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  “It’s just breakfast, Trey. And coffee.” Even if last night it had been more. Even if the way he was looking at her made her want more. Why had she waited so long to test the waters that had swirled around them all those years ago? “I work much better when it’s not on an empty stomach. I thought it might be the same for you.”

  “It is, but I’ll cook.” He raised his mug and gave her props. “You did the coffee.”

  “That’s because I can’t work at all without caffeine.”

  “If I’d known that, I would’ve put on a pot when I got up.”

  “What time did you get up?” Judging by the sun in the sky, she swore it couldn’t be any later than seven now.

  “Maybe four?” he guessed, taking another sip.

  “But it was almost two…” She let the sentence dangle, finishing the thought privately, quite sure he knew exactly the hour when they’d finally fallen asleep.

  “There’s a lot to do. And I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He shrugged as if there was nothing more to it when she knew there was. And then he stared off toward the field behind the house full of weeds and wildflowers, and in desperate need of mowing.

  She’d expected him to head toward the house. To find a skillet and scramble some eggs. To make toast in the aluminum toaster she’d seen on top of the fridge, one she was certain would still be around to brown bread and waffles and frozen streusel for any children he might one day have.

  Trey with children, with an apple-of-his-eye daughter, with a strapping young son. She switched mental gears at that thought. “Can I ask you something, Trey?”

  “Sure,” he said, still studying the tall grass, his mug halfway to his mouth, his shirt blowing further open in the soft morning breeze.

  “The other morning at the Speedway. What you said about seeing me at school.” She paused, waited for a reaction, got a visible tick in his jaw for her trouble. It was better than nothing at all. “Did you never speak to me because you weren’t interested? Did you think I wouldn’t say anything back?”

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked, slinging his mug so the dregs of his coffee flew out in a creamy brown arc.

  She watched the droplets soak into the ground. “Just curious.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What?”

  This time he came around and met her gaze, his a smoky warm gold. “I think it’s more than curiosity.”

  “What else would it be?” She wasn’t looking for him to stroke her ego, or to gain any sort of upper hand. She just wanted to know. She had always wanted to know why neither one of them had made the first move. “You were older than me, but our circles of friends overlapped. We may not have shared classes, but had that in common at least. It’s why we both ended up at Tater’s kegger that night.”

  He shook his head, his mouth twisted. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

  She didn’t get it. “Why would you have to? You were in a bedroom behind a closed door. I’m the one who made the hugely embarrassing mistake of opening it.”

  “Were you? Embarrassed?”

  Her face heated. “Yes, but I was also perversely fascinated.”

  “Tapped your inner voyeur, did I?”

  She held her mug in both hands, staring at what remained of her drink because his gaze was bold, and disarmed her. “It wasn’t about the sex. I mean, it was. I hadn’t ever…watched before.”

  “Did you like watching?” he asked, his voice husky, thick, his breathing more rapid than moments before.

  Her throat tightened. Her pulse leapt. “I liked watching your eyes, your face. The way you looked at me while…it was happening. We’d never talked, and I’d heard things about you. Girls share stuff, you know. But it was all secondhand. At least until—”

  “Until you got a personal introduction to me and my friend.”

  He made it so easy for her to smile, to feel comfortable with a subject that wasn’t. “I like your friend. I just don’t understand why that moment when you backed me into the bedroom wall was it. There was nothing before. Nothing after. You left town. I worked at Headlights. And now…this. Us. Talking all the time, sleeping together. You don’t find that strange?”

  He took so long to react, she started to wonder if he ever would, if maybe she should let him stew and go get their breakfast started and forget working to understand how they’d reached this place with more questions than answers.

  But then he headed for the house, hopping up to sit on the porch, helping her up beside him when she finally realized he was waiting for her. “I don’t find it strange, no. I think we’d have connected just as strongly in high school if we’d given it a chance.”

  “So why didn’t we?” she asked, having always felt tongue-tied just at the thought of him. He was older, knowing, forbidden.

  Trey laughed softly, an awkward sound, as if he was uncomfortable with his confession. “Well, frankly, I didn’t think I had anything to offer a girl like you.”

  She turned to look at him, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean, a girl like me?”

  He shrugged with one shoulder, gave her a lopsided grin. “A girl whose last name was Worth.”

  Was he kidding her? They might have a bit of a Capulet and Montague thing going on now, with no one knowing the cause of the fight between Eddie, Aubrey, and Jeb. But not in high school. No way in high school.

  She scooted around, sitting cross-legged, wishing for another cup of coffee as a gust of wind left her chilled. “You make it sound like we’re from different sides of the tracks, or something. And Dahlia doesn’t even have any tracks.”

  “Your family’s legend, Cardin. Pillars of the community—”

  “Oh, please. We’re just…people. Like anyone else,” she said. Her family was a local fixture, but that didn’t mean they were any different from anyone else.

  “My mother left without a word. My father’s a mechanic—”

  “And my father’s a cook. So what?”

  “A cook in a family owned business that’s been a local landmark for what? Over forty years?” He set his mug behind him, held onto the edge of the porch and leaned forward, his brows drawn together as he stared down the long gravel drive. “When you’re a guy barely out of high school, and you’re pumping gas and cleaning windshields and changing oil for a living, and you hear Jeb Worth this and Jeb Worth that every time you turn around—”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Not by much.” He glanced over at her then, his expression kind, but curious. “You have to know that. That your family is the one family everyone in Dahlia respects.”

  She tried to brush it off. “All that means is that we’ve been here a long time.”

  “To you, sure. But to an eighteen-year-old kid who gets a hard-on every time he see you in the school halls—” His voice was solemn, the cockiness all tucked away. “I just didn’t think I was good enough for you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. To realize she could have set him at ease with nothing but a word…“Oh, my, God. Trey. Tell me you didn’t really think that.”

  He nodded. “I did. What can I say? I was young. Not very worldly.”

  “And a moron. I don’t know whether to yell at you or hit you.”

  “Why don’t you kiss me instead?” And he reached for her before she could say yes or no.

  10

  IT WASN’T UNTIL EDDIE WORTH hit the kitchen at dawn on Monday morning that he realized Cardin hadn’t spent the night at home.

  Ever since she’d moved back, and Delta had taken herself off to live in their daughter’s apartment, Cardin had come downstairs each night for a glass of chocolate milk before bed.

  And each day before leaving for Headlights, Eddie rinsed her glass, put it in the dishwasher, and returned the squeeze bottle of Hershey’s syrup she always left out to the fridge.

  Cardin was completely capable of cleaning up after herself, and when it came to the rest of her dishes, her laundry, and her rooms upstairs
, she did. Hell, half the time she cleaned up after him and his father, too.

  Jeb was the worst about leaving tools and scraps of wiring and electrical connectors lying around. Cardin gathered it all into a bushel basket by the back door for him to haul to the garage when he headed that way every morning.

  And Eddie would have to plead guilty to kicking off his shoes wherever he happened to be when his leg started giving him hell. Cardin never complained the way her mother had. She put his shoes where they belonged, and told him how lucky they were that his accident hadn’t been worse.

  No, Cardin wasn’t the one who was a slob. Her leaving her glass for him to rinse and the chocolate syrup for him to put away, was her telling him she remembered how as a child she would come to the kitchen and ask for a drink in the middle of the night.

  A lifelong insomniac, Eddie had used the time while his father and wife slept to spoil his only child in a way he knew couldn’t be healthy. But having Cardin on his lap, sipping her chocolate milk while he read the news from the day’s paper aloud, had been the favorite part of his day.

  Knowing she still held dear their secret had made the reason she was home again easier to bear. He missed his wife. Goddamn but he missed his wife.

  It had taken every bit of his willpower this morning not to pick up the phone and call Delta to tell her their daughter had spent the night with Whip. He’d decided against it. He and Delta might be in agreement that the romance was not a good idea. But Eddie knew for a fact his wife would tell him not to do what he was doing—picking up breakfast for three from Pammy Mercer’s bakery before driving out to the Davis place to say good morning to his kid.

  He pulled into the parking lot of Pammy’s Petals at the same time as Alex Morgan drove up in the Gran Torino she’d been restoring in her spare time. Soon enough, he figured, the body would look as good as the horses under the hood sounded.

  Alex was the daughter of George who owned the garage where the fight between Eddie’s father and Whip’s father had happened. George was good to put up with Jeb hanging around to talk cars.

  Alex smiled as Eddie rounded the front of his Dodge Charger. “I haven’t seen you at the track since the accident. You doing okay these days?”

  “I’m good. Thanks for asking.” And for not mentioning it had been almost a year since his injury. He’d got tired of Delta nagging about the very same thing, his becoming a homebody, a hermit. Then she’d quit nagging. Then she’d left. “I keep pretty busy in the kitchen. Not much time for anything else.”

  Alex reached up and smoothed the bandana tied around her long blonde hair. “Rumor has it that Jeb asked Whip Davis to drive for him in the Moonshine Run.”

  “Really.” Eddie took a minute to open the door and usher Alex inside. He used the same minute to wonder why his father had shared nothing of his plans. Maybe the same reason your wife left you, you ass. You’re not the nicest guy to be around these days. “Jeb’s probably the biggest fan Corley Motors has, so that’ll be a treat.”

  Breathing in a head rush of warm sugar and yeast, Eddie walked with Alex across the pink and white tiled floor to the counter where pastries, brownies and cookies were on display. Before Alex could respond, Pammy Mercer appeared to take their orders.

  A schoolmate of both Alex and Cardin, the pint-sized bakery owner wore a cap shaped like her huge trademark daisy on the top of her head. “Eddie Worth! And Alex Morgan! I can’t believe you two workaholics are out and about at the same time. What can I get you?”

  Eddie gestured for Alex to go first. “I need three dozen donuts. Mixed. But a lot of cream-filled for Tater.”

  Pammy nodded, her head-hugging auburn curls bouncing, and jotted the order on a ticket that matched the green and white stripes of the apron she wore. “Feeding the boys at the garage this morning?”

  Alex shoved her hands in the pockets of her denim overalls and grimaced. “I bet the shop on Friday that Butch Corley wouldn’t get close to Tony Schumacher’s time during the Farron Fuels. I lost, so donuts are on me.”

  Eddie’s laugh sounded more like a snort. “You bet against Whip Davis’s tuning formula?”

  “Right? What was I thinking?”

  Pammy turned her attention to Eddie. “And you, Eddie Worth? Did you bet against Whip Davis, too?”

  He should have bet Delta that nothing they said was going to keep their daughter away from Whip, but since they were in agreement in that regard, the odds wouldn’t have been worth the gamble. “Nah, I just need a half dozen Danishes. Cream cheese and apple cinnamon will do.”

  “Coming right up,” Pammy said with a slap to the top of the glass case. She headed into the back, leaving Eddie to look around the bakery that reminded him of the fairy-tale castle five-year-old Cardin had begged for so her princesses wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.

  And here twenty years later, she was the one sleeping on the floor—or so he assumed, doubting there was much in the way of furniture left in the Davis house—with a man Eddie just knew was going to break her heart.

  Once he had the box of Danishes and Pammy’s special blend coffee to go, he made the drive to Whip’s family home in less than fifteen minutes. The Davis’ property was on the other side of Dahlia than the Worth’s, but nothing in the small town was more than a stone’s throw away.

  When he pulled onto the gravel drive, he saw Jeb’s truck parked in front of the crew cab dualie Whip drove, and the two kids sitting on the porch, coffee mugs in hand.

  Cardin had never been a morning person, and looked sleepy, he noticed, braking to a stop not far from where they’d both hopped down. And Whip appeared to have been hard at work already.

  Eddie wasn’t sure why that made him feel better, but it did. The thought that he could’ve caught them otherwise engaged had him almost regretting this visit.

  But only almost.

  He swung his bad left leg out first, then gingerly pushed up to stand. Once upright, the pins keeping things in place gave him little discomfort. He set the coffee and pastries on the hood of his car, and called out, “I come bearing breakfast.”

  “Daddy, what are you doing here?” Cardin asked, walking toward him after a quick glance passed between her and Whip who followed.

  Eddie blew across his cup before taking a sip. “I told you. I brought breakfast. I figured with the Farron Fuels taking up most of the weekend, that Whip here wouldn’t have had time to lay in much in the way of groceries.”

  “I laid in a few,” Whip said, holding his mug in one hand and pouring the contents of one disposable cup into it with the other. “We had coffee, but only a fool would say no to Pammy’s blend. Or to anything she bakes.”

  Eddie reached for a Danish, as Whip added sugar and cream to his cup, and gestured toward his daughter with the pastry. “Cardin? I’ve never known you to say no to Pammy’s, either.”

  She didn’t look happy, but she dipped into the box as Whip did, and the two shared a look that had Eddie’s chest aching as they came up holding two sides of the same one.

  Whip was the gentleman and let it go. “You a cream cheese fan, too?”

  “It’s my fave,” Cardin said, biting in without a word to Eddie for remembering.

  He grabbed a napkin and licked his fingertips before wiping the glazed sugar away. “I ran into Alex Morgan at Pammy’s. She told me Jeb asked you to drive White Lightning in the Moonshine Run.”

  His mouth full, Whip nodded, taking a swallow of coffee before he spoke. “He came out to the track late Sunday while we were making ready to roll out. He asked if I’d take a look, see what I thought about running it on the track.”

  “I had no idea he’d even entered this year,” Cardin said to Eddie. “I thought he’d retire the car, maybe even sell it since you can’t drive anymore.”

  Oh, he could drive. As long as he could take his time getting in and out of the vehicle, and didn’t have to worry about getting clear in the case of flipping or flames.

  Eddie finished off his coffee. “He�
�s been working on the car since last year, so I’m not surprised he went looking for someone to drive it. Just surprised he didn’t say anything. And that he waited so long. The race is only a couple of weeks away.” Eddie stared into his empty cup, at the few grounds clinging to the Styrofoam. “I swear, the older Jeb gets, the worse he is about sharing any of what he’s thinking.”

  At that, Whip turned to face him. “Speaking of that, I don’t guess he ever said much about what went down with my father before you stepped in to stop the fight, did he?”

  “Not a word,” Eddie told the younger man, wondering if he would have divulged the truth had he known.

  After all, accident or not, Whip’s father had ruined Eddie’s life. And now Whip was doing his damnedest to continue the family tradition by ruining Cardin’s.

  And nothing about it looked like an accident. “Would’ve been nice to know what I sacrificed my leg for besides a couple of tempers, but my dad’s never said a word, and your dad’s…”

  “Dead,” Whip filled in. “My dad’s dead.”

  “And my dad can really be a jerk sometimes,” Cardin added, narrowing her eyes and glaring at Eddie, all righteous indignation as she moved closer to Whip.

  Taking sides already. Eddie figured at this point there wasn’t anyone he cared about that he hadn’t pissed off. That didn’t mean he was going to step out of his daughter’s life and watch her make a magnificent mistake—no matter the cloud of tension swirling thicker here than any morning fog hanging over the ridge.

  He closed up the pastry box, then moved it from the hood of his car to the hood of Jeb’s borrowed truck. “I’ll let you kids get back to your packing and cleaning, and head on to work myself.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. You’re not a jerk. I shouldn’t have said that.” Cardin stepped in front of him, putting a stop to his leaving. “Especially after you went to all this trouble to bring us food.”

  Pammy’s baked goods. Best served with a side of humble pie. Eddie dropped a kiss to the top of Cardin’s head and stepped back. “I’m the one with apologies to make. Yeah, I’m angry about what went down between Aubrey and Jeb, but I’m alive. I can deal with the pain and the limitations. Like you, though,” he said to Whip, “not knowing what I stepped into isn’t sitting well a year later.”