Hotshot and Hospitality by Nora Everly
Chapter 4
Molly
I couldn’t figure out how to handle him. Combine that with my new and screwy feelings for him, and I’d reverted all the way back to my childhood methods of communication—pouting and mild drama. Not a good look, dumbass.
“That was so smooth, Molls,” Leo drawled, hip against the corner of the counter as he sipped his coffee. Barrett and Landon were at the table in the bay window, studiously perusing the plans spread out in front of them and I’d like to think they had ignored my outburst, but I knew better.
“I don’t even remember what I said, Leo. I need more scones. Where are the scones?”
“The word buttface was uttered, or rather, shouted,” he informed me with a smirk.
Barrett raised his head from his blueprints. “Don’t listen to him, honey. Garrett is a pushy little buttface sometimes. You do whatever you need to do.” His eyes were sympathetic and only a tiny bit laughing at me. He’d always been big-brothery and sweet. He resembled Garrett, and Everett, and Wyatt too. All the Monroe brothers looked alike and they all took after their dad. They also looked kind of like Henry Cavill—totally tall, dark, and handsome. Why had I said no again? Oh yeah, the friend thing and the Becky Lee thing and other things I didn’t want to think about. With a shake of my head, I poured a second cup of coffee. I needed more caffeine in order to truly examine my life choices. And more scones. Definitely more scones.
“Maybe give the kid a chance though,” Landon chimed in. My actual big brother coming in with the push. “He grew out of most of his buttface behavior. In fact, I bet he’d even let you win at basketball,” he teased.
“Ha ha ha.” I pulled a chair out and plopped into it.
Garrett entered the kitchen followed by his crew, and I’m sorry to poor Clara, but she was absolutely missing out. There were way too many muscles in this kitchen. Dusty work boots, hard hats, and huge sledgehammers completed each of their jeans-and-a-T-shirt ensemble. Do not even get me started on their low-slung tool belts and the literal acres of broad, sculpted man chest spread out before my eyes. I tried not to ogle but it was impossible. I wanted to feel Garrett’s muscles, for quality assurance, or science, or my own perverted curiosity. Ugh!
“I’m sorry I called you a buttface,” I announced to the room, because why not go all the way down the embarrassment spiral. Also, it was the right thing to do and acting like a grown-up was always a good idea. Maturity for the win!
He chuckled. “I forgive you.”
I exchanged a glance with an equally bug-eyed Leo as I stood up to get the heck out of this kitchen. It was pulsating with testosterone in here, and it was dangerous to my girlie parts. They were already swirling with barely suppressed lust over Garrett.
“Take a last look around, y’all. Make sure you have everything you want to keep,” Garrett instructed.
Landon slid up next to me to put his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry, Leo and I got all of Dad’s stuff out of here,” he whispered into my ear.
I nodded and glanced around the kitchen, suddenly flooded with childhood memories. The fact that Garrett was here today emphasized how much this place was going to change. The last time he was in this kitchen with me, we had been kids and my dad had been at the stove making us pancakes. My dad had loved to cook breakfast for dinner—pancakes and bacon, biscuits and gravy, strawberry scones for his favorite girl in the world . . .
My nose tingled. The tears were imminent but I didn’t want to cry, so I fought it like I always did, managing to beat back most of the emotions and only letting a huge sigh escape instead of an avalanche of sad feels. “Okay! So, I have to go check on stuff. I’m going to take a break. Listen for the phone for me, Landon?” My voice was falsely bright, a high squeak choking its way out of my throat.
“I got you, sweetie.” No sweetie, no kindness, definitely no no no to sympathy, empathy, and soft eyes that understood—and Landon understood. He took care of me after our father died. He was there for all of us. He was twenty-three years old when our dad died. He came back here and took over the inn, took over our family. His big-brother/surrogate-father sweetness caused tears instead of preventing them. I inhaled a huge breath and held it as he continued. “Take the rest of the day off if you need to. Hear?” With a nod, I turned tail and all but ran through the dining room, across the lobby and out the front door of the inn. I stopped on the porch and looked side to side trying to decide where to hide out.
I couldn’t go home; either he or Leo would be on their way to check on me and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. For moments like this, I preferred to be alone so I could miss my father in peace for a minute before I reburied my feelings and built my walls back up. When people were around, they always wanted to talk about it, or reminisce with me, or try to make me feel better when I knew I would never bebetter when it came to missing my dad. It would just be different, always different. Bursts of grief like this would always hit at random. We all got them. We all expected it, even though it was impossible to predict a trigger. It was the entire rest of my life that I could never seem to get a handle on—he was gone and never coming back. There was no way to put that into an acceptable perspective, no matter how hard I tried, so I preferred to avoid thinking about him entirely.
Behind me, I felt pounding footsteps echo beneath my feet from the other side of the door. I darted aimlessly off the porch, through the rose garden at the side of the inn and across the lawn toward the tree line near the state park. Part of the forested area belonged to us, but once the land began to ascend into the mountains, it was no longer ours.
I swung open the gate in the picket fence and stepped through the trellis onto the brush-covered dirt that led into the woods. The forest was sparse right here, but it grew denser as it moved up the foothills until there was nothing but colorful treetops as far as the eye could see. From yellow to russet to brown, the trees unfurled up the mountain like an earthbound autumnal rainbow. The ever-present mountain mist swirled between my feet as I walked to my treehouse destination. My father and Bill Monroe, Garrett’s dad, had built it years ago for us kids to play in. Bill’s involvement meant this was no ordinary treehouse. Its twin turrets and faux stone facade gave it a magical feel, like a castle in the trees. I could live in it if necessary; it had electricity, running water, and a small bathroom and kitchen. Everything you would ever need was inside. Bill came out to inspect it every so often, to make sure it was safe for Abbie and any future Cooper offspring to play in.
“Aunt Molly, wait for me! My legs are too short!” I whirled around with a smile and braced for impact as Abbie took a flying leap into my arms. Lucky for her, I too was short, so the leap was not a big one. “Daddy said to give you emergency hugs and here I am!” she yelled in my ear. We were still working on decibel levels when it came to her and my hearing. I glanced over her shoulder to see Jordan, still in his work clothes, heading out of the rose garden toward me. Jordan was divorced. His wife left him when Abbie was a baby to make it big in Nashville. So far, she had managed to make it medium. She was currently employed as a studio backup singer and waitress. They shared custody of Abbie and occasionally shared a night together, if you know what I mean.
“You okay, Molls?” he asked. He must have arrived right after I ran off.
I nodded while Abbie answered. “My hugs are helping her already! Look at her smile, Daddy!”
I kissed the top of her head. “Your hugs are the best, Abbie. I feel better already.” And I did. Over the years, I had perfected the art of shoving my sorrow out of my head. It usually required a few minutes alone to regroup, or a distraction—and Abbie was my favorite distraction. The loss hit hard sometimes, but I’d grown adept at compartmentalizing it. Ninety-nine percent of the time I could nip it in the bud before it took over my day.
“You sure you’re alright?” he questioned. Jordan was a sweetheart and his ex-wife was an idiot for leaving him.
“Yeah, it’s just the usual. I had a moment in the kitchen. Memories, you know?”
“Gotcha. Yeah, it’s going to be weird when it’s different in there. It’s bringing up a lot of memories for me too.” He smiled. “Remember when—”
“I don’t want to think about it anymore, Jordan. I’m sorry. But I’ll hang out with Abbie if you want to go get something to eat and take a nap?” I offered.
His smile was knowing and sympathetic. I had to look away from him. “Okay, Molls. Thanks, I’ll take you up on that. I’m beat.”
Abbie yelled her enthusiasm in my ear again. “Yay! Can I brush your hair? Daddy, will you bring us cookies and milk in the treehouse?”
“Yep, I sure will. Then I’ll crash for a couple hours, okay, Molly?” Jordan leaned over to smack a kiss on Abbie’s cheek, then mine, before turning away to the inn.
“Fine with me,” I agreed, glad that he dropped the Dad subject. I felt bad that I never talked about him with my brothers, but it was just too much for me to handle and I was afraid it probably always would be. Luckily, they understood me.
I set Abbie down and held her hand as we crossed the rest of the distance to the spiral staircase that led up into the treehouse. I pushed up the hinged door, we climbed through, and I sat at the small table-and-chair set on the deck that surrounded the interior space. Abbie went behind me to search through my hair for the pins holding my bun in place.
“Your hair feels weird. It’s all crispy when the pins come out of it,” she mused.
“I sprayed it with hairspray so it would stay in the bun.”
“Don’t do that anymore. I like it when your hair is pretty and soft,” she murmured as she ran her fingers into my hair, removing the last pin.
“I don’t know. I kind of liked the bun. It was cute.” I spun in my chair to find Garrett, not Jordan, poking his head through the hinged door with a smirky smile on his face. “Take these, sugar pie, so I can climb up,” he instructed Abbie.
“Uncle Garrett!” Abbie cried as she grabbed a Tupperware container from Garrett’s outstretched arm. I knew Garrett and Jordan were still close, but I hadn’t realized it had extended to Abbie too.
“Uncle?” I questioned.
He climbed the rest of the way up and stepped closer to set a half gallon of milk and a stack of red Solo cups onto the tiny table. He sat next to me in the small chair and I smiled when his knees hit his chest. “Jordan and I still play basketball together almost every weekend, only now we have Abbie and Mel join us. Not quite as competitive, but we have fun, right, Abbie?” Mel is Wyatt’s six-year-old daughter, Garrett’s niece. Mel and Abbie are in the same class at school and thick as thieves.
“Mel is my best friend forever. Daddy said you two used to be best friends forever.” She glanced briefly at Garrett before returning her focus back to my hair.
“We were, Abbie.” Garrett caught my eye and continued. “Jordan and I don’t need to catch up like you and I do. In fact, out of all you Cooper people, you’re the only one who has ever drifted away from me.” I could only manage a light shrug in response.
“Isn’t her hair prettier like this? It looks like shiny chocolate syrup.” Abbie finished finger combing my hair and pushed it to flow over my shoulder. I had let my hair grow to the middle of my back with long layers cut in since it was so thick. “I’m done with your hair and now it’s cookie time! I’ll get the little plates from the treehouse,” she declared before darting inside and slamming the door behind herself.
“You’re beautiful, Molly,” Garrett answered, his eyes hot on my face. He reached out, gathering the strands at my shoulder, letting it sift through his fingers as he pulled his hand away. I exhaled as my hair drifted softly against my neck. We’d always had a certain way we had acted around each other and this was not that way. Never before had his voice been this deep and gravelly when he addressed me. Never had his gaze drifted from my eyes to my mouth and back up like it did just now. But most of all—never had I wanted his eyes on me like this. Not only want it, but like it, crave it, contemplate ways to seek it out.
I was in trouble.
Last night had changed everything. And what I couldn’t figure out was the cause of it. Had it started with that fake kiss? But worse, even though I couldn’t completely remember it, I felt it too. I wanted to let my hair down, unbutton some buttons, make the effort to be pretty and have him notice it. I wanted his eyes on me, his hands on me, I wanted more than I should, and I had to stop these reckless thoughts before I ruined everything.
“Why do you keep pushing me away, Molly?” he murmured. Because he had spoken so softly, I wondered if he had intended for me to hear him. In fact, I hadn’t heard his voice; I had read his lips.
My mouth opened slightly but no words formed to answer him. Instead of talking, we were caught up in each other’s gaze. Except this was an experience vastly different from the staring contests from our olden days. This time, neither one of us stuck out our tongue or attempted to tickle the other. He ran a hand through his lush, nearly black hair. It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short either. It flipped behind his ears, dipped over his forehead and curled down to touch the back of his neck. His hair needed my hands in it, not his, dammit.
“Daddy said I could have seven cookies.” Startled, I jumped in my seat as Abbie broke our moment, stepping out of the door carrying a stack of tiny pink plates.
Garrett came out of our lusty eye lock first and took the plates from Abbie. “Oh really? Then you’d better go back inside and grab a very big bowl.” A confused V dropped between her eyes and her nose wrinkled adorably in question. “So you can throw up in it after you eat seven of these huge chocolate chip cookies,” he added.
“You’re crazy, Uncle Garrett. I will never throw up cookies. They will stay in my tummy ’till I poop them out.” She was all little-girl attitude as she glared at him with her hands on her hips.
“He usually gives you two,” Garrett argued.
With an eye roll good enough to compete with any teenager, she huffed. “Fine. He did say only two. But you’re not a dad yet, so I think you should give me three and we’ll keep it a secret.”
“What happens in the treehouse, stays in the treehouse?” I interrupted their staredown and grinned at Abbie.
She smiled back at me. “Yeah! A secret cookie pact.”
“Okay, three it is. She’s just like you, Molly. And we both know I never could tell you no.” Garrett held out his fist and Abbie bumped it.
I exhaled a huge breath because, what the fudge? “I want three too,” I said with a nervous deflecting chuckle. Statements like the one he just made went beyond the friend zone. The way he said it made it feel like a flirt. “Leo is a cookie genius.”
“He really is,” Garrett agreed as he stuffed an entire cookie into his mouth. “He gave me this recipe. It’s my favorite.”
“What is up with the stress baking?” I asked.
“Grown-ups are so boring. Who cares about baking and stress? Eating cookies is the important part. I’m going in there to watch Trolls. Tell me if you get sad again, Aunt Molly, and I’ll come back out.” Abbie got up and went inside the treehouse. It wasn’t long before the theme song blasted from the television.
Garrett chuckled and shook his head. “If I answer you, does it stay in the treehouse?”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“I still get insomnia—it’s a little worse since I’ve been home.”
“From the Marines?” He nodded but said nothing more. “Do you have PTSD?”
With a noncommittal shrug, he grabbed another cookie from the container and took a bite.
“Do you ever talk about it?” I prodded.
He swallowed and pinned me still with his eyes as he studied my face. His lips quirked up in a smile, but his eyes were sad. “I don’t have PTSD, Molly. I just can’t sleep sometimes, like always. Do you ever talk about your dad?”
I drew back in my chair. “No, I deal with it through denial and bad jokes. I eat pie to cope, and occasionally I make dramatic exits to brood in this treehouse.”
He wasn’t amused by my flippant yet truthful response. “I thought not.” He looked past me toward the forest. “I remember being here with you that day.” I watched him as he stared passively at the trees behind me.
My mouth opened to say something, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t come out. Ever since that day, I had lost all the words I’d ever had about my father. My chair screeched, then tipped over as I stood up to get away. “I—”
“I’m sorry, Molly,” he called to my back before I could leave.
That stopped me in my tracks. I spun to face him. He had also stood up. His tall form towered over me and blocked out the early morning sunlight. “What for?” I demanded.
His eyes swept over me before settling back on mine. “For not being able to help you back then—that day. You broke right in front of me and I didn’t know what to do.” For the first time I considered how it must have felt for him to see me that way. He had been close to my father too; I wasn’t the only one who’d felt his loss.
Images of that day flashed in my mind. My mother trying to catch me as I ran to the treehouse, then giving up to collapse sobbing onto the lawn. She was never the same after that. She checked out of life and remained distant and sad, even after she remarried. Garrett always was faster than me; he caught up and we ran the rest of the way together. We stayed up here into the evening, only realizing later that Becky Lee had spent the entire day sitting beneath us on the spiral staircase in case we needed her while Bill had stayed with my brothers and mother in the house, making phone calls and arrangements for the funeral and the . . . body. Dad had died in his bed of pancreatic cancer. My brother Cameron had discovered him early in the morning, before the hospice nurse had arrived for the day.
“We were only fifteen, Garrett. What else could you have done? You stayed with me. You held my hand. You let me cry and didn’t try to make me stop like everyone else always did. That was enough.” The words floated out of me as if I hadn’t been the one to speak them. Sometimes buried truths felt that way; like they came from somewhere else.
“But, after that—when you finally came back to school—we didn’t talk anymore, at least not like before.”
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone after that. Not just you.”
“But, Clara and Leo—”
“Clara’s dad took off and her mom is a cold-hearted witch. Leo’s parents sent him to live with his grandparents after he told them he was gay. I lost my hearing, then a few years later, my dad died. We didn’t talk to each other, not really, and if we did, we weren’t sober. Look, you and I were on two different paths, Garrett. Yours led to the baseball team and the student council, to college and then the Marines. Mine led to cutting school to get drunk in the woods behind the library with Clara and Leo, then right here back at the inn. I just couldn’t deal, with anything. It wasn’t about something you did or didn’t do. I promise.”
“And what about now?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“What about now?” Too many truths had spilled out of my mouth, like puzzle pieces from the past. I could see him putting it all together as he watched me pace the length of the treehouse deck.
“We still don’t talk, Molly. I’ve been back in town for almost four years and once a conversation between us moves past, ‘Hey, how are you?’ you make sure you have somewhere else to be. You’re not even subtle about it.”
“I don’t do that,” I insisted. I totally did that. He just looked at me as I continued pacing and thinking and pacing some more. Without intending to, I stopped and met his eyes.
He rocked forward on his feet, then forced himself to take a step back, stuffing his hands into his pockets with a frustrated sigh. “You were my best friend. Then you weren’t. I missed you—I still miss you,” was all he said. But I guess that said it all, didn’t it?
I stood there, trapped by his eyes, whiskey brown and earnest. I was a sucker for earnesty. Earnestness? Whatever. Abbie was earnest, and that kid always got four cookies out of me. My guts heaved with the possibility of being spilled. “Maybe I do avoid talking to you,” I admitted. “I—I don’t like remembering how I was back then, how it felt. I really don’t like thinking about the past at all. I don’t consciously avoid you. I don’t want to hurt you. Now I’m the one to say I’m sorry.”
“Maybe we should stop apologizing to each other and lose this awkwardness. Yeah? We don’t have to talk about the past.” He held his pinky out, bridging the distance between us.
I grinned at the familiar gesture and reached out to link mine with his. “Yeah, okay. But I’m on to you, so don’t think I’m overlooking the insomnia thing. I’m just letting it go for now, but turnabout is fair play, my friend.” I let the pent-up feels in my chest take the form of a huge sigh and then let it out. “I need a cookie.” I let my hand fall from his as I stepped around him to return to the table, right my chair and sit back down. I was full of scones but I was also an emotional eater, so I stuffed a bite of cookie into my mouth hoping my feelings would be stuffed down with it.
“Okay, then I’ll eat the rest.”
“Should I have Abbie bring out the big bowl?”
He laughed. “No, I’m good. So, about dinner at my place?”
“Not a good idea,” I answered quickly, stuffing another bite of cookie into my mouth to avoid saying anything else.
“But, we just—”
“Became friends again. Even more reason not to date each other.”
“Who said it’s a date?” He winked, effectively mixing his message.
My cheeks heated with embarrassment, yet I was sure I hadn’t misunderstood him about the date. “Oh, uh . . . I just assumed, since—”
“Friends are allowed to have dinner together, right?”
“I guess so . . .” I remembered this part of him. The sneaky, twisty word guy. Garrett always won every argument we’d ever had. He was also a master deflector. He liked to be the one to provide help or give of himself. He never asked anyone for anything.
“I have to get back to work. We’ll talk about dinner later.” He got up to leave, grabbing the cookie container as he stood up.
“Okay, sure, we’ll make plans.”
Scooting my chair, I leaned on the railing to watch him walk down the stairs and back to the inn, but I failed at being subtle. He caught me looking and waved as he shouted from the lawn, “Bye, cutie!”
“Later, buttface!” I was trying as hard as I could to ignore what was happening—the odd chemistry that had bubbled between us last night and the fact that he definitely asked me out, then took it back to pretend it was a friend thing. He wouldn’t play games with me—I believed that. He had to be just as confused as I was.