Page 56 of Ocotillo Kisses
“That’s not true, either,” Beck said.
How did these two think they knew him so well?
“I wish I hadn’t hurt Poppy. That’s my only regret.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be a little hard to get past for a while. Sofia was upset that she was upset, even wanted to go over to her house.”
“I never should have let her entertain the idea,” Con said with a sigh.
“Would you have gone out with her if Britt hadn’t come back?” Beck asked.
“Yeah, probably,” Con admitted with a sigh.
“My man, your issue is, you don’t want to work for it,” Caleb said.
“What?” Con whipped around to face the man he didn’t know all that well.
“You dated Britt because you went to high school together. You married Noelle because you went to high school together. You were going to date Poppy because...
“We went to high school together,” Con completed for him, stung by the observation.
“And we’re always hanging around together, and she’s one of the only single women in the group now. You don’t step outside your comfort zone, not when it comes to women.”
Or anything else, Britt would say.
“Now Britt is back, and she’s available and familiar and you step back into that. I’m just saying.”
Con hated to think there was truth to that, that he took the easy way. If he did, that was the only aspect of his life where he took the easy way out. Maybe it wasn’t the easy way, though. Maybe he didn’t want to have to explain to new people in his life all the baggage he carried. The women he’d gone to school with all knew.
But with Britt...the appeal was more than her knowing him. They had history, but they had a present, also. Their attraction was beyond what they’d shared in the past.
The only thing he didn’t know was if they had a future. They didn’t. He knew that. He just couldn’t convince his heart.
“I think I’m going to go talk to Mrs. Lopez about getting the work done in her store,” Con said when they reached a point in the project where two men could do the job and the third would just be in the way. “I’ll bring us back some drinks.” Even though Beck had a cooler full of water, packed by Lacey, Con wanted something sweet. “Anything else?”
The other two men grunted in the negative, and Con crossed the street to enter the cooler air of the grocery store.
Mrs. Lopez was at the register. Con greeted her and walked toward the cooler to grab a couple of sodas and snack bags of chips.
“That’s not good for you while you’re working outside,” she chided when he put the products on the conveyer belt.
“We have water, too, but I wanted something else,” he said. “And I wanted to talk to you.”
“I already told Caleb that it would be best to work on my sidewalk during the week, but I guess he didn’t listen.”
“Sure, we plan to,” he said. “If not this week, then next. I think yours is in slightly better shape than Mr. Nazareth’s.”
She grunted. “And him being a hardware store.”
“What I wanted to talk to you about,” Con said, guiding her back on topic. “We thought we’d help you spruce up the place a bit, since you’ll probably get a lot more customers that week.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Spruce up?”
“Well, we talked about cleaning the windows, you know, and maybe stripping and waxing the floors.” He glanced down as he spoked at the battered linoleum. He wasn’t sure even that would save them. But at least a coat of wax would make them shiny.
“My store is clean,” she insisted. “I mop every morning.”
“I’m sure you do, but when was the last time you waxed them? I’m going to guess it’s been a while.” He actually didn’t know much about waxing, but he knew when he’d been in school, the floors had been waxed a couple times a year.
