Page 4 of Perfectly Matched: Harbor Falls Romance Collection

Brad couldn’t help but watch Suzie’s backside as she sashayed away from him. He stared as she opened a cabinet door and took down a small first aid kit. She rummaged around in it while his gaze traveled and lingered over the length of her body. When she moved toward him again, he jerked his head back to stare at the sink.

“I’ll put these on the cut.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“No funny business, Brad Matthews. Keep those hands to yourself.”

How did she know his hands itched to touch her again? To caress the bump on her forehead and make her pain go away? He wanted to touch a whole lot more than that.

After a moment, she had dabbed the wound clean, applied antibacterial cream and a couple of bandages, and then rocked back on her heels to survey her handiwork. All the while, Brad sat still and let her hands work over him, like a good little boy.

“There. I think that will do,”

she pronounced. Her gaze fell lower, inspecting his face, then to his lips. Christ, don’t look at me like that Suzette.

Just as quickly, she backed against the sink, putting a few feet of distance between them again. Her voice lowered, she asked.

“Why are you here, Brad?”

Now or never. He had to spill it.

“I came to find you, Suzie. I… I miss you.”

She shook her head.

“Why? And how did you find me? It’s been months. Why now?”

“Because I needed to see you again.”

She shook her head again.

“Not good enough. There is something else.”

He stood.

“Yes, you’re right. There is something else.”

“Then tell me.”

“It’s...it’s simple, really, Suzette. I need you. I….”

“Because...?”

“Because I can’t get you out of my head, dammit. Because I want to know why you ran away and didn’t tell me where you were going. Because you turned my life upside down and around again. Because I was falling in love with you and you walked out of my life. Because things in my life have changed and I want—”

She held up a hand.

“That’s enough. I get the picture.”

More. I want more.

“So you understand?”

She crossed her arms and stared.

“No. Yes. I mean, no.”

Her arms dropped to her sides and she began to pace back and forth, and back and forth again in front of him.

She looked so damn cute, all dirt-smudged and homey. And beautiful.

Abruptly, she stopped square in front of him, looked him in the eye, and blurted out.

“I was engaged back then.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

“Yes. Not at the time. Later.”

Her face screwed up. “How?”

“You mentioned it to Sara, one of the servers, and after you left, she made some comment that you probably went back to your fiance.”

“Oh.”

“I have to tell you that hurt like hell and I didn’t know what to think then. In fact, I was pretty angry with you for a while because you’d not been honest with me. How could you let me fall for you when you had someone back home? It was confusing and didn’t seem like you.”

Her eyes grew big.

“I’m sorry, Brad. I shouldn’t have…sort of cheated. It was wrong. Truly, it wasn’t like me. I’ve never done anything like that before, and I was confused, and you were wonderful, and we were great together and… Oh, hell.”

She sighed deep and glanced away, avoiding looking into his eyes. Oh, hell is right.

“Look. I know you, Suzie. Yes, perhaps what you did was wrong on some level, I don’t know, and I can understand that you might have felt guilty—but maybe the relationship wasn’t right anyway?”

She looked back at him.

“There was a lot wrong with that relationship. But I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

Brad continued.

“Suzie, I was hurt, but after I thought about it for a while, I realized there had to be a reason why you left your hometown and moved to Asheville to take a new job. Particularly when, besides the couple of years you spent in chef school, you had never lived anywhere other than Harbor Falls. Yes, I’ve done a little investigating. I figured you either needed a break from the relationship or you needed money.”

She held his gaze firm and nodded.

“Yes. Both.”

“Tell me?”

Suzie crossed her arms over her chest and glanced away.

“I… Shit, Brad.”

“Just tell me.”

Finally, she nodded.

“Okay. I did need a break. I needed to figure out where my life was going. My dreams weren’t coming true and I wasn’t getting any younger. I knew I could make more money in Asheville. I was trying to save enough to buy my own place and open a B&B, so I took the job when it was offered. I told Cliff, that’s the ex, that I needed some time away from the relationship. In my head, I’d made the split. He, however—who was not supportive of my dreams in the least—didn’t fully realize that we had broken up. Or, so I thought at the time. It was all a little vague.”

Brad studied her for a moment. She caught his gaze then lowered her eyes.

“Suzie, face reality here. If you needed to get away, then things weren’t going peachy keen between the two of you, right?”

She looked up and sighed.

“Truth? No, things weren’t peachy keen and yes, I needed to think about my pending marriage, and if that was truly what I wanted. After fourteen years together you think you know someone but the thing of it was, he really didn’t know me. And I guess I didn’t really know him”

“Fourteen?”

“Yes. I know. Ridiculous, right? We’ve been a couple since we were teenagers.”

Brad frowned.

“I know you, Suzie. And it didn’t take me fourteen years.”

She exhaled, caught his gaze for a moment, and then and looked to the floor. Wrapping her arms tighter around her chest, she turned away, and just when Brad wanted her to go on.

“You can tell me, Suzie. I need to hear what happened, and I think you need to tell me.”

She briskly shook her head and talked to the floor.

“No. That’s not what’s important. I was engaged. I shouldn’t have had that—”

she flipped her hand through the air.

“—that thing I had with you, whatever it was. So I left.”

She turned and brought her gaze back up to meet his.

“I left, Brad, because it was wrong. I felt guilty. And as great as it was, I knew I could never be the woman for you. You said more than once you had goals that obviously didn’t include anyone else. I’m just… Well, I am just me. We weren’t right.”

“Now that’s a ridiculous statement if I ever heard one. And, whatever it was that we had? It was special, and I want it again.”

Her brow arched. “What?”

He stood up, pushing the bar stool back toward the kitchen island.

“That you could never be the woman for me is ridiculous. You were the woman for me then, Suzie-Q, and if I have any say in the matter, I want you to be the woman for me from this day forward.”

“But I… But you….”

“But nothing. Your boyfriend, dumbass that he was, let you go. Can’t say I’m sad about that. You aren’t together any longer. It doesn’t matter now. Why you didn’t come back and try to find me, I don’t know. But I was tired of waiting so I figured I’d find you myself. So you listen to me, Suzie Hart. I’m here. I want you. And I’m not leaving until I get what I want.”

He lifted a forefinger to smooth back a stray lock of hair that had fallen over her eye. He smiled and waited.

“You have everything figured out, don’t you?”

She smiled back, semi-sweetly.

“Yes, honey, I do.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“Except for one thing.”

He moved closer, his fingers itching again, wanting to haul her against him and run his hands over her body.

“And what is that?”

“There is a reason I didn’t come looking for you when Cliff left, Brad.”

“Oh?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to find you,”

she said softly.

“I wanted to put that part of my life behind me. Forever.”

Brad stepped back, his brain reeling. Once again, a scenario he hadn’t anticipated. She didn’t want him? Ridiculous.

“Suzette, you can’t mean….”

“Stop calling me that!”

Puzzled, he peered into her eyes. They were misty. Frightened. Overwrought. Shit. Too much. It had all been too much.

“Look. Let’s table this for tonight. We’re running close to overkill here.”

She nodded and pushed back.

“Good idea. I’m sure a nice, long, cool ride on your bike will make you see all of this is an impossible situation and—”

“Stop.”

This time it was Brad who held up his hand.

“I’m not going anywhere. I have a room reserved tonight and I intend to stay here.”

“Wha—”

That last statement may have been her undoing. He continued.

“I’m Mr. Logan. I know you have a room for me. So, okay, I gave you a fake name but admit it, you wouldn’t have given me a room if I’d told you the truth. I’ll go get my things from the bike and we’ll finish this discussion in the morning.”

He turned toward the kitchen door. Suzie’s footsteps padded along behind him.

“Okay, fine. Stay.”

He walked down the hall, through the living room, and toward front door.

“I intend to.”

Suzie followed.

“But it doesn’t mean anything,”

she went on.

“It’s late, and with your injury, you shouldn’t be riding the bike, but first thing in the morning I’ll be expecting you to be on your way and….”

He turned. His stare bore into her eyes.

“I believe I reserved my room indefinitely. Did I not?”

She clamped her lips tight, took a deep breath and blew it out.

“Your room is at the top of the stairs to the right,”

she uttered.

“Lock the front door behind you when you come back in and turn off the downstairs lights. I’m turning in for the night and I really don’t want to be disturbed.”

The look on her face told him she really meant business. He was not going to rock this boat any more tonight.

“Of course,”

he told her.

“Sweet dreams.”

She turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen, each step punctuating her last statement. She moved straight through the kitchen—he watched her sashay through, pause at a wine rack and grab a bottle—and into a room beyond. Then he heard the door slam.

Good. He liked to get a lay of the land. So she’d be downstairs, off the kitchen. Must be her master suite, her personal quarters. He bet there would be a sturdy lock on the door, too.

The sharp snap of a deadbolt echoed throughout the empty kitchen and into the entrance hall.

Thought so. Yes, he did know her. And she’d come around. Eventually.

He grinned and went out to get his things.

****

Bubble therapy was everything it was cracked up to be.

That and a few other amenities were Suzie’s guilty pleasures. Low lights. A candle flicker. A bottle of Merlot sitting on the small bench next to the tub. Madeleine Peyroux crooning from the CD player in her bedroom. The only think that would make it better would be chocolate.

And maybe sex.

Hell, sex was the last thing she needed to be thinking about.

Suzie laid back in her whirlpool tub, a rolled towel at her neck, hair piled on top of her head, bubbles up to her ears. Lilac drifted through the humid heaviness of her bathroom. She breathed deep. Sighed. The perfumed bubbles mimicked the fresh scent that drifted through her bedroom in early summer from the lilac bush that lived outside her window.

Her stomach growled and she lamented the fact that she hadn’t grabbed some cheese from the fridge on her way through too—but there had been not time. And she sure as hell wasn’t going back into her kitchen tonight.

With the flick of one finger she switched on the jets. Nice. Yes. The hard streams of water worked on her tired and tensed muscles. This was her third cycle of hot water added to the tub. The bubbles grew larger, and she wanted to lose herself in them.

She sank lower. Maybe if she stayed here long enough, the bubbles would erase all the bad stuff that happened in the past few hours.

Well, she supposed it wasn’t exactly bad stuff.

Uncomfortable stuff, yes. Unplanned, that too. Thinking…sure, there were things to think about. Funny, when Cliff called everything off, she did not have to think about it. She accepted it and told him to go on his merry way. When she realized it was her sister he wanted, well then, that had required thought.

Wouldn’t any woman stop to think about that?

Her sister was younger, thinner, attractive. She had cornered the market on cute and bright from an early age. In fact, Shelley had earned three degrees while attending state university on a cheerleading scholarship.

And she was fertile.

She was that.

Apparently. She and Cliff got pregnant oh-so-quickly after they had married. At last, one of the daughters gave her parents the grandchild they’d longed for. The one Suzie, being the oldest, was supposed to give them first. But she didn’t.

Couldn’t.

Suzie had known for years that her woman parts were defective.

Yes, little sis Shelley was quite the girl. Landed herself quite the man. Now she had quite the baby too. Along with an ideal picket-fence life in Dalton Springs, forty miles down the road. Thank God she and Cliff had decided Harbor Falls was too close for comfort.

When Suzie had decided to leave Harbor Falls—take a break from Cliff for a while and try to figure out things—she was overjoyed to finally put her culinary skills to good use. She’d yearned to use her skills for more than cooking dinner for Cliff every night. To Cliff, her cooking was nothing special, it was what women do. He didn’t like the thought of her cooking for other people and only tolerated her working on her cookbook because he thought it was a great hobby.

Hobby. Bleh.

Suzie slapped down a handful of bubbles that teased her ear.

“Cliff never saw my cooking as important,”

she muttered.

“I have no clue why I put up with him for so darn long.”

Now Brad, he was different. He found her culinary skills very useful. Which was probably one of the reasons why she’d fallen for him, lock-stock-and-barrel. He’d hand-picked her for his sous chef after a week as line cook.

Brad Matthews was the top-dog chef at Mountain View, the Chef de Cuisine for the resort, and he was a damned good one to boot. Suzie hadn’t worked with anyone as skilled at the Cramdon University School of Culinary Arts in New York. She’d longed to work someplace where she’d actually be valued for her talent and was eager to please Brad in every sense of the word.

They’d quickly fallen into a relationship. Maybe it was all the attention he’d paid her that attracted her to him. Probably. Cliff never gave her that sort of attention. And of course, Brad was unlike shoe-salesman Cliff. Brad was a six-pack, Adonis-type bad-boy from Atlanta, who had lived all over the world. Cliff was nearly bald and from Harbor Falls. Brad was five years her junior. Cliff was two years her senior. Brad was fit and buff and quite the ladies’ man. Cliff was, well, chubby.

But so was she. She had a little pudge around the middle from all those years of cooking. To say she was surprised when Brad Matthews made a pass at her late one evening after cleaning up was an understatement. She’d admired Brad as a chef. Loved his style of running the kitchen. Couldn’t wait to get to work each and every day to see what new delectable dish he would serve up.

But she never, ever, in a million years thought he’d be interested in her in a romantic way. Or a sexual way. Pudgy Suzie. A little thick around the middle. Five years older.

And barren.

Of course he didn’t know about the barren part. Still didn’t. It was not the kind of thing you blurted out to someone who you were having an affair with. And just as well. When Brad shared his dreams with her one evening, dreams of being his own boss, and then one day settling down into life and having a family—it was then she knew she had to end it.

Brad Matthews was a fantasy. He wasn’t real life. Five years younger than her and wanting a someday family. Something she could never give him because she couldn’t have a baby. It was something she’d learned in her early twenties from her gynecologist. The likelihood of her ever getting pregnant was practically non-existent. Listening to a man like Brad talk about his future, only served to start her thinking and realize she was totally out of her league. She couldn’t see herself in his future. So she left. She took herself out of the equation and high-tailed her thirty-four-year old pudgy fanny back to Harbor Falls where she belonged.

Of course, she had no earthly idea that Cliff and Shelley were waiting in the wings to break the big news to her.

Oh, well.

Suzie shook herself. The water was cold again, the bubbles dying. Her fingers and toes were tiny prunes already. She took another drink of wine from the bottle.

“Time to get out, Suzie-Q.”

She inhaled and blew out the breath. A few bubbles churned up and flitted away. Suzie-Q. Suzette. Brad’s pet names for her. She hated to admit that she’d missed them.

How in the hell was she going to send him packing?

****

Brad turned off his phone and lay back on the bed with a flop. He glanced to the top of the dresser where he had set the box of chocolate candy he’d bought for Suzie earlier today at her cousin Gracie’s shop. When he’d bought them, he sure had envisioned this evening going a lot smoother than it had. No matter, he’d just give them to her another day. Might be nice to have something waiting in the wings, in case he needed it.

The day had its ups and downs, that was for sure, and nothing had according to plan—but at least he’d reconnected with Suzie. He was hopeful for a fresh start. What more could he ask for, anyway?

For her to fall into his arms and profess her undying love to him, after he’d sprung himself on her from out of nowhere, was ridiculous. No, he hadn’t thought that would happen, but in retrospect he wondered if he had thought things through. Her resistance was worrisome, but he was pretty sure she would warm up eventually.

Right?

He sure hoped so.

Blowing out a breath, he crossed his feet at the ankles and propped his arms under his head. Earlier he had cracked the window beside the bed and now, his eyes closed, Brad listened to the night sounds.

Birds.

Rustling leaves.

Waves lapping.

Tranquil and calm. Comforting. A lot different from Asheville night noises.

A sweet floral smell wafted up from below and he wondered about the scent. Something flowery and sweet drifting on the humid breeze. It smelled like Suzie.

Somehow he felt at peace after all these months, even though his arrival was a bit rocky. If anything, it felt damn good to be under the same roof again with the love of his life.