Maximum Exposure (23 page)

Her armpits were drenched; her neckline was a wet half-moon. Even the small of her back and her shoulder blades stuck to the worn cotton. She didn’t even want to think about the sweat down below.

She was wearing work boots and jeans because she’d learned the hard way that shorts and sandals meant bug bites in places she couldn’t scratch in public.

And her hair…After the first week here, she’d come close to whacking it with a pair of her grandmother’s sewing shears.

But then she’d remembered Gramma’s long braid, her gray and white hair plaited so tightly not a single strand pulled free. It had taken a few tries to secure her own hair so thoroughly, and most days she still wound the braid on top of her head.

If Dustin Parks could see her now, sweating her ass off, ruining her nails, too tired to make an appointment to trim her split ends. It would have been humiliating had she not been having the time of her life.

Her body ached—oh, how it ached, fuck but it ached—at the end of each day and gave her hell getting out of bed each morning. But stress?

She’d been here for almost a month, and she’d already forgotten what it felt like to be so wound up from dealing with Dustin, his idiosyncrasies, and his drama queen disasters in the making that she couldn’t eat or sleep, worrying that she’d let a vital detail slide, or she’d left an important message unanswered.

She’d kept up with the news coming out of Miami and had been thrilled about Tomás Bebé, though she’d cringed in sympathy when hearing of the fate of Splash & Flambé. Poor Livia. She had to be reeling—not only with the loss, but at the cause. And with the realization she’d employed an undercover agent for a year.

Thinking about Roman was harder. The only contact they’d had since her flight from Miami was the phone call she’d received from him while on the road. That had not been a pleasant conversation. But she’d done what she thought was best for both of them.

Roman didn’t need her in his way when he had a job to do, and a dangerous one at that. And really? The change had been good for her, a lot more so than the change she’d made when she moved from Atlanta to Miami.

Even so, she had to be in the right frame of mind to come home to Valdosta, and only now, on her own, was she there. She’d been seventeen when she’d left for college. She would’ve left at sixteen but for needing two more college prep courses, which she couldn’t get in summer school.

When she’d finally made it to college in Athens, she couldn’t believe there were almost as half as many students at the school as residents living in her hometown. She’d loved it. She’d absorbed it. She’d lost herself in the atmosphere, reveled in the freedom, the choices, the fun.

Those four years had been an incredible experience. Even now, she wouldn’t trade them for anything. But all this time there had been something missing, some unidentifiable longing nagging at her during times of feeling low.

And she’d found the puzzle piece here among Gramma Netta’s things—the part of her that loved the smell of freshly turned earth, that loved mornings spent drinking coffee under flawless blue skies, that couldn’t get enough of wrapping up in her grandmother’s quilts and sleeping under the stars.

She groaned. Jodi Fontaine. A country girl at heart. One who loved her iPhone and her wireless Internet and her Starbucks and her Coach bags and her Ann Taylor separates and her Kenneth Cole flats and her Saab, her poor Saab, which had been begging for days for a wash and wax…

At the sound of a dog barking, she looked up from the azalea beds where she’d been working. She shaded her eyes with one gloved hand, finally pushing from her knees to her feet. The dog she’d heard looked like a shepherd of some sort. And the man walking beside it…He looked like Roman Greyle.

She looked like shit, and he was here, and she looked like shit, and he was coming,
and goddamn, Jodi, calm down
, but she looked like shit. She’d been without him for days, for weeks. She didn’t need him, and she wasn’t going to let him see how much she still thought she did.

Calm. Calm.
She had to stay calm. Calm was her life now. So what if the one and only man she ever regretted leaving behind was walking toward her, his feet stirring up clouds of dust, a big oaf of a dog ambling along at his side, its tongue lolling?

She picked up the trowel she’d been using, whether to use as a weapon or to have something to do with her hands or to look like she was a productive member of farming society, who the hell could say. She just did, her fingers tight around it as she walked slowly—slowly, one step at a time—to the gate at the end of the long drive.

He beat her there, and he just waited, and she had to walk faster so he’d quit staring, or maintain her pace and give him a good, long chance to see what he’d been missing. But then she was there, too, and she curled her fingers over the top rail of the gate, the trowel banging against it with a metallic ring.

“Hi,” she said. “I see you found me.”

“Jodi Fontaine of Valdosta, Georgia. Even unlisted, it wasn’t hard. Seems everyone knew your grandmother.”

She smiled sadly. “You would’ve liked her.”

“No doubt.”

And then silence settled between them. It finally occurred to her that he was on foot, and her drive went on a half mile before meeting the county road. “You didn’t walk all the way from town, did you?”

He gestured with a jerk of his chin over his shoulder. “I left my truck parked just this side of a creek bed back there that’s looking pretty dry.”

“Yeah.” She turned her gaze to the sky, shading her eyes with her forearm. “We could use a good rain. A couple, actually.”

He grinned, shook his head, brought his hands up to curl over the fence rail on either side of hers.

“What so funny?”

“You,” he told her. “I didn’t even know you owned a pair of boots.”

She’d owned Prada and Cole Haan, but not John Deere until now. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me. A lot of things I don’t know about you.”

His eyes narrowed. “I know you’re hardheaded about doing things your way.”

“And I know you don’t need to be wasting time or energy worrying about someone who can just as easily take care of herself. Your job’s too dangerous.”

“Was dangerous.”

Was? What the hell? She didn’t believe for a minute he’d willingly step down from the DEA. “How so?”

He looked off into the distance, shrugged as if it meant nothing. “They cut me loose.”

She bopped his shoulder with the handle of the trowel, brought him back. “Why? Because you broke your cover and got involved with me?”

“That was a big part of it, yeah. And technically, I’m on leave. Company doc figured breaking my cover was a collateral symptom of burnout.”

That made sense. But still…“What are you going to do now?”

“Well, I’ve got to find a place with enough room for the dog,” he said, looking down at the mutt lounging at his feet.

“You’ve had him awhile?”

“Half a mile, I’d say.”

She sputtered. “I knew he looked familiar,” she said and squatted down to talk to the dog through the gate. “You belong on the Munson place, don’t you?”

The dog lifted his head from Roman’s boots and gave two booming barks.

“I thought so. You know little Amy’s probably worried sick.”

The dog got to his feet, backed up two steps, looked around, and whined.

“That’s right,” Jodi said, standing again. “You get on home. And stop picking up strays on the road. You never know where they’ve been.”

Roman watched the dog trot down her drive, then turned to face her again. “You’re amazing.”

“Why? Because I can talk a dog into doing what it should?”

“Dogs,” he said, then casually added, “Men.”

Whoo, boy.
She stared over his shoulder, watching the Munson’s shepherd break into a lope, reminding herself that she, too, had found her way home.

She was not going to be lured away by grass that could never be greener—though it was so very hard not to fall headfirst into Roman’s gorgeous dark eyes.

She cleared her throat, found her footing. “By men, I’m assuming we’re referring to you?”

He nodded, hinted at a smile.

She was not going to get hurt over this. She was not. She gripped the trowel tighter, used it to gesture. “Are you saying I’ve talked you into something? Because if that’s why you’re here, because I convinced you somehow to come—”

“Jodi.” He grabbed her wrist, pulled the tool from her hand. Then he stared into her eyes until she didn’t have to worry about falling, because she had turned liquid and melted all over him. “I’m here because it’s the only place I want to be.”

“It is?” she asked lamely.

“It is,” he told her again. “And I was hoping you might let me come in.”

Why wasn’t he in already? She looked at the lock, damned the delay. “I don’t have the key. It’s back at the house.”

A dark brow went up. His white teeth shined when he grinned and, along with his eyes, brightened his face and her day. “I think I can climb.”

She nodded worthlessly, stepped back, wringing her hands together, tugging at her gloves as he swung one leg over, then the other, because when he hit the ground—and he did right then—she wanted to touch him and hold him with nothing in the way.

He opened his arms, and she ran, crying out and launching herself because she was too far away, but he stepped forward and caught her, wrapped her up and swung her around and around, finally letting her slide the length of his body until her feet were on his, and not yet quite on the ground.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, her arms looped around his neck. “I saw you and the dog, and thought someone was looking for work, but then it was you. Oh, God. Roman. You’re here.”

And then she buried her face against the front of his black Henley T-shirt and sobbed until he was soaked. He rocked her back and forth, holding her and soothing her while the tension drained away, until she was finally able to breathe without breaking down.

She stroked his neck, his shoulders. “I’ve been so happy here. And I wouldn’t let myself want you. I could take being alone better than hoping, or the disappointment when you didn’t come.”

“But I did come,” he said, cupping the back of her head, kissing one temple and then the other, then nuzzling her church-lady bun. “And, obviously, just in the nick of time.”

“Why do you say that?” she leaned back to ask.

“Because you’ve got this big, fuzzy thing growing on the top of your head.” He frowned, looked around. “Hey, what did you do with that trowel?”

She yelped, jumped away, covered the top of her head with both hands. Then, laughing and crying at the same time, she ran to the house like all hell was after her, when it was only the man whom she loved.

He heard her step out of the house and onto the deck. He was wearing sunglasses, and so it was easy to pretend he wasn’t looking at her when she moved to the lounge chair next to his. She was wearing the same sarong she’d worn that day on Dustin’s deck, and just like then, once she sat, she tucked it around her legs tightly.

“I was out of my mind, Finn. I don’t know what I was saying, but I know I couldn’t have meant it, because I would never tell you to leave me alone. I would never
want
you to leave me alone.”

She’d said it once. Said it again. Said it in a tone of voice that even he, putz that he was, couldn’t misunderstand. Yeah. She’d been pretty goddamn clear about it that night.

And so he shrugged. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“And what you’re saying now, I’m supposed to believe, but what you said then, I’m not?”

She reached over, jerked the sunglasses from his face. “Do you think acting like a five-year-old is going to get you what you want?”

“It worked for you.”

“What do you want then? Tell me.”

He’d tell her, but he wasn’t going to make it easy. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of his chair, hovered as close to her as he could without coming out of his seat. “I want you to tell me what the hell I’m supposed to think when you tell me to get the hell out of your life after the month we spent together.”

She held his gaze for what seemed a silent eternity, finally looking down at the floor of the deck between them, as if she wasn’t so brave, after all. “I can’t tell you what to think, Finn. I can only tell you where I was then.”

He snorted. “Funny. I thought we’d been pretty much in the same place.”

“In the same place as far as our relationship was concerned, of course, we were,” she said, her fingers laced tightly in her lap.

“So you agree that it was a relationship.”

“It
is
a relationship, Finn,” she said, her emphasis not hard to miss. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Then explain how you view this same place thing, sweetheart,” he said, grabbing his sunglasses away before she broke the earpiece, which was all twisted up in her hands. “Because I still don’t know where you were coming from.”

“I don’t buy that,” she said to him, meeting his gaze, as if having found the courage while staring at the decking. “You’re too intuitive…too sensitive. I wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t.

“Yes, I hurt you. I know I hurt you, and I will never be able to apologize adequately for the things I said. But I believe with all my heart that you did know where I was. My soul had been ripped from my chest. I was lashing out, and you were the one I trusted to understand.”

“And that’s how you show it?” That was what was eating at him most. He did understand. He didn’t want to. He wanted to be a brat about his own feelings, his own hurt. But the truth was that he’d seen the life go out of her eyes the minute she turned on him and exploded.

She pulled in a deep breath. “What gets to me the most thinking back? I didn’t once ask how you were. I saw you there on back of the truck, holding an oxygen mask to your face, your arm bandaged, and I did nothing but berate you for not saving the store.”

She paused, her hands shaking as she reached out, touched the scab that was nothing. “You could have lost your life. I could have lost you. What I lost is nothing in comparison. I need to know that you don’t believe I’m that callous.”

He didn’t. It had been one night. One tragedy. But life went on, and as long as she knew that…

“Finn?”

He looked up. “I don’t believe you’re that callous.”

She nodded, swallowed, waited several seconds, as if she had more to say, then reached for her purse. “I have something for you. From Dustin.”

Parks had already paid him for the investigative work. He took the check, frowned. “What’s this for?”

“The photographs.”

“I haven’t even given them to him. We didn’t even finish the shoots.”

“I told him that. He insisted. He has this grand plan to auction the photos and raise money to help rebuild the store. I haven’t told him yet, but I’d rather he give it to the designers who lost so much of their work in the fire. We’ll see if he agrees.”

She seemed strangely ambivalent, and Finn frowned. “I thought you’d decided against a showing.”

“If something good can come out of it…” She paused. “Listen. I need to get back to town. I have another meeting today with the insurance people. I wish it would end, but no matter. I wanted to bring you that check and tell you in person how sorry I am about everything.”

She could have mailed him the check. Parks could have mailed it, for that matter. And she could have scribbled her apology on a note and stuffed it in the envelope. She didn’t come here for this.

“Can I ask you one last thing?” she said.

He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.

“Would you meet me at the bistro Friday morning for breakfast?”

“Across from the boutique?”

A sad smile spread over her face. “Across from what used to be the boutique.”

“I guess so. Why?”

“I’ll tell you then.”