Wild in the Moment (11 page)

“You are wild, babe.”

She closed her eyes, all too aware that she'd completely changed from the woman she once was. The woman she'd once wanted to be. And she still had to finish the story for Teague. “Jean-Luc was honestly a creative man, a talented artist who deserved all the glory he got. But he needs a harem to take care of him. At least three maids, then someone to work and actually bring in food and rent. And then a bodyguard to keep all comers away who'll ask him for money—because for damn sure he'll give it away.”

“Sounds like hell to live with.”

She whispered, “He was.” And suddenly she found it was easy to get out of bed. She wanted her clothes on. Wanted that reality she'd wanted to disappear minutes before. Didn't want to look at Teague anymore at all if she could help it. At least until she had a better handle on control. For some stupid reason, she felt like crying.

“You stayed for so long because you loved him?”

She wasn't a Vermonter for nothing. Her voice was as brisk as a sturdy wind. “Nope. I was wildly in love with him in the beginning, no question about that. But I think love started dying the first day I woke up hungry. I mean, seriously hungry. The thing was, we moved around so much that I couldn't work—day-by-day jobs, sure, but nothing that could have given us some financial stability. We were all over the place. Living with
friends one day, renting a cottage or a villa the next—wherever the spirit of painting took him. So…”

“So?” he prodded her when she didn't immediately finish her thought.

In the dark, though, it was hard to find every sock and button…and somehow she didn't want to turn around until she was fully dressed. “So…he gave me the yellow diamond one day—and we had to pawn it the next. That was the turning point for me. I didn't give a hoot about the stone. It was just that I finally realized he wasn't being impulsive and absentminded and a devil-may-care artist. He
knew
we couldn't afford his grandiose gestures. He
knew
they were going to turn off the electricity. He just thought he could snow me, like he'd snowed me all the other times. He thought I'd be swayed into staying by the romance of the extravagant present. He loved me the same way. Hugely one day—and pawning me off the next.”

Teague still hadn't moved from the bed. “Yet you stayed with him for a long time.”

“Yeah. Out of idiotic misplaced pride.” She lifted her hands in one of the Gallic gestures she'd picked up in that ghastly marriage. “I was just so ashamed to tell anyone. My family thought I had this jet-setting fabulous life. My sisters thought of me as a role model, the one they could always turn to for advice, to take charge. They were proud of me, for living my life my own way, for making it unconventionally. I knew famous people. I dressed in designer duds. I was traveling, seeing the world. Teague?”

“What?”

“I stole a loaf of bread one day.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I was hungry. But I wasn't that hun
gry. And I can still remember thinking, how ashamed my mom and dad would have been if they'd known.”

“Well, hell. Let's get a rope and hang you right now.” For a man who'd been so somnolently still, he suddenly bounded out of bed in one swift move and crossed the room stark naked. Suddenly he was an inch from her, his knuckles lifting her chin. Before she could breathe, his mouth came down on hers, soft, warm, firm. “I think you can probably let that guilt go,” he murmured.

“You're making light of it. And maybe it was just a loaf of bread. But I wasn't raised to take anything from anyone. I still don't understand what made me do it.”

“You think you might have felt just a little bit desperate at how you were living? Not knowing where the next dime—or franc—was coming from? That sometimes scared people do scared things?”

“That's not an excuse.” But she searched his eyes in the dark room, still felt the warmth of his kiss, of his body, of all they'd shared naked moments before. “I don't know why I'm telling you all this.” He didn't answer, just stood there, his finger idly tracing her jawline. “I think I'm just trying to explain…why I kept it all from my family. From the people who knew me growing up.”

“You wanted them to think you lived a romantic, exciting life.”

“It sounds pretty shallow when you put it that way. I just mean…I hate coming home with my tail between my legs. I hate people thinking I'm a failure. Thinking that I was always a wild, irresponsible screw-up and the life I got was payback.”

He stood at the front window long after she'd left—taking his sacred Golf GTi—and he heard her moving
to third gear before she'd reached the end of the road and the first stop sign.

His head was buzzing. He'd never dreamed, from the image she put on, that her ex had been such a selfish self-centered bastard. It changed things.

All this time he'd believed her about not wanting to stay in White Hills. Now he wasn't so sure. She had plenty of pluck. She'd coped with a blizzard, coped broke, coped with a selfish liability like Jean-Luc for years. When it came down to it, she seemed to be inspired by adversity, not afraid of it. She'd pushed up her sleeves and become a cook. Made that horrible attic room into something artistic and personal and fun.

He got it. That she wanted people to think she wasn't practical and responsible. She wanted people to think she was exotic and fun and romantic and wild. He didn't understand it, but he did understand that the key to Daisy was her pride.

She said she was proud, but as far as Teague could tell, it was her pride that had taken a battering over the last years. In her own way, on her own terms, she needed to feel that fierce sense of pride again. Not fake pride. Not lying-to-everyone pride. But the kind of pride that made her feel good about herself inside.

She wanted to feel wild. She didn't want to be ordinary. The more Teague repeated those concepts in his mind, the more a plan slowly started brewing. Possibly a goofy plan—but then any plan was better than desperation. Teague understood that Daisy intended to be gone as fast as she saved a down payment on a car and enough savings to take off. And that meant, if he had any way to influence her feelings, he had to move damn fast.

Because he was afraid he'd fallen. Hard and fast. He
already knew the odds were against both of them—but a man didn't feel this power of love very often, if ever, in a lifetime. He wasn't throwing away a treasure if there was any chance he could woo Daisy into seeing herself as unique and wonderful and loving as he saw her.

D
aisy had never spent much time thinking about Valentine's Day, yet for the last week, she couldn't get it off her mind. She wanted to give Teague a present. She didn't have much money, but the present she wanted to give him wasn't an issue of cost. She just had to prowl the market for exactly the right item, and Valentine's Day was coming up in another week so it would give her an excuse to give it to him.

This morning she was standing in the café kitchen with a hot mug of coffee in one hand and a wooden spoon in another, when panic hit.

It was so natural, thinking of Teague as her lover. Thinking of giving her lover a gift. Thinking of the kind of gift that really, really mattered to him—even if he didn't know it yet.

The feeling of panic lunged at her like a surprise nightmare. Holy cow. When had it happened? How
could she have done such a damn fool thing as fall completely in love with him?

The oven buzzed, forcing her attention back to practical priorities. It was still ink-black outside, sleet coming down on a day doomed to be gray, as she swiftly took a cake from the oven and then hustled to the counter, where she was tossing together a blend of dried lavender buds, orange zest, and some beautiful baby white onions. Because she was working this afternoon with Teague, she'd come in the café before dawn, hoping to get a bunch of cooking and baking done.

She spun around and reached in the refrigerator for a weighty package of ground round, when her mind did it to her again. Whispered that
love
word.

Her heart started mainlining more panic. Okay, okay. Making love with Teague had been stupendous. More than stupendous. Maybe she found it crazily easy to be honest with him, to share things with him she told no one else. Maybe she loved working with him, pushing him, being with him.

But that was no excuse for starting to believe they could have a future. She knew better. He was as happy in White Hills as a cat in sunlight, when she couldn't possibly stay here. Yet now she realized how long this ghastly problem had been going on. Every time she thought of him, she'd been doing goofy things. Singing out loud. Walking with a little rock and roll in her hips. Thinking of jokes to tell him. Thinking of giving him something important. Laughing for any excuse. Finding something gorgeous in a gray February day that no one could love.

She
had
to get a grip.

“Oh, God. What are you making
now?
” Harry always showed up at the café before sunrise, made coffee
and then promptly disappeared into a booth with his paper—but he usually paid no attention to anything she was doing.

She grinned at his suspicious expression. “I'm making
bitoque
with the ground round,
cher.
I told you. I just put a couple new things on the lunch menu. I promise they'll fly.”

“I know everybody loves the pastries. But nobody around here wants fancy food.”

“Now, Harry, how many people showed up here for lunch yesterday?” She didn't waste time waiting for him to answer. “Jason thought it was a great idea.”

“He said so?” Harry asked, obviously taking his brother's okay as reassurance.

“He sure did.” Actually, Jason had just said, “Whatever.” Neither of them had ever varied the lunch menu from brats in a decade, but then, Jason wasn't the most inventive short-order cook on the planet. “I'll tell you a secret, Harry.
Bitoque
is just hamburger, French style. Same old hamburger. Just with a little bit of sour cream, a little bit of consommé, a little bit of secrets. Just enough to make it special.”

“All right, but then what's this other thing?” Harry pushed in his stomach so he could find the space to ease in next to her, still looking suspicious.

“Just chicken.”

“That isn't
just
chicken. Chicken is a coupla legs, a coupla breasts, then throw it on the grill.”

“Jason
is
going to throw this on the grill. It's just going to chill until lunch in this little marinade. Everyone will love it, I promise. Try not to worry.” She pulled out two long sheets of plastic wrap to seal the bowls, then impatiently motioned her boss aside so she could put them in the fridge. When she stood back up,
he was standing in the narrow opening with that gruff, exasperated look that had everyone else fooled.

“I am worried. About you. You're young. You're beautiful. You're dressed—” he motioned to her Versace silk blouse and navy slacks “—like a million dollars. Yet you're cooking in my café. I don't get what's going on here.”

“But I told you what's going on, Harry. I've been cooking for you because I love to. It's always been a hobby, and I haven't had a chance to do it in years, and what fun would it be to cook for myself?”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard all your malarkey.” A phone rang from the back office. Harry cocked his head toward the sound. “Go. I know it's for you.”

The chance of the call being for her was one in a zillion, but Daisy swiftly wiped the flour off her hands with a linen towel and hustled. It's not that Teague had never called her here, but he generally used her cell phone. Harry just liked her to answer the phone because she played bodyguard for his unwanted calls—particularly from his ex-wife.

The closest phone was in his office—which hadn't seen a dust rag or vacuum in this century, possibly longer. She grabbed the receiver and started to say Marble Bridge Café, but her sister never waited to hear her voice.

“Oh, Daisy. It's me. I was going to wait to call you until a reasonable hour, but I couldn't sleep anyway and I had to tell you. I had an ultrasound. It's a girl.”

“Oh, baby.” She'd talked to her mom and Camille over the past couple weeks, but she'd only been able to catch Violet when both of them were on the run. Just hearing her sister's voice brought a smile. Clamping the receiver to her ear, she wandered back to the kitchen.
She couldn't cook one-handed, but there were always dishes to rinse, bowls to put away. “I'm so thrilled for you. Are you still feeling good?”

“Better than good. I'm fat as a slug, but I don't care. I'm just so
happy.
It's scary.”

“Don't be scared. You deserve happiness.” She could hear Violet sniffing, and though it was crazy, she almost started sniffing herself. Margaux and Violet were the emotional ones in the family. She'd taken after Dad, could hide her feelings like a pro, but damn. For years Violet had believed she was infertile. She and Cameron talked about the coming baby as if it were a priceless treasure—which, of course, it was. “You're taking good care of yourself?”

“Hey, this is me. You know I eat right. How's the cooking going?”

“Fabulous. I'm having a ball. I've been using your lavender right and left. Made every recipe Mom ever taught us. Hey, you, we have to schedule a baby shower—”

“Oh, yeah, I'm all about it. But not quite yet. And in the meantime…” Violet cleared her throat. “Now Daisy—”

“Uh-oh. Nothing good ever follows ‘now, Daisy.'”

“I'm just saying. I haven't always been rolling in it, but I am now. I know, I know, you told everyone you got out of the divorce okay, but just in case you need some help, just say. Mom and Dad will never know. No one will ever know, I promise—”

“I don't need a thing, sweetie. But you're a love to ask. What's the baby's name going to be?”

“Well, Cameron and I are still fighting about that. Because we three girls got stuck with Camille, Violet and Daisy, you'd better believe there isn't a chance I'm
naming this kid after a flower. But Cam, he's got his heart set—he thinks—on Rose. In the meantime, hey, any men on the horizon?”

Daisy's heart instantly leaped to Teague, and in a millisecond flat, her pulse wanted to sing arias. She dropped a dish towel. Then her favorite wooden spoon. “I'd have to be nuts to get involved with anyone until my life's more settled, don't you think?”

“Well, yeah. But I hate to think of you alone.”

“I'm not afraid to be alone.” At least that was the whole truth. “You can be lonelier with the wrong person than being by yourself.”

“You've sure got that right. Been there, done that, didn't like it.”

“What I've been doing…” In the process of fumbling with the phone, she somehow knocked the napkin holder on the floor. “Is writing up a résumé. Getting going with my life. Figuring out something serious to do for a career.”

“That sounds good. So what kind of job are you thinking about?”

Daisy knelt down to pick up the scattered bunch of napkins. The truth was, she hadn't thought about sending out résumés, hadn't made any moves to leave White Hills. She hadn't made a single plan since making love with Teague—except for stockpiling every dime she could. Now, though, her throat felt as thick as pea soup, not because she was telling her sister lies, but because they shouldn't have been lies.

“I've been happy to be home for a while,” she admitted to Violet. “To be honest, I kind of felt crushed when I got here. It's been good, being back in White Hills, getting back on my feet, but in the long run…you know how restless I am. I was thinking about a job in
the travel industry. Cruise director, something like that. Maybe I could be a courier for a jeweler. Or work in insurance in the estates area. There has to be something that a woman who's been spoiled rotten is uniquely qualified to do.”

Her sister laughed.

When Daisy hung up the phone, she found Harry still sitting in his favorite booth—on the same page of the newspaper he'd been before. He shook it, though, as if turning to the next page. “Sheesh,” he muttered with a short glance at her, “whoever you were talking to, don't talk to them again.”

“Why?”

“Because you look like you lost your best friend.”

“No, no. In fact, the call was from my sister. Nothing but great news. She's expecting a baby—” Daisy motioned to the newspaper. “When you're done with that, would you mind saving me the classified section?”

“You don't have enough work between me and these projects you're doing with Larson?”

“I'm not looking for jobs, Harry! I just want the lost and found section.”

“What'd you lose?”

Her entire mind, she thought darkly. By one o'clock, though, as she drove Teague's car to his current work site—a den he was paneling in tongue-and-groove redwood for some absentee owners—she'd pepped up.

She found exactly the present she wanted for Teague in the newspaper—although she wouldn't have the chance to see it in person for several days yet. Finding that, though, knowing how badly she wanted to give him this particular gift, forced her to soul search her feelings about Teague.

She was afraid of loving him. She was afraid to trust
her own judgment. And she had reasons for those fears, considering her past history with falling for men who inspired her hormones but never had a chance of working out.

She was mighty afraid a relationship couldn't work out with Teague, either. With reason. But as she found the address and pulled his sacred Golf into the driveway, Daisy told herself that she was armed with several fresh coats of caution. She'd been honest with herself this time. And more than that, so much more than that, Teague was different from any man she'd ever known. This feeling of love was too new, too different, too wonderful to run away from it. She couldn't give it up. She just couldn't. Surely it had a chance to work out if she were just more careful. More smart. More certain that she wasn't repeating past mistakes.

Buoyed with resolve, she hiked up the snowy walk and rapped on the door. There was no decorating to do on this job. Teague just said he'd pay her for helping him finish the wood, because together they could get it done in half the time, and his work schedule was jammed.

Almost before she'd finished knocking on the door, she turned the knob and yelled out an exuberant “Yoo-hoo!” Teague bounded from a far room to greet her.

That fast, she forgot all her nettling fears. Forgot about being cautious. Forgot all the hard-won lessons she'd learned from picking men who weren't for her.

His grin was more infectious than chicken pox. He galloped down the hall and pounced, taking a kiss as if she were breakfast and he'd been starving for weeks. Then lifted his head and grinned again at her dizzy-eyed response. “Where have you
been?
” he demanded.

“It's ten to one. Didn't you tell me to come at one?”

“Well, yeah. But I've been waiting for you since yesterday.” Another kiss, as he stripped off her coat and hat and started pulling her toward the den.

He let her up for air halfway down the hall, only to roll his eyes at her attire. “The slacks, the silky blouse—you call those varnishing clothes?”

“I know they'll get ruined. But they're old. They're what I've got.”

“Nah. We'll fix you up better than that.”

His theory of fixing her up was to strip her down to the buff, make love with her on the pale-pink carpet of the stranger's hall, and then loan her his shirt to work in. An hour later, give or take, she had a chamois cloth in her hand.

“You need another rag?” he asked her.

“You! Don't come near me! If I need another rag, I'll get it.”

“Hey.”

“Don't you hey me,
cher.
Every time you come near me, we get diverted for another long while. At this rate, we'll be done with this by February l0 of 2020.”

“And this is a problem…how?” He managed to look bewildered at the question she raised, which obviously required her stalking over to his side of the room. She kissed him good. On the navel. The shoulder. Under the chin. And once, swiftly, below the waist.

Then scurried back to her side of the room. “I love making your eyes cross,” she mentioned.