The BFF Bride (14 page)

She sat back down at her coffee table and finished wrapping the presents, only to realize she was missing one for Hannah. The custom storybook was still in her locker at Ruby’s.

Swearing under her breath, she looked at the clock. If she hurried, she could get to the diner before it closed up for the day.

She grabbed her coat and keys and headed out. Once she was done there, she’d keep driving on to Braden.

Get that Christmas tree.

She’d be back before dark, and tonight, anyone driving by her place would see a festively lit Christmas tree through her front window.

She was going to act like everything was fine, even if it killed her.

* * *

When he started out that morning, Justin had intended on finishing at least the first rough draft of his paper before calling it quits for the day. Getting raked over the coals by Erik had been only one of his interruptions. But even if he’d had none at all, he still wouldn’t have gotten anything more accomplished than the few pages of crap he’d managed to eke out.

The hospital had been issuing announcements all day about the coming storm. Nonessential personnel were sent home. Medical teams were put on alert.

After hearing the same announcement for about the tenth time and staring at the same nonsensical paragraph in his paper for just as long, he finally packed it in. He shoved his materials into his messenger bag, locked up the office and signed out of the lab.

Outside, the weather had turned to crap. The sky couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to spit out ice or rain or snow. It wasn’t dark yet, but it might as well have been with the solid sky and miserable visibility.

He flipped up his collar and bent his head against the driving cold as he ran across the lot to his truck. He saw at least a half dozen other people doing the same thing and hoped they didn’t have far to drive.

He cranked the engine and mentally blessed his uncle Matt, whose attention to everything on the Double-C—equipment, vehicles, stock—was as reliable as always. The cold engine started without a hitch. He let it run for several minutes until the heater kicked in. By the time it did, he was shivering from the cold.

“Couldn’t wait until I go back to Boston to throw down the weather, I guess,” he said to the universe at large and finally put the truck in gear. He didn’t even realize he was heading toward the triplex until he turned the corner of Tabby’s street, and he cursed his distraction. He noticed her gunboat of a car wasn’t parked in the driveway when he used it to turn around and reverse course.

His tires slid as he turned the corner again, and he swore once more. Getting out to the Double-C in this frozen soup wasn’t going to be a picnic. Trying at this point wasn’t particularly anything he wanted to do, either.

Waiting out the storm somewhere was an option. Except the weather report said they were in for hours of it. Sleeping in his own bed at the triplex was out, but some of his cousins had places in town. The entire family was pissed with him, but not everyone would turn him out in a storm like this.

And if they did, he’d rent a bloody room at the Cozy Motel if he had to.

There were only a few other cars on Main Street as he stopped in front of Ruby’s and pulled out his cell phone. He wasn’t surprised that the service was out. The lights were still on in the diner, though. Leaving his truck running so he wouldn’t lose the heat, he darted across the sidewalk to pull on the glass door. It was locked, and he banged his hand on it hard enough to raise the attention of Bubba back in the kitchen.

Only it wasn’t Bubba who appeared and quickly crossed the diner to let him in. It was that one waitress whose name he kept forgetting. “Hey,” he greeted, glancing at her name tag. “Paulette. Just need to use the phone.” He started toward the counter and the kitchen door. “Weather’s getting really bad. Do you have far to go to get home?”

“No.” She shook her head, following on his heels. “I’m just over by the community church. Uh—”

He pushed through the swinging door and came to a dead stop at the sight of Tabby, stuck half inside the oven. “Have you decided to play Gretel now?”

She jerked her head out so fast she banged it on the edge of the oven. She rubbed her head, giving him a foul look, and closed the door. “I think it’ll be okay for tomorrow, Paulette. But someone needs to tell the
owners
of this place that they should start planning on purchasing a new oven.”

Paulette’s worried gaze bounced from Tabby’s face to Justin’s and back again. “Um, I—”

“Paulette, you should go.” He gave her a second look. “You do have a vehicle, don’t you?”

The waitress nodded frantically. Eagerness oozed from her pores as she opened one of the lockers and pulled out a coat and scarf. She hadn’t finished winding the scarf around her neck before she said a quick “G’bye” and left out the rear door.

The sound of the metal door slamming shut seemed to spur Tabby into action. She headed for the lockers, too, reaching into one that was already open. “I only came to get my personal belongings.” She pulled out a pair of shoes and dropped them in a half-filled box sitting on the floor. A thick book and a hairbrush followed, then a ratty-looking sweater that she bunched up and shoved on top.

“You don’t want to quit.”

She kicked the locker door closed and picked up the box, only to set it on the stainless steel rolling table where she made her cinnamon rolls. “Au contraire.” She brushed past him through the swinging door and checked the front lock while she doused the lights. Then she hit the power switch on the enormous coffee brewer and nudged on the cash register drawer to be sure it was latched.

She didn’t look at him as she came back through the door he was holding for her. “I’ve decided to open a restaurant of my own.” She sent him an insincere smile as she reached for the coat tossed over a box of paper goods.

He grunted impatiently. “You don’t need to do that. Ruby’s is—”

“Yours.” She shoved her arms into the sleeves and flipped her hair out of the collar. It was back to normal again, full and wavy. And he knew it would feel silky and vibrant between his fingers.

“Maybe I’ll even poach Bubba from you,” she went on. “My rolls and his barbecue? We just might be able to put Ruby’s out of business. Not that you’d mind. You never cared all that much about the place to begin with. Had bigger, better things in mind with the fancy degrees and the—”

“Shut up.”

She gave him a dark look. “Don’t like hearing the truth anymore?” She tsked. “You were a better man when you were ten than you are now.”

“The truth?” He advanced on her. “The truth is I’ve got a job where I feel like the only people I’m helping are shareholders. Which means everything I’ve done for the past ten years has been a freaking waste of time.”

Her expression didn’t soften. “If you don’t like what you’re doing, then change it! I didn’t even have to earn a doctorate to figure that one out, much less my plain-Jane online college degree. I knew being an artist wasn’t for me. But running this place was.”

He stopped short. “You finished your bachelor’s degree? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“A couple years ago. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“You’ve been working here full-time since you graduated from high school. Of course it’s a big deal. I know how much that mattered to you.”

“Yeah, well, we weren’t exactly sharing life news then.” She reached for the metal door but didn’t push it open. “How long have you been unhappy in your job?”

“A few years now. But like you said. We haven’t been big on the whole sharing thing for a while now.”

She rubbed her hand against the door latch. “Is it because of Gillian? Your job dissatisfaction, I mean.”

“No. That, at least, is one thing I am certain about. Gillian and the job. No matter what anyone thought, they never went hand in hand. Not to me.”

Tabby chewed her lip for a moment, then shook her head slightly. “I thought you came in to use the phone.”

“I did.”

“Well.” She gestured at the phone hanging on the wall. “Have at it. Door here will lock automatically after you leave.” She flipped up her hood and grabbed her box before pushing the door open. Sleet drove in around her.

“Tabby, wait.” He crossed the kitchen in long strides and grabbed her arm, pulling her back inside and dragging the door closed again. In just those few seconds, the floor inside the doorway had gotten covered with the icy stuff. “It’s not safe. Let that die down some first.”

She clearly wanted to argue. But she also knew he was right. “I don’t want to be here with you.”

He swallowed that blow. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She exhaled and pushed off her hood. Set down the box and pulled off her coat again.

Then she crossed the kitchen, giving him a wide berth, and turned on Bubba’s radio. The music stuttered with static, and she twisted the dial a few times until it cleared. Without saying a word, she went through the swinging door. “You’re gonna have a dead battery in that truck before long,” she called back to him. “Headlights are still on.”

He exhaled. He’d left the truck running. But it couldn’t run forever. And if it stalled, she was right. He strode through the dim diner, unlocked the front door again and went outside. It only took a few seconds to shut off the engine and lights and return to the diner, but he still felt soaked.

She silently handed him a dry towel and then went to sit on one of the counter stools, dropping her head on her folded arms.

“You didn’t use this thing to wipe the floors or toilets, did you?” As an attempt to lighten the situation, it fell pretty flat.

“Have no idea,” she said, her voice muffled. “I don’t work here anymore.”

He ran the towel over his head, then went into the bathroom and held his hands under warm water until they didn’t feel like frozen chunks.

Then he looked at himself in the ancient mirror over the plain white sink.

“Fix it,” he muttered.

He dried his hands and left the bathroom. He pulled off the wet leather coat that wasn’t giving him much warmth, anyway, and hung it on the coat tree by the door to dry. He checked the thermostat to make sure the heat was still running.

She hadn’t moved but was still sitting there, hunched over the counter, her head on her arms, dark hair spreading over her slender shoulders.

“You were right,” he said.

Chapter Fourteen

T
abby wished she could block out the sound of Justin’s voice. She wished she hadn’t stopped at the diner to pick up Hannah’s gift. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have gotten hung up balancing the till for Paulette and then fiddling with the finicky oven. She would have been long gone before Justin came in.

Of course, she might have stupidly forged on to Braden with her prove-she-was-fine Christmas tree quest and gotten stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the storm, too.

She exhaled and straightened. “Right about what?”

“Sex should mean more than that.”

She froze. Inside, though, her nerves began lashing around as violently as the sleet pounding against the windows.

“It just never did. Before.”

She stared blindly at the stacks of white china on the shelves opposite her.

“Not with Gillian,” he said. “Not with anyone. Even Collette, I guess, if I go back that far. It just...never did. Until you.”

She clenched her teeth, feeling something hollow out inside her chest.

“You were a virgin.”

She closed her eyes.

“That first time.”

“It doesn’t matter what I was four years ago. I said I... I forgave you.” She surreptitiously swiped her cheek and cleared her throat. “And I didn’t think you even noticed that.”

“I noticed. I thought talking about it would’ve just made it worse.”

She swallowed a choked laugh that held no amusement. “That logic still applies.”

“I don’t know why her name came out. I knew exactly who I was with. I wasn’t thinking about anyone but you. I couldn’t think about anyone but you. The way you felt. The way you tasted—”

“Justin, please. I can’t do this.”

“Why?”

Her throat felt like a vise. “Because it hurts too much,” she whispered.

She heard his footsteps as he moved closer. “Why does it hurt?”

She shook her head without answering.

He stepped closer again. She couldn’t see him. Didn’t want to turn around and see him.

But her storming nerves imagined him standing only inches away.

“I know why I hurt.” His already deep voice dropped a few more notches. “Do you want to know? Do you care? Erik—” He let out an impatient sound. “He says the words matter. God knows I’ve always gone out of my way to justify how different I am from him, but he’s got the life he wants and I—”

She clenched the edge of the counter and pushed the revolving stool around.

He wasn’t standing inches behind her.

He was still halfway across the room. But even in the dwindling, storm-drenched light from outside the windows, she could see the tight set of his face.

“And I don’t,” he finished.

“You don’t have to justify the person you are. You’re the only one who’s ever believed that. Do you have any idea at all how
proud
they are of you?” She gestured toward the windows. “That whole town out there is proud of you.” Tears clogged her nose. Choked her voice. “You’re our...our very...own genius.”

“If I was a genius, why did I take Collette to our high school prom?” He closed the distance between them and slid his hands around her face, making her look up at him, even though she tried to avoid it. “Why didn’t I take
you
? Then it would have been you and me on a blanket spread out by the swimming hole making love under the stars, and it
would
have meant something.” He brushed his thumbs over her wet cheeks. “It would have meant a hell of a lot of something.”

“Justin—”

“I have loved you for more years than I can remember,” he said gruffly. “And I’ve been
in
love with you for most of them.”

She caught her lip in her teeth to keep in the sob. She shook her head. “No.”

“Yes.” He brushed his mouth over hers.

She trembled. Even though she was determined not to give in, her arms went around his neck. Her fingers slid through his thick, damp hair. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like having sex with Collette after prom. You crowed about it to Caleb for days.”

“That’s what high school guys do.” He pulled her off the stool and up against him. “And high school was a long time ago.” He closed his mouth over hers again. “Kiss me back, Tabitha.”

She shuddered.

And kissed him back.

His hands tightened on the small of her back, dragging her even closer, and she drew away, hauling in a desperate breath. “Justin, we can’t just—”

He lifted her right off her feet and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen, where he set her down again. “No windows here.”

Before she could protest—as if she had even a whispering thought of protest—he whipped her flannel shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor. “Someone could come in.”

“Ruby’s closes at two.” He pushed aside her thin bra strap and kissed her bare shoulder. “It’s well past that. And even if it weren’t—” he slid her hair away and kissed the side of her neck, then her earlobe “—just listen,” he whispered.

Shivers danced down her spine. The furnace was still running, but the air in the kitchen would have been cool if not for the heat of him against her. “Listen to what?” The sound of her heartbeat thudding in her head? The sound of his breath against her ear?

“The storm. Nobody is out in that.”

She closed her eyes and pulled his mouth back to hers while blindly feeling down his chest for buttons to liberate. The only storm she knew was the one collecting inside her.

Justin seemed to know it, too. His kiss deepened, and his arms hardened around her for a moment before he pulled back long enough to yank off his shirt and spread it over the stainless steel rolling table. Then he was lifting her again until she was sitting on it. Bubba’s radio was spewing soft static instead of music, and rain was driving against the roof.

Justin’s hand slid under her thigh, running slowly down the back of her calf as he straightened her leg and finally reached her cowboy boot, tugging it off. After removing the other one, too, he pulled her gently off the table and unfastened her jeans. Peeled them away.

Then he hauled in a deep breath that roused her out of her seduced stupor.

She ran her hands over his bare, sinewy shoulders. Trailed them over the swirl of dark hair covering his hard chest, following downward as it narrowed to a fine line, beyond the round divot that was his navel, and disappeared beneath his jeans.

As many nights as she’d spent tormented by fantasies of this very thing, her fingers shook as she fumbled with his belt. His fly.

And he just smiled faintly and brushed her hands away, finishing the job himself while he settled his lips on hers again. So slowly and sweetly that she would have fallen in love with him right then and there if she hadn’t already done so half a lifetime ago. And when the rest of his clothes had gone the way of hers, he set her on the table once more and pulled her thighs around his. “Tell me, Tabby,” he murmured, pressing against her, so close but not close enough. “Tell me the words.”

Even though Tabby knew it wouldn’t last—it couldn’t possibly last when Justin had always been meant for so much more than her and the small-town life that she loved—she twined her legs around him and arched, taking him in with a gasp. “I love you, Justin. I love you, I love—” His mouth swallowed the rest.

And neither one of them said any more.

There was just the hum of static. The beat of rain.

And their bodies moving in perfection.

* * *

When they finally left the diner the next morning, they emerged into a frozen world. Ice dripped from the tree branches and the picnic table behind the diner. It had collected on the doors of her car and his truck so thickly that they couldn’t get either one open.

She put up a sign that Ruby’s was closed because of the weather and they walked back to the triplex, she bundled in her hooded coat and Justin in a sweatshirt of Bubba’s they’d purloined from his locker layered underneath the leather jacket. It wasn’t perfect, but for the three blocks, it was enough to keep both of them from frostbite.

When they got inside, she immediately went to the fireplace and set a match to the wood already there while Justin turned up the furnace and started the shower. She watched until she was sure the small flame was going to take and then pulled off her boots and went down the hall to the bathroom. The sight of steam beginning to curl around the shower curtain was welcome.

The sight of Justin without a stitch on was a revelation. The man was so physically beautiful it seemed a shock each time she witnessed it.

“Guess I don’t have to worry about hot water,” she said faintly.

“Nope.” He tugged her close and started pulling at her clothes. “Get nekkid.”

She laughed softly. “Nekkid?”

His violet eyes were wicked. “It’s more fun than naked.” He kissed her nose and lightly slapped her butt, then stepped into the shower. “Oh, yeah.”

She pressed her hand to her chest and felt her uneven heartbeat.
Oh, yeah.

Then she blew out a breath and quickly finished shedding her clothes. “You never called the Double-C last night.”

“They’ll have figured out I was at the diner. Truck’s still parked in plain sight right in front of it. Sheriff’s department had cruisers out. Word will have gotten back.”

“I hope Beastie’s okay.”

He laughed. “That dog is getting better treatment than I am.” He snaked an arm out from the shower curtain and yanked her under the water with him.

She laughed, too, then sputtered when she got a mouthful of hot water. “I still have on my socks!”

“Makes you all the more nekkid,” he assured her and pulled her close.

Later, when the water was running cold and the bathroom floor was drenched from the splashing, she had to admit it.

Nekkid was more fun than naked.

* * *

The sun came out of the clouds that afternoon and the frozen world turned into a constantly dripping one.

Justin called the Double-C to let them know he was back at the triplex. His grandmother wryly told him that she already knew. Mrs. Wachowski had said as much to the church deacon who’d called to check in on her after the storm, and the deacon had passed it on to her daughter who housecleaned a few times a month for Hope Clay.

“And so on and so forth,” Justin said after he hung up. “Life in Weaver, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing.”

Tabby chewed the inside of her cheek and finished adding the dishes from their lunch to the dishwasher. “I suppose we should go back to the diner. See if the vehicles have thawed out, too.”

He nodded and prowled to the front window, looking out. “At the very least I need to get my research stuff.”

“For the paper you’re writing.” She looked away from the long line of his back, sharply outlined by the white shirt he’d been wearing since the afternoon before. “Are you close to being finished?”

His snort said it all.

She slowly shut the dishwasher door and dried her hands on a towel. “Did you decide the data was accurate at least?”

“It’s accurate.” He turned away from the window. “I think Mrs. Wachowski and Mr. Rowe are getting busy.”

She blinked. “I...what? He’s fifteen years younger than her!”

“Yeah, well.” His lips tilted in a smile. “The heart wants what it wants and all that.”

How well she knew it.

“You’re imagining things.”

“He just left her place wearing a pink flannel robe over his boxers.”

She clapped her hand over her eyes as if she could rid the image from her mind. “Oh, good grief. Don’t tell me that.”

Justin chuckled as he went down the hall. She thought he was going into her bedroom, but when she followed, she found him in her studio, looking through the paintings that she hadn’t yet decided were good enough to give to Bolieux.

“You sent off that blizzardy-looking one, didn’t you.”

“Yes.”

“I liked it.”

“So did I. I think it was one of my better efforts.” She didn’t want to think about the painting or the sentiment that had inspired it. But she did know she was going to do everything she could to get it back. “I’ll grab my coat and we can head out. If you’re ready.”

He straightened. “I am.”

Less than a half hour later, they were back at the diner. It was as quiet as it had been when they left it.

“I think I’m going to stay,” she said after Justin had successfully gotten into his truck and pulled out his bulging bag. “If I know you, you’ll be working on that stuff the rest of the day, anyway. I might as well be useful here. Get a jump on things for tomorrow.”

“Unquitting?”

She pressed her teeth together in a crooked smile. Apparently, she could no more stick to her resolution about Ruby’s than get over Justin. “So it would seem.”

“Good.” He kissed her thoroughly, then hitched the bag over his shoulder. “I’ll walk over to the hospital,” he told her. “Easier than driving on ice. Call me when you’re finished.”

She nodded and watched until he disappeared around the corner. Then she sighed a little and went back inside the diner. No matter what had occurred between her and Justin over the past twenty-four hours, they were still the same people they’d always been.

She turned on Bubba’s radio, found a station playing Christmas music without too much static and pulled on an apron.

She was crazy in love with a man who would probably never stay. Which meant there was only one thing to do.

Start another batch of dough. Same as she’d done day in and day out for years.

* * *

The lull lasted five days.

Five perfect days of Justin working at the hospital lab, and filling her nights with passion and laughter, and more than a few arguments when it came to the television remote control and whose turn it was to take Beastie out to do her business.

Five perfect days that came to a screeching halt the day before Christmas when Tabby got home from a quick run to Classic Charms only to find a painfully familiar blonde woman hanging around outside the triplex.

Even though the desire to keep driving was strong, Tabby pulled into the driveway and parked. She clipped Beastie’s leash on the puppy’s collar. “Come on, sweetie.” She slowly pushed open the car door and climbed out of the car.