Paxton raced into the law office, waving a quick hello to Carmen before heading down the hallway. She opened the conference room door and halted.
Sawyer, who sat at his desk sipping from a paper cup with The Jazzy Bean’s logo, was scribbling on a notepad. He looked up at her.
“What are you doing here?” Paxton asked, her shoulders falling in defeat as she shuffled over to her desk with much less enthusiasm.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said with a chuckle. “Why are you out of breath? Have you been running?”
“Only from my car to here,” she answered. She set her briefcase on her desk, then walked over to his.
He had on his reading glasses, the bronze, wire-rimmed ones that looked so good on him it made her want to scream.
“You’re early,” he said.
It was ten minutes after eight, which meant she was technically late, but since she’d spent the past week coming in after eight thirty, shewasearly today.
“Where’s your car?” Paxton asked.
He handed her a cup of coffee. “The mechanic’s.”
She hadn’t noticed the second coffee cup on his desk. Her heart performed a ridiculous flip-flop at his sweet gesture.
“Thank you. And good morning,” she added. She took a sip of the slightly cooled coffee. It had just the right amount of cream and sugar, which meant Shayla Kirkland, the owner of The Jazzy Bean, had likely made it herself. Her best friend knew how Paxton preferred her coffee.
“Did you walk here?” she asked him. Paxton made a habit of not listening to gossip—hard to do in this small town, which fed off gossip the way mosquitoes fed off blood—but she’d heard that Sawyer had bought a house on Willow Street, which was less than ten minutes away on foot.
“I could have, but as muggy as it is this morning I was afraid I’d need a shower after I got here. I’m driving my dad’s old Buick for the next few days.” He grimaced.
“The burgundy one?” She couldn’t stop the sharp laugh that escaped. “I don’t know how I missed seeing it parked out there.”
“Yeah, the burgundy one,” Sawyer said. “I hate that car.”
“I can’t believe it’s still running. It has to be over twenty years old.”
Paxton could remember Sawyer driving his dad’s car during their senior year of high school, which was twenty years ago this year. She’d missed the reunion this past summer, purposely filling in for a coworker on a job in Memphis so she’d have an excuse. If given the choice to revisit her high school years or frolic through a minefield, she would choose the minefield.
“It’s twenty-two years old,” Sawyer said. “My dad loved that damn thing. He went through four cars after it, but he refused to get rid of the Buick.”
“You didn’t have a problem with it back in high school,” Paxton pointed out.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he said with a laugh.
Sawyer had driven the Buick up until the week following the big state championship game, when his father had surprised him with a brand-new pickup truck as a reward for leading the Lions to victory and being named MVP for the season.
The shiny black truck had been parked in front of the school with a big red bow on the hood. They had all later learned that the truck also counted as Sawyer’s birthday, Christmas, and graduation presents that year, but it was still a huge deal. There were not many families in Gauthier who could afford to buy their teens brand-new cars. The lucky ones got their parents’ hand-me-downs, and were more than grateful for it.
Paxton could still feel the envy flowing through her veins as she boarded the school bus while at least a dozen of her classmates piled into the cab and truck bed of Sawyer’s gleaming new ride. She wasn’t jealous of his truck. Belinda didn’t have a car of her own at the time; Paxton knew there was no way on earthshewould get a car while still in high school.
No, it was witnessing the camaraderie between the group of friends who had joined Sawyer to celebrate his new truck that got to her that day. She was so envious of the bond they all shared, including Shayla, who, even though she had been Paxton’s best friend, had also been part of the popular crowd.
Until this day Paxton had truly believed her greatest feat was convincing everyone that it had not bothered her in the least that she wasn’t included in their number. She’d perfected the “unaffected loner” façade, the girl who was above the hype of belonging to high school cliques or attending dances or being noticed by the most popular boy in school.
She’d pretended she didn’t care, but if anyone had bothered to look just a little closer, Paxton knew they would have spotted the longing in her eyes.
She shook off those thoughts. She was no longer that girl, the one who pined for Sawyer to notice her. She’d proven three years ago that she’d grown into the kind of woman who could hold his attention for hours on end, until he collapsed in a heap of pleasure-filled exhaustion.
Paxton breathed her way through the full-body shudder that coursed through her, silently cursing herself for even allowing her mind to go there.
She went back to her desk to start on today’s work, welcoming the distraction of poring over the field inspection notes collected during the Bolt-Myer team’s previous visit to the proposed construction site. She soon settled into what had become a familiar routine over the past week.
