Page 56 of Beauty and the Bayou

“Wow.”He stared at her for a few long moments.Then he shifted, hanging an arm over the back of the chair, angling his body toward her.“Does all the protective gear make you feel safer?”

He seemed truly interested.

“It actuallymakesme safer,” she corrected.

“Okay,” he agreed.

That was it.No more questions about her stroke, no questions about should she really being messing around with power tools, no sudden excuses to get up and leave.

She tipped her head.“When I was turning eleven, about ten months after the stroke, I wanted a bike for my birthday.But I knew my mother would say no.For the first couple of months, I was unsteady and weak and scared and I didn’t want to do a lot of things like play at the playground or even run and play around the house.But I was ten.I got over all of that.Iwantedto play.I wanted to go down slides and swing on swings.Except, I often fell because of my weakness and balance.It freaked my mom out.She got more and more careful with me and more and more restrictive in what she’d let me do.By the time that birthday rolled around, there was no way she was going to go for a bike.So, I decided I had to do something to reassure her.”

Sawyer was watching her with rapt fascination.She hadn’t talked about her stroke and physical deficits in a long time, and she didn’t think she’d ever shared the bike story with anyone.

“I asked Rhett to take me to the local bike shop.I got a helmet, elbow and knee pads, a bright orange shirt that would make it easier to be seen, a bell, and all kinds of reflectors for the bike.I even took a bike safety class online and got this pretty certificate that I printed out to show her.I presented all of this to her when I asked for the bike.I figured if I took every safety precaution, it would make her feel better and more likely to go along with it.”

“Did it work?”

“It did.I got the bike.”

He smiled.“And that’s where the protective gear addiction comes in.”

She nodded.“It was always for other people.At least for a long time.The moreIwas conscious of the risks and worked to prevent them before they were even a problem, the more likely it was that people would trust me and let me do my thing.”

He gave her a look that was a mixture of admiration and affection.“Worked on me.”

She grinned.“Exactly.”Then she shrugged.“But—”

“There’s a but?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed.“Okay.Hang on.”

He seemed to actually want to know all of this.Juliet marveled at that a little as she watched him get up and cross to the bag he’d brought from Ellie’s.He dug for the final box and brought it to the table.Inside was a huge piece of cake.It had six layers of cake with alternating layers of custard.

“What isthat?”

He grinned and handed her a fork as he took his seat again.“Cora’s version of a Doberge cake.”

“Wow.”

“It tastes even better than it looks.”

Juliet took a bite and moaned.He was right.

Sawyer cleared his throat and shifted on his chair, and Juliet looked over at him.He was watching her and without thinking, she licked the frosting off her fork.Slowly.Her eyes on his.

“Fucking love this cake,” he muttered, almost to himself.

She smiled.He was so much fun to tease.She loved the flirtatious chemistry between them.He’d made her smile every single time they’d spoken.When he wasn’t making her aware of her nipples in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time.But even that was…fun.See, she could have fun.Just not airboat-on-the-bayou fun.

She’d missed seeing and talking to him over the past couple of days.That was weird.She didn’t know him well, and it wasn’t as if they’d established any kind of pattern or habit of seeing one another.But yeah, she’d missed him and had found herself looking for him throughout the day.

“Okay, so go on,” he said, after he’d taken a few bites.“You said all your safety gear and preparedness makes people more likely to leave you alone,but…”

She nodded and swiped one more bite of cake before going on.“Butall of that takes a lot of the spontaneity out of things,” she said.“And it just takes time and effort.I learned that I could either be fully prepared and safe,orI could be fun-loving and adventurous.But it was hard to be both.If my brothers wanted to go on a bike ride, I couldn’t just plop on my helmet and go.I had to take time to get everything on, lace up my shoes with triple knots so they didn’t get caught, put on long sleeves and pants so I didn’t get scraped up if I fell, make sure I had my backpack with my first aid kit, flashlight, phone, mace—”

“Mace?”Sawyer broke in.“To go on a bike ride?”

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