SunnyWithAChanceofTrueLove (9 page)

“I love it,” he said. “It’s perfect. Better than anything I’d imagined.”

“I’m so glad,” she said. “I hope it makes Macy and Jim happy. I faxed pictures of the piece and the new decorations for the café to their daughter in Santa Fe. She said she’d make sure her parents saw them.”

Ross kissed her cheek. “Just when I think you can’t get any sweeter.”

Elodie smiled. “I’m not sweet. I’m selfish. I’m hoping this will help break the curse.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the curse,” Ross said, setting her back down on her feet.

“I don’t, but I don’t believe black cats bring bad luck either. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to turn around and walk the other way if one crosses my path. Better safe than sorry.”

“Well, I think we should throw caution to the wind and count our chickens before they’re hatched, instead,” Ross said, untying his apron and pulling off the ball cap he wore while he cooked. “As soon as we have everyone out the door, I’m taking you out to celebrate. Go get into something you don’t mind getting dirty.”

“Sounds like fun, but are you sure? We won’t know if the night was a success for a few days,” she said, nibbling on her bottom lip.

“The night was already a success. I had a full restaurant and everyone enjoyed the food. And I got to see your critters in person.” He shook his head gently. “They’re really something special, El. I’m not surprised people pay big bucks for your stuff.”

Elodie shrugged. “Well, I’m glad people seemed to enjoy them, but not everyone’s a fan. A few months ago, I had a critic call me a wart on the nose of surrealism.”

Ross frowned. “I’m guessing that’s a bad thing?”

“Yeah,” Elodie said dryly. “He said the art world would, and I quote, ‘be better off if Elodie Prince crawled back into whatever backwoods hole she came from and took her stuffed animals with her.’ ”

Ross snorted. “What an asshole. But I
am
glad you came crawling back to the hole you came from.” He paused, smile slipping as he ran a hand through his hat-flattened hair. “But I wanted to let you know, I’ve been thinking, and if you decide you don’t want to stay in Lonesome Point after all, I’d understand.”

Elodie blinked at the unexpected words, not sure how to respond until Ross added in a softer voice—

“But I hope you’ll think about taking me with you. I’d go. I could find a job wherever we end up and I don’t want you to spend another minute being bullied by Spencer or anyone else.”

Elodie reached up, cupping his handsome face in her hand. “There are bullies everywhere, babe. I’m not going to let them scare me away. I want to stay here. With you. Your friends and family are here and we’re making memories that are making me love this town more every day.”

And love you more every day,
she added silently. Every day, in a hundred different ways, she and Ross said I love you, but they both still shied away from the words. Elodie kept reminding herself that they’d only been a couple for a short time and it wasn’t really a big deal, but as they neared their second week of constant togetherness and Ross began to feel like a part of her flesh and bones, not just a person she loved having around, she was beginning to worry.

Her brave side insisted she should go ahead and say it first, but the part of her that was still the timid girl Ross had befriended years ago was afraid. What if he wasn’t quite there yet? What if she pushed too soon and scared him away?

And so she held her tongue and swallowed the words down, instead suggesting, “Why don’t you go schmooze? Everyone’s almost finished with dessert and I know they want to meet the chef. I’ll get cleaned up and be down in a little while.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Wish me luck.”

“You won’t need it. You’ve got talent and charisma,” she said with a wink, making him laugh as he headed toward the dining room.

She hurried upstairs, changing out of the blue dress she wore to waitress and into jeans and a soft white sweatshirt she didn’t mind getting dirty, wondering what sort of celebration Ross had in mind. She lingered in the bathroom for a little longer than usual, brushing mascara on her lashes and smoothing fresh Chap Stick onto her lips before re-braiding her two braids into one long French braid that trailed down between her shoulders.

These days she couldn’t stand to have hair tickling her neck, but back when she was a kid, she’d worn her hair in braids because she thought it helped hide the fact that she often went as much as a week or two without being able to wash it. When she was growing up, the water at the house was always getting turned off. The water or the electricity, so that even when they had water, it was often freezing cold. Elodie had very few golden memories of childhood or of her drug-addled parents, but she didn’t hold that against Lonesome Point itself.

She’d told Ross the truth—she was making wonderful new memories here every day.

But she was also making enemies, a fact that became abundantly clear when she stepped into the now empty restaurant and looked through the windows to see Ross facing down their childhood nemesis and his very big, very scary looking friend on the sidewalk outside.

CHAPTER NINE

Ross

“You seriously think you’re getting paid for what you did?” Ross shook his head, unable to hold in the laugh that rumbled in his chest, though the look on Spencer’s face made it clear he wasn’t in a laughing mood. “You’re even crazier than you look.”

“I made up the name for your stupid restaurant. I should get paid for it.” Spencer took a menacing step forward, but Ross refused to take a step back.

This had gone far enough. If Spencer and his friend had come to beat the shit out of him, then he’d take the beating. And then he’d go straight to the police afterward and file charges for assault. Spencer’s grandfather had been superintendent of the school and made sure none of his piece of shit grandsons paid for their sins growing up, and Spencer’s dad, the fire chief, had managed to keep his son from anything worse than occasional suspension from the fire department, but this was different. If Spencer let his infamous temper get the better of him tonight, he would be facing jail time, not suspension.

As Ross faced the other man down in the light of the street lamp glowing on the corner, he decided it would be worth a broken rib or two, to know Ross Spencer was locked away in a jail cell where animals like him belonged.

“I’m not paying you a dime,” Ross said with a smile. “But if you want to come around to the back door tomorrow, I’ll let you and your friend have the leftovers when the civilized people are done eating. I figure it’s the least I can do, considering it’s Valentine’s Day.”

Spencer lifted his fist, but Ross didn’t flinch. He was ready to take that punch. Hell, he was practically eager to feel Spencer’s fist in his face, to finally be able to make the bastard pay for being such a waste of human flesh.

But then he heard Elodie call out his name and his priorities quickly shifted.

“Go inside, El,” he said, turning to her. But he was too late. Bart, Spencer’s right-hand idiot, was already in front of the door, blocking Elodie’s way back in.

“Good to see you, Elodie,” Spencer said with a predatory smile. “Maybe you’ll be able to help us out. Your boyfriend doesn’t want to pay what he owes me for stealing the name I thought up for his stupid restaurant. I guess the loser doesn’t have any cash to spare, but I bet you do.”

“Fine.” Elodie’s eyes darted anxiously from Ross, to Spencer, to the man hovering behind her. “I’ll write you a check. As long as you promise to go away and leave us alone.”

“No, you won’t,” Ross said sternly. “I won’t let you be extorted, Elodie. Go back inside and if Bart tries to stop you, call the police.”

Spencer laughed. “No one’s calling the police. We’re having a friendly talk and I’m getting paid what I’m owed. That’s it. I know your girlfriend’s loaded, Ugly. She can afford to pay up. A couple grand is small scratch to a millionaire, right Stinky?”

Ross’s hands balled into fists at his sides. “Shut your mouth, Spencer. We’re not kids anymore. You don’t get to talk to her like that. Ever again.”

“And who’s going to stop me, Ugly?” Spencer asked, the cruel expression twisting his features making him look, for a moment, like the monster he was on the inside.

“Don’t, Ross,” Elodie said, sliding in between him and Spencer just as Ross was about to lunge for the other man. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes long enough for him to see the determination in hers. “It’s my turn. Because you’re worth it, too.”

By the time Ross realized what she meant, she’d spun and punched Spencer right between the legs, making him double over with a groan.

A second later, Elodie’s hand was in Ross’s, tugging him down the street.

“Come on!” she panted, dragging him along, displaying an impressive amount of strength for someone just a hair over five feet tall. “Run!”

Ross shook his head and pulled his hand away. “No. You go. Get somewhere safe, but I’m staying here. This ends tonight. I’m not running anymore.”

Ross turned, facing Spencer as he stood upright. Spencer’s face was pale, but there was murder in his eyes. Still, Ross didn’t rethink his decision to stay. He was sick of running from old shadows and keeping his mouth shut to keep from attracting the wrong kind of attention. Tonight he was going to face the past, and then turn and walk away from it once and for all.

Tonight, he was letting Spencer know that he might be the prettier Ross in this town, but in every way that counted, Ross Dyer was the better man.

“I’m going to make you bleed, Ugly,” Spencer said, but Ross only smiled.

“And I’m going to send you to prison, douchebag,” Ross said, feeling it was only fair to give the other man fair warning.

But even before Spencer’s fist connected with his gut and then his face and then his gut again, Ross knew it wouldn’t matter. Some people spend their lives running from shadows, but other people are too stupid to realize they’re carrying their own death sentence around on their backs until the day their bad karma comes around to bite them in the ass. But Spencer’s was about to come calling for its pound of flesh, Ross could feel it, and so he kept his arms at his sides, refusing to put a single mark on the other man or give him any excuse to claim that this had been a fair fight.

Even as Ross took a brutal punch to the side of the head, he didn’t regret his decision not to fight back. The only thing he regretted was that Elodie had to witness his beating.

He heard her scream as he fell to the ground and realized she hadn’t run, but it was too late to get her to safety. It was too late to do anything but curl into a ball and try to protect as much of himself as he could while both Spencer and Bart set to kicking him black and blue.

CHAPTER TEN

One week later

Elodie

By the time Ross was out of the hospital and on his feet again, the restaurant was booked solid for three weeks, and Elodie had already reprinted the menus, upping the price on every entrée to make sure Ross was able to cash in on his success as the tourists came back to town along with the balmy spring weather. She welcomed him home early on a Friday afternoon with a lunch of macaroni and cheese and sliced vegetables—the only meal she could cook without burning it to cinders—and tried not to fuss over him too much.

He’d already been fussed half to death by his mother and his friends and all the other people who didn’t understand why he’d done what he’d done. The people who didn’t see that he was a hero, although a stupid one. Elodie had bit her tongue every time she’d visited Ross at the hospital, but as they sat down to their first meal together in a week, she found the words spilling out of her against her will.

“You should have run,” she said, voice shaking as she set her fork beside her bowl of mac ’n’ cheese, her appetite vanishing. “Or I could have paid him off and it would have ended right there.”

“No it wouldn’t have.” Ross met her gaze, that same quiet strength in his eyes that she’d always seen there, even when he was a kid. “You know better. If it wasn’t the name of the restaurant, it would have been something else. He’d decided we were targets again. The only way to make sure he left us alone was to put him away.” He plucked a carrot stick from his plate and held it up like he was making a toast. “And now he’s facing a minimum of ten years for aggravated assault. If we’re lucky, he’ll get fifteen and we won’t have to worry about Spencer again for a good long while.”

“But you could have died,” Elodie said, voice catching. “He could have done worse than bruise your kidneys, Ross. He could have beaten you to death.”

“But he didn’t, El,” Ross said, his smile fading. “And everything is going to be okay. I promise you.” He motioned to her plate. “Now eat up. I want to show you your surprise. It’s been waiting since the day before Valentine’s Day. I bet it’s getting lonely.”

Elodie took a deep breath and snagged a celery stick from her plate, fighting the tears heating the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t cried any of the times she’d visited Ross in the hospital and she wasn’t going to start now, even if the man she loved was still covered in bruises and had the remains of a black eye yellowing his cheekbone. He was home and he was healing and hopefully he was right and everything would be fine.