When We Let Go by Delancey Stewart (read with me .txt) 📕

Coffee was critical. And I peered into the old tea tin someone had given me once (it had been filled with tea, but I’d fixed that right away), only to find I was out. Because of course I was.

And what the hell was that tapping noise outside? It was half-past barely the buttcrack of dawn. And I had no coffee, an increasingly bad attitude, and a growing irritation for woodpeckers. If that was actually a woodpecker.

Was he pecking on something metal? Stupid bird. I squinted out the cheap broken blinds over the dinette, but didn’t see anything except trees. Because that was one thing I wasn’t short on up here in the place to which I’d been relegated. There were plenty of trees.

Tap, tap, tap.

And persistent birds. I really hated birds.

But I didn’t think that was a bird. The sound was annoying and abrasive, most likely human in origin, I thought. And only one person I knew was capable of inspiring the level of irritation I was feeling. I shuffled across the thin bubbled linoleum floor to the window that looked out the front. A glance out the window confirmed my worst fear. Jack.

An ungodly rage filled me at the sight of him, and perhaps I should have taken a breath and given more thought to the situation before acting. But that had never really been my style.

I pulled on the thin robe hanging on the back of the door and clattered my way through the tinny space to the front, throwing the flimsy door open to crash loudly against the side of the trailer.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My voice surprised me. It carried all the frustration and annoyance I’d kept bottled up and hidden under my assurances to everyone over the last year that I was fine.

“Well, hello, darlin’! You’re a sight, Maddie.”

Typical. Ambiguous. Everything Jack said could be interpreted nine different ways, and everything out of his mouth sounded charming, thanks to that lilting Scottish brogue of his. He knew it, too. It was his strategy for staying out of trouble.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, it’s not a compliment, love.” He gave me his half grin and cocked his head to the side, his waves perfectly styled above his perma-tanned face. God, he was sexy. And God, I hated the bastard.

“Don’t call me ‘love’. Or darlin’.” I sputtered. “My thanks was sarcastic.” I knew it wasn’t a compliment. I couldn’t recall the last compliment my bastard of an ex had paid me. But now if he believed I thought that he’d paid me a compliment, I was already losing this conversational battle. This was what happened when I had to talk to Jack before I’d had coffee.

“You’re a gorgeous woman, Maddie, but today you’re really working that mountain woman thing, ya know. The tatty robe, the smudgy black stuff around your eyes …” He motioned to his eyes, as if I wouldn’t be sure where the smudgy black stuff was. And then he laughed. He was smiling, but the venom in his words worked as he’d intended. The smooth Scottish accent did nothing to me now except deepen my desire to kick him in the balls.

I tried not to care about his words, but I couldn’t help it. I swiped at my eyes. I didn’t exactly practice perfect makeup maintenance now that I was living on my own. In a trailer. On the side of a mountain. No one was usually around to care. “What are you doing here, Jack?” My plan was to get to the heart of the matter and then get him the hell away from me.

“Just doin’ you a wee favor, darlin’.”

I stared at the mallet in his hand, and realized that he’d been pounding a sign into the ground in front of the half-framed house that stood next to my trailer. We were actually talking to one another through the non-existent walls of the front room. The front room of my dream house. My ex-dream house. The one I had been building with my ex-husband. Jack.

“What’s the deal with the sign?”

“What do think the deal with the sign is?” Jack grinned and my blood bubbled hot beneath my skin.

“It’s eight a.m. I don’t want to play guessing games.”

Jack turned away from me as a car motored slowly up the narrow road and came to a stop behind where he stood. “I think you’re about to find out.” As he said it, he turned back around and winked at me.

The wink threw me over the edge.

“Don’t you wink at me, you ass!” I practically screamed it, and as I did, the owner of the car emerged, his head turning my way as he ran a hand through shiny auburn locks.

Wow. I suppressed an involuntary shiver and pulled my robe a little closer around me.

The car was one of those practical luxury types. A Land Rover or a Land Cruiser or some kind of four-wheel-drive Land thing. I wasn’t an expert in slow, hulking cars. Actually, given that I now found myself living in a trailer next to a half-built reminder of my failed marriage and was working in a diner, it turned out that I was not an expert at anything. Not marriage. Not big cars. And certainly not men.

The man who approached the threshold of my trailer, taking in all my terrycloth-robed glory, had an air of practical luxury about him, too. He was tall and broad, his hair glinting with hints of copper in the morning sunlight. It was a little long, a little messy, but clearly some attention was paid to it. He wore aviator sunglasses that hid most of his face. But not his lips.

And his lips … his lips were like a sculpture. The kind of lips that would make nuns blush and giggle. They were a little too perfect, maybe. But the guy wore flannel, like most people in this mountain town. And the short stubble covering his jaw gave him a rugged look that inspired in me a wild urge to rub my hand over it. Or better yet, photograph it.

I longed to dart back inside for my camera, but I already looked like a loon. A robe-wearing loon with a camera would definitely not be better.

The man stepped around the car, gazing up at the half-built house, and I chastised myself for staring. My fascination, beyond his movie-hunk looks, was that this man was clearly different from the other people I’d seen up here, but he still managed to fit in. Something I hadn’t mastered.

“How much?” the man asked, speaking to Jack.

“How much what?” I asked, my voice bordering on a high-pitched scream. What was going on here?

Jack ignored me. “I guess given the state, and the fact that winter’s not far out, the better question is what’s it worth to you?”