Page 13 of The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor #5)
‘We need to go.’ She lifted a hand to find the doorknob but in the cramped space ended up fumbling against his arm and his stomach. He grabbed her wrist before she could grab anything more… personal.
‘Don’t you ever rest?’ he asked instead of dwelling on where he’d like Annie’s hands to wander.
‘I’ll rest when I’m dead.’
‘Annie.’
‘Mac.’
He tugged a little on her wrist and to his surprise she leaned into him, her cheek pressed right over his heart.
‘Your heart is beating really fast,’ she whispered.
‘I know.’
Still, she didn’t move. For one agonizingly perfect minute, she didn’t move.
She just pressed her face against him and let him twine his fingers with hers.
Her breathing slowed and her body relaxed against his.
He took a risk and planted a chaste kiss on the top of her head.
The soft sigh she let out at the contact was everything he’d dreamed about in the past eleven years.
But like everything else with Annie, it didn’t last.
‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he murmured.
Annie pulled away. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’
‘Christ, Annie, will you just accept my apology? I fucked up, okay? We had one perfect month together and then I ruined it. Can we move on, please?’
She was fumbling for the doorknob again.
‘I don’t need your apology, Mac. Because I’m fine. We hung out for one month like a million years ago and it really doesn’t matter to me anymore. Where the hell is the doorknob?’ She groaned in frustration.
‘If it doesn’t matter, then why are you pissed at me all the time?’
‘Did it ever occur to you that I simply don’t like you?’
‘Ha! Okay, sure, darling. You and I and everyone else in this town know the way you look at me.’
‘Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.’ She punctuated each word with a kick to the door.
Mac sighed and turned the knob. Annie spilled out, almost landing face-down on the hallway floor. As he blinked in the suddenly bright light, she glared up at him from the carpet. He reached out a hand to help her up, but she ignored it.
‘I will find Estelle myself,’ she said, getting upright and storming down the hallway.
‘Annie, wait.’ He followed her long strides.
‘You know what, Mac?’ She spun to face him. ‘It wasn’t that perfect of a month.’
‘Oh, really? That isn’t what you said at the time.’
‘Well, I faked a lot of things at the time.’
Mac froze. She could not mean what he thought she meant.
‘What are you talking about?’
Annie raised her eyebrows. ‘I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.’
‘But we… but you… I thought…’
She gave him a smug smile. ‘You thought wrong. Bye, Mac.’ She spun on her heel and left him there gaping after her, reassessing everything he thought he knew about Annie. About that December. About women in general.
Mac hadn’t felt this punched in the face since he was actually punched in the face during a bar fight in Tulsa that he’d got in the middle of by accident.
But that blow hurt much less than this one.
* * *
‘What the hell, Annie?’
Mac had followed her out to the parking lot and got to her just as she was realizing they had driven here together.
There was no way he was letting her get away with saying something like that and then running off.
She should have kept her mouth shut. But this was what happened to her when she spent too much time around Mac.
Her sense left her completely and she reverted to childish behavior.
But she didn't hate the way Mac looked chasing her across the parking lot. She found it quite satisfying actually, which of course was part of the problem.
‘We have to go,’ she said. ‘We don’t have time to talk about this right now.’
‘Like hell we don't.’ Mac had caught up to her and had her crowded against his truck.
His voice was nearly a growl. With anyone else she would have felt threatened and perfectly within her rights to use her favorite self-defense maneuver of a knee to the crotch, but with Mac, she found herself wanting to piss him off more, just to make him get closer.
‘You can’t drop a piece of information like that and then walk away,’ he said. She hadn’t seen him this mad since she spilled the cocoa in his lap last year. His chest rose with each angry breath and pressed against hers. Damn this winter weather. Why was she wearing so many layers?
Annie sighed like this was all very taxing for her and not at all like she wanted to throw Mac into the backseat of his big stupid vehicle and have her way with him. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘Say it’s not true,’ he ground out. ‘Say you said it to make me mad.’
‘You’re being awfully dramatic about this.’
‘Dramatic? Dramatic . After all these years you’re trying to tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself when we were together and I’m supposed to be okay with that?’ His voice dropped on the word enjoy and Annie felt it down to her toes.
But she’d be damned if she’d let Mac know the effect he was having on her.
She rolled her eyes, and she was sure, if it was physically possible, steam would have come out of Mac’s ears at the sight of it.
‘The sex was fine . I wasn’t expecting much more than that.
We were young and inexperienced. It’s really not a big deal. ’
Mac was pacing in front of her now, leaving scuff marks in the fine layer of snow that had accumulated in the parking lot.
His brow was furrowed, his mouth set in a firm line.
He looked like a man whose entire world had been turned upside down.
With that one admission it was like Annie had completely rewritten their past. And she almost felt bad about it.
She almost felt bad for him . She nearly relented and told him the rest of the truth.
That, while she may not have had an orgasm, that night with Mac was still one of the best of her life. But he didn’t deserve that truth.
‘I thought… I thought you… I mean, I thought we…’ Mac kept up his pacing, talking to the pavement instead of Annie.
When he finally looked up, there was so much hurt on his face it took Annie's breath away.
‘I thought that night meant something.’ He stopped moving and the weight of his stare had Annie pinned to the side of the truck harder than his body had.
She could lie. But instead found herself telling the truth. ‘It did mean something,’ she whispered.
With that admission Mac stepped in closer until Annie could feel the heat of him, but he didn't touch her. She really freaking wished he would.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘Yeah. It meant something.’ She felt him nearly sag in relief.
‘Let me try again,’ he said, his voice tight.
‘Try again?’
He was so close now that his words brushed against her ear. ‘Let me try again.’ His voice dropped, sending shivers through Annie’s body that had nothing to do with the falling snow.
For a brief second, she actually considered it, letting Mac try again.
Her body was very interested in what that might look like.
She was hot from her head to her feet and was about thirty seconds away from tearing off both of their coats so she could press herself against him.
They had only been nineteen the last time she’d had the chance, and she was sure Mac had acquired many new skills since then.
Maybe she should let him try. Maybe she was owed the effort.
Hate-sex was a thing, wasn’t it? Maybe they could do that.
But if Annie had one character flaw, it was her pride. And hers had been irreparably injured.
‘I thought it meant something, too,’ she said, meeting his gaze. They were so close their noses nearly touched. ‘I thought it meant something until you ditched me like the whole thing meant nothing.’
Mac flinched. ‘That's not how it happened,’ he growled.
Annie laughed in his face, causing him to take a step back. ‘Not how it happened? As I remember it, we had an agreement, and you never showed.’
‘Annie, I wanted to.’
‘Save it, Mac. I don’t have time. I have a mani-pedi to get to and a grandmother to track down.
’ Annie opened the door and got into the car, slamming the door shut before Mac could get another word out.
She’d heard enough from him for one day.
If he had wanted to show up all those years ago, he would have done it.
She wasn’t going to let him rewrite the story now.
Just because her body was fooled, didn’t mean the rest of her would fall so easily.
All this reminiscing wasn’t doing anyone any good.