Wild in the Moment

She wasn’t a Vermonter for nothing. Her voice was as brisk as a sturdy wind. “Nope. I was wildly in love with him in the beginning, no question about that. But I think love started dying the first day I woke up hungry. I mean, seriously hungry. The thing was, we moved around so much that I couldn’t work-day-by-day jobs, sure, but nothing that could have given us some financial stability. We were all over the place. Living with friends one day, renting a cottage or a villa the next-wherever the spirit of painting took him. So…”

“So?” he prodded her when she didn’t immediately finish her thought.

In the dark, though, it was hard to find every sock and button…and somehow she didn’t want to turn around until she was fully dressed. “So…he gave me the yellow diamond one day-and we had to pawn it the next. That was the turning point for me. I didn’t give a hoot about the stone. It was just that I finally realized he wasn’t being impulsive and absentminded and a devil-may-care artist. He knew we couldn’t afford his grandiose gestures. He knew they were going to turn off the electricity. He just thought he could snow me, like he’d snowed me all the other times. He thought I’d be swayed into staying by the romance of the extravagant present. He loved me the same way. Hugely one day-and pawning me off the next.”

Teague still hadn’t moved from the bed. “Yet you stayed with him for a long time.”

“Yeah. Out of idiotic misplaced pride.” She lifted her hands in one of the Gallic gestures she’d picked up in that ghastly marriage. “I was just so ashamed to tell anyone. My family thought I had this jet-setting fabulous life. My sisters thought of me as a role model, the one they could always turn to for advice, to take charge. They were proud of me, for living my life my own way, for making it unconventionally. I knew famous people. I dressed in designer duds. I was traveling, seeing the world. Teague?”

“What?”

“I stole a loaf of bread one day.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I was hungry. But I wasn’t that hungry. And I can still remember thinking, how ashamed my mom and dad would have been if they’d known.”

“Well, hell. Let’s get a rope and hang you right now.” For a man who’d been so somnolently still, he suddenly bounded out of bed in one swift move and crossed the room stark naked. Suddenly he was an inch from her, his knuckles lifting her chin. Before she could breathe, his mouth came down on hers, soft, warm, firm. “I think you can probably let that guilt go,” he murmured.

“You’re making light of it. And maybe it was just a loaf of bread. But I wasn’t raised to take anything from anyone. I still don’t understand what made me do it.”

“You think you might have felt just a little bit desperate at how you were living? Not knowing where the next dime-or franc-was coming from? That sometimes scared people do scared things?”

“That’s not an excuse.” But she searched his eyes in the dark room, still felt the warmth of his kiss, of his body, of all they’d shared naked moments before. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” He didn’t answer, just stood there, his finger idly tracing her jawline. “I think I’m just trying to explain…why I kept it all from my family. From the people who knew me growing up.”

“You wanted them to think you lived a romantic, exciting life.”

“It sounds pretty shallow when you put it that way. I just mean…I hate coming home with my tail between my legs. I hate people thinking I’m a failure. Thinking that I was always a wild, irresponsible screw-up and the life I got was payback.”

He stood at the front window long after she’d left-taking his sacred Golf GTi-and he heard her moving to third gear before she’d reached the end of the road and the first stop sign.

His head was buzzing. He’d never dreamed, from the image she put on, that her ex had been such a selfish self-centered bastard. It changed things.

All this time he’d believed her about not wanting to stay in White Hills. Now he wasn’t so sure. She had plenty of pluck. She’d coped with a blizzard, coped broke, coped with a selfish liability like Jean-Luc for years. When it came down to it, she seemed to be inspired by adversity, not afraid of it. She’d pushed up her sleeves and become a cook. Made that horrible attic room into something artistic and personal and fun.

He got it. That she wanted people to think she wasn’t practical and responsible. She wanted people to think she was exotic and fun and romantic and wild. He didn’t understand it, but he did understand that the key to Daisy was her pride.

She said she was proud, but as far as Teague could tell, it was her pride that had taken a battering over the last years. In her own way, on her own terms, she needed to feel that fierce sense of pride again. Not fake pride. Not lying-to-everyone pride. But the kind of pride that made her feel good about herself inside.

She wanted to feel wild. She didn’t want to be ordinary. The more Teague repeated those concepts in his mind, the more a plan slowly started brewing. Possibly a goofy plan-but then any plan was better than desperation. Teague understood that Daisy intended to be gone as fast as she saved a down payment on a car and enough savings to take off. And that meant, if he had any way to influence her feelings, he had to move damn fast.

Because he was afraid he’d fallen. Hard and fast. He already knew the odds were against both of them-but a man didn’t feel this power of love very often, if ever, in a lifetime. He wasn’t throwing away a treasure if there was any chance he could woo Daisy into seeing herself as unique and wonderful and loving as he saw her.

Nine

Daisy had never spent much time thinking about Valentine’s Day, yet for the last week, she couldn’t get it off her mind. She wanted to give Teague a present. She didn’t have much money, but the present she wanted to give him wasn’t an issue of cost. She just had to prowl the market for exactly the right item, and Valentine’s Day was coming up in another week so it would give her an excuse to give it to him.

This morning she was standing in the cafe kitchen with a hot mug of coffee in one hand and a wooden spoon in another, when panic hit.

It was so natural, thinking of Teague as her lover. Thinking of giving her lover a gift. Thinking of the kind of gift that really, really mattered to him-even if he didn’t know it yet.

The feeling of panic lunged at her like a surprise nightmare. Holy cow. When had it happened? How could she have done such a damn fool thing as fall completely in love with him?

The oven buzzed, forcing her attention back to practical priorities. It was still ink-black outside, sleet coming down on a day doomed to be gray, as she swiftly took a cake from the oven and then hustled to the counter, where she was tossing together a blend of dried lavender buds, orange zest, and some beautiful baby white onions. Because she was working this afternoon with Teague, she’d come in the cafe before dawn, hoping to get a bunch of cooking and baking done.

She spun around and reached in the refrigerator for a weighty package of ground round, when her mind did it to her again. Whispered that love word.

Her heart started mainlining more panic. Okay, okay. Making love with Teague had been stupendous. More than stupendous. Maybe she found it crazily easy to be honest with him, to share things with him she told no one else. Maybe she loved working with him, pushing him, being with him.

But that was no excuse for starting to believe they could have a future. She knew better. He was as happy in White Hills as a cat in sunlight, when she couldn’t possibly stay here. Yet now she realized how long this ghastly problem had been going on. Every time she thought of him, she’d been doing goofy things. Singing out loud. Walking with a little rock and roll in her hips. Thinking of jokes to tell him. Thinking of giving him something important. Laughing for any excuse. Finding something gorgeous in a gray February day that no one could love.

She had to get a grip.

“Oh, God. What are you making now?” Harry always showed up at the cafe before sunrise, made coffee and then promptly disappeared into a booth with his paper-but he usually paid no attention to anything she was doing.

She grinned at his suspicious expression. “I’m making bitoque with the ground round, cher. I told you. I just put a couple new things on the lunch menu. I promise they’ll fly.”

“I know everybody loves the pastries. But nobody around here wants fancy food.”

“Now, Harry, how many people showed up here for lunch yesterday?” She didn’t waste time waiting for him to answer. “Jason thought it was a great idea.”