As it was a fairly leading question, she only responded with, “I do.”
Matt let out a whoosh of air. “Thank God. Is he okay? He hasn’t been answering his calls and apparently he’s been suspended at work again and no one can find...wait. You know all of this already, don’t you?”
If Lincoln had been in the room with her right now, she would have happily pinged him with as many synonyms for I told you so as she could come up with. I was right. You were wrong. Hold still so I can rub this in with salt and lemon. How typical of him to not let his family know he’d be out of touch for a few days, leading them to unnecessary worry and forcing them to drink. She knew she should have gone with her gut and called Matt that first night.
“I’m aware of his situation.” She hesitated. “All I can tell you is that he’s fine. Well, he’s fine in Lincoln terms, in that he’s alive and causing trouble. But I promised him I wouldn’t say anything else.”
“We were already talking in barely concealed hypotheticals,” Matt said leadingly. “Can’t we trade? One of yours for one of mine?”
Screw it. If her brother or one of her sisters was in trouble and they hid it from her, she’d cut a swathe of outrage for months. And while she might be in a strange situation right now where Lincoln held her virtue captive, he didn’t also get to dictate her conscience. She drew the line there.
“Hypothetically speaking, your brother is currently recovering from a bar fight under the care of a scorchingly hot mountain man.” She didn’t hold back as she outlined the situation at Noah’s hermit cave of wonders, including the bizarre sexual atmosphere brewing. She only left out the severity of Lincoln’s wound and the fact that this wasn’t the first time he’d come to her—or Noah—for help. Some conversations might be better saved for later.
Matt sat silent at the end of her tale, so she fixated on the part worrying her most: her own problems.
“I’m going to take advantage of your silence to ask your opinion,” she warned. “What do you think I should do about the Noah thing? You’re a man. You know better than me how the bro code works. Am I not allowed to be friends with him, simply because Lincoln doesn’t like it?”
“Geez, Kendra. I don’t know.” His voice came through bewildered and a little strained, but that might have been because of the bombshell she’d just dropped. Poor Matt. He was such a good guy—a brother like Lincoln had to be a real trial. “You said there’s nothing going on between you...sex-wise?”
She had to laugh. “You had no idea what you signed up for when you promised to be my temporary BFF, did you? No. There’s no sex. There should be sex—and lots of it—but Noah cares about Lincoln, and he said he wouldn’t do that to his friend.”
“But there’s flirtation?”
“I’m not a saint. Of course I flirt a little.”
“And you’re absolutely sure you won’t just marry Lincoln and settle him down with lots of spray-tanned babies?”
She almost choked on her laugh. “That would solve all our collective problems, wouldn’t it?”
“It really would,” he said sadly.
Too bad the human body—and heart—didn’t work that way. As sorry as she was, nothing Lincoln could do or say would change the way she felt about him. And short of moving away or hiring a mail-order groom, she didn’t know how else to make that clear.
“It sounds silly for me to make such a big deal out of this, but I really think there might be something different about this guy. Now I won’t even get a chance to find out.” There it was, in a nutshell. For the first time in a long time, she felt like she’d met a man who might actually be one of the real ones. The loyal ones. The good ones. And she couldn’t have him—couldn’t even try him on to see if he’d fit. “It sucks. You know?”
“Yeah, Kendra. I know.”
She believed him. If anyone understood what it felt like to fall hard for someone and have to fight to turn it into something real, it was the man who’d won Whitney’s love. Whitney was also a real trial.
“Well, at least one of us can walk away from this conversation in a better frame of mind,” she said with a brightness she was far from feeling. “I promise he’s doing fine.”
“I think I might remember this Noah guy, now that you mention it. Lincoln used to spend a lot of time in the summer with a friend in that part of the county. Does he have red hair?”
“It’s more gold-tinted now. But I can see how that might have changed.” She smiled into the receiver. What she wouldn’t give to see childhood pictures of a ginger Noah. “He also seems to be pretty capable, and he promised me he’d make sure Lincoln doesn’t overexert himself or get into more trouble.”
“What’s the address?”
“Oh, there’s no address. I told you—it’s the middle of nowhere.”
“Can I at least follow you out there?”
Kendra’s hand moved toward the keys again, this time holding a firm grip. This was what she’d been waiting for—a decision. And she didn’t even have to make it herself. “I was planning on staying away from there for a while,” she hedged. “To keep the peace.” To keep her sanity.
“Please. I just want to talk to him. We can tell him I coerced you by force.”
“Well, if you insist...”
“I do.” He said it in that tone of voice he had—the one that not even Whitney could withstand. Kendra almost squealed in delight to hear it.
“Be here in ten minutes,” she said, and hung up.
Chapter Seven
Neither man was in the house when she and Matt arrived.
Noah’s door was unlocked, of course, open to thieves and wandering deer, completely unprotected from the world. She knew there must be guns somewhere on the property—robust Noah might be, but she doubted he hunted with his pocketknife—but that didn’t make it feel any more civilized. If anything, it made it worse. They could have been on any continent in any era, one of those places where women were chattel and baby-making machines and nothing more.
She suppressed a shudder. The modern world was a much better place for a woman like her. She would have sucked at being chattel.
“You’re telling me Lincoln has been living out here for over a week?” Matt stood at her back, glancing over the land with something approaching awe. In the bright light of the afternoon sun, he looked a little like his brother—they shared the same handsome features, and his longish hair shone the same brown that Lincoln covered with highlights. But the similarities ended there. A kindergarten teacher with a love of tweed, Matt was very much the less shiny of the two. “Doing what, exactly?”
“Getting bored. Taking his irritation out on other people.” Kendra had to laugh. “And don’t think that’s me casting judgment. I feel his pain. There are chickens out here, Matt. No one should have to cohabitate with chickens. Did you know they bite?”
At the sound of their voices, Lincoln emerged from around the worn path leading to the woodshop, a water bottle and one of her thriller paperbacks in hand. His grimace transformed into a grin and back into a grimace so fast she felt as though she was watching an actor exercise his facial muscles.
“You told him,” he accused.
Kendra’s hands went immediately up. “I was coerced. Held at gunpoint. Tortured.”
She could have spouted excuses all day, but none of them were as effective as Matt’s small frown and quiet, “We’ve been worried about you.”
Lincoln’s whole body tensed, and Kendra might have fallen into a backwoods sinkhole for all the attention they paid her. “It’s not a big deal, Matt. I’m practically on a vacation out here. I believe the kids call it taking a little me time. Enjoying some R and R.”
“You’ve never vacationed anywhere but an all-inclusive resort.”
“This is inclusive. Noah feeds me and Kendra entertains.”
<
br /> Lovely. She was being likened to a cruise-ship magician now.
“I almost filed a missing person’s report,” Matt said. “Can we at least talk about this?”
“Uh, guys?” Kendra called after them. “Do you want me to come play referee?”
She got two noncommittal male grunts in reply as they disappeared into the house. Kendra could hardly believe her good luck—she was damn near to pinching herself. Experience had long since taught her that a Fuller brother disagreement was an all-consuming task, liable to take hours. They’d been going back and forth on the groomsman tuxedos for months.
This was her chance. She could go to Noah. Tackle him to the ground. Have her wicked way with him.
She forced the sudden flurry of desire that hit her stomach to settle into something cold and hard. Into a lump. Into inertia. The task was a difficult one—but not nearly as difficult as it might have been a few weeks ago. All the fresh air and barnyard animals were warping her perspective, Noah’s ascetic ways pushing their earthy roots through.
“Hello?” Kendra knocked on the door to the woodshed, where the grating brush sounds from within indicated Noah was hard at work doing something manly and rustic with sharp objects. The lump in her stomach wasn’t so immovable she’d deny herself the pleasure of seeing that firsthand. She pushed on the door. “Anybody home?”
Noah looked up from where he straddled a stool, a smile crinkling the weathered lines around his eyes before he remembered to keep such powerful expressions of joy at bay.
“You came back.” His voice was gruff, a perfect match for the work-worn Henley he’d pushed up to his elbows and the pieces of sawdust captured in his beard. There was so much raw intensity in the man—it seemed suddenly unfair that she’d only ever seen him on his own turf. He was perfectly suited for hard work and the backdrop of swirling sawdust, the cloak of wood chips fragrant with the outdoors.
She felt out of place, standing in her favorite heels, bringing the sterile smell of the medspa with her, gawking at Noah as he rubbed his hands up and down his thighs to clean them. Gah. Did he have to move his hands so slowly, drawing out the task as though he was taking his own measure?
“Does Lincoln know you’re here?” he asked.
The air left her, a tire not just punctured but slashed wide open. So much for any lingering dreams of being welcomed with open arms. She was the entertainer, the problem, the fluff.
“Yes, Noah. I made sure to check in with our jailer before I dared cast my eyes your way.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “Lincoln’s in the house yelling at his brother right now. You and I might want to stay hidden away until he’s done.”
The mention of hiding out together left Noah unmoved. “Was that wise? Bringing Matt out here?”
“It was unavoidable,” she said firmly. No way was she taking the blame for this one. “Matt asked me outright if I knew where Lincoln was, and I had no choice but to tell him. In this place I live called the real world, people sometimes intrude and make things messy—whether I want them to or not.”
Noah looked at her for a long, drawn-out moment before answering. “Unlike out here. Where everything is simple and carefree, and no one asks me to sacrifice anything.”
She wasn’t taking the blame for that either. “I only came back because you asked me to.”
“No.” His eyes didn’t waver from hers, commanding that she acknowledge his truth, his righteousness, his everything. “You came back because you wanted to.”
The lump in her stomach was all but gone now, dissolved into butterflies taking flight below her ribcage. It was all she could do to stay standing against the force of them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt butterflies over anything, let alone a man.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “I did want to come back. And, as I always do, I let my desires dictate my actions. I do that, you know. Give in to the impulse of the moment. Allow my feelings to take the wheel.”
“I noticed.”
“Is that so? Might I ask what else you’ve noticed about me? What other judgments you’ve cast?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
She inclined her head in assent before she realized what a mistake it was. Something—women’s intuition, logic, the painful vestiges of rejection—warned her that whichever words formed on Noah’s lips, they wouldn’t be the ones she wanted to hear. He wasn’t going to confess his longing or admire her beauty. He wouldn’t sugarcoat his affection or lay out her virtues end to end.
She had no idea what that left—and she was suddenly terrified to find out.
“Let me guess,” she said brightly, rushing ahead before he could fill the silence. “I’m high maintenance and spoiled. Useless around a farm. Harmful to the environment. Barely even willing to sully my manicure in the dirty dishwater.”
His lips twitched, and some of the severity left his expression. “I wasn’t going to go quite that far, but there are princesses out there who have it rougher than you. When was the last time you got your hands well and truly dirty?”
“Don’t tempt me, Noah. You have no idea how dirty they can get.”
He jerked his head in the direction of the medieval-looking machine he’d been working on. “Good. Why don’t you prove it?”
She took a step back, startled. “I already handled your filthy goat. I don’t think you want me touching your tools too.” That thing looked dangerous—and this was coming from a woman who knew how to run every kind of depilatory machine out there. “I don’t even know what that is.”
He chuckled. “Relax. It’s a lathe.”
A lave? Noah had a licking machine in his shop? In light of her current state of longing, that seemed outright cruel. “What did you just say to me?”
“Lathe. Th. For making chair legs and things—it was a hobby of mine long before I moved to this area. Come here and I’ll show you.” He stood and drew closer to the machine, his hand running a warm caress over the constituent parts. “I warn you, though—I may ramble. If you think me getting visitors to my home is rare, you should see how often I have company in my shop.”
He sounded so endearing—a little boy showing off his toys—that Kendra’s chest gave a clench. “You don’t have to live in such isolation, you know. You’re proving to be quite sociable, with table manners and everything. You might even try coming down to town every now and then. I could show you how the other ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population lives.”
He shook his head firmly. “No. I gave all that up for a reason.”
She waited, expecting some sort of clue as to what that reason might be. Given the way that man had been yelling at him the other day—and taking his friendship with Lincoln into account—it could be anything. Drugs and alcohol. Too many parking tickets. Closets full of skeletons. Closets full of tightly bound women.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t look at me like that, Kendra. It’s not something I particularly enjoy talking about.”
“One clue—that’s all I ask. It was a woman, wasn’t it?”
He blinked slowly, and she realized that even though she wasn’t the woodworker in this scenario, she’d hit the nail right on the head.
“Oh, crap. I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“That would require me talking about it.”
“Was she pretty?” She didn’t know where that question came from, all needy and unlike her. It just slipped out.
“Yes, Kendra. She was pretty, but not nearly as pretty as you. Can we move on now?” He turned to the lathe and began pushing metal bits around. She was no expert, but it seemed like he was using more force than was necessary. “The lathe is a fairly simple machine to run—I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”
She accepted his change of subject and drew closer. “You were only here f
or a short while every summer, right?”
He swiveled his head to look at her. “How did you know that?”
“Lincoln mentioned something the other day. He said you used to save him from bullies.” She mock swooned. “His hero.”
Noah laughed. “Someday, you’ll have to time that man doing a mile. He could run faster than any kid I ever met. It was how he survived when I wasn’t around.”
“He also said he protected you,” she said.
“He did. He does.”
And then he turned off again, all his attention on logs and machinery, those tangible things she could hardly fault him for. Some might say she had her own tendency to be preoccupied by material goods every now and then.
“Now,” he said firmly. “You start by putting the wood against the headstock right there.”
That was distraction enough for her. “No way. It’s not actually called that. You’re making it up.”
He caught her meaning, the brown of his eyes deepening in mischief and something warmer. Farms were apparently chock-full of double entendres—and he meant to use them, wield them, slay her with them.
And she intended to let him. At this point, all they had were words.
“This part over here,” he said dramatically, “is the tailstock.”
“That can’t possibly be true.”
His voice dropped, his hand running to the machine’s base. “This is the bed.”
“Nuh-uh. I want to see the owner’s manual proving it.”
“And since I don’t use an electrical lathe, this one is run by a foot pump I attached to the back gear.”
Oh, she’d pump his back gear, all right. “Fine. Show me.” She began removing the half dozen gold bracelets that jangled on her arm, setting them on a worktable alongside a pile of cedary curls. “I want to know how this lathing of the wood works. Pervert.”
Noah watched Kendra take off her jewelry one piece at a time, mesmerized as she shucked her outermost layer—feeling the removal of a circle of gold as keenly as if she’d slipped out of her clothes and stood naked before him.
The Party Girl Page 11
