Matched, p.14
Matched, page 14
“What kind of music do you like?” he asked.
She swirled her wine and told herself to get a grip. “I don’t listen to much music.”
“Ever?”
“Lady Naga could walk past me on the street and I wouldn’t have a clue.”
He sucked in his cheeks as though he was trying not to laugh. “What about Justin Beaver?”
“Him either. What’s so funny?”
Will shook his head and held up a finger. After a minute, his eyes were still dancing, green flecks peeking out amidst the brown, but he’d stopped snickering. “You’re one in a million, lawyer lady. You ever listen to anything but NPR?”
“Nope.”
“Gotta branch out some. Try some heavy metal. Grunge rock.”
“Grunge rock?”
He nodded, all fake seriousness. “You look the type.”
And there she went, laughing at him.
She never laughed in January. It was a refreshing change.
Also dangerous.
Wrigley sniffed the air. She tossed him a piece of chicken. He lunged for it as though he hadn’t been fed in months, then scrambled to a sitting position at her side.
“People at the shelter said he wasn’t ever this active,” Will said. “He likes you.”
So Wrigley was a shelter dog. She fed him another piece of chicken. “Do you have to return him?”
“I don’t take my dogs back.” The offense was heavy enough to make her feel guilty, even though she hadn’t meant it that way.
“I didn’t know if you were borrowing him”—she lifted an eyebrow—“to annoy me.”
Wrigley grunted in Will’s direction, and Lindsey smiled. “He didn’t either.” She stood to take her plate to the sink. “Thank you, again, for dinner.”
“Worth eating?” he asked.
“It was surprisingly good.”
He stood with his own plate and padded after her. She could’ve told him to leave it, that he cooked, she’d clean. But that felt too domestic. Too much like what her parents would’ve done.
At the thought of her parents, an unexpected lump settled in her throat.
Mom would’ve liked Will.
Rather, he would’ve charmed her out of her heels. She wouldn’t have just liked him. She would’ve adored him.
Will bumped her shoulder at the sink, and awareness flared deep inside her, deeper than just the smileys on her panties. She fluttered a hand. “I’ve got this. You can go—do whatever.”
“No trouble.” His voice was right there, right in her ear. “Like to clean up my messes.”
Was she one of his messes?
She turned on the faucet to rinse the plates. “Still. I can handle this.”
He was between her and the dishwasher. And he’d apparently decided he was done behaving himself, because he was watching her with a singular concentration, as though he were putting all his effort into sending subliminal messages that she needed to drop everything—including her clothes—and kiss him.
“Excuse me,” she said, but he’d broken so soundly through her barriers at dinner that her voice wobbled.
He took the plate from her hand. Set it in the sink. Killed the faucet. Stepped closer, his intentions clear.
Her breath came in short, shallow bursts. When she kissed a man, she kissed him on her terms. Always with an escape route clear.
Will anchored his arms on either side of her, trapping her against the countertop.
She didn’t like being crowded.
But she didn’t want to escape.
Didn’t want to be in control.
She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to lead. She wanted to feel his lips, his tongue, his teeth. The scrape of his stubble. The solid wall of his chest.
The scents of cotton and beer tickled her nose.
He was going to kiss her.
“Dessert?” he said, that voice rumbling over and through her, fracturing those cracks in her resolve.
She needed to say no. She needed to push him away. “Y—yes.”
He leaned closer, his lips a breath away, and then—
And then he pulled away. Let go of the countertop. And shoved a plate of cookies between them. “Me too.”
When she didn’t immediately move, he shrugged, took a cookie, then put the plate down. “My Aunt Jessie’s recipe,” he said. “Lady can cook.” He gave a nod, took a man-size bite, then sauntered to the sunroom.
Will twenty billion, Lindsey zero.
Again.
Chapter Eleven
LINDSEY WAS SCARCER than snowflakes in a Georgia summer on Saturday. Will didn’t hear her get up, didn’t hear her leave, didn’t know when she was fixin’ to come back.
So he called Mikey and got scarce too, settling in for working on some songs at Dahlia’s house.
Dahlia.
Mikey’s not-bad match, according to all that stuff Lindsey wouldn’t say. Will wondered if Mikey had figured that out. Probably not. Probably wouldn’t want to know either. Still, Mikey had spent more than a normal amount of time with Dahlia this week.
Her house was across the street from Vera’s final resting place, so Will stopped and said a few words. Wanted to cross the yellow tape, go digging, see for himself if he could find any of her strings, but Mikey pulled him over to Dahlia’s sparsely furnished ranch before Will got into places he wasn’t supposed to go.
“Dahlia’s a little tight on money right now,” Mikey said. “She runs this funky ice cream shop in downtown Bliss. Has a dirty flavor tasting next Saturday. We should go.”
Huh. Mikey was acting nervous. Like a girl.
“Holy shee-ite,” Will breathed. “Girl’s got you smittened.”
“Shove it, Billy,” Mikey grunted. “You comin’ for ice cream or not?”
Lindsey had nailed this one.
Will’s heart triple-timed it on a two-beat rhythm. “Miss seeing your ass mooning over a girl? Never. Be like hiding from the show at the end of the world.”
Lindsey was better than she would admit. Maybe she could see the good matches too.
Or maybe Dahlia had heard Lindsey pegged her as a not-bad match for Mikey and was taking advantage of the situation. “She using you?” Will asked.
“Don’t talk shit about shit you don’t know anything about,” Mikey growled. “Dahlia’s good people. I’m getting tickets. Telling everyone you’re going. She needs a boost. Shut up and be there.”
Will grinned and pulled out his Yamaha. “Sure thing, Mikey boy.”
They worked until Mikey had to disappear and meet someone at The Milked Duck—named by Dahlia’s great-aunt, Agnes Mallard, Mikey said—and then Will went to check on Wrigley.
Saturday night, Lindsey was still hiding out somewhere. Mikey was hanging with Dahlia, so Will took himself over to Bliss and went to Suckers. Pepper was there, along with the odd but strangely adorable Kimmie Elias. When Will assured Kimmie that his management had sent him to anti–mind-control training, and that he wouldn’t let her mother brainwash him into marrying Kimmie so her mother could get her hands on his money, she talked about freaky fortune cookies instead of her dreams about Will creating a turtle-rito, whatever that was.
All in all, not a bad night. And the food was pretty decent.
When he got to Lindsey’s house, he found a note on his guitar saying that Wrigley went out for potty shortly before 10, but nothing else.
After dinner last night, and that near-kiss, and watching Lindsey love on Wrigley, living in the bedroom she’d decorated special for her nephew, and now hearing stories from Pepper and Kimmie about what Lindsey had done for Natalie and CJ and various other people around town, it was clear the lady was more than a divorce lawyer with a secret gift for matchmaking.
To hear her friends and family talk, she was sounding more and more like the girl he’d fallen in love with.
But she didn’t show him that part of her. Not today.
Then, he’d known she had secrets. But she’d still let him in.
I love you, she’d whispered in the dark, skin to skin, body to body, heartbeat to heartbeat.
He’d heard her.
Not just once.
He’d felt it too, in the stroke of her hand, the brush of her lips, the burn of her gaze when she’d led him across that final bridge from boyhood to manhood.
She’d loved him.
Of course, her dumping his ass cold the next night, talking into that microphone for all the tavern to hear, on a stage where he’d sang her a song from his heart and proclaimed his undying love for her, that hadn’t been love. That had been hell to recover from. Took him months to be able to look at a microphone again.
But she’d had something that had been missing from all the girls he’d known growing up: big dreams, confidence in her smarts, her acceptance that he wasn’t the bookish type she was, and a desire to spend time with him anyway.
An unwavering belief in his dreams for him, right until that moment onstage.
You can do it, Will. You’re amazing. You need a plan and a little courage, but one day, you’ll be a superstar.
He’d thought fifteen years was enough to let go of how they’d ended, but the memory of loving her so hard, so deep, of believing she loved him too and then doing a complete one-eighty, kept nipping at him. It bugged him all of Saturday night on into Sunday morning. She’d slipped out of the house early again. Mikey had texted a do-not-disturb-except-in-case-of-dire-emergency message, which Will took to mean he was planning to score with Dahlia—poor girl—and which meant today would be another day of just him and his dog.
But by late morning, Wrigley had used up all his energy and was snoring by the fireplace, and Will wanted a human to talk to. He knew Suckers was open, and they had good food.
Plus, going there again fed the rumors that he was camped in Bliss rather than one town over.
And it wouldn’t ruin his day if Lindsey was there.
This early on a Sunday, the place was brighter and near empty. Lindsey wasn’t there, but Natalie and her little boy were. The lights were high and the music was low while she swung her foot and flipped through a dress catalog. She looked his way when he approached.
“Well, hey, Billy,” Natalie said. “Pull up a seat. You hungry?”
Will nodded.
Noah sat on the ground near her, singing to himself and playing with dinosaurs dressed in pink and holding baseball bats. Lindsey had mentioned the little boy’s dress fascination and his dinosaur obsession over dinner Friday night, and it wasn’t hard to see why she’d talked about her nephew with a big smile. Kid was cute.
CJ popped out of the kitchen. “How you doin’, man?” he said to Will.
“Getting by. Y’all enjoying married life?”
CJ and Natalie grinned at each other, and Will’s heart gave a hollow thump. He’d always thought he’d get the wife and kids while making it big would fade into a dream. Instead, he’d made it big and now wondered if he’d ever get a family of his own.
“It’s okay,” Natalie said.
“I was gonna say fair,” CJ said, but they were grinning bigger at each other.
“Y’all make a good burger?” Will said. “Could go for some of them cheese fries too.”
Natalie and CJ shared another one of them looks happy couples could pull off.
“Lucky you, the cook’s here,” Natalie said. “CJ’s idea of gourmet is putting Spam on a plate, and the burning water gene runs deep in my side of the family. Which you’ve probably already figured out.”
Huh. Now that she mentioned it, he hadn’t seen Lindsey cook much more than breakfast.
“Burger and fries, coming right up,” CJ said.
He went to the kitchen. Natalie tossed her short, dark hair and gave Will a speculative look. “Did you really take a dog into Lindsey’s house?”
Now there was an interesting topic to discuss with her sister. “Those two are soul mates.”
“You’re a handful, aren’t you?”
“Goes with being this irresistible.” Will grinned at Noah. “Bet he is too.”
Natalie gave the little boy behind her an indulgent smile. “Most days.” She peered closer at him. “Noah, did you have an accident?”
Will glanced back again too. The kid had a wet streak all down the front of his shirt.
“Mo-om,” Noah said. “I don’t have accidents. I use the toilet.” He grinned big. “I even wipe myself.”
Will nodded. “Me too, man. Me too.”
“I meant with your drink,” Natalie said. She grabbed a handful of napkins and pressed them to Noah’s chest and belly.
“Are you married?” Noah asked Will while the boy was getting wiped down.
“Nope,” Will told him.
“Are you going to get married? My mommy makes pretty dresses. If you ask nice, she’ll—”
“Oh, no!” Natalie lunged for a glass next to a coloring book and crayons, scooped out some ice, and tossed it on the floor. “Meteors are attacking your dinosaurs! Run, dinosaurs, run!”
Noah scrambled to his feet. His laughter echoed off the walls, “Oh, no!” he wailed in a falsetto voice. “Meteor-droids!” He took off skipping around the tables, making his dinosaurs fly.
Natalie brushed her hair off her forehead and slid onto her stool. “Kids,” she said with a wry smile. “We’re working on teaching him not everything in real life revolves around weddings, but it’s tough, living here.”
“Imagine so,” Will said.
CJ reappeared with a glass of water for Will. “He ask if you want Nat to make you a dress?” he asked.
“No, honey,” Natalie said in that sing-song, you’re-in-trouble voice. “Meteors attacked his dinosaurs first.”
“Guess you lucked out,” CJ said with an unrepentant grin. “Get you anything else to drink?”
“Not unless you’ve got some real sweet tea.”
“Got iced tea and sugar packets.”
Will shuddered. “No, thanks.”
What they lacked in sweet tea, they made up for in company. Other than Mikey and his family, Will wasn’t often around people who’d treated him like a regular person. With Natalie and CJ, it might’ve been the Lindsey factor, might’ve been that CJ’s sister had played in Will’s band, but there was nothing starry-eyed about either of them. No angles, nothing they seemed to want from him.
So today, he enjoyed himself, being himself. He was debating asking if the bakery delivered cupcakes when he realized Noah was singing something awful familiar.
Off-key and off-beat, but he was singing a Billy Brenton original to his dinosaurs.
Will choked on a laugh.
Words weren’t quite right either.
“Lookin’ for those bow spangle smiles,” Noah crooned.
“Oh, lordy.” Natalie hid her face behind her hands, but her shoulders shook with silent laughter.
Will spun on his stool.
Noah held the pink-dressed tyrannosaurus in his right hand, making it sing to the blue-dressed triceratops in his left. “Ain’t never been a mime, too like, too old, Air I was, moan on the gold…”
“Back up, back up,” Will said over another laugh. “Ain’t never been the kind, Noah, bud. Ain’t never been the kind.”
He walked Noah through the first verse. They hit the chorus, and Noah burst into song all on his own again. “And she’s glowing me her gritty miles, bunny miles, dime word miles…”
“Whoa, whoa,” Will interrupted. “Dime word?”
“He, ah, thinks you’re saying A-S-S-Y instead of sassy,” Natalie said, “which would cost me a dime to his college fund.”
“Got it,” Will said. “And now she’s showing me her pretty smiles, funny smiles, sexy smiles, her sassy smiles,” he sang for Noah.
Noah chimed in on the rest of it.
She wears her biggest smiles, her brightest smiles, her secret smiles, her underneath-it smiles.
And she’s wearing them just for me.
My snow angel’s smiles are just for me.
Will grinned at the kid, but Natalie stared at Will with a half-confused, half-thinking-hard-enough-to-make-her-brain-smoke look.
Uh-oh.
She blinked, then shook her head. But her eyebrows were still scrunched like she had a notion about something.
His heart kicked out a you stepped in it now, pal rhythm, coupled with the hair standing up on his neck.
“Did you—” She stopped herself.
Will felt an unusual warmth in his face. CJ walked out of the kitchen with a burger and fries. He looked at Natalie, did one of those silent-questions-to-the-wife looks.
“What exactly are your intentions?” Natalie said, and while Will had heard Bliss’s Queen General lady had some scary to her, Natalie was plain terrifying.
He gulped. “Ma’am?”
“Your intentions,” she repeated, making every syllable sharp and distinct.
“Regarding?”
“Regarding the subject of that song.”
Will sometimes had to wear his Business Billy face, and he was good at putting on a show, but he wasn’t good at lying. And Natalie didn’t appear to be good at tolerating being lied to.
The lady’s eyes had gone dark as night.
“Billy, you’re in trouble,” Noah whispered.
“Looks like,” Will agreed.
Natalie folded her arms over her chest. “My sister can take care of herself, but that doesn’t mean I won’t end you if you’re playing with her, and I don’t care who you are. In fact, because of who you are, if you hurt her, I’ll end you, and then I’ll bring you back to life so I can end you again.”
Will glanced at CJ, who had the half-afraid, half-admiring look of a guy who got off on watching a woman on a power trip. “Might could need that to go,” Will said to CJ.
“Oh, no,” Natalie said. “Stay. Enjoy the music.”
“Face the music?” Will said.
“That too.” She smiled sweetly, which was even more terrifying than her intentionally scary face. “It’s the least you can do for teaching my son a song about my sister’s underwear.”
Will bit his tongue.
Because otherwise, he’d ask if Lindsey still wore those smiley face panties. And even he knew that was a bad idea.
