by Amber Burns
“Black’s fine,” Violet calls back.
All fashioned out, I’m expecting the coffee run to occupy me long enough to avoid the recent fittings with the dresses Wes and Violet were bringing in.
My hope for the café to be filled doesn’t come true.
In fact, it backfires spectacularly. I’m in and out in five minutes, and with less than a ten-minute walk to Sterling Outfits, the chill of the early October wind hardly pierces my bones. Not that I’ve forgotten my regret for not packing an extra sweater or two, Georgia boy that I am now.
I’m wearing a long dark sleeve shirt with an outdoor vest. It does nothing to keep the cold away or people from staring, their eyes screaming ‘stupid tourist’.
Whatever, people of Albany.
Back in the store, I deliver the goods and sure enough get tied up by my sister and her party for comments.
“It looks great.” I give the same bland comment to each girl, watching their expressions go from indulging to plain annoyed. By the time I reach Iris, in a new but equally ugly-as-sin dress, she holds up her hand.
“I know, I look great.” She rolls her eyes and sighs.
I shrug, taking a sip of my coffee.
Wes shakes his head and Violet is hiding her smile behind her hand.
“So I’ll take this outside then.” I take a step towards the front room, and Iris waves me off, her dismissal making me grin over the edge of my cup. She’s just saved me from having to fudge through more of the same responses for another hour or however long the dress fitting continues to go for.
I’m thinking of how I’m going to kill time when it strikes me, in the form of wide hips squeezed into a pair of light wash jeans. The sparkly accent outlining the back pockets do nothing but exaggerate that big, beautiful ass of hers more.
Vanna.
I pause.
Hair in its bun again, she’s in a sheer white blouse today, the beige tank underneath making me question her place in this store among her fashion-loving siblings. Unlike Wes and Violet, Vanna appears fit for a children’s school yard. She’d make one sexy school teacher, that’s for sure.
I note the idea as a future fantasy; I’d love to role-play with her in the very near future. I’m keeping chart of all the scenarios, including my favourite doctor-nurse getting it freaky on the operated table.
She hasn’t noticed me yet, and that’s enough to give me an idea. Keeping the heels of my Timbalands quiet over the pine floorboards, I make it to the carpet and ease the strain on my leg muscles playing mouse – or would I be the cat gaining on the mouse?
Mouse or cat, I still have a bit of a distance though. It’s paramount I cross no sneaky flooring and reveal my presence too early before I’ve had my fun.
I keep the hand gripping my drink out of reach, in case this goes south and I can keep us both safe from adding coffee stains and burns to the humiliation.
Patience unlocked, I reach out and tuck my free arm around her waist, absorbing the jolt of her startle.
“Oh,” she gasps.
“Hello to you, too.” I murmur the greeting down into those dark brown pools of hers. I’m lost in her eyes until she shifts and her fingers brush the tops of my forearm.
Her feather-light touch does wonders to my cock. I’m hard, hot and bothered in a second.
“Umm…” She’s unsure of how to ask for me to move my arm. I hate doing so, but I don’t like that I’m making her uncomfortable in that way. Teasing is one thing, taking it too far might push her from me for good.
Dropping my arm, I even step back to give her just enough room to spin slowly and face me, her elbows going up to settle on the desk behind. Trapped.
I like her like that. I’d settle with waking up every day above her on my California king back in my Georgia loft.
Baby steps, tiger. She’s going nowhere...
That’s true as long as I don’t chase her away.
“How are you?” I try for ordinary and every-day in hopes of loosening her guard.
“Good.” She’s maddeningly skittish.
It’s tough on me too, baby.
Especially when all I’ve wanted to do since I saw her yesterday is drag her into my arms and bruise those moving lips of hers.
“And you?”
I almost miss what she’s saying in my lusty haze. I see where this is going. As soon as I say something mediocre like ‘fine’ or ‘good’, she’s going to shut down and I’ll lose any chance at fun.
“I could be better.”
I can see the effect of my words working through her head.
“You see, I’ve been dragged up here against my own will to watch a bunch of girls change.” I drawl, keeping within the fringes of her personal bubble. “Now they don’t want me, and I’m bored out of my mind.”
“You’re not from here?” she latches to that part of the conversation, just like I hoped she would. It’s a safe enough topic, and it beats her shutting me out altogether.
“ATL, not born or raised, but it’s my home for now. Been to Georgia before?”
I learn that the Sterling siblings were West Virginian natives, with their parents continuing to hold the family fort down. Vanna is the newer edition to the trio, having made the move over a little less than two years ago. It recalls my upcoming two-year anniversary as a civilian.
To think we’d both been making big changes in our lives and having our paths cross now.
Since she’s opening up, I reward her with a bit of my personal history. I leave out the part where Iris and I were orphaned as kids and raised by our Grandmamma and Papa.
The sad stuff, you know.
It’s not her sympathy I want right then, it’s her relaxing around me, not looking like she’s ready to jump at the first sign of any intimacy.
She appears to warm to any hint of travelling I did while on- and off-tour, eyes sparkling and lips parting when she listens to the humorous tales of cultural faux pas in my past.
“It must be nice to travel so much and do what you love while you’re at it…” she trails off when I’m finished my recent story, visibly grasping at straws.
“Amos Fuller,” I hold out my hand. Keeping my face neutral over my disappointment is difficult. I thought she’d remember me. She’s opening her mouth to reciprocate. I beat her to it. “Vanna Sterling. I remember.”
She flushes and looks to the side, hand reaching out to fix the business card holder at her side. It doesn’t need to be fixed.
“Sorry. I wasn’t calling you out or anything.” I say. She must have heard the note of remorse as I have her attention again. “It’s just I have trouble forgetting a pretty face.”
Cheesy, yet it gives me the desired result.
Her giggle, short and sweet, tightens my boxers.
Oh man, I’m a goner.
Like an invisible hand, her smile strokes me, bringing me to attention. At this rate, I’ll have to excuse myself for a washroom someplace.
I feel the responding smile pulling my lips and that’s all I do: grin like a freaking fool. I’m about to dork out all over Vanna and I don’t know if I can handle that. I take a long sip of coffee to ground my thoughts.
Rejuvenated, I ask, “Do you have an appointment? Or are you helping your brother and sister?”
“Appointment? Uh, no.” Her dark brows come together. In a blink of an eye she went from lukewarm to hot, with her laughter, and down to frosty temperatures that could rival the outside.
I’m about to tread carefully, not asking directly as to her mood change, when Vanna smiles, “I’m more of the helper. I’ll answer the phones when Wes or Vi aren’t around. I keep the order book in check. Prepare lunch when they’ve got back-to-back clients. Sweep, mop and dust. Oh, and bookkeeping.” She actually taps her chin. “I think that’s it.”
She says ‘bookkeeping’ like it’s on par with sweeping, dusting and answering phones.
“And the display.”
I won’t ever get tired of the way her cheeks pink,
and her lips twitch when she’s flustered.
“And the display,” she repeats, slowly stretching out the syllables. I smirk with my drink to my lips.
Which reminds me…
“Wait here,” I hold out a finger, and leave her hanging.
When I directed Iris and her friends for our appointment, I stopped and brought coffee for the Sterling siblings. All three: Only Vanna was MIA and I was informed she didn’t like coffee at all.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I might run into Vanna – not that I wasn’t hoping for it, so I didn’t grab her anything.
And I’m trying to woo this girl, not her siblings or any of Iris’ friends.
One way or another, I’m planning to rectify my mistake.
I make the ten-minute walk a jog of five and come up to a line at the door of the café. Of course it fills up when I want to get back to Sterling Outfits quickly.
Eight customers later, some leaving with orders in both arms, I pick up a blueberry muffin and a black tea, a stir stick, and two sugars and two creams on the side. I ask for a tray, and add my half-filled coffee to the most recent order.
I can’t jog back this time, but speed-walking isn’t off the table.
In some dignified fashion, I present the tray to its owner, remembering to pull out my coffee. Waiting exactly where I left her, only poring through a big book I assume is the order log she was talking about organizing, Vanna drops the book and takes it out of my hands, not quietly though.
“I – ”
“No worries.” I interrupt her, knowing exactly what’s she going to say. “It’s plain old tea. I even asked for the sugar and cream on the side.” I hold out the tray closer for her to punctuate my point.
A little hesitant, she accepts my explanation and offering with a nod. “Thank you.”
No, thank you.
She sets the tray on the counter behind her. While she splits open a bag of sugar and a creamer, she doesn’t speak. Stir stick to the side, she does a taste test.
I move to gauge her expression, trying at low key when I’m hella nervous and bounding with all this energy. While AD, I never was given a long enough breather to wonder what to do with myself. Almost two years out of the Marines left me with too much on my hands.
Working a gym, training meatheads and skinny socialites in Atlanta helps; four days at the grandparents’ home in the tiny village of Cold Springs an hour off Albany is undoing all the inner Zen I worked to maintain.
And Vanna is completely shattering it.
“It’s good.” She says, as if finally noting my impersonation of a Roger Rabbit hop.
Wes joins us.
He’s giving me a look, one brow raised and suspicious as fuck.
Oddly, where Vanna was dark, Wes was fairer, and Violet could have been a natural blonde, she was bubbly enough. They all had the same eyes though, only now Wes was staring at me like I’d grown an extra head in the span of time we were apart.
“Vanna?” he stretches her name out, an unspoken question filling the air. His gaze goes from me to her, to the paper cup in her hand, to me and back to her again. I figure it’s enough time for him to get over his brain fart to remember whatever he was going to say. “Sorry to do this to you, but can you head out to Woodlawn. Mrs. Kingston’s making her demands again, and this time I don’t think we can avoid a house call. Or is it ‘afford not taking this house call’?” He sighs, “I have no clue what I’m saying. She does that to me.”
“But she didn’t call.” Vanna is rounding the desk when Wes stops her.
“She called my cell. The jury’s out on whether it was a bad idea to give her my number in the first place. She’s been calling about all these tiny changes, and then this,” Wes scrolls through this phone and sets it to his ear. “I’ve told her I could come, and then I realized I can’t. Not with another appointment in the hour.”
He rolls his eyes and his tone goes all syrupy. “This is Wes Sterling calling from Sterling Outfits for Mrs. Kingston. Yes, I’ll hold, thank you.” Phone to his chest, he pegs Vanna with puppy eyes. He does it better than Iris’ Honey.
I don’t blame Vanna for caving; I’d cave.
“Sure I’ll go. It’s for the good of the store.” She’s taking it pretty well when he’s springing it on her out of nowhere. My Vanna is a do-gooder, maybe too much of a people-pleaser, but that only makes me realize I need to protect her probably from her own do-goodness.
“Thank you. As usual, you’re a lifesaver.” He mouths the last part, phone to his ear again, voice going up an octave for the lady on the other end. “Good morning, Mrs. Kingston.” He takes the phone call to the doorway dividing the back dressing room area from the front reception.
Vanna leaves her tea on the counter, grabbing a dark green wool jacket from a coat hook I didn’t notice until then. She’s back at the front desk, grabbing keys from the drawer and her tea. She looks longingly at the muffin bag, the debate clear on her face as to whether she should take it and try to eat and drive or leave it and go with her tea only.
I settle it for her.
3
“I’ll drive.” Holding out my hand for the key, squeezing my hand a couple times to signal she drop the key in my hot little palm.
Vanna blinks. Wes is out of earshot and occupied, talking to Mrs. Kingston. It’s perfect time for me to set my coffee down, grab her hand and trap it between mine.
“I need something to do, anyways,” I nudge my head back, “I got kicked out of there, and I’m bored out of my mind. You’ll help me?”
Wes is back, and doing that weird stare. He waves his cell between us. “What’s going on here? Are you hurting my kid sister? Are you chasing away a client?”
“No.” We say it together. I chuckle and Vanna does that adorable giggle thing, the one that’s got me going hard for her. Nervous giggle aside, she looks a little overwhelmed by my plan and turns to Wes for help.
Just what is she running from?
Not me, surely. I can be pretty forward, but I’ve been nothing but a good boy with Vanna, controlling the impulse to take her against a wall, or the desk at her back. So what gives? Was she hurt by some bastard in the past?
That would suck majorly, in two ways: One, that bastard shouldn’t ever show his face near me unless he’s angling to die and leave me with getting stripped of my Marine honors and rotting away in a jail – even the probability of Vanna nursing a broken heart took me to the wringer in a way drill training and under-hand jabs from my hats never did. Two, I want Vanna swollen with our first kid by the end of the year if I have anything to do about it. But that’s going to be impossible to accomplish when she’s shying from any contact.
Her timid nature is novel to me, and I’ve had my run through enough meat markets to know it isn’t some coy ploy to get the big, tattooed Marine into bed.
Whatever the hell is going on in that pretty head of hers, it’s frustrating the crap out of me.
Throughout my musing, Vanna quickly filled Wes in. Her part done, she waits for Wes’ intervention.
A signal of my victory starts with that twinkle in his eye. Vanna seems to know it’s not going her way, too, because she drops her head and rings a nude fingernail around the rim of her cup’s lid.
“Perfect idea.” He beams, smile not budging when Vanna, head down, stammers, “Is that really all right?”
For the first time I’m glad Wes is there.
Wes shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t care how you it’s done, just as long as I get Mrs. Kingston to open that big, fat purse of hers.”
Big brother isn’t coming to her rescue.
Sorry, Vanna. He’s throwing you to the tiger, and the tiger wants you.
“Ready to go.” I grab the muffin in its paper bag, and I’m wheeling her out the door before she can complete her latest excuse.
You’re mine, Vanna.
Wes’ Bug is exactly where Vanna says it’ll be. I kept her busy with directions to avoid her turning tail and wriggling her cut
e tush out of my grasp. From there I feign an intense concentration on driving and keeping to the directions on the GPS, leaving Vanna to enjoy her muffin and tea.
It gives me immense pleasure to help her. I’m buzzing with a natural high that has nothing to do with the recent caffeine in my system.
“It’s that one there.” She speaks since entering the car to point out Mrs. Kingston’s house.
