Celeste tried to talk Lindy out of opening the store the next morning, but Lindy wanted to work. “I need to stay busy,” she told her aunt as she handed her some coffee.
“All right, but it’s not going to hurt a thing for you to take a day off,” Celeste replied, looking doubtful.
“I’ll be fine. Much better this way.”
Lindy headed down to the shop, and the first thing she did was to check the caller ID. Yes—there was Alan’s cell phone number from when he’d called the day before. She tapped her fingernails on the counter while she waited for him to answer, but nothing.
“Hey, Alan,” she said after the beep. “This is Lindy. I’m just checking in to make sure you’re all right. Can you give me a call? Thanks.”
She hung up, then leaned against the counter, trying to get her head in the game. She was going to make some honeysuckle lotion, and she should see what other scents they needed while she was at it.
She’d just jotted down five bottles of lilac when Katie Quinn entered the shop, a large box in her arms. “Soap delivery!” Katie said as she set the box down in front of the shelf where all her products were displayed.
“Wow. Those smell fantastic.”
Katie had been making soap and selling it to the shop for a while now, which made Lindy no end of happy. Soap was time consuming when done from scratch, and Celeste had never wanted to invest in the supplies or the man hours. Partnering with Katie had been a great solution for everyone—their customers loved the soaps, Katie had an outlet, and the shop had a more well-rounded product line. “Let me grab you last month’s sales report and check.”
Lindy unlocked the safe and brought Katie her percentage of the sales. “It looks like jasmine outsold everything this time around,” she said. “If you could bring in some extra bars, that would be great.”
“You’re in luck because I have some extra jasmine out in the car,” Katie replied. “I was going to run them down to the bookstore at River’s End Ranch, but if you want them, they’re all yours.”
“I hate to deprive Melissa of new product, but I do think we’ll sell them,” Lindy replied. Just in the short time she’d been back, she’d noticed how well it went over with the customers.
“I’m taking her a bunch of other stuff—maybe she won’t notice there’s no jasmine,” Katie said with a smirk.
“You can blame me if you need to. I’m prepared to take the fall-out.”
Lindy accepted the inventory list Katie provided, updated it with ten more bars of jasmine, and arranged everything on the shelf. There now. Once she had those lotions made, the shop would be fully stocked again, and that would feel great.
The door opened, and she heard a man’s voice talking on a cell phone. Her heart pounded. Alan. It had to be Alan.
She turned around, a huge smile on her face, but it wasn’t Alan. It was a tall, good-looking guy she’d never met before.
He hung up and tucked his phone in his pocket. “I’m sorry—that was Trix on the phone. I’m her brother, Isaiah.”
“Hello, Isaiah. I’m Lindy. So glad to meet you.” She accepted his handshake, which was friendly and warm.
“And I’m glad to meet you. Trix told me what you did for her last night, and I had to stop in and say thank you. She’ll be at our grandmother’s for a few weeks, she thinks, and she wanted you to know that she’s arranged for another nurse to fill in so Celeste will still get the care she needs.”
“You tell Trix not to give us a second thought. She needs to be thinking about herself right now. In fact, do you have a minute?”
He checked his watch. “About that long, yes.”
“Hold on—I’d like to send a gift along with you.”
Lindy reached under the counter and pulled out a small basket, which she lined with shredded paper. Then she walked up and down each aisle, choosing out soap, lotion, lip balm, bath salts, and body spray. After she arranged them in the basket, she tied a bow around the handle.
“Give this to her, would you?” she asked, giving the basket to Isaiah. “I want her to know that we’re thinking about her.”
“I will. This is very kind—thank you.”
“And tell her . . . that if she wants to get a lawyer, it’s probably a good idea to have one,” Lindy went on, now feeling awkward. “I mean, if she’s still pressing charges.”
“Oh, she has a good lawyer,” Isaiah said with a grin.
“She does? Who?”
“Me.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a foil-embossed business card.
She’d thought he was dressed a little nice for paying calls on Main Street in his suit and tie. “I’m glad you’re representing her,” Lindy said. “She’ll need someone who believes in her.”
“That man will feel my wrath before we’re through.” Isaiah spoke with a smile, but Lindy knew he was serious, and it almost brought tears to her eyes. Everyone deserved to have someone in their corner, someone with the passion to defend them and speak for them and make sure they were heard.
Isaiah thanked her again and said he was due in court, so he left, holding the basket carefully. Trix would be all right—Lindy felt sure of it. Her support system was rallying around her, and that would go a long way toward her recovery.
All right. Deep breath. Back to work. Lindy updated the Facebook page with information about the new batch of soap that had just come in, and then on a hunch, she looked up Alan Murray.
There were a bunch, and not all of them used pictures of themselves on their profiles, so she narrowed it down to Alan Murray Idaho. That helped.
She smiled when she saw Alan’s profile picture. He was wearing his black leather jacket, and he had just a little bit of stubble on his jaw. Very good-looking. Trying not to feel stalkerish, but knowing she was being stalkerish, she scrolled down his page. Hmm. A picture of him in front of his truck, a series of scenic pictures he’d taken while driving his route, and then some pictures of himself fishing with an older man who looked like his dad. Because they weren’t Facebook friends yet, she couldn’t see everything on his wall, and this little taste had only whetted her appetite to know more.
Her finger was hovering over the “add friend” button when the door opened again, and Alan walked in.
“Alan!” She quickly clicked on a different tab so he wouldn’t accidentally see how creepy she was being, and then she ran around the counter to give him a hug. She stopped herself right before flinging her arms around him. “Are you in pain?”
“Um, yes. A lot.”
“Okay. I can work with that.” She reached out and touched his shoulders with her two pointer fingers. “That’s a very gentle, non-squeezing, compassionate-to-injured-people hug. How did you like it?”
“I would have preferred the real thing, but that’ll have to wait.” He grinned. “How are you?”
“Extremely rattled, but so much better now that I’ve seen you. Come here.” She ran into the back office, grabbed two chairs, and brought them to the front, setting them up behind the counter. “Sit down. Tell me how you are.”
He lowered himself into the offered seat and exhaled. “I have three cracked ribs and one whale of a sore jaw. I have to take the next month off while I heal, but UPS is okay with that. They’re actually pretty proud of me.”
“As they should be.” She studied his eyes. “Should you even be out and about right now? Can you drive your car?”
“I had a friend drop me off. I was hoping you might take me home later.”
“Of course! Absolutely.” She realized how giddy she sounded and tried to scale it back. “I would be more than happy to.”
“I promise to make myself useful. You could show me how to use the cash register, or I could put labels on things—whatever you need. Well, whatever you need that doesn’t require me to lift things. Or bend over a lot. Or be coherent. These pain pills they’ve got me on are pretty strong.”
“If you’re hurting, why are you here? You should be home resting.”
“I should be, but I wanted to see you.”
His answer was so simple, her breath caught. “You wanted to see me? Even though you’re in pain?”
“I needed to know you were all right.”
“I’m not the one who got in a fight last night!”
“But you did get hurt.”
She sat back in her chair, blinking. “What do you mean?”
Alan looked down at the floor, then back up into her eyes. “I saw how you were reacting to everything that was going on. I don’t know your story and you don’t have to tell me, but I could tell that you were struggling, and I needed to see if you were all right.”
Tears sprang up in her eyes so suddenly, she didn’t have time to stop them, and they trickled down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the palms of her hands. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Alan swiveled in his chair and picked up a sample bottle of lotion that had been sitting on the counter. “My sister was raped two years ago,” he said, almost sounding casual, but Lindy knew better. “She knew the guy, but she wouldn’t say who it was, and she never reported it. She thought it was easier that way. But ever since . . .” He turned the bottle over and over in his hands. “She hasn’t been the same. She’s lost her self-confidence, her motivation, her drive . . . I’ve lost the person my sister used to be. Now she’s just going through the motions.”
“Trix is going to press charges,” Lindy replied. “Her brother’s her lawyer.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” Alan sniffed the lotion, then put the bottle back up. He turned to look at her again, his eyes so open and accepting, she couldn’t help but say it.
“I pressed charges too,” she said.
His eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t react in any other way.
“It was right at the end of my junior year of high school. We were having a party for the last day of school before summer break, and we were up in the mountains at a campsite roasting marshmallows. I’d been dating someone, but we hadn’t done anything yet because I wanted to wait for marriage.” Lindy laced her fingers together and studied them as she spoke. It was one way to keep her hands from shaking. “He pulled me off into the trees and told me he was tired of waiting. He’d been drinking, and he just wouldn’t listen to me. I managed to get away, and I went to the police and told them what happened. I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.”
“What happened next?” Alan asked when she didn’t go on.
“The police talked to him, and everything just exploded from there. He was one of the school’s best students and he was expected to get a scholarship, but he lost it because of my accusation. Everyone turned against me, pretty much everyone in town, and when it was time to start school again, that’s when I moved to Quinn Valley to live with Aunt Celeste.” She wiped her cheeks again. “So, no, I wasn’t raped, but I was victimized, and then I was victimized again over and over.”
“Wow.” Alan sat back, wincing as he did. “So, how long did you live here?”
“My senior year and then another year after that. I wanted to move back home, but my parents told me things in town weren’t any better—it was a tiny place, and no one ever forgets anything there. My brothers barely got out of there alive. They ended up selling their house and moving to Boise. By then, I was settled in at River’s End Ranch, and I was determined to be light and happy and start all over again. And I did.”
“What about the guy?”
“He went to community college somewhere else, and that’s the last I heard of him.”
“Wow,” Alan said again. “So you were punished for telling the truth. That’s exactly what my sister was afraid of—that no one would believe her.”
“Only one out of every sixteen rapists does jail time,” Lindy replied. “Well, that’s according to a report I looked up a while back. You know why that statistic is so high? Because of how many attacks go unreported. So many women are terrified to say anything. I didn’t think twice about it—I headed straight in and told my story, but it didn’t do me one bit of good. And what does that tell women like your sister? That she made the right choice? But how can it be right when she’s lost so much of herself?”
Alan shook his head. “It’s not right. It’s just not right. We’ve got guys walking around out there who think the world owes them something, that they can just take whatever they want. Something’s got to change.”
“And then we’ve got guys who stand up and do the right thing,” Lindy said softly. “Thank you.”
“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” Alan said with a laugh. “My great-great-great-grandfather was a Canadian Mountie. Protecting people runs in my blood.”
“He was a Mountie? That’s so cool. Where was he stationed?”
“The Northwest Territories, up where the Northern Lights are the brightest.”
“I’d love to see the Northern Lights someday. That’s actually been on my bucket list for a really long time.”
“Me too.” Alan reached out and took Lindy’s hand. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. I know it wasn’t easy.”
She gave a short laugh. “Understatement. But thank you for listening. And thank you for what you did last night. If more men were like you instead of like Saul . . .”
“I think a lot of men are like me. They just don’t always have the opportunity to step into the fray.”
“Opportunity? You make it sound so positive.”
“The situation was definitely not positive. Having the ability to help? That was kind of awesome.”
Lindy smiled. “You know what, yeah. It was kind of awesome. And now you get a whole month off work. What do you plan to do with it?”
“I think I’ll spend the first week taking a lot of pain pills and feeling just a little bit sorry for myself. That seems completely justified. Then I’ll catch up on some repairs around my apartment—stuff I’ve been meaning to get to for a while.”
“That sounds kind of boring,” Lindy replied.
“It does. Really boring. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Well, you could come visit me. Kind of like you’re doing right now, coincidentally.”
“My goodness. That would be quite a coincidence.”
“I know, right? And we could take a drive maybe, only we’d go over the bumps really slowly because of the ribs.”
He nodded. “Yes. Slow bumps. Not fast bumps.”
“Eat diner food, because diner food has been clinically proven to help mend broken bones. Especially onion rings. They’re almost as magical as potato skins.”
“Onion rings? Wow. You know a lot of stuff.”
“I do. I really do.” She grinned. “I’m so glad you came, Alan. I mean, I would have been happy with a phone call, but I’m happier to see you.”
“There are some times when you need a little more than just a phone call. This was one of those times.”
His gaze had become intense again, but she didn’t turn away. Instead, she let herself drink in the moment, noticing how her heart started to beat faster and her breathing quickened, but how very safe she felt at the same time. He reached out and touched the side of her face, and she burst into giggles.
“What? What’s so funny?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry . . . it’s just . . .”
Alan looked exasperated. “You’ve got to know that when a guy goes to kiss a girl, if she starts laughing, it sort of kills the moment.”
“You were going to kiss me?”
“Yes, but now you’re laughing. I can’t kiss a laughing person. I’ll . . . I’ll get teeth and stuff.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that now your hands smell like lotion, and it seemed funny at the time, but now you’re not going to kiss me, and so it’s very sad.”
“My hands do smell like lotion, yes. That’s because I availed myself of this very nice bottle right here that says ‘sample’ on it. That’s what it’s for, right? So people can sample the lotion?”
“Yes. Of course. You’re right. I’m . . . I’m just kind of nervous.” She’d be honest with him—he’d proven trustworthy with her honesty before.
“Nervous? Why?”
“Because I’ve really wanted you to kiss me for the last fifteen hours or so, and the thought of actually doing it . . . I mean, what if you decide you don’t like it? What if I’m a terrible kisser? What if you’re a terrible kisser? Not that I’m saying that’s the case—you actually look like you’d be an amazing kisser. And I mean amazing. It’s myself I’m doubting. What if I’m not up to this challenge? What if—?”
He reached out and placed one finger on her lips. “I think we’ll work on it together, and it will be a really amazing kiss. There’s just one thing.”
“What?”
“Well, when I kiss someone, I like to take them in my arms and pull them in close.”
That sounded wonderful. “And? What’s the problem?”
“If I do that right now, it would hurt. A lot. Because of ribs.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Lindy felt ridiculous for having forgotten. “So, what should we do?”
“Well, we should definitely kiss, but I won’t pull you in quite as close. Not arms’ length—I’m not going to be that strict—but not as cuddly as I would like under normal circumstances.”
“You sound like you’ve put some thought into it.”
“Well, I have, because I’ve wanted to kiss you pretty badly for the last fifteen hours or so, but I’ve had broken ribs for about twelve hours, and I’ve spent some time in the ER with nothing better to do than figuring out how to go about this.”
“I see.” Lindy nodded, trying to look serious. “I’m going to let you take the lead, since you’ve worked out a system and all.”
“That’s very kind of you. All right, step one of my plan is for both of us to stand up and face each other.”
Lindy stood up. “I’m in position.”
“As am I.” Alan nodded. “Excellent. Step two is taking three steps toward each other.”
“Wait.” She held up her hand. “Are we each taking three steps, or are we each taking one and a half steps?”
“Good question.” He looked down at their feet. “Let’s each take one and a half steps and evaluate from there.”
They moved around until Alan was convinced that they were the proper distance apart. “Now we approach each other gently,” he said. “If we just grabbed each other, that wouldn’t be good, even though grabbing is sometimes fun.”
“It can be fun,” Lindy replied. “But approaching seems like the kind thing to do. Because of ribs.”
“Yes.” Alan slid his hand behind her neck. Then he leaned forward and brushed his lips across hers.
Tingles shot down her arms and to her fingertips, and she reached up and rested her hands very lightly on his chest. He kissed her again, this time coming a bit closer, and she inhaled everything about him—his shampoo, his kindness, the way he stroked her neck with his thumb. All of it went down into her lungs and became part of her.
He let go and stepped back, and she smiled up into his eyes. “You planned that out very well,” she said. “I believe congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you. For our second kiss, I plan to put more weight on my right leg, which will take the pressure off my left ribs. It’s a scientific process, you see.”
She grinned. “I love that you’re already planning our second kiss.”
“I planned it last night. I told you—I had a lot of time to kill in the ER.”