Bad timing. Just like his love life.
He’d been dating another woman for a couple of years when he’d found this coffee shop last year and realized it was a good place to work when he needed to get out of the house. It had been a fine relationship. They’d gotten along fairly well and were comfortable with each other. But he’d never found the motivation to take the next step to marriage with her, and she'd never seemed inclined to push him.
Then he met Vivian Carmichael. Too young for him. Too pretty. Too smart and engaging. Too softly sensual with her lush, curvy body. Too everything he didn’t need.
Plus, she was always around. Talking to him. Smiling at him. Acting like she really wanted to know him for real.
He’d never been an asshole, so when he realized his interest in her wasn’t just a passing thought, he’d broken up with his girlfriend and was immediately relieved by the freedom.
But his timing had been bad, as it always seemed to be. When he was free to pursue her, Vivian stopped being interested in him. She started going out with one man after another in a dating spree that threatened to make him crazy with jealousy.
He tried to resign himself to never getting a chance with her. After all, he was clearly not what she was looking for in a man. But for months now he hadn’t dated. Hadn’t even looked with interest at anyone else. He was totally hung up on this twenty-five-year-old woman, and the feelings weren’t going away any time soon.
As he watched her walk away with Megan, he tried not to dwell on the rich curve of her hips. She wore leggings and a long sweater, but the fabric was thin and soft enough to cling to the shape of her.
He was dying to run his hands up and down those curves. He was dying to do a lot more. But the yearning had become a basic part of his existence now, so he was able to push it aside as she disappeared onto the sidewalk outside.
Vivian had been right. He was stalling today, unable to summon the energy to start writing the next chapter. But he’d only excused it by mentally insisting he go over the previous chapters he’d written, tweaking any minor issues and making note of anything major he would need to revise.
So far, they were pretty clean, which was always a pleasant surprise. He got almost an hour of good work done before someone else dropped down into the chair beside him, where Vivian had been sitting before.
Glancing up, Rick discovered it was the other Carmichael. Tyler, Vivian’s older brother. He didn’t hang out at Coble Coffee as much as his sister, but Rick had seen him often and talked to him several times.
Glad of the distraction from his work, he saved the progress on his document and gave Tyler a friendly nod. “What’s going on?”
Tyler was in his late twenties—a few years older than Vivian—and he seemed to be as smart as his sister and a hard worker. He was evidently also very popular, since almost every time Rick saw him, Tyler was with a different woman. Today, however, he was alone and frowning at the counter. “I thought Megan worked on Wednesdays.”
Rick almost laughed. Apparently everyone coming in today with disappointed by Megan’s absence. “Your sister said the same thing. I think Megan swapped shifts for some reason.”
“Oh.”
“She just stopped by about an hour ago. She and Vivian were headed to campus. Did you need her for some reason?”
“No. I just expected to see her.” Tyler’s face was perfectly sober. He clearly didn’t see any of the irony that Rick did in the situation. “That Nash guy annoys me.”
“He’s okay. He just puts on the bad attitude.” Rick was good at reading people—seeing beyond the surface of what others showed the world—so he was sure of this assessment.
Tyler scowled slightly before he shook off his mood. Then he glanced over toward Rick. “How’s the book going?”
“Slowly.”
“I guess slowly is better than not going at all. Did you talk to Vivian?”
“For a few minutes.”
“She texted me all excited about a new plan. Who knows what wild scheme she has in mind? She was always like this as a kid. Getting ridiculous ideas and dragging me into them, whether I wanted to be or not.”
Rick couldn’t help but chuckle, since this sounded exactly like the Vivian he knew. “I believe her plan this time is about dating, and unfortunately I’m the one being dragged into it.”
Tyler had brown hair and blue eyes like his sister, but with sharper features and a taller, lankier frame. His eyes widened as he asked, “Did she ask you out or something?”
“No! No, nothing like that. She wants to date older men, so she wants me to introduce her to all my nonexistent single friends.”
Tyler made a face as he scratched his forehead. “The girl has lost her mind. Everything that crosses her mind comes out, no matter how ridiculous. She thinks you know a bunch of unmarried old fogies?”
Rick laughed for real now, the knot in his chest relaxing as he put it into words. “I don’t think she’s looking for senior men. Just old fogies about my age.”
“Oh.” Tyler shrugged off the topic, clearly only half-interested. “I guess that’s a little less crazy. I don’t know why she’s been on this dating obsession lately. She never even went out much before.”
Tyler was clearly done with the subject, but Rick kept thinking about it. He’d only known Vivian for a year. All he knew about her in the past was what people had casually shared with him. He hadn’t known whether she was a chronic dater or if she’d only recently become a social butterfly, but now he did.
Story of his life. Watching from the sidelines and cursed with bad timing.
For a while, he was sure she’d been open to romantic advances from him. He wasn’t inexperienced. He had plenty of practice in relationships. He normal prided himself on his ability to correctly interrupt people and situations.
But he was at a loss with Vivian. She might have been interested in him once, but now she clearly wanted to date every man in the world except for him.
He wasn’t sure exactly how to change that fact.
And this ridiculous plan of hers was only going to make it worse.
Two
VIVIAN WASN’T A BIG exercise person. She hated running, and she couldn’t stand aerobics classes, and she wasn’t competitive enough to care about sports. In fact, she was perfectly happy sitting around reading or talking or watching movies for hours with only her bladder compelling her to get off the couch.
But she always felt better when she made herself move beyond her inclinations, so she tried to walk to every walkable place she went in town. If that didn’t feel like enough physical activity for the day, she’d add an extra walk in the evenings.
On that Wednesday, she was feeling more restless than normal, and her thoughts kept straying back to Rick. So she decided to walk over to the town park and duck pond, hoping to sort through her chaotic ideas on her dissertation chapter as she did.
She did better than she expected in disciplining her mind. She breathed in the spring air and mentally organized some of her research into a coherent argument and smiled at the ducks in the pond, a motley assortment of colors and sizes who’d flocked together with a common mission of begging for food from parkgoers. She’d walked the path on the perimeter of the park twice and was skirting the parking lot when an exclamation ahead of her distracted her from Appalachian folktales.