Her Rugged Rancher (22 page)

Looking at her had him thinking he was already there. She'd blown him away from the beginning and it wasn't a case of beer goggles. In fact, the more he sobered up, the better she looked. She was tiny, at least eight inches shorter than his own six feet, with a slender, birdlike build. But it was her face that captivated him, the bone structure so fine it looked like she'd been sculpted by an artist's hand.

“I'll have the
ropa vieja
, and he needs a
medianoche
with a side of
maduros
. Oh, and a colada and a bottle of water.” The man behind the window nodded, writing down the order.

He nudged her to the side, and got out his wallet. “Let me buy, please.”

She motioned him forward. “Be my guest.”

He paid what seemed like way too little and accepted a bag stuffed with food and the bottle of water in exchange. Mollie grabbed a full Styrofoam cup and two smaller, empty plastic ones. They picked a table farther back from the path and sat down facing each other.

‘Okay, so tell me what I just paid for.”

“My company?” At his pointed look, she took pity on him and started opening packages. “I got the
ropa vieja
. It's shredded beef, and it comes with rice. Your
medianoche
is a pork sandwich on a soft, sweet bread.” She unwrapped it for him while she talked. “The name means midnight, because it's usually eaten when you are out partying and drinking. I figured it would be perfect for soaking up the last of the alcohol. The
maduros
are fried sweet plantains, and the colada is kind of like espresso, but with sugar.”

Coffee sounded amazing. He reached for it, only to have her block him, putting her hand over the cup.

“First some food and water, then coffee.”

“Anyone ever tell you you're kind of bossy?”

“All the time.” She dug into her food, closing her eyes in bliss. “This is so good. How's your sandwich?”

He took an experimental bite. The salty pork and pickles vied with the cheese and mustard for top billing in his mouth. “Amazing.” He took another bite, considering. “The bread's a bit like the challah my grandmother used to make. I like it.”

“Challah? Are you Jewish, then?”

“My
bubbe
was, and my mom. My dad's Catholic. One item on a long list of things they disagreed on. I'm the only person I know that had to go to both confirmation classes and Hebrew school. Religion was just one more way to fight with each other without actually getting divorced.”

“Wow. That's kind of crazy.” She snagged another plantain from the bag. “The weirdest thing my parents ever did was putting up the Christmas tree the day before Thanksgiving one year, instead of the day after.”

“They sound very...sane.”

“If by sane, you mean utterly normal and conforming, yes. I'm definitely the black sheep of the family.”

“That sounds better than the constant fighting at my house. Maybe we should trade.”

Finishing his sandwich, he tentatively tried one of the plantains. Slightly crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and sweeter than he'd expected. He quickly grabbed another before Mollie could finish off the container.

When he couldn't fit in another bite, he stretched and looked around. The haze of his earlier imbibing was gone, and he realized that although the restaurant itself was modest, the scenery was spectacular. Dunes stretched for what seemed like miles, and beyond them he could see the deep blue of the ocean. Sprawling trees dotted the landscape, with huge green leaves the size of dinner plates. “What are those trees with the giant leaves? The ones growing right in the sand?”

“They're called sea grapes. Those big leaves help block any light from the town that might disturb nesting sea turtles. In the summer they grow these berries that look almost like grapes that the birds go nuts for. And of course the roots help stabilize the dunes, so they don't just blow away.” She poured coffee into the two small cups. “It's beautiful, but there's a lot of strength there, too.”

Somehow, he had a feeling the same could be said about her.

* * *

Mollie wasn't blind; she'd noticed the way he looked at her. She just wasn't sure what to do about it. She should probably just walk him back to the Sandpiper, then go home and clean her house or something. That would be the practical thing to do. Of course, as the black sheep of he family, practical wasn't really her speed. Despite her mother's best efforts to the contrary. No, Mollie believed in going with her gut, and her gut was saying it was way to early to say good night. “How do you feel about a swim?”

He looked down at his faded T-shirt and jeans. “Now? I'm not exactly dressed for it.”

“Not here, back at the Sandpiper. I'm assuming you packed a bathing suit?”

He grinned. “What, no skinny-dipping on the first date?”

Oh, boy. He was cute and he had a sense of humor. And was totally on the rebound. She was in deep trouble. But in for a penny, in for a pound. “I'll take that as a yes. I've got one in the car, so while you get checked in I can duck into Jillian's room and change.”

“Jillian?”

“Jillian Caruso. She and her husband, Nic, own the Sandpiper. They have a private suite on the first floor.”

“Ah, when I made the reservations, Nic mentioned he'd gotten married recently.” He stood and collected their trash, disposing of it in the labeled bin. “I don't think I would want to live where I worked, with the public just a few doors away all the time.”

“Yeah, it's not ideal. But they're building a separate house on the property, so they can have some privacy. Plus, with the baby coming, they'll need the space.”

His smile faded at the mention of a child.

“What, don't you like kids?”

“Actually, I do. Up until a few days ago, I thought I was having one.”

She sat back down on the picnic bench. “Excuse me?”

He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “My ex-fiancée is pregnant—she's due in a month.”

“But it's not your baby?”

He shook his head. “When she ran out on me, she left me a note. It said she couldn't go through with the wedding and that I shouldn't try to find her. Of course, she might have said that last part because of the money she took out of my account before she left.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he started back towards the Sandpiper. “She also admitted the baby wasn't mine.”

Shell-shocked, Mollie just sat there for a minute, watching him walk away. Getting dumped was bad enough, but this was like something out of a daytime talk show. Belatedly getting to her feet, she ran to catch up with him.

What did you say after an admission like that? Maybe it was better not to say anything. He was a stranger and probably didn't need some random girl poking into his life. On the other hand, sometimes it was easier to talk about the hard things with someone you didn't know. And she wasn't good at keeping quiet anyway. “Do you believe her?”

He sighed, looking out over the water as if the answer to her question could be found along the horizon. “I don't know. I guess I have to. I don't even know where she went, and I don't know why she'd lie about it. Not that I understand much about why she did what she did. We never should have been together in the first place. She was a friend of a friend, no one I knew well, and it didn't take long to figure out we had nothing in common. But by then she was pregnant, and in the shock of it all I made a bad situation worse and proposed.” A harsh laugh escaped. “It seemed like the honorable thing to do, you know? But the more I got to know her, the less I could picture us married. We spent the last several months living mostly separate lives. At least she had the guts to realize it wouldn't work. I was too stubborn to admit it.”

“Because you thought she was pregnant with your child.”

“Exactly. As much as I wasn't in love with her, I wanted to be there for my son.” He stopped, and a hint of a smile touched his lips. “I was there when they did the ultrasound. It's a boy.”

“So what do you do now?”

“There's not much I can do. I hired an investigator. If he finds her, I'll get a court order for a DNA test. But he doesn't sound very hopeful.”

“That sucks.”

He rubbed a hand through his hair, shoving it back in a burst of frustration. “Yeah, it does. But I couldn't just sit around my apartment, feeling sorry for myself. I was going to go crazy.”

“So you came here.”

He shrugged. “I still had the tickets and it was too late to get a refund.”

She walked beside him in silence, feeling his betrayal and confusion. Maybe she'd only known him a couple of hours, but there had been an instant connection as soon as she'd seen him on the stairs at the inn. He was like a wild animal that'd been abused, beautiful and proud but hurting inside. She couldn't fix his life, but maybe she could help him forget a bit, at least while he was here. Sometimes a distraction was almost as good as a cure.

At the Sandpiper, she stopped in the gravel lot to retrieve her bathing suit. She unlocked the trunk and swung her backpack over her shoulder before taking the path to the front door.

“Does everyone in Florida keep an emergency bathing suit in their car? The way people up north keep blankets in theirs?”

“Not everyone. But I do, in case I want to go for a swim after work or on my lunch break.”

Noah's single suitcase was on the covered porch where the cab driver had left it. He grabbed it with one hand and held the door for her with the other. “Wait, you go to the beach on your lunch break?”

“Sure, it's only five minutes from the clinic I work at. I can change, have a half-hour swim, then eat a sandwich in the car on the way back to work.”

He shook his head and smiled. “No wonder they call this place Paradise.”

* * *

Mollie left Noah at the front desk with Jillian while she went to change into her suit. Ducking into the master suite, she noticed the new hardwood flooring in the halls and fresh paint on the walls. Nic was doing a great job restoring the old inn. Of course, she was happy that Jillian had such an incredible place to live, but the whole idea of marriage and babies seemed so grown-up and responsible. She wasn't ready for all that yet. She'd seen what raising a family had done to her mother's dreams—her professional dance career had ended before it really began—and Mollie wasn't going to let that happen to her.

Which was why she didn't date. Dating led to relationships—first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Mollie with a baby carriage. No, thank you. She had things she wanted to accomplish, and getting sucked into the mommy track wasn't in the plans.

Jillian poked her head around the door. “Hey, I just checked in a Noah James. He said you two are heading to the beach?”

“Yeah, we're going to get in a swim before dark.”

Jillian's eyebrows rose. “You know he was supposed to be here on his honeymoon, right? He's on the rebound, hard-core.”

Mollie rolled her eyes. “I'm not sleeping with the guy—we're just going swimming. I found him on the front steps earlier, and we ended up getting a bite to eat at Rolando's. He seemed like he could use some cheering up.” She reached back to adjust the tie of her bikini top, torn between sharing his story with her friend and protecting his privacy.

Jillian's expression softened. “Yeah, I guess he does. I don't know very much about him—he dealt with Nic when he made the reservations. They know each other, though, from some welding project he worked on for Caruso Hotels. Nic says he's a good guy, but still, be careful, okay? I know you never turn away a stray, but you don't want to get wrapped up in that level of drama.”

Be careful. Safety first. Look before you leap
. Why did everyone feel the need to say things like that to her? She was twenty-six, not twelve. She was getting tired of everyone she knew treating her like she couldn't handle herself just because she led her life a little differently. So what if she ate sushi for breakfast sometimes or preferred thrift-store T-shirts to business casual? And yeah, she had daydreamed and doodled her way through high school, but not everyone could be the straight-A student her sister was. She'd graduated just the same, and if her choice to focus on the arts rather than something practical was a risk, it was one she was willing to take. Her goal was to live life without regrets, to follow whatever adventure came along.

Maybe that's why she'd been so ready to take a chance and invite Noah to dinner. A small rebellion against all the caution signs surrounding her. Or maybe he was just that intriguing. Whatever it was, she wasn't backing off. Her gut told her he needed a friend right now, and despite what everyone seemed to think, her gut was usually right.

“We're going for a swim, not robbing a bank. I'll only be a stone's throw from your back door. Heck, you can send Nic to find us if we aren't back in a few hours.” She threw the backpack on her shoulder and headed for the door.

“I might just do that.” She grinned. “But in the meantime, he's lucky to have you to introduce him to Paradise Isle. He couldn't ask for a better tour guide.”

“Well, when you've never been anywhere else, you get a good appreciation for a place.” She shrugged. “But thanks. I'll see you later.”

She found Noah waiting for her out back. Nothing like watching a man's mouth fall open to boost the ego. She didn't have the curves of a supermodel, but her new push-up bikini top seemed to be working just fine. “You can put your tongue back in your mouth now.”

He chuckled. “I'll apologize for staring if you want, but it would be a lie.”

She understood his predicament. She was doing some ogling herself, taking in all six-foot something of him. She'd known he was tall and broad-shouldered, but she hadn't anticipated all the lean, tanned muscles he'd been hiding under his street clothes. Jillian was right—this man was no stray.