Page 16 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

He cleared his throat. “I’ve got an appointment with this guy tomorrow.”

“You mean Thomas Greely?”

“Yeah, him. You know him?”

Had he been away so long? There weren’t many people she didn’t know in Miller Creek, and certainly the executor of Jason McCormick’s will wouldn’t be on that list. “Sure,” she said. “I know him.”

“Maybe you’d better come with me tomorrow so that we can work out this house stuff.”

“I’ll think about that,” Taylor said. “I didn’t really anticipate having to deal with all this tomorrow.” She didn’t actually have other plans — Saturday was a day off for her — but the prospect of spending the day looking at legal documents with Kane was a little overwhelming given everything that had happened between the two of them. She knew it would have to be done eventually, of course, but maybe there was some way to delay it for a while — at least until she could process the fact that he was back in town and decide how she felt about it, which was a question she didn’t have the answer to at the moment.

Kane nodded. “Is my room free?”

“I don’t know which room that is.”

“I guess I’ll go look.” Before she could say anything to dissuade him, he picked up his suitcase and headed down the hall.

Taylor looked at the yellow Labrador for a moment. Then she followed him.

She found him standing in the doorway of the bedroom she’d always used here — the room she now thought of as her own. “It looks like you took it,” he observed, noting her things strewn about the place.

Taylor forced herself to remember that she hadn’t done anything wrong. “This is my room, yeah,” she agreed. If it had once been his, it hadn’t belonged to him for a very long time, and she felt no compunction about claiming it as her own now.

It wasn’t the master bedroom, of course, but there had been no question of her moving into Jason’s room right after his death. She could imagine doing it in a few years, maybe, when the immediacy of that trauma had worn off, but it would have felt disrespectful to sleep in that bed right now.

A part of her wondered whether Kane would try to do that — and if he did, what she would say. She didn’t have any right to tell him that he couldn’t. This was his house as much as it was hers.

He regarded her for a moment. Maybe he was waiting to see if she would relinquish this bedroom to him. She had no intention of doing so.

Finally, he cracked. “All right,” he said. “I’ll stay in the guest bedroom tonight.”

Taylor didn’t love the idea of it — the two of them sharing the house when things between them were so tense — but what could she do? Even if she had a right to throw him out, which she didn’t, there was no chance he’d be able to make other arrangements at this point in the evening. There was only one hotel nearby, and they stopped taking reservations at five p.m.

So she nodded. “All right,” she agreed. “We’ll deal with the rest in the morning.”

She watched him walk down the hall to the guest room, the Labrador following behind him, and wondered what this would lead to. She had never anticipated that he would walk back into her life like this, and she honestly didn’t know whether she was glad to see him again or not.

CHAPTER 9

KANE

Iwas a real jerk tonight, Kane thought as he opened the door to the guest bedroom.

Of course, he had some excuse for his behavior. He knew that. He was grieving the death of his father, and that was a complicated thing, given the state of their relationship. And then there was the fact that he certainly had not expected to cross paths with a face from his past when he had arrived at home. He’d known there would be unpleasant interactions upon coming back to Miller Creek, but part of the appeal of staying at his father’s place had been the hope that he wouldn’t have to see too many people he knew from his old life. He’d hoped to get in and out of Miller Creek with only a handful of people realizing he had come back at all.

He still hoped for that. But now he realized that it was going to be more complicated. Having Taylor realize he was here was as intense as having ten other people know, because she was…

Well, what was she? Not the reason he had left. She was right, he couldn’t put that on her. But his last conversation with her had certainly taken away his hope that he could find a better life here if he stayed.

Still, that didn’t mean he had needed to be a jerk to her.

He sat down on the bed, exhausted, wishing he could go to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t settle. Thoughts of Taylor turned over and over. It wasn’t right to say she’d gotten hot — she had always been pretty, and he remembered admiring her in their teen years. But it was different seeing her as a woman. There was a sensuality to her that just hadn’t been present when they had been younger. She had been a girl then, and now she was a woman.

That was the thought that refused to leave Kane’s head as he drifted off to sleep — not consternation with the fact that she was in his house, not frustration about the fact that he would have to figure out a way to split ownership of the place with her, but this fresh attraction to her that he had never felt before. It was enough to make him wish that the two of them were meeting — or re-meeting — under different circumstances, because as things stood, he didn’t think he would ever feel right about making a move on her.

Especially not after the way he had acted when he had found her here. He would deserve it if she never wanted to speak to him again after that, he thought.

Kane lingered in his bedroom the next morning, glad that he’d left loose his meeting time with Thomas Greely. He didn’t want to cross paths with Taylor if he could avoid it. When they saw each other again, things were going to be awkward — particularly after the way he had behaved yesterday. He wasn’t sure yet how he was going to handle that.

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