Small-Town Hearts (7 page)

“Just bring yourself,” Megan's mother assured him. “We've got plenty of snacks, and Megan's dad can grill hot dogs. Then we can pretend we're at the stadium.”

“That's stellar seating right there,” Danny agreed, grinning. “Thanks so much for the invite. I'll be there.”

“And bring Meg, even if she tries to resist,” her mother added before she resumed their walk. “She'll most likely have a list of things she thinks she needs to do with festival season upon us, but hopefully you can convince her otherwise.”

Her smile said more than her words.

Pretty sure he'd found an ally, an important one at that, Danny nodded. “I'll do my best, ma'am.”

H
annah entered the candy shop kitchen on Saturday morning and waved a slip of paper Meg's way. “A note for you.”

“For me?”

Hannah raised her eyes skyward. “Your name's Megan, right?”

“I believe it is,” Meg quipped back, her curiosity piqued. Caught at a critical moment in caramel making, Meg sent a look of frustration to Hannah. “Who's it from?”

Hannah held the note up to the light, scanned the contents, then grinned. “Cute guy next door.”

“He signed it ‘from the cute guy next door'?” Meg wondered out loud.

“No, he signed it ‘Danny.' The embellishments were all me.”

“What's it say?” Meg eyed the caramel mixture, decided it needed a minute more and hiked a brow, trying to stem her impatience. No luck.

“You can't wait 'til you're done with that and read it yourself?”

“No.”

“Ah-hah.” Hannah's smile suggested too much or maybe just enough, Meg wasn't sure, but she was totally certain she
wanted to know what the note said sooner rather than later. “Hannah. Please?”

“Well, since you said please…” Hannah unfolded the note, added a ridiculous note of urgency to her voice and read, “Meg, your mother invited me to watch the Yankees game tonight. I'm supposed to bring you along. Since you've been avoiding me for forty-eight hours, I wanted to give you a heads-up before tonight to prepare any useless arguments you might throw my way. Feel free to wear appropriate Yankees fan apparel. Danny.”

Meg went straight to the crux of the matter. “My mother invited him? Is that what that note says? Honestly?”

Hannah didn't try to hide her grin. “It does.”

“On purpose?”

“So it would seem.”

“I am so giving her a piece of my mind,” Meg sputtered, striving to keep her attention on the boiling mixture while plotting and planning what to do with an interfering mother who should have known better. “What was she thinking?”

“Being nice?” Hannah suggested.

“No doubt that's what she'd want us to think.” Meg scowled, tested the candy mix and frowned more deeply because it wasn't quite right yet and she needed both hands to throttle her mother.

“And isn't your mother working today?”

Hannah was right. The dental office in Wellsville was trying to accommodate people's crazy schedules and had started opening on Saturdays a few weeks back. Her mother alternated Saturdays with the other hygienist, and today was her day to work.

“You can yell at her later, though,” Hannah added, teasing. “Because why on Earth would you want to spend Saturday night with a cute guy, eating hot dogs and watching baseball on a big-screen TV?”

“Cute guy?” Alyssa Michaels walked in the back door,
breathed deep and sighed in delight at the combined scents of cookies and candy. “Meg's giving the guy next door a chance? Tell me more.”

Hannah hooked a thumb toward the van outside. “I would, but we've got a booth at the strawberry festival, and I promised I'd deliver the cookies to the girls staffing it.”

Meg studied the drizzle of caramel, nodded satisfaction, switched the burner off and moved the big, cast-aluminum pot to the table behind her. “Are you sure you're okay doing the ice cream stand with Crystal tonight? After dropping this stuff off and working at the library?”

“Positive.” Hannah's matter-of-fact voice said it wasn't a big deal, but Meg knew it made for a long day. “The library is only open for six hours, and it's the last Saturday until after Labor Day, so it's fine, Meg. And the extra money I make here over the summer makes a big difference in my finances.”

“And having Hannah help Crystal tonight means you're free to watch baseball with the cute guy,” Alyssa added.

“Except that I planned on getting ahead for tomorrow.” Megan poured caramel into the molds carefully. The intoxicating mix of dark sugar and milk chocolate delighted her senses while her mind thought of her mother's possible motives for extending an invitation to Danny. Karen Russo knew better. She'd witnessed Meg's heartbreak, her embarrassment. Both times. What was she thinking?

Determined, Meg turned her attention back to the task at hand. The work she did now made up for the lack of business midwinter, and as busy as summer was for a store owner and festival vendor, Meg would have plenty of time to rest come January, February and March. Those three months could make or break a business in this climate, and while Meg might be a little soft in matters of the heart, she was tough in the ways of the business world. Covering her bottom line meant work now, play later.

 

“You ready, Megs? It's six-fifteen. Game time is seven-oh-five.”

Megan turned toward Danny's voice, scanned his worn Major League Baseball T-shirt, and shook her head as she set out fudge pans. “Working. Sorry. Enjoy yourself, though.”

Danny stepped in, eyed the cold stove and grabbed her hand. “There's a game on, Miss Russo. Time to go.”

She frowned, wishing the feel of his fingers didn't warm her somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. Their meshed fingers felt just right.

“Yankees versus Tampa Bay,” he urged, imploring, tugging her toward the door, his smile cute and possibly lethal. “You got my note, right? We're watching it at your parents' house.”

“We're
doing no such thing,” she corrected smoothly. She pulled her hand free, turned and rolled her right shoulder, trying to ease a persistent kink.

“Sore?” Danny moved behind her and pressed the flat of his hand between her shoulder blade and the center of her back.

“Ouch. Yes. Right…”

“Here.” Danny indicated the area with the flat of his hand and then kneaded the muscle below with gentle fingers. “You've got a knot here from using your right arm continuously.”

“I'm right-handed, thereby limiting my options.”

“Push yourself to alternate hands,” he advised, his hands working some kind of delightful magic against the taut muscle that stretched from midback to her shoulder. “Your trapezius is taking a beating on this side.”

Or she could just have him massage the fatigue away each night. The appeal of that made her step away. “Thanks. It's fine. And how did you wrangle an invite to my parents' house out of the blue like this?”

“It's we, not I, and your mother took pity on me because I didn't have cable. And you have Hannah and Crystal running the ice cream stand all evening. I know. I checked.”

“I have work to do.”

“All work and no play—”

“Says the guy who disappears at first light and stays gone all day.” He flinched a little, just enough to make Meg wonder about his purpose in town. “Rumor has it you're secretly a federal agent, working on some big case hidden in the Appalachian foothills.”

“That comes off as way more exciting than the reality.” He jerked his head toward her side of the house. “Do you need a jacket? A sweater?”

“No, because I'm not going.”

He didn't move, just stood silent, watching. Waiting. The warm look of gentle expectation had her rethinking every horrible thing she'd ever said about men the past four years. His eyes, calm and steady, said he'd wait her out. The tiny grin that quirked his mouth meant he had the patience to do just that. And she hadn't hung out with Ben in days…

“All right.”

His grin deepened.

“But not because you're pressuring me,” she scolded. She called goodbye to Hannah and Crystal, patently ignoring Hannah's profile smile. “I haven't had time to do anything with Ben all week.”

“And there's nothing like a Saturday night baseball game to offer bonding opportunities,” Danny finished for her. “Exactly my point. And your father's cooking hot dogs.”

“This just gets better and better, doesn't it?”

She started to turn away as they rounded the corner of the house, but Danny caught her arm.

“Hey.”

She kept her gaze down, feeling trapped by the combi
nation of Danny, her parents' invitation, Ben's behavior problems…

He raised her chin and met her gaze. “They're just being friendly because I bought the fruit last week.”

“The…” She hesitated, puzzled, not expecting this turn of events. “What?”

“The fruit Ben knocked over,” Danny explained. “I bought it. John Dennehy told your mother what I'd done and when she saw me in town, she invited me. Nothing more, nothing less. No one is setting you up. Least of all your mother.”

Megan sighed. She turned her gaze away from him and focused on a spot over his shoulder, then worked her jaw and blew out a breath. “All right. I'm sorry.”

“For?”

She met his eyes, deciding they were way too gorgeous to be ignored. “Thinking it was something else. Jumping to conclusions that had no base in reality.”

“What if they have a base in reality? What then?”

“But they don't.” She countered his words by striding forward, refusing to meet his gaze, her focus undivided. “So it's not an issue.”

“It could be an issue. If we let it.”

The look of frustration returned, but not nearly as dark or deep. “No. It couldn't.”

“You sure?”

“Listen, I—” She turned, peeved that he refused to drop the topic, irritated by the opportunity he offered and the fact that it tempted her at all.

His grin disarmed her. She stood stock-still on the sidewalk, looking up at him, the glint in his eye, the strength of his squared jaw, the strong set of his shoulders even in a faded Yankees T-shirt that had seen better days.

Part of her wanted to melt.

Part of her wanted to smack him for being so nice, so inviting, so comfortable with himself, his teasing words tugging
her back into a game she'd been burned at twice. Where was her resolve? Her backbone? She couldn't trust herself, her judgment, her choices, not when it came to matters of the heart. She'd proven that in front of the whole town.

 

Danny stepped closer, a part of him wanting nothing more than to wipe the frown from her face, erase the tiny lines of worry etched by a pair of jerks who didn't know a good thing when they saw it, then realized he was probably no better. His plans didn't include the happy ending girls sought, although something about Megan made that seem almost possible.

But it wasn't. And he knew that, and still he moved forward, letting his gaze search her eyes, her face, her mouth…

A gentle brush of the lips, that was all he intended. Just a hint of her, the delightful mix of old and new that was Megan Russo, a fellow entrepreneur and candy maker, a young woman whose spirit called out to him despite all the reasons this couldn't possibly work.

She smelled of vanilla and chocolate with a hint of toasted almond, a heady combination that drew him, a mix of familiarity and something else, something uniquely Megan, an allure that had called to him every time he deliberately passed her door without a look, without a glance, chin down until he got to his car. And then he managed to stay gone all day, until after the ice cream window closed at nine-thirty, making himself scarce until she was safely tucked in her apartment. Out of sight.

Not out of mind.

“Danny.”

He paused the kiss, wondering if she felt the same way, wondering if simple proximity sent her heart into a danger zone the way his had done, half hoping it had, almost afraid it didn't.

He stepped back, knowing too much, who he was and why
he was there in Allegany County, looking to develop a store close enough to threaten her business.

She started to speak, but he shushed her with a gentle finger to her mouth. “One day at a time. Please.”

She shook her head, but her eyes said something different, a tiny spark of hope brightening the gold flecks. “Danny, I—”

“Don't want to be hurt, used or embarrassed in front of the entire town again,” he filled in for her. “I get that. What I don't get is—” he waved his free hand between them, indicating her, then himself “—this. But I can't deny it, either, and I've spent most of the past week skulking in and out so I didn't see you, couldn't hear you and wouldn't be tempted to stop by and make you smile. See you laugh.” He brushed a hand across her forehead, smoothing tiny wisps of curl back away from her face. “But I can't spend the next seven weeks doing that. So either I move out and find a place that doesn't have your smile, your cute old-fashioned dresses that make me appreciate American history in a way old Mr. Gorham never could in high school…”

Her smile deepened, the dimple on her left cheek flashing just for him.

“Or I stay in my apartment and we stop pretending that we're not listening for one another. Or sneaking peeks out the window.”

She blushed.

He grinned.

“And since it goes both ways, I suggest we see where it leads us.”

Megan stepped back, reality urging caution. “In less than two months it's going to take you away. Whereas I'm going to be right here, stirring chocolate, molding candies and dishing up ice cream treats for the football teams after practices.”

“Possibly. But how will we know if we don't take a chance?”

“Well, Danny, I've taken chances.” Megan took a broader step away. “And I'm not so big on them right now. You've been in town long enough to know that I've been the object of discussion, and you overheard enough last week to explain why, so it's probably best if we just maintain a nice, friendly business relationship. End of story.”

She refused to dwell on that kiss. How she got lost in the moment, totally dazzled, as if her heart and soul were there for the taking. That in itself was reason to run. She couldn't afford any more stupid mistakes. A girl's heart could take only so much. Right?

His expression said she hadn't exactly convinced him. Oh, well. She'd convinced herself, and that was all she needed right now.