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The one. It sounded so mystical and wondrous. And not something Isaiah deserved. If it wasn’t Serenity, who then? There weren’t a whole lot of eligible women in town, so he needed to figure it out fast so he could stay far away from this woman. How could he jet if he was busy going gaga over a woman? The prediction had it wrong, all the way around. Not happening.
Though he couldn’t deny that he ached down in his bones for the kind of soul-deep connection running rampant throughout that prediction. It was like Serenity had cracked him open and in one shot spied everything he longed for but couldn’t have. His own mother hadn’t wanted him. But the Navy had. And then Caleb Hardy, Tristan Marchande, Hudson Rafferty and Rowe Hardy had adopted him as one of their own. As a thank you, he’d failed them all.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said mildly. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t run right out and propose to someone.”
“Oh, no. You definitely shouldn’t do that. This is a process. You need to do it slowly. Weren’t you listening?”
Serenity was so serious about all of this that it gave him pause. “I’m sorry, I was. Slow. Got it.”
Now he somehow had to navigate the next few weeks until he left without hurting Serenity’s feelings. Preferably by completing a schoolhouse for Hardy’s build-a-town project while not falling prey to the suggestive lure of glancing around just in case there really was someone the universe had selected to fix everything that hurt inside him. That was as likely as Isaiah taking a breath that didn’t burn all the way down.
Three
Tristan Marchande was the most beautiful human Aria had ever laid eyes on. If she had a poster of him, she’d tack it up above her bed like a besotted teenager. The fact that she shared a room with Havana, who was engaged to Caleb, meant nothing at all. They could both stare at him. She’d share.
It was all make-believe anyway.
It wasn’t like he’d give her a second glance or anything. Sure that stung a little but it was so much safer to dream about a stunning, out-of-reach angel of a man. If she set her sights on someone she had a chance with, then this hypothetical guy would eventually leave. Just like everyone else in her life had done. That was not a recipe for happiness.
No. Much better to have a harmless crush on a former SEAL with a physique that could bring a woman to tears. No one had to know she’d set her sights on him strictly because nothing ever could or would happen. That was the only way to avoid getting hurt.
“How did you know Caleb was the one?” she asked Havana, who stood behind her braiding Aria’s hair in an intricate fish-bone pattern. It would be horrendously difficult to unbraid later, but Aria would never say a word.
Havana had been gone for eight of the longest years of Aria’s life. Now her sister was back in Superstition Springs for good and there was literally nothing important enough to potentially squabble over. She’d much rather hear her sister talk about something fun like her fiancé. Just because love wasn’t in the cards for Aria didn’t mean she hated the concept. On the contrary. It was great to see her sister so happy.
“Because he thinks I’m bossy and loves me anyway,” Havana announced immediately with a happy sigh. “I can be myself twenty-four/seven without censure. What is that, but heaven on earth?”
The middle Nixon sister, Ember, spread her red-gold hair behind her as she settled into a pillow on the king sized bed that Aria and Havana shared. Ember had taken a tiny room on the second floor where all of Serenity’s ex-SEALs currently lived since there was no extra room on the third floor of the partially renovated hotel their aunt had bought a couple of years ago.
Her sister came upstairs enough that she might as well live there. She’d wandered into the bedroom a few minutes ago, seemingly content to watch Havana’s fingers fly through Aria’s stick straight hair, no mention of the whereabouts of her seven-year-old. Neither Aria nor Havana had asked after Judd since Ember got snippy the moment anyone said a word about her son.
“Really?” Ember’s voice dripped derision as she jumped into the exchange. “That’s what you find attractive in a man? A guy who calls you names, then tries to make up for it with declarations of his feelings. Please.”
Geez. That’s what Ember had taken from Havana’s comment? It had sounded pretty nice to Aria but since she’d never been in love, maybe there was a trick to it that other women learned on the fly.
“What do you think makes a guy attractive then?” Havana shot back over her shoulder. “A tractor?”
Ooh, interesting question almost assuredly designed to get some answers out of Ember about who the father of her son was. The young boy her long-lost sister had showed up with a few weeks ago looked exactly like Ember and their mother so there were no clues there, and her sister had been shockingly closed mouthed about his parentage. Just like she had been at seventeen. The only males of approximately the right age and who were also rumored to have been Ember’s lovers in high school were Farmer Moon’s sons.
Aria glanced at Ember in the mirror, but their sister’s face betrayed nothing. Too bad. Aria wouldn’t ask. If Ember wanted them to know, she’d tell them. And it wasn’t like she’d called a whole bunch over the last eight years that she’d been gone either. Havana had at least tried to maintain her relationship with Aria via phone, which was more than Ember had done.
“I like a guy who knows when to keep his mouth shut,” Ember finally said cryptically. “Sil
ence is sexy.”
No doubt a nod to whichever local boy had gotten her pregnant but hadn’t spilled the secret in all these years. Of course it was possible that she’d never divulged the truth to the father, either. Maybe she didn’t even know. Ember had been rather free with her affections back in high school, yet another source of conflict between Ember and Havana, especially after the positive pregnancy test. Aria had always avoided male attention on purpose, not that her lack of curves and dull red hair had inspired much of that in the first place.
“Figures.” Havana smirked. “You’ve never met a wall you couldn’t have an argument with. Why not pick a guy whose ear you can talk off? I feel kind of sorry for whoever you end up with.”
“Who said I was in the market?” The hard cross of Ember’s arms belied her mild tone.
“I like a guy I can have a conversation with,” Aria threw in before the whole thing devolved into exactly the kind of argument Havana meant. Those two had always clashed and nothing had apparently changed other than the fact that this time, no one had stormed off to another city and stayed for almost a decade. Not yet anyway. “Cheekbones are nice too. You could cut butter with Tristan’s.”
“Because that’s a useful quality in a man.” This from Ember who apparently had appointed herself the naysayer of all Nixon women’s opinions about the opposite gender.
“What do you think is a useful quality?” Havana asked point-blank, pointing the comb in her hand at Ember. “You know, if you were in the market?”
“Why all the interest in my love life?” Ember responded instead of answering, likely to avoid the question. Obviously she didn’t get the concept of conversation between sisters, a deficiency that Aria, for one, would like to change.
