Page 14 of Hero for the Holidays

Like she was fifteen and about to see him, that giddy new love spreading through her, like the first bite of cotton candy. Sweet, fluffy and clinging to her tongue.

But it vanished.

Oh, how she knew that.

But her heart could still feel that same old joy, that same old anticipation. That same old need. It was like loving Landry King had worn grooves into it, so deep and so entrenched she’d have to cut her whole heart out to get rid of them.

And she wouldn’t do that. Not for him.

Because she still loved too many other things in her life. Because she still had so many things worth caring for, and Landry King didn’t deserve her whole heart. Even if she couldn’t do much of anything about the grooves.

So she just had to accept that rolling up on King’s Crest would always present as a new wound. Fresh and sharp as it had always been. With little that could be done about it. It was the cost of being human, she supposed.

She drove past the farmhouse. She had never spent much time there. It wasn’t like they had openly been in a relationship back then.

Theirs had been secret. A method they’d used to escape their untenable situations. A wild, untamed need that had been theirs, only theirs. They hadn’t been helpless teenagers dealing with family drama, they hadn’t been two kids living in the middle of nowhere. When they’d been together they’d been king and queen of their own kingdom.

They’d held all this bright, wonderful feeling between them, and they’d found pleasure. Real, adult pleasure, and they’d wielded those dangerous things between themselves, and in the end they’d gotten hurt.

They hadn’t known what to do with all that emotion. It had been jealous. And mean. She’d wanted him all to herself. If he talked to another girl, she went feral. He’d once put a dent in the side of his truck with his fist, because she’d been talking to another guy. They’d been mutually, ridiculously horrible.

She had been so obsessed with him. It was all she could think about. She had dreams for a while. Of what she wanted to be when she grew up. And they rotated. She had wanted to do all kinds of things. And then for a while there, she had wanted Landry. And that was it. She dreamed about kissing him. Touching him. When she lost her virginity to him, she’d been more than ready. If she had one secret that she quite enjoyed, it was that Landry King might’ve taken her virginity, but she’d taken his too.

She supposed in the end of all things she could claim that as a little bit of a perverse victory.

Then her heart sank because the problem was, there was simply no victory to be had in that complicated landscape of her and Landry.

Well. There was going to be one today. She wasn’t going to oppose him for the sake of it, but she was going to make things a little bit difficult for him. And frankly, he deserved it. He’d done more than make things difficult for her when she was trying to expand Sullivan’s, after all.

She saw the old barn, and some sawhorses set up outside, power tools and the like.

So he must be at work today. Already.

Well. That was fine. She cleared her throat and tossed her hair, pulling the car up to the front and turning off the engine. She got out and surveyed the place.

And Landry strolled out of the barn. Black hat on his head, tight black T-shirt molded to his muscular body. She knew that body. Except, she also didn’t. He had been a kid the last time she’d seen him naked, just as she’d been one. He was a man now. And she might’ve watched him grow and change every day since then, but it still hit hard, every time. And the way he looked at her, she had to wonder right then if he’d been hit hard too.

Normally, Landry didn’t have a reaction to her. But right now, he looked like she’d walked up and punched him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to check out your new venture,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because. It seemed like the thing to do. I mean, after all, my issue was that I wasn’t going to decide to invest on the spur of the moment without actually having a look at the place.”

“Was it? Or was it actually that you had some kind of prejudice against me.”

“I just wanted to—”

“Listen. I’m busy.”

He was acting cagey, standing there with his arms crossed, looking worried.

“You have a woman back there or something?”

She would really rather never think about Landry and his women. Though, she was certain that he must have them.

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