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  “Did you want something, Eddie?” Besides to sit there and make it hard to remember how bad things were?

  “Yeah, actually. It’s Cardin. She’s out back.”

  He wasn’t worried, so Delta knew there was no reason for her to be. “And?”

  “With Whip Davis.”

  Ah, well, now she understood why Eddie was here. God forbid their daughter become involved with a Davis. Though to be honest, Delta wasn’t overjoyed with the news. She wanted better for Cardin than a life spent on the road, a life not her own, but Whip’s.

  “If you’re worried, why aren’t you out there playing chaperone?” she finally asked, realizing she’d been lost in thought way too long, and Eddie had been staring at her all the while.

  “Because Cardin’s twenty-five, making Whip twenty-seven, and I remember being that age.”

  What he meant was he remembered being seventeen and not even out of high school, and then by eighteen, both a husband and a father. “Are you more concerned with their privacy, or with the embarrassment of catching your daughter in flagrante delicto?”

  “Up against the Dumpster in broad daylight?” Eddie shook his head, snorting an incredulity Delta didn’t buy. “I hope we taught her better than that.”

  “Oh, Eddie.” Frustration squeezed her like a too tight belt. “It doesn’t matter what we taught her. Hell, if kids listened to what their parents said, Cardin wouldn’t even be here.” She paused, added, “Or maybe your memory of being that age isn’t so great after all?”

  His eyes flared with heat, then grew smoky, smoldering as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his fists bracing his chin. “I have the memory of ten thousand elephants, D. I haven’t forgotten a thing.”

  That made two of them, and was the reason this conversation was now at an end.

  She looked down at the folder she’d completely mangled, and at a second fingernail that was now a mess, and tried to find a thought that didn’t have the remembered imprint of Eddie’s hands and mouth all over it.

  She had absolutely zero luck, so couldn’t have been more appreciative of the interruption when Cardin opened the door.

  “Mom, I need to change my schedule—” Cardin cut herself off and careened to a stop, her ponytail flying, her face flushed. “Dad. What’re you doing here?”

  “He’s worried about the company you’re keeping,” Delta answered before Eddie could say a word.

  Cardin looked at her father and frowned, her black hair and blue eyes so similar to his that Delta couldn’t breathe for the crushing ache in her chest. How had things gone so wrong?

  “What company?” Cardin asked Eddie. “You mean Trey? Are you kidding me? Why in the world would you worry about me talking to Trey?”

  “I’m worried that you’re not just talking,” he told her, delivering the words as he would a reprimand.

  Cardin rolled her eyes. “Is this more of that broken-heart crap?”

  Delta raised a brow at that. “What broken-heart crap?”

  Spinning away from her father, Cardin pushed up her bangs with one hand, parked her other at her hip. “He told me earlier he doesn’t want Trey to break my heart, and I told him it’s not going to happen.”

  Oh, to be young and certain and naive. Delta sighed, choosing her words carefully. “His breaking your heart would imply there’s something going on between you two.”

  Cardin didn’t answer. She faced the room’s small air conditioner instead, the refrigerated breeze blowing her hair here and there. Delta switched her gaze to her husband. All Eddie did was shrug and drape himself at an angle in the chair.

  That left Delta to do the dirty work. Hardly a surprise. She’d been doing it all this last year. “Cardin? Is there something going on with you and Whip?”

  Their daughter’s shoulders stiffened before she turned, her expression bright and wary, the color in her cheeks giving her away. Delta stifled a groan, and barely managed to keep herself from looking toward Eddie, from telling him silently that they did, indeed, have cause for concern.

  If Delta knew anything about her daughter, it was how much Cardin hated the way her parents could talk without saying a word. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Trey. I want to talk about my schedule.”

  “What about it?”

  “I need to cut my shifts in half for a few months.”

  “For however long Whip’s here, you mean,” Eddie said, getting to his feet.

  Cardin stared him down. “Yes. For as long as Trey-who-I-will-not-let-break-my-heart is here. Happy now?”

  Eddie didn’t snap back as he would’ve done in the past, but pushed aside the chair and slammed out of the room. Delta stared at the door as it bounced back open, and Cardin could only say, “Guess not.”

  Delta felt as if she were caught in a war with too many battles to fight, and too many sides to take. She loved her daughter, but Cardin could be as hardheaded as her father, and Delta was lost when it came to understanding her feelings for him these days. And so she did the only thing she could think to do.

  She dug into her lower file drawer and pulled out the folder of timesheets and schedules. Once it was open on her desk, she laced her hands on top and looked at her daughter. “If you want four-hour shifts, you have to take the dinner rush with Megan, Holly and Taylor. I’ll split Sandy between lunch and late nights.”

  Cardin cringed. “She’s not going to be happy about that.”

  “And it’s going to be up to you to give her the bad news.”

  “That’s fine,” Cardin said, waving her hand as if now it were nothing. “I’m sure she’ll need me to accommodate her at some point.”

  “Just be sure you remember this when she does.” Delta marked the changes, then shut the folder and shoved it back in the drawer.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Why would I be mad at you?” Delta asked in return, never looking up as she turned her attention to the produce supplier’s file. “Schedule changes happen.”

  “Not about the schedule,” Cardin said, sitting in the chair Eddie had abandoned. “Well, yes, the schedule, but not so much about changing it as why I want the change.”

  “Am I mad that you have your sights set on Whip?”

  “I didn’t say I had my sights set on him—”

  Delta held up one hand. “Whip’s a great guy. One of the best of all the boys I watched you grow up with. He and Tater both are men any parent would be happy to see their daughter choose.”

  “And yet you’re not any happier than Dad.” Cardin slumped, her posture the identical twin of her father’s.

  “My being unhappy is not about Whip.”

  “Then what? What else is there?”

  There was so much, Delta didn’t know she could do justice to her concerns. “I want you to have a home, Cardin. And if it’s in your plans, one day, a faraway day, I would love for you to make me a grandmother.”

  Cardin dropped her head back on her shoulders. “Jesus, Mom—”

  “I’m not finished. I don’t want to get a call in the middle of the night that you’ve had to stop on the side of the road to give birth between races. You’re the love of my life, and I want better for you than that.”

  “You mean you want me to stay here. To live the rest of my life in Dahlia.”

  “That’s not what I said.” They were going to have to table this discussion for a time when emotions weren’t running so high. Delta didn’t want to say something she would never be able to retract. “And once you give it some time, I think you’ll realize that. Right now, however, we both need to follow your father’s example and get back to work.”

  And as much as Delta hated to admit it, she breathed a sigh of relief when her only child left the room and closed the door behind her.

  6

  BY THE TIME CARDIN SAW the lights of Trey’s pickup bouncing off the trees at the end of his drive, she was over her aggravation and had managed to cool down. She couldn’t
believe a day that had started out to be just about perfect had gone downhill so fast.

  Lately, it took next to nothing to trigger a family flare-up. The resulting stress drained her as completely as an eight hour shift—part of the reason she’d cut out early tonight.

  After talking to her parents, she’d been in no mood to work. She’d stayed anyway—at least until Sandy told her to get the hell outta town if she was going to act like a princess who had fallen off her pony and smashed her frog prince flat.

  Sitting on Trey’s front porch, her legs dangling and her feet swinging above the square of bare earth where azalea bushes used to grow, Cardin allowed herself a disparaging smile. She’d be the first to own her bratty behavior, and tomorrow she’d be back on her game.

  Right now, however, she didn’t want to do anything but give her full attention to Trey.

  The moon shone down like a spotlight. It was the only illumination Cardin had by which to watch as he braked his truck to a stop. She couldn’t see him at all until he opened the door and the cab’s overhead light came on, glowing behind him, putting him in silhouette, leaving her to wonder about his expression…

  If he was happy to find her waiting, if he was irritated that she’d trespassed. If he was filled with the same anticipation twisting knots in her belly and zinging in the small of her back. She’d been imagining his two sleeping bags in all possible configurations…stacked as one, zipped together, unrolled side by side.

  He held nothing in his hands when he walked toward her, not one sleeping bag, not two. She curled her fingers over the lip of the porch, kicked out with one leg, then the other, watching the roll of his hips and shoulders, the ground-eating strides of his legs.

  Ignoring the path leading to the front steps, he hopped a mangled strip of garden lattice to reach her. She stayed where she was, her heart urging her to scoot away from the precipice and onto the safe surface behind. What she felt for him frightened her, all of it right, and real. But then she couldn’t move because he was there, stepping between her legs.

  “You look good in moonlight,” was all he said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

  She’d left it loose after her shower, and though she’d told herself her scalp needed a break from her ponytail, she knew that she’d done it for him.

  “Is that a pick-up line?” she asked, feeling the tingle of her nipples growing taut.

  “Why would I need a pick-up line? You’re already here.”

  He was too confident, cocky. She loved it, but she wasn’t that easy. “Don’t make more of it than it is. I’m already here because you said ten.”

  “It’s a quarter till.”

  “Call me punctual.”

  “I’d rather kiss you,” he said, and threaded his fingers into her hair at her nape, lowering his head.

  She met him halfway, no hesitation just desire, parting her lips before he asked, and offering him her tongue. He took it, slid his against it with a tender aggression. He made a hungry sound low in his throat. She moved her hands to his chest, took the measure of the vibration there, remembered the way he’d felt the first time she’d touched him so long ago.

  When she curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, he leaned forward, pushing her back. Needing her elbows to brace herself, she let him go. His lips drifted to her throat, the hollow there, the ribbed neckline of the Corley Motors T-shirt she wore, the fabric covering her breasts.

  He nuzzled between them, making his way to her shirt’s hem, pushing it up to reveal her belly where he settled his lips. She closed her eyes, and lay flat on the porch, her arms stretched out to the side. What he was doing was magic, and she wanted nothing to break the spell.

  His fingers were like matches on her skin, his lips and tongue like flames. He burned her, consumed her. She was willing kindle for his fire, and she wanted to be naked beneath him, not clothed and unable to fully realize all these things he made her feel.

  His mouth was a wicked warmth, wet and wild as he tasted her, kissing from her sternum to her navel, leaving a long damp trail that the night breeze cooled. She shivered, wanted to squirm, but stayed perfectly still, the porch hard under her back, rough beneath her elbows. She scraped her fingernails over the wood, spreading out her hands as if to hold on.

  Trey was toying with the buttons of her jeans, his fingers slipping beneath the waistband to find the elastic edge of her panties. When he freed the first, her eyes popped open. When the second followed, she felt the night’s air low on her belly. When he reached the third, she shook off the sex daze he’d lulled her into and pushed up.

  “Stop.”

  He raised his head, met her gaze, his eyes bright and full of the same confusion she was feeling. “Okay.”

  “What are we doing here, Trey?”

  He stood then, moving his hands from her hips to his own. “Taking care of unfinished business?”

  She sat up, tucked her crossed legs beneath her. The top two buttons of her jeans remained undone, and she swore she could still feel his touch where the fabric gaped. “Maybe we should talk about my proposal first.”

  “You want to talk?”

  The light from the moon was enough for her to see the sarcastic arch of his brow. “I don’t mean idle chitchat. But we did agree I’d explain things tonight.”

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds, staring at her as his breathing settled, giving her time to gather her scattered emotions close. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His face was unreadable, shadowed by the big oak behind him, the tree’s limbs spreading over what had once been a lush green yard, but was now dirt and hardscrabble weeds.

  She’d come here a few times in high school, a passenger in a friend’s car giving Trey a ride home, but she’d never been inside the house to see how he lived. She wondered if he didn’t want to go inside at all. He’d been in Dahlia four days and tonight was the first time he’d set foot on the property where he’d lived for twenty years. Or maybe, as he’d said, he’d just been too busy to come out here and open the door.

  He finally moved, scrubbing his hands down his face. “Let me get my things then. Unless you’ve changed your mind about staying.”

  She hadn’t, but there was no reason for him to if the memories he had of living here weren’t ones he wanted to face in the dark. “If you don’t want to stay here, we’ve got an extra room at home. We can sleep there and come back here in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” he said, with a huff. “I can see that going over well with Eddie. The son of the man who nearly killed him under his roof.”

  The conversation about their fathers was one she wasn’t going to have until they’d said and settled a lot of other things first. She scooted to the edge of the porch and hopped down, dusting the dirt and grit from her backside. “I’ll grab my backpack.”

  “I’ve got it,” he said, turning and walking away.

  She followed. “I can get it. You have all your own things to get.”

  “If that’s your way of asking if I brought both sleeping bags—”

  “I was just offering to help.”

  “If you say so,” he said, lowering his pickup’s tailgate and retracting the bed cover part way to slide out a box of supplies.

  Cardin grabbed his arm and spun him to face her. “If you don’t want me here, Trey, say the word and I’ll go.”

  “And do what?” He towered over her, a dark shadow, a menace. “Find someone else to play your fiancé?”

  She felt his hard-beating heart where she held him. “No, I’ll find another solution.”

  “Why not another guy?”

  “Because no other guy will work,” she said, and let him go, stunned by her own words. No other guy would do; only Trey. Her feelings for him had never lessened, but changed, and grown, deepening into something she’d been afraid to let herself see.

  He looked down at her then, his gaze searching, and she was the first to look away. She’d been so sure this would work, that he’d go
along because of the connection she’d imagined between them. It was obviously the only part he had interest in pursuing was the physical.

  Talk about naive. What had she been thinking? This man was not the boy she’d had a crush on in high school. He was bigger, larger than life, a man who could have any woman he wanted.

  She sighed, turned and leaned against the truck, the tailgate cutting into her back. “I must’ve been insane. Seriously. I’m going to go home now, you’re going to go inside, and we’re both going to forget I proposed.”

  He left the box where it was and moved to stand in front of her, lifting her chin with the edge of one finger when she refused to look into his eyes. They were calmer now, sweet and understanding. And it nearly broke her heart when he smiled and told her, “I’ll never forget you proposed.”

  “Well you should,” she said, pulling free of his touch. She couldn’t let herself get sucked further into a fantasy that had nothing to do with real life. “My family needs a wake-up call, but this engagement isn’t it. Trust me.”

  “No.”

  She frowned, looked back. “No, what?”

  “No, I’m not going to trust you. I’ll make up my own mind once you spell out your plan.”

  “I have no plan.”

  “You did. You do. It involves me posing as your fiancé. But I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish or why.”

  “I told you—”

  “You told me your life has gone to hell. And it happened after the fight. Well, things for me haven’t been all puppies and rainbows since then, either, so why don’t we unload our gear, go inside and compare notes?”

  His life had gone to hell? Seriously? Or was he trying to placate her, make her feel like less of a fool for going to desperate lengths to make things better?

  Her plan stunk, but she supposed it couldn’t hurt to talk. Maybe she’d come up with another idea, because this one? She had a feeling things would end up just as her father had predicted.

  Trey Davis was going to break her heart.