Hell on Heels Christmas (4 page)

Her heart
skipped and she stayed very still as if that would camouflage her. He walked up her mom’s path as he had many times before. As he got closer light illuminated brilliant green eyes, wavy dark hair and a face as familiar to Regan as her own. His eyes were fixed on her as he walked up the steps as if he had every right to join her. Without a word he sat on the porch railing across from her. Regan hated the mix of emotions that rushed through her. Joy, bitterness, shame and pain. He was still handsome in that rugged way of his and that aura of barely civilized clung to him. Wasn’t that why she’d gone for him in the first place?

“Regan Lee
.”

“Brooks Hawking.”

“You’re back.”

She resumed pushing the swing with her foot because she needed to do something.
“For a while.”

“I saw you yesterday.”

She inwardly winced. He just had to bring that up. “I was looking for my mom.”

“You saw me.”
His piercing green eyes dared her to deny it.

“I thought it might be you but I wasn’t sure.”
She tried to sound nonchalant.

“If you
waited a minute you would’ve known for sure.”

She didn’t know what to say to that so she didn’t say anything. She had always been the punch first, ask questions later type. Retreat had never been in her vocabulary until Brooks. He was the only man who ever made her feel vulnerable and she didn’t like that after all this time the same feelings rushed through her.

“Were you going to call me?”

It sounded like an accusation but his voice was so calm. Regan raised a brow.

“You still have the same number?” she asked sarcastically. Who did he think he was?

“No. Got my own number now. I figured you would call Kerry or my parents to get it.”

“Kerry and your mom are the last people I want to talk to,” Regan said scathingly.

Ten years passed and he was acting like she’d been gone for a month.
What was with the people in this town? A lot could happen in a decade but people in this town just picked up where they left off with her and it knocked her off balance. Brooks didn’t say anything, he just waited. He knew she hated that.

“Aren’t you married or something?” Regan said more aggressively than she intended.

He didn’t frown, smirk or smile. He just stared at her with those eyes that pierced her soul and roused the rebellious teenager in her she thought she’d gotten rid of. What was it about this place that made her feel like a loose cannon instead of a civilized adult?

“Want to go out for dinner?”

Regan blinked at the change of subject. “Don’t you think that will bother Allison?”

“No. Want to get dinner?”

She stopped swinging and leaned forward. “What are you doing, Brooks?”

“I haven’t seen you in ten years. I want to talk.”

She got to her feet because she was too agitated to sit and act like she didn’t feel anything. No man had ever been able to arouse even an ounce of want and desire Brooks did without trying. He made her feel too much. This guy was the reason she left and he refused to make her time here easier by ignoring her while she was in White Mist. He
had
to show up at her mom’s house and ask her out to dinner because he wanted to
talk
.

She threw up her hands. “Talk about what?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“That’s
all in the past.”

“I don’t want to talk about our past. I want to talk about now. Have dinner with me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I already ate.”

“With Wade. Where is he?”

Regan paused. “How’d you know?”

“Heard from Sam when I got coffee this morning.”

“She’s still a damn gossip,” Regan muttered.

“So, where’s Wade?”

“At his mom’s house with his son.”

“Okay. W
ant to get dessert?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “No.”

“Okay, want to get breakfast tomorrow?”

She gaped at him. What. The. H
ell. “I don’t want to catch up, Brooks.”

“Why?”

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “Because all that shit you want to talk about was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through in my life, that’s why! I’m surprised you even want to talk to me much less see me after all that happened.”

Brooks watched her pace the length of the porch and turn to come back towards him. He pushed off the rail and stepped in front of her. She tilted her head back and their eyes clashed.

“I told too much people I was going to propose,” he said quietly. “I took you for granted. I didn’t expect you to say no.”

His words literally knocked her back a step. The memories
that burst through her were so painful she closed her eyes, held up a hand and backed away.

“Brooks, I can’t
do this with you.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“I’ve been waiting ten years to have closure about this. I need to talk about it. I didn’t know what happened with Kerry, Missy and our moms until the next day. You were gone by then.”

“I didn’t come back for this.
I just came to see my mom-”

He
backed her into the corner of the porch. “You can’t come back to White Mist and expect to ignore everyone you know.”

“I’m not ignoring anyone.”

“Except me.”

She ground her back teeth. “I’m only going to be here
a couple of days and then I’m gone.”

“Even more so you should come with me to breakfast tomorrow.”

“I don’t have time.”

“You made time for Wade.”

“He’s a friend.”

“And what am I?”
             

God,
Brooks was the man she never got over. After ten years he was standing right in front of her, close enough to touch but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He was married with kids. The end.

“I need to go,” Regan said and walked inside.

She closed the door and waited. She heard his footsteps walk off the porch and back down the path. She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a frozen pack of mixed vegetables and a cold beer and sat at the table. Her heart was pounding like crazy and she drank half the bottle before Valerie walked in with raised brows.

“
Not even here twenty four hours and you’re fighting already?”

“Actually, Guy tells me I
made twenty eight hours before he had to arrest somebody.”

Valerie sat at the table. “Who?”

“Steph Carson. Wade’s baby mama made a scene in the diner. Called me a whore and a slut and I did what Wade can’t do.”

Valerie nodded, lifted the bag to take a look at Regan’s knuckles
and then set it back in place. “Hope you got her good.”

Regan shrugged. “
Good enough. I didn’t break anything.”

Valerie
shot her a sharp look. “Was that Brooks I heard?”

Regan fiddled with her beer. She’d been so damn mad at Brooks for causing the mother of all fights with her family but she couldn’t really blame him. He knew what he wanted and he’d gone after it. It was his bad luck that he wanted
her and she hadn’t wanted what he did- a family, stability. Seeing him with kids yesterday was a kick in the gut but she had no right to be angry. He got what he wanted with someone else and that was that. The end.

“I’m sorry,” Valerie said into the silence.

Regan got up, put the vegetable bag back in the freezer and downed her beer. “That’s not why I came back.”

“I need to say it. I’ve been waiting ten years. I promised myself that even if I only had a few minutes with you, I would say it. I chickened out yesterday.”
Valerie took a deep breath and Regan pulled another beer out of the fridge. “I shouldn’t have jumped all over you when you said no to Brooks.”

“Mom-”

“No! I wanted you to settle down, to stay in White Mist where I could keep an eye on you. I wanted you to be like Missy and that wasn’t fair of me. I just didn’t want you to be like your father.”

Regan set her beer down very carefully. “I am not like him.”

“You look like him, you weren’t satisfied with White Mist just like him. He didn’t want to be tied down-”

“Don’t you think I did the
right
thing by turning Brooks down before we got married, before I had kids?” Regan burst out.

Valerie sobered. “Yes. We all knew
Brooks was going to propose and you were so perfect for each other-”

Regan
counted on her fingers. “He had a good job, he wanted to marry me, he wanted children and his mom is your best friend… On and on and on, mom! You wanted me to marry him, to stay in this town and never leave it. I was only nineteen!”

Valerie held up both hands. “I know. At the time I wasn’t thinking about that. All I knew was that Brooks would take care of you. Is that so bad?”

Regan sighed and sat. “It’s not bad but it wouldn’t have made me happy. I would have suffocated and hurt him more in the end.”

Valerie grabbed a beer for herself and sat. “
What I saw between you and Brooks… I’ve never had that with anyone, even your father. I thought you were ruining your life when you turned him down. Here was this great guy proposing to you and you wanted to go backpacking across Europe and move to New York!”

Regan cracked a smile and took a slow pull on her beer.
If her mom only knew what she’d been up to since she left White Mist she would have a heart attack. Valerie drummed her hands nervously on her bottle.

“
You ever marry?”

Regan
shot her a scornful look. “No.”

“Did something happen? Is that why you came home?”

“I got out of a sticky relationship,” Regan said without inflection and drained her beer.

“How serious?”

“Really.”

A pause. “Why
are you so exhausted? You slept the whole day away.”

“Drove from New York.”

Valerie slapped the table and started laughing. “Well, I’ll be damned. So you actually did it.”

Regan’s
mouth twitched. “Yeah. Did the backpacking thing too.”

Valerie’s grin faded. “You did what?!”

“You’re lectures coming about six years too late,” Regan informed her and finished off her beer.

Valerie fumed. “Do you know you could have been raped, killed and left as road kill and I never would’ve known?”

“Yup.”

Regan flexed her hand as her mom went over outrageous scenarios on what could have happened to her in Europe. Regan yawned in her face and Valerie glared at her.

“Well,” Valerie said grudgingly. “How was it?”

“Amazing. Europeans are the best.”

Valerie sneered. “Sure.”

“I don’t know how this is possible but I’m still tired.”

“I have to open the shop tomorrow so I won’t be around when you wake up. Will you be here when I get back?”

Regan stared at her mom.
Valerie had been forced to raise three kids on her own and it had turned her into a rigid control freak. Asking wasn’t normal for her. Like Missy, Valerie commanded people into doing what she wanted. Regan could tell from her face that this was killing her.

Regan decided on the spot.
“Yeah. I’ll wait until you come home.”

The worst was over right? She got through a conversation with Brooks and she was okay. Beyond him, if everything was okay with her mom she could manage another day in White Mist.

Valerie blew out a breath. “Okay.”

Regan went upstairs, took another shower and went to sleep in the oversized man shirt she used to go to sleep in ten years ago because it smelled like Brooks.

“Regan?”

Regan cracked open one eye and screamed. She swung her fist and it was caught in a big calloused hand. Her left
flew wildly and connected with a shoulder that nearly broke her hand. She howled and glared up at Brooks.

“What the hell are you doing in my room?” she screamed.

How many times had she dreamed of him? Waking up and seeing him standing in her old bedroom as if no time passed was bizarre and
so
wrong. She thought she’d never have to see him again and now here he was,
waking her up
? What. The. Fudge.

“Calm down,” he said.

She heard the amusement in his voice and shucked off her covers so she could use her legs to kick him in the head. Seeing what she was up to he jumped on the bed and straddled her, pinning her hands above her head.

“You’re wearing my shirt.”

His voice sounded weird, like he was choking. That was when she remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath his old shirt. They stared at each other in the dim light trying to pierce through her bedroom curtains.

“My shirts from high school are too tight. This is the only thing that fits,” Regan whispered.

“Looks good on you.”

She narrowed her eyes as his
eyes slid down her body. He had on jeans and a long sleeved shirt beneath a navy blue vest. He hadn’t shaved and it only made him look more rugged and dangerous. The look fit, considering he was straddling her and pinning her to the bed as if she were some Victorian virgin and he an uncivilized pirate.

“You’re married,” she said, voice breathless. When was the last time she’d been breathless? Mortification nearly choked her.
Damned if she wasn’t turning into that helpless Victorian maiden.

He leaned down so their faces were less than two inches apart. “I
was
married.”

She head butted him. H
e reared up, cursing and released her hands. She sat up too and shoved at his chest but he didn’t move. He was braced on his knees over her in a very interesting position… She shook herself so she could verbally kick his ass.

“You’re not married?” she shouted.

He rubbed his forehead. “Damn. Your head is still hard as a rock.”

She grasped his vest
and shook him. “You’re
not
married?”

“No.”

Even as something in her loosened in relief she desperately searched her mind for something that would put him off limits. She would
not
get involved with Brooks Hawking again. He’d been so focused on what
he
wanted that he ignored her dreams. She never forgot what it felt like to love someone so much and yet be selfish enough to hold back because you weren’t willing to give him what he wanted. It had killed them both and she refused to be put in that kind of situation again- especially with the
same
person.

“You have kids.”

He frowned. “I do?”

She shoved him so hard he tipped backwards and this time
she
straddled
him
and jabbed a finger in his face. “Don’t play games with me Brooks. You were with them on Halloween.”

A slow smile curved his mouth and she wanted to smack him.

“That’s Kerry’s kids.”

Temporarily distracted she gaped. “Your sister has kids? With who? A mob boss?”

Kerry had been her partner in crime and all around hell on heels. The thought of Kerry being married was like Paris Hilton deciding to be a housewife in the suburbs. If there was anyone more notorious in White Mist than Regan Delaney it was Kerry Hawking.

“She’s married to
Ned.”

“Kerry is married to your ex-wife’s brother?” Regan leapt off of him and ran her hands through tangled hair. “This is why I should never settle in a small town. It’s too,” she waved her hands wildly. “Interconnected. You know what I mean? It’s like you can’t even sneeze in this town without someone telling my mom.”

“And you can’t throw a punch without the whole town hearing about it the next day,” Brooks said.

She whirled on him. “She deserved it.”

“I heard. Wade’s more worried about your hand than her face.”

Before she knew it, Brooks had her hand in his. He
tugged her over to the window and pulled back the bedroom curtains so he could get a better look at her bruised hand. She pummeled his arm with her left and tried to jerk away all to no avail.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, you’re poking at me!”

“You broke your hand twice when we were dating.”

“Yeah, once on your face.”

Brooks grinned and looked out the window at two old women who were standing on the sidewalk below, staring up at them with their mouths hanging. Brooks opened the window.

“Good morning Mrs. Mullan. Did you see Regan Lee’s back?” he hollered.

Mrs. Mullan touched her wig, glared at Regan and stomped down the sidewalk.

“She never got over you shaving her head. I don’t know why,” Brooks said innocently.

“
Are you trying to prove a point?” she demanded with her arms crossed over hard nipples. It was because of the cold air
not
him.

“We’re going to eat breakfast.”

A sudden thought struck her. “How did you get in the house? Does my mom know you’re here?”

If her mom was trying to set her up with Brooks after all this time Regan was going to give her a piece of her mind. Brooks took a key out of his pocket.

“Your mom’s been hiding it in the same spot since she moved in. Half the neighborhood knows where it is.”

“You’re the only one with enough
balls to actually use it,” Regan snapped.

“
Get dressed. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

She barely restrained from stomping her feet in frustration. She spoke slowly so the mentally handicap man standing in front of her would understand.

“I-do-not-want-to-talk-to-you.”

“I don’t care what you want.”

“What a surprise! It’s like I never left,” she said sarcastically.

For the first time anger darkened his features and she stilled warily. Everyone knew Regan had a temper because she never tried to hide it. Brooks was a different matter. He
bottled everything up until he exploded. Even after all this time she knew he was at the end of his rope.

“We’
re going to talk. I figured you’d react this way so I brought breakfast with me. I’ll be downstairs.”

She watched him walk out of her room, pause and look back. He ran his eyes over her and from the way he watched her, she would’ve thought she was wearing lingerie instead of an old shirt and sweat pants.

“We
will
talk one way or another. If you don’t come down to the kitchen I’m coming back up and you’re not going to like it.”

With that threat he walked downstairs. She stuck her tongue at him and heard her phone beeping
as the battery began to die so she found the charger and plugged it in, all without looking at the screen. She had enough going on without listening to her voicemails which no doubt had people pleading for her to return to New York, especially Daniel. He could kiss her ass.

She debated what to do as she brushed her teeth and hair.
Ignoring Brooks wasn’t going to work- obviously. He was like a bulldog when he wanted something and right now he wanted to talk. Just the thought of ripping open wounds it took her years to stitch back together wasn’t appealing but she didn’t want Brooks to think she was still in love with him either. She didn’t have any other clothes to change into so she marched downstairs with her nose in the air until she smelled bacon and grease. Her mouth watered and she saw the crumpled bag from the diner in the corner and open containers with the best breakfast ever.

She made herself a plate and reluctantly took the mug of coffee he set in front of her and dug in. They ate in silence and she was aware of his eyes constantly on her but she focused on her food. She wouldn’t show him how nervous she really was. Brooks didn’t play nice. He never had. He was b
lunt, stubborn and possessive. It was her bad luck that she thought that was appealing. Her phone rang and beeped upstairs as they ate. He raised his brows when she ignored it.

“Someone looking for you?”

She took a sip of coffee. “What do you mean?”

He glanced at her ring less left finger. “Boyfriend?”

She shrugged. “Probably.”

He drummed the fingers of one hand on the table. “So, where you been, Regan Lee?”

Her phone rang again and she sighed and patted her full stomach. “Most recently, New York. You?”

“I stayed.”

“The whole time?” At his nod she asked, “You never feel restless?”

His eyes were piercing and so direct that she picked at a hash brown instead of looking at him.

“I don’t have the same type of restlessness you have.”

The insecure part of her that was ashamed for having that traveling gene that made her daddy leave his family behind cringed. O
utwardly she showed no signs of discomfort. She propped her chin on her fist and widened her eyes.

“Do tell.”

“I get restless because my life isn’t what I want it to be. That doesn’t make me want to leave White Mist.”

His answer was blunt and true. She swallowed, cleared her throat and cocked her head as another call
came in on her cell. Why hadn’t she put the damn thing on silent?

“He sure is insistent,” Brooks observed.

She grabbed their take out plates and dumped them in the trash and poured herself more coffee from the pot Valerie left on the warmer. Instead of sitting with him at the table she sat on the counter to give herself room. He looked amused which made her want to pour her hot coffee on his lap.

“
So did you do everything you said you would?” When she didn’t answer he cupped his ear with his hand. “I didn’t hear what you said, Regan Lee.”

If she owed anyone an explanation it was him.
Ten years ago Brooks got down on one knee and proposed in the snow on Christmas Eve. She reacted by giving him a list of everything she wanted to do before she got shackled. Just thinking how callous and selfish that was made her want to punch herself. Most women dreamed of that moment when someone proposed but she not only hadn’t reacted the way a normal woman would, she’d yelled, “no!” right in his face, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. She had nightmares about the stricken look on his face when she ruined everything.

“I backpack
ed across Europe,” Regan began reluctantly. “I did move to LA for a while, met a few actors. A friend let me fly his plane for a few seconds, I rode a camel, swam in the Dead Sea, was in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, went dogsledding in Alaska, worked on a cruise ship and learned how to speak French.”

“Is that all?”

She pursed her lips, thinking. “What else did I say I was going to do?”

“You said you were going to sing with
Johnny Bentley at one of his concerts.”

She snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah. Did that.”

Brooks sat up a little straighter. “You did not.”

She grinned. “I did.
YouTube it. Johnny’s a sweetie.”

“I bet he is
.”

The mood lightened a little and she relaxed slightly. Before she became aware of
Brooks as a male he had been her friend first. For as long as she could remember Missy, Max and Regan spent most days at the Hawking house with Brooks’ dad while their mom’s ran their shop. She wasn’t sure when Brooks went from being her friend to being the hottest guy she’d ever seen. It just happened. She examined him now and wanted to view him as she did Wade but she couldn’t. As an adult Brooks was even more masculine and alluring than before. It didn’t make sense. Why would she want a man she knew she couldn’t have?

She swung her feet. “And what about you? What have you done?”

“I’m still with White Mist Electric. I’m a supervisor now.”

She gaped at him. “You
stayed at the same job this whole time?”

“Yeah. I like it.”

She glared at him. “How the hell do you do one job and know that it’s what you want to do with the rest of your life? It’s not natural!”

“So you still don’t know what you want. Is that why you’re home?”

She bared her teeth in a snarl. “I know what I want.”

“Okay. What do you want? Ten years ago you wanted to experience everything and now that you have, now what?”

He hit it right on the nose, smug bastard. She did everything she set out to do in six years. Four years ago she decided to accept a job offer that would force her into unfamiliar waters- the corporate world. To her amazement she’d done well. Who knew she could turn her restlessness into a workaholic overachiever? She succeeded in that arena and now left it behind because of her asshole ex. Now what?