The Lemon Sisters (Wildstone #3)(22)

On night three, there’d been no talking at all. Even better.

Tonight was night four. They were in the Whiskey River Bar and Grill in downtown Wildstone—the word downtown being a bit of a deception as the main strip was two streets wide and two blocks long. And because Whiskey River was the only bar in town, it was packed. But Lisa wasn’t seated with him. She stood tableside wearing an apron, the pockets stuffed with tips and an order pad. She worked as a waitress in the restaurant part of the bar and was on a break.

From everything, apparently, including him.

“Actually,” she said. “I take that back. It is you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Man of Mystery and Very Few Words.” She shook her head, sighed, and put her hand over his. “Look, you’re great, okay? And better yet, you’re not only employed, you’re successful, and your work’s hugely sought-after. And you look sexy as hell in a tool belt.”

“I’ll add that to my résumé,” he said dryly. “But if I’m all that, what’s the problem?”

Her smile was just a little sad as she sat and looked at him. “We go out, we sleep together, and after, you get up and go home and I don’t hear from you for days or even a week, unless I contact you.”

All true, although when she said it out loud like that, it made him sound like an asshole. “You made it clear you didn’t want to get serious,” he said.

She met his gaze. “I lied.”

He hadn’t expected that. She’d told him they weren’t going to be a thing, and he’d taken her at her word without putting much thought into it. But he could see by her expression that he’d hurt her. Not what he’d intended.

“I want love,” she said.

Hell. Okay, yeah, they had a problem. He wanted a family—actually, he wanted that quite badly. But to get there, he had to fall in love. Love hadn’t exactly worked out for him. In fact, love had led to a whole lot of loss. His mom. Ann. And then there were the people who’d chosen to walk away from him, like his dad. And Brooke. And in a way, being walked away from had been even worse, and Brooke being back in town had stirred all that up inside him again. “Lisa—”

“Don’t panic,” she said. “I get that this is my fault. I wanted you, and I thought I could sneak my way into your heart.” She paused, clearly waiting for a response.

He didn’t have one, at least not one she’d like. His heart was guarded. The last person he’d let “sneak” in was Brooke. He could admit he’d been half in love with her from the day he met her. Her adventurous spirit had drawn him in, but what had held him spellbound was her innate sweetness, proving quite the contrast to her bravado. Up until that point, he hadn’t had much sweetness in his life, and no one had asked so little of him and rewarded him so much for what he’d given.

Lisa shook her head. “It was a mistake—my mistake, because you, Garrett Montgomery, are emotionally deficient.”

He thought about that on the drive home. He opened up to people when it suited him. Didn’t he? He strained to remember the last time he’d done so, but couldn’t.

Huh.

He pulled into Ann’s driveway. No, his driveway, he corrected himself. Ann had been struggling financially, unable to keep up with her mortgage, not to mention the house itself and all the land that came with it. At the time, the market had been shit. She’d been upsidedown on a loan.

It’d taken some doing, but he’d bought the place just before she lost it. For most of his life, everything he’d owned could fit into a backpack, which he’d taken with him from foster home to foster home.

Until Ann.

He was twelve when he’d landed on her doorstep after a run of really bad homes. She’d kept him. Given him his first taste of home cooking, his first affection from an authority figure, and his first real home.

No way could he have let her place go to the bank.

So he’d bought it for more than what it was worth at the time, which had allowed her to stay in her home in her old age as she wanted. Not living far from her in a rental in town, he’d been able to help her out as needed after work and in between jobs. She’d wanted to renovate, and he’d just gotten started two years ago, when she died. That’s when he’d moved in.

Shrugging off the memories, he entered through the front door and was greeted by three pissy old ladies who tried to tell him he’d starved them half to death. He sighed and crouched low, petting each in turn.

He didn’t turn on the lights. He didn’t need to, and also, the electricity in the entryway was faulty. He needed to get on the renovations, but he hadn’t. Hadn’t wanted to. He’d kept the house with the idea of someday filling it up with his own family. Except that hadn’t happened. Probably because apparently he was “emotionally deficient.”

Feeling twice his thirty years, he stripped and stepped into the shower. He stood there, head bent, letting the water hit his shoulders and back until it cooled. As he stepped out, he heard a knock at his back door. Wrapping a towel around his hips, he strode through the house and into the kitchen, stopping short at the sight of Brooke looking at him through the square glass window.

The woman who’d indelibly changed his life every bit as much as Ann had.

Growing up next door to the Lemon sisters had been both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him. He’d thought they were both a little crazy, but in a good way. Their closeness had been magic to him, a kid who’d had no family to call his own.