Chapter 11

Isaiah hustled out of his room to take the stairs to the third floor before he could change his mind. Aria answered the door at the private apartment she shared with her sisters and Serenity, her red hair hanging down her back in a long liquid fall of gorgeous. He didn’t bother to pretend he wasn’t drinking in her pretty face.

He’d missed her. Which was ridiculous. He’d just seen her at church a few hours ago. But that didn’t change the big ball of happy in his chest that expanded the longer he looked at her.

“Isaiah.” She stared at him as if she couldn’t quite look away either. “Didn’t we decide we’d reconvene after I tried talking to Tristan on my own?”

He shrugged. “I guess that’s where we left it. I’m here about something else. Something roof-worthy. You can’t say no.”

This would be a great time for his rusty persuasion skills to make a reappearance. Good practice too. He had a burning need to get Aria Nixon onto that roof and an even greater need to prove to himself that he could still figure out how to motivate people into doing things they didn’t necessarily want to.

If he could find remnants of his old self, maybe—maybe—he might have a shot at doing what Hardy had asked. Not that he was going to. It was just that he would feel a little better about his chances.

“I can’t say no?” Crossing her arms over her midsection, she tried—and failed—to keep the amusement off her face. “What happens if I do?”

“I’ll cry,” he said deadpan. “And you don’t want to see that.”

She actually laughed, leaving him wondering why he’d been in a bad mood all day. Maybe he’d misread her caginess earlier. Or he’d really hit on something when he’d told her she was scared of Marchande, which she hadn’t liked. Either way, he didn’t intend to leave without her.

“Tell me what it is then,” she insisted.

“Can’t.” He mimed zipping his lips, which was hard with the grin stretching his face, and that’s when it struck him that he’d been in a bad mood solely because he hadn’t been in Aria’s orbit. Being around her did nice things to his insides, things that lightened his spirit, and he was glad all at once that Hardy’s visit had caused him to seek her out. “Come with me to the roof and I’ll spill everything.”

She didn’t move. “But this is not about Tristan?”

“No, something else,” he promised, glad all at once that he had an excuse to spend time with her that had nothing to do with other people. “Come along.”

Shock of all shocks, she nodded and stepped across the threshold, shutting the door behind her. That had been far too easy. His skills might be in much less dire shape than he’d thought.

But now he had a bigger problem. Aria spilled into the hall, surrounding him in ways that his greedy, contact-starved soul lapped up like a dog. Why did it always feel as if the sun had just broken through the clouds of his heart whenever she looked up at him through those clear blue eyes?

“So… yeah. This way,” he said brusquely and turned, hoping whatever warmth had just bloomed inside would die a cold death the second he cut off the source. Didn’t happen. But it was too late to back out now.

When he pushed open the door to the roof, sunset had just started staining the sky to the west, throwing purples and oranges deep into the blue. He couldn’t have timed this better if he’d tried and the serendipity of it actually made it much better than if it had been planned. The only thing he could do at this point was roll with it.

“That’s a nice picture,” Aria commented, her gaze fastened on the horizon.

His gaze was on her and he couldn’t seem to stop watching the small smile playing at her lips as she gorged on the sunset. “It’s more than nice. It’s closer to perfect.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot for a second how much of a romantic you are,” she said wryly. “I stand corrected. It’s a lot like perfect.”

“I’m not romantic.” A genuine scoff barked from his throat. “Furthest thing from it.”

At that, she sifted her gaze from the sunset to his face, zeroing in on him with uncomfortably canny focus. “You do realize that Shrek is a love story. Right?”

Rolling his eyes, he gave up. She could think whatever she wanted about his nature and assign his preferences all kinds of fluffy qualities. Didn’t make it fact. “Let’s circle back to that later. I have something that I need your help with. Strictly in exchange for helping you with Tristan.”

Yes. Good. Focus on the task.

But Aria was already shaking her head. “I’m setting you up with Cassidy in exchange. It’s already decided.”

“The same Cassidy who completely ignored me at the movies yesterday? I don’t think that’s something you can promise.” Nor was that what he wanted, and not just because of the prediction—though that was a huge factor. First and foremost, he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings since he had less than zero interest in Cassidy. But he didn’t want to examine why he had no interest, let alone explain it to Aria. “This is a much better favor. Hear me out and then you can decide what’s fair compensation.”

“I’m listening.”

“Caleb asked for help in putting together some ideas to draw people to town.” It didn’t sound so overwhelming phrased like that, more like a group effort. Hardy could benefit from some tips on persuasion, which didn’t include tossing around the concept that Isaiah would be in charge of anything. “As a longtime resident, you’re well suited to coming up with angles that might appeal to people.”

“Ideas about how to draw people?” She pursed her lips. “Permanently or you mean like, to shop at Voodoo Grocery?”

“Either. Both. To do things that don’t exist yet. Like maybe we create a festival.” Now he was just making this up as he went along, because that had been nowhere on his radar. But he warmed to the idea almost against his will. “What local traditions could we capitalize on? That’s the kind of insight you’ll have. I’m thinking we could come up with some great stuff together.”

Suspicion marred her pretty features as she did some mental calculations in her head that apparently didn’t add up in his favor. “Why didn’t Caleb come ask me to help out on this himself?”

“Because it’s…”

Wow, there was not a good way to weasel out of answering that honestly, not after he’d wordsmithed it to sound like something different than it was, namely Caleb trying to force Isaiah into an ill-fitting mold. Sure, Caleb had good intentions and there was the possibility that taking on this assignment could help tether Isaiah to Superstition Springs in way nothing else had. But at the end of the day, framing it as a team think tank type project had been disingenuous and he owed Aria a better explanation.

“It’s really supposed to be mine,” he told her, straightforward, no hem hawing. “Tapping you for help was my idea, not Caleb’s. I think we’d be a formidable team. Don’t you?”

“Why don’t you think you can do it by yourself?”

The simple question washed over him with surprising force. She hadn’t even bothered to be complimented by his pretty words and instead had honed in on the root of his issues, despite additional deflection. This was the inherent problem with Aria: she saw him a little too clearly and he liked that a little too much.

He was so tired of pretending. Why couldn’t he just be honest with her about how itchy it made him to think about her and Marchande together?

Well, what if he did tell her? Then what? It wouldn’t change anything. He was still on his way out the door and Aria wasn’t. All Isaiah could do at this particular point in time was spend a few hours in the company of a woman he liked and work out some ideas to help the town. One step at a time, like Hardy had said.

“I can totally do it by myself.” Which was totally a lie. Not only that, he couldn’t be honest about Marchande, and he couldn’t flat out tell her how broken he was. “I just don’t want to. We like the same music and of course, you have a vested interest in new blood since you work at the diner, right?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “Sure. Ruby could use some patrons with deeper pockets. I always feel bad taking tips from people I’ve known my whole life, who don’t make much money in the first place.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to help?” he asked her hopefully.

After a brief moment of hesitation, she nodded. “We’re going to be here a while then. Where’s the blanket?”

A little thrown by her sudden decisiveness, Isaiah jumped to do as she bid and pulled the blanket from the watertight container he’d invested in after figuring out that a wet blanket wasn’t the slightest bit fun and spares were hard to come by. He fanned it out, stomped out the air bubbles and extended a hand to Aria to help her get settled before taking his own seat.

The silence stretched as the sun finished up for the day, sinking toward the horizon, which ran in a line as far as you could see.

“I appreciate you. For doing this with me, I mean,” he corrected hastily.

“Of course.” She flashed him a smile that took on a mysterious edge in the fading sunlight. “It sounds like fun and besides, watching a sunset with you is not a chore.”

“Well, it was a tossup whether I’d actually get you up here tonight. You weren’t so keen on the idea earlier,” he reminded her lightly, praying that she couldn’t read how much her rejection had actually bothered him.

“I’d planned on hunting up Tristan tonight,” she said, her gaze trained on the stain of colors beyond the lip of the roof. “To prove I’m not scared of him. Yet here I am. Avoiding him again.”

“I didn’t mean anything by that.”

Other than to point out the obvious—that she wasn’t getting Marchande on board the Aria train fast enough. Isaiah needed them together and the whole thing done with. Then he didn’t have any room to imagine a different ending to his association with Aria or have to worry about his prediction.

“You did so.” But her tone was gentle enough to tip him off that she wasn’t mad. “And it’s a valid point. I’m comfortable with you. It’s easy. I like not worrying about whether I’m saying something witty or if you’re giving me a compliment that you’ve repeated to a hundred other women. I know you’re completely sincere. Why wouldn’t I prefer that to a sweaty-palmed encounter with a man I have nothing in common with?”

Ridiculously pleased, he absorbed all of the nuances of what she’d said and then did it again because hello. She’d just admitted that she preferred Isaiah’s company to Marchande’s. Not a typical occurrence in his world. Or anyone’s.

“Thanks,” he said, though how he got the word out around the lump in his throat was a mystery. “I like hanging out with you too. That might have been at least half my motivation for dragging you up here.”

Oh, look. He could be honest after all.

“I came willingly,” she returned with enough texture in her voice that he did a double take.

She wasn’t…flirting with him, was she? If so, he’d gone about this whole thing wrong. He should have brought candles. Invested in chairs. With cushions.

And then reason returned in a huge, uncomfortable rush. Aria wasn’t interested in him. She liked Marchande or they wouldn’t even be here. Likely she was rehearsing her moves, hoping to rinse and repeat with his friend. Isaiah had volunteered to help. Why not with that aspect as well? Certainly made it a lot easier to ignore the little rush in his stomach when she smiled at him if he kept the idea front and center that this was all practice. Not real.

Eventually she’d get it right with Marchande. And then Isaiah would have to sit back and watch his efforts bear fruit while Aria cozied up to someone else. He had to get to the point where he was okay with that.

“Yes, you did and a good thing too. I don’t invite just anyone up to my roof.”

“I do feel special, then,” she murmured and her gaze wandered away from the horizon to light on his face. “Where should we start?”

About a million responses sprang to mind but he bit them all back. Every last one was too provocative, too intimate. But that didn’t stop him from wishing he had the liberty to say exactly what was on his mind and it was not a dying town, the bet she’d made or anything other than how much he’d like to kiss her.

“Theme song,” he choked out and she blinked. As well she should. He needed to get his thoughts in order before he blurted out stuff. “I think Superstition Springs should have a theme song. Maybe ‘If the Stars Were Mine.’”

“Melody Gardot?” Aria pursed her lips, which did nothing to stop kissing type thoughts from multiplying in his head like rabbits. “That’s a fascinating choice.”

“I mean, you can’t dance to it or anything…” Duh. What a lame thing to say, as if dance-ability factor had anything to do with anything. She’d fried his brain or something. “Maybe slow dance but it would be tricky.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Aria said wryly. “I’ve never slow danced to anything, so I wouldn’t exactly call myself an authority.”

“That’s terrible. And easily rectifiable.” Instantly, he jumped up and fished his phone out of his pocket to key up the song in question, pushing everything Superstition Springs related out of his head. “Let’s see how it would work.”

The notes wailed out of the speaker, low and sultry. He held out a hand to help her up, but she hesitated long enough that his lungs seized up.

“You don’t have to dance with me,” she said with a half-laugh that was anything but amused.

Those candles would come in handy right about now. He’d love to have some extra light to read the things in her eyes that she hadn’t said. But if his persuasion skills hadn’t completely deserted him, he could still feel his way through this without benefit of additional clues. “Come on. You don’t want Tristan to ask you to dance and then stumble all over his feet, do you? This is just practice.”

Labeling it as such seemed to do the trick, just like it had for him a minute ago. This was no big thing. It meant nothing. She placed her hand in his and climbed to her feet, crowding into his space and then there was nothing left to do but pull her into his arms.

Yeah, he was really wrong. This was a big thing. Huge. She smelled like cinnamon and something fruity which he would have never expected to go well together but on her, it swirled into a magical blend which crossed his eyes.

“What do I do now?” she murmured throatily and the catch in her voice told him that she was similarly affected by the moment.

How, was the question, but he didn’t dare chalk it up to anything other than nerves, likely because she worried she might be doing it wrong. The least he could do was set her at ease.

“You’re doing great. Put your other hand at my waist,” he instructed her without giving away just how affected he was.

His performance deserved an Oscar to boot, especially once her warm fingers nipped into his flesh. The T-shirt between them hardly mattered since he could still feel her heat through it, and he wasn’t at all ashamed to admit he’d much prefer it if the shirt could go.

“Let me lead,” he said and guided her in a clumsy circle that probably told her all she needed to know about his skill on the dance floor, which was somewhere in the low fives on a scale of one to ten. But it wasn’t zero.

They found a sweet spot where they moved pretty much in sync, and when he caught her gaze, deep and rich and full of unfathomable things, his soul turned over.

“This is kind of fun.” The surprise in her voice made him smile. “And not as hard as I was thinking. It probably won’t be easy when I’m trying to do it with another man, though.”

Not for either of them, he thought sourly, but pushed that out of his mind. He had a lot of nerve even thinking about Aria as anything other than a friend, her scent and the way she felt in his arms notwithstanding. “We’ll practice a lot. How about that?”

Yeah, he was a saint, wasn’t he?

He spun her slowly, giving her time to acclimate to the new direction. She did so flawlessly, catching on to the rhythm much faster than he’d have expected. The waning light provided just enough illumination to see each other but not much more than that. It was kind of a blessing, taking some of the tension out of their nearness for some reason, like a twilight filter that muted any weirdness.

The song swelled around them as he caught her back up in his arms, holding her a little closer than was expressly necessary, but in his defense, she’d never danced before. She might trip and fall. That wouldn’t do.

“Her voice is so beautiful,” she said wistfully. “I wish I could sing. I’m tone deaf.”

“Ironic much?” he teased. “With a name like Aria, you should be belting it out.”

“Yeah, well. The fact that I can’t is one of Ember’s favorite jokes.” She seemed to be a good sport about it though. “Besides, that would be like me questioning why you can’t spout prophecy.”

“Point taken.” He was definitely not in the same category as his biblical namesake, and prophecy wasn’t his favorite subject right now. “We’ll pretend our names have nothing to do with who we are and move on.”

She went quiet for a moment and he imagined she was concentrating on the moves, but then she said, “Why ‘If the Stars Were Mine’? For the theme song, I mean. Why not ‘I Put A Spell On You’? That might play to the quirkiness of the community that Caleb hopes to capitalize on.”

“Perfect.” Why hadn’t he thought of that? Easy answer—because he was still not on his game yet. But she’d filled in his gaps and he didn’t mind that at all. “Where do you stand on the otherworldly aspects of this place?”

“What, you mean in relation to Havana and Caleb’s plan to tease out the supernatural part of the town?” She shrugged, and he felt the movement under his fingers. “I think it’s brilliant. The residents love their oddities and that’ll motivate them to make it work.”

As she was one of the longtime residents, he couldn’t help but ask. “What’s your oddity?”

“The fact that I don’t do feminine things isn’t enough of a clue?” she said with a wry laugh. “Havana’s always after me to do something with my hair or clothes, but that’s just not me.”

“What? You do feminine as well as anyone.” Case in point, the moon had peeked over the horizon in the opposite direction of the sun, lighting up her hair with an ethereal fire that caught in his throat.

She smiled. “How do you always know what to say?”

Because it was easy when it was the truth. Mostly. The truth he’d like to be speaking he shied away from, though.

“I almost never know what to say,” he mumbled and even that was a lie. A lot of times he knew what he should say, but didn’t. For example, he should be talking about the plan to draw tourists to Superstition Springs. He should not, under any circumstances, tell Aria how beautiful she was.

“Is that why you wanted help on working through ideas for Caleb?”

No, that had been because he suffered from a lack of confidence, a severe case of the waffles, plus myriad other issues. But this was one of the times when he didn’t want to think about the consequences of his brokenness. “I told you. I thought we’d be a good team. Why do something by yourself when you can do it with someone else?”

She nodded. “That’s true. I’ve never thought about it like that.”

“That’s because you’ve never been a part of a cohesive unit like I have,” he said automatically. Except he wasn’t anymore and that was a hook through the gut he could have avoided if he hadn’t been distracted by Aria.

“Yeah.” Her voice grew wistful again and her thumb moved against his shirt in a little circle that heated instantly. “It’s hard to come by here. But it sounds wonderful. What was the best part about it?”

“Having a niche,” he said. “A place that was mine.”

Which wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all, not to her. It was too personal. Revealed too much.

But it was pure truth. The camaraderie, the guys having his back, working as a highly trained team—that was all great. But he’d liked knowing there was a unique spot that only he could fill. His job had been to keep the team unified and he’d lost his way.

“I can see why you’d like that.”

He swallowed. “It was hard to lose. Really hard. I’m still not sure where my place is now.”

A part of him felt as if the announcement should have come out with a little more fanfare. A drumroll. Something to mark the occasion of owning the damage that Syria had done to him way down deep inside, where he couldn’t touch it. There was nowhere to hide and no way to paint that picture with any less bleak colors.

Aria just nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry. But that’s what’s great about the fact that you’ve come here. You can find a new niche.”

Which sounded remarkably like what he suspected Hardy had been trying to help him realize. The problem was that Isaiah could see that very clearly. What he couldn’t see was how to reverse the fact that leaving was what he knew best. What he deserved. There were too many dominoes stacked up, ready to usher him across the town lines as he left for the last time.

“Maybe,” he said noncommittally.

The song ended and they both stopped moving at the same time. He should step away. She should step away. There was entirely too much unsaid swirling beneath the surface of what should have been a simple dance lesson. But neither of them moved and the longer they didn’t, the tighter the tension bound them together.

“This was nice, thank you,” she said, her voice low as she peered up at him through her lashes.

“You say that like it was some horrible favor I had to endure,” he countered gruffly, and tightened his arms at her waist, completely determined not to let her go. “I like dancing with you.”

“Then that’s the best kind of favor, when you don’t mind it.” She leaned in without warning and brushed his cheek with her lips in what she might have considered a thank-you kiss or some nonsense.

Before she could draw back, he caught her jaw with his thumb, threading his fingers through her hair to hold her in place mere inches away. She stared at him. His flesh burned where she’d brushed it. It would take no effort at all to lean into the gap and connect in a real kiss.

He shouldn’t. But in that moment, he couldn’t remember why. This was every bit the spiritual connection Serenity had predicted, the one he’d tried to avoid, tried to ignore. Tried to pretend it was someone else he’d had to watch out for, when it had been Aria all along. Now that he had it, he didn’t want to deny himself a single second.

But before he could instruct his muscles to move, she broke away, stumbling backward to put a huge gap between them. She stuttered out some words and then fled, leaving Isaiah on the roof alone.