The Party Girl

by Tamara Morgan

  It seemed that despite his retreat from that world, the room was still very much there. Like a balloon stretched to capacity and emptied again, he’d been lifeless, flat. A little trickle of companionship, and all of a sudden he was buoyant again.

  That’s not good. There was no doubt in his mind that the austerity of his home would wear thin on this pair before too much time had passed. Lincoln, for one, had his own specialty filtered water bottle clipped to his belt. And Kendra had looked at him as though he were a monster when he confessed to having spent last New Year’s Eve literally counting sheep. His neighbor’s barn door had been left open. It was a miracle they’d gotten them all back before they froze.

  “Here. Let me help you with those.” Kendra appeared at his elbow. “You shouldn’t have to put up with our fighting and clean up after us.”

  Noah looked at his dishrag and back at her, allowing his doubts to shine through. As his house was equipped with only the bare essentials, and the water came primarily from collected rainwater, a dishwasher was out of the question. And her fingernails looked way too sparkly to scrub grease. No way was he falling for this one.

  She yanked the rag out of his hand with a scowl. “I’m perfectly capable of doing dishes. I’m not going to shatter under the pressure of soap and water.”

  “No, but you could break a nail.”

  “That is the single most insulting thing a man has ever said to me.” Without waiting for him to offer, she grabbed the plate from his hand and began drying it, her movements deft and sure. “And you can bet your ass I’ve heard a few doozies in my time. Most of them from your friend over there.”

  “I apologize on behalf of Lincoln. And all mankind.” He had to forcibly keep his lips from twitching. “If it’ll make you feel any better, you can help me haul firewood later.”

  “Is that what you were doing earlier?” she asked. “When you were all hot and sweaty?”

  He couldn’t tell from her tone if she was disgusted or intrigued by the idea of him panting from exertion. “Overheating and sweat are requirements for life out here, I’m afraid.”

  She laughed, a deep, throaty sound that tingled up his spine. “You say that like I should be appalled. Don’t be fooled by my appearance, Noah. I like hard work. The harder, the better.”

  He swallowed heavily. There was no mistaking her meaning—and there was no mistaking his reaction to it. He might be able to bend his mind to closing off all ties to the past and all pleasures of the flesh, but his body was another matter altogether. “So what’s the plan for the rest of the evening?”

  She accepted the change of topic with a smile. “Well, that depends. Do I need to keep holding Lincoln’s car hostage, or did you want to drive me back into town tonight?”

  He handed her another plate. “Let’s do the first one. It’s easier that way.”

  She shook her head. “But what if you need something? Or if there’s an emergency?”

  “I won’t. And there won’t be.”

  “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  That was because he was. For the first few months of his life out here, there had been a near-constant niggling in the back of his mind, a vague threat that he’d left some task unfinished, some words unsaid, some person behind. It was amazing what a few years of solitude could do to silence those threats. He’d long since learned that there was no such thing as a real emergency. There were just the varying degrees to which people reacted to their situations.

  “I don’t drive,” he said.

  She stilled her movements and turned to stare at him. “You don’t drive at all?”

  He handed her a cup instead of answering.

  “You also don’t have a phone. Considering the way you almost shattered the wine I brought with your look of loathing, I’m guessing you don’t drink. You clearly don’t text or Tweet or have a garage band.” She bumped his hip playfully, sending a jolt of awareness through his body. “Tell me, Noah—what do you do?”

  “Hey—what are you guys talking about over there?” Lincoln’s voice took on a petulant twinge, and Noah forced himself to step away from Kendra, injecting some much-needed distance between their bodies. He didn’t know how it happened, but every time he turned around, she was right there, touching him, teasing him, shifting the air around him. For such a petite person, she took up an overwhelming amount of space.

  She tossed her head and laughed. “Noah’s secret garage band.”

  “He doesn’t have a secret garage band.”

  “He must have something.” She cast a challenging look his way, her gray-green eyes dazzling in their certainty. “Everybody has something.”

  “I don’t,” Noah said firmly, shutting the light banter down and returning his attention to the sink.

  Kendra stood between Lincoln’s pouty face and Noah’s broad, strong back, unsure which man was more irritating at that moment. Mood swings to the left of her, stoic silence to the right. They’d been running neck and neck that way for most of the evening, and she wasn’t sure she cared to stick around for the outcome of the race.

  “Okay, well. I’m off,” she announced to both and neither of them. “Some of us have to get up and go to work tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to leave yet,” Lincoln said from his place at the table, where he sat clearly not helping do the dishes. “It’s early. And you didn’t open your wine yet.”

  True. Mostly because as much as she enjoyed this particular red blend, she didn’t relish the thought of drinking alone. And she very much doubted Noah had any wineglasses. Although he’d cooked them a surprisingly tasty minestrone soup for dinner—served with bread she suspected he’d baked from scratch—his kitchen was the most frighteningly underequipped space she’d ever seen.

  “I can save it for another time,” Kendra said. “You should probably be in bed anyway. Rest up. Fantasize about all the ways you can cheat against me at Monopoly tomorrow.”

  Noah turned. “You’ll be back tomorrow?”

  Well, she’d been planning on it. The look of alarm on his face might be changing her mind a little. “I assumed you’d want some help keeping Lincoln entertained. But if I’m in the way here, I don’t have to be an imposition.”

  “Of course you’re welcome here anytime,” Noah said, but he’d resumed his attention to the sink, making it impossible for her to read his expression.

  Not that he was all that expressive to begin with. In the three hours she’d been at his house this evening, she’d seen him frown, grimace and, only once when she complimented his cooking, crack a smile. That sort of negative reaction to her presence, taken alone, was something she could handle—maybe not with delight, but at least with dignity.

  But his eyes. They followed her everywhere, watching her, consuming her. If you believed all that garbage about eyes being the windows to the soul, she was pretty sure his soul wanted to bend her over backward, spread her legs and have its wicked way with her right there over the sink.

  “Stay. Drink. Don’t leave me here alone.” Lincoln began putting away the pieces to the board game. “You never hang out with me anymore.”

  She didn’t care for the wheedling, possessive note in his voice. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all evening?” she asked, giving him an easy out.

  “You know what I mean,” he said, not taking it.

  “Lincoln, please do us all a favor and go to bed.” Her voice came out harsher than she intended, stretched raw from too much worrying, too much talking, too much Lincoln, period. “It’s been a long couple of days, and I think we could all use some space right now.”

  “You’re kind of a bitch sometimes, you know that?”

  She heard Noah’s sharp intake of breath over the roaring in her own ears and registered it on a visceral level, as if his anger was an extension of her own—or possibly
the other way around. But as much as she liked seeing actual human emotion from him, she doubted he’d appreciate being forced to stand against his friend. She pressed his shoulder and leveled Lincoln with a careful stare. “I’m sorry you’re having trouble at work. I’m sorry you’ve been stabbed. And I’m sorry you’re bored being cooped up here. But you don’t get to call me names to make yourself feel better.”

  Lincoln’s gaze lingered on the spot where her hand touched Noah’s shoulder, his expression growing hurt. Noah hadn’t moved since her fingers had landed, and she could feel the tense bunch of his muscles as he held himself firm. She lifted her hand now, aware that she’d breached some kind of man-bond in allying herself so clearly on one side.

  “Fine,” Lincoln muttered. “I’ll go to bed.” After a moment’s pause in which she assumed she was supposed to beg him to stay, he limped toward the back. “Thanks for dinner, Noah.”

  She waited until he was out of earshot before speaking. “Do you think I should go help him get dressed? One of us should probably change his bandage, and I doubt he can maneuver in and out of his clothes on his own.”

  Noah turned to her with one of his eyebrows raised. “Call it a hunch, but I think you seeing him naked right now isn’t going to help his mood any.”

  “Are you making a joke?” she asked, oddly pleased. “At Lincoln’s expense?”

  “I wouldn’t dare.” His voice wobbled, verging very near amused territory. “It’s just that I can sympathize with the poor guy. I don’t imagine there are very many situations where being naked near you is an easy thing for a man to handle.”

  She knew it was wrong, what with Lincoln a stone’s throw away and the general lack of encouragement Noah had shown so far, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “If you were to get me naked, I can promise you I would be easy to handle. Very easy. Ridiculously, mind-blowingly easy.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, those eyes once again fucking her against the sink. And the table. And the wall. Apparently, Noah’s eyes were quite virile.

  “Why don’t you pour us both some of that wine,” he said evenly. “I’ll help Lincoln and be right back. I think there are a few things you need to understand about him and me.”

  Unsure what else to do, she complied with his request, grabbing two of the recently cleaned earthenware mugs from the counter and setting them on the table. Naturally, there wasn’t a corkscrew to be found in the place, so she rummaged around in the drawers, looking for a supplemental tool and finding none.

  Everything about this man’s house was freakishly neat and horrifyingly sparse. The cleanliness she appreciated, the lack of appliances she did not. One peek in her house would reveal a tool for every culinary function known to mankind. John once dared her to tally up the combined energy output of her kitchen electronics, but she’d politely refused. She bought organic groceries. She’d stopped using incandescent bulbs years ago. Surely that balanced things out in the greater ecosphere?

  So far, she hadn’t been able to get much out of Lincoln about Noah or why he lived like some kind of medieval monk out in the middle of nowhere, but she found herself increasingly intrigued by it. It was so quiet here. She even heard the crickets outside. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a live cricket before.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t keep the secret sex paraphernalia in there either,” that same muted baritone voice called a few minutes later.

  She tamped her smile down as she turned to confront Noah. “You make an awful lot of sex jokes for a man who’s afraid of a woman’s touch.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You have a funny way of showing not-fear. If I were a rattlesnake, you’d be crying into your pillow right now.”

  “I’m not afraid of snakes either.” He thumbed over his shoulder to where Lincoln presumably lay cozy and healing and not at all naked. “But I told you. Things with Lincoln...well, they’re complicated.”

  As Lincoln was the last thing she wanted to talk about right now, she changed the subject. “You don’t have a corkscrew.”

  “No. I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Screwdriver?”

  He wrinkled his nose in an adorably youthful grimace. “I’ve never been much of a one for vodka.”

  “No—do you have a screwdriver? As in twist and turn and screw things?” She let the sexual innuendo land between them, grateful for its company. It wasn’t any fun being the only depraved one in a room. “In a pinch, I’ve been known to open wine that way.”

  His eyes widened, but he pointed to the front door. Once again feeling the warm envelope of his jacket as it fell over her arms, Kendra grabbed the mugs and the wine to follow him out. It would be nice to enjoy a little of the night air—and it had nothing to do with wanting privacy away from Lincoln.

  Absolutely nothing at all.

  Noah heard Kendra following behind him, her footsteps light and unsteady as she navigated the dark path from the house to his workshop. He should have slowed down or offered his arm, but it seemed worse to initiate contact out here. There were no lights in this part of the countryside. No blasts of traffic assailed their ears, no noises except the breezy promise of summer punctured the night air.

  Oh, yes. It would be a big mistake to touch her out here. There would be nothing to stop him until the sun peeked over the horizon—and that was a good eight hours away. A lot could happen in eight hours. A lifetime could change. A friendship ruined.

  Since he rarely had company, there was only one Adirondack chair set up outside his workshop, which lay along the path leading to the rest of his farm. He pulled the chair out to indicate she could have it, and, with a quick halting gesture, ducked into the cedary, well-used shop to rifle in his toolbox. Although he tried to live as simply as he could—no luxuries, no temptations—his tools were his one concession to the modern world. Nothing he used in there required electricity, but he’d found himself unable to part with titanium bearings and carbon steel tips.

  “Will this do?” He handed over a well-worn screwdriver.

  Kendra examined it for a second and nodded, taking a moment to wipe the axial shaft with his jacket sleeve. She sat and angled the bottle between her legs, looking delicately ladylike despite the awkwardness of the position. Noah watched, fascinated, as she stabbed the screwdriver into the cork and began pushing it into the bottle. Her hair, a shoulder-length bob of sleek, dark brown strands, fell into her face as she struggled.

  “That’s not a very high-tech method,” he said. “There are going to be bits of cork floating in it.”

  “You haven’t lived until you’ve had to pick winey bits of cork out from between your teeth,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do this at parties.”

  “You must not go to very fancy parties.”

  “On the contrary—I’m an equal-opportunity partier.” The plop of the cork landing in the wine sounded, and she let out a triumphant yell. “Oh, sorry. I should be quieter.”

  “Nah. The dirt makes a pretty good natural insulator. Since the bedroom doesn’t have any windows, you can’t hear much back there.”

  He leaned against the shop door as she poured their wine. He wasn’t a teetotaler or anything, but alcohol had never been his besetting sin, and he hadn’t missed it much beyond the first few months of living out here. Near the end of summer, he sometimes bottled his own dandelion wine, but he usually ended up giving most of it away before the first leaves began to fall.

  But this wine wasn’t like his home brew, which was bright and full of sunshine. This was rich, potent. Intoxicating.

  “So I was wrong. You do drink.” Kendra leaned back in her chair. Noah longed to tell her how carefully he’d worked that wood, rubbing and oiling it, hand-carving the scrolling notches at the end, but he didn’t dare. Discussion
s of rubbing and oiling needed to be kept to a bare minimum if he was going to keep his thoughts in line. “Tell me, Noah. Any other vices you like to divulge in from time to time?”

  “He loves you.”

  She sputtered. “Excuse me?”

  “Lincoln. You might not be aware of it, but he’s in love with you. He has been for the past year.”

  She set her mug on one of the chair arms. It was too dark to see much in the way of her expression, but it didn’t take a spotlight to recognize she was struggling to remain calm. “I beg to differ. What he feels for me isn’t love. It’s an infatuation. A crush. A little boy wanting what he can’t have.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Well, for one, it’s not like he’s been sitting at home pining for me all this time. When I’m not around, I might as well not exist for him. He even had a steady girlfriend for a while last fall.”

  “That’s true.”

  Her voice lowered when it was clear he wasn’t going to argue. “And he doesn’t know me. Not really. He’s built me up as this perfect vision of everything he’s ever wanted in a woman, but I doubt he even knows my favorite color.”

  “What is your favorite color?” Noah couldn’t help asking.

  Her answer came out a little strangled. “Orange.”

  “Like your robe yesterday.”

  “My bloody, ruined robe. Yes.” She paused. “And I know it probably seems like he and I are the best of friends and that we hang out all the time, but the reality is that we rarely see each other. He has the annoying habit of only calling me when he needs me to clean up his messes. Lately that’s been a bit more frequent.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She tilted her head. “Why would you?”

  Noah considered her words carefully, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground. Lincoln had never been particularly wise when it came to women. For as long as they’d known each other—and it had been quite some time—Lincoln had always had some kind of female project lined up and ready to go. A girl he was gathering up the nerve to ask out, a woman he knew he could wear down if she’d only give him the time of day, an ex-girlfriend he was sure would regret her decision to leave him behind. He wasn’t obsessive or anything. He just had a hard time letting go.