Page 5 of Pumpkin to Talk About

That’s okay. This ain’t my first rodeo, as he would say. I can fix up Annie’s place by Halloween, and hopefully get her back on her feet, too. She’d be embarrassed if our parents knew how low she was feeling, so I make a promise to myself that I’m going to take care of everything for her without dragging them into it.

I take my time perusing the aisles and collecting things I need. Wood and nails for the porch steps, paint for the shutters. I see a sale on dish soap at an endcap and grab that, too. My skin stretches raw across my knuckles, and I wince at the memory of doing all of her dishes yesterday. I toss in a couple pairs of rubber gloves for good measure.

As I’m walking down one of the aisles, pondering how not one single thing has changed in this place over the years, I hear a soft curse from the aisle over. Next thing I know, an entire stack of tall two-by-fours clatters to the ground. Through the open shelving, I can now see bottle-black hair, sparkling jewelry, and those blue-violet eyes that kept me up all night.

Belle doesn’t notice me as she puts her hands on her hips and looks at the mess she’s made of the wood. She puffs out her cheeks and lets out a slow breath through pursed lips.

“Well, fuck me,” she grumbles.

Gladly, I think, and it surprises me how readily available that thought is.

A bit thrown by the subconscious admission that I would, indeed, love to see if Bluebell Allen has any other tattoos in illicit places, I smirk and try to project as much composure as I can.

“We have to stop meeting like this, Bonnie Bluebell.”

Her gem-like eyes fly to mine, wide and sparkling until she realizes it’s me. Then, they glass over, her expression turning chilly.

I guess my large tip didn’t make much of a difference after all.

“Indy.” Her dark-painted lips flatten into a straight line. She regards the boards on the floor again, sighs, and starts to pick them up and haphazardly place them back on the shelf.

“Here, let me help you,” I say, coming around to her side of the aisle. Maybe a little helpful chivalry will do what the tip didn’t.

“I don’t need your help,” she mutters. But she stumbles backward as she tries to lift an armful of two-by-fours. I reach out and catch her around the waist before she can join the rest of the boards on the floor. Her cropped shirt raises a little, and my palm meets her soft, warm skin just above her ripped jeans. In a woosh, my breath is expelled from my lungs.

Damn, I liked that a little too much.

Belle scrambles to her feet and jumps away from me as if my hand scalded her. Okay, then…

“What are you even doing here?” she exclaims breathlessly as she frantically tugs her shirt lower over the hem of her jeans.

“Nice to see you again, too.” I chuckle. When she doesn’t move or speak, I clear my throat. “Annie’s house needs some work, so I figured I’d get started. What about you?”

Belle tugs on her shirt again, clearly self-conscious. “I need supplies for my Halloween display,” she says simply.

Typical Ironwood Flats behavior. Always needing to go above and beyond for Halloween, making the decorations bigger and more ridiculous every year. And, if I remember correctly, Belle was always the biggest and most ridiculous of them all when it came to the holiday.

I bend over to pick up the remaining two-by-fours and replace them on the shelf. “Ahh. I’ll, uh… leave you to it, then.” If there’s one thing I don’t want anything to do with, it’s Halloween decorations. Doing it for my niece and nephew is fine, but I don’t want to even know what Belle has planned.

I cross over to my side of the aisle to get my cart of stuff and make my way quickly to the checkout. It might be my imagination, but I think I can feel those blue-violet eyes on me the whole time.

But I don’t have enough caffeine in me to even think about that right now. I need coffee and to get started on Annie’s front porch. Stat.

Chapter 4

Belle

Working at The Broken Spur is a great job for me. The hours are manageable, and the people who come in and out keep me interested. Making drinks is really just a series of tasks that are easy to accomplish, so it doesn’t take too much brain power. But the pay isn’t always great, especially with big groups who don’t tip, like those jackasses who were in there on Friday night. And there sure as shit aren’t any benefits. So, I also work as the part-time librarian at Ironwood Elementary. I love it there. The kids are cute, and they love my seemingly never-ending list of fun facts about each story we read.

Which is how I find myself standing outside the school on Monday morning to help with the rush of kids, parents, and vehicles at drop-off when none other than Mike Page walks up flanked by his niece and nephew in the most perfect, most adorable scene known to woman.

I really need my ovaries to calm the fuck down. I can’t be thinking of Mike as perfect or adorable just because he’s doing the bare minimum by helping out his sister. Especially not after what happened in high school. I know that was a long time ago but seeing him again really brought up some shit. I could barely sleep on Friday night, and I hated myself for continually thinking about him. It was like my brain would not turn off. And then running into him at Lewis Hardware on Saturday morning, his perfect ass looking impossibly better in those sweatpants… it’s enough to test anyone’s resolve.

“Miss Allen!” Nicholas runs up to me. “I finished my book over the weekend. Do you have the next in the series?”

“I’m sure I do. Lyle brought it back last week, and I saved it for you. Stop by before recess, and you can check it out.”

“Yes!” Nicholas pumps the air and jumps, his too-large backpack bouncing against his back. “Uncle Mike, are you picking us up after school, too?”