Matched(27)

"Not unless you've got some real sweet tea."

"Got iced tea and sugar packets."

Will shuddered. "No, thanks."

What they lacked in sweet tea, they made up for in company. Other than Mikey and his family, Will wasn't often around people who'd treated him like a regular person. With Natalie and CJ, it might've been the Lindsey factor, might've been that CJ's sister had played in Will's band, but there was nothing starry-eyed about either of them. No angles, nothing they seemed to want from him.

So today, he enjoyed himself, being himself. He was debating asking if the bakery delivered cupcakes when he realized Noah was singing something awful familiar.

Off-key and off-beat, but he was singing a Billy Brenton original to his dinosaurs.

Will choked on a laugh.

Words weren't quite right either.

"Lookin' for those bow spangle smiles," Noah crooned.

"Oh, lordy." Natalie hid her face behind her hands, but her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

Will spun on his stool.

Noah held the pink-dressed tyrannosaurus in his right hand, making it sing to the blue-dressed triceratops in his left. "Ain't never been a mime, too like, too old, Air I was, moan on the gold … "

"Back up, back up," Will said over another laugh. "Ain't never been the kind, Noah, bud. Ain't never been the kind."

He walked Noah through the first verse. They hit the chorus, and Noah burst into song all on his own again. "And she's glowing me her gritty miles, bunny miles, dime word miles … "                       
       
           



       

"Whoa, whoa," Will interrupted. "Dime word?"

"He, ah, thinks you're saying A-S-S-Y instead of sassy," Natalie said, "which would cost me a dime to his college fund."

"Got it," Will said. "And now she's showing me her pretty smiles, funny smiles, sexy smiles, her sassy smiles," he sang for Noah.

Noah chimed in on the rest of it.



She wears her biggest smiles, her brightest smiles, her secret smiles, her underneath-it smiles.

And she's wearing them just for me.

My snow angel's smiles are just for me.



Will grinned at the kid, but Natalie stared at Will with a half-confused, half-thinking-hard-enough-to-make-her-brain-smoke look.

Uh-oh.

She blinked, then shook her head. But her eyebrows were still scrunched like she had a notion about something.

His heart kicked out a you stepped in it now, pal rhythm, coupled with the hair standing up on his neck.

"Did you-" She stopped herself.

Will felt an unusual warmth in his face. CJ walked out of the kitchen with a burger and fries. He looked at Natalie, did one of those silent-questions-to-the-wife looks.

"What exactly are your intentions?" Natalie said, and while Will had heard Bliss's Queen General lady had some scary to her, Natalie was plain terrifying.

He gulped. "Ma'am?"

"Your intentions," she repeated, making every syllable sharp and distinct.

"Regarding?"

"Regarding the subject of that song."

Will sometimes had to wear his Business Billy face, and he was good at putting on a show, but he wasn't good at lying. And Natalie didn't appear to be good at tolerating being lied to.

The lady's eyes had gone dark as night.

"Billy, you're in trouble," Noah whispered.

"Looks like," Will agreed.

Natalie folded her arms over her chest. "My sister can take care of herself, but that doesn't mean I won't end you if you're playing with her, and I don't care who you are. In fact, because of who you are, if you hurt her, I'll end you, and then I'll bring you back to life so I can end you again."

Will glanced at CJ, who had the half-afraid, half-admiring look of a guy who got off on watching a woman on a power trip. "Might could need that to go," Will said to CJ.

"Oh, no," Natalie said. "Stay. Enjoy the music."

"Face the music?" Will said.

"That too." She smiled sweetly, which was even more terrifying than her intentionally scary face. "It's the least you can do for teaching my son a song about my sister's underwear."

Will bit his tongue.

Because otherwise, he'd ask if Lindsey still wore those smiley face panties. And even he knew that was a bad idea.

But if Natalie was putting it all out there, Will probably needed to clear the air with Lindsey about it too. No more talking behind it. No more pretending it didn't exist.

It was time to put the past to rest.





LINDSEY WASN'T unfamiliar with working on the weekends, but she usually stuck to one day or the other, generally no more than six or eight hours total.

By early Sunday afternoon, she'd racked up ten, and that was after spending yesterday morning at Bliss Bridal being fitted for a wedding gown she'd never wear for anything other than Nat's promotional pictures for her new line of dresses. Lindsey spent Saturday afternoon with Dad and Noah at a crazy, jam-packed bouncy house place close to her office. So it had been natural-and a blessed, quiet, uncrowded relief-to swing in and do a few hours of paperwork instead of going straight home last night.

Today, she'd risen early so she could finish what she started at the office yesterday. But now, Lindsey was hungry, and she wanted to be home. Whether or not Will was there.

And she refused to think about which option she preferred.

She could've kicked him out-between the dog, the music and the memories, he shouldn't have been her favorite houseguest. But between the dog, the music and the memories, he was inspiring ideas and feelings she shouldn't have.

Her heart-and the smileys on her panties-squealed when her garage door lifted to reveal his big dark blue truck inside.

He wouldn't be here forever. And she knew she shouldn't let him be anything more than a friend.

But Will was her weakness.

He had been from the minute they met.

And neither her internal match-o-meter nor his big, public life-compared to her need for a simple, private life-could change that.

She softly opened the door into the house. Twangy music came from the living room.

She tossed her purse onto the counter, kicked off her mules, put them next to his cowboy boots and shrugged out of her coat, listening.                       
       
           



       

" … Soon I was tumbling into the snow, with my face all about to hit the ground … "

She couldn't hear the song without thinking of nineteen-year-old Will, flashing that country boy grin, using that line-"Baby, that ain't no way to break a man's fall."

There were other instruments, and his voice sounded different. Still Will, but not the same. He wasn't playing the song on his guitar. It must've been on the radio.

In the living room, she found Wrigley on the floor at Will's feet while he lounged on the couch, watching himself on the television.

Not the radio. His music video.

Shot at a ski resort.

Will flicked a glance at her, and she felt warm sunshine. "Five weeks at number one last fall," he said conversationally.

The song played on. Lindsey's heart tripped over itself. She hadn't seen the video, and she couldn't reconcile the man lounging on her couch with the man on the television, flashing a wink-wink every time he sang the word smile.

"Congratulations," she murmured.

Will lifted a brow at her, and the sunshine she'd felt when she walked into the room morphed into a typhoon.

Congratulations? the brow said. That's all you have to say? I wrote a song about your underwear and made millions off it, and all you want to say is Congratulations?

Tell him he's an asshole, her brain said. What kind of creep writes a song about a woman's underwear?

"I'm sorry," she whispered, straight from her heart.

Not because he didn't deserve an ass-kicking for writing a song about her underwear.

But because she needed to say it. She needed to know if he could honestly forgive her.

If she could forgive herself.

Not because they had a future. But because she needed to let go of the guilt from the past.

"That's a right good start," he said, his voice on the husky side.

Wrigley whimpered. He stood, shook and trotted to Lindsey's side.

She didn't know what else to say. Or how. Apologizing was a skill she'd voluntarily unlearned when she came home to Bliss as a divorce lawyer.

She'd had to, or she wouldn't have survived.

"You know what's always bothered me?" Will's voice was raw, his eyes steady but seeping with old injury. "You knew. That whole week, you knew you'd leave. All that friend stuff was bullshit, and we both know it. Why'd you do it? Why'd you let me in when you knew you were fixin' to just kick me out again?"

Why, indeed? Of all her regrets in life, hurting Will had always been the biggest. "I didn't mean to. I didn't want to. And I thought I had it under control. But I was a know-it-all nineteen-year-old who had alienated all her friends by telling them that my psychic powers said none of them were in good relationships. I was a freak who didn't know how to be a friend. But you-you were funny and sweet and goodness personified. You made me feel like a person instead of a weirdo. And I hoped we could leave the week as friends, and that you'd never know how terrible I could be."