Pepper pulled the rug out from under his bravado, left him scrambling. The only thing he knew was to plant his feet in the cold, hard, truth.
“Birdie? Yeah, hard not to. We aren’t close, but I wish her the best. It took guts for her to do what she did. I should never have proposed in the first place, but we were young and dumb, only nineteen when engaged, and it lasted another ten years while I went off to vet school and started my practice. Not every first love is meant to be your last.”
She pondered that a moment, an unasked question scrunching her forehead. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“What, you’ve never been in love?” With a face like that, hard to believe they weren’t lining up around the block.
After a brief pause, she shrugged. “Do fictional men count? My relationship status is singing power ballads to stray cats.”
There it was, conclusive proof that his gender was made up of idiots. “That’s the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”
She gave a rueful shrug. “You haven’t ventured out of Everland much, huh? The world is a hard place, Rhett Valentine. War. Death. Suffering. Netflix refusing to upload the latest season of your favorite show.”
A piece of her flyaway hair bobbed in the breeze. He reached to smooth it and threaded his fingers through the silky tresses instead.
“What are you doing?” She squared her body to face him. Her throat flushed. He liked it. And that small mole on her kissable mouth, too, the one shaped like a heart.
“Looking at you.”
Her unexpected smile transformed her whole face. Something passed, invisible, between them. A dark, thick tension burned up his veins, hotter than a whisky shot. Fuck it, he was going in. He leaned toward her. She had the tiniest of freckles on her lower lip. He’d lick it.
“Rhett?” That wasn’t a breathy, “take me, sexy baby,” tone. He froze.
“Don’t look now, but you know the old woman who lives across the street?”
His heart sunk. “Miss Ida May?”
“She is parked across the river spying on us through a pair of binoculars. No, I said don’t look.”
Too late. Miss Ida May’s pink Cadillac was parked on the far side of the river, the hood emerging from the bushes. She waggled her fingers in a cheery wave.
His shoulders heaved with an inward groan. So much for staying out of the spotlight. He’d been damned if he did and damned if he didn’t in helping Pepper out of her jam.
Now, he was fucked.
No good deed ever goes unpunished.
