“No.” God. Aubrey closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Cathy.”
“I was anorexic,” Cathy said again. “And no one noticed that I was starving myself. Except you.”
Aubrey opened her eyes and once again met Cathy’s.
“You got me to eat one of the cheeseburgers we made for cooking class—do you remember?” Cathy asked. “It was our midterm, and we were required to eat what we cooked. I tried to throw mine away, but you told on me and then I had to eat the burger in front of the whole class.”
Aubrey winced at the memory. “Yeah, I remember. I—”
“No, listen to me.” Cathy’s voice shook a little now. “I hadn’t eaten in a week, Aubrey. That burger was the best thing I’d ever tasted. It helped me to start eating again.”
Aubrey let out a breath. “I’m glad. So glad. But I shouldn’t have done any of that to you. Not that I’m trying to excuse myself, but I was trying to lose weight. I needed to fit into a stupid pageant gown for an upcoming beauty contest, and I couldn’t. I was starving myself, too, and so hungry and angry all the time—but I wasn’t anorexic. I was just a bitch.”
Cathy smiled. “Yeah. You were that.” She cocked her head and studied Aubrey’s reflection. “I was going to overcharge you for this scarf, you know. Because I’m a bitch, too.” She smiled. “But you know? We didn’t turn out so bad after all.”
Ben was leaning against his truck, sipping the coffee he’d purchased from the diner with one hand and beating Jack’s ass in Words with Friends with his other hand when Aubrey stepped off the pier and headed his way.
It’d only been about fifteen minutes, but she looked like she’d lost a little bit of the chip on her shoulder. He didn’t say a word as he opened the door for her.
“Pretty scarf,” he said, and watched her hand fly to the material now wrapped around her neck.
But she said nothing.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
More nothing.
“Do you have any gum?” he asked.
“Yes.” She opened her purse, and he reached in and smoothly grabbed her notebook.
“Hey,” she said.
He flipped it open. “We crossing anyone off yet?”
She snatched it back and hugged it to herself.
Reaching past her into the glove compartment, he pulled out a pen and handed it to her.
She glared at him for a beat and then snatched the pen. She opened her pad and very carefully crossed off number four.
Cathy.
He smiled at her. “Where to now?”
She reached for his coffee, but he got to it first, lifting it out of her reach. “You could do me next. Seeing as I’m sitting right here.”
“I could do you? You think I’m going to do you right here in your truck?”
He had to work hard to keep from laughing. “I meant the list. I’m on your list.”
“Oh.” She narrowed her gaze at him, her cheeks flushed. “I’ve told you, you’re not the Ben on my list.”
“Prove it,” he said.
“What?”
“If I’m not the Ben on your list, then who is?”
She just looked at him for a long moment. “You have a shovel?” she finally asked.
“In the back. Why?”
“Can you go back to the store?”
“Sure. On the drive there, you can tell me what your definition of ‘do me’ is.”
She blushed some more and ignored him. At the store, she was gone for less than five minutes, and then she climbed back into the truck a little breathlessly. “Head out on Route Ten,” she said.
“You should feel free to show me this bossy side of you in bed anytime.”
She sent him a baleful glance as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed to Route 10. The highway turned inland—not up into the mountains, but east, to the far end of the county. The houses out here were few and far between. There were a few ranches, but mostly these places were older and run-down.
“Turn right,” Aubrey said, looking down at her map app.
Ben followed her directions onto a dirt road, and then onto a dirty driveway. The mobile home there was a double-wide. Sitting on the porch was an old guy in a rocking chair.
Ben stopped the truck. “Is that…Mr. Wilford?”
“Ben Wilford,” Aubrey said smugly.
“The mean old science teacher?”
“He’s retired now, but yes. And mean is an understatement,” she muttered under her breath.
“This is the Ben on your list?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yes, Mr. Egomaniac, this is the Ben on my list. Stay here,” she said, and started to slide out of the truck.
He caught her arm. At the touch, she went still as if prodded with an electrical current.
He knew exactly, because he felt it as well. And it told him something, something he hadn’t been prepared for. They weren’t done with each other.
Not by a long shot.
This wasn’t good news. Neither was the fact that he was playing with her. He’d tricked her into needing a ride from him and he’d justified it because he wanted to know what she was up to.
But the joke was on him, because he realized the truth—he just wanted to be with her.
That wasn’t good news, either.
“What?” she asked.
More than a little unhappy with his epiphany, he shook his head. “Nothing.” And then he let go of her, gesturing for her to have at it. Whatever “it” was.
She slid out of the truck and headed to the back to pull out his shovel. Then, carrying the shovel, she walked up to the double-wide in her fancy dress and coat, as though she belonged there.
Mr. Wilford stood, eyes narrowed and nearly hidden behind his white, bushy brows. Ben rolled down his window, but he still couldn’t catch any words. He didn’t have any trouble at all catching Mr. Wilford’s bad attitude, though. Ben braced to get out of the truck, but the old man got up, limped to his front door, and vanished inside—but not before slamming the door, practically on Aubrey’s nose.
Damn it, that pissed Ben off. But Aubrey merely squared her shoulders and vanished around the back of the trailer.
Ben waited a minute and then followed. He couldn’t help it if he wanted to make sure she was okay. And that Mr. Wilford didn’t shoot her for trespassing. He risked Aubrey clobbering him over the head with the shovel for not staying in the truck, but he’d deal with that when he got closer. He wasn’t actually too worried, but he’d discovered something about his odd relationship with Aubrey. He preferred kissing her to arguing with her.
Not that he was exactly comfortable with that…
Chapter 14
Twenty-five minutes later, Aubrey slid back into Ben’s truck. The ground had been frozen and was almost impossible to break apart, forcing her to work her ass off. As a result, she was hot and sweaty, but she felt good about the morning’s progress. Very good. Lowering the truck’s sun visor, she studied her reflection in the small mirror there. Not too bad. She swiped at her slightly smudged mascara. Then she pulled out her notebook and, with great ceremony for the man seated next to her, she crossed off BEN. “There,” she said to Ben. “All taken care of.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Yep. Ben’s off my list.” It wasn’t the right Ben, of course. The right Ben was seated next to her, but he didn’t need to know that.
Nor did he need to know how much it was killing her, how she was sleeping less and less at night, worried about exactly that.
His being on her list.
Not to mention his reaction when he found out. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him, not yet. He’d walk away, and even knowing that’s what she deserved, she wasn’t ready for it.
“Well, if you’re righting your wrongs,” he said—clearly fishing but coming so uncomfortably close to the truth that she held her breath—“then don’t forget Kristan. Remember how mean you were to her in high school when she took your spot in the school play?”
Kristan wasn’t on Aubrey’s list. Nor would she be. “She tripped me at rehearsal, and I sprained my ankle so that I couldn’t dance the lead. If I were making a list of wrongs to right, which I’m not”—she paused when he snorted, and she sent him a glare—“then I should be on her list.” She swiped her sweaty brow and sat back, arms still trembling from exertion.
He started the truck and took them back to the highway. “You want to talk about it?” he asked casually.
No. She didn’t want to talk about last night and the best sex she’d ever had. She was afraid she’d beg for more. “Talk about…?”
He glanced at her. “You were out there digging for something—or attempting to, anyway, since the ground was pretty frozen.”
Damn it, he’d sneaked a peek. “A pumpkin patch,” she admitted. She leaned back and sighed. “And if you were spying on me, the least you could have done was come help.”
He gave her a slow, lazy grin that did things to her girl parts. Each and every one. And thanks to him, there were more of those parts than she’d remembered. “You looked like you were doing all right,” he said.
Trying to ignore her annoying reaction to him, which she was helpless to prevent, she sighed. “Gee, thanks.”
“So why were you digging Mr. Asshole a pumpkin patch in the off-season?”
She looked at him. “It’s the off-season?”
He grinned. “Little bit, Sunshine.”
Damn. She’d not even thought of that, and she hadn’t looked at the seed packet when she’d bought it earlier at the grocery store. “How about I answer a question, and then you answer a question?” she suggested.
“Fine,” he said. “You first. What the hell was that back there?”
She slid on her sunglasses. “Mr. Wilford gave me an F in eighth-grade science because he didn’t like me.”
“He didn’t like anyone.”
“But I’m the only one he failed. He said I was cheating when in fact I wasn’t.” She paused. “Okay, so I was cheating, but only to help Lance.”
“The kid with cystic fibrosis? The one who runs the ice cream joint on the pier in the summer?”
“Yeah. He’d been going through a rough patch and had missed a week of school. He couldn’t catch up, so I was feeding him the answers to the test. Mr. Wilford caught me.” She’d never forget how he’d stood over her, those bushy brows—which were black then—bunched together. And how he’d said so harshly, You’re a selfish girl, Aubrey Wellington. No one likes a selfish girl.
She’d heard No one likes you, and she’d reacted with predictable bad behavior. “Lance tried to tell Mr. Wilford the truth,” she said, “but he wouldn’t listen. He thought I was a bad seed, and his mind was made up. So he failed me.”
She’d then been disqualified from two beauty contests that her mom had already paid for and bought gowns for, and it’d been a huge drama in the house. “I tried to talk to him about it after school,” she said. “I found him in the school garden, working on his pumpkin patch with the garden club.” She blew out a breath and a low laugh. “I can still see him standing there among his prize pupils and his equally prized pumpkins, pointing a dirty, bony finger in my direction. He said”—she adopted a low baritone—“You, Aubrey Wellington, will never amount to anything.”
“He thought we were all miscreants,” Ben said quietly. “But he shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“Actually, in hindsight I probably deserved it,” she said. “I was a total shit. But there was something in his tone that got me. And then he just walked away, like I wasn’t worth his time.”
“He spoke like Darth Vader,” Ben said, “and walked like he had a stick up his ass.”
She laughed. “Yes,” she finally said. “But at the time I didn’t think about that. I was embarrassed and humiliated.” She paused and then admitted the rest. “I kicked one of his pumpkins and broke it loose from the stem. I didn’t find out until the next day that it’d been one of his award-winning pumpkins, the one he’d planned on taking to the annual pumpkin contest—which had a thousand-dollar prize.”
“Ouch,” Ben said.
Aubrey sighed. “He cried. Mr. Wilford cried.” She was still staring out the side window, so she was surprised when she felt his warm fingers close over hers.
“You were just a kid, Aubrey.”
“Yeah, but not really. And I cost the school garden club that grand. I’ve always felt so bad about that.”
“So you dug him a new pumpkin patch,” Ben said. “What’s your plan, to grow him another award-winning pumpkin?”
She bit her lower lip, and he laughed. “It is,” he said, and laughed again.
“Stop that.”
“It’s cute,” he said.
“Cute?” She almost choked on the word. No one had ever called her cute before, not ever. Her phone rang, and she pulled it out, frowning at the unknown number. “Hello?”
“Aubrey Wellington,” said Darth Vader’s voice. “What did you do to my backyard?”
“Mr. Wilford?” she asked, glancing over at Ben in shock.
“Well, how many other people’s yards did you decimate today?” he asked testily. “What the hell did you do?”
“I…dug you a pumpkin patch,” she said. “I planted pumpkin seeds.”