by Alison Kent
“Sorry about that. Lost in thought.”
He nodded as if he’d grown used to her doing that. “You had a good time with Luna today?”
“I did, yes.” She paused, thought of the things she and Luna had talked about, families, friends. Men. “And I saw Mitch again.”
“Mitch?”
“The applicant for the cook’s position? Luna’s friend?”
“Oh, that guy,” he said, his tone of voice like a string of nasty adjectives tacked on the end.
If he’d known the other man, this attitude he had might make sense. But it didn’t, and so she asked, “What is it with you and him? Or with you? I get that you let down your guard in the past and someone got hurt because of it, but that has nothing to do with Mitch. Did he wrong you in another life or something?”
“Sorry.” He tugged the plug of an extension cord from the wall and wound the long orange snake using his palm and his elbow. “It’s none of my business who you interview or hire.”
“Thank you,” she said, but was then struck with a thought. “I know that you’re looking out for me, and I appreciate that, but you’re inching up on going overboard again.”
He snorted, tossed the extension cord into the pantry with his jigsaw. “I don’t know him. He’s not from around here.”
“Luna knows him. So does her father. He and Mitch did their military service together.” Ten arched a brow at that, and Kaylie went on. “Besides, I’m not from around here either. Not really.”
“You lived here with the Wises for eight years. I think that qualifies you as a local.”
She’d always felt she belonged here, but that didn’t necessarily hold to his definition. “What about you? When did you come here?”
“I lived in Round Rock growing up, so we were close.”
That had her remembering Carolyn Parker saying he’d been here ten years. “Why Hope Springs? Is this where you and your brother had planned to open up shop?”
“We didn’t get that far in the planning stage. I came here…for some of the same reasons you did. Starting over. Getting some sleep.”
“Looking for your family?”
“Looking to get out from beneath mine.”
Except he hadn’t. He carried what had happened, whatever it was he blamed himself for, to this day. And obviously he realized that or he wouldn’t have told her about his habit of rushing to judgment. “Did it work?”
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the drill bit he held, then bit off a brusque “No.”
“Have you talked to your sister yet? About my garden?”
“No.”
If he wanted to look out for her, focusing on her garden instead of Mitch was a good place to start. “I need to get it in—”
“I know that.”
Crabby, wasn’t he? “If you don’t want to talk to her, I’ll get someone else.”
“You asked me to help. I’ll help.”
“On my schedule or yours? Because time is something I don’t have.”
His jaw tightened. “Fine. I’ll try to touch base with her tomorrow.”
“She’s still nearby?”
He nodded. “She’s also busy. Or was last time I talked to her. I can’t guarantee when she’ll be able to get away.”
What was it about his family? He didn’t know what was going on with his sister. He didn’t know when he’d last talked to his brother. “I didn’t ask you to guarantee anything. She might not be able to fit me in, or she might be outside of my budget.”
“Hey, I’m just the yellow pages. It’s your business who you hire.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, that was sneaky.”
She smiled.
“Fine. Hire your Mitch Pepper. Just don’t expect me to run interference if he steps out of line.”
Seriously? He thought Mitch might step out of line? “All I expect from you is to have this job done well and on time.”
“Oh, really,” he said, shoving his hands to his oh-so-lean hips, his too-long hair catching in his collar and making her want to lift it away. “So you don’t expect me to talk to Indy? You don’t expect me to hook you up with an exterminator who’ll get the job done right, or a security guy who won’t put in an extra camera or two you don’t know about?”
“I’m sure I can get recommendations from Carolyn or Jessa. Or even Luna.” Which she should’ve done in the first place. She was relying on him too much. “Really, Ten. I don’t need you thinking you know what’s best for me.” And then she took a deep breath and let go of the thought that had been building. “Whatever happened with you failing your family, I’m not a token charity case or whatever for you to use to make up for that.”
“Wait a second,” he said, reaching for her arm as she turned away, and stopping her.
She wanted to go. She wanted to stay. She wanted the choice taken from her because she was in a place she didn’t recognize or know how to navigate. And yet she’d been thinking since lunch about being here, wanting things from Ten she couldn’t name, she didn’t understand, she longed for without knowing why.
“You can’t say something like that and not expect me to respond.”
“Then respond.” She was baiting him. She was pushing him. She didn’t know why. But she knew why exactly. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted.
He backed her into the wall beside the door, against the space where the refrigerator would go. The big commercial refrigerator, with half-glass doors and shelves for industrial casserole pans and bushels of lettuce and crates of tomatoes.
The spot was tall and wide and there was plenty of room for both of them to fit. He laced their fingers and raised her hands to her shoulders, anchoring her with his body, his feet on either side of hers, his thighs, too, as he lowered his head, his eyes bright, his nostrils flaring as he breathed.
She was frightened, but not of him as much as herself and the things she didn’t know. She’d been here before with boys who thought themselves men, but not with these feelings, her belly, her heart, and not with Tennessee Keller. He smelled of a day’s work and sawdust and worn cotton and a woodsy spice she’d noticed before in passing. It was subtle and she wanted to close her eyes and savor it, to remember it later when he wasn’t so near. But closing them meant not seeing him and she wanted that most of all.
His lashes were long, the same turned-earth brown as the stubble of his beard. She wondered about the hair on his chest, on his legs, in private places. His lips parted, smiling, inviting, she didn’t know. Before she could figure it out, time jumped forward and his mouth was there covering hers. He moved gently against her, soft and persuasive, the pressure of his lips imploring more than demanding, and at odds with the shackles of his hands.
The heels of his palms pushed against her, pushed her wrists against the drywall, pushed her knuckles, too. But his mouth didn’t push. It begged, and she breathed deeply and parted her lips the way she knew he wanted. The way she instinctively wanted as well.
He slipped his tongue into her mouth, softly at first, then more boldly, going deeper, then sweeping harder as he learned her, coaxing her to follow his lead, to mate her tongue with his, to come with him into his mouth, to stay. She curled her fingers around his, her nails digging into his skin with her need to hold him, to grip his shoulders, to cup his nape and thread her hands through his hair.
She wanted more than this, and her chest ached and her eyes, closed now, grew heavy with tears because she had no other outlet for the feelings bursting inside of her. Ten was here, touching her, his hands, his thighs, his chest when he leaned into her, his tongue and his lips as he loved her mouth with his.
Reality fell away, leaving magic, Ten’s magic, here in her kitchen, the only sounds in the room their breathing, the tiny moans of the house, the wind through the breezeway stirring the bamboo chimes, a clutch of a whimper in her throat when he rubbed his thumbs over the heels of her palms.
He caught at her bottom lip, holding it, slicking it
with his tongue, then finding hers and slicking it, too. He tasted of the coffee he’d last drunk, and he tasted of salt, and he was warm, hot even, his lips softer than she’d thought they would be, the stubble of his beard as it rasped over her chin arousing. Her nipples pebbled, and the whimper in her throat clawed loose in desperation. The sound, barely audible, was enough.
Ten stopped, his mouth a hair’s width from hers, his breathing ragged, the brush of air as he exhaled like a furnace at her cheek. And then he released her, backing away, holding up both of his hands as if to show her she was free and he was…sorry? Displeased with what they’d done? Regretting the way he’d pushed her and held her and taken her as if giving her no choice? Except that wasn’t how the kiss had happened at all. She’d been completely willing and involved.
Another moment and he spun away, crossing the room to return to packing his things. She shook off the daze keeping her pinned in place and scraped the loose hair from around her face, touching her fingertips to her mouth, still feeling him. Still wanting him. Not knowing how to tell him that when he’d been the one to leave. She was so tired of people leaving.
“Look. I didn’t mean for that to happen—”
“Don’t.” She bit off the word so sharply he stopped in the act of locking his toolbox and turned. Her chest was heaving. She tried to stop it, to control her breathing, but everything around her had changed and she didn’t know how. “Just don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t apologize. Don’t say you didn’t want that to happen.”
“That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t mean for it to.”
“Is that different than you didn’t mean it?”
“I meant every second.”
“Then why did you stop?”
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t believe him. She was certain he knew exactly why, but that he wasn’t comfortable telling her. Or comfortable with admitting it to himself. And as much as she didn’t want to accept the truth, he’d been right to stop. She’d been angry. He’d been reacting to that, not to her. Yes, her experience with men was limited, but she knew the heat of the moment did not lend itself to rational thought.
Still, she couldn’t let it go so easily. “If you want to kiss me, then kiss me. Don’t work out your frustrations with your family or use me—”
“I’m not using you, Kaylie. This…it has, had, nothing to do with my family.”
“But you stopped anyway.”
“I stopped because things were about to get out of hand, and this isn’t the time or the place…” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m not going to take you up against a wall in an empty house. You deserve better than that.”
“You kissed me because you were angry.”
His head came up at that. “I wasn’t angry. I was…aroused.”
“Oh, I thought…” She stopped, because she wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking. Or if she’d been thinking at all. It had become habit, assuming the worst. She knew better, but old habits died hard. “I think I’m embarrassed now.”
“We kissed. I got hard. It’s what happens. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“No. I mean I’m embarrassed that I didn’t realize why you backed off. I thought…” And here she went again. “I thought you didn’t want to kiss me.”
“How could you get that out of what just happened?”
“Because you stopped. You walked away. Because you’re over there packing your tools and I’m just standing here.” Like a fool, she wanted to add, but didn’t. The words she’d already spoken had said it loudly enough.
He dropped the roll of tape he’d been holding, watched it bounce from the toolbox lid to the floor. Then he walked to the sink and planted both hands on either side, leaning into them and staring out the window.
From her vantage point, Kaylie could see Magoo sprawled out asleep in the driveway, but didn’t think Ten was looking at her dog. She pushed off the wall and waved a hand distractedly. “I’m just going to go make sure I didn’t leave anything in the Jeep. Maybe throw a ball with Magoo for a bit.”
“You’re going to walk away? And leave me standing here?”
A flush climbed from her chest up her throat, heating her skin and no doubt turning her the color of a watermelon. “Ten—”
“No, Kaylie. We’re going to finish this.”
“I thought we did.”
He bit off a sharp curse, slammed a fist against the countertop. “No, sweetheart. We were just getting started. I don’t want you walking outside thinking anything else. Or thinking I don’t want you. Or thinking that if you said the word, I wouldn’t be dragging you upstairs by the hair.”
She tried to laugh, but her heart wouldn’t let her, thumping all the air from her chest. “That sounds rather caveman.”
“I can be caveman. But I’m trying to be nice.”
At that she swallowed, her throat working around unfamiliar emotions. Among them, a terribly unseemly longing that he show her the side of him that wasn’t nice. “I’m…not very good at this. At reading signals. Usually when I’ve had someone walk away, it’s meant they’re not coming back.”
Another curse and he straightened, facing the window as he shoved both hands through his hair. Frustration poured off him in waves, and in many flavors, and she wanted to go to him but held herself back, waiting, curious. Anxiously desperate to know what happened next.
“When I kiss a woman I’m interested in,” he said, “or when…things get intimate, I’m there for more than what’s happening physically. That means I’m not going to walk away afterward. Unless it’s to slow things down. And sometimes that means”—he gestured toward his toolbox—“cleaning up at the end of the day. That’s all this is. I promise.”
He was interested. In her. And yet…“I was worried that I was the only one having a good time.”
He held her gaze, the line of his jaw taut, his pulse a tic in his temple, the sun through the window glinting like fire in his eyes. She thought he might be trying to frighten her off, or see that she kept her distance because he couldn’t be trusted to keep his. But she wasn’t frightened. She was full of something big and grand, and thought if she didn’t escape, she’d explode with it.
And because she was done with picking up pieces, and because he was obviously done with trying to explain, she pushed open the screen door and left him there, knowing without looking back that he watched her all the way to her Jeep, then as far as he could as she headed to the front of the house with Magoo.
From there, he wouldn’t be able to see her. It was the best place for her to be until she settled the feelings he’d whipped up inside her like tornado winds.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“What are you doing here?” Kaylie said when she opened the kitchen door to Ten’s knock. It wasn’t the welcome he’d been expecting, or the one he’d been hoping for, to be honest, but he’d shown up without calling, making it the most obvious question she could’ve asked. And at least she had answered. He hadn’t been sure she would with the way they left things last night.
“I was hungry. Thought you might be, too.”
“I am,” she said, pulling the door wider and letting him in. “But I’d resigned myself to a ketchup sandwich made from the rest of the bread I picked up at Butters Bakery and any fast-food packets I can find in my Jeep. You know, since I’ve got to pay the exterminator. And because I don’t have anything in the house but dog food.”
Whew. She was sounding more like the Kaylie he’d gotten to know before he’d been stupid and kissed her. He’d been afraid he’d ruined all of that. He knew a lot of people, was close to only a few, and losing her friendship would’ve been a bigger blow than losing her business.
She hadn’t been around today while he’d been working, and he’d gone crazy with it, wondering if she’d taken herself off so she wouldn’t have to see him. The rest of this renovation would be a bear if that was the case.
“As appetizing a
s a ketchup sandwich sounds,” he said, lifting the brown paper bag he held by the crimped top, “I stopped by Malina’s. I’ve got meat loaf and mashed potatoes and green beans with bacon and hot cornbread. Or it was hot when I left the diner. Things might need a quick blast in the microwave.”
She took the bag, set it on the island, and opened it. Closing her eyes, she leaned over the top, inhaled deeply, and smiled. That look on her face made up for all the worry of the past twenty-four hours and last night’s total inability to sleep.
Looked like his fear about having messed things up had been a big waste of time. Except after yesterday’s kiss, when she’d finally walked out of the kitchen, he’d had no idea where things stood between them, what she’d been thinking, how today would go down.
Though he would’ve been fine eating out of the Styrofoam containers, Kaylie dished out the food onto two of the stoneware plates she’d bought at Canton’s Hardware Emporium, serving him more than she served herself, and grabbing them both bottled water from the fridge.
He took his drink, picked up his plate, and followed her to the dining room and the two chairs she’d brought down from Austin. There he settled into what he’d come to think of as the visitor’s seat, while Kaylie curled into the big worn wingback, tucking her feet to the side, balancing her plate on her knees.
“Are you getting tired of camping out?” he asked, and when she frowned as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him, he added, “Don’t you miss your things? Your TV? Your bed? A table that’s not a kitchen counter?”
“We can sit on the stools in the kitchen if you’d rather.”
“No,” he said, smiling to himself. “I’m fine. I was just making conversation, wondering if you weren’t tired of roughing it.”
“A little, but not enough to complain. I’ve got Internet, so I can watch TV on my laptop. A bed would be nice, but my sleeping bag’s well padded. I’m adaptable. I’ve had to be. I did a lot for myself. Even when I lived with my mother.”
“You were only five when you were taken away. Seems kinda young to be doing more for yourself than playing make-believe.”
