Now he snapped his gaze to hers. “You weren’t there. You don’t know. So on top of me not liking storms and all that, I also have to deal with the fact that I was so fat people couldn’t lift me out of danger.”
“And that’s why you were so determined to be fit,” she said, her voice soft, like she was talking to herself.
“And strong. I’m the rescuer now, not the rescuee.”
“Javi.”
She said his name, softly, again, but a different inflection. Her gaze was soft, not pitying as he might have expected, but genuine and caring. She was still holding onto his arm, and he looked down at her small hand.
“I didn’t tell you the story to make you feel sorry for me, just so you’d know the truth.”
“I know the truth,” she said, but he didn’t think she was talking about the bus accident any longer. “And you have shown me who you are more just with this conversation than if I’d known you as long as your friends have.”
He hadn’t meant to do that. He had a façade he liked to keep up for his friends. For anyone he knew. He must have really been tired to reveal so much to Esperanza now. But the way she was looking at him, she wasn’t judging him for being weak. She was…understanding. And that felt…man, that felt…
He took a step closer to her, because that was where he needed to be, and he scooped his hand under those crazy curls because he needed to touch her, and he looked into those soft brown eyes framed with thick lashes, and watched her lips curve into a smile.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he said, at once happy to seize the moment and trying not to remember that she would be leaving Broken Wheel soon. Somebody with whom he had such a connection—how could he let her go without kissing her?
How could he let her go?
CHAPTER14
Espy’s heart thundered as Javi’s head descended, those full soft lips brushing over hers. As he nudged her lips apart, she let her eyes drift shut and gave herself to the kiss, sliding her hands up over his arms—those strong arms—to his broad shoulders. She had to stretch to stroke the skin at the back of his neck, the short hair there tickling her fingertips, sending tingles down her arms as his thumb rubbed back and forth just beneath her ear.
She was pretty sure tomorrow the Laughtons would be looking for her and someone would point to a puddle on the sidewalk and say, “There she is.”
Nope, she was not thinking about her clients, nope. She was thinking about herself and this kiss, and how she wanted it to go on forever even though anyone passing by could see them.
He was the one who broke the kiss, though, lifting his head just a fraction of an inch, his thumb still stroking beneath her earlobe and making her eyes roll back in her head.
“Wow,” he said.
“Um, yes,” she said because as much as she liked to talk, words escaped her completely right now.
He must have noticed, because he grinned and straightened, then took her hand and led her toward The Wheel House, that magical thumb still doing crazy circles on the back of her hand.
She may have whimpered, because he smiled down at her.
“I’m not even all that hungry anymore.”
She shook her head, because she was full of popcorn, so she wasn’t either, but they weren’t kids who could just find a spot and make out.
Heck, she hadn’t done that when shewasa kid. She hadn’t grown up in a small town like this, but she had lived in the same house for all her life, well, until she and Angelica had enough money to go out on their own, and she knew all the same people from the time she was little, and they just….stopped seeing her. So she understood Javi more than he thought she did.
Why did he have to live so far away? And she knew he was committed to staying here because of his mom. Besides, expecting a man she’d known a matter of days to uproot himself from the place he’d lived all his life to follow her was ridiculous.
But.
She was only married to Oklahoma two months out of the year, during storm season. She never went back to the same job she quit in March, always starting something new, wondering if she’d ever learn to love anything as much as storm chasing.
Because of that, she had a little experience in a lot of areas. She’d worked in a wine tasting room, been a barista, worked at a nursery—the plant kind, not the kid kind—But what could she do here? All the places she’d been had been run by the owners of the business, and if they had employees, they were teenagers. Where did people work in this town? She would not make a good cop.
So what could she do? Work remotely, maybe, but doing what? She didn’t have enough experience in any one area to know what she might be good at.
They walked into The Wheel House, and Hailey’s gaze dropped immediately to their joined hands. Her eyebrows went up, and when she met Espy’s gaze, a corner of her mouth hitched up. Espy felt her face heat. She couldn’t remember the last time she blushed.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held hands with a guy, had any type of PDA at all. Javi didn’t seem to feel self conscious as he stepped up to the counter.
