SunnyWithAChanceofTrueLove (3 page)

Ross was none of those things, but he’d been able to convince Meg he was for a while. Maybe he could convince Elodie, too, though he didn’t like the idea of putting on an act with her. With anyone, really.

He was twenty-six years old and tired of pretending to be something he was not. Tired of pretending he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. Tired of playing hard to get, playing games, and playing the fool when yet another relationship failed to launch. Most of all, he was tired of being alone. Even with his best friends, a part of him had always felt alone, a part that had found kinship only once, all those years ago, when he sat in the dirt with Elodie Prince and twisted pipe cleaners into monster shapes while she told him stories.

And if that wasn’t reason enough to man up and ask her out, he didn’t know what was. Sometimes you have to take a risk, no matter how slim your chances of success. Some things—like beautiful girls with magical smiles—are worth it.

He pulled in a breath and turned to Elodie, a question about her dinner plans forming on his lips, when a collective gasp rippled through the sleepy crowd. Ross turned back to the burrow in time to see a massive armadillo barrel out of his burrow and make a run for the bluffs in the distance, waddling at a surprisingly brisk clip straight into the sun, casting a long, lumpy shadow behind him.

After a moment of stunned silence, the small gathering of Armadillo Day spectators broke into applause.

“Yes!” Clementine pumped her fist in the air. “Winter is over! Call Grandpa and tell him we’re going on a trail ride tomorrow, Mama!”

“How about we go eat breakfast and check the weather, first,” Tulsi said with a laugh. “If, by some miracle, the rain has vanished from the forecast, I’ll call Grandpa as soon as we’re done eating.” Tulsi reached out, touching Elodie’s elbow. “It was nice seeing you Elodie.”

“You too,” Elodie said, glancing up briefly from her notepad. “Have a great rest of your Armadillo Day.”

“We will.” Tulsi took a step toward the parking area. “You coming, Ross?”

“I’ll be there in just a second,” he said, turning back to Elodie, who was busy filling a second page in her notebook with tiny, narrow handwriting.

Tulsi and Clem moved toward the car, and Ross’s heart began to beat faster. The rational part of him knew it was just a dinner invitation, but his crazier half insisted this was a do-or-die moment, one of a very few that would impact the entire course of his life. If Elodie said no, then the part of his heart that had been hers—and remained hers, because he wasn’t the kind of person to forget his first love—would go dark and never light up again.

But if she said yes…

“Please say yes,” Ross mumbled, tongue slipping out to dampen his lips as he waited for Elodie to finish her notes.

“Yes,” she said, looking up at him with a serious expression.

He smiled. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

“I don’t care.” She lifted one slim shoulder and let it fall. “Whatever it is, the answer is yes. Ride on my scooter, yes. Kidney, yes. Special place in my heart…always.”

Ross’s smile faltered, her answer so unexpected it knocked the wind out of him. He met her gaze and watched a hopeful light creep into her eyes. It was the light he remembered from that day he’d wanted to kiss her when they were kids, because a kiss had seemed like the only way to show her all the confusing, wonderful, breath-stealing things she made him feel.

“Sometimes it just takes one person, you know?” she said softly. “To make the world seem like a better place. You were mine. Gram too, but you were the first.”

“I’m so glad,” he said, chest tight with unexpected emotion.

“Me too.” She stuffed her hands into her deep pockets with a laugh. “So what did I say yes to? I hope it’s not a kidney because I’d kind of like to hang on to both of them for a while.”

“I’d like to make you dinner,” he said, nerves melting away in the honesty of the moment. “Tonight, and any other night you have free this week.”

Her answering smile was dazzling. “Yes. And yes. But first, I was hoping you might be able to help me with something.”

“Anything,” he said, knowing he’d give her a kidney, too, if she asked for it, even though they’d only been reacquainted for a few minutes.

“I was hoping you’d introduce me to your friends at the highway department,” she said. “I need an in, and when I was asking Remi about you, she said you used to work there.”

“You were asking about me?” Ross took a step closer, wonder and disbelief mixing inside of him, making the moment feel even more dreamlike.

“I was. And call me crazy, but I think it was destiny that you were waiting here for me this morning.” She paused, biting her lip as a teasing twinkle crept into her eyes. “You were waiting for me, right? Not the armadillo?”

“Absolutely,” Ross confirmed. “And assuming two can fit on your scooter, I’ll cancel my breakfast plans and we can head over to the highway department right now.”

She grinned. “Sounds perfect.”

And it did, Ross thought. He didn’t know if Adolf’s break for the sunrise meant an early end to winter, but he knew that his life was certainly looking a lot sunnier now that Elodie was back in town.

CHAPTER TWO

Elodie

In the fourteen years since she’d left Lonesome Point, Elodie had come to terms with the fact that most people thought she was a little crazy. Or a lot crazy—depending on the person and how grossed out they were by dead animals, taxidermy, unconventional career choices, and women whose insides didn’t match their outsides.

In those fourteen years, Elodie had also realized that she wasn’t a smelly, ugly, contemptible troll of a person. She was, in fact, very pretty, in a soft, delicate way that made some men want to protect her, some want to control her, and a good deal more want to take her home and show her who was the boss in the bedroom. All of the above were eventually disappointed when they realized that Elodie was about as delicate as a chunk of titanium, and only showed her soft side to the people she treasured the most.

People like Ross Dyer.

Ross Dyer, who had his strong arms wrapped around her waist as she steered her Vespa toward the highway department office, making her nerve-endings hum with giddy pleasure. Ross, who hadn’t hesitated to climb on the back of the bike and let her drive, who had barely blinked an eye when she’d confessed that he owned a special corner of her heart, and who had asked to make her dinner every night she was free this week.

Every
night she was free!

It made her romantic soul hope that maybe he felt the same way she did—that it didn’t matter that it had been fourteen years since they’d seen each other or that they’d been kids when they’d started to fall in love. There was still something there, something special and undeniable.

Her gram had insisted that she was crazy to move back to a town that had brought her nothing but pain, even if the parents who had neglected her were dead and gone, but Elodie knew better. Lonesome Point had been a painful place to grow up, true, but it was also the place where she’d met the kindest, funniest, bravest boy in the whole world.

She’d never forgotten the moment Ross had told her that she was the most interesting person he’d ever met. Because he was the most interesting person she’d ever met, too—before or since. He always spoke his mind, never apologized for who he was, and had a quietly confident way of carrying himself that was more attractive than any amount of alpha male swagger.

Even when he was a skinny little boy whose jeans were always two inches too short, he’d made her blood feel bubbly. Now, she was fizzing all over, just from the pressure of his arms wrapped lightly around her waist and his thighs resting close to her own. She’d been keeping a sharp eye out for Ross since the moment she set foot in Lonesome Point, but it had still taken her a moment to see the boy she’d known in the man he’d become. Ross had always had beautiful eyes and a smile that made her heart want to get up and dance, but now he also had a boyishly handsome face, broad shoulders, and a lean, muscled body that made her intensely aware of every place they touched.

By the time she parked at the highway department office—a squat, concrete building near the last exit before the highway veered south—all she wanted to do was hurl herself into his arms and hug him breathless, but she managed to restrain herself. She was hopeful that Ross felt the pull between them, but she wasn’t sure yet. And until she was sure, she didn’t want to do anything to screw this up.

People could call her crazy all they wanted; it didn’t change the way she felt. And she felt like this was it—the day she’d been waiting for. If she played her cards right, this might be the last day of her single life, the day she started down the road to forever with the sweet, wonderful person who had captured her heart before she’d been old enough to realize how odd a critter that particular organ was. Now she knew that she and her heart were both a little strange, odd ducks in a world that preferred lightly-seasoned chicken.

She’d had lovers and boyfriends in the past, but none of them had made her feel as special or understood as one little boy had years ago. And once a heart has been understood—every dark corner seen, every shadow embraced—it’s impossible to settle for a softer shade of love. Elodie didn’t want pastels; she wanted vibrant, light-up-the-world color and only this man, in the ancient jean jacket and jeans with holes in the knees, would do.

As Ross slid off the bike, exchanging her spare helmet for the cowboy hat he’d stored beneath the seat, she let her eyes play up and down his long frame, amazed all over again that her brown-eyed boy had grown into this gorgeous man.

“Sorry about the holes,” Ross said, gesturing down to his jeans. “I was half-asleep when I got dressed this morning.”

“No need to apologize.” Elodie blushed, torn between confessing that she thought he looked delicious and embarrassment over having been caught staring.

In the end, she let embarrassment win, wanting to get her meeting with the highway department people out of the way before she confessed any more of her secrets. She had to focus and make sure this meeting went well. If she couldn’t get on the department’s good side, it was going to make keeping her shop in Austin stocked that much harder. She was already running low on inventory after taking a week off to move and get settled in Lonesome Point.

“So who’s the softest touch in there?” Elodie asked, motioning toward the door to the office. “The person most likely to do a girl a favor in exchange for donuts once or twice a week?”

Ross’s brow furrowed. “Well, I think just about any of the boys would sell you his soul for donuts, but probably Blake is the soft touch. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s always listening and ready to step in when people need help.”

“Sounds like my kind of person,” she said, barely resisting the urge to hook her arm through Ross’s as they started toward the entrance. The temptation to touch him was like nothing she’d ever experienced before—crazy, in the best way.

“Yeah, he’s good people. I wouldn’t have had the restaurant ready to open as fast as I did without his help with the plumbing.”

“I heard you’d opened a restaurant,” Elodie said, bouncing excitedly on her toes. “That’s so wonderful! I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

“I’ll give you a tour later,” he said, shyly. “If you’d like.”

“I’d love that!”

“Great.” His fingers closed around the door handle, but he didn’t open the heavy black door and the furrow reappeared between his eyebrows. “I hope it’s not rude, but can I ask what kind of favor you’re after before we go in? My head’s been spinning the whole way over, but I can’t figure out what kind of deal you’re hoping to work with the highway department.”

Elodie winced. “I’m sorry, I should have explained. I use animal skins in my work, but only the skins of animals that are already dead. I can’t bring myself to kill an innocent animal for the sake of art, even if it is the way I make my living. So that’s where the highway department comes in.”

Ross nodded slowly. “So you’re after the roadkill.”

“Exactly,” Elodie said, pleased that Ross didn’t seem put off by the thought. “But only the roadkill that’s in good enough shape to taxidermy. I used to go find it myself, but then I learned from a very unpleasant police officer that it’s illegal for a private citizen to collect roadkill in the state of Texas.”

Ross’s lips curved on one side. “Unpleasant, huh?”

“He kind of tried to take me to jail,” Elodie said, rocking back on the heels of her tennis shoes. “But luckily he got called away on some important business before he could arrest me for possession of an opossum.”

Ross laughed. “Not many possums around here, but lots of armadillos and jackrabbits. Come on in, and we’ll find you a hookup.”

Twenty minutes later, Elodie emerged with a smiling Ross by her side and Blake’s phone number programmed into her cell. The soft-spoken man had needed a little convincing, but had eventually agreed to give Elodie a call when he picked up animals that were in decent shape.

“Well, that went well,” Elodie said, unclipping her spare helmet from the Vespa’s handle. “At least he doesn’t seem to think I’m dangerously weird.”

“You’re not weird,” Ross said, accepting the bright blue helmet. “Your stuff is great. It’s like you’re giving dead things a shot at a bigger, more exciting life than they had before.”