have a respiratory condition. I was born premature and had several lung problems
and childhood asthma. So my aunt called me Wheezy.”
“That’s horrible!” Right up there with an adult calling a dyslexic kid an idiot.
His free hand fisted involuntarily.
“No, you don’t get it. It wasn’t insulting.” Chloe shook her head adamantly. “It
was more…I don’t know. I hated having asthma. I felt different from the other
kids. Limited. And I dreaded being teased about anything. By turning it into a
term of endearment, Aunt Jane took the sting out of it. It was liberating.”
“Oh.” He relaxed his fingers against his side, realizing he must have looked
foolish, wanting to ride to her rescue years after the fact and pummel anyone
who’d wounded her feelings. He half wished Petey Grubner was handy just so he
could slug him. “That sounds like a healthy attitude.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She took a sudden keen interest in her manicure. “Not all of my
coping strategies have been quite that well-adjusted, I’m afraid.”
“Such as?” He lowered the pen and stared at her, trying to radiate empathy and
understanding. Tell me. You can tell me.
He was angry that she’d lied to him last weekend, but he was beginning to see a
bigger picture. Her favorite aunt had just died, and Chloe was acting out; she’d
been at a reunion with people who’d apparently mocked her throughout high school
while he’d been too busy with baseball—okay, and redheads—to notice the social
angst of people around him. It was an unscrupulous thing she’d done, pretending
to be Candy, and he’d never had any tolerance for cheaters.
Yet the more he learned about Chloe Malcolm, the more he unwillingly
sympathized. How had she felt when he’d mistaken her for Candy? Had he somehow
cemented Chloe’s fear that people saw her first and foremost as a nerd and not
as the lovely woman she’d become?
Shifting her weight, she nodded toward the checkbook. “I’m here on your dime.
We’re supposed to be talking about what you want to do with your place, and I’m
treating it like a free therapy session. Why don’t you show me the other rooms.”
He gestured toward the microscopic hallway. “Not much else to show. The bathroom
and bedroom are both right through there. With me, it’s ‘what you see is what
you get,’ C.J.”
Since she was already moving ahead of him, he couldn’t tell if she had any
reaction to his comment.
His bathroom was modestly sized but equipped with all the basics. Chloe poked
her head in, muttered to herself for a moment, then withdrew. Next, they walked
into his room. He flipped on the light, and her gaze went immediately to the
king-size bed. He could have sworn he saw a slight tinge of pink color her
cheeks.
She glanced upward, pointing at the ceiling. “You have an exposed beam over
where you sleep.”
It ran the length of the room. “What does that mean?” he wanted to know.
“Sha chi, bad energy. Could be problematic.”
“You sure? I’ve never had problems in the bedroom,” he said, completely
straight-faced.
Her blush deepened. “Still. There are things you can place to offset sha chi.
Mirrors, for instance, are supposed to be pretty powerful.”
He grinned. “You want me to put a mirror on my bedroom ceiling?”
“No! I mean, you could if you—No, that’s not what I was suggesting. You could
also affix a, um, bird figurine to the beam.”
He followed her gaze skeptically. “A bird?” Frankly, the mirror idea had sounded
more intriguing. “Not really me.”
“Or a string of miniature lights,” she babbled. “Bamboo flutes. You know what?
Now that I’ve seen the place, I should take some time to think everything over.
Write up some suggestions for you. I’ll e-mail you!”
“Or we can get together next time I’m in Mistletoe,” he said, mentally running
through his work schedule. He had next Tuesday off and could stay at his mom’s
before heading back to Atlanta on Wednesday. While he’d tackled a couple of
maintenance issues around his mom’s house, there was more that needed to be
done. “I’ll be back in town next week.”
“But you never come home!”
He arched an eyebrow. “You pay attention? I’m moved.”
“Everyone does,” she backpedaled. “You’re a big deal in Mistletoe.”
“Was. I was a big deal. Now I’m just—”
“Please don’t do that.” She touched his arm. “You’re not ‘just’ anything. You’re
Dylan Echols. You’re…” She trailed off, but the expression in her eyes made him
very glad to be himself, to be on the receiving end of a look like that from a
woman like her.
He knew better than to kiss her again, but he couldn’t help running his thumb
across her bottom lip. “Thank you.”
If only she’d been so clear about who she was.
Chapter Nine
Chloe waited until she was clear of the Atlanta freeways before reaching for her
cell phone at a red light. She punched in the first number programmed in her
speed dial. “I’m a terrible human being! You shouldn’t even be friends with me.”
Her unorthodox greeting was met with a slight pause. “Chloe, is that you? I know
a lot of terrible human beings, so you’ll have to be more specific.”
“This is serious, Nat. I’m out of control! You won’t believe what happened at
Dylan’s place.”
Natalie gasped. “Don’t tell me you had sex with him. On second thought, do tell
me. I want all the details.”
“What? No, of course I didn’t sleep with him! Although I was in his bedroom. And
we did kiss again.”
He was such a great kisser. He was a great listener. He was a great guy…which
made her feel like slime. Today was supposed to have been the end of it. She was
supposed to have freaked him out with girlie suggestions of angel figurines and
crystal balls in every room, putting to rest the possibility of his wanting to
hire her. But everything had gone wrong.
Paradoxically it had felt right.
He had a way of looking at her that made her feel sexy and whole and…herself.
Even though she was pretending to be someone else, he seemed to see more of the
real Chloe than her Web site customers, parents and friends. More than anyone
except Natalie. In fact, Chloe thought, recalling the way they’d joked with each
other, spending time with him was a lot like being with Natalie. Except that Nat
knew Chloe’s actual name and profession, and Chloe never fantasized about
kissing her friend.
“Who kissed who?” Natalie asked, sounding ecstatic instead of outraged.
“It was sort of a mutual thing.” Which she’d instigated, scooting closer to him
on the couch. She didn’t even want to think about how she must have been looking
at him to encourage him. “That’s not the point, anyway. I took his money!”
“You stole from him?”
“I might as well have! I let him write me a check for services rendered. Or to
be rendered.” She’d thrown out the lowest number that was still halfway
credible, adding at his disbelieving expression that he got a discount because
he was someone she knew. But you live in a very small town, he’d argued. Don’t
you know about sixty percent of your clients? How do you stay in business if you
give everyone that rate?
It was difficult to lie to an astute man. Witness how he’d described seeing her
at the inn, how he’d described her body language this afternoon—
“Hello? Did I lose you?” Natalie prompted. “Are you going through a bad
reception area?”
“I’m going through a midlife crisis! And I’m not even thirty. I should have been
racked with remorse all afternoon, but you know what the most shameful part is?
I enjoyed myself.” Especially the kissing. “I’m sick and twisted enough that
most of me is glad he’s coming to Mistletoe next week.”
Even though she knew that every time he stepped foot inside town limits, it
increased the odds that he’d find out she wasn’t Candy Beemis and that C.J. the
Decorator didn’t even exist, her idiot heart beat a bit faster at the thought of
seeing him again.
“Coming to Mistletoe?” Natalie shrieked. “To see you? This is incredible.”
“I’m sure his main reason for the trip is to check on his mom, but he does want
to see me while he’s there. I gave him my cell number.” She thought it was safer
for him to have that, rather than the home number under Malcolm. It disturbed
her that she’d even thought to take that precaution.
This was bad. The more she covered her butt, the deeper the hole she dug. At
first, she’d told herself that he would be gone from her life soon, none the
wiser. And now…Chloe had waited twenty-seven years to feel this way, alive and
important, to have someone show avid interest in her as a woman, not as a sickly
child too frail to be left unattended for a few minutes. Though it was insanity
to continue on this course, the thought of pushing Dylan away for good pierced
her like a wound. Not yet, just a little more time. A few more memories.
“So how’d you leave things with him?” Natalie wanted to know.
“I told him I’d work on design ideas for his place and that he could call me
Monday or Tuesday. Nat, what am I doing?”
“I have no idea.”
Chloe sighed, raising her gaze skyward and checking the clear blue horizon for
celestial assistance. She was certain that if she had a guardian angel, it was
Aunt Jane. There was also no doubt she was the only angel up there with a
naughty enough streak to help out under these circumstances. “I really like
him.”
“Sure seems as if he likes you, too.”
“Yeah, but there’s no future in that. What am I supposed to do, date him, get
him to fall in love with me, hope for every girl’s dream proposal, then pray he
doesn’t notice the name on the marriage license? The only other option is to
somehow explain to him that I’ve been lying. No way he’d want anything to do
with me after that, and I wouldn’t blame him. Who wants to be involved with
someone they can’t trust?” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel,
cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder. “Do you think I could convince
him that I sustained a major head injury shortly before the reunion? Forget I
asked that.”
When she figured out a way to be honest with Dylan, the key would be actual
honesty. In the meantime, she was not cashing the check she’d guiltily stowed in
her glove compartment. She also had no plan to kiss him when she saw him next
week.
No matter how badly she was tempted.

MOST MEN WERE probably motivated by anniversaries and apologies to stop at
flower stores. Dylan, pulling into town midmorning on Tuesday, was passing
Mistletoe Berries and Blooms when he was suddenly inspired to go on a fishing
expedition. Parking his car, he wondered what exactly he thought he might learn.
Natalie and Chloe were obviously close—albeit not through the cheerleading bond
he’d first assumed—but even though the blonde probably knew all sorts of details
about her friend, she was unlikely to share them.
A small copper bell tinkled overhead, announcing his entrance to the shop.
“Hello?” a female voice called out from a small room behind the counter. Natalie
came into view seconds later.
“Hi, there.” He smiled, pouring on as much charm as was possible without hitting
on her or trying to sell her a car.
“Dylan. I have to say, I’m surprised to see you here.”
Surprised, but not shocked, which would have been a legitimate reaction since he
hadn’t set foot in the flower shop since he’d picked up his date’s corsage for
the senior prom. Had Chloe told her friend he was coming to town? The idea of
Chloe talking about him left him feeling divided. On the one hand, it was nice
thinking that she might care enough about him to confide in someone else. But if
Chloe had been discussing him, would she also have told Natalie about her
impersonation? That possibility rankled.
“I was hoping you’d be in today.” He kept his tone easy. “Maybe you can help me
pick out an arrangement for C.J.? I don’t want it to be too intimidating or
clichéd—no dozen red roses—but since she arranges beautiful things for a living,
I want it to be special.”
“Sure thing.” Natalie didn’t even blink. Or ask, C.J. who?
Though he wasn’t surprised she knew about the situation, his gut clenched
anyway. It had been galling the night of the reunion to find out he’d been made
a fool of—it was worse that someone else was aware. Had Chloe revealed her tall
tale only to Natalie or were there other people in Mistletoe who knew? A
sickening sensation enveloped him as he too easily imagined a conspiracy in
which townfolk nodded to his face and laughed behind his back. In his head, he
heard Grady Medlock’s snickers, the titters of classmates when he’d been asked
to read aloud during those early years before baseball had elevated his status
to a popular student.
If you could throw an amazing curveball and owned a varsity letter jacket, your
peers didn’t care whether or not you were struggling with Shakespeare and
Steinbeck. Not that the varsity jacket fit anymore.
“Dylan?” Natalie’s blue eyes looked so genuinely concerned that it would be easy
to hold it against her, knowing that behind her facade of friendly worry she was
party to deceiving him. At least she was a smoother liar than Chloe, so it
wasn’t as much of an insult to the intelligence.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Just second-guessing myself,” he heard himself say. “Maybe the flowers aren’t
such a good idea.”
“No, wait. I think they’re a wonderful idea.”
“You’re the flower purveyor,” he pointed out. “Of course you’re in favor of it.”
“True. But—and she would kill me dead if she knew I was saying this—she likes
you.” Natalie waited a beat, perhaps waiting for some assurance that the feeling
was mutual. When she didn’t get it, she tensed slightly. “I hope that your being
back in Mistletoe so soon, thinking about flowers, means that she wasn’t just
someone to chat with at the reunion. I’d hate to see her hurt.”
Whoa, back the hell up, Mama Bear. He understood protective loyalty among
friends, but from his point of view, Natalie should be issuing warnings about
Chloe to unsuspecting men, not issuing warnings on her behalf.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said tightly.
“I overstepped, didn’t I? It’s really none of my business what happens between
the two of you.”
The remorse in her tone made him sigh—she wasn’t the one who’d started this
mess. “You were looking out for someone you care about. I get it.”
“Thank you. I do care about her. We’re both only children, more like sisters
than friends. God knows I might not have earned my diploma without her.”
Dylan thought about how Nick had said more or less the same thing.
“And I’m probably more worried about her right now than I ordinarily would be.
She just lost someone who meant a lot to her.”
“Her aunt?” He nodded. “Jane sounds like quite the character.”
“Oh, she was.” Natalie smiled fondly, then her expression became more somber.
“I’m sure you know what it’s like to be turned emotionally upside down by losing
someone. It wasn’t too long ago that your father…” She trailed off, probably
realizing she was overstepping again.
If he were a different sort of son—if Michael Echols had been a different sort
of father—Dylan would buy flowers for the grave while he was here. It was the
decent thing to do. He could just imagine how such an action would cheer his
mom, who’d always liked to pretend there was nothing wrong in her home.
Gritting his teeth, Dylan thought about how much the pretense had bothered him,
the hypocrisy of his old man cheering for him at games, acting the proud father
when happily accepting accolades from everyone else in the bleachers while, at
home, he made his son feel like nothing he ever did was good enough.
And now Dylan was knowingly turning his own personal life into a pretense? The
truth was, he did like Chloe. But he wasn’t sure he liked himself for it.

AT TEN O’CLOCK, Chloe met with Kimberley Warren, a local matron with four kids.
Kim was opening a salon in the back of her house and wanted to talk about the
possible cost of a Web site. Knowing that Dylan was supposed to reach town
today, Chloe found herself losing her concentration more than she had when she
was a teenager sitting in class with him. Luckily, with children ranging from a
tired-but-refusing-to-nap six-month-old to an eight-year-old home from school
after getting tubes in her ears yesterday, Kim was too distracted herself to
notice Chloe’s momentary lapses.
Kim grimaced at the third consecutive interruption, a request for something to
drink. “Can you give me just a second? The oldest one isn’t usually this much of
a pain. She’s just bored silly because she’s cooped up at home. Honestly, if I’d
realized how easy her recovery was going to be, I would have sent her to class.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Chloe said. Her next appointment, with Rachel Waide,
wasn’t for another two hours. Plus, ever since Rachel and her husband, David,
had found out they were expecting, the woman was extra indulgent about anything
involving children. She wouldn’t mind if Chloe ran a few minutes late.
The beleaguered mommy poured some grape juice and exited the kitchen muttering.
As Chloe waited, she found herself looking around and evaluating the room. Round
table, which was good chi, but the stove was not optimally placed, in conflict
with—Chloe blinked when she realized the direction her thoughts had taken. You
know you’re not actually a decorator, right?
Still, she’d found herself inspired over the weekend, brainstorming some ideas
for her own home. It wasn’t a bad little house and she certainly had some fond
memories of growing up there, but she was an adult now. Wasn’t it time to make
it her place and not her parents’? She hadn’t started any projects yet, but
she’d put together an outline of what she wanted to accomplish and gone
window-shopping Sunday afternoon to compare prices on supplies.
“Sorry about that.” Kim came back into the room. “But I think that’s the last of
the interruptions. I told the eight-year-old we could order pizza for lunch if
she can find something to watch in the DVD collection until then, and the baby
finally fell asleep in his playpen.”
“Not a problem. Now, about some simple things you could do for a site…”
They tossed around some ideas, including Kimberley’s desire to include pictures
of Mistletoe locals, which she could update periodically. As Chloe started
getting more into the technical side of things, she realized Kim was staring at
her absently.
“Did I lose you?” Chloe asked.
“What? Oh, it’s not that. I was just wondering…Would you let me cut your hair?
Then we could take a picture! You’d be one of the first photos for my online
portfolio, and it would be my way of saying thanks for today. Well, more than
today. I swear every time we’ve talked on the phone, one of the kids has been
playing drums in the next room, tattling on a sibling or inciting the dog to
bark in the background.”
Chloe laughed. “It hasn’t been too bad.”
“Is that your polite way of turning down the haircut?”
Now that Chloe thought about it, when was the last time she’d had a trim? Her
thoughts skittered back to Dylan. She’d be seeing him soon. It wouldn’t hurt to
look her best. “Okay, sure. We could take off a few split ends.”
“You don’t want anything else done?” Kim looked disappointed. “I was hoping for
something at least dramatic enough for ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures.”
Chloe smoothed her hand over her head. Barring the short-lived and ill-advised
highlights when she was a teen, she’d worn her hair pretty much the same way
ever since…what, second grade? Good Lord. She was a one-woman definition of
stagnant.
Not anymore. “What did you have in mind?”
Kim brightened. “I’m glad you asked!”

FAR FROM the somewhat timid woman Dylan often remembered her as, Barb Echols
seemed positively jubilant now, flitting about her kitchen and humming while she
prepared lunch for the two of them. She was so happy that Dylan found himself
grinning, her mood contagious. For a little while, he forgot Chloe Malcolm and
simply took pleasure in having made a right decision.
“I was so excited when you called to say you were coming back!” Instead of being
discouraged that he couldn’t stay longer, his mom was obviously touched. “Some
people wouldn’t even think the drive was worth it for only an overnight stay.”
“It’s not that far.” The trip was not even two hours. He knew people in the
Atlanta area who commuted close to that just to get to work. It was not a
hardship for him to get in the convertible, turn up the MP3 player and drive on
a sunny day.
Barb stirred a pot of her homemade chicken noodle soup, the peppery aroma that
wafted from the pot immediately taking him back to childhood. “Still. With
gasoline prices what they are these days…I’m so glad to see you. You know who
else would be equally happy? Todd.”
Dylan was so accustomed to everyone he knew calling Todd Burton “Coach” that it
took him a second to make the connection. “Coach B.?”
His mother nodded. “Have you talked to him since the banquet? About his offer?”
Suddenly restless, Dylan stood. He busied himself getting bowls down for the
soup. Unfortunately that only killed about three seconds.
“It wasn’t really an ‘offer,’ Mom, merely a suggestion. He can’t just hand out a
job. I’m sure there’s a lot of bureaucracy with the school board involved.”
Barb hesitated; he assumed she’d agree with him and change the subject. It’s
what she would have done in a similar situation if she’d been talking to his
father. So Dylan was startled to see her square her shoulders, lift her chin and
shake her silvered head at him.
“That’s silly, and you know it. With your record in the sport and Coach Burton’s
sway in this community, you could probably walk into the school’s administration
office this afternoon and have the position before dinner.” As if realizing how
vocal she was being with her opinion, she lowered her gaze, mumbling, “If you
wanted it.”
Passing behind her on the way back to the table, he stopped to give her a quick
squeeze of affection. Go, Mom. He didn’t want the job, but he was thrilled to
see his mother showing some spirit. “I’m not convinced that I’d be a good coach.
Besides, some people in Atlanta pulled strings to help get me into a really good
job after my shoulder gave out. It seems wrong to just walk away from that.”
“So you’ll stay in a situation you know deep down isn’t right for you because
you feel obligated?” Her voice cracked.
“Mom.” Instead of taking his seat, he returned to her. “You okay?”
“No. I’m an old woman looking back on her life.”
He hugged her to his chest. “You’re not old.”
“I feel it,” she muttered into his shirt. “I’ve felt old for years. And now
I…now I…”
Oh, damn. She was crying, and Dylan didn’t have the first clue what to do.
Irrationally he wished Chloe were here. Next to his mother, Chloe was currently
the central female in his life, and this seemed like an occasion requiring a
feminine touch. She’d been sensitive and insightful at his apartment. So what
would Chloe do in this situation? Probably lie through her teeth. Not helpful.
“I’m getting your shirt all wet,” Barb sobbed.
“I have plenty of shirts, but only one mother.” He led her to the table and she
sat down. “I want to help.”
“Such a good boy. And after you were handed such a poor lot in life.”
He squirmed guiltily—he’d endured his difficult adolescent years surrounded by
friends and admiring peers, had gone on to follow his dream and had been able to
pursue it further than most men ever did. “It’s not so bad. I played major
league ball for a few seasons. Even now I have decent gig. I also have people
here who love me, like you and Coach.”
“I know it was hard on you,” she insisted. “The struggles at school. Before you
found baseball, I was always scared to death you’d drop out before you
graduated. I wanted more for you than I ever accomplished. I got married so
young I never even considered college. And you have a diploma and a degree!”
She wasn’t this upset about his dyslexia, and they both knew it. It wasn’t just
school that had been an ordeal. The fact of the matter was, sometimes being
there had been a nice respite from being home.
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“I don’t blame you. Looking at the man you’ve become, I wonder if I did the
right thing staying here all these years or if I should have…I don’t know what I
would have done without your father, but maybe it was only cowardice that kept
me from finding out, not love.” Her eyes filled again. “Is it wrong to look at
this as a fresh start? There was a time I loved him, there must have been.”
She looked unconvinced, but Dylan was the wrong man to plead his father’s case.
Dashing away a few tears, she added in a stronger tone, “I do want you to know
he loved you. In his own way, he loved you very much. I don’t know if he ever
told you this, but his mother had a learning disability. Not that it was
diagnosed well or that school curricula back then were developed to handle that.
I think your father had a misplaced sense of anger, that maybe you’d inherited
something through him.”
“Mom, I know you have the best of intentions, but I do not want to talk about
it.” To lessen the sting of his vehement words, he knelt by her chair. “We
should look at this as a fresh start, with each other. Please don’t beat
yourself up over what-ifs. You can second-guess your plays all you want, but it
still won’t change the score after the game’s finished. The truth is, I wasn’t
an ideal son, either. But we can work on that, right?”
“Right.” She gave him a watery smile, emboldened. “And we could work on it even
more if you took a coaching job in Mistletoe.”

AFTER LUNCH, Dylan attempted to distract himself from everything his mom had
said by calling Chloe to let her know he’d reached town, but her cell phone
rolled immediately to voice mail. You’ve reached C. W. Designs, she chirped.
Leave a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can! The cynical part of
him wondered if that had always been her outgoing recording, or if she’d altered
it and removed her name since giving him her number. Having struck out getting
in touch with her, he tried Nick Zeth instead.
Nick laughed as soon as Dylan identified himself. “Dude, when I offered to buy
you dinner next time you were in town, it’s because I figured you wouldn’t be
back for at least a decade. What happened, you get back to Atlanta and decide
you missed us?”
The picture of Chloe’s smile swam in his memory. “Something like that. But don’t
worry, I’m not looking for a free meal. Maybe just some company at batting
practice?” He had sworn to his mentor to at least consider the idea of coaching.
Now, with Barb adding her own pressure, Dylan felt that, at a minimum, he should
swing by the high school to watch the team for a few minutes this afternoon.
Showing up might make him look more interested in the job than he really was,
though. He planned to use Nick as a human shield, just two former players
motivated by recent nostalgia to check out the old stomping grounds and see the
new team in action.
“I can get away for a little while,” Nick agreed. “I’m not active today, just on
call. I’ll bring the pager with me.”
Once they were off the phone, Dylan called the school to verify that practice
time hadn’t changed and to make sure Coach Asbury didn’t mind the audience.
“Hell, no. You boys feel free to come down on the field and give pointers. I
don’t suppose you’d be willing to autograph baseballs for the kids?”
Dylan winced. “Maybe next time. I think we’ll keep it low-key and incognito
today.”
He arrived in the bleachers wearing shades and a scruffy cap pulled down over
his forehead.
Nick smirked at him. “No one told me we were wearing spy gear. I would have
brought my trench coat and fake mustache.”
“I wanted to observe without being blatant about it,” Dylan admitted. The boys
down on the field had just begun their warm-up exercises.
“Does this have anything to do with Coach B. informing anyone who will listen
that you’re his natural successor?”
“Tell me he’s not,” Dylan implored.
“Only if you don’t mind me lying to your face.”
“No thanks, I’ve had quite enough of that lately,” he grumbled. Witnessing
Nick’s transparent curiosity, Dylan engaged in a brief mental debate and decided
he might as well get someone else’s take on the situation. After all, Chloe had
a confidant. Turnabout is fair play. “You remember my asking about Chloe
Malcolm?”
“Yeah, she caught your eye at the reunion.”
“More than caught my eye. We talked for a while. I may have even kissed her.”
“You’re not sure?” Nick drawled.
“I was trying to give you the pertinent information but still be a gentleman
about it.”
“Sorry, just having fun. Continue.”
“During the course of our conversation, she lied to me about who she was. I had
to resort to skimming through reunion literature just to figure out who the hell
I’d had up in my hotel room!”
“Hotel room?” Nick gave a fierce shake of his head. “You can’t be talking about
Chloe Malcolm. None of this sounds like her.”
“She called herself C.J. and told me she was an interior decorator. Unless she
has an identical twin you forgot to mention?”
“No, she’s an only child.”
“Yeah, that’s what her friend Natalie said, too.” Dylan glared out at the
baseball diamond, but barely processed what he was watching. “They’re both in on
it.”
“‘In on it’?” Nick echoed. “Chloe and Natalie Young? You make it sound like they
deliberately set you up.”
No. In retrospect Dylan caught the small hesitations that he’d overlooked the
night of the reunion. “I don’t think it was premeditated. I’m the one who
mistook Chloe for Candy Beemis. She went along with it and then some,
embellishing along the way.” When he thought of her standing in the kitchen
listing the five elements of feng shui as if she were the expert she claimed to
be, he wanted to shake her.
Or at least kiss her senseless.
“You thought she was Candy Beemis?” Nick’s jaw dropped. “How the hell could you
confuse a sweet kid—Chloe—for that she-wolf?”
Sweet kid? “She’s the same age we are,” Dylan pointed out. “And not to
disillusion you, but—”
“Did you actually call her Candy?” Nick clarified. “That had to sting. I know I
temporarily lost my wits and dated Candy—I mean, come on, have you seen her? I
was young and at the mercy of my hormones—but the girl has a vicious streak.
Chloe always brought out the worst in her. It’s not the reason she gave
publicly, but I think Candy dumped me because I had the gall to suggest she lay
off the jokes at Chloe’s expense.”
So Dylan had come along at the high school reunion, where Chloe might have been
feeling vulnerable over the way people had treated her in the past, and
immediately mistaken her for someone who’d made her teen years a living hell?
Awkward. But she should have just corrected me like a normal person! His blunder
didn’t excuse her inventing a persona and perpetrating an elaborate hoax.
“What on earth did Chloe say when you asked her about all this?” Nick demanded.
Dylan’s mouth twisted. “It’s more complicated than that. When I asked if she
went by Candy or Candace, she told me it was C.J. now and she led me to believe
she was an interior decorator. So…I hired her.”
“I’ve never heard that she does any decorating on the side,” Nick argued,
looking confused. “She works with computers.”
“I know! But she doesn’t know that I know.”
“Dude, you’re making my head hurt.”
Welcome to my world. “Maybe she’s bipolar. Maybe she’s using me to live out some
kind of fantasy.” Although it wasn’t the kind of fantasy he would have hoped.
“All I can tell you is that she’s gone to great lengths to pull one over on me.
I don’t want to just tell her the jig is up. I want her to admit what she’s done
and apologize.” Soon, he fervently hoped.
Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had to be the one to set things
right, but once she did, maybe they could see each other for real. Have that
dinner they’d missed the night of the reunion, exchange more of those kisses
that might lead—
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to confront her? Or to walk away entirely? You can’t
actually let her decorate your place.”
Then this probably wasn’t the time to mention that Dylan was supposed to see her
later to discuss swatches and furniture. “She took the check of her own free
will,” he defended himself, “passing herself off as a licensed decorator.”
Despite Nick’s logical suggestion, Dylan didn’t think he could simply walk away.
Though she had only reentered his life a week and a half ago, Chloe had made
quite an impact. The lust he’d felt when he first saw her, the anger when he’d
learned who she really was—or wasn’t—the compassion he’d felt when she talked
about her aunt and the admiration when she mentioned her asthma, trying to
pretend casually that didn’t bother her anymore. He knew how tough it was to be
a kid when you felt different from everyone else around you. Just about everyone
Dylan knew had expressed some sort of condolence that he’d lost his ball career,
but Chloe was different, the way she’d reached out to him at his condo. She’d
made comforting him seem hot rather than pitying. The former was extremely
preferable.
“I just can’t wrap my mind around this,” Nick said. “Chloe and Natalie lying and
scheming? It’s like finding out Bambi and Thumper are beating up the other
forest animals for their lunch money.”
“Life’s not an animated fairy tale.” Dylan’s storybook ending would have
involved a long career and a Cy Young Award. And what about his mother, married
to an emotional bully and struggling with the regret thirty years later? Dylan
was smart enough to accept reality rather than butt his head against it.
So why, whenever he thought of Chloe and the sweetness of her kiss, did he allow
himself to imagine a happily-ever-after?
Chapter Ten
“I tumbled into the photography thing,” Rachel bubbled, looking adorably round
and almost too big for the precarious folding chair in the back room of the
print shop. “I can’t remember—pregnant-woman brain—what do you call happy
accidents?”
“Serendipity?” Chloe offered.
Rachel snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Pictures were a hobby, but then when the
chamber of commerce approached me about doing a series for them, other
opportunities presented themselves. It’s been a slow trickle. Nothing close to
what you’d call a full-time job, but that’s not what I want after the baby
comes, anyway. Just a supplemental income with flexible hours after I abandon
poor May. But even for that, I think a Web site is a must.”
Ever since Rachel got married and moved to Mistletoe, she’d worked for May
Gideon, who was helping customers out front while Rachel used a late lunch hour
to meet with Chloe. May had expressed regret that her friend was quitting in her
final trimester, but couldn’t be happier that it was to become a full-time mom.
“I can definitely help build you a site tailored to your needs,” Chloe promised.
“We just need to talk ab—Are you okay?”
“Fine. Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” Rachel’s hands had jerked to her
stomach so quickly Chloe had feared something might be wrong. “We’d been
expecting to feel the baby move—‘flutters,’ all the books say—but nothing
happened for the longest time. Dr. McDermott did an extra sonogram just to check
on everything. Then this week, he—or she—started kicking up a storm. It’s
amazing.”
“He or she? It’s still too soon to determine the sex?” With the baby due this
summer, Chloe would have thought they knew whether they were having a boy or
girl by now.
“David and I decided to wait and find out.” The woman’s face lit up when she
mentioned her husband. “We asked Dr. McDermott not to tell us, even though she
knows. Maybe it’s a little impractical, since it limits what we can buy ahead of
time and I have to keep addressing it as The Baby, but—”
“I think it’s cool that you’d rather not know,” Chloe told her. “After all, when
you stop and think about it, how many surprises are there really in life? This
is a way to enjoy a huge one. Like throwing yourself a fantastic surprise
party.”
Rachel nodded happily, but with a faraway look on her face, her focus was
clearly on her baby.
Chloe had never had a surprise party, but she would have hated it. In her life
experience, “surprises” usually consisted of a sudden inability to breathe or a
moment of social ineptness she immediately wanted to take back or the rare
computer crash.
She preferred structure, logic, predictability.
Was that why she’d resisted the idea of the reunion so strongly—because she
couldn’t calculate what would happen, whether she’d be the newly created femme
fatale Natalie hoped for or just Klutzy Chloe version 2.0? Unlike the aunt who’d
lived each day as an unexpected adventure, on the eager brink of new discoveries
and adventures, Chloe would probably spend the rest of her life here in
Mistletoe. She’d gone into exactly the kind of field her instructors would have
forecast for an introverted student good with computers. Her life didn’t lend
itself to surprise.
Until Dylan. The night of the reunion, Chloe had thought of herself rather
sardonically as Cinderella. Now, however, she felt more like Sleeping Beauty.
Had she been sleepwalking through her carefully ordered existence all these
years? Suddenly the idea of waking up each day and wondering what could happen
didn’t seem like a terrible fate. It seemed…exciting.
“I can’t believe how different you look,” Rachel said, diverting her attention
from the neonatal gymnastics back to Chloe.
“You mean my hair?” Chloe smiled shyly. Kim had layered it that morning, not
taking off so much that it was tons shorter, but styling it so that the overall
effect was quite different.
“Not just the hair. Everything! Your makeup, your clothes.”
Was the change really so noticeable? Chloe was wearing light powder, as usual,
with mascara and gloss. It must be her blackberry gloss, which was darker and
more dramatic than what she normally wore to a casual day meeting. The blue
dress she’d chosen had been one of Aunt Jane’s more conservative gifts, which
still made it more daring than anything Chloe had bought for herself. She’d
looked in the mirror that morning and grinned, pleased by what she saw. Pleased
by the possibilities.
Leaning closer, Rachel added in a confidential tone, “And then there’s the glow.
Looking at you, I see what people must mean when they tell me I’m glowing.”
Chloe blinked. “Well, I’m not pregnant. I can guarantee you that.”
“No, that’s not what I was implying.” Rachel laughed. “You look like a woman in
love.”
“What?”
“So who is he? If it’s anyone in town, I know him, right?”
“He’s not in town exactly. And it isn’t love. Maybe a crush.” What was she,
thirteen? Dear Diary… Chloe groaned, then murmured, “This is why I need C.J.”
“His name’s C.J.?”
“No. C.J. is a long story. Kind of a role model.” Or, more accurately, alter
ego. “She wouldn’t fall apart at the mere mention of a man.”
“If you makes you feel any better, I’ve fallen apart over David plenty of
times,” Rachel commiserated.
“I find that hard to believe.” Chloe had seen the couple together often over the
past few months. They looked like a perfect fit. Not in the sickeningly Stepford
kind of way, just that they seemed so natural, as if it were a universally
accepted equation. Like the fundamental theorem of calculus.
And completely unlike me and Dylan Echols.
“Rachel, did you ever worry that maybe you and David didn’t belong together?”
Chloe was shocked when the other woman burst into nearly hysterical laughter.
“Oh, honey. You have no idea.” Rachel wiped an eye. “Trust me, there were days
that we both questioned it. There was even a time when I almost walked away. But
we ultimately realized our relationship was worth working on.”
“I don’t think what I have qualifies as a relationship,” Chloe admitted.
“I am dying to hear more,” Rachel said, her tone apologetic, “but I have a tiny
person doing chorus-line kicks over top my bladder. Give me a sec?”
“Sure.” Alone in the room, Chloe pulled out her cell phone, unable to resist
checking messages. Had Dylan called? The suspense was killing her.
As soon as she saw his name and number appear on the tiny digital readout, she
could feel her blood racing faster in her veins. She hesitated before listening,
drawing out the moment, the way she sometimes paused before eating the last bite
of a really exquisite dessert, savoring it. Then she gave in to curiosity and
punched the button.
“Hi, it’s Dylan. I’m here in Mistletoe…and I hope I can see you tonight. Call
me?” Beneath his crisp, confident tone, there was a single boyish note that made
her grin. She reached for a pen and paper, then replayed the message to catch
his number at the end.
She’d just finished writing the digits when Rachel returned. The other woman
stopped in the doorway, doing a double take of Chloe’s broad smile and flushed
cheeks. “I have no idea if you have a relationship or not,” the other woman
said, “but you definitely have something going on!”
The question was, what?

DYLAN WAS DRIVING home after leaving the high school when the cell phone played
his John Fogerty “Centerfield” ring tone. “’Lo?”
“Hi.” Hearing Chloe’s voice created the strangest sensation throughout his body,
as if it subtly relieved certain tension he was carrying with him but created
tight bands of something different altogether. “It’s me.”
“C.J.?” he pressed.
“Yeah. I got your message. So you’re in town?” It was the same husky tone he’d
first heard the night of the reunion.
He could close his eyes and listen to her talk like that for hours. “I’m here.
Are you available tonight?”
“Very. You could come over again and—”
“Actually, why not come to my mother’s for dinner?” It was an impulsive
invitation, thrown out in part because he didn’t trust himself with Chloe
unchaperoned.
“Y-your mother? That would be Barbara Echols?”
“Yep. You know her?” That would certainly bring the situation to a head.
“Just by name,” Chloe said. “Are you sure she won’t mind?”
Barb would be thrilled, and Dylan discovered that he wanted the extra time with
her before leaving tomorrow. “Tell you what, I’ll double-check with her. The
tentative plan is that you’ll come over and I’ll cook—”
“You cook? Your kitchen was spotless. It didn’t look as if anyone ever ate
there, much less cooked there.”
Spotless could have been a compliment, but her tone, not to mention her
expression when she’d seen it, made him think that she really meant barren. Was
his kitchen so devoid of personality? “Well, I don’t spend hours on end
simmering sauces and whipping up new culinary creations, but yeah, I can cook.
If that’s inconvenient for Mom, we’ll go to the Dixieland Diner.”
His suggestion was met with a long silence.
“Check with your mom,” she said finally, “and we’ll play it by ear. But one of
our homes really would be convenient so we can take a look at a computer after
we eat. There are some decorating sites I wanted to show you.”
He agreed to call her back with the final verdict, then disconnected as he
pulled into the driveway. His mother met him on the front porch.
“Did you have a nice time at practice?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about.” The boys on the field had played with
enthusiasm, but even watching them for a short time, he’d thought of several
things he’d have them try differently. Still, he wasn’t sure he was the man for
the job. Players needed someone wise and motivational, like Coach. “Not to
change the subject, but how would you feel if I had a friend over to dinner?”
“When you’re in town, this is your home! You can have people over whenever you
like,” she assured him. “Is this one of the guys from the banquet? Nick or
Shane?”
“No, this is a female acquaintance who wasn’t there.”
His mother pursed her lips thoughtfully. “The one who turned you down before you
got stuck taking me?” Her green eyes were twinkling, making it clear she’d been
teasing him.
“I was honored to have your company, Mom, but yes, it is the same young lady.”
“So are the two of you an item?”
“No, she’s going to help me redecorate my condo.” It was a safe, convenient
explanation that might stave off further questioning. “Until the reunion, we
hadn’t spoken in ten years, and we didn’t run in the same circles in high
school. To tell you the truth, I don’t know her that well. But maybe…”
“Maybe?” His mother nodded sharply. “I’ll take maybe for now.”
“Great. You let me know what time works for you, and I’ll call her back to
hammer out the details. Then I might need to make a quick run to the store. Any
special requests on what you’d like me to cook?”
“You cook?”
He didn’t know whether to be amused or affronted by getting the same incredulous
response twice. “Is it really that hard to believe? I’ve been living on my own
for some time now. Did you think I just ordered pizza and nuked frozen entrées?”
She shrugged. “Other men have gotten by on less. I’m glad you have some domestic
skills.”
“Oh, I’m all over the domestic skills. Sometimes I get really wild and crazy and
even do my laundry,” he deadpanned.
Chuckling, she poked him in the ribs. “Don’t get smart with your mother, son.”
He looped his arm around her diminutive shoulders. “I love you, Mom.”
It was startling to realize that he’d misjudged a woman he’d known his entire
life. For years, he’d pegged her as someone too soft-spoken to be capable of
mischievous humor, too weak to acknowledge difficult truths. But he’d only
viewed a single, simplistic side of her.
If there was one thing Dylan had learned in the past two weeks, it was that
people were always more complex than they appeared at first glance.
Chapter Eleven
“Whoa.” Dylan couldn’t help the long, lingering once-over of the beautiful woman
on the other side of the doorway. “You look amazing.”
He couldn’t put his finger on everything that was different. Her overall
appearance wasn’t blatantly seductive as it had been for the reunion, but there
was something more sensual about her than when she’d shown up at his apartment.
“Thank you.” She held up a square cardboard box.
“Pizza in case I burn the chicken?” he surmised.
“No, I brought dessert. Key lime pie from the diner.”
“My favorite.”
“I know. I mean…I heard that once. And I have a pretty strong memory.” She
sighed. “You’re going to get a restraining order now, aren’t you?”
“No.” He brushed a piece of her hair behind her ear, just for an excuse to touch
her. “It’s—Did you get a haircut?”
She nodded, looking pleased. “I thought guys never noticed stuff like that.”
“Is whoever told you that stereotype the same person spreading the story that
guys can’t cook? People can be multifaceted, you know.” He was only just
beginning to see how true that was…and beginning to wonder how it applied to
him.
For the majority of his life, he’d thought of himself as a ballplayer, but just
because his career had ended didn’t mean his life had. His thoughts flickered
back to the practice he’d witnessed today. Despite what Dylan had told his
mother about feeling obligated to Channel Six and the people who’d helped him
get the job, he couldn’t help entertaining possibilities. Did he possess enough
of the qualities that made Coach Burton so special?
He showed Chloe inside. After placing the pie on the kitchen counter, he led her
to the living room, where he knew his mother sat in genteel impatience, not
wanting to hover but dying to meet Chloe.
“C.J., this is my mom, Barbara Echols.” His hand went to the small of Chloe’s
back as he introduced the two women currently most important in his life, women
with whom he was developing unexpected relationships.
His mother rose to shake Chloe’s hand. “Oh, call me Barb.”
“And, Mom, this is C.J.” He felt Chloe tense as she worried that he’d add
Beemis. He couldn’t do it. He wanted Chloe and his mother to get along, which
could be compromised if protective Barb learned later about Chloe’s lies. Dylan
himself still experienced twinges of residual anger, but he knew that he could
forgive her deception. If he simply called her by name, it would put an end to
this entire fiction. But would it also end a relationship between them before it
had even begun? Instead of finding the courage to tell him herself, Dylan would
take the choice away from her. He needed to know that she trusted him
enough—that she could be trusted—to tell him on her own.
“You have a beautiful home,” Chloe said. She gravitated toward the fireplace.
The mantel was graced by three framed pictures of Dylan. When he’d lived here,
his parents’ wedding picture had dominated the ledge. Barb had removed it.
She joined Chloe. “If you want to see pictures, I have entire scrapbooks!”
“Mom, I’m sure—”
His mother sent an impish look over her shoulder. “Don’t you have something
you’re supposed to be cooking?”
“Fine.” He returned her heckling tone. “But see if I ever bring a date home
again.”
Chloe’s body jerked at the word date. In profile, he could see a light blush
staining her cheeks. Several comments came to mind, but his mom’s presence
stopped him from saying anything that might make Chloe more self-conscious.
After he’d retreated to the kitchen, he heard his mom poking around in the hall
closet, looking for albums, followed by the murmur of female voices and
occasional laughter.
It was ten minutes later that Chloe drifted into the kitchen. The change in her
wasn’t just the hair. He could swear she carried herself differently, as if she
was more comfortable in her own skin. She’d been at least a little skittish
during all of their previous encounters; this was the first time he’d seen her
at ease.
“Anything I can do to help?” she asked.
He had just topped the barbecue chicken breasts with slices of provolone cheese.
The potatoes were done. “You can pull the salad out of the fridge, if you’d
like. And the bottle of dressing. Mom makes it herself.”
“She’s sweet,” Chloe said, sounding genuinely affectionate and not like someone
sucking up to her date.
“She likes you. She doesn’t open up so quickly to everyone.”
“Neither do my parents.” Chloe carried the salad bowl to the table. “They can be
very…insular. They have good hearts, they just aren’t effusive. Or welcoming in
the traditional outgoing sense. Even Natalie, who’s known them forever, still
calls them Mr. and Mrs.—Oh, shoot. I stubbed my toe.”
He shot her a look of pure skepticism, but she wasn’t meeting his eyes at the
moment. Chloe was not cut out for lying. She was too artless and
straightforward. When was she going to realize that she couldn’t keep this up
and just come clean?
Put us both out of our misery, sweetheart.
She took a shaky breath. “So…your mom tells me you might be interviewing for a
coaching job at the school?”
“I don’t know, maybe. But if I did get a job at Mistletoe High, we could finally
have that dinner out I keep offering.” Seeing the anxiety creeping into her
gaze, he pressed further. “Unless, of course, you wouldn’t be interested in
seeing me socially? You’ve shot me down more than once. A man could get a
complex.”
“I’m interested,” she murmured.
“Really? Sometimes it seems that you want to get away from me. Like in the
grocery store parking lot, when I had to talk you into lunch. Or when you fled
the reunion.”
“That had nothing to do with you! There were extenuating circumstances.”
“Such as?”
Chloe bit her bottom lip—hard from the looks of it. He wanted to rub his finger
over the spot, soothe away the tiny hurt. Talk to me, Chloe.
“It’s a long story,” she finally said. “I’m not sure this is the time or the
place.”
“I see.”
“Dinner’s about to be served, your mom’s just a few yards…I’m sorry.”
So was he. It was crazy that she could make him feel in the wrong, but he hated
that she’d lost that alluring, unconscious confidence. She was stiff now,
uncomfortable, and probably regretting that she’d accepted the dinner
invitation. He’d been pushing, but he didn’t want to alienate her.
Luckily, between Barb’s presence and the natural mellowing properties of food,
Chloe had relaxed again midway through dinner. She offered Dylan a slow,
appreciative smile; there was a sleepy quality to her expression that made it
all too easy to imagine waking up to that face, kissing her good-morning.
“A man who can cook like this,” Chloe proclaimed, “definitely deserves a better
kitchen than yours. Something warmer, more interesting, vibrant.”
Warm, interesting and vibrant. Did she realize she was all three of those
things?
Barb set down her fork. “That’s right. Dylan mentioned you were going to help
him redecorate.”
Chloe nodded. “I went and saw the condo last week, made some notes after our
meeting. There are some very cool virtual-designer sites where you can check out
what different options would look like online.”
“Your generation and those computers!” Barb shook her head ruefully. “I can
barely check my e-mail. I must have done something wrong, because people say
they’re sending me stuff I’m not getting.”
“Do you want me to look at it for you?” Chloe volunteered. “It could be a simple
fix, like your spam filter settings.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” Barb said. “Your parents obviously raised you
right. Are they still in Mistletoe?”
Chloe started coughing so hard that Barb half rose. Dylan reached around to pat
Chloe firmly on the back before his mother panicked and administered the
Heimlich.
“Th-thanks.” She reached for her drink, her voice scratchy. “Went down the wrong
pipe.”
I’ll bet.
Barb resituated herself in her chair. “I remember once when Dylan was a kid, I
thought he was going to choke to death. Some older boy in the neighborhood dared
him to see how many marbles he could put in his mouth, and one accidentally
lodged in his throat. Scared ten years off my life.”
“Sorry,” he told his mother. He looked back to Chloe. “It was a stupid thing to
do, but sometimes we just lose our common sense temporarily.”
He’d meant it as a subliminal invitation, a way to let Chloe know that he
understood making mistakes and could forgive. A key difference between him and
Michael Echols. It wasn’t Chloe who felt motivated to share but Barb. She began
expounding on some of his less proud moments, stories that were funny twenty
years later for an outsider but served as a reminder to Dylan of the vicious
cycle he’d created for himself.
He’d been so angry with his impossible-to-please father that he’d acted
out—accepting reckless dares, taking needless chances on the playgrounds, going
for the laugh in class instead of focusing on difficult-to-process reading
assignments. Naturally, all of these actions had led to his father labeling him
an even bigger loser.
Dylan’s appetite disappeared, but since he felt it would look bad for the chef
not to eat his own cooking, he continued to pick at his food while the ladies
finished their dinners. The three of them worked together to clear the table and
agreed to wait a little while before dessert. As his mom fired up the
coffeemaker, Dylan and Chloe loaded the dishwasher.
“Were you serious about helping with the e-mail?” Barb asked hesitantly.
Chloe smiled. “Lead the way.”
The PC sat on a desk at the back of the living room. Dylan turned the television
on low volume and checked scores while the two women behind him discussed
different e-mail tools. He liked the way Chloe spoke to his mother. Barb was so
far behind the Internet age, it would be easy for a person to sound
condescending when answering her questions. It would be equally easy for someone
who was an expert in computer technology to unintentionally give too much
information, confusing his mother more than she had been in the first place.
Chloe handled everything just right, encouraging the other woman with
easy-to-understand, but not dumbed-down, explanations and liberal amounts of
praise. Barb blossomed under the friendly tutelage, grasping terms quickly and
asking even more questions as they went through drop-down menus and various
settings.
Barb laughed at the explanation of “signatures.” “Althea Webb ends each e-mail
with the oh-so-smug reminder that she won the cake cook-off this year and the
year before. Do you know I used to think she typed it every single time?”
Chloe was in the middle of changing the display settings so that everything was
larger and easier for Barb to read when his mom gasped. “Heavens, is that the
time already? Oh, dear, I’ve monopolized your whole night! And poor Dylan has to
get back to Atlanta in the morning.”
His broadcasts weren’t until evening, but he did have a station meeting at noon.
“Did you bring your notes and ideas with you?” he asked Chloe.
“Of course.” She stood, and he couldn’t help watching the line of her body as
she stretched. “Is it too late to get started on those?”
“Why don’t you leave them with me. We can meet for breakfast on my way out of
town to talk about what I might like.” This was becoming a habit of his, wanting
to know exactly when he could see her again whenever they parted ways.
Unlike other guys in college or even at the high school, he’d veered far away
from alcohol, nicotine and any kind of drugs. Not because of parental lectures,
but because he wanted to protect himself physically, stay in top condition. Now
the man college dorm mates had declared Mr. Squeaky Clean finally had a vice:
Chloe Malcolm.
After a brief hesitation, she flashed a genuine smile. “I’d like that.”
They all adjourned to the kitchen for coffee and dessert, but his mom had barely
filled three mugs before kicking them out of the house.
“It’s such a pretty night, the two of you should take your pie out on the
porch,” she suggested, being about as subtle as Natalie had been when she left
him alone with Chloe in the lobby of the reunion hotel.
He remembered the hint of desperation in Chloe’s eyes that night. If Natalie had
stayed and the three of them had started chatting, would Chloe have relaxed?
Would the situation have evolved differently? Or would she have faded into the
background while he and Natalie conversed? Maybe her friend had done her a
favor, throwing her in the proverbial water and challenging her to come up
swimming. Looking at Chloe now, he couldn’t imagine this woman panicking over a
brief drink with a guy. She was charming.
As it turned out, his mother was right about it being a gorgeous night. He
leaned against the porch railing while Chloe took the rocker.
“Don’t get stars like this in downtown Atlanta,” he admitted.
“Do you miss it?” she asked him. “Living here? I love Mistletoe. I truly do. But
sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out, settling.”
“For me, Mistletoe was a ‘best of times, worst of times’ situation. Which is the
sum total of what I remember from Lit classes,” he joked. “Honestly, I was so
focused on ball that I don’t remember details about much else. It’s only fair to
tell you, when I walked into that reunion, Candy Beemis was just a name to me. I
didn’t have any specific memories or preconceived notions attached to it when I
asked you to dinner.”
“Really?” She sounded elated. The actual Candy would be clawing his eyes out by
now.
For the first time it occurred to him how lucky he’d been to sit with the wrong
girl. “Really. I asked you out because you were stunning and I wanted to spend
more time with you.” He leaned in closer. “You still are, and I still do.”
She swallowed, then ran her tongue along her lower lip. He was overcome with a
need to know what she tasted like tonight. His Chloe was always full of
surprises.
“If it weren’t for that policy of yours about not getting involved with
clients,” he began coaxingly.
“I…” Her gaze was troubled, the internal debate clear in her eyes. “I can’t. I
want to, but I can’t. I should go, Dylan.”
Damn.
It wasn’t until she’d safely put a few stairs of distance between them that she
said, “But I’m looking forward to breakfast tomorrow! We’ll talk more then.”
He watched her go to her car. It was on the tip of his tongue to call out Wait,
Chloe, but if he did, he’d never know that she respected him enough, cared about
him enough, to tell him the truth herself.

HER FIRST REAL DATE with Dylan Echols. Well, date might be too strong a term,
but this would be their first meal in public. Chloe’s heart thudded madly in her
chest. She’d agreed because it was so early in the day and the restaurant was on
Dylan’s route back to the freeway, practically the outskirts of Mistletoe.
Statistically this was the least likely place and time for her to run into
people she knew. Still, her mouth was dry and her palms were damp.
How the hell did people commit crimes? If she were even pondering something
illegal and happened to pass a police officer, she’d be seized with the
uncontrollable urge to turn herself in. What you’re doing to Dylan is a crime.
You have to tell him the truth. She realized that. It had been unfair to ever
rationalize that he didn’t need to know, even though she’d never dreamed that
their acquaintance would continue and evolve.
But she’d let it go on so long. How could she explain what she’d done in a way
that didn’t make her sound pathological? In a way that didn’t make him never
want to speak to her again?
“C.J.! Over here.” He waved from a back booth. Was it her guilty conscience, or
did his voice boom extra-loud as he signaled her?
She hurried to sit across from him, her back to the restaurant’s entrance.
“Morning. Before I forget, here are some more URLs I wrote down for you.”
As he took the sheet of paper torn from a memo pad, his thumb swirled over her
palm, pressing gently against pressure points she hadn’t known were there. It
shouldn’t have been any more sexual than two kids holding hands, but she nearly
trembled at the contact. Sitting with him last night on Barb’s front porch,
Chloe had yearned for more physical contact. She’d bolted in part because she
didn’t trust herself alone with him. She’d been infatuated with him in high
school, but the feelings that had seemed so all-encompassing at the time were
nothing compared to the rising desires of an adult woman who’d come to know
Dylan more intimately.
A curly-haired waitress wearing a faded uniform and funky green horn-rimmed
glasses took their orders. After she’d gone, Dylan held up the list Chloe had
made of sites and brief notations about each.
“Thanks for these. You sure are going to a lot of trouble.”
“Not really.” The very fact that Chloe had the time to devote to Dylan and his
condo was a glaring neon arrow pointing to her lack of love life. Friends like
Natalie spent leisure hours getting ready for dates, going to movies with new
boyfriends, shopping for anniversary and Valentine’s Day gifts. Chloe spent her
free time watching reruns of House. She suspected, though, that even if her Web
site business kept her so busy that she put in sixty-hour weeks, for Dylan she
would have made the time. “Besides, I’ve been enjoying myself. The site listed
at the bottom of the page is entirely too much fun. You can scan in a photo of
your room and mess with colors and stuff. The models are crude, but if you’re at
all a visual person—”
“Oh, I am.”
“Most men seem to be,” she agreed. “When I did student tutoring—”
He raised an eyebrow and looked as if he might interrupt. Chloe hastily tried to
recall what kind of student Candy had been. Plenty of cheerleaders and varsity
athletes had been on the honor roll, but the idea of Candy selflessly helping
her peers was laughable.
She spoke faster, trying to prevent an interruption even though she’d
momentarily lost her train of thought. “I found that guys always absorbed the
point faster when they had a diagram or map or illustration. I got really
interested in the different ways people learn.”
Dylan’s expression had changed from questioning to thoughtful, and he nodded.
“It’s about knowing how each person gets the best results,” she continued.
“Like, some people do better with music playing in the background while others
need the quiet to focus. Some you joke with to cajole results, others…Well, you
get the idea. You’d tell me if I was boring you, right?”
“You’re not. Quite the opposite,” he said. “I was thinking that you did an
amazing job with my mom last night.”
Chloe flushed with pleasure, but didn’t feel she could take credit for Barb.
“She was a quick study. Since my parents moved into the senior living complex,
I’ve started offering short computer tutorials to the residents there. They’re
not exactly part of the Internet generation, but they still want to be able to
access digital pictures of the grandkids and look up occasional recipes on the
Web. It’s all basic. You could teach it just as well as I could.”
He shook his head. “I worry that we fall back on what we know. Whether we want
to or not.”
“What do you mean?”
“For example…” He stared beyond her, collecting his thoughts. “I’ve heard
children of alcoholics are more likely to become alcoholics themselves even
though that sounds counterintuitive. You’d think that someone who had witnessed
that kind of destruction would be the last person to put their own loved ones
through it.”
“A girl who grew up in my neighborhood used to nag her mother to stop smoking.
She even got in trouble once for hiding her mom’s cigarettes. Ironically,
whenever I see her now, she’s smoking outside the Dixieland Diner. Is that what
you mean?”
“Exactly,” he said grimly.
But Chloe was still confused. What trait was Dylan concerned that he might have
picked up, might pass on? The teacher who’d probably made the biggest impact on
him was Coach Burton, who was beloved around these parts. And Barb Echols
obviously adored her son. Five minutes in the same room with them confirmed
that. Chloe frowned, searching her memory banks for any impression of Michael
Echols. When she’d brought up the subject of Dylan’s father previously, he’d
shut her down. She’d assumed that was Dylan’s reaction to his father’s death,
but now she wondered.
“With your interest in learning styles,” Dylan asked, “did you ever think about
becoming a teacher yourself? Schools can always use good instructors who are
attuned to their students and flexible with their teaching styles.”
“Actually, I was an education major for all of one semester, not that it
mattered since I was only getting started with core classes at the time.”
“What made you change your mind?”
The reason sounded so lame she hated to say it, but she owed him the truth about
something. “Performance anxiety, the idea of standing up in front of an entire
class. One-on-one tutoring was a different story. I don’t do well in front of
crowds. At least, not alone,” she added quickly, before he asked any questions
about cheerleading. “When I was doing something on a team, the pressure wasn’t
the same.”
That was what had appealed to her about the Academic Decathlon, where they all
sat onstage together and could confer over the answers, versus the debate team,
which involved individual turns standing at a podium.
“I can understand the comfort of being surrounded by a team,” Dylan
commiserated. “I think that’s been affecting me lately. For more than a decade,
I had one team or another. Some of the guys who play for Atlanta still call me,
but they have crazy schedules and it’s uncomfortable now that I’m a civilian.”
She tamped down the impulse to offer herself up as his new team. “I know it will
probably never be the same, but do you think that after you’ve been at the
television station longer, you’ll develop a similar sense of camaraderie?”
Frowning, he toyed with a packet of sugar. “Not unless they reassign the lead
guy to another solar system. He’s all ego. He likes himself way too much to
spare any affection for others, but he specifically dislikes me. On a personal
level I don’t care. It’s not that I want to be his new golfing buddy or
anything, but knowing I have to deal with his bs on top of whatever else is
going on at work just adds an extra layer of frustration to a job that I’m
learning as I go.”
“Do you think he feels threatened by you? There was…a girl like that once, who
went out of her way to make me feel like an insignificant bug even though all I
wanted was to avoid her.” Chloe thought of last night, when he’d told her he
remembered very little about Candy. It had been a relief that Dylan wasn’t
attaching any of the woman’s negative qualities from years past to Chloe. Such a
hypocrite. She’d wanted him to associate her with Candy’s popularity and
charisma, but didn’t want to take the blame for any lesser traits. “Natalie
insisted she was jealous.”
“Maybe. Maybe they’re acting out of insecurity.” He grinned. “Or maybe they’re
just asses.”
She let out a peal of laughter, his matter-of-fact comment helping to exorcise
the last ghosts of adolescent insecurity. All through high school, she’d been
unable to think of a comeback, to stand up for herself in a memorable manner.
For weeks she’d felt herself changing, evolving. Perversely she half wished
someone would insult her so that she could test herself. There was a possibility
that now she could react with wit, or at least aplomb.
As long as the person making the cutting comment wasn’t Dylan. That—
“Well, hey, there.” The friendly female greeting came from mere inches away, and
Chloe jumped. “I thought that was you I heard laughing, Ch—”
“Brenna!” And this is what I get for challenging the universe. Not that the tall
redhead was likely to make an insulting comment, but seeing her here definitely
shot Chloe’s supposed aplomb all to hell. “Um, have you met Dylan Echols? He’s a
new client of mine. We were just having a consultation. Dylan, this is Brenna
Pierce. She runs her own pet-sitting business. She’s Mistletoe’s dog whisperer.
And cat whisperer. And iguana whisperer.”
Chloe knew she should really shut up, having already belabored a mediocre joke,
but she was worried that as soon as she stopped talking, Brenna would mention
the new Web site mock-ups Chloe had done for her.
Brenna was shaking Dylan’s hand, her gaze frankly admiring. “Nice to meet you.
I’ve heard about you, of course. You won’t regret hiring this genius. She—”
“Does the fact that you’re singing my praises mean you had a chance to look over
the design suggestions?” Chloe interjected. She felt rude, panicked and
generally nauseous.
Though Brenna looked surprised by the interruption, she nodded. “They’re so
fantastic my only concern is choosing the right one. All of them had—”
“Positive energy, right? That’s my motto!” Did anyone else notice how manic
Chloe sounded? “Brenna, Dylan’s on his way out of town after breakfast, so we’re
trying to squeeze this in. Do you want me to call you later about what you’d
like me to do?”
“Sure.” Brenna was eyeing her as if she thought Chloe had started the day with
way too much coffee. Still, she took the hint, turning to go. “It was nice to
meet you, Dylan.”
I’ll need to do some damage control later, Chloe thought. She’d cut Brenna off
at least three times in a two-minute conversation and had tried too hard to seem
bubbly and unconcerned, veering into deranged. She didn’t want to lose Brenna’s
account.
Glancing back at Dylan, she acknowledged with a sinking sensation in the pit of
her stomach that she risked losing something far more valuable.
Chapter Twelve
What did a woman wear to her own downfall? Chloe wondered as she scanned the
contents of her closet Saturday at dawn.
Dylan had e-mailed her after his newscast late Thursday night to tell her he was
really impressed with some of the notes she’d made regarding his condo. She’d
happened to be awake at the time, working on her laptop, so she’d responded
immediately. They’d gone from exchanging e-mails to instant messaging—it was
almost a little sad how much easier it was for her to express herself through
emoticons than face-to-face communication.
Though she’d enjoyed flirting and chatting during her cyber interaction with
Dylan—typing was more deliberate than speaking, protecting her from the nervous
babbling she was prone to—the computer screen was a lackluster substitute for
the man. The more they’d talked, the more she’d wished she was with him. As a
teen, she’d bought into the illusion that he was the guy who effortlessly had it
all. The reality of him was far more fascinating, an intoxicating puzzle. She
wanted to learn all his edges and pieces; everything he’d revealed about himself
so far only attracted her more. As a bonus, when she was with him, she’d also
been discovering more about who she was. The only downside to their time
together was that she lived in fear of blurting out the wrong thing, clumsily
exposing herself as a liar.
You’re living on borrowed time, C.J.
When he’d broached the subject of when she could go with him to look for
furnishings and decor, she’d agreed to come to Atlanta today. They’d spend the
day shopping then have an early dinner before he had to work. She was resolved
that, over dinner, she’d tell him everything and hope for the best. She didn’t
know if he would forgive her, but if she didn’t rectify the situation, she
wouldn’t be able to forgive herself. One way or the other, this stressful
pretense would be ended by tomorrow.
She wasn’t sure what they’d be eating, but she hoped it would be good. A girl
had high expectations for her last meal.

DYLAN TRIED to keep his eyes on the road, but it was damn difficult with Chloe
right next to him, smiling as she reclined her head against the passenger seat.
Some of the shorter strands of her layered hair had escaped the barrette,
framing her face in soft tendrils.
“Enjoying the convertible?” he asked.
“Mmm. If I had this car, I’d get a job delivering pizzas so I could be driving
all the time.”
He chuckled. “You’d need to make really good tips delivering pizzas if you were
going to pay for it, though.”
She mock-glared at him over the top her sunglasses. “I’m daydreaming over here.
Do not bother me with trivial stuff like reality.”
Reality. Was it as clear-cut as he’d once assumed? He’d been angry at her for
lying, but there was more C.J. in her than she realized. Whatever her technical
job description really was, she’d thrown herself skillfully into the task of
suggesting changes for his apartment. Once, he’d assumed that the reality of his
injury was that baseball wouldn’t be part of his life anymore, but maybe he’d
been needlessly limiting his opportunities. On a gorgeous spring day like this,
spending his afternoons coaching a bunch of eager kids who loved baseball as
much as he did sounded far better than spending six nights a week alongside
Grady Medlock. Maybe it was time for both him and Chloe to reexamine what was
real and what was malleable.
They reached the interior-decorating warehouse shortly after it opened for the
day. While Dylan secured the roof on the car, Chloe fussed with her windblown
hair and withdrew a slim tube of lip gloss from her purse.
“I have to know.” He watched her put on the shiny layer of color, wanting to
kiss it off of her before she’d even finished applying it. “What flavor?”
She blinked, looking startled by the question. “My gloss? Butter pecan.”
It made him think of ice cream, the cold sweetness of it melting on his tongue.
He hardened at the thought of Chloe against his tongue.
“This cosmetic habit of yours is thoroughly distracting,” he told her. “I never
know what you’ll taste like. It’s like dating a woman who wears staid business
suits with naughty lingerie underneath. A man could go crazy wondering what’s
next to her skin. A whisper of ivory silk or a leopard-print thong?”
Chloe’s cheeks flamed pink. Had he offended her with the analogy?
After a moment, she smiled. “I’m glad I distract you. Even if it is just my
makeup.”
He echoed what she’d once said to him in his apartment. “It’s not ‘just’
anything. It’s you.”
“Thank you for asking me to come with you today,” she said. “I…wanted to see
you.”
“Ditto. And I don’t trust myself to decorate the condo by myself. You saw what
happened when left to my own devices.” He gave an exaggerated shudder, listing
some of the feng shui terms she’d taught him. “Elements in conflict, ‘secret
arrows’ every place you look…catastrophe. Save me from myself.”
“Don’t worry, my assistance is yours as long as you want it.” Opening her door,
she added softly, “I plan to see this through.”
As they crossed the asphalt toward the massive shopping complex, Chloe asked,
“So, which of the eight areas do you want to really focus on? Harmonious balance
is key, but what are your immediate goals? Wealth? Career? Love? I’ve…been
surprised that there’s no girlfriend in your life. There’s not a girlfriend,
right?”
“What the hell kind of guy do you think I am?” Dylan was incensed. He’d kissed
Chloe on multiple occasions—not brief pecks of greeting or farewell, either.
Deep soul kisses that had shaken him. He knew players who had “girlfriends” in
cities up and down the Eastern Coast, but that had never been his style.
She bridged the gap between them, taking his hand. “I’m sorry. That came out
sounding like, I don’t know, an accusation. It was just a surprise.”
He grunted, not mollified. It was ironic that she suspected him of being
untrustworthy, the kind of guy who would nonchalantly cheat on a woman.
“You’re smart and funny and successful,” she continued. “The best-looking guy
I’ve ever seen in real life and not on a movie screen. In short, a man some
single women would commit unholy acts to meet.”
It was difficult to stay angry after praise like that. She thinks I’m smart?
Rationally he’d known for years that dyslexia was a reading disorder and no
reflection of actual intelligence. He was not stupid, but he had to remind
himself of that routinely.
He held open the heavy glass door for her. “You asked about the area I’m most
interested in? Knowledge. With the right knowledge, the information and wisdom
to make good decisions, it seems like a lot of the other areas would fall into
place.”
For instance, should he play it safe and keep his lucrative job in Atlanta, the
city that had become home over the past few years? Or throw that away on Coach
B.’s whim and return to the place that held some of his ugliest memories?
“Good thinking,” Chloe said approvingly. “Of course, some people feel that too
much knowledge can be dangerous. Just ask Adam and Eve.”
“I’ll take my chances. Ignorance gets good PR, but I don’t think it’s as
blissful as people say.”
Chloe had pulled a little memo pad out of her purse. He watched over her
shoulder as she jotted down colors that he assumed were applicable to wisdom:
yellow, brown and other earthy tones, blue.
“You have that small bookshelf in your living room. We could move it to the
knowledge area. And we should find you a great lamp while we’re here.” She
tapped her temple. “For enlightenment.”
“It disturbs me that I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or if you’re just
making bad puns.”
She gave him a cheeky smile. “Can’t I do both? Oh, we should go down that aisle.
Vases!”
“I hear vase and my only two associations are priceless Ming, which is not in
our budget, and girly bud vases. I’m evolved enough that I don’t think I have to
decorate in leather and moose heads to prove anything, but—”
“Nothing pink and curvy and filled with flowers?” Chloe rolled her eyes. “Duh.
Trust me, Echols.”
Paradoxically, he did.