“Anything else?” asked Margit.
Lucas finally looked up, his face hard. Hard like a man who’d been in prison and knew how to protect himself and the people he cared about.
“Yeah. A better goddamned attitude or a new waitress.”
And that’s when, for the first time in her entire life, Missy Branson’s heart exploded with love.
Staring at Lucas’s badly broken nose in profile, she sighed.
This wasn’t just physical desire. Or desperation for attention. Or the hope that someone would like her. Or the pathetic need to feel connected to someone. This was love. This was the act of her heart choosing his. It had to be, because she’d felt all the rest before, and this was new. This was different, and for just a second it made her feel breathless and beautiful.
Margit slunk away, and Lucas returned Missy’s gaze, running his thumb gently back and forth against her wrist. He smiled at her, and his was, hands down, the most captivating smile she’d ever seen.
She never, ever wanted to look away.
Chapter 4
Lucas stared back at Missy, marveling at the transformation in her expression as he stood up for her. It made him feel like a king, like a god, like someone handsome and upstanding and worthy of goodness in his life. Despite beating a man almost to death, despite spending three years incarcerated, despite failing his little sister and having a face that would spoil milk, the look of admiration and approval in Missy Branson’s big blue eyes made Lucas Flynn feel like second chances were possible. Nothing showy or complicated. A little happiness, like what his folks had before his Pop passed away. He had a faint, fleeting memory of his father’s protective arm over his mother’s shoulders as his Pop’s gruff voice shared the secret to happiness: It’s a simple recipe, son: A lot of good. A lot of loving. A little hard work.
He looked at the beautiful woman across the table from him, holding her hand gently. “No one has a right to treat you bad, Missy.”
Missy flinched, dropping his eyes.
“How can you live in this town?” he asked her, feeling the wonder in his voice. “How do you stand it?”
She drew her hand back and unwrapped her straw, plopping it into her soda. “I’m a waitress. I live with my mother. I’ve got savings, but not much. Where am I going to go?”
“Anywhere’s got to be better than this.”
“Like where?”
“Kitten, I hate to tell you, but they need waitresses everywhere. Bozeman, Livingston, Great Falls. Helena. Billings, for God’s sake!”
Her eyes were sparkling, and her lips tilted up tentatively. “Kitten?”
He grinned at her, feeling like a giddy teenager. “If I had a blond-haired, blue-eyed girlfriend from Gardiner, I’d definitely call her Kitten.”
She giggled softly, and he swore he’d call her Kitten a hundred times a day until the end of time if she’d smile at him like that forever.
“I’ve never been to Billings,” she confessed, cheeks blushing prettily.
“Billings is great,” said Lucas. “It’s only a few hours away!”
“They have skyscrapers there.”
“Yes, they do.”
“And an orchestra.”
An orchestra. Huh. He hadn’t expected her to say that. Her face was lit by a light inside, and her eyes were dreamy. He wanted to know more.
“What else do they have in Billings?”
“So much. Um, let’s see…museums!” she said, tilting her head to the side and smiling, her face flushing further as her voice filled with warmth. “And every month there’s something special going on. Like, right now? They have a Festival of Trees and, um, they have a Christmas Stroll coming up. We just had one in Gardiner, but ours is way smaller.”
“What else?” he asked her.
“Oh, um, they have lots of movie theaters. You’d like that, right? And microbreweries!” she exclaimed. “More than any other city in Montana!”
He couldn’t stop looking at her, loving the transformation in her face, her voice, her mood, as she talked about Billings like it was New York City. Is this how she’d be if she could get away from Gardiner? Bubbly, open and adorable?
“What else?”
She shrugged, looking down at the table, grinning like she had a secret.
“Come on. You’ve done your research. I know there’s more! What else?”
“Well, don’t laugh…”
“I’m not laughing. I’m stunned that the nice girl I took out to dinner happens to be an authority on a city she’s never visited.”
She chucked, then said, “They have a zoo.”
Of all the answers he’d thought she might give, that one hadn’t come close to making the list. “A…zoo.”
“Have you ever been to one?”
“Sure. But you have Yellowstone in your backyard. What do you need with a zoo?”
She gave him a brief dressing-down with a roll of her eyes, apparently disappointed that he didn’t immediately understand the appeal and merits of a zoo. “Does Yellowstone have tigers? Red Panda bears? It does not. But Montana Zoo does. And something else besides.” She took a deep breath, searching his eyes. “It has a preschool.”
“A preschool,” he repeated. He was lost now. But utterly fascinated.
“The Zooschool Preschool.” She grinned. “Remember when you asked me before? What I wished for? Well, if I could be anyone, in the entire world, I’d teach little kids at the Zooschool Preschool in Billings. I swear I’d be happy the rest of my life.”
“Is that the wish you made? On Friday night?”
“I never told you I made one.”
“Call it a hunch. I’m guessing you did.”
“Whether I did or didn’t, it won’t come true, so it doesn’t matter.” That soft dreamy look that Lucas had so been loving faded. “Anyway, I’m sure you need a college degree to be a preschool teacher, and I never went to college. I barely finished high school. It’d be silly to waste a wish on a dream like that.”
“You make me sad, Kitten,” he said softly, wishing it was within his power to help make her dreams come true.
“You make me happy, Lucas,” she said, giving him a small smile.
They sat quietly, then, staring deeply into one another’s eyes, so taken with one another that when Margit returned to take their orders, they barely noticed how greatly her attitude had improved.
Missy kept her gloves off on the walk home because she wanted to feel the skin of her palm pressed up against the skin of Lucas’s. They walked slowly and she hoped it was because he’d had as good a time as she—that he liked her even half as much as she liked him.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Two things, actually.”
“Okay, two things.”
“First, what happened with your sister? And second, who do I remind you of?”
He sighed, adjusting then readjusting his fingers to lace them through hers. “My sister is dead.”
Missy gasped, stopping in her tracks, jerking as if someone had punched her in the chest. “No,” she whispered disbelievingly.