She, the Kingdom (She #1)(33)

Chapter Ten

Colton shoved the tool he was using into the back pocket of his jeans. “It’s not the line. It’s not the lamp. I’ve changed the bulb and the batteries in the remote.”

“So what do you think is wrong?” I asked.

He held up the small white rectangle. “I think the remote is defective. I can send it back for you. It’s under warranty.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Colton lifted his arm, using his sleeve to wipe the dripping sweat from his forehead. “I’m a little pissed off, to be honest. Pardon the language. I checked this more than a dozen times so I wouldn’t have to come back.”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorjamb, unable to say my next words without smiling. “Am I that bad?”

“No, ma’am.” He adjusted his ball cap. “I guess part of me was trying to impress you.”

“Why?” I blurted out, frowning. Immediately, my cheeks flushed crimson, and I turned on my heels, escaping to the kitchen.

Colton walked out from the hallway a few moments later, his tool box in his hand and a sheepish look on his face. It had been so long since anyone had flirted with me, I’d acted like an idiot before I’d realized what was happening.

“I’m sorry,” I said from the other side of the island. It was the only thing that separated the kitchen from the dining room, and at the moment, I wished it was at least fifty feet wider. “I didn’t used to be so awkward.”

He set his toolbox on the floor and walked into the dining room. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

I scanned him from boots to ball cap, but nothing about him was familiar. I shook my head.

“I was in the hospital with Mama. We were trying to figure out a way to pay. I sat at your desk for about an hour as you went through every charge and gave us the insurance company discount. Then you removed items that we shouldn’t have been charged for before setting her up with a payment plan. You were the only person who was nice to us that day. Everyone else treated her like an account number.” The memory was painful, and he shook his head.

“Your Brenda Higgins’s son?”

“I am,” he said, proud and reverent.

“I almost got fired for that,” I said. “But I remember her being with a kid.”

“I was nineteen.”

Holy shit. Five years makes a world of difference. “Oh.”

“I’ve never forgotten the smile you put on my mama’s face. Or you.”

“Oh,” I said again, unable to voice anything else. My throat felt tight, and I stood up straight. “I’m glad I could help her out. That’s one thing I miss about my job.”

“I heard about that. I also heard about you and the Kingstons. It’s a little different for around here, but knowing what I know about you, it doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Crawl in a hole and die, Morgan. Crawl in a hole and die. It’s preferable to the way you’re feeling in this moment. He’s young, gorgeous, and flirting with you, and now he’s telling you he knows you could be impregnated soon with Max’s baby.

I looked at my watch. “You know, speaking of… that… I have an appointment.”

“Oh, are you…?” He tucked his chin, waiting for me to finish his sentence for him.

“What? No. No, just a normal appointment. But I should get going.”

He touched the brim of his hat and nodded. He just tipped his hat to me. Do guys still do that? Especially guys his age?

“Hope to see you again soon, Miss Morgan.”

“It’s just, um… it’s just Morgan.”

One side of his mouth turned up, a dimple forming a perfect indention in his cheek.

He left, and I breathed out, reaching for the closest chair to sit in.

*

Amelia sat on the bar stool next to me, her long, tanned legs crossed and bare up to her mid-thigh. “Gosh dang, it’s hot,” she said, fanning herself with a napkin.

Southern Kansas was under a heat advisory, and the air conditioners in every home and building in town hadn’t kicked off since before noon. Amelia looked miserable, beads of sweat forming on her upper lip and along her hairline. She was only wearing a light blue floral strappy sundress and wedges. The VFW had the best bartender in our small town, but it was also inside one of the oldest buildings with an older ventilation system.

“I thought with it being downstairs, it would be cooler,” she said, sipping on her light pink cocktail.

I’d given up on my hair an hour earlier, twisting it up into a rat’s nest of a bun. I was in a taupe tank top, and my curves filled out a pair of cuffed skinny jeans, looking pitifully underdressed and dowdy next to Amelia.

“Water?” Michelle asked, drinking out of a bottle with a straw. Her hair was pulled up, too, the roots soaked with sweat just like her shirt. She placed a new, dewy bottle in front of me.

“No, but I’ll have another beer, please.”

Michelle made a face. She still had the same fluffed brassy bangs and bad perm that she’d had in high school, and she hadn’t changed the blue frost eyeshadow she’d worn since seventh grade, but she worked fast and mixed drinks strong, and so she made more in a week than I had at the hospital. She’d been working behind the VFW bar Thursday through Sunday since she was twenty-one, and it supported all four of her kids and her sometimes-husband, Bill.