“For always, Denise.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
FRIDAY, NEVADA STEPPED OUT of the bakery, the pink box she carried neatly tied with string. Yes, there were six chocolate cupcakes inside and she was pretty sure she was going to eat them all by herself. But it had been a stressful week and she deserved a sugar rush to make it all seem better.
The weird part was she didn’t usually eat a lot of sugar. Nor could she point to any particular event in her week and complain. Work was going great. They were going to be blasting in a couple of weeks and she was excited about that. From what she could tell, Cat and Tucker weren’t spending a lot of time together, although she kept reminding herself it wasn’t her business if they were. So the need for cupcakes was inexplicable, but very powerful.
She turned the corner and nearly ran into a man carrying a pizza box. Her body registered who it was before her brain recognized him.
“Tucker.”
He smiled at her. “I called you about a half hour ago, but you weren’t answering.”
She held up the pink box. “I had an emergency errand to run and forgot my cell phone at home.”
“I thought you might be out on a hot date.”
“Do three chocolate cupcakes and three coconut vanilla cupcakes count as a date?”
“It depends on what you do with them.”
They seemed to be staring at each other, she thought, rooted in place by forces she couldn’t name.
“I haven’t seen you much this week,” she murmured. “We’re both on-site at the same time, but in different places.”
She was out with her crew and he was in the trailer doing whatever it was potential owners of multibillion-dollar companies did.
“You’ve been busy with Cat,” he reminded her.
“She’s taking up a lot of my free time. Have you spent any time with her?”
“Not since the day she arrived.” He sounded pleased as he spoke, as if this were good news.
“She’s still really beautiful.”
He shrugged. “Not interested. I’m done with her. It was over years ago.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly her shoulders didn’t seem as tight and the evening was a little brighter.
He held up the pizza box. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”
She laughed. “Sounds good. Let’s go back to my place. I have wine waiting.”
“Wine and cupcakes. Talk about a party. You’re my kind of girl.”
Twenty minutes later they were sitting at her kitchen table, pizza on plates, wine in glasses.
“How’s your mom doing?” he asked between bites.
“Good. She and Max have worked things out. Apparently he proposed because he thought that’s what she wanted and she freaked out. They’ve talked everything over and are in a committed relationship that won’t end in marriage.” Nevada shook her head. “While I’m thrilled that she’s happy, I never thought this was anything close to a conversation I would be having with my mother.”
“You are part of a classic American family.”
She laughed. “I’m not sure about that.” She took a bite of pizza and chewed. After she’d swallowed, she said, “You really haven’t seen Cat?”
“Nope. No reason to. I’m not sure why she’s in town, but it’s not for me.”
He sounded cheerful as he spoke. As far as Nevada could tell, there wasn’t even a hint of longing for what had been.
He poured her more wine. “This is nice. I like your place. Did you remodel?”
She nodded. “I did most of the work myself. The house was built in the nineteen twenties. The traditional Victorian style didn’t fly with the neighbors, but the original owner was powerful and no one told him no.”
“A man after my own heart. I like being the guy no one says no to.”
“You would. In this case, people came to like the house. I’ve loved it from the time I was a kid. Over the years it was sold and turned into a low-rent apartment building. No one took care of it. By the time I bought it, the whole place was trashed. It took me nearly three years to do all the work, but it was worth it.”
She’d also squeezed every penny she could from the second mortgage she’d used to pay for the materials. Once the remodeling was done, she’d been able to rent out the bottom two apartments. She’d paid off the second mortgage last summer and was now paying down her first. A good feeling, she thought.
“To your house,” he said, raising his glass.
She touched hers to his. “Thank you.”
“Want to show me the rest of it?”
There was only the third floor, which was her bedroom, the large bath and a study. She was about to say that when she realized Tucker was watching her with an interest that said he wouldn’t mind his pizza getting cold. She went from hungry for food to hungry for something else in the space of a heartbeat.
He stood and walked around the table, then held out his hand. When she placed her fingers on his palm, he drew her to her feet and pulled her close.