by Sienna Ciles
“Son,” he said, and shook once, firm and businesslike as usual. He was the older, shorter version of me, with silver hair and his collar undone. Jeans as usual, always practical, though he hadn’t gone out on the farm to reap or sow in years.
Dad entered the kitchen and took his place at the head of the table, dragged an empty plate and fork toward himself. Mom busied herself with the mugs and now full coffee pot.
“You said you broke down?”
“Not technically broke down. I ran out of gas and my phone went dead,” I said. “I was in a rush to get George his new goat.”
“And you didn’t think to gas up the Ford?” Dad gave a tiny shake of the head, another of his not-so-subtle signs of disappointment in his son.
“I didn’t think.” Another crime punishable by frown. Fuck’s sake, I was an adult. This shouldn’t get to me. “How have you been?”
“We’re fine,” Howie Jackson replied, stiffly. Never one to show much emotions or let on that there may or may not be hard times ahead.
“I was just asking Joshy about his new girlfriend. He says her name is Eve,” Mom said, carrying over the three mugs on a tray, along with sugar and cream. She put it down and lavished me with a smile. “I hear she’s pretty.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend. She just helped me out of a sticky situation yesterday when I ran out of gas.”
“Ran out of gas.” Dad shook his head again.
“Anyway, she’s a nice woman but she’s –” What? What could I say? That she was gorgeous and I couldn’t get her off my mind but she probably wouldn’t want to see me again? I didn’t even know why that was.
And now, Cassidy wanted me to ask her out and it made things seem so… pressurized all over again. I couldn’t catch a break or fantasize about the possibilities in peace without someone putting pressure on the situation.
“– getting any younger.”
I’d missed most of Mom’s lecture about kids and age and a ticking male clock.
“Unless you plan on marrying a woman much younger than you,” she said, and sniffed to show what she thought of that.
“Define much younger.”
“Ten years,” Mom said.
“You’re one to talk. Dad’s seven years older than you,” I replied.
“Perfectly acceptable. Just not ten years.” Mom carried the pie to the table and set it down on one of those fluffy pot holder things. “Here, sit down and have some pie, darling. Shoot, I forgot to whip up the cream.”
“Let me do it,” I said, and moved to the electric whisk that sat on the counter. I’d take any excuse to avoid the prying questions and to allow me a few seconds to think about Eve, and the way she moved, her smile, her tiny waist.
Chapter 7
Eve
“Come on, it’s fun,” Cassie said, nudging me in the ribs. “We’ll ride the teacups and then we can get cotton candy and –”
I’d already agreed to a visit to the Hope Creek Fair, now in full swing, but my enthusiasm this afternoon had worn off after a long shift flipping burgers. I bit my lip in front of the ticket booth and wiggled my head from side to side.
“Look, lady, you’ve got to buy a ticket to get in and I’ve got customers waiting in line,” said the nerdy dude behind the glass window.
I snapped open my handbag and brought out a few coins, then fed them into the tray beneath the window. He slipped out a ticket without any change. “Have fun,” he drawled.
Screams and laughter, along with that plinky-plonky music chased me toward the gate, Cassie alongside me, with Charlie clutching her hand and her grandmother’s on the other side. The little girl’s eyes were as round as plates.
“Look,” she said, and gasped. “Momma, look.” She pointed at a giant teddy bear at one of the stalls. “It’s amazing.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“Can I have it? Please?”
“I’m sorry, love, but you have to play the game to win one of those. Don’t worry about that, we’re going to go for a ride on the teacups.”
My stomach whooped in response to that. I wasn’t good with rapidly moving objects. Sitting in them was the real challenge, to be precise. Oh, cars were fine, simply because I could actually control where they were headed and what they’d do but fair rides? God help me.
The crowd of chattering fair-goers swept them toward the teacups, folks with their kids screaming or laughing – one boy threw up in a trash can on the way there, a corn dog clutched in his right hand.
I made a mental note not to try one.
“Here we go,” Cassie said. “Are you ready?” She winked at me, the tease, then led her daughter toward the end of the line.
I joined them, hustling toward the open gate at the tail end of the line, but Ma didn’t. “Are you coming?” I asked.
“No, no, dear, you go ahead. I’ll watch from here. Hurry, they’re about to close the gate for the ride!” She lifted a Polaroid camera. “I’m the designated picture taker at the moment. I have much more fun watching than participating.”
I could believe that in the case of the teacups. The line moved at a glacial pace, and finally, we were ushered past the gate and toward the steps. Cassie lifted her daughter into her arms. “Now, don’t be afraid, it will be fun,” she said.
“I’m not scared,” Charlie replied.
“I know,” I put in, at the exact same moment, then burst out laughing.
“Two per cup.” The uniform pointed to one cup for Cassie and Charlie.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. I have to go through this alone?” I shook my head. “This isn’t what I signed up for, Cassidy Waterson.”
“Sorry,” she yelled, and shot me a grin, regardless. Charlie waved goodbye, her little eyes sparkling with excitement.
I huffed and glanced back at the gate but it was already closed. Too late to back out now. I hustled down the strange boardwalk and onto the last teacup, decorated with blue flowers, both gaudy and nauseating.
I froze with my hand on the tiny teacup door.
“Hi,” Joshua said, from his seat on the tiny mock-porcelain bench.
“Hi.” I didn’t move, just swallowed and kept staring at him. The man I’d practically obsessed about for the past day and night was here, in front of me. Shit.
“I don’t think it’s a standing ride,” he said, pointedly.
“Oh, right.” I shut the door behind me, then took my place beside him. He was too big for the damn teacup, and his thigh brushed against mine. Every alarm bell went off in my mind.
He grabbed the miniature rail and pulled it across our laps.
“Oh, god,” I muttered. “Oh, shit, oh, no.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I – I’m not a big fan of these kinds of rides.”
“Make you puke?” he asked, giving me a sympathetic onceover.
“No. I just don’t like the not being in control part.” I laid my hands on the bar and closed them tight.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “These things don’t normally break down. And I think they do maintenance on them once every decade.”
“You’re evil.”
He burst out laughing and slung his arm over the back of the seat. “I’m kidding, of course. I don’t know when they do maintenance.” He leaned in very close, close enough that his breath heated my neck and ear and set off a chain reaction of goosebumps. “Or if they even do maintenance at all.”
“Stop,” I groaned but his jokes helped a little, and so did that scent. That same warm, soil and sunshine smell.
The ride started and his arm slipped from the back of the bench. “Here we go.”
My knuckles went glossy white against the bar.
“Okay, so you don’t like this kind of thing. I know, we’ll take your mind off it,” he said.
“How?” I asked, through gritted teeth.
Joshua slipped his arm around my waist and held me to his side. The rush of adre
naline and fear mingled with a thud of desire for him.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he whispered. “It’s all I think about, actually. The way you ran me over.”
“I apologized for that.”
“And the way you saved me. And Billy.”
“I wasn’t saving you. Just doing you a favor.” Well, his warm body against mine had helped distract me from the circling cups, the vertigo that came with it. “I really am sorry I ran you over.” Even though he had run toward the truck.
“You don’t need to be sorry, and that’s not why I’ve been thinking about you, Eve.”
“What?” My mouth went dry, throat, too. I met his gaze, at last. His crystal blue eyes bored right into me, right through to my soul. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you because – well, isn’t it obvious?” He brushed his fingertips down my arm.
How the hell was I supposed to respond to that? No, it wasn’t obvious; it was downright crazy. Sure, I was attracted to him, so attracted that I might’ve fantasized about him alone in my bed last night but this? I’d promised I wouldn’t get involved with anyone.
“I – look, Joshua, you’re nice but –”
“Wait,” he said. “I’m not ready to be rejected quite yet.”
“What?”
“I haven’t even asked you out on a date and you’re letting me down gently,” he said. “Tell you what.”
“What?”
“Give me until the end of the afternoon before you reject me, okay?” Josh asked, giving me that sexy half-smile.
My core tightened up, and I blinked up at him, lips parted.
His gaze swept over them and down my chest to the heart-shaped pendant nestled between my breasts, then away. “Just until the afternoon. Then you can reject me thoroughly.”
“Okay?” I couldn’t think straight with his cologne in my nostrils and his heat mingling with mine. Images of him naked from the waist up drifted up from my memory bank. I bit down on the side of my tongue to keep myself in the present. “What happens at the end of the afternoon?”
“You’ll see,” he said, and sat back.
Finally, the teacups slowed and came to a stop. We lifted the bar and I stumbled upright, almost fell. Joshua caught me by the waist and held me there. “Easy,” he said.
The rush of adrenaline came back full force and I went rod-stiff. “I’m fine,” I said, and stepped from his grasp, though every inch of me ached to keep his hands on my body. I couldn’t let this happen.
I exited the demon cup and walked toward the exit, where Cassie, Charlie, and Ma waited. Charlie waved and clapped her hands. “It was the best, Auntie. Wasn’t it the best?”
“Lovely,” I said, even though I could barely see straight.
Cassidy’s eyes widened, and she glanced to my left. “Oh, hello. Are you joining us for the afternoon?”
Joshua nudged my arm. “Only if you’re all okay with it.”
“Fine by me,” Ma said, handing him her handbag. “I could use a strong man to lug this thing around. It’s got Charlie’s books in it.”
“Charlie never goes anywhere without her copy of the Hungry Caterpillar,” Cassidy said, by way of explanation. She was a little pink around the jowls, now, and she made eyes at me. “Shall we?”
We set off at a leisurely pace and wended between the Hope Creek folks. Laughter rang out, and we stopped for cotton candy, Charlie totally in awe of the machine. “Wow,” she said. “It’s humagous.”
“Humongous,” Cassidy said.
“Hamangous.”
I laughed but it came out high-pitched and nervous. Joshua stood by my side, his presence constant, drawing me further away from the present and back in time to the night I’d spent in his guestroom, listening to the gentle sounds of him locking up downstairs in the house.
“Are you okay?” he muttered.
I nodded once.
“Look, if you want me to leave you alone, I will. I’ll go right now. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
I kept my eyes on the cotton candy machine. The guy working it handed a pink, fluffy candy ball on a stick over to Charlie, who lost the will to articulate and began devouring it.
“Do you want me to leave?”
I looked over at him and giggled. He cradled Ma’s fantastic handbag in his muscled arms, his expression almost too sincere. His dark eyebrows had drawn together, his lips puckered beneath that impossibly straight nose.
“Do you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. This is fine. It’s fun.”
“Look, Momma, the teddy bear,” Charlie said, around a mouthful of fast-dissolving cotton candy. She pointed her chubby fingers at the stand – a classic shooting range using water pistols instead of bullets.
“You like that, sweetheart?” Joshua asked. “I’ll win it for you.”
All three women stared at him. How could he possibly make a promise like that?
“Yay, Momma, he’s going to win it for me,” Charlie said.
“Don’t get your hopes up, sweetheart.” Cassie kissed her daughter on the forehead.
But Joshua had already marched off with his eyes on the prize, and I followed him in spite of my better judgement. What if he did win it? Him winning that bear and handing it over to adorable little Charlie would make rejecting him even more difficult.
And there was no question I had to reject him. If I didn’t, I’d put my own sanity at risk all over again.
Joshua paid the booth attendant, then lifted the water pistol and aimed it at the targets. The music started playing, the targets danced back and forth, and the timer started. Thirty seconds to hit ‘em all, as the man in the cheesy tux had announced to each and every customer – all in that gleeful tone that said he’d made a killing off these suckers already.
I positioned myself just behind Josh and admired his broad back, muscles tense beneath his cotton t-shirt. He fired, three short bursts.
Blam, blam, blam. The bulls-eyes shot down one after the other. The music cut out, and the stunned man in the tux and hat stared at Hope Creek’s most eligible bachelor.
“All right,” he said, sour as a lemon. “Which one do you want?”
“This one,” Joshua replied, plucking the teddy bear from the stall’s corner. “Thanks.” He winked at the man, then walked over to Charlie, who was positively out of her mind with excitement. “Here you go.”
Charlie squealed and hugged the teddy.
“Say thank you, Charlie.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” the girl squeaked and hugged her oversized teddy.
I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and swallowed the lump in my throat. If that didn’t make a girl’s ovaries explode, I didn’t know what would.
Joshua turned to me and risked a grin. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“What is it?” My pulse ticked up and I pressed my hands to my thighs, against my cotton dress.
“Will you go out with me? Dinner? Tomorrow night?” Joshua asked.
All of a sudden, it was as if every eye was on us, there in the fairgrounds. Women, especially, stared and whispered behind their hands. Oh, god, and there was Faith, watching from beside the cotton candy machine.
The plinky-plonky music continued, and Cassie mouthed something I couldn’t make out, nodding frantically behind Joshua’s back.
“Sure,” I said. “Tomorrow night sounds great.”
The world had stopped and it was slow to resume again. Joshua and I stood feet apart, both smiling, his happiness less reluctant than mine.
So much for the rejection. So much for getting to know myself better before I got involved with another man. No matter how much I wanted to put it off, my gut told me I’d regret giving up the opportunity to get to know this man better.
This man who rescued baby goats and won teddy bears for poor little girls.
“Can’t wait,” he said, and we w
alked on, a group of five instead of four now, with Charlie squeezing the teddy and licking cotton candy off her fingertips.
Chapter 8
Joshua
“It’s this way.” I’d never been this nervous before, not during finals or my first business meeting or the time I’d pitched my idea to investors.
A row of fairy lights twinkled in the trees at the back fence. The gate itself stood open, half-in and out of darkness. Stars overhead, the moon out, round face pale and pocked, lighting the path to the exit.
“Out here?” Eve asked, keeping pace with me. She held the bottle of champagne I’d chosen out and two plastic glasses.
“I would’ve taken you to the Cowboys n’ Cuts,” I said, “but I figured you’re sick of the place already.”
“You can say that again.” She huffed a sigh, and I shifted my focus from the path out to our private little picnic spot under the stars to her.
Eve wore a loose dress, cleavage barely visible, and cowboy boots again. He hair was loose around her shoulders, dark and curled at the ends. I pictured myself running fingers through it, tilting her head back, kissing her for the first time while the moon played across her soft cheeks.
Christ, I had to –
My hip banged into the gate’s post and the plastic plates in the picnic basket rattled. “Shit,” I muttered.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, “serves me right for not paying attention to where I’m going.” I tried for a laugh but it came out nervous. Christ, it was as if all my hopes and dreams rode on this one moment, and it was bullshit. No pressure. I had to remember that. No pressure.
I held the fence and gestured for Eve to exit in front of me, then followed her out. The row of fairy lights continued into the forest behind the farmhouse. I’d spent all afternoon stringing them up, picturing this moment with her.
The connection with Eve had been instant and unbelievable but she didn’t seem to share it. What if this was all for nothing?
“No pressure,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, sorry. Just thinking out loud. I do that sometimes.”
“Hey, me, too. It’s kind of awkward when other people are around and they hear you doing it.” Eve laughed, that pleasant tinkle that set me on fire inside all over again.
