The Last One (The One Trilogy #1)

by Tawdra Kandle

  I collapsed back into my chair and put my hands to my cheeks. This casual summer affair was getting more complicated by the minute.

  SAM DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING to me about our encounter with Maureen when he came home that evening. I was helping Ali with dinner and working with Bridget on perspective when I saw his truck pull alongside the barn. He glanced up at the kitchen window, and I waved, sighing a little without even thinking about it.

  Ali looked over my shoulder. “Aha, I see why you’re going mushy.” She shoved at my arm. “Go on, get out there and greet him.”

  I looked at Bridget, her small face focused on the pencil and paper. “Not in front of the munchkin. I promised Sam.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying, don’t worry about it on my account.”

  The screen door squealed open, and Sam came in, his eyes on me right away. He halted in front of the laundry room, paused and then took the extra steps toward me. Leaning down, he gripped the back of my neck, pulled me close and kissed me, open-mouthed and deep. I breathed in his scent of soil, sweat and man.

  “Hi.” Straightening up again, he rubbed his thumb over my cheek. “Did you stay awake this afternoon?”

  “Just barely.” I realized I was staring up at him, probably looking like a lovesick girl with stars in my eyes. I turned back toward the sink and dried my hands. “How about you? Good afternoon?”

  “Yep.”

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as he pulled a clean shirt on. I wanted to beg him not to cover up his chest, but it might have been a little too much, I decided. Bridget might pick up on that.

  We fell into our normal rhythm of dinner, talk and clean up. While Ali supervised Bridget’s bath and bedtime ritual, Sam helped me with the dishes. He was playful, blowing bubbles into my face and splashing water until my shirt was soaked.

  “Look at this.” I peeled the cotton away from my stomach. “See what you did?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m looking.” He chucked the dishtowel onto the counter and grasping the bottom of my tee, pulled upward. “You don’t want to keep wet clothes on, you know. You’ll get pneumonia. Least that’s what my grandma used to say.”

  I let him tug it over my head, smiling when his eyes widened upon seeing my white eyelet bra. “I should go get a dry shirt.”

  “Nah, just come with me.” He took my hand and led me through the living room and onto the front porch. “See, you can dry off here in the fresh air.”

  It was twilight, and I glanced around, uncertain. “What if someone comes up the drive and sees me here without a shirt?”

  Sam frowned at me for a minute, and then he threw back his head and laughed, long and hard.

  “What?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “It could happen.”

  “No.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “I’m laughing because here you were with me on the side of the road, naked in the cab of my truck, and you weren’t worried about anyone catching us. But now you’re on the front porch in your bra, and you’re scared someone might see. Here, at our farm, out in the middle of nowhere.”

  I shook my head at him. “I was a little distracted when we were in the truck on the side of the road.” I turned around. “But if you’re going to make fun of me, I can just go into my room ...”

  Sam caught me by the arm. “Nope. Can’t do that.” He swung me close and tightened his arm around my lower back, pressing me against him so that I could feel his desire. “You need body heat to help dry you, and since I’m the one who made you wet, I need to provide the warmth.”

  I traced a line down his cheek to the side of his mouth. “Yeah, you make me wet. Really, really wet.”

  He nuzzled my neck. “My pleasure, Babe. Believe me ... it’s my pleasure.”

  RAIN MOVED IN A few days later, making the days gray and damp. Our evenings on the porch felt even more intimate with the sound of the rain in the eves and the fall of it around us.

  Sam came home the second night of the storm, shaking water off his hair. “What a mess.” He kissed me as he passed, almost absently. “I was going to run over to town and pick up the new blade for the tractor, but I ran out of time before dinner. Want to take a ride with me after we eat?”

  I nearly dropped the plate of sliced tomatoes I was carrying. “Really? You want to take me with you? Aren’t you afraid ...” I slid my eyes to Bridget. “You know. That people will talk?”

  He grinned at me. “Nope. Let them talk. Who cares, right? After all, once Reenie saw us, I figure that ship’s sailed.”

  “I don’t think she’ll say anything.” I glanced at Ali. “She seems like the kind of person who’ll keep her word, and she told me she wouldn’t.”

  “We’ll see.” Sam sat down. “Do you want to go or not?”

  Of course I did. And so right after dinner, I was sitting next to him in the truck, bouncing down the road. He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other around me, pulling me tight enough against him that I could lean my head on his shoulder. On the radio, a country singer was talking about checking some girl for ticks.

  “I can’t believe you listen to this.” I watched him lean forward to turn up the volume. The windshield wipers competed with the radio as the rain picked up again.

  “Of course I do. This is real music.” He rested his elbow on the door by the closed window. “It’s about real people, like me. What’s not to love?”

  “Hmmm.” I linked my hand with his, as it hung by my neck. “But ticks? Really?”

  Sam laughed. “Yeah, ticks. What, you don’t think it would be romantic for me to check you for ticks? I bet I can prove it to you.”

  “I bet you could, too,” I mused. The song changed to something slower, dreamier ... two people, a man and a woman, singing about how her love just did something to him. Sam tightened his arm around me and kissed the side of my head, and I think right there, I fell a little bit in love with country music.

  We pulled up in front of the hardware store, and I slid out Sam’s door behind him. He took my hand and led me inside through a door with a tinkling bell. The man behind the counter was leaning on a wall, shooting the breeze with an older guy in a one-piece coverall. When they caught sight of us, both men stared.

  “Hey, Larry.” Sam grinned at him. “Billy. Y’all got that blade I called about?”

  Larry regained his voice first. “Uh, yeah, sure, Sam. It’s just in the back.”

  We all stood still for a minute, and then Sam cleared his throat. “You want me to get it myself?”

  “No, no. I’ll get it.” His eyes lingered on me, darting down to our joined hands.

  “You gonna introduce us to the lady, boy, or you gonna give your mama a bad name by not using the manners she beat into you?” The other man cuffed Sam on the arm.

  Sam shook his head. “Wondered how long you could hold back your mouth. Meghan, this is Larry. He owns the store. Billy works down at the grange. Y’all, this is Meghan. She’s teaching art at the school this summer.”

  Both men offered me their hands and mumbled something that sounded as though they were pleased to meet me. I tried to smile and not let the awkwardness make me shuffle my feet like a kid.

  When Larry went in the back for the blade, Billy turned to me. “So what’s a pretty lady like you doing with this sorry son of a—uh, gun? If you’re lookin’ for a date around here, I can set you up.”

  Sam’s fingers gripped my hand a little harder. “Mind your own damn business, Billy.”

  “Hey, Sam.” Larry stuck his head out of the storeroom. “Can you come back here for a minute? I want to make sure I pull the right blade.”

  Releasing my hand, Sam ducked behind the counter and disappeared into the back. Billy turned to me, lowering his voice.

  “Let me tell you something, missy. That boy there? He’s the genuine article. Not a better man in this town. Lots of boys would have sold out and left after what happened to his parents, but he didn’t. I’ve never known a harder worker in all my yea
rs, and that’s the truth.”

  Sam and Larry came back up front, Sam glancing suspiciously at Billy. “What kind of tall tales are you spinning for Meghan?”

  He shook his head. “Never you mind. Just givin’ your girl the real deal on things around here.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” He slanted me a look. “Don’t believe a word he says.”

  Sam paid, and we left, darting through the rain. As I climbed back into the truck, he caught me around the waist and turned me back to face him, perched on the edge of the seat, protected from the weather.

  “What did Billy say to you?”

  I cast my eyes up as though trying to remember. “Oh, he said you’re a horrible flirt, and you have a new girl in town with you every week.”

  “Yeah?” He leaned into me, his body between my knees. “And did you buy his stories?”

  “I don’t know. You seem pretty smooth.”

  Sam snorted. “Okay.” He kissed me. “Whatever you say.”

  I scooted over to the middle of the seat. As we drove out of town, I snuggled closer to him. A part of my brain was screaming for me to remember that this was temporary. It couldn’t last.

  I ignored that voice. I planned to enjoy this man and whatever was between us for as long as I could.

  OUR FARM HAD BEEN in the family for more generations than I knew, and over the years, there’d been some changes in how we did things. We didn’t use a horse to pull the plow anymore, much to my niece’s disappointment. We’d gone from not using any fertilizers or insecticides in the nineteenth century to using all of them in the twentieth to switching over to only natural help in the twenty-first century. I used the same almanac to tell me when to plant and when to harvest, but mine wasn’t a paperback book; it was on my cell phone.

  But over a hundred and fifty years later, one thing hadn’t changed. We were still completely at the mercy of the weather and unable to do a damn thing to change it.

  Two nights after Meghan and I had our night down at the river, a front came up along the Florida coast, a hurricane that never developed, and it stalled over eastern Georgia. We had days and days of torrential rain. I was stuck in the house most of the time; I went over to the stand each day, but business was slow there, since only the most stalwart souls ventured out in this weather to buy fruit and vegetables from a stand instead of a grocery store. I spent more of my time planning for harvest and for next year’s crops.

  “I don’t mind a day or two of rain, but this is ridiculous.” I sat on the porch with Meghan after dinner. The steady patter on the roof had been cozy the first few nights, but now it just pissed me off.

  “I know. I was supposed to take the kids out to a few places around town to do sketches, and we have to keep putting it off. They’re all restless during class, too. I can’t imagine how you’re holding it together.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She smiled at me, unfazed. “It means you’re a man who needs to be outside. You thrive on walking in those fields and being with your plants. You’re kind of like a caged lion when you have to be inside for too long.”

  “Hmm.” I folded my arms over my chest. “I like the lion part, but I’m not sure about the rest.”

  “You can be not sure, but it’s true.” She laid down her drawing tablet and pencil and scooted closer to me on the wicker love seat. “Are you missing anything else, maybe?”

  “What else would I be missing?” I played dumb, mostly because she was right that I was being antsy inside, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her knowing me that well.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe something like this.” She leaned closer, kissing my ear lobe as her hand ventured to my zipper. “No alone time.” She licked the side of my neck. “Other than the porch, I mean.”

  “I’ve gone longer than a week without sex. As you know.” Still, I took her hand from the front of my pants and laced our fingers together. “But yeah, it is kind of messing with any plans to go back to the river.”

  “And I’ve thought about driving home during lunch a few times, but with the stand not being busy, I know Ali doesn’t always stay there all day.”

  “Yeah, and she left Bridge with me today. That would’ve been frustrating, to have you come home and not be able to do anything.”

  “It’s got to stop raining soon.” Meghan wrapped both of her arms around one of mine, her boobs pressing into my side making me ache. “And then we’ll make up for lost time.”

  Of course, she was right. Three days later, I awoke to clear skies, with no rain in the forecast. I spent the day out walking the fields, checking for any damage almost two solid weeks of wet might have done to the crops still out there. When I finally drove the farm truck back to the house, all I could think about was kidnapping Meghan back out to the river and keeping her up all night—again.

  Her car was in the driveway when I got out to get cleaned up. I turned on the faucet, pulled off my dirty shirt with one hand and cupped water in the other. I had just made the first swipe with the rag when I felt arms slip around my waist.

  “Now see, this is how things were meant to be.” Meghan’s lips touched my back and her fingers crept up to tease my nipples.

  I turned in her arms, a swell of something that scared the shit of me rising in my chest. It felt so right, so perfect, to have her greet me at the end of a hard day of work, her pretty curls dancing around her shoulders, her eyes bright and full of life. Like I could do this every day and never get tired of it.

  Not knowing what to do with that thought, I tugged her closer and kissed her until the lips under mine were the only things I could think about.

  “Hi.” I lifted my mouth just long enough to speak. “Ali and Bridget?”

  She smiled. “Still at the stand for another hour. Cassie sprained her ankle, and Ali’s expecting a delivery, so she has to wait there. And Bridget went home with her friend Kate to spend the night.”

  Something new was rising now, and it was not anything I dreaded. “We’re alone here? For at least an hour?”

  “We are.” She pulled at my arm and began walking backward toward the kitchen. “Your room?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  We made it into the kitchen before I had to kiss her again, backing her into the counter where I lifted her up and stood between her knees, my hands gripping her rear and my mouth on her neck, heading south.

  When I heard a knocking, I decided it had to be my heart. Or something we were shaking in the kitchen. Or maybe even a lost group of Jehovah’s Witnesses who had wandered to my front door and would just go the hell away if ignored.

  “Sam.” Meghan lifted her head from my lips. “Someone’s at the door.”

  “Uh-huh. They’ll go away. Shhhh, just be quiet, they’ll think no one’s at home.”

  “What if it’s important?”

  “Babe, nothing’s more important than what we’re doing right here.”

  “But what if it’s something with Ali or Bridget?”

  I sucked on the pulse in her throat. “Someone would call.”

  “Unless they didn’t have your number, just the address.”

  I blew out a breath of frustration and dug my fingers through my hair. “Fine. I’ll get the fucking door and then—” I pointed at her. “Then you—me—upstairs, naked. Lots of naked.”

  She giggled and pushed at my shoulder. “Go, and then the nakedness.”

  I stomped to the front door, cursing anyone who was stupid enough to come by my house at this moment and already making up reasons to send them away. The plague, maybe, forcing us to be quarantined. Or a rabid dog on the premises. Something really believable.

  I threw open the door, and I must have been wearing my frustration on my face for all the world to see, because the guy standing on the other side took an instinctive step backward. It was to his advantage that I had no idea who he was—just a man younger than me, with black hair that reached almost to his shoulder. He was thin and not quite
as tall as me.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I’m at the right house,” he began, and my hopes soared. He had the wrong address, and I could send him on his way without resorting to violence.

  “Who’re you looking for?” I opened the door a little wider and put one hand on my hip.

  “I’m—” He started to speak again, and then he looked over my shoulder, and his eyes brightened. “Hey, Megs!”

  I looked over my shoulder at Meghan, who stood frozen a few feet behind me. Her eyes were round and her mouth had dropped open.

  The guy smiled at me. “I came to see Meghan. I had the address, but I wasn’t sure if this was the place.”

  “Owen.” Meghan’s voice was flat, and when she said his name, it dashed my hopes that this dude was her brother, whose name I knew was Joseph.

  “Surprise!” Whoever he was, this Owen didn’t know how to read Meghan at all. He was still going on as though this was a big happy pop-up visit, when I could see in her face that she wasn’t happy. Well, join the club, because I wasn’t either. Matter of fact, I was damned pissed.

  “Owen, what are you doing here?” Her tone bordered on hostile. Hell, it more than bordered. It actually set up camp there. That made me just a little happier.

  He was beginning to get the picture, and the shit-eating grin on his face faltered. “I was just ... I got back to town, after being away all summer. Remember, I went to Europe with Dr. Edgars?”

  If Meghan remembered this, she wasn’t copping to it. She lifted her shoulder in a little no-but-keep-going gesture.

  “Yeah, well, I got back to Savannah, and I went by to see you, and the girl who’s staying in your apartment told me you were here. I mean, she gave me your address.”

  I raised one eyebrow and looked at Meghan. She rolled her eyes. “Laura and I sub-let our apartment to one of Laura’s friends who was doing summer session. I don’t know why she’d give out my address, though.”