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“Well, now that’s insulting,” he said with a mock frown. “I don’t usually have to resort to luring a woman into my clutches with job offers. Mostly they come along willingly.”
“You know what I’m saying,” she shot back. “Our association needs to stay professional if we’re going to work together.”
“Like it stayed professional with Scott?” he asked with raised eyebrows. “Seems to me like you traded on that working relationship all kinds of ways.”
“That’s not the point.” It was the point, and she didn’t like that he was forcing her to stay on her toes. “It didn’t matter with Damian because—”
She bit off the rest: I could never fall for him.
And wasn’t that the ugly truth. She could work with Damian and pretend they were engaged all day long because he didn’t stir her up the way Caleb did. The man was confident in his own skin, gorgeous, and oh, so dangerous. She had no clue how to manage a situation that was quickly spiraling out of control.
Curious, he cocked his head as if trying to fill in that blank, and it would not surprise her if he’d guessed the direction of her thoughts. Or had developed some kind of ESP that allowed him to read her like a book strictly by stepping foot in Superstition Springs, the mecca of all things mystical. Either way, none of this was cool.
“I know,” he said softly. “You’re still hurting over the loser ex, and you need someone to treat you like a queen so you lose that panicked look in your eye as soon as a man pays attention to you.”
No , that was the opposite of what she needed, never mind that it sounded so lovely she almost burst into tears. “I need a man who understands that I’m not looking for another broken heart and backs off.”
He held up his hands in the classic I surrender gesture. “Then we’ll keep it casual. No diamond rings four seconds after the next time I kiss you. Got it.”
Okay, now he was being silly. Because she was too, and it figured he’d find a way to put it all in perspective. She let out the breath she’d been holding, and with it almost all the knots in her stomach dissolved. “Yeah, yeah, I’m an idiot again. We can date and kiss and whatever as long as everyone understands I’m not looking for anything more.”
That would keep it all nice and safe. She could let Caleb focus his time and energy on showing her how a real man did things while she invested none of her heart and soul into a man who would eventually tear up both into little pieces. She could hang out for a while longer, see how his plan played out. Keep one foot pointed at the exit.
“What are you looking for then?” he asked so nonchalantly that she almost missed how critical of a question it was. “With the shopping center? Why does it have to be that or the town?”
Trust him to cut right to the bone, slicing through all the meat and exposing her vulnerabilities. Caleb never once had to question his place in the world because he settled into his niche as if he’d always been there. He knew exactly how he fit, and the way he owned that was a large part of his appeal, if she was being honest. And she was so sick of trying to brute force her way into that kind of acceptance that she told him the truth.
“It was supposed to be me showing my strengths once and for all. My mom was cut from the same cloth as her sister. How do you think I got a name like Havana?” She smiled wryly. “Serenity picked up where my mom left off, depending on me to help care for my sisters because she was mostly clueless about how to handle three kids dropped on her doorstep. I didn’t mind. I loved helping. But my sisters didn’t see me as nurturing, just bossy and domineering.”
Ember mostly had said that, more than once. Sometimes Havana thought she’d gotten pregnant on purpose strictly to spite her. Never once had the girl taken a step back to see that Havana had only wanted the best for her. Aria at least had stayed out of trouble, but that didn’t make up for having failed with Ember.
She shrugged and rounded out the list of her sins. “Turns out I come across that way when trying to sell a shopping center too.”
“But if you could get the townspeople to buy into it, you’d finally be seen for your contributions?” Caleb guessed quietly. “Everyone would appreciate you in a way they never had?”
Was she that obvious, or did Caleb pay that much attention to her? Better question—which one did she want it to be? “You see how that worked out. Once again, I didn’t read the room well enough, so I’m still not a Springian.”
That pretty much put the nail in it. She had no business seeing how Caleb’s plans played out. Since everything had fallen apart, it was a great time to leave before she got her hopes up again.
“You can be,” he threw out. “Do this with me. Don’t you see how perfectly the universe set this up to give you what you’ve always wanted? Help them embrace their destiny.”
Help. It was the magic word, Havana’s kryptonite and elixir of life all rolled into one.
Option B didn’t seem so outlandish all at once. When laid out in Caleb’s dulcet tones, it actually sounded pretty great. A few months wasn’t so long to stay in Superstition Springs, not when she could test out dating Caleb at the same time. Maybe she could even segue this design experience into a job in Austin or San Antonio.
If she hadn’t succeeded with Ember or crossed the finish line on getting married and the shopping center was out too, why not jump on board with Team Caleb? What did she have to lose?
Fourteen
Somehow Caleb had convinced Havana to completely abandon the shopping center idea and take a job helping him shape this town into something all the residents could be proud of. An unpaid job because, as she’d pointed out, he had no revenue to draw her salary from. And she’d volunteered to talk to Damian Scott about the new plans since they’d have to somehow convince him that he loved the idea of not razing the town.
Dazed pretty well described his state of mind since the election. Maybe even before that. Havana had knocked him for a loop the moment he’d crashed into her at Voodoo Grocery, and he hadn’t really ever regained his balance.
She was something else.
When she showed up on his balcony the next morning, he could easily call himself shocked. Hadn’t she told him they were taking it slow? That alone had kept him from mentioning the status change in their relationship—if you could call it that—when the guys had ribbed him over the amount of time he spent with Havana.
Yet there she was, knocking on the door. Since he was pretty sure she wasn’t there for the same activity he’d been visualizing, he threw some pants on and eased the door open, partially shielding himself behind it.
