She drank her coffee because she didn’t know what to say or do. She wasn’t good at asking for help, and it didn’t help that she was a perfectionist. She expected herself to execute things flawlessly. For that matter, learning new things wasn’t one of her strengths, and it had been a struggle the past few days trying to figure out the store. “I am doing my best, but I am truly out of my element. I specialize in numbers and am awash in words and I honestly don’t know why Lesley gave me, of all people, the store. I’m the last person who should be in charge of something like this.”
“Why don’t you ask her that?”
“Because it would feel like defeat, and I’m not a defeatest.”
“But you’re also not a machine. You have questions, you have feelings—”
“Ugh. Please don’t say that ever again.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “You don’t like feelings?”
“I avoid them whenever possible.”
“You make me smile,” he said.
“I’m not trying to.”
His smile just widened and the smile was so gorgeous and sexy it made her heart do a silly flip. “If I can help you sometime, will you let me?” he asked.
“You’ve already helped me a lot. You took me for that lovely drive. You made sure there was nothing scary lurking in my building. You even showed me what good window displays looked like.”
“You’re not mad about that?”
“No, I appreciate it. I value the truth.”
“So do I,” he said quietly, his blue gaze meeting hers and holding, the expression in his eyes so warm it put fresh butterflies in her middle.
After a moment, she dropped her gaze and fidgeted in her seat. “Here’s a truth,” she said lowly, “if I called Lesley, I wouldn’t ask about the store.”
“No?”
“No.” She kept her gaze locked on her plate. “I’d ask about my mom.”
She waited for him to say something but he didn’t, and she hated all the yawning silence, a silence that made her feel too much and God help her, she wasn’t good with emotions. Feelings. Love, loss, pain. There had been so much loss and pain when her mother was sick, and even more loss and pain after she was gone.
“I would hope Lesley could tell me things I’ve forgotten,” she added, digging the prongs of her fork into the thick icing and peeling it from the layers.
“I don’t remember enough about my mom,” she said after another beat. “When I’m at the office, buried in work, I can block out everything but the work. But here, I’ve so much time on my hands and I find myself thinking about things the way they were before Mom died, and I just come up… blank. My entire past has become something of a blur.”
“What happened to your mom?”
“Cancer. She was diagnosed at the end of my freshman year, and was gone by October of my senior year. High school is fuzzy. My senior year is fuzzy—I literally remember nothing after the funeral. Even before she was sick is now foggy. Why can’t I remember more?”
“You were young and something devastating happened. Sounds like your brain tried to protect you.”
“I don’t blame my brain. I blame me. After she died, I didn’t want to think about her. Hospice sucked. I didn’t want to remember her the way she was at the end. It was awful. She was so skinny—all bones and bruises—and it was hard to look at her. I didn’t even want to hug her because I was afraid it’d hurt her, and maybe she’d break—” She exhaled hard, and fought to keep her voice even. “I wished I hugged her so much more. I regret being afraid—”
“You were a teenager, Rachel.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she retorted fiercely. “Once people are gone, they don’t come back.” She reached up and brushed fingertips beneath her eyes, not about to let tears form or fall. “I worked so hard to block out the bad memories that now I can’t remember anything.”
“Other than grandparents, I’ve never lost anyone close to me,” Atticus said after a moment. “So I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through. I’m just sorry you had to experience so much loss so young.”
Rachel grimaced. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I never talk about this.”
“Maybe I’m a good listener?”
“Or maybe you want that bookstore really badly.”
“What does that mean?” he demanded, sitting taller, his deep voice sharpening.
She was feeling prickly and out of sorts and she shrugged impatiently. “You’re ‘befriending’ me,” she answered bluntly, doing air quotes around the word befriending, “to increase your odds for ending up with the store.”
He now looked as annoyed as she felt. “I don’t need to befriend you to get the store. I’m hanging out with you because I like you.” He must have seen her expression because he added, “Is that really so shocking?”
Her prickly defensiveness just increased. “I’m on the nerdy side, and I know it.”
“Nerds can be cool.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. I’ve been a nerd my whole life, and I love my life. It’s interesting and I’m myself and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Nobody is going to meet you and think you’re a nerd.”
“Nobody is going to meet you and think you’re a nerd, either. You’re beautiful—”
“Oh, come on.”
“Don’t you look in the mirror?”
“I try to avoid it.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t—” She broke off, shoulders twisting. “Find my appearance all that interesting. There are other things I’d rather focus on.”
“Like numbers?”
She smiled ruefully. “Well, yes.”
“Men are attracted to you, Rachel. You must know that.”
“I don’t really pay attention.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you should pay more attention to the world around you.”
“Ugh. Now you sound like my dad. He’s begun talking about trying to set me up with one of his former grad students.” She shuddered. “I can’t think of anything worse.”
“Why?”
Rachel flashed back to Eric and the demise of their relationship. He wanted so much more from her, and he couldn’t understand why—at her age—she wasn’t ready to settle down. “My last relationship ended in May when I chose to focus on my career and not on ‘us.’” She stabbed the cake, cutting a big bite. “He was a nice guy, and probably a really good catch. My father certainly liked him—they’d talk economics for hours—but I wasn’t ready to get engaged, and settle down.”
“So he broke it off?”
“No, I did. I didn’t think it was fair to string him along.”
“Don’t feel guilty. He wasn’t the right guy.”
“How do you know?” she asked, before popping the big bite into her mouth. Soft, moist cake with thick creamy, not too sweet, icing. For a second she felt almost human again.
“Because you wouldn’t let the right guy go,” Atticus added. “You’d fight for him.”
She lifted a brow, challenging him. Atticus was impossibly confident but she secretly found it quite appealing.
Atticus shrugged. “You fight for everything else, why wouldn’t you fight for your true love?”
She sipped coffee to wash the cake down. “Maybe because I don’t believe in true love. I think there is compatibility and respect and all of that, but I think the whole falling in love, can’t live without you stuff is a lot of commercial nonsense.”
Atticus just grinned and polished off his pie.
She leaned forward, and nearly pulled his plate away from him. “Why are you looking smug?”
“Because when you fall, sweet girl, you’re going to fall so hard.”
“Not going to happen.”
He just gave her another knowing smile. “We’ll see.”
*
He’d wanted to kiss her at the diner, and he wanted to hold her hand as they crossed the street, heading back to the bookstore, but he couldn’t do either.