Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

  He sighed. “Want to do it now? I’d like to see that.”

  She wanted to do something right now, but screaming wasn’t it.

  “Sorry, can’t do it without provocation and I’m not provoked.”

  “But are you still hot?” he teased.

  She was. Though not in terms of temperature. “It’s nice out here,” was all she would commit to.

  This time it was Cal who just said “Mmm” as he took another brownie. “These have to be the best things I’ve ever tasted,” he complimented.

  “I’m glad you like them.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes as Abby’s gaze caught on that equipment shed she’d just mentioned and her mind wandered.

  “What’re you thinkin’ about?” he asked.

  She laughed and felt her cheeks heat slightly. “I was thinking about once when I was really, really ticked off at Bree and I came here. I climbed up onto the top of the shed and screamed until my throat was raw. Then I plopped down, flat on my back, spread-eagle like a perfect martyr. I guess lying that way made it hard to see me because a while after my tantrum had worn itself out I heard—and then saw—one of my friends’ mothers and the gym teacher sneaking into the shed underneath me. They were both married to other people, so I knew that in itself was bad enough, but then they started... uh...having an affair...inside the shed.”

  Actually she’d also been thinking about what it might be like for her and Cal to do just what that other illicit couple had done, but she didn’t admit that.

  “Ooh, bad timing,” he groaned and laughed at once.

  “You’re telling me. I couldn’t get down without making a lot of noise and letting them know I was there, so I just stayed, wishing they’d leave. But they didn’t. And I could hear everything. I never looked at that shed the same again.”

  “Funny, but when you were lookin’ at it just now, I thought I saw some longing in your expression.”

  Oh, the man was a devil.

  And she loved it.

  She met his blue eyes with her own and saw the glimmer in them that said he was enjoying himself.

  “Maybe I was longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads,” she countered with a barely suppressed smile.

  “Were you?”

  She straightened her legs, scooted her hips down and lay on her side just the way he was, facing him. “Okay, no, I was not longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads.”

  He grinned with a single side of his mouth. “What were you longin’ for?”

  “You’re the one who said I was, not me.”

  “Maybe I was just seein’ in you what I was feelin’ in myself.”

  “You were longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads?”

  “Not quite,” he said so softly she almost couldn’t hear him.

  He held her eyes with his, and Abby let him, expecting him to reach over to her. To touch her. To kiss her. Wishing he would.

  But he didn’t. Damn him, he didn’t. Now, when she had talked herself into indulging in the feelings, the yearnings he stirred up inside her, when she was ready to give herself to him completely, he only stared into her eyes.

  So Abby summoned courage of her own and reached a hand to him, to his hair where it had fallen to his brow, running her fingers through it much the way he did.

  Still he only studied her as if delving into the depths of her soul with that gaze.

  But Abby didn’t retreat. Not when touching him seemed to answer at least one need in her.

  She caressed his whisker-stubbled cheek with the tips of her fingers, traced the line of his sharp jaw to his chin, to his mouth, letting them stay there as if to halt words he wasn’t even speaking.

  He kissed her fingers then, but only barely before parting his lips to flick his tongue teasingly against them. When she still didn’t pull away, he drew one of those fingers into the warm, velvety inside of his mouth, sucking slightly.

  It didn’t take more than that to light sparks in Abby. To awaken the arousal that waited just below the surface and had kept her sleepless tonight. To make her even bolder.

  She slid her hand away and leaned forward to replace it with her mouth on his, kissing him tentatively as she trailed her fingertips down his Adam’s apple and into the open placket of his shirt, finding a smattering of coarse hair hiding there.

  Cal deepened the kiss, finally raising a hand to cup the back of her head, to pull her closer to him as his lips parted farther, as his tongue came to play.

  What was it her sister had said? That if she couldn’t help thinking about Cal or getting moony eyed over a simple kiss from him, she might as well give in and enjoy herself?

  Well, that’s exactly what she was doing. And she didn’t care if it was out in the open, in the middle of the football field. With a man who probably wasn’t good for her. She didn’t care about anything but being with Cal. Kissing him. Touching him. Being touched by him. Quenching the thirst she had for him.

  His mouth was open fully, and so was hers, in a kiss that was rapidly turning demanding. He eased her back into the cool grass, laying his big body half on top of her, raising a knee over her thigh in a way that brought them so close together she could feel the hardness lurking behind the zipper of his jeans, straining for her.

  Abby reached her arms around him, pressing her palms against the expanse of his broad shoulders, letting them ride the rise and fall of muscles that were like steel, trailing them down to the narrowness where his waistband held his shirt so she could pull it up and slip underneath to feel the warm smoothness of his skin.

  Passion made her braver still, and she eased the shirt upward, interrupting their kiss only long enough to bring it off over his head so she could have pure, unadulterated access to at least his magnificent torso, to run her hands across every inch of his back, his shoulders, his hard pectorals and the sides of his flat stomach.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  As wonderful as it all felt, what she needed was to be rid of even the scant barrier of her tank top, to feel her naked breasts flattened to his chest, in his hands, in his mouth....

  She arched her back to give him a clue, letting kerneled nipples brush against his skin, hoping it did as much for him as it did for her.

  Cal groaned deep in his throat, as if she were torturing him, as if she were tempting him with something he couldn’t have.

  Then he seemed to lose his power to resist. He nudged his knee between hers and raised it to the juncture of her legs, lighting fire to the sparks within her as he slipped the tank top’s straps off her shoulders, then lower still to below her bare breasts.

  It was Abby’s turn to moan, and her back arched again all on its own, meeting his hand as it covered first one engorged mound and then the other.

  The warm kid-leather palm cupped her flesh, kneading, squeezing, teasing in featherlight strokes all in turn.

  Strong fingers explored her nipples, circled them, barely brushed the tips, rolled them gently, even pinched but with a tenderness that was anything but painful, driving her almost crazy with the desire that grew more urgent by the moment.

  Her hips rose to him; her hands grasped his arms, his shoulders, his sides, his tight, tight derriere. Her tongue met and matched his thrust for thrust in a motion she wished other parts of their bodies were enacting, even if they were out in the open, on the football field. Nothing seemed to matter but the sensations alive in her, the desires he was building within her, the yearnings crying out to be sated. Making love with him was the only thing that was important. Right then. Right there...

  But just when she was sure he would go further, go all the way to making love to her, he tore his mouth from hers, his hand from her breast and stopped everything cold.

  “If I don’t quit now, we’ll have to take this to the equipment shed,” he said in a raspy, ragged voice.

  “I always wondered what it would be like,” she heard herself say, the words coming straight from the intensity of her own need.

&nbs
p; Cal chuckled wryly but he didn’t do anything beyond dropping the top of his head to her shoulder. “You’d hate me in the mornin’. I’d hate me in the mornin’.”

  Because he’d made love to her in the equipment shed or just because he’d made love to her?

  Abby wasn’t sure. And her courage came up short of suggesting they take this somewhere else to finish it, just in case he was saying he’d hate himself in the morning if he made love to her at all.

  He took a deep breath and held it for a moment before blowing out a long gust of hot air against her skin. Then he raised his head and pulled her tank top back up into place, keeping his eyes closed the whole time when she would have welcomed his looking at her naked breasts.

  And Abby had to swallow back desire so sultry she thought it was going to singe her insides.

  But swallow it she did while she watched him cover his gloriously masculine torso with the henley shirt again.

  Then he raked both hands through his hair with a punishing fierceness, pointed his chin to the sky and again held his breath as if he were fighting as hard as she was to tamp down on all they’d just erupted in each other.

  Yet for the life of her she couldn’t understand why. Why they weren’t on their way to his house, to his bed, right at that moment, if he wanted her the way she wanted him.

  But when he stood up and offered her a hand to help her to her feet, too, all he said was, “Come on. Let’s get you back to your car so you can go home and get some sleep before this night is through.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything at all. Not then. Not as they walked across the athletic field. Not in his car on the short drive to the bakery.

  He drove up the alley and parked behind her small sedan but he didn’t turn off the engine. Instead he left it running as he got out and came around to open her door and take her up to the driver’s side of her car.

  “What would you say to a real, live date tomorrow night?” he asked only after he’d seen her safely behind the wheel, closed the door and was leaning in through the open window.

  “I’d say that sounded good,” she managed to answer in a soft voice, confused by this man who never seemed to do or be what she expected.

  “How about I pick you up around seven? Cook you dinner?”

  “Okay.” And then what? she wanted to ask. Will you get me all turned on again only to leave me high and dry?

  But of course she didn’t say that.

  “Seven it is, then,” he said, searching her face and looking somehow confused and frustrated and forlorn himself.

  He ducked in for a quick kiss. But only a quick one before ducking out again as if he were afraid of it developing into more than that.

  Then he said, “Cut me a little slack if I went over the line tonight, Abby. I haven’t had a lot of experience with good girls.”

  He gave the top of her car a final tap and left her sitting there, watching him go back to his own car through her side mirror.

  And unquenched desire notwithstanding, Abby couldn’t help smiling.

  Was that why he’d stopped short of making love to her tonight? Because he thought she was a good girl and good girls didn’t do that?

  And here she’d considered herself to be giving very clear signals to encourage him.

  Lord, was she that inept? Or were their wires just crossed?

  She honestly didn’t know.

  But either way she took a deep breath of her own and sighed it out, finding comfort in one thing.

  They still had tomorrow night....

  6

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON when the bell over the bakery’s door rang to announce a customer, Abby was alone in the kitchen, bagging up the dinner rolls that hadn’t completely sold out. It had been a busy day and with the exception of those buns, there wasn’t much of anything else left to sell. She crossed her fingers in hopes that that fact would mean she wouldn’t have to spend much time with the customer. She was anxious to head for home, and get ready for her date with Cal.

  But one foot through the doorway that connected the kitchen to the storefront and she knew it wasn’t any baked goods this particular man had come for.

  “Bill,” she said in surprise as she found herself face-to-face with her former fiancé on the other side of the counter.

  “Hi, Ab,” he greeted tentatively.

  Abby hadn’t had any illusions about never seeing him again. Clangton was too small a town for that. But she hadn’t been looking forward to the occasion, either, and it was every bit as awkward as she’d feared. Especially when she knew his plane from the trip that was supposed to have been their honeymoon had only landed a few hours earlier. Certainly she hadn’t thought he’d stop by the bakery on his way home. What did he want to do, tell her about the great time he’d had without her?

  She wasn’t going to help him, if that was the case. Actually she didn’t feel inclined to make anything easier for him. So rather than giving him a conversational opening, she merely stood there, watching him fidget like a shamefaced child.

  It was funny, though, because she wasn’t thinking that she was glad he was uncomfortable. Instead she was thinking about how different he suddenly looked to her.

  Not that anything had changed. Except that now he had a deep tan. He was still slightly under six feet tall. Still lean and lanky. His hair was still a shiny black and so curly he had to keep it cut short in order to have any control over it. He still had swarthy, olive-toned skin and a small ridge on the bridge of his nose. He still had dark eyes that were a little too close together and smallish teeth. He still wore clothes well—white tennis shorts and an equally white polo shirt. He was still attractive enough without being anything remarkable to look at.

  But for her he’d lost his appeal. And not only because of what he’d done in calling off their wedding three weeks before it was to have taken place. Not even because he’d done it by attacking her with criticism.

  He simply didn’t seem to match up when her mind flashed an image of Cal in comparison. Bill Snodgrass just wasn’t the man Cal was.

  “How are you doing?” Bill finally asked.

  “I’m fine,” she answered easily. In fact she seemed to be doing better than he was if the lines of strain in his face were any indication.

  “Could we talk?”

  “About what?”

  “A lot of things.”

  “I’m sort of pressed for time,” she said with a glance at the wall clock.

  “I was cheating on you,” he blurted out in a way that sounded partly as if he thought that would convince her to indulge him and partly as if the weight of carrying the information around with him had suddenly become more than he could bear.

  He did manage to shock her. “You were cheating on me?” she parroted as a million questions went through her mind. When? Where? With whom? How could she not have known?

  “I met her last fall over in River Run,” Bill continued quickly. “She was in that bookkeeping class I taught two nights a week.”

  Abby had some problems grasping what he was revealing to her. “You cheated on me with one of your students when I thought we were dating exclusively,” she said when things began to click. “So why did you ask me to marry you in the middle of it?”

  “I was trying not to like Peggy. She wasn’t my type. Flashy. Loud. Aggressive. Brash. Brassy. I was afraid if I brought her to Clangton she’d embarrass me. I thought if I committed myself to you formally, it would help get my mind off her. Keep me from doing something stupid, something I’d regret.”

  He hesitated, shrugged, then admitted, “But next to her you seemed like the same old same old. I mean, we’ve known each other all our lives. We dated when we were just kids in high school ourselves and then these last two years since I came back to Clangton—where’s the excitement in that?”

  Oh, yeah, the guy was a charmer.

  “So why are you here now, telling me this?”

  “I’ve learned my lesson.”
>
  “What does that mean?”

  “I took her to Mazatlán with me.”

  He was having trouble making eye contact with Abby but he accomplished it just then and must have seen the expression of disdain on her face.

  “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands, palms out, as if warding off an attack even though Abby hadn’t moved a muscle or said anything to this last admission. “I know it was tacky to not only go ahead with our honeymoon trip without you but to take Peggy, too. But that’s what I did. And it cured me.”

  “Cured you?”

  “She just went berserk down there. Drinking, swearing, doing things I couldn’t believe—let’s just say it was awful.” He smiled halfheartedly, as if he expected Abby to feel sorry for him. To commiserate.

  She only went on staring at him, thinking how grateful she was not to be married to him.

  He didn’t seem to realize it as he went on. “Shy, quiet, predictable, steady and provincial started to look better and better to me,” he said, repeating all the reasons he’d originally given for why he’d decided he didn’t want to marry her after all, why he didn’t love her anymore.

  “You have every reason to be furious with me,” he went on. “But couldn’t we think of this as just a little fling I had before settling down? You know I didn’t date a lot—there was you when we were seniors and only one girl in college and one while I was working in Denver before moving back here, and then you again these last two years. I guess I just hadn’t gotten it all out of my system. But it is out of my system now. Believe me, it’s completely out of my system now. And all I could think about on the plane ride back was you. How much I love you. That marrying you, having kids with you, getting old with you, is really what I want.”

  Abby stared at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I know what I did was lousy. But I’m sorry. And I love you,” he said as if that wrapped everything up in a neat package.

  Abby stared at him, not only in disbelief for all he was saying, but also realizing as she did that somewhere during the time since he’d broken their engagement her feelings for him had changed to such an extent that standing there, facing him, hearing all he’d told her seemed almost as if it were happening to someone else. As if she were that far removed from it. And that distance felt good.