Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Can you believe it? I can’t. She’s never done that for anyone. Not me, not the principal, not Loni…” Sienna hadn’t come down from the high of Dawn’s brief wave at Mike.

Mike looked over from the driver’s side of his pickup. “Clearly, she knows a good guy when she sees one.”

“You
are
a good guy.” Sienna leaned her head against the back of the seat. “I don’t know what you did, or how, but you got to her.” She reached over and took his hand. “You have no idea how big that is.”

“I have kind of an idea. Since you’ve been talking about it nonstop since it happened.”

She squeezed his fingers and stuck out her tongue.

He lifted a brow as he pulled into the parking lot behind Jimmy’s. “Don’t tease me.”

She unfastened her seat belt and crawled onto his lap. “Are you sure? I thought you liked being teased.” Her hand went to the button on his jeans while she ran her lips along his neck. He let out a sigh and curved one arm around her. He tugged her hair gently and slid one hand underneath her coat.

“I do,” he murmured in the quiet chill. “I like teasing you even more.”

She buried her face in the warmth of his jacket, which smelled like soap and faint cologne. She knew at least in part why Dawn had warmed to Mike. He made a girl feel safe. Cared for. Like he would take the world head-on if he needed to and rip it in half before it hurt anyone he cared about.

“We should probably get some dinner,” he whispered into her hair.

She lifted her head. “Okay. But we’re picking up where we left off when we get back in this truck.” She slid her hand down his leg, and he grinned.

“It’s a deal.”

Nate Hunter waved them over to two stools at the bar when they walked in. He squeezed Mike’s hand in hello and winked at Sienna. “Hello, beautiful. Good to see you.” He tossed down coasters and produced two wrinkled paper menus. “Got a local band coming in at nine, if you like alternative rock.”

“I’m hoping we’ll be making our own kind of music by then,” Mike murmured into Sienna’s ear, and she smiled despite the corny comment. She felt shaken up, fizzy and fine and happy with everything.

Mike took their coats and carried them to the rack in the corner, stopping on his way back to talk to some guys Sienna didn’t know. She studied the menu and sipped the martini Nate brought her. “Yum. This is perfect.”

“Thank you.” He turned his Yankees baseball cap backwards. “So I hear you’re almost a professor.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“You’re working on your dissertation, right?”

She nodded. Nate took two empty beer mugs from a customer and sloshed them into a sink filled with soapy water. “What’s it on? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Personality psychology.”

He squinted in puzzlement.

“I’m trying to show how environment shapes the way people develop.”

“Ah.” He set the glasses on a drying rack and refilled the wine glass of the woman beside her. “And you’re here because you think small-town environments shape people in significant ways? A case study on good ol’ Pine Point?”

“Something like that.”

Nate whistled. “You should stand on this side of the bar for a night. You’d find out everything you need to know about the people here and then some.” He shook his head. “Half the stuff I hear and know, I don’t want to.”

Sienna could believe that. She scanned the pub, growing more crowded by the minute. Polly and Harmony stood near the door. No big surprise there. They hadn’t even gotten their coats off, and Harmony was flirting with a guy with a graying beard and temples. Polly checked her phone and looked miserable.

“Nate, I’ll have a plate of nachos to start,” Sienna said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She shrugged off her sweater and left it draped over her stool.

“Sure thing.”

She wound her way through the crowd until she reached Polly and Harmony, surprised to see they’d dressed completely different from each other. Harmony wore winter-white jeans and a pale blue sweater cut halfway down to her navel, while Polly wore the same clothes she’d had on at school, maroon corduroys and a black T-shirt. Her mascara was smudged, and her bottom lip chapped. Sienna took her elbow and steered her away from her friend.

“Can I give you some advice?”

Polly looked startled. “About what?”

“Don’t listen to your friend when it comes to men.”

Polly crossed her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Please
. “Listen. We both know Harmony’s got this whole I-have-to-find-the-perfect-rich-husband-or-I’ll-die thing going on.” She looked over her shoulder. Harmony tossed her hair and reapplied lipstick as she cooed up at whoever the guy of the night was.

“She doesn’t really…” Polly trailed off.

Sienna gave her a look. “You and I both know there’s no such thing as the perfect guy. Or that being rich means he’ll be the perfect husband.” She tried to figure out her next words without betraying Mac’s confidence. “All I’m saying is, if you meet a guy you like, and he doesn’t make a million dollars or own a yacht, don’t immediately write him off.”

One corner of Polly’s mouth lifted. She swiped at the black smudges under her eyes with one thumb. “I guess a yacht wouldn’t really be practical in Pine Point.”

“But a pickup truck would be.” Sienna winked. “As well as a guy who knows how to build your dream house from the ground up.”

Polly’s mouth dropped open.
You know?
her eyes seemed to ask. Sienna squeezed her arm and walked away. Some secrets, she decided, were meant to be kept.

* * * * *

Mike couldn’t wait to get out of there. More and more people filled Jimmy’s in anticipation of the band, and by quarter to nine, he couldn’t turn around without jostling someone’s elbow or having someone step on his feet. He finally touched the small of Sienna’s back.
“You ready to go?”
he mouthed, and she nodded.

“Too much of a crowd for me,” he said as they walked to the truck.

“Me too. I’m glad for the place though. Nate’ll make good tips tonight.”

Mike nodded and helped her into the passenger side, letting his hands linger a little longer than necessary on her hips. His groin stirred. He couldn’t wait to get her back to his place. Sienna must have had other ideas though, because as soon as he got into the truck, she had her hands in his hair and her mouth skating across his lips and neck.

“Whoa…” he began, but she nibbled his bottom lip before he could get anything else out. And why would he want to? If she wanted a little fun right here and now, he wasn’t about to argue. He fumbled with the seat and managed to lay it back a few inches. She began unbuttoning his shirt, one slow movement at a time.

“You know this isn’t the most private place,” he said with a grin.

She tilted her head and continued to unbutton him, not stopping when she reached his jeans. “So?” She reached inside to take him in her hands.

Mike’s eyes closed.
Ah, hell.
So good, the way she stroked him. His hips moved in rhythm with her motions, and though they had little room, the awkward close quarters of the truck, his elbow bumping the door and his knee pressed against the dashboard only turned him on more. When she sank down to take him into her mouth, it took less than a minute before he exploded.

“Ahhh—fuck!” His heart leaped out of his chest, and he looked down at her in wonder. “You didn’t have to do that.”

She licked her lips. “I know I didn’t. I wanted to.” She ran her hands along his thighs, still clad in jeans, then up the ridges of his pulsing cock. “Kind of fun, right?”

More than fun. He nodded, his breath unsteady. He stroked her hair, catching the curls in his rough callouses. “God, I could fall in love with you right now.” The words came out before he knew it. Heat flooded his face. “Shit. I didn’t—”

She sat up and pushed her hair behind her ears. Her eyes grew huge in the dim light from outside.

He pressed his lips together and did his best to tuck himself back into his boxers, not an easy feat while still hard. “I didn’t mean that like—” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “Forget it.”

She slid over to her side of the truck and took his fingers in his. “This is getting pretty intense, isn’t it? Considering we were going to just be friends.”

But he didn’t want that anymore. He wanted more. He wanted all of this, seeing her at school and taking her to dinner and messing around in his truck like they were teenagers and had the world ahead of them. He cleared his throat. “Would you ever think about staying?”

“In Pine Point?” She took forever to answer. “I don’t think so.” She traced a random pattern on the window and looked away from him. “It’s not my home.”

“Of course it is. You grew up here. You came back here.”

“My mother died here. I spent one hell of an unhappy childhood here.”

He turned on the truck without another word and revved the engine.

“Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not.” Frustrated, yes. Disappointed, hell yes. But how could he be mad? He left the parking lot and turned up Main Street, away from his house. He didn’t explain, and she didn’t ask. When he parked in front of the diner a few minutes later, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Talk tomorrow? After we both sleep on it?”

He nodded and pulled away without watching her go inside. He couldn’t. As it was, he couldn’t draw a breath without feeling like something inside him had broken.

Shouldn’t have said that about falling in love with her.
He pounded the steering wheel as he accelerated out of town, past Park Place Run and Mountain Glen and up the road that led to Silver Valley. At the top of the mountain, he glanced down and saw the speedometer needle hovering over ninety.

He screeched to a stop and then pulled to the shoulder of the road. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he put down the window for some air. The warm day had turned to a mild night, and he drew in long, cooling breaths.
She’s just a woman. Don’t get so worked up about it. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. You were never getting married again anyway.
He curled and uncurled his fingers around the steering wheel. He could lie to himself all he wanted. Sienna Cruz was far from just another woman, and every inch of him knew it. He did a U-turn and drove back down the mountain. So he could man up and talk to her about how he felt, or he could pretend he was twenty-two again and be the idiot who turned his back on something great.

He passed Jimmy’s Watering Hole at almost ten. With his window still down, he could hear the band clear as day. Cars lined both sides of Main Street, and he had to slow as people dodged between them on their way to the bar. He dimmed his headlights and idled, waiting as a group passed in front of his truck. He was about to pull ahead when a single man stepped off the curb. He put up an arm to shield himself from Mike’s headlights. Then he stopped and stared. A crooked smile broke out on his face, and Al Halloran walked over to Mike’s open window.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Mike tasted something sour in the back of his mouth. “What the fuck are you still doing in town?” He glanced into the rearview mirror as headlights approached from behind.

“I live here.”

“Where? You’re not staying with your dad, I know that for a fact.”

Al shrugged. “You’re not the only one with friends in town.”

Mike pushed the button to raise the window, but Al put a hand out before he could. “I wouldn’t be such a dick to me if I were you.”

“No?” Mike stared straight ahead. “Why’s that?”

“Because from what I’ve heard, people here don’t have a clue about why you really came back to Pine Point.”

“I came back to open a gym and take care of my mom.”

Al burst out laughing. “Sure you did.”

Mike’s ears burned, and before he knew it, he’d grabbed Al’s collar and yanked him halfway through the window. “Listen to me. You say a word to anyone, and I’ll make sure you never open your mouth again. You’ve got as much at stake as I do if people find out.” That wasn’t true, and they both knew it. But they also both knew Mike could make Al’s life more miserable than it was if he ran his mouth.

Al wriggled free. The smile and the laugh disappeared. “Hey, I’m just trying to start over, same as you. Get myself a job, a place to live, maybe a cute little piece of ass like Sienna Cruz…”

Mike seethed but kept his mouth shut. A car pulled up behind him and beeped.

“’Course, maybe you two are meant for each other,” Al went on. “Both got some history you don’t want people knowing.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mike put his truck into gear and raised a hand at the driver behind him.
Don’t worry. I was just leaving.

“Ask Sienna how her mother died.”

“I know how her mother died.”
And who the fuck are you to bring that up?

Al shrugged and backed away. “She was awfully young to have a heart attack, right? Usually that only happens to people who are shooting or smoking or popping pills. They get so much shit in their blood that their heart either works overtime tryin’ to keep up, or just slows down ’til it quits for good.”

Mike stared at the spot in Al’s mouth where a tooth belonged. His stomach churned.

“All I’m sayin’ is, ask Sienna what was in her mom’s system the day they brought her in. You might be surprised.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I could fall in love with you right now…

Sienna tossed and turned all night. Mike couldn’t have meant that. He’d been caught up in the excitement of the day, in the nice weather and baseball and the headiness of an orgasm. She stared at her ceiling. What if he
had
meant it? She had no plans to stay in Pine Point. She couldn’t let herself get attached to him. Loving someone meant losing them, because no one stuck around forever. She threw one arm over her face and told herself the ache in her chest came from her earlier martini and the nachos, not from pushing her feelings down deep where they couldn’t hurt her.

“Let’s meet for lunch
,
”
he texted around seven the next morning. She ran her thumb over the screen and thought of a half-dozen responses. Finally, she typed, “
I have a ton of stuff to do. See you at the gym?”

He replied with a thumbs-up, and she didn’t hear from him again until late on Sunday.

“Tabata and meditation at five if you’re interested
.
”

Sienna picked up her phone from the floor. She’d spent almost the entire weekend on her research, organizing notes, making new ones, and drafting the first part of her dissertation. If she planned to finish by May, she needed to light a fire under herself. She stretched her arms overhead. Yes, a workout sounded good. Plus, she couldn’t avoid Mike forever. She didn’t want to. She changed into black workout pants and a baggy T-shirt and walked the mile and a half to Springer Fitness.

He sat behind the desk at his computer. When she walked in, he smiled. “Wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“I did.”

They didn’t say anything else for the next forty minutes. He pushed her harder than she’d pushed herself in weeks, until sweat dripped from her eyebrows and her elbows and everything in between. Before the last round, she pulled off her T-shirt and tossed it aside. “Sorry.” She panted as she tugged her black and pink sports bra into place. “But I’m dying here.”

“Don’t be sorry.” His gaze raked her torso, and she drank in his appreciation. She might not be falling in love with Mike, but she sure did like him a lot.

After they stretched and collapsed onto their mats for meditation, she closed her eyes and sighed. “I needed that.”

“Good.” He turned off the lights in the fitness room and sat beside her. He directed their first few breaths, but then he grew silent, and all she heard was the sound of their tandem inhalations.

She opened one eye after a couple minutes and caught Mike looking at her. “Hey. I thought we were meditating. It hasn’t been ten minutes yet, has it?”

“Nope.” He lifted both palms in a gesture of surrender. “I just couldn’t help myself.”

At that, she leaned over and kissed him. Salty and certain, his tongue slipped along hers. One hand went to the back of her head.

“I’m sorry I freaked out the other night,” she said against his lips.

“It’s okay. I came on a little strong.” He ran his fingers down her cheek. “I don’t want to lose you, for however long you’re here.”

She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I don’t either.”

He kissed her temple and then pulled her up. “What do you say I close up and we hit the showers?”

“Together?”

He gave her the wicked grin she loved, the one that curled her toes. “Of course together.” He grabbed his mat and tossed it on the pile in the corner. “Race you there.”

* * * * *

The students talked about Mike and baseball all week long. Even spats of mid-week rain couldn’t keep them from practicing under the tiny pavilion with gloves Silas’s father brought in for everyone.

“Miss Cruz, watch me!” Billy called.

“That’s much better, honey,” she said as only a few tosses went wild.

Caleb turned out to be the most accurate of them all, which didn’t surprise her. He came in each morning telling her about the books he’d read at home the night before, about angles and speed and the difference between all the pitches.

“Mr. Mike is certainly going to be impressed,” she told him. To her surprise, Caleb looked her straight in the eye as he responded.

“I’m glad he visits our class.”

“Me too, honey.” She looked at her brood, the whole funny bunch, as Mike called them. In weeks, they’d progressed more than she would have guessed. Now they talked to other students in the cafeteria and in the halls, and last week she’d caught Bailey playing tag with a group of fourth graders. Even Dawn stood with them under the pavilion, not throwing or catching, but holding a baseball in her hands. She turned it over and over, stroking the stitches with one thumb.

“Miss Cruz, Mr. Mike said he’d take us to a baseball game,” Caleb said as they walked inside at the end of the day on Thursday. “There’s a minor league team in Silver Valley, and they start their season on April sixth. He said we could go.”

“Well, yes, but I’ll have to make arrangements with the school and your parents,” she said.

“I already told my parents,” Caleb went on. “My dad said he would come with us if we needed a chaperon.”

“You tell him thank you, and I’ll give him a call to talk about it, okay?” She clapped her hands. “Five minutes to dismissal. That means everyone needs to pack up so I can check bags before you go.”

“Miss Cruz, can we play baseball the whole time tomorrow instead of having read-along?” Bailey asked.

“I’m not sure, honey.” She glanced at Caleb, who had frozen halfway through organizing his backpack. “Maybe just one book and then we’ll play baseball. Fridays at two is always read-along, so we don’t want to give that up entirely.”

Caleb began to breathe again.

“We’ll ask Mr. Mike what he thinks when he comes tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

But Mike didn’t show up the following day. By one o’clock, the students had already chosen his book,
Forty-Two: Why We Remember Jackie Robinson
. Billy and Bailey were coloring pictures of famous baseball players, and Caleb was working on a math worksheet two grade levels up. Dawn kept looking at the door until Sienna steered her to a beanbag chair and gave her a book to read. At ten minutes to two, she gathered them all on the carpet. The last few days of rain had cleared for a glorious Friday, with sunshine and temperatures nearing sixty again. She couldn’t wait to go outside. More than that, she couldn’t wait to see Mike. They’d had a quick dinner Tuesday night and they talked every day, but he’d been busy with the gym, setting up spring advertising and hiring new instructors. Since the weekend, he’d also seemed oddly preoccupied.

“Everything okay?”
she texted him last night.

“Yeah,”
he responded almost thirty minutes later.
“Just a lot on my mind.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not this time. Thanks though. XO”

At five after two, she checked her phone. It wasn’t like him to be late.

At ten after two, Caleb left his seat and walked to the door. “Mr. Mike isn’t here,” he announced with concern. “He’s eleven minutes late.”

“I know, honey. But sometimes that happens. Maybe he got caught in traffic or at work.” She sent him a quick text.
“Everything okay? Kids are waiting to play catch with you.”
But she heard nothing in return.

At twenty after two, she stumbled her way through the Jackie Robinson story, despite the fact that no one was listening. She finally put the book aside and clapped her hands. “Let’s go out to the playground for the last twenty minutes.” She checked her phone again. No text or call.
What the hell had happened to him?

“But Mr. Mike isn’t here,” Bailey said.

“I know.” She forced a cheery tone into her voice. “But we can practice without him. That way we’ll surprise him the next time he comes.” With that, Sienna led her students outside and tried to ignore the niggling fear that something was very wrong.