The moment their flesh connected, a jolt went clear up her arm, and she didn’t bother to pretend it hadn’t, not when she had Damian’s voice echoing through her head. No, Caleb wasn’t the reason she couldn’t be anything but friends with Damian, but Damian was definitely the reason she knew the difference in what it felt like to hold hands with her fake fiancé and Caleb.
Dang it.
“May the best woman win,” he said cheerfully.
Clearly he’d gotten plenty of sleep in his room right below hers. Not that she’d spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about how close he was or anything.
“I think you’ve got it locked up, Miss Congeniality,” she said with an arched brow.
That made Caleb laugh, and she wished she didn’t like his laugh so much. He was so comfortable in his own skin, quick to poke fun at himself as fast as he made jokes about anything else. His enormous confidence might be at least seventy-five percent of his attractiveness.
Damian was confident in his own quiet way. Why couldn’t their flesh spark when they touched? It was maddening.
“It was a tough crowd,” he allowed. “I tried to make sure the whole process was balanced and not weighted so heavily in my favor.”
“Yeah, why did you?” she couldn’t help but ask. That had been bothering her, but after having to set Damian straight and expending so much energy trying to forget about the man sleeping in the room below, she’d yet to fully examine that odd piece of yesterday’s speeches.
“You started it. Caleb is an American hero,” he mimicked in a singsong voice. “That is so far from the truth—”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“That’s exactly what you said.” But he grinned to take the sting out of it. “Maybe without the falsetto. But still. My military service has nothing to do with my ability to lead a town.”
“I know. I was going to say that,” she said wryly. “But we got all off track, and then it didn’t seem to make a difference what I said. Serenity and her cohorts would have countered everything anyway. So I’m prepared to lose.”
She wasn’t. Not at all. Maybe she should have said she was expecting to lose, but that would sound petty. If Caleb got elected, it would be because the citizens of Superstition Springs thought he was the best choice. Period. And democracy said they got to make that choice, misguided or not.
“I hate that it went down like that.”
She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “The folks don’t seem to like my brand of help.”
Which was the kicker. The thing that she hated. If she couldn’t have a husband, she needed a replacement. Helping the people of this town had been it. But she’d floundered from the start, leaving these enormous depths of nurturing she had inside her untapped. Story of her life. Maybe she deserved to go unfulfilled for abandoning her sisters and Serenity, who had definitely depended on her help. And maybe part of the problem was that she’d tried to give Serenity money to make up for that, and money wasn’t the motivating factor here.
But what was?
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I’m sorry that’s the case.”
Caleb ran a hand through his close-cropped brown hair, rumpling it, which detracted from his appeal not at all. Nothing did. His face wasn’t classically handsome and certainly had its share of worn places, as if he’d spent a lot of time in the sun without benefit of sunscreen. But it worked on him, creating a whole that was downright mouthwatering.
Which of course begged the question—why did she continue to put Damian between them? When she’d conceived of this fake fiancé idea, she hadn’t met Caleb yet. Didn’t matter. She knew herself and getting married, having that soul-deep connection with someone, was still something she yearned for. What she did not want was the soul-deep evisceration when she lost it. Still didn’t.
Except Caleb had happened. He made her feel… alive sometimes, as if she hadn’t really been awake until he’d engaged her temper, her vitality, even her funny bone sometimes. What would it be like to explore that even further? Her gaze strayed to his mouth as her thoughts inevitably circled there, imagining how he might kiss her. If she told him the truth about Damian, which she wasn’t at all prepared to do.
The expression on his face heated as he caught her watching him, and her gaze automatically lifted to lock with his. He was too close, too male, smelled too much like something her body craved and like her entire world had just spun off its axis.
That was the only excuse she could come up with for why she ached for him to touch her. However he pleased. He could slide a palm up her arm, cup her jaw. Brush a thumb across her ear. She wasn’t picky. But the touch of his lips on hers… The shudder that visual unleashed rocked her to the core.
She clawed it back, desperate to regain some of the control she’d lost. Futile. Control over anything in her life had been slipping away since Cole had announced he was done. And maybe that was the crux of this fake engagement plan—she’d needed to take action, to prove she still called the shots in her own life, not Cole. And neither did Serenity with her wacky predictions, never mind that it had unfolded exactly as she’d sa
id.
Work success may overshadow the desire for a relationship, and a problem may arise in becoming a bit too pushy or aggressive.
Yep, in retrospect, that was a frighteningly accurate statement concerning the events of yesterday. She’d tried to push her agenda on the town, and they weren’t buying. Well, if she wanted to be honest, that might have attributed to some of the reason Cole had dropped her like a hot potato too. He’d had a real problem with her ambition as well as her tendency to be assertive. Which was not the same thing as being bossy, like he’d said.
Wow. Fine time to have these realizations, after she’d already barged into town and blown her chances on this shopping center. Probably. But none of this explained why she’d so badly wanted to get married to Cole and then, in response to his rejection, had so carefully ensured she’d never meet anyone new by plunking down the barrier of Damian.
She didn’t believe Serenity’s predictions had any weight. Not really. But still, just in case, she’d carefully avoided the heartache of constantly wishing for someone to care for and constantly screwing that up.