Her career was clearly the most important thing to her, and a family wasn’t something that helped when a person pursued a career with passion. I needed not to think about her too much, no matter how much I wanted to. She wasn’t going to be into the things I was finding out I was or want the things I was figuring out that I wanted.
12
HELEN
I decided before I went that I was going to do my best to be nicer to all the mountain boys. To be fair, I had decided that already, ever since meeting Deacon and seeing how sweet he was with the baby and Rebecca.
I knew I had a tendency to be a little aloof, a little cold to men in general, especially ones I didn’t know already and respect. But I was trying to change that, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to be stuck in a town like Ashford and not have anyone to talk to.
It wasn’t that all the women of Ashford were boring. There was Rebecca, Lauren, and Harleigh, all of them worked at the diner at some point and who were part of the same circle of friends.
Then there was Desiree, who sounded like she was straight out of a movie about mob princesses, though I was told not to say that out loud. Apparently, there was some sensitivity about that particular assessment that I would hopefully be clued in on at some point.
But aside from them, most of the women in town seemed pretty tame, generic traditional role women who wanted nothing more than to pop out babies and have mommy wine nights. Not exactly my speed. I wanted more adventure out of life than that, and while I knew Ashford wasn’t exactly the adventure capital of the world, I wanted to be able to find adventure when it came and take hold. As soon as the restaurant got on its feet again, I planned on making some time for it.
At least I had a few women who were pretty cool that I could hang out with. Rebecca was a force to be reckoned with and the only other girl I had met with as many tattoos as I had in Ashford. She liked the same kinds of music as I did and had the same general attitude about life.
It was like a slightly softer version of myself, but I figured motherhood did that. Especially as young as she was. In a lot of ways, she was like a little sister to me, maybe even more like one than my actual sister.
The men, in my limited interactions with anyone other than Deacon, seemed nice too. I still found myself either being a little cold for no reason or plastering on a fake smile and being overly nice. Neither were appropriate. I wouldn’t get very far in my friendship with Rebecca if I was an ice queen to her friends, since they had all but adopted my favorite waitress. I also thought they could see through the fake smile.
There was one man that I didn’t need a fake smile for though. Everett seemed to be able to get the real thing out of me. There was something about him that confounded me. He was tall and kind of lanky, though it looked like he might be hiding a ripped body underneath his shirt. He was most certainly a bit more energetic, a bit wilder than the other ones.
Usually, I found myself attracted to older men, men who were more established and stable. Not that I acted on it very often, but when I did go out with a man, it was usually someone else in the food industry, someone I felt like I could learn from. When I really sat down and thought about it, I never went out with a man because I thought he was sexy. There was always some other motive. Some other aspect that I thought he brought to the table that I could learn from or benefit from.
I didn’t really like how I felt about myself when I realized that.
But then, there was Everett. Cool and smooth and a little dangerous, he was everything I thought I didn’t like. He grew his hair out longer and was a former military jock and smirked a lot. He was older than I was but only by a couple of years. So why did I start smiling like an idiot when I saw him and blush when he spoke? He was sexy as all hell. But that didn’t matter. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
When Rebecca and Deacon picked me up, we dropped by the little all-purpose general store near the diner to pick up some sodas and wound back by the diner. I had ordered a large selection of watermelons for a menu item and figured I could snatch one or two for the bonfire. Usually, I would have spent a day or so preparing something spectacular for an event like this, even if it was just friends. I liked showing off. But Rebecca had called and asked me to come at the last minute, as they were on the way to pick me up, so I didn’t have the time.