She lifted the snack bag into the air. “Buying me dinner already?” she teased. “Careful you don’t fall in love with me. I’m terribly damaged.”
Burke’s smile faded from his face, and he shrugged up a shoulder. “Damage doesn’t scare me.”
“What does scare you?” She didn’t know why that question tumbled from her lips. The words just fell out.
He straightened his spine and lifted his chin. “Dying before I’ve really lived.”
And then he made his way around the front of his Bronco and climbed inside, leaving her just standing there, hugging a bag of Chex Mix to her chest and wondering why her heart was pounding so hard against it.
Chapter Five
Kimberly was the worst at this job ever.
Leslie’s pottery shop was really busy today, all three tables filled with families painting ready-made pottery together.
Already, Kimberly had made a kid cry when she’d told the little girl she needed to work better on painting within the lines on her ceramic reindeer. The mother had yelled at her for being a “dream-crusher.” Leslie had to ask seven million times how to ring up pottery on the register, learning shipping was a nightmare, and she’d loaded the kiln wrong. Twice.
Leslie had to pick up her slack and fix the fires Kimberly made all day long.
She was definitely going to get fired.
“I’m sorry,” she uttered to Leslie as her sister turned the Open sign to Closed and locked the front door.
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because I messed everything up, and if you have to fire me, I get it. Everyone is firing me from life. My own husband fired me from marriage. Pretty sure Mom is going to fire me from daughtering.”
Leslie snorted. “You’re good.”
“What?”
“Kimberly, you’re good. You’re okay. It was your first day. I expected you to suck.”
“I sucked?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely. But you know what?”
“Huh?” she asked, sinking down onto a chair by Table 1.
“Everyone sucks on their first day at a job. You aren’t born knowing everything. It’s how you handle day two that matters.”
“So, I’m not fired?”
A giggle escaped her curly-haired sister. “Of course not. Just maybe don’t insult the kids’ painting skills tomorrow.”
Kimberly cracked a grin and nodded. “I will do my best.” She swallowed hard. “Mom used to do that.”
“Insult our painting skills?”
Kimberly nodded.
“Mom insulted us on everything. She trained us to work harder to please her just to avoid insults for a day.”
“I always hated that.”
“Do you know what I saw for the last five years?” Leslie asked, digging something out of a minifridge in the back.
“Me living my happily ever after and then ruining it?”
Leslie handed her a beer. A beer. In a can. “I saw you turning into Mom.”
Kimberly felt slapped. “What do you mean?”
Leslie popped the top of both their beers and took the seat across the table from her. “You were so hard on everyone around you. You made people walk on eggshells to make sure they didn’t disappoint you. Braden walked on eggshells, too, so you wouldn’t insult him. You learned that little ditty from Mom.”
Kimberly’s eyes stung, so she blinked hard and took a long swig of the disgusting drink Leslie had handed her. “I ruined that marriage, didn’t I?”
“No. You both did. Braden didn’t match you in the first place, and he quit trying a while ago. He didn’t support you growing, and each year, you grew unhappier, and that’s when I saw you start mimicking Mom. How can a man support you emotionally if you shut down like that? He didn’t know how to get you aimed in the right direction, and he shut down on you too, so he’s just as at fault for the end of your marriage as you are. You both stopped trying. It takes two people to build and two people to destroy, and those are your options in a marriage. You’re building or destroying. He wasn’t building with you. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad man, Kimberly. And the end of your marriage doesn’t mean you’re a bad woman. You just weren’t good together. Part of your growth from here on out is going to be forgiving yourself, learning to hold your head up high with the family again, and doing the emotional work on your own.”
“Dad tried to give me two hundred bucks yesterday. For food.”
“And?”
“I said no.”
Leslie’s smile was slow and proud. “What did Mom say when you moved your stuff out?”
“Well, Burke didn’t help her attitude.”
Leslie’s eyes went round. “Burke was there?”
“Yeah. He offered to help me move.”
Leslie nodded. “Burke is cute.”
“Burke is poor.”
“Ha!” Leslie tossed her head back when she laughed. “God, you’re such a fuckin’ snob.”
“I’ve signed up for Millionaire Match dot com.”
“Oh, Jesus. Kimberly, that’s not the personal growth I was talking about.”
“All of my matches are twenty years older than me. And boring.”
“Lion shifters aren’t boring. You can go bone an older millionaire for money, or you can get thoroughly fucked by a man who is just as much animal as human.”
When Kimberly’s cheeks lit on fire, she took another drink. “Sex sounds not-that-fun to me right now.”
Leslie kicked her feet up on the table and took a drink. Beer tasted like piss, but her younger sister kept a straight face like it tasted fine to her. “Why no sex?”
Kimberly shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t done it in a long time.”
“How long is a long time?”
“A couple of years? Maybe three?”
“Holy shit!” Leslie yanked her feet off the table and leaned forward. “You didn’t have sex with Braden for that long?”
Another shrug from Kimberly, and now her cheeks were even hotter. “He wasn’t super interested, so I just learned to take care of myself.”
There was a knock on the front door, and outside the window, Kimberly could see Kieran. Leslie waved and jogged over to open it for him. In came Kieran and Burke. Burke. The one they’d just been talking about, and why were her cheeks so hot?
“We came to see how your first day on the job was,” Kieran said in a friendly tone.
“Well, my boss said I sucked,” Kimberly muttered.
“Ha ha!” Burke laughed a little too loud to be called mannerly. Annoying. He made his way over to the mini-fridge and grabbed a couple more beers for him and Kieran, then came to sit right beside her as Kieran sat by Leslie. Right beside her. He even leaned his chair back on two legs and held onto the back of Kimberly’s chair in this comfortable way that felt right and terrifying all at once.
“How was work?” Leslie asked the boys.
“Slow as hell,” Kieran muttered. “It’s always slow at the sawmill from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, and then work picks back up again. Me and the boys played Texas Hold ’em for three hours today and then got lunch at the taco truck down the road.”