Chapter 19

It was still dark when Luke climbed out of bed to let the dog out, careful not to wake Jordan as he slowly pulled his arm from beneath her head.

She made a disgruntled noise but didn’t wake as she rolled over and burrowed farther beneath the covers.

His covers.

Luke waited for the stab of panic, frowned when it didn’t come.

He didn’t do this. He didn’t do one-night stands at his place, he didn’t have women stay over, and he sure as hell didn’t do any of the above with a sassy New Yorker who was easily the most provocative and responsive woman he’d ever had in his bed.

And yet far from anxiously awaiting the moment he could get rid of her, Luke found that he sort of liked her just where she was.

He pulled on his jeans and grabbed a fresh T-shirt from the drawer before heading into the hallway.

As expected, Winston was pressed against the door, his baleful glare making it clear he wasn’t entirely ready to forget last night’s banishment, but the tail wag indicated he might be persuaded to forgive if there was bacon in his future.

“I’ll think about it,” Luke promised the dog as they headed downstairs.

He opened the back door for Winston to do his business, and Luna appeared from wherever she’d been lurking, giving Luke a disdainful look before sauntering out into the early morning chill.

“Your highness,” he muttered, leaving the door open a crack so they could find their way back inside.

Winston thumped into the kitchen a couple of minutes later, chomping the remainder of last night’s dinner as Luke waited for the coffee to finish.

He’d just poured his first cup and turned to close the back door but drew up short at the sight of Jordan walking into the kitchen—wearing his shirt, carrying his cat.

For one annoying moment, his chest tightened with…something. And not the panic he kept bracing for.

“Morning,” she said, her voice still a bit sleep-raspy. Her smile was friendly and confident, but her blue eyes held a trace of vulnerability, as though not sure of her welcome.

Luke eased her worries in the best way he knew how, turning toward the coffeepot and pouring her one.

“Milk, right?” he asked, going to the fridge.

“Please. Just a bit.”

He added a splash and turned back with both mugs.

Jordan gave Luna a kiss on the head before gently setting her on the floor. The quiet affection left Luke oddly jealous of a cat he barely liked.

“For the record, I feed you and clean your litter box,” he said with a scowl at the cat.

Luna swished her tail indifferently and hopped onto the kitchen chair, back to him.

“She’ll be there till the sun comes up and the birds come out,” he explained. “They’ll sit in that tree, she’ll scream bloody murder at them for twenty minutes, Winston will then bark at her, I’ll yell at Winston…Obviously you’ll want to stay; it’s a real treat.”

She laughed. “What would be my role, yelling at you?”

“Impossible.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Women never yell at me; I’m too charming.”

“Weird,” she said, lowering herself into the chair across from the cat. “I have yet to see that part of you.”

He scooped up Luna and took her chair, only to have the cat jump into his lap a half second later and resume her bird-watching.

“True or false,” he said looking across the table at Jordan. “You’re sitting there in my T-shirt, in my home, before dawn.”

“True,” she said with narrowed eyes.

He lifted his coffee mug in a toast. “Like I said. I’m charming.”

Jordan snorted, her eyes watching his hand as he petted the damn cat out of habit. “That’s not what last night was about.”

His body stirred at the memory of last night. “No? Enlighten me.”

“It was merely weird chemistry and lots of mad. Like…an anger bang.”

Luke choked on his coffee. “A what?”

“Is that a New York term?” she mused. “Anger bang? It means—”

“Yeah, I can figure out what it means,” he muttered, shaking hot coffee off the back of his hand, the gesture earning him a scornful look from Luna before she hopped down to go watch the birds from the living room.

Jordan pursed her lips, cupping the mug in both hands and staring down at the steam. “Okay, so…” She blew out a breath. “I feel like I should say sorry. No, I know that I should say I’m sorry.”

Luke was careful to hide his surprise, but he was surprised. He’d had his fair share of serious relationships and knew that a woman apologizing out of the blue wasn’t especially common.

“For?” he asked warily.

“I was wrong to get pissed last night,” she said. “I mean, yes, you could have cleared up a lot of things if you’d have told me that the women were the ones who called it off, but—”

“Not all of them,” he said, before he could think better of it. “Just the first two.”

She studied him. “You left the third one? On your wedding day?”

The memory tore at him. All the memories centered on Eva did. “Yes.”

His tone left no room for discussion on that matter—something she apparently picked up on, because she shifted the conversation back to his previous…brides.

God, he hated thinking of it like that. He knew that the situations were complicated—all three of them. But he wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly how this all looked from the outside perspective.

He’d tried damn hard not to let it bother him—what he did with his life was his business. His motivations for doing what he had didn’t require justification to anyone.

So why the hell was he tempted to tell it all to the one person he shouldn’t?

It was because when she sat there wearing his oldest shirt, at his beat-up kitchen table, after a night of epic sex, looking as though she belonged there, it was damn hard to think of Jordan Carpenter as anything other than what she was at this moment….

A beautiful woman he wanted to know.

Whom he wanted to get to know him.

“Did you know?” she asked, studying him. “About Stacey?”

Luke’s knee-jerk reaction was to get up and leave the table. Nothing he hated more than memory lane.

But his damn dog must have sensed this and disapproved, because Winston ambled over and rested his head on Luke’s knee, forcing him to stay put. To face the past.

“I didn’t know, but I wasn’t shocked,” he finally answered quietly. “That’s the best answer I’ve got.”

It was the honest-to-God truth. When a tearful Stacey had found Luke in the small groom’s room at the church that morning, his first thought had been that he’d raise hell to stop whatever was upsetting her. His second thought was that he knew exactly what needed to stop to ease her pain: the wedding.

It had hurt. It had hurt hearing the woman he loved say that she was in love with someone else—her best friend. It had hurt even more knowing that the truth had probably always been there, and he and Stacey both had been guilty of convincing themselves otherwise.

But that was the tricky part about loving someone—their happiness had to mean more than your own. It wasn’t love otherwise.

So he’d gotten over it. Got plenty drunk with Gil, then went about the business of healing.

His plan had worked. Stacey and Isobel were happy, if not exactly open about their relationship, and Luke had learned to be…content.

At least until Eva.

“Stacey said you let everyone assume it was you who called it off.”

He shrugged. “Her dad’s kind of an asshole. He’d cut her out of all future Christmas dinners if he found out she was gay. I care about her too much to let that happen until she’s ready.”

“If she ever is.”

“Right.”

“Does it bother you?” Jordan asked. “That people think you ditched her on her wedding day?”

He gave a rueful smile. “As you’ve delighted in reminding me, I’d had some practice by that point.”

“Ah yes, the mysterious bride number one,” she said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs.

He nearly leaned forward to get a peek at the way his shirt must be riding up on her slim thighs, before reminding himself that he wasn’t twelve.

He did, however, make a mental promise to himself to check out those perfect thighs up close later.

“So you didn’t break her heart either,” Jordan was saying.

Luke shrugged.

“Did she break yours?”

“Nah,” he said, meaning it. “It was mutual and the best for both of us.”

“Yet she let you take the blame?”

“I insisted. I was nineteen; she was my first love.”

Jordan sighed. “Damn, you really would have made a killer candidate for Jilted.”

“I thought I was out of the running now that we’ve established that I’m only part asshole, rather than a complete one,” he said, standing to grind more coffee for a second pot.

Winston promptly transferred his love over to Jordan, who reached out a hand to stroke his head.

“I’m rethinking,” she said. “Ladies love a gentleman nearly as much as they love a bad boy, and I think there’s definitely a gentleman lurking beneath the backward hat and glares.”

“For what it’s worth, I only glare at you.” Luke punched the machine, the angry whir of the grinder announcing that he was done talking about himself.

When the kitchen went silent once more, he turned and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms and studying her.

“You miss New York?”

She blinked in surprise. “What?”

He smiled. “Look, if we’re going to fight, screw, then have a get-to-know-you morning-after chat, it’s got to go both ways.”

She looked down at the dog and rubbed behind his ears. “Fair enough,” she agreed, looking back at him. “Yes, I miss New York.”

Her words did something obnoxious to his chest, but he refused to back away from the conversation. “We have too much fresh air for you?”

“Something like that.”

Her voice was light, but her face was sad, and Luke knew he wasn’t getting the full picture of whom Jordan Carpenter was. She kept putting up walls, but that was too damn bad. If she was going to scale his, he’d happily launch a counterattack.

“What’s your story, City?” he asked, grabbing the pot of coffee and coming back to the table. “You born and raised on Park Avenue?”

She sipped her coffee. “Hardly. I was born and raised in a town a lot like this one.”

This news both surprised the hell out of him and also…didn’t.

“Explains why you look so good in the cowboy boots,” he said, trying to keep the mood light to keep her talking.

“Simon will be glad you think so. They were his doing.”

“Small-town life wasn’t for you?” he asked, topping off her cup.

She ran a nail along the handle of the mug as she considered. “I don’t know that it was like that. I mean, like most people, I went through a stage in high school where I dreamed of getting out, living a more glamorous life, but I wasn’t one of those Big Lights or Bust kind of dreamers. Keaton was home.”

“But you left.” He took a sip of coffee.

“I left.”

They locked eyes for a long moment, a silent battle of wills, and as much as he hated it, he got it…she wasn’t going to spill her guts when he wouldn’t spill his.

He gave her something—as much as he was ready for.

“Bride number one was Hailey,” he said, continuing to meet her eyes.

He’d been pretty sure that nobody had mentioned that fact to her, and the shock on her face told him he was right. “Hailey? How the heck did I not know this?”

“Honestly, I don’t have a clue, since the town’s run its mouth about everything else. Best guess, Hailey asked them not to.”

“Because it’s a painful story?”

“Not really. At least not for her and me. Her parents are still a little pissed about the money they spent on a wedding that didn’t happen, but they got a far better son-in-law in Tim than I’d ever have been. My guess? Hailey figured you might treat her differently if you knew and had already pegged you as BFF material.”

“I suspect everyone’s BFF material to Hailey.”

He smiled. “You know her well.”

“I thought I did,” Jordan muttered, tapping her fingers against the table, her mind clearly racing. “So what happened there?”

He shrugged. “We were kids. I proposed when we thought she was pregnant. Started her period a few days before the wedding, and I think we were both relieved. We loved each other, but neither of us was even close to ready for marriage or kids.”

“And yet once again you took the blame,” she said.

Her tone was a little cranky, and Luke nearly smiled, wondering if perhaps Jordan Carpenter wasn’t a bit protective on his behalf. It’d be a nice change from a town that, while affectionate, had always been all too happy to play up his reputation while letting the women get off easy.

He’d wanted it that way, sure, but look where that had gotten him. The bull’s-eye of a fucking reality TV show.

“All right, your turn,” he said, lifting his cup and winking at Jordan.

Her face went perfectly blank, and Luke tensed, sensing that whatever she was about to share was a good deal more gut-wrenching than his and Hailey’s failed childhood romance.

“I left my hometown because it stopped feeling like home.”

“Okay…” he said slowly, knowing there was more. Not sure he wanted to hear it.

Her eyes were locked on Winston, who seemed to sense her distress, because he let out a mournful sigh and wiggled closer.

Jordan looked at Luke, and her eyes were clear of tears but full of pain. “When I was a senior in high school, a tornado ripped through Keaton. Tornadoes weren’t unusual, but this was a big one. The high school escaped it. My house didn’t.”

Luke’s throat hurt. “Ah hell, City—Jordan.”

She gave the slightest of sad smiles and lifted her shoulders. “My little brother had stayed home from school sick that day. My mom was a homemaker; Dad was off from work because he’d thrown out his back. My whole family, gone in one awful afternoon.”

Winston was damn good at giving comfort, but Luke was better.

He stood, nudging the dog out of the way so he could haul Jordan to her feet. He didn’t know if she wanted a hug, but he needed to give her one. She was rigid for a moment before collapsing against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. “Probably not the answer you were expecting.”

He ran a hand over her messy hair. “No. And not the one I wanted, but I’m glad you told me.”

“I don’t hate small-town life,” she said, her words partially muffled against his shirt. “I just…” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “It brings back memories, you know? It’s much easier to be someone else in New York. I don’t think so much about the life I might have had if they were still alive.”

“Have you been back?”

She bit her lip. “No. I haven’t wanted to, and yet being here, it’s made me…remember. And I can’t help wondering if I need closure, you know? If maybe I need to go back there to say goodbye, so that I can…I don’t know. I don’t know what I need.”

He held her closer. “I think maybe closure,” he said quietly. “You can only run from pain for so long before it catches you.”

“Spoken from experience?” Jordan asked.

“Nah, we’re not talking about me right now,” he said, keeping his tone light.

“You think I should go back?” she asked. “To Keaton?”

Luke was silent for a moment. “My first thought was to tell you that it’s not about what I think, but…these past few weeks have taught me that sometimes the people who care about us maybe know a thing or two that we can’t see for ourselves.”

“I don’t suppose that means you’re going to do the show.”

He smiled against her hair. “Don’t push your luck, City. But about you going back to Kansas: Maybe. Don’t do it alone. Take a friend. Let it be more of a celebration of what was rather than a mourning of what was lost.”

She inhaled, held her breath, and then let it out. “A celebration. I like that.”

They were quiet for several moments, until she pulled back slightly, her blue eyes searching his face. “Do you ever think about what kind of life you want? I mean really sit and think?”

“Sure, all the time. Usually while I journal and sip herbal tea.”

Jordan laughed. “I get it. I pushed the girl talk too far.”

“What kind of life do you want?” he asked.

She smiled up at him. “Still trying to figure that out. Aren’t you?”

No. No, Luke already knew the life he wanted. The wife. The kids. The dog.

He had the last one but none of the former, and not for lack of trying. He’d been telling himself for years that he didn’t mind, that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for him.

Suddenly that answer didn’t feel nearly good enough.

“How about we start with something easy?” he murmured, planting a kiss on her forehead and giving her hand a squeeze. “What do you feel like for breakfast?”

He sensed her relief at the change in topic. “How do you feel about pancakes?” she asked.

“I feel good about pancakes. I feel even better about pancakes after sex—”

“Oh, but I don’t think—” Her hand lifted self-consciously to her messy hair.

“Don’t worry, I thought for us,” Luke said, bending his knees to lift her, throwing her lean weight over his shoulder.

“What the heck is happening right now?” she shrieked, banging a palm against his back.

He smacked her ass. “This, City, is what you get for starting a fling with a firefighter.”

Then he carried her to the living room couch and proceeded to show her exactly how hot that fling was going to be.