I knew how to ski, kind of. I’d been to the slopes with my parents and brother a lot in my life. When I got older, since I didn’t enjoy it, I usually shopped or hung out at a lodge, drank cocoa and read while they hit the slopes.
But snowboarding was a blast. I loved it, and since Bodhi and Heather loved it a whole lot more than me, we had a ball.
So when the snow started melting and I could climb on board my Schwinn, Bodhi and Heather showed me the ropes of getting around. They also let me borrow a used trail bike from the shop and they took me out on trails.
It was amazing. I’d lived in Willow, thus Colorado, all my life but I had never seen the fabulous places and beautiful vistas I saw with Bodhi and Heather.
Mostly because I hadn’t gone out and looked.
Now I did, all the time. Even when Bodhi and Heather weren’t with me, I’d rent a bike from Bodhi and hit the trails.
Heaven.
The last five months I’d also worked hard to expand my business so I could enjoy my new lifestyle that included living, but also included such things as lift tickets, board gear, bike racks and insurance on two vehicles.
Thankfully, my expansion efforts worked so when I needed help with packing and shipping, I’d hired Heather.
She was as laidback as her boyfriend and she took me up on the offer. It was a good fit for both of us. She worked when there was work to do. It could be two hours a week, it could be twenty. She was up for anything and I needed someone who was flexible.
Heather definitely was that.
So I spent a lot of time with them, and Bodhi was helping me trick out my bike. I had a lighted, woven daisy basket. I had a hot pink, retro bike bell. I had a bright headlight and flashing taillight.
And now I had cutesie, girlie streamers on my handlebars.
I had it all.
Bodhi, arms still around me, suddenly whispered in my ear, “Dudette, GI Joe checkin’ you out. Three o’clock.”
It was such a bizarre thing to say, I leaned back in his arms. My face split in a huge smile, and I looked in his eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Total GI Joe. As in GI Joe, whoa,” he muttered, and we both were wearing shades so he had to jerk his head to his left to indicate what he was referring to.
I looked right.
And saw Raiden Miller standing outside his Jeep, wearing a skintight army green tee that was straining so much at his biceps it looked in danger of ripping. He also had on tan cargo pants, boots, and unbelievably cool gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses which did, indeed, seem to be trained on me.
I felt my breath start burning in my lungs as I mentally rewound the hit-the-town-for-errands preparations I’d done that morning.
Light makeup.
Blown out hair.
Pink, cuffed short-shorts and a white cutesie top that had a little ruffle around the collar and capped sleeves. On my feet were pearlescent pink slim-strapped haviannas.
Oh God, I matched my bike.
No! I matched my bike!
Thank God I’d worn my own fabulous shades, pink on the inside of the arms, black on the outside, but the frames were silver and shaped like cop glasses. They rocked.
“Seriously, they should update the doll to look like him,” Bodhi went on, and I looked back at him to see he was still eyeing Raiden. “Every kid in America would buy that doll.” He turned to me. “Boys and girls.”
He was absolutely not wrong.
I pulled out of his arms, lifting a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, acutely aware that Raiden Miller might be watching these movements.
In the last five months I’d let my hair grow, and Betsy said if I kept it up with just trims to the flippy layers she’d cut into it that it would be down to my bra strap by the 4th of July. This was because it grew so fast. Now it was halfway there. Long, thick with highlights and lowlights in it that Betsy said, “gives it lift and personality.”
It definitely had that. With its natural health and shine and my being in the sun all the time making the blonde even blonder, even I thought it looked pretty great.
Still, it wasn’t big hair, like Raiden’s cool, pretty skank.
I put Raiden out of my head (kind of) and opened my mouth to ask Bodhi how much for the streamers so I could get the heck out of there when Bodhi kept talking.
“I’m a dude, so even though he’s wearin’ shades, I can tell you, as a dude, you in those shorts, his eyes are aimed at your legs.”
At his words, I wondered if legs could blush. If they could, mine would have done just that, even though it was just coming on June and they were already tan since I was on a bike so much.
“I also know this seein’ as he’s lookin’ down… at your legs,” Bodhi finished.
Okay, definitely, legs could blush. I knew this when I felt the heat hit them.
“How much do I owe you?” I asked, taking Bodhi off the subject of Raiden and my legs. Moving to my basket, I was wishing for the first time I didn’t have a daisy basket that any six year old girl would be in throes of ecstasy over, but, suddenly I was realizing, any twenty-nine year old woman should think twice about.
“Was fifteen, seein’ as they’re custom-made by Heatherita, but since you gave me a hug, and I give discounts for hugs, we’ll call it square at ten,” Bodhi answered.
I grabbed my wallet. A long, Coach slimline pocket wallet that was made of a silvery champagne leather that I had to have the minute I saw it, but right then I worried was glitzy and ostentatious. I pulled out a ten and a five and extended the bills to Bodhi.
“Girl, I said ten,” he told me, but I shook my head and my hand.
“Take it,” I urged.
He had a bike shop to keep open, a pot habit, expensive hobbies and a questionable work ethic.
He needed the five bucks.
His shades held mine, then he took the money because he knew better than me that he needed it.
“You rock,” he said quietly.
“So do these.” I ran my finger through the streamers, something else I now had second thoughts about. Then I thought… forget it. I liked them. So Raiden saw me on a cutesie, girlie bike wearing a cutesie, girlie outfit that matched it.
I had my cop glasses.
I had a groovy friend who made me laugh and taught me to snowboard.
And I probably wouldn’t see Raiden for another five months.
So what did I care?
I mounted the bike, wishing I was pedaling home instead of pedaling further into town to run some errands for Grams. Raiden was parked, and thus obviously in town for a reason, and that reason might mean I’d run into him again. I turned around to face town.
“We goin’ out on the trails this weekend?” Bodhi asked, and I threw him a bright smile over my shoulder.
“Absolutely,” I answered.
He grinned back.
I dipped my chin to look at my feet and again tucked my hair behind my ear as I pushed up the kickstand and put feet to the pedals. I also looked out the corner of my eye Raiden’s way.
Just to check.
I felt heat hit every inch of my body making it tingle when I saw that now he was leaning back against his Jeep, arms crossed on his massive chest, shades, it appeared, still on me.
He had a sexy smile playing about his mouth and he looked settled in, like he was enjoying a show.
What on earth?
Okay. Whatever. It wasn’t every day a guy saw a twenty-something woman on a six year old’s dream bike wearing an outfit that matched her bike. So he had a show.
Again, whatever.
This was what I thought.
What I felt was idiotic.
I had to let it go, but more, I had to get out of there, so I took off, shouting to Bodhi, “Later!”
“Later, girl!” Bodhi shouted back.
I pedaled away and felt funny, hot and strange while picking up Grams’s meds from the pharmacy and grabbing cat food for Grams’s cat, Spot, at the pet store.
T
hese feelings only died down when I was paying for Spot’s food.
The meds were important, of course. But although Spot couldn’t see the cupboard where Grams kept the tins of his food, he could sense when they were getting low and he got antsy.
Grams and I had learned the hard way that when Spot got antsy, something needed to be done about it.
I could have picked up the meds the next day when I usually did Grams’s big shop for the week. But since Spot only accepted two different flavors of a special brand of cat food that had to be bought at the pet store and Grams was running low, I’d pedaled into town, and unintentionally made a fool of myself the first time Raiden Miller’s attention turned to me.
I loved that cat, no matter how ornery.
But at that moment I cursed him to perdition.
I’d bought the food and was heading out of the store when Krista, the owner of the store, called after me. “Is it still cool if I go over to Miss Mildred’s on Saturday to learn how to make her biscuits?”
Grams was known for her cooking. She was from Louisiana. Full-on Cajun, full-on Southern, and she’d brought to Colorado all the knowledge she’d learned from home.
She was also generous with it.
I kept heading toward the door as I looked over my shoulder at Krista, smiled and called, “Absolutely!”
Her head jerked, her eyes went up and she cried, “Hanna!” two seconds before I hit wall.
This shocked me since I’d been in that pet store more than once in my life, a lot more, and I knew where the walls were, even if I wasn’t looking right at them.
And no walls were there.
Walls also didn’t have fingers that could curl around your upper arms, which, by the time I’d swung my head around, had happened.
I saw army green tee and I tipped my head back, back, back and stared straight into Raiden Ulysses Miller’s eyes.
Close up.
I’d seen them in his yearbook picture, of course, dozens (okay, maybe hundreds) of times.
He’d even run them through me when I’d been at Rachelle’s.
But I’d never seen them that close when he was right there, alive, breathing, with his fingers wrapped around my arms, so close I could feel his body heat.
“You okay?” His deep voice rumbled through me.
He had a phenomenal voice, but all I could do was stare in his eyes.
They were a weird light brown/green with a yellow tint at the pupil, but as it radiated out to the edge of the iris it went pure light green.
Startling.
Amazing.
Gorgeous.
I dropped my bag of kitty food.
The crash was loud. The tins overflowed and started rolling everywhere, and all this helped me jerk myself out of my stupor.
I also jerked myself out of his hold and immediately went into a crouch to rescue the cans.
Unfortunately, so did Raiden, and our heads smacked together with a painful thud that sent me falling back, right on my behind. It also sent my sunglasses, which were on top of my head, flying.
I slowly lifted my hand to my head where it slammed into his, thinking, Someone kill me. Please. Right now. Kill me.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. He was in a crouch, leaning toward me, his hand coming up, fingers wrapping around my wrist.
They burned the instant they touched skin.
I lifted my eyes to his.
Startling.
Amazing.
Gorgeous.
With effort, I found my voice, but when I did, it came out high.
“Are you… uh, okay?”
“Got a hard head,” he replied. “I’m good. You got knocked on your ass.”
That I did.
God!
“I’m good… fine, fine… just, uh, fine and, well… good,” I murmured.
And babbling! I thought, then realized there were cans everywhere, and I realized this mostly because a kid went running toward the door, kicking some and they went flying.
Not thinking and freaking way the heck out, I pulled my hand free from his, shifted to my hands and knees and started crawling around on the floor of the pet store (gah!), gathering up stupid cat food tins.
Seriously, Spot was lucky I loved him or I’d kill him.
I stopped doing this when I felt a tingle shift along the small of my back. I turned my head and saw Raiden had hold of my bag in one hand. He had four tins of cat food clamped in his other, but his body was still and his eyes were locked on my upturned booty.
Oh God.
I was a klutz and a dork.
I was a dorky klutz!
Quickly, I shifted to just my feet, still gathering tins, piling them in my arm, snatching up my glasses, shoving them on my head and not wanting to, but having to move toward Raiden, who had my bag.
“How ‘bout we take this in turns. You go up first,” Raiden suggested.
I forced myself to look at him and saw he was grinning at me.
I’d seen that grin. It was beautiful. I’d seen him smile. That was even more beautiful. Way back in the day, I’d heard his lush, rumbling laughter. Sublime.
But he’d obviously never grinned at me.
I was right. It was beautiful.
Beyond beautiful.
Life altering.
I froze.
Entirely.
Every inch of me.
And I stared.
“Everything okay here?” Krista asked, coming curiously late to this harrowing incident I knew I’d play over and over in my head, wanting to do every second differently and kicking myself that I didn’t.
I forced myself to speak, and this time it wasn’t high. It was squeaky.
“Me first?” I asked Raiden.
His grin got bigger. My insides melted and he jerked up his chin.
I straightened to standing.
“Here’s another can, Hanna,” Mrs. Bartholomew said as Raiden rose to his full height. In other words, towering over all of us.
I turned to her and took the can she was offering. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”
She gave me a smile then looked up at Raiden. “Raid, tell your Mom I said hi.”
“Will do,” he mumbled.
She grinned at him and took off.
Raiden opened the plastic bag, indicating to me I should divest myself of my pile of cat food tins, and I had to lean forward to dump in all the cans I had clutched to my chest. This I did, excruciatingly aware that he could see right down my shirt.
That was when I thanked God I’d tossed all my crappy underwear five months ago and loaded up on the good stuff during my now-not-infrequent trips to Denver.
“I think you got them all,” Krista shared, and I looked to her, lifting a hand, tucking my hair behind my ear and wishing I was anywhere but there.
And I meant anywhere.
A sweatshop in China. At a phone making marketing calls to people who hated marketing calls and thus would abuse me before they hung up on me.
Anywhere.
Krista was scanning the floor for cans then she looked between Raiden and me. “You guys conked noggins pretty hard. You good?”
“I am, but Hanna seems a bit dazed,” Raiden answered and I stopped breathing.
He said my name.
He said my name!
I looked up at him, my lips parted.
Then I realized he thought I’d been dazed by our head knock and that was not good.
I had to get myself together.
I pulled in a breath, and on the exhale I reached out and gently took the bag from him, then assured them both in my normal voice (thank God), “I’m fine. Just… I have a lot on my mind. But I’m okay.” I looked up at Raiden. “I’m also klutzy. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, honey. You didn’t run into me, I wouldn’t have a chance to smell your perfume. Made my day,” he replied, and I blinked.
Oh cripes. He called me honey in that rumbling voice.
And he was being (could it be?) kind of fl
irty.
God!
I had to keep it together.
I did this (just barely), then I ran through my morning again, seeing as I was a perfume whore. I had at least twenty bottles of it. It could be anything.
I settled on a morning memory, realizing it was Agent Provocateur, and deciding the minute I got home I was ordering another bottle (or seven).
“I best get back to work,” Krista mumbled.
I tore my eyes from Raiden to look at her and saw she was looking at the floor, grinning like an idiot.
She took off.
Raiden spoke again.
“You Miss Mildred’s grandkid?” he asked.
“Sorry?” I asked back.
“Krista said she was goin’ to Miss Mildred’s this weekend. Heard her grandkid was takin’ care of her. You her?”
He didn’t know who I was.
I’d lived for twenty-three years convinced I was in love with him, no matter how totally crazy that was, and he didn’t know who I was.
He heard Krista say my name.
He had no clue.
“Great-grandkid,” I told him.
“You lookin’ after her?” he asked.
I nodded, still coping with the devastation that we’d played tug of war together at Grams’s picnic and he’d been on my team three years running, and he didn’t know me.
“How’s she doin’?” Raiden went on.
“Great. Ninety-eight going on twenty,” I replied, and he awarded me another smile.
I must have been getting better with practice seeing as that one only made my scalp and kneecaps tingle.
“Least that doesn’t change,” he murmured.
He was right about that. Mildred Boudreaux never changed. Even acts of God couldn’t change her. I knew this because, when Grams was sixteen she got struck by lightning, wandered home, clothes still smoking (or that was how the story was told, incidentally, by Grams) and asked her mother what was for dinner.
“Listen, I need to go,” I stated and his head tipped slightly to the side, which I wished he hadn’t done. Because it was just a head tip, but being his handsome head, his fabulous hair, his amazing eyes, his attention on me, it seemed both cool and hot and I wanted to ask him to do it over and over again just so I could watch.
I pulled myself together (again) and kept talking.
“I’m really sorry about bumping into you and, well… then banging heads.”