“You look…” Chance gestured at his own face.
Right, she was blushing hard enough to start a fire. Nice of him to point it out.
“I’m fine.” She stretched her smile wider. “Thanks again.”
She rushed out of the donut shop as fast as she could, which wasn’t that fast these days. It was only when she was two blocks away, shaking out the keys to her apartment above the Swing Inn, that she realized the awful truth.
She’d gone through with it. She’d left the ad pinned up on the Donut Palace bulletin board.
Chance Kessal liked things easy.
Some people thought that a character fault. Like his older brother, Quint, or their father, Holden. They’d married their sweethearts right out of high school, which should have guaranteed them happiness, but they were both miserable.
Chance didn’t want to be like Quint, for damn sure not like Holden, or any of the rest of the cursed Kessal men.
Why fall in love if it hurt? Why not have the best night of your life, then happily say goodbye in the morning? Chance did it most weekends, and his life was great. If he tried to force something he wasn’t capable of, like a commitment longer than an evening, those women only got hurt.
Chance never wanted to hurt anyone. And he never wanted a woman to expect more from him than he could give.
When he walked into the Donut Palace that fine morning and found Cordelia Johnson, his favorite bartender, looking miserable while everyone stared stonily at her, his back got up. He saw red, not that he ever let on he was angry.
This town needed to give the poor woman a break. Cordy might be a newcomer with no family or roots, but that was Reed Saxon’s kid in her belly. The town ought to embrace her like they would Reed, even if Cordy could be standoffish when she wanted.
They all missed Reed, Chance included. Reed had been a year behind Chance in school and had been well-liked by everyone, if kind of up his own ass sometimes. When Reed and Cordy had started dating, Chance privately thought that showed good taste on Reed’s part and not-so-good taste on Cordy’s. A woman like her could have done better.
Since the town had loved Reed, they needed to embrace his… Well, whatever Cordy had been to him. There wasn’t a good description of the situation she was in now, and no, Chance didn’t even let himself think the termbaby mama.That was plain insulting.
The Saxon family were the ones who should protect her most of all, but from what Chance was hearing, they were giving her the cold shoulder. Things had been tense at the funeral and didn’t seem to be improving. Sure, the family was upset at theloss of their son, and they were the kind of respectable folks who turned their noses up at having a baby out of wedlock—so most definitely not Chance’s kind of people. But they should put all that behind them and treat Cordy like a daughter.
Assuming that was what Cordy wanted, of course. Cordy might be even more allergic to entanglements than Chance was. She didn’t seem to have many friends and mostly kept to herself.
Cordy stood tall and thin, staring at the bulletin board like something tragic was up there. She would have been all elbows and knees if she didn’t move so gracefully. Chance wondered if she’d trained as a dancer at some point.
Pregnancy had softened some of her angles. Her skinny jeans emphasized her high, tight ass, and the clinging T-shirt showed off her deepening cleavage. Not that Chance had ever thought to try his luck with Cordy—he just noticed these things. She was hot as hell, but he knew better than to sleep with his favorite bartender.
Her usual calm expression was gone. Nothing rattled Cordy, not even a drunken brawl—he’d seen her keep her cool in the middle of one—but she was rattled now.
Chance was about to ask if everything was okay. Then she spun around and smashed right into him.
She started to tip backward. Her eyes went wide with fright.
Adrenaline flooded through Chance. Quick as a whip, he grabbed her arms and pulled her back to him.
Once she was firmly on her feet, he let himself breathe. Thank God she hadn’t fallen. She seemed steady enough, but he wouldn’t let go until he was sure.
“Hold up,” he murmured, same as he would to any frightened being.
She glanced at him, then away again. Her gray-green eyes reminded him of snow on the pines surrounding his home. Her long, wavy hair was the shade of a red Angus’s hide, one ofhis favorite colors in the world. Honestly, she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen—not that he’d ever act on it.
“Sorry.” Cordy’s voice was cheerful, but it felt like she was quietly pushing him away. “Thanks for catching me.”
As if Chance could just let her fall. No way, no how. He trailed his hand down her arm, keeping hold of her elbow in case she still needed him. “No problem. You okay?”
“Sure.” She gazed desperately at the door, her face sunburn-red. What the heck had been going on before he’d gotten here? Was she having some kind of medical thing?
“You look…” He pointed to his face because it would be rude to point at her.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t look it. “Thanks again.”
