“I’m going to have so much fun with this,” she taunted, her eyes shimmering with mischief. “I’ve got you now, Jake Stone.”
His heart tumbled and rocked unsteadily. The way she said it had something deep in him rising up in agreement. But he wasn’t ready to deal with that. “You can’t tell anybody.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m telling everybody.”
It was beginning to sink in that Apple’s lush body was pressed against him. Her amazing breasts were plumped like two warm pillows against his chest, making his brain start to go fuzzy. Having her face so close to his that her breath whispered across his cheek was sincerely distracting because it put her full, beautiful lips mere inches away. Before he forgot how to think, he tried again. “You can’t tell anyone, okay? It’s fucking embarrassing.”
Apple placed a palm against his chest and looked him in the eyes. “Fine, but you’ll owe me.” She pushed away a little, wiggling against him. His body reacted to her by going instantly rock hard.
But damn it felt good to hold her soft, curvy body in his arms. His gaze dropped to her bare lips. “Yeah? What will I owe you?”
She smiled then, brilliantly, and caressed his chest. “I want nudity-free questions.”
His brow rose. “Excuse me?”
She raised one right back. “That’s right. I want three free questions—anytime, anywhere. Or else I’m going to blab it all over town that you have a crush on Taylor Swift.” Her index finger trailed over his collarbone, leaving his skin tingling in its wake. “You wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”
He really wouldn’t, that was the thing. Christ, he’d never hear the end of it. Especially since he used to drum for a rock band. But more than that—what really got him—was the fact that he owed Apple. Had been owing her for months. Guilt for keeping her in the dark about his family’s history swirled in the pit of his stomach and had him blurting, “Fine, I agree. But you have to seal the deal with a kiss.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and she chewed her bottom lip. “And if I don’t?”
Desire reared up, temporarily snuffing out the guilt, and Jake grabbed her by the back of the head gently, pulling her close and whispering against her mouth, “Then I will.”
She gasped softly, her lips parting into a small smile as she melted against him. “Well, fine then. I suppose if I have to . . . ”
A FEW HOURS later, Apple sat at a corner table in the Mother Lode, her laptop open and a huge-ass cup of coffee at the ready.
Inhaling deep, she tried to mentally pump herself up for about the thousandth time. She was going to do this. See her write; hear her roar. Kicking ass and taking names were the specials of the day. This book was getting finished.
She closed her eyes. Breathed one more steadying breath. Opened her eyes again.
The blank screen stared back, cursor blinking, mocking her.
Yeah, she was roaring all right.
Swearing under her breath, Apple snatched up her coffee and glared at her laptop. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could simply stare the book into completion on her computer through some sort of telekinesis. Taking a drink of her vanilla latte, she leveled dagger eyes on her Mac and mentally willed her book into being. Be finished NOW!
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
If you do truly have feelings for Jake, then maybe this book was just a subconscious attempt to find a way to be close to him.
“Oh, just shut up, Mom.” Slapping her laptop closed as her stomach went tense and jittery—and not in the good way—Apple pushed her fingers into the bridge of her nose as her eyes began to sting. Sedona wasn’t right about that. Couldn’t be.
“Is this a bad time to join you?”
Apple startled and opened her eyes. Nell stood next to her looking tall, fit, and pretty in a spring green cardigan. The color on her was absolutely gorgeous. “No, not at all. Sit, please. I need the break. I’m not getting a darn thing done on my book anyway.”
“Ah, that makes sense now. You were scowling something fierce and talking to yourself, honey. Is it technical stuff that’s giving you fits, or is it Jake?”
Definitely door number two.
But not for the usual list of reasons. “I have to confess something to you, and you can’t tell a living soul, okay? I’m invoking the girl code oath we swore in eighth grade.”
Nell’s green eyes went round as she slid onto the chair across from her. “Wow, this must be serious. What happened?”
“I did a bad, bad thing.”
“How bad? Scale of one to ten.” Her best friend swept her arm from one side of the old round wood table to the other. “Where’s it hit on the Richter scale?”
Apple didn’t even have to consider it. “Twelve,” she blurted and promptly took another swig of coffee. Chugging caffeine gave her something to blame for the nerves, and she was not above scapegoating at the moment. She swallowed and just went for it; put it all out there. Because she had to tell somebody. “I kissed Jake.”
“Apple!” Nell squeaked softly, her tone filled with surprise.
“Twice.”
Her friend’s mouth dropped open.
“I’m just kidding,” Apple said.
“Okay . . . well . . . good?” Nell replied, her expression filled with confusion.
“It was way more than that.”
For a moment her friend just stared at her in shock before she seemed to find her voice. “Are you serious? When?”
Apple glanced at her phone. “The last time was about two hours or so ago.” She looked at Nell and couldn’t stop the grin. “And it was good.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Hold up. Clearly I’m missing something important. The last time we were in here you couldn’t stand him. When did that change, and how? Why?” She grabbed Apple’s latte and took a drink, staring hard. “Obviously you’ve been holding out on me.”
“Only a little bit.” Apple held up her fingers, just a fraction apart. “I told you about the agreement.”
“Of which you said there was to be no touching. Clearly, there’s been touching.”
Apple tipped her head to the side and studied her best friend. Noticed the tense lines of her face. “Are you angry at me?”
“Not angry. Worried, honey. I like Jake—you know that. But he’s not the commitment type. And you—well, sweetheart, you are a lifetime guarantee.” Nell brushed a strand of dark blonde hair off her face, her eyes filled with concern. “It’s the mom in me. I can’t help it.”
“I know, and I love you for it.” Reaching out, Apple gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Thank you.”
Her friend took a breath and slowly exhaled, briefly closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the expression was clearer. “Okay, now that I had my moment of anxiety over that, tell me the good stuff. I want details.” She leaned forward. “Was it as good as the rumors say?”
Apple leaned forward too, amused at their whispering. “Better.”
Nell’s eyes went round. “Holy shit.”
“Yep.” She nodded. Emphatically. The man had skills.
“Are you duping him with kisses into giving you information?”
“No, but man, that would have been a great idea! Maybe I could still use it . . . ” She trailed off, thoroughly enjoying the mental image of kissing Jake into cooperation.
Nell rapped the table softly. “Hey, dreamer. Focus.”
Apple looked at her best friend and blushed hard.
“Ha! That’s what I thought, you perv. Get your mind out of the gutter. I have important questions to ask, and I want real answers. When and where did you two first lock lips?”
Briefly Apple wondered at how much to divulge but then realized whom she was talking to and felt a flood of relief that she could finally get it all out. “It was at his place during our agreement. I asked him a question. He sort of answered and told me to take off my top, so I—”
“He did what?” Nell exclaimed, turning several heads in the coffee shop.
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br /> “Shhh!” Apple leaned forward. “Everyone’s staring.”
Her friend shot her apologetic eyes and lowered her voice. “He really told you to take off your shirt?”
“It was a game of strip, honey. Do we need to go back over that part of things again too? Because you seem to be having difficulty keeping up.” She grinned, only teasing. “I got to see him naked too.”
“Ha-ha. You’re funny.”
“I’m serious. It was . . . incredible.”
Nell just gaped at her, speechless.
“Remember the old high school rumors about his, um, anatomy?”
“I do, yeah. The cheering squad was always giggling about it.”
For good reason. “It’s true.”
“The rumors?”
“Yep.” Apple took a swig of her coffee and hid her flaming cheeks from view behind the cup. It was really warm in there. Okay, so maybe it was suddenly hot because she was remembering Jake in the buff. The image of him in all his manly, well-endowed glory was burned into her brain for all eternity.
“Really? Wow, am I having a hard time keeping up. This is completely unexpected news.” Nell raked a hand through her hair and stole Apple’s coffee again. “Give a woman a break, will you? You and Jake playing hanky-panky together isn’t the easiest information to digest. Especially since I’ve spent the better part of twenty years listening to you complain and go on and on about him.” Nell froze then, her green eyes going round. Like a statue she sat for several heartbeats. Then she gasped. “Oh. My. God.”
Apple darted her gaze around the café. “What? What is it?”
Tears began to well in her friend’s eyes, and their expression went soft, emotive. “Oh, honey, you’ve been complaining about him for twenty years.”
She didn’t get it. “Um, yeah. Because he’s been a pain in my ass for that long.”
Nell slid a hand across the table and gripped hers gently, briefly. “That’s not why,” she said with a tender smile. “It’s just the opposite, actually. I recognize the signs now and can’t believe I missed them before. Oh, sweetie, it’s written all over you.”
Apple had to fight the urge to wipe her sleeves all over her face to get it off. Whatever it was. She couldn’t, however, fight the urge to fidget as something close to panic bloomed in her chest. It was almost like deep down she knew what her friend was going to say and she couldn’t sit still long enough to hear it. She had to move now.
Definitely too much coffee.
“I’m not sure what you think you see in my face, but I can assure you it’s nothing.”
Nell grabbed both of Apple’s hands now, her gaze compassionate. “It’s not nothing, sweetie. It’s everything. It’s love. And I see now that it’s been there most of your life.”
Apple went numb. She just stared across the table at her friend. Tried to compute what she’d just said.
Her.
In love.
With Jake.
How about that?
She went from numb to a tsunami of emotions in less than three seconds flat. Feeling them clawing up her throat at a devil’s pace, Apple shoved away from the table, trying to stand, and caught her heel on the bottom rung of her chair. Diving headfirst into the wall, she flung out her hands just in time and caught herself. A picture jarred loose from the wall and fell with a crack of glass to the floor. But no bones or noses were broken.
“Are you okay?” Nell asked, her voice filled with worry.
Nodding, Apple bent over to retrieve the photo. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just clumsy.” She glanced at her friend as her fingers came into contact with the cool wooden frame lying listless on the floor. “Also, you can’t dump something like that on me and expect me not to flip out. You know that.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I had to say it because it’s true. I’ve been in love. I know the signs.” Nell’s eyes went misty with memory.
Apple went nervy. That might have been because there was some truth in her friend’s words, and she didn’t have the ability at the moment to deny them. “Yeah, well, maybe,” she grumbled and righted herself, holding the photo in her hand. Turning to look at it, she frowned at the long, thin crack that went all the way from the top left corner down to the bottom right one. Mrs. Thomas, the café owner, was going to be so disappointed. “I better go find Winnie and tell her I broke her picture.”
Nell leaned across the table. “How bad is it?”
Apple angled it so that she could see. “It’s bad.” She slid a finger along the length of the crack. “Which is unfortunate, because I know this photo. It’s the one taken during that brief gold strike in the fifties. Fortune was flooded with out-of-towners trying their hand at prospecting. This picture is of the group of Fortunites who started that short-lived craze.” She smiled fondly at the faces in the old black-and-white. Most of them she was able to pair with names, thanks to her research. All six of them except for one.
She handed the photo to Nell. “Hey, you don’t happen to know who this is, do you?” She pointed to the young teenaged man wearing prospector’s clothes and a huge, proud smile. Ugh, it nagged at her, not knowing. She was usually so good at this kind of stuff.
“I don’t personally recognize him, no. But he does look a lot like Jake did when he was younger, don’t you think?”
Apple snatched the photo back and squinted her eyes, drew the picture close. And her eyes flew wide when she realized Nell was right. “Holy crap, that’s Harvey!” She shoved the photo under Nell’s nose. “See? He’s holding a bag with the initials H. S. on it. How have I missed this? Gosh, he couldn’t have been more than sixteen, seventeen when this was taken. Wasn’t he handsome?”
Before Nell could answer, Apple pulled the picture back and scoured the photo again. “I love all this history. It’s so fascinating!” And it was incredible. All of it. Every single thing she could see in the old black-and-white. From the metal pans piled at the successful prospectors’ feet, to the rubber waders they all wore, to the stake in the ground just behind them near the river shore that had a carving notched into the top. Squinting even more and pulling the photo close enough to fog it up with her breath, Apple stared at that carving until the symbol became clear. When it did she promptly sat her butt back down in her seat.
Man, it had been one roller coaster of a day.
“What is it?” Nell immediately demanded.
“I’ve seen this design before,” Apple replied and tapped the glass over the stake in the photo.
“What does it mean?”
“I think it means ‘gold strike,’ given this picture and the history I know associated with it. Don’t you think?”
Nell looked at the whole photo, from the background to the foreground. “That makes sense, yes. Like the stake marked their panning sight or something.”
“Exactly.” Why had Jake’s ancestor drawn it on the inside flap of his Bible? Had he considered the book to be his treasure? Or had he put it there because he’d found a real gold strike? “It looks that way.”
Did this have anything to do with the first settlers and what actually happened to them?
Before she could ruminate any further, Nell broke into her thoughts. “Crap, it’s late!” She frowned at the clock on the wall and then grabbed up her purse and stood. “Well, that’s fascinating and all. It really is. And I hate to be a jerk and cut you off, but I just noticed the time and I have to pick up Sam from practice. He hates when I’m late and he’s the last one, and I promised him I’d make it on time today because I’ve been struggling with that lately.” Nell stood from the table and came around to give Apple a hug. “Promise me you’ll think about what I said, okay?”
Like she was going to be able to do anything else. “I promise.” She watched her friend go and gently placed the photo back on the wall. Then she turned to find crotchety old Mrs. Thomas to tell her about the crack.
Nell thought she was in love with Jake. Had been for a long time. Well, what did she think about that?
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Turned out, she didn’t know.
But she felt.
Oh man, she most definitely felt.
Chapter Twelve
NINETIES NIGHT WAS in full swing by the time Apple pushed through the saloon doors to Two Moons and was hit with a lot of noise. Jake sure knew how to throw a party. And by the looks of things, pretty much every citizen of Fortune over the age of twenty-one was in attendance.
“I was hoping you’d come,” came a female voice from her left.
Swiveling her head, Apple grinned. “Wow, now that’s an outfit, Shannon.” Fortune’s newest resident had gone all out for the night, wearing platform lace-up boots, a plaid miniskirt and fuzzy crop-top sweater. To finish the look, she’d added white knee-high socks. “I’m very impressed.”
Her friend gave Apple a once-over. “Not nearly as much as me. Where on earth did you find that dress?”
Apple hooked an arm through one of Shannon’s, and they began pushing through the crowd to the bar. “I’m not sure if I should admit this or not, but I found it in the back of my closet. Apparently a part of me had always known it would someday make a comeback.” Didn’t floral dresses with oversize buttons up the front always come back into style? What about her old Doc Martens? No?
Well, tonight they had. And she was rocking it all proudly, right up through the cropped jean jacket and hot pink scrunchie. And yes, she had found a shoebox full of them stuffed on her closet shelf. So what?
Shannon tossed her auburn hair over her shoulder, laughing. “Oh, honey, you don’t even want to know how many clothes I had in my closet before moving here and how old some of them were. It took a solid week of purging and donating to charity to get it to a reasonable level. As it is, I still had to take over the closet in the guest room, much to Sean’s dismay.”
“What do you mean? That man looks downright elated every time I see him nowadays. You know he’s thrilled to share his closet with you.”
Warm, cognac-colored eyes smiled at her. “Oh he is, definitely. It’s just that he’s still adjusting to the reality of how much stuff a woman comes with. I don’t think he was prepared for twenty-some pairs of shoes and half a dozen face creams.”
Talking Dirty Page 13
