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“I see what you’re trying to do here.”
“And what’s that?” Her voice wasn’t even breathless. Go, her.
He held up his hand to do the gesture again, but stopped midway. His baffled look turned steely and grave. “I’ve got too much to lose to let you beat me. A nice ass and breasts aren’t going to suddenly win you a bunch of customers. If you haven’t noticed, most of the market’s customers are families and women, not single guys looking for a hot girl to hit on.”
Oh, she was so not flattered that he’d said she had a nice ass and breasts. Or insinuated she was the hot girl. She was not at all pleased he’d noticed. In fact, it was totally demeaning.
She’d work on her outrage later.
“Yeah, families, Dell.” Mia pointed to the sign Anna had made her. Pruitt Farms, Family-Friendly Fruits and Veggies from Our Land to Your Table. “And I’m guessing a family with wife, husband and kids are going to come over to our booth with people fully clothed and kid-friendly activities. Free kid-friendly activities, at that.”
Dell’s jaw set tighter. “So what’s with ditching the baggy clothes if you’re so family oriented?”
Mia worked up her best dismissive smile. “Maybe I’m trolling for dates. Maybe I wanted to look different for fun. Maybe it’s a business tactic. Maybe it’s not. All you need to know is it’s none of your business.”
He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring with the effort. “You won’t win, Mia.” He shook his head and walked away.
Mia grinned. His words were a lie. He kept coming up to her demanding to know what was going on. He kept getting irritated by her tactics.
She was absolutely winning, and it felt awesome.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_ddc515e8-a657-5fde-a97a-a85e45c432ee)
“DOYOUKNOW how many calories are in one small square?”
“Moooom,” Cara groaned. “Don’t ruin this for everyone.”
“Well, it’s never too early to start being careful about your health,” Mom said primly, taking a sip of her milk. Skim milk. “There are ways to make desserts healthier.”
“It’s Grandma’s recipe!”
“Remember when Grandpa said they used to feed skim milk to the pigs when he was growing up?” Anna said with a grin, causing Mom to roll her eyes and huff out an annoyed breath.
“Yes, we did,” Dad said, taking a defiant bite of brownie. Dessert was about the only thing he ever got defiant over.
Mia picked at the brownies Cara had brought over. Like everything Cara made, they were delicious, but ever since the market this morning she’d felt...weird.
Buoyed, yes. But, and she hated this but, Dell saying she was hot kept playing itself over and over in her mind, and her stomach felt all jittery and nervous and not at all interested in food.
She did not want to care that Dell said she had nice...assets. Why would she care? Why would that please her? It shouldn’t. It was all very unstrong, unfeminist, unbusinesswoman of her.
But she was pleased. She couldn’t help it. A guy thought she was hot. That had never happened before. At least not that she knew of. The fact it was Dell?
You are an idiot.
“Earth to Mia.”
Jostled out of her annoying, embarrassing thoughts, Mia looked up at Cara.
“Ready to go?” She nodded toward the door, the international Cara symbol for “get me away from Mom before I lose it.”
“Yup.” Separation was definitely best when Cara got that squirrelly look about her. Mia didn’t feel like playing peacemaker tonight. She wasn’t sure what she felt like doing, but it wasn’t that.
They got up from the table, offering Anna hugs and Dad goodbyes while Mom followed, the typical anxiety waving off her.
“Why don’t you girls stay the night?” Mom engulfed Mia in a cinnamon-scented hug. She lowered her voice. “Sweetie, next time maybe you should wear one of those—what are they called?—camisole things under that shirt. It’s a little low cut. You wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what she wants,” Cara whispered, earning herself a jab in the side.
“What, dear?”
“Nothing.” Mia pushed Cara toward the door. “Ignore her. Do you want us to take the leftover brownies?”
“Oh, yes. Your father will inhale them before the night’s over if you don’t. Maybe next time you try my trick of making them with applesauce? Adding a little zucchini? It cuts back on the fat and—”
“It’s Grandma’s rec—”
Mia discreetly moved in between Mom and Cara. “Yes, Mom. Applesauce. Will do.”
“Oh, I hate you two girls living on your own.” Their mother wrung her hands, fretting next to the door as Mia and Cara shrugged on their coats. For two years Mia and Cara had shared an apartment. Still, every time they left the Pruitt farmhouse, Mom worried over the two young women living alone.
Cara rolled her eyes and groaned. “We’re only ten minutes away, Mom. Two years, and a serial killer hasn’t gotten us yet.”
Mia pushed Cara again. “You’re not helping.”
Mom clucked her tongue. “Stay the night. Silly to drive all the way home when it’s dark out.”
“We’re only ten minutes away,” Mia repeated gently.
Mom took a deep breath and let it out, offering a pained smile. “All right. All right. We’ll see you in the morning.” Cara and Mia waved as they stepped out the door.
“Don’t forget to get one of those camisoles, Mia!” Mom called after them. “And make sure to lock both locks on your door. Oh, and lock your car doors, even when you’re driving.”
Cara groaned into the evening quiet. “Seriously, how did we turn out normal? How did they even manage to produce three children? Never mind—I don’t want to know the answer to that.”
Mia climbed into the driver’s seat of her truck. Cara and Anna were on that normal spectrum, but she wasn’t always sure she was. How long had Mom’s outer monologue been Mia’s inner dialogue? She’d learned to manage the anxiety, push away the worry about what other people might think or do, but it wasn’t as if the voice had disappeared.
Cara turned in her seat, smiling weirdly as Mia pulled out onto the highway.
“Okay, so hear me out before you totally shoot me down, ’kay?” Cara practically bounced in her seat.
“Oh, God.”
“It’s Saturday night. We rocked it at the market today. You look like someone I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with. I don’t have to work at the salon tomorrow.” Cara clutched Mia’s arm. “Let’s go to a bar.”
Mia laughed, shaking off Cara’s grip so she could have both hands on the steering wheel. “Right.”
“I’m serious! It’ll be fun. A few drinks. We find a few cute guys to chat up. Maybe you give a guy your number.”
Mia’s shoulders involuntarily hunched before she told herself to relax them. She was twenty-six, for heaven’s sake. This was what she should be doing on a Saturday night. Not sitting at home with her seed catalogs. Maybe this was the something different she was wanting.
Still, the idea left her vaguely nauseous.
“We’ll have fun! I promise! We can leave whenever you want. Please, please, please, please—”
“All right!”
Cara’s squeal was ear piercing. “Let’s go to Juniors. Way hotter guys there.”
“Super.” Mia tried to talk herself into some enthusiasm. She wasn’t going to meet a guy holed up in her apartment, and she probably wasn’t going to meet a guy working at the farm or even at the farmers’ market. If she wanted to drop the virginity, she was going to have to put herself out there.
If she could control her blushing, quiet the anxiety, keep her mouth under control, there was no reason this couldn’t be a fun evening.
And Cara wondered why she wasn’t more proactive in the dating scene.
Mia pulled into the crowded lot of Juniors. New Benton boasted only two bars, and Mia had never spent time at either, unless occasionally picking up a drunk Cara counted. Still, the whole town knew Juniors was where the young people went and The Shack was the old, townie bar.
Cara rummaged around in her purse as Mia parked in the back. She flipped down the visor mirror and began applying mascara, holding out a tube of something in her free hand. “Here.”
“Oh, I—”
“Just put on some lipstick. Oh, and some mascara.” Cara finished with the mascara, shoved both tubes of makeup at Mia. “Cara tip number one. Make sure to always wear lipstick. It makes a guy notice your mouth.” Cara waggled her eyebrows.
Oh, this was so not a good idea. She did not belong here. Of course, there hadn’t been any places she’d belonged growing up, outside the farm. Slowly, she was changing that. So maybe she needed to suck it up and try something different. Sometimes jumping into the deep end was the only way to learn.
Mia took a deep breath and flipped down her own visor mirror. In the truck’s pale dome light, she applied the lipstick and the mascara. She didn’t wear makeup often, but Cara had given her enough lessons that she didn’t look like a clown.
Hopefully.
“Ready?” Cara already had her door open. This really was her element.
She managed a weak smile. “Just give me a sec.”
“Oh, God, not the Stuart Smalley routine.”
“Just a second.”
Cara shook her head in disgust as she hopped out of the truck and slammed the door. Mia looked at her expression in the mirror. Stupid or not, a little positive self-talk always helped calm her nerves and bolster her confidence.
“I can do this,” she said to her reflection. “I am a confident, capable adult. Talking to a guy will not kill me. In fact, it’ll probably be fun.” It was time. Past time to fight anxiety and really go after this. Did she want to be alone forever without even kissing a guy? No. So she needed to make this work.
With one final “I can do this,” Mia hopped out of the truck and met Cara at the door to the bar. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Because, gosh, darn it, people like you.”
“Shut up and move.”
Cara led her into the crowded bar. A few people greeted Cara and she waved. Even though Mia recognized a lot of the faces, no one called out to her. Her social circle was slim. Oh, sure, she talked to a few of the ladies at the market, had something passing as a friendship with some of the women there her age, but mostly her tried-and-true friends and confidants had the last name Pruitt. And did not hang out at Juniors.
Cara found a little table in a back corner. “You sit. I’ll go order us some drinks.”
“Just get me a soda.”
Cara shook her head. “Yeah, right. An alcoholic beverage is exactly what you need.”
Mia sat and looked around the room while Cara went up to the bar to order their drinks. People talked and chatted and yelled and laughed. In the corner, she felt somewhat separate from it all. Nobody looked at her. It was as if she wasn’t even there.
Depressing thought. Funny how she’d spent so many years wishing to be invisible but always somehow ended up the butt of the joke, then finally getting the invisibility thing down and now she was wishing for attention.
Cara sauntered back over, two guys following her. Mia recognized one as C. J. Pinkerton, who’d been in her class. The other guy looked familiar, but she didn’t remember his name. He unabashedly stared at Cara’s ass as he walked behind her.
C.J., though, smiled and took a seat next to her. Mia froze a little. He was smiling at her. “Hey, I’m C.J.”
Mia smiled, biting her tongue in time so she didn’t say something stupid like, Duh, we went to high school together. “Mia.”
He squinted, leaning in closer. “No shit. Mia Pruitt.” He didn’t say the rest of it, but she knew what he was thinking. Queen of the Geeks. “You look a lot different than you did in high school, huh?” Then he smiled, pretty and white, a little crooked. He was definitely cute, if a little skinny.
“I guess I do.” Mia took a sip of the drink Cara had put in front of her. She gave herself a mental high five. She sounded like a normal human being.
C.J. laughed. She’d made a guy laugh. Holy moly. For the next twenty minutes she managed to hold an entire conversation with a kind-of-cute guy without once hyperventilating. She might have blushed a few times, but maybe he didn’t notice in the dim light of the bar.
She talked about the farm. He talked about working at the Ford plant in Millertown. It was going well. Hell, it was going perfectly. He even scooted his chair closer to hers.
“Want to dance?”
Hopefully the involuntary squeak she made was inaudible over the hum of the crowd and music. Who knew a little lipstick and some cleavage could make such a difference? Mia smiled, hoped her laugh didn’t sound like some kind of nervous hyena. What if—? Nope. No what-ifs. “Give me a sec to run to the bathroom?”
C.J. leaned back in his seat and smiled. “Sure.”
Mia stood, walked calmly to the bathroom. Where she would normally go into the stall and hyperventilate, she walked over to a sink instead. She washed her hands slowly, deliberately. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. She could totally do this. If she ever hoped of getting even remotely close to having sex, she had to do this.
Her stomach pitched, but she wasn’t going to let that thought derail her. This wasn’t about sex. This was about a dance. One dance. A step. Just like all the other steps she’d made to get here.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked put together and cute, and no one had to know all the anxiety in her mind if she didn’t show it to them.
With a determined nod, Mia pushed out of the bathroom. Shaking her hair back, she put a little bounce in her step and walked back to the table. She faltered for a second when she realized C.J. was no longer at their table. Two new men had joined Cara.
Never should have given him a chance to realize what a colossal mistake he’d made by asking her to dance or the time to remember all her embarrassing moments. Well, that was fine. Mia swallowed down the hard dip of disappointment. Two new guys were sitting with Cara. From the back, they were pretty cute.
If step one had been talking to a guy without acting like a goof, then doing it again didn’t need to be a deal or a problem.
Mia stopped in her tracks when the first man’s profile came into view. It wasn’t some cute guy in her seat. It was Dell.
He lounged in the chair as if he owned it, the lip of a Budweiser bottle perched at his mouth. He must have seen her out of the corner of his eye because he turned and grinned.
“Well, well, well, this is a surprise,” he drawled, setting the bottle back down on the table. He made no effort to move, instead hooked his arm over the back of the chair. “Come here often?” he asked with a wink.
Mia clenched her hands into fists. She wasn’t sure whom she wanted to kill more. Cara, C.J. or Dell.
