Page 41 of The Last One You Loved
“Move your hat, Sheriff.”
He did so, reluctantly, placing it back on his head like many of the people in the restaurant. Tillie took the words on her door seriously.
“Sit, sit. Tell me what you want so I can get it started before I come back and give you the third degree about everything in your life.”
“Um…” I looked around for a menu and then up at the specials board behind the counter. It looked like it hadn’t changed in the decade I’d been gone. “Biscuits and gravy, please. Bacon crispy.”
“Scrambled or fried eggs?”
“Scrambled, thanks.”
“Nice to see some things never change.” She winked, patted my hand, and headed toward the back, already hollering the order at Javier, who had been her fry cook for as long as I’d known her.
Maddox was squeezing his cup of coffee with such force it was lucky the mug didn’t break, and his jaw looked as tight as his fist beneath the beard he’d grown. Even scowling, he was breathtaking. The beard was a good look on him, adding an aura of wisdom to his appearance that his eyes already screamed, adding another layer of sexiness that made me wonder what it would feel like on my skin.
He did his best to ignore me, but it did nothing but continue to build the tension in the air between us. My conversations with Eva and Sally had tempered my emotions from yesterday, and I didn’t know if I should apologize for my anger or beg to spend time with Mila.
Tillie came swirling out and put down a cup of coffee in front of me, then she put one hand on Maddox’s shoulder and another on mine. “M&M… Gosh dang, it’s good to see the two of you sitting here next to each other again.”
My stomach clenched at the nickname. Once upon a time, I’d reveled in it. The idea of being tied so closely to the bright light that was Maddox. To the Hatleys.
Maddox rose suddenly, and Tillie’s hand fell. “I gotta go, Tillie, hold the breakfast.”
“Maddox Hatley, you sit back down and wait for the meal you ordered.”
“I forgot I need to stop by Willy’s this morning to help him look for his tools,” Maddox said, stepping backward, but Tillie caught his arm and darted a gaze between me and him.
“So, the rumors are true. Y’all were at each other’s throats last night?”
My cheeks heated. You’d think with the way gossip spread in Willow Creek, I would have been free of Mama much earlier than a week before my eighteenth birthday. You’d think the whole town would have come to my rescue. It just proved how good Mama and I had been at covering her tracks.
Maddox rubbed his jaw.
“You gonna apologize?” Tillie asked Maddox.
“Tillie,” I said, desperately wanting to dive below the counter and stay there because I could feel everyone’s eyes on us.
“Sit down before I call your mama,” she said to Maddox.
“Jesus,” he said before doing just that. “I’m not ten, Tillie.”
“No, you’re an elected official who should know better, so act like it.”
She flounced away, heading for the antique cash register and the couple waiting to pay. When I turned back, risking a glance at Maddox as I took a sip of coffee, his eyes were hidden beneath the brim of his hat, but his jaw remained tight.
The stools were so close together that every time I moved, my elbow brushed his arm. It made my skin tingle, sending spirals of electricity through me as if I’d used the crash cart on myself. My breath was shallow and unsteady, and I had to concentrate to get it back in order.
“You’re leaving today?” he asked, his voice bland, and I couldn’t tell if it was a command or a question, and the knowledge it might be a bit of both stopped the apology I’d wanted to give before I could utter it.
“No. I told you, I want the truth. I want to get to know her,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm and using my very best doctor voice—the one that stated the facts but still tried to gentle the sting of the words.
He whirled toward me on the stool, feet and legs tangling with mine and causing more heat and energy to drift through me. My body flushed from head to toe as memories assaulted me of us twined like this without clothes in the back of his Bronco. The best kind of memories that I’d carefully packed away and refused to open for nearly ten years. And now they were pouring from me, causing the ugly demon hope to try and pop back up.
I couldn’t help wanting to know if he felt it, too. Did his skin ripple with the pulse and draw that seemed to be yanking us together? Did his belly have the same low ache of desire I had in mine? Was he as confused as I was by having these feelings atop the anger and hurt time had laid between us?
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
MADDOX
