Page 57 of Austin
Not going to happen. Over. Done. Fun while it lasted.
It was going to take a few days for his inner self to get it through his inner head, but facts were facts. He’d enjoyed his time with Kristen, enjoyed watching the layers peel away as she shed inhibitions—even if her newfound confidence had given him pause every now and again. But their time of sharing secrets was over.
“How long are you staying?” Shelby asked.
“Just a couple days. I’m appearing at a benefit in Pendleton and I thought I might get a house close to the beach for a couple days after that. Enjoy some peace and quiet before the event.” A few days alone might help him get his shit together. Then, when he came back through Marietta, he could look Kristen up. Take her to dinner. By that time, she’d be back on the job search and he’d be a pleasant memory. In other words, they would have both come to their senses.
“Nothing like quiet time to heal.” Shelby had hung around rough stock riders long enough to know exactly what he was doing.
“Exactly.” He grinned at Les. “I know I’ll get put to work if I stay here.”
“That’s a fact,” Les agreed easily.
He wouldn’t have minded working if he wasn’t hurt. He liked work. In that regard, he and Kristen were alike. They were both driven—just in different directions.
“Do you know if you have a fracture?” Shelby asked.
“I prefer not to know.” His leg was damned sore, but he was riding regardless.
“Stay out of hospitals,” Les muttered. His hatred of hospitals was legendary.
“I’ll do my best,” Austin said with a laugh. Although his chosen profession sometimes made that a difficult promise to keep.
“Check the leg out,” Shelby said. Ty nodded in agreement and Austin gave a noncommittal shrug. He’d have it checked out when he thought he needed to. Right now it was only slowing him down on the ground. He could still push weight down through it, as he would when he rode. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but what was new there?
*
“How’d it go?”
Whitney poured Kristen a tall glass of ice tea as soon as she walked in the kitchen door. She waited for her sister to take a drink before asking, “Did they understand?”
‘They’ being their parents. Less than an hour after arriving in Marietta, Kristen had walked the two blocks to her parents’ house to set the record straight about her life. They had been more stunned by her secret keeping than by her layoff. After she explained her logic—how she’d thought she could land something fast, but time had slipped by more quickly than she’d anticipated—her dad had kind of gotten it. Her mom was still working on the secret part. Working hard on it, in fact.
“She was embarrassed to get fired,” her father had said to her mother, as if Kristen wasn’t sitting right there. Embarrassed.
“Laid off, Dad.”
“Whatever.”
They’d talked for almost an hour, and after Kristen laid out the stark reality of her situation—lots of applications in lots of places, but no real responses—her parents had gone into protection mode, offering solutions, possible places of employment. But they weren’t happy and her mother kept studying her, as if half expecting her to say, “Surprise, just kidding. I never lied to you.”
“Well?” Whitney prompted.
“Didyouunderstand?” Kristen asked as she stirred sugar into her tea. She needed a jolt of something. Sugar would have to do, since Whitney didn’t have any booze in the house.
“Of course not…until I cooled down and recalled that you’re competitive as hellanda perfectionist.”
“I am not.”
“Argumentative, too.”
“Funny.” Kristen leaned back in her chair and took in the cheery kitchen with its sunny yellow walls and cherry motifs on the white curtains and dish towels. Her twin loved color and retro style. Kristen had given her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted with the house they’d inherited from their grandmother. The result was a colorful, fun interior that made her feel like smiling. Most of the time. Right now she was dealing with the sting of parental disappointment—disappointment she could have prevented by being upfront.
“What did you think would have happened if you’d told us when you lost your job?”
Kristen shrugged. “I…thought you guys would be disappointed in me.”
“Well, it wasn’t like the earth would stop spinning.”
