by Merry Farmer
“Anything for the old neighborhood,” he said, then promptly looked around the room instead of at her. The furniture everyone had been sitting on yesterday was grouped in the middle of the floor and covered with drop cloths. Only a small section of one wall had any paper peeled away. “Having a little trouble getting started?”
He heard Angie shift, but took his time glancing back to her. When he did finally look her way with detached calm, she had her hip cocked to the side, her hand resting on it. “Easy for you to say, big shot. You just got here.”
“I did.” He grinned at her, channeling his suave friend and project leader, Scott Martin. “So we’ll start to make real progress now.”
Angelica blinked. Her posture stiffened. She didn’t say anything.
Dennis crossed to a bucket of tools on a cloth-covered table, putting his keys and wallet in a clear spot. “Is this what you’re using to take the old wallpaper down?” He took a blue plastic scraper out of the bucket, studying it.
“Yep. I sprayed the edges of the paper with water first thing, not that it needs much more moisture than the humidity today.”
As soon as Dennis heard her move, he stole a glance at her. He caught her face in profile, and his heart thumped against his ribs. He’d noticed how sexy she was, now that she was all grown up, at graduation, when he’d come to the house on Saturday, at Mary Mac’s, and in his restless dreams for the past two nights. But it struck him anew each time he looked at her.
“So why are you having trouble scraping the old stuff off?” He forced himself to concentrate as he walked to her side.
He wasn’t the only one struggling to focus. Angelica wriggled her shoulders with restless motions and shifted her weight as she stared deliberately—a little too deliberately—at the section of wall she’d been working on. “It came up easily here and here—” She pointed at two sections of the wall, right above the dark, wood wainscoting. “—but when I got to the middle, things got sticky.
Dennis crossed his arms, plastic scraper in one hand, and nodded at the wall, rubbing his chin. The last thought on his mind was wallpaper. Things were sticky, all right. He’d been sent to Atlanta on a mission, but all he wanted to do was untangle old emotions. Or maybe new emotions. Either way, he was getting off track and into uncharted waters. For his own sanity, he needed to remember why he was there.
“Okay. How about this? You keep going here, I’ll start at the other side, and we’ll see who gets the most paper to come unstuck fastest.”
Angelica cocked her hip to the side again and turned to him, light in her eyes. “Are you suggesting a competition?”
Dennis laughed so suddenly and so loud that Angelica flinched. He shook his head. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been in Haskell too long. Howie likes to make everything—and I mean everything—into a competition.”
“Are you saying I can’t compete?” Now her eyebrow skewed up to match her jaunty posture.
That was the biggest challenge Dennis had faced yet. “I’m not saying anything of the kind. I’m sure you can compete just fine. But I’ll still beat you.”
Angelica snorted. “What, you? Honey, you used to eat my dust for breakfast.”
He knew she was joking. He knew full well that her comment was just smack-talk. But it hit him right in the spot that had been aching for the last three days. He took a step closer to her, towering over her, lips twitching to a grin, eyes narrowed just enough. “That was then, sweetheart,” he crooned. “This is now.”
She tilted her head up to him. Her eyes danced with excitement. Her lips parted as she sucked in a breath. The insane urge to throw his scraper aside, scoop her into his arms, and kiss her within an inch of her life seized him. The only way to fight it was to take a large step back and to send her the sauciest look he could muster.
“On your mark, get set, go!”
He strode off to the far end of the room, grabbing a squirt bottle from the table of tools as he went. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to turn around to see what Angelica thought of his challenge, of the way he’d issued it. He bolted to the corner, squirted the wall with more water. The sharp scent of vinegar highlighted that there was more than water in the air. It also snapped him out of his haze.
Only when he had chipped away at the paper at the edge of the wainscoting did he feel it was safe to turn and check on Angelica. She had gone back to the section of wall where he’d found her and was squirting it with another bottle. The lines of her face were set with determination, but she wore a fierce grin as well. That combined with the lithe movements of her arms and legs as she worked, was enough to tighten Dennis’s jeans. He needed to think of something else before his focus was completely shot.
“So, Miss Jones, on behalf of Paradise Space Flight, I’d like to invite you to consider all of the opportunities the job we’ve offered to you presents,” he began, falling back on the speech he’d prepared on the flight into town days ago.
“Is that so, Mr. Long,” Angelica fired right back, playing along. “What can Paradise Space Flight offer me that NASA can’t?”
“Imagination.” Dennis pushed out the word with a little more of a grunt than he intended to as he yanked down an entire strip of wallpaper. It was just his luck that the whole thing peeled off more or less in one piece, leaving him just a tiny spot to scrape. Already, he was winning. “NASA is limited by government regulations and expectations. Since no one expects much of PSF at this stage in the game, we’re able to put our brain power to serious outside-the-box thinking.”
“Your brain power, huh?” He could hear the teasing in Angelica’s voice. It ran perilously close to the dismissive tone she used to use on him when other people were around in high school.
“I have brain power of considerable size.” He infused his tone with something he never would have dared to as a teen—sex appeal. “And I have the skill to use it to scintillating effect.”
He peeked to the side. A dark flush deepened the tone of Angelica’s skin. A shiver raced down Dennis’s spine, paying particular attention to everything making his jeans tight. Never, ever, had he caused Angelica to blush like that. It felt good. It felt…powerful.
“And you use this considerably sized brain as part of a team, do you?” Her voice had a rough catch in it.
“For now.” He scaled back the flirting. He had to get in some legitimate information at some point, after all. “The propulsion team is focused on the Haskell I rocket right now, but as projects develop, more teams will develop, giving each of us a chance to head our own projects.”
“So are you saying that you’re looking for someone to work under you?”
He nearly fumbled the scraper at her hot tone. A quick glance south showed that it would be a good idea to keep his hips angled away from her until things calmed down. Or he could toss caution and his scraper to the wind, throw her down on the cloth-covered sofa, and show her just how good it could be to work under him.
But no, he had to keep it together. He had to come out on top…so to speak.
He shrugged, digging in to the next section of wallpaper. “Unless you want to be on top—” He let just enough of a pause go by before finishing with, “—of your own research team.” A deep part of him wanted to laugh. Why had he never thought of bantering with her like this before?
Because seventeen-year-old Dennis would have sprained something if he’d tried to hold his own with her like this.
“So you’re offering me the chance to lead my own team?” Angelica stopped working. She stopped flirting too.
Dennis pulled away another strip of wallpaper and turned to her. The expression she wore was suddenly serious. “Is that what you want?” he asked, as serious as she was.
“Yes.” The single word came out with enough force to hold a textbook of meaning behind it. “That’s what I’ve always wanted. I have so many ideas, so many theories. I don’t want to get stuck working on someone else’s dreams my entire life. I have dreams of my own.”
; Dennis took a step toward her. “You always have. That’s why I found you so fascinating.”
In the flash of an instant, something primal and…and sad filled Angelica’s eyes. It was replaced in another second by renewed confidence. “I thought you kept coming around because you liked hanging out with a girl.”
“Uh, Angelica—” He took another step toward her. Bitter and sweet memories warred in his chest. Now would be the perfect time to deliver a killing blow by telling her how badly she’d hurt him. But he didn’t want to hurt her the same way he’d been hurt. He still wanted the girl full of dreams. “You weren’t the only girl I knew.”
She blinked. Hard. “Yes, I was.”
He shook his head. His next step took him to within feet of her. “I hung out with Latoya sometimes too, you know. And Kate Shaughnessy was always nice to me.”
“Red-head Kate from the corner?” Angelica balked.
“Yeah.”
“The one who always won the prize for selling the most Girl Scout cookies?”
“What do you think I spent all my allowance on every winter?”
The flush that came to Angelica’s face at that question matched the look she’d worn when Dennis had walked into Mary Mac’s with Latoya. It probably made him some kind of jerk, but he kind of liked that she was jealous of him spending time with other girls. It was better than her laughing at him because he couldn’t get a date.
“Come on,” he said, snapping out of the intense moment. “This wallpaper isn’t going to pull itself down. Or are you ready to admit defeat already?”
That did the trick. Angelica blinked one last time, then snapped straight. “In your dreams, Denny.”
Dennis laughed and strode back to the section of wall he’d been working on. He fetched the squirt bottle and dampened the paper. “How do you know what I dream about?”
“I bet it’s all rocket ships and space aliens.” She fell right back into playful banter.
“Goes to show what you know.” He stole a glance at her as he put the bottle back, and when her gaze met his, he winked.
Angelica looked back at her work so fast Dennis wouldn’t have been surprised if she got a crick in her neck. “You probably dream of getting a promotion and lording it over everyone.”
His expression pinched into a frown, but it only lasted for a second. “I’m happy being part of a team.”
“I thought you said you were excited about being your own team leader once PSF picks up more business.”
Dennis made a noncommittal sound and began scraping the next section of wall from the bottom up. “As long as I can be part of a team working to reach for the stars—and I mean that literally, not figuratively—then I’ll be good.”
“So if I went to work for you and ended up as your boss, you wouldn’t get all huffy?” she asked.
Dennis chuckled. “Only if you turned into an arrogant, pushy, mean boss.”
The section of wallpaper he was working on was particularly stubborn, and it took him a few seconds of putting his shoulder into scraping before he realized that Angelica hadn’t answered. More than that, she’d gone suspiciously quiet. He glanced over to her only to find a look of tortured sadness had taken over her face.
A split-second later, he realized how she must have heard his comment. A cold, slithery feeling filled his gut. The sensation of being ripped in two slammed back into him. The dark part of him thought it served her right to squirm over who she’d been and how she’d treated him. But the much bigger, maybe even fatalistically nice guy part of him hated that she was so upset over what was dealt and done.
“Hey,” he called, hoping to snap her out of it. Angelica sucked in a breath and looked up and over to him. “You missed a spot.” He nodded to the wall in front of her.
She stared at the wall, her lost look turning to confusion, then to realization. “I did not. You’re just trying to distract me.”
“Me? I would never do that. Even if you were my boss.”
She sent him a look that he thought was mocking at first, but when he did a double-take, he realized how serious she’d gone again.
“What?” he asked.
“Would you really be okay with me working alongside you every day?”
Dennis shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Why not?” She let her arms drop and turned to face him fully as he continued working, tugging a strip of paper off the wall. “Dennis, we have history. And it’s not exactly Leave It to Beaver history. Do you think you could ever get past that?”
A wave of emotionally-charged tension hit and left him with no idea what direction the conversation was spinning off in. “History is history,” he said, hoping his thoughts would come together on the fly. “Everybody’s got it. Maybe we have more than other people. But we’ve both grown up and moved on, so—”
She started moving across the room before he had marshalled his thoughts, before he had a lick of warning. His mouth was open, in the middle of his sentence, when she reached him. Before he could finish, she grabbed the scraper out of his hand, tossed it aside, pressed up on her toes, threw her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him.
Chapter Six
There was no way around it. She was plum crazy. But nothing had felt so good as throwing her arms around Dennis’s broad shoulders and kissing him like the fool she was. Angelica had no idea what made her do it, only that she couldn’t continue to stand there, heart ripping itself to shreds, wondering if Dennis would ever forgive her for the past. Her brain short-circuited, and she went straight from wondering if he would ever give her a second chance, to planting her lips on his and taking that chance.
His body went rigid with surprise as she wrapped herself around him. Because of his height, she had to cling to him in order to balance while slanting her mouth over his. For one terrible moment, she was certain she’d made a complete ass of herself as he just stood there like a rock.
Then he reacted. A deep sigh escaped from his chest, and his muscles loosened. He pulled her into his arms, lifting her nearly off her feet as he embraced her. His lips parted, and instead of her forcing a kiss on him, he melted into her, taking the lead and teasing her lips with his tongue, coaxing her to open up to him.
A tight, desperate sound curled up from the bottom of her anxious soul. Dennis had learned a heck of a lot about kissing in the ten or so years since they’d fumbled through that adolescent make-out session in the lab. His large hands spread across her back, reached down to cup her backside, the energy his touch carried with it demanding and electric. His kiss was heaven itself, far beyond anything she’d dared to dream of.
“Well if that’s not a sight to see, I don’t know what is,” Mrs. Brown’s voice boomed from the doorway.
Angelica gasped as though someone had doused her with ice water and jumped away from Dennis. She spun to face Mrs. Brown so fast that she nearly lost her balance. “Mrs. Brown,” she croaked. “We were just—”
“Oh, I can see what you’re doing, all right, honey,” Mrs. Brown cut her off with a laugh.
“Why’d it get so quiet in there?” Mr. Fellowes asked a moment later, sticking his head through the open front window. He too wore a grin as wide as the sunrise.
Angelica winced, turning it into a smile as well as she could. How stupid was she to throw herself at Dennis when the old folks out on the porch were probably listening to their every word? It wasn’t like the two windows that opened out to the porch where they sat were hidden, even if the curtains hadn’t been taken down yet.
“You caught us,” Dennis said with much more grace and good humor than Angelica could have managed.
“We certainly did, young man,” Mrs. Miniver stuck her head through the other window and made a scolding noise. “Taking advantage of women.” She shook her head. “In my day, Angie’s papa would have called you out for something like that.”
“Oh, hush, Gladys,” Mrs. Brown said with more teasing than scolding. “Times have changed. And can’t you see these tw
o young people are meant for each other?”
Another splash of awkward tingles zipped along Angelica’s skin, making her face burn hot. “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” she rushed to get out while she still had a voice. “We’re just friends.”
“That don’t look like no friends to me,” Mr. Fellowes said.
So they’d watched more than just the tail end of the kiss. Angelica let her shoulders drop in embarrassed defeat. “We’re just friends,” she sighed. “That’s all it is.”
She felt Dennis stiffen behind her. A third wave of embarrassment washed over her, but this one with a far more sinister taste than before. She turned to peek at Dennis, only to find that the smile he wore was definitely forced. His eyes flashed with an emotion she couldn’t put a name to.
“That’s right,” he said. “We’re just friends. No big deal. But it will be a big deal if we don’t get this old wallpaper down and the new stuff up before I have to leave.”
“Leave?” Mrs. Brown balked. “When are you leaving?”
“Well, I fly back to Wyoming tomorrow night. But I probably shouldn’t stick around here too much later than this afternoon. Stuff to do and all.”
He hadn’t mentioned he had stuff to do to Angelica. Her heart ached in her chest as he bent to pick up his scraper and turned back to the wall. Mrs. Brown’s long, slow, “Mmm hmm,” reflected what she thought about his claim. And it underscored how badly she’d messed things up. Again.
“Don’t let us keep you from your important work,” Mrs. Miniver said, retreating back to the porch with a click of her tongue and a muttered, “Young people these days.”
Mr. Fellowes pulled back onto the porch himself and said something indistinct to the other elders sitting there.
“Don’t go getting yourselves in a mess of trouble,” Mrs. Brown said, sending Dennis and Angelica each particular looks before heading back out to the porch herself.
“We won’t,” Dennis called after her in a falsely cheerful voice.
