On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  Megan just wasn’t the norm for Elk Creek.

  So what if she was somewhat unorthodox? he asked himself. Was that so bad?

  Okay, he’d thought the same thing about Farrah. But while Megan might be unorthodox she wasn’t un dependable or fickle or self-centered or down right un balanced—all the things Farrah had proven to be.

  Instead, Megan was interesting and unique. Not to mention smart and beautiful and funny and fun to be with and well-grounded and centered and sexy…

  Oh yeah, so sexy she made his blood boil just by walking into a room.

  And the bottom line, he realized as he held her even closer than he had been, was that whatever her views, whatever her back ground, whatever her occupation—and he had to admit that he hadn’t had a single sneeze since her acupuncture treatment—he sure as hell didn’t want to slip out of her bed and maybe out of her life.

  He wanted to be with her every day. He wanted to build a life around her and have her life built around him. He wanted her to be his life.

  Megan might not be like a lot of other women. She might not be what he’d thought he should be looking for.

  But she wasn’t Farrah, either.

  And what she was, was everything he needed. Every thing he wanted.

  Whole heartedly. From the depths of his soul. Without any doubt.

  And ultimately wasn’t that what mattered?

  That and that she was someone he genuinely believed he could trust?

  It was.

  What mattered was that she was the person she was. What mattered was the way he felt about her.

  And the way he felt about her was unique all on its own. It was like nothing he’d ever felt for anyone else. Farrah included.

  And it was too strong to be denied for one minute longer.

  Megan woke up to the feel of a feather-light tickle running from her shoulder to her wrist, from her wrist to her shoulder.

  She knew instantly what it was, where she was and who she was snuggled up next to. And it made her smile against Josh’s chest.

  “That’s a lot better than an alarm clock,” she said, her voice quiet and sleepy but slightly husky, too, from the other things that he was awakening in her body at the same time he was rousing her from slumber.

  “And it can be yours every morning for the rest of your life for just a small price,” he said like an infomercial announcer.

  “Mmm. That seems like a good deal,” she countered, assuming he was kidding. “What’s the small price?”

  “You have to sleep with me every night for the rest of your life.”

  Megan laughed. “Wow, I must have really knocked your socks off last night. But I don’t know if I could keep it up every night for the rest of my life,” she joked again.

  “Some nights we can just sleep. It’s the every night that’s the price.”

  Some thing in his voice told her he wasn’t kidding at all and before she said anything else she opened her eyes to glance up at him. Now that was some thing to wake up to every morning, she thought as she drank in the sight of him. His sharp jaw was stubbled with beard and while the scruffy look was not Megan’s favorite, on Josh it was so incredibly sexy she was tempted to say anything to maintain the status quo.

  But she had the sense that more was going on with him than she should disregard in favor of the pure sensual elements of waking up with him. “Every night, huh?” she repeated quizzically.

  “Every night,” he confirmed.

  “You aren’t talking in your sleep, are you?”

  “I’m wide awake. I have been for a while, lyin’ here thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About how I want every morning to be just like this.”

  Every night. Every morning. And he seemed serious.

  Megan held the sheet to her breasts with one hand and sat up in bed, curling her legs to one side underneath her.

  When she did, Josh pushed himself up against the head board, baring his glorious chest and distracting her until she forced herself not to look at it. Not to think about how good it had felt to lie against it.

  “You’re not just teasing, are you?” she surmised.

  “Nope. Is that so bad?”

  She wasn’t sure. For some reason it didn’t feel good. It made her sort of panicky.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I hadn’t thought beyond last night.” Last night when all she could think about was not having her time with him end…

  “Well, think beyond it now,” he commanded. “Would it be so horrible for us to be together as some thing more than partners in crime solving? I know it would mean meat in the refrigerator along side the tofu and maybe a chair in front of the TV where it might block some of the energy flow or some thing, but I think we could work it out.”

  His tone when he talked about tofu and energy flow struck a sour note in Megan. She’d taken his comments about things like that before as simple skepticism, but they suddenly sounded disparaging to her. Worse than that, they also sounded like criticism. The same kind of criticism Noel had dished out behind veils of helpfulness and concern.

  “I like the chairs where they are,” she said stubbornly, the only concrete thing she could come up with.

  “Okay, then we’ll move the TV to the chairs. What I’m telling you is—”

  “How I can change things to suit you.”

  That had come out more harshly than she’d meant for it to. But she was beginning to feel a little harsh. And defensive. And afraid. And disillusioned.

  “I’m talking about compromise, is all,” Josh said reason ably enough. “So we can be together.”

  “And what compromises would you make?”

  He shrugged one broad shoulder and it occurred to Megan that he was causing her a terrible tug of war between what her head was telling her and the response her body had to nothing more than the knee-weakening sight of him. But this time she had to let her head rule. She had to.

  “I’d make whatever compromises I’d need to,” Josh said. “The point is, I know we’re pretty different and I can’t help thinkin’ some of the things you’re into are a little weird, but what I’ve come to realize is that you’re not weird. That Megan Bailey the person is sweet and kind and compassion ate and has the sort of character that makes her a decent person. That makes her everything I want. And since there’s no question that I want you…”

  Megan was holding up the sheet with only one hand and Josh took the other from where it rested in her lap, holding it gently as he continued.

  “Since I want you so much it’s like I’m under the influence of some magic spell, I’d really like it if we could work around the differences and be together.”

  In all he’d just said two things kept ringing in Megan’s ears—that what she was interested in was weird to him, and that they were so different.

  Too different, she couldn’t help thinking. Too different if he considered anything about her weird.

  She felt her head shaking before she was even sure why it was. Then she said, “No,” with enough force to make Josh rear back slightly and look at her through shocked eyes.

  “I know where this leads,” she went on as her panic grew. “It starts here, it starts out nicely, but it ends with you trying to reshape me into some thing that fits the image you want me to be.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he said, his handsome face sobering into a frown that looked on the verge of anger. Anger that echoed in his voice, too. “Compromise—that’s all I’m talking about. People have to compromise to be together.”

  “Except I still haven’t heard what you’re going to do to compromise. I’ve only heard what you want me to do.”

  “Only because that’s all that came off the top of my head.”

  “I know that’s how it seems but the truth is, what comes off the top of anyone’s head is very telling. Sure, meat in the fridge and a chair in front of the TV are small things but they’re still things connected to me that you want cha
nged. And this is only the beginning. Pretty soon there would be some thing else. Some thing bigger. And then some thing after that. And some thing after that. You’ve spent the whole time since the first day you walked into my office thinking I’m some kind of freak. And you told me yourself you wanted the tried and true. I know how one fits into the other and it doesn’t involve you embracing the weird stuff I’m into, it involves you trying to show me just how weird it is and why it should be left by the wayside. It involves you trying to change me so I don’t embarrass you.”

  “Farrah embarrassed me, you don’t.”

  But Megan didn’t believe him. She’d had too much experience with Noel, with a man who wanted something she wasn’t and thought a few compromises on her part could give him that. She simply could not now feel confident that the same thing wouldn’t happen with Josh. That before too long he wouldn’t try to fit her into a mold that made him more comfortable.

  She shook her head again. “We’re too different, Josh.”

  “Deep down we aren’t too different. That’s part of what I realized when I started thinking about the two of us. We want the same kind of life in the same place. We enjoy each other. We’re good together.” He paused a moment, watching her with those midnight-blue eyes of his. “The differences between us are all just trap pings. Outward stuff. Nothing that really matters.”

  “It all matters. It matters when you have some big dinner with the head of the sheriff’s department and you worry that I might tell him what herb would help his psoriasis or that his wife’s back problem could be helped by acupuncture because you think I’d sound like a nut. It matters when you take me to a barbecue at your friend’s house and wish I’d eat the ribs he’s cooking so I wouldn’t seem rude. It’s all small stuff, but it adds up. It all counts as the weird ness about me that you don’t like. And what it adds up to is not wanting me to be me.”

  “You’re who I’m crazy about. Why would I not want you to be you?”

  “Because it will embarrass you because you don’t believe in the same things I believe in. Because we’re different and you don’t want different—you told me so yourself.”

  “I want you,” he said as if he knew it without a doubt.

  But his certainty didn’t override Megan’s doubts. “It won’t work,” she decreed, feeling as if her heart were breaking even as she did.

  “How do you know it won’t work until we try?”

  “I know. I’ve been there.”

  “You haven’t been there with me.”

  For the third time Megan shook her head. Only this time she let that be her only answer.

  That and getting out of bed.

  She kept the sheet around her and left Josh, going into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

  “Come on, Megan. You can’t mean this,” he called to her through that solid oak panel.

  “I do mean it,” she managed to answer the same way.

  “And what am I supposed to do? Just put on my clothes and walk out of here? Pretend last night didn’t happen and just say hi, how are you, when I pass you on the street?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she said, strongly enough to convey that she wasn’t going to waver in her decision.

  “You just want me to go?” he said in disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  “Dammit, this is ridiculous.”

  “It’s how I feel.”

  “Well, change how you feel.”

  The split-second right after that seemed to shout of the irony of that statement before she heard him sigh disgustedly and mutter, “Oh, geez,” as if he knew he couldn’t take it back or lessen the impact it had.

  “Fine,” he shouted in defeat. “If that’s how you want it.”

  “That’s how I want it,” she barely whispered.

  Megan listened intently to the sounds of Josh snatching up his clothes and storming out of her bedroom, out of her house, leaving behind him nothing but an empty, lonely silence.

  Then she pressed the top of her head to the bathroom door and simply stood there, letting hot tears drop from her eyes onto her bare feet.

  And as they did she couldn’t help wondering how it had come to this, how it had come to this so quickly.

  And what she’d done to screw up her karma so badly that she had to meet a man like Josh and still send him packing….

  Chapter 12

  WHAT HAD BEGUN AS A spectacular weekend on Friday night became one of the worst Megan had ever spent after the argument with Josh on Saturday morning. And that turned into a week that was not much better.

  Business picked up remarkably, which would have been helpful in keeping her mind off the sheriff except that it seemed as if every second or third of her new clients named him as the person who had recommended acupuncture. Those clients frequently went on to talk about their own relationship with him—whether it be as a relative or a friend or just someone who had known him or his family forever.

  It was interesting for Megan to see how right she’d been in believing that a high-profile client like the town sheriff could be a big boost to establishing her business with word-of-mouth recommendations, but each mention of Josh’s name, each anecdote, just defeated what she was trying so hard to do—put him out of her thoughts.

  Not that she was having much luck with that even when she didn’t have a client bringing him into the conversation. It was as if he’d become for her what the latest cause became for her parents—an obsession. Because without a doubt, Josh was all Megan could think about.

  Everything seemed to remind her of him. He was on her mind the minute she woke up in the morning. He was the last thing she thought about in bed at night. And many times in between she was so lost in the memory of him or some thing they’d done together or some thing he’d said, that she wasn’t even aware of anything or anyone around her.

  Which was exactly the case late on Friday afternoon as she stood in the break room with the teapot upturned over the sink, the tea long since having gone down the drain and Annissa saying her name in a way that let her know it hadn’t been the first time her sister had called to her.

  “Where is your head this week?” Nissa asked when Megan finally jolted back to reality.

  “Sorry,” Megan muttered as her sister turned off the hot plate she’d for got ten about.

  Then Nissa took the teapot from her, set it on the counter, stretched out her arm to point her index finger at the love seat, and said, “Sit. Right now. And tell me what’s going on.” Megan purposely hadn’t told her sister what had happened with Josh when Nissa had returned from Denver Sunday night. She felt foolish. It didn’t seem possible to have gotten in so deep with a man she’d basically just met and she hadn’t wanted to admit it to her sister.

  But now, as she did as she’d been told and sat on the love seat, she decided that confiding in Nissa the way she usually did might help clear some of Josh out of her system. So she opted for being honest and open about it, letting Nissa know to just what extent she and Josh had gotten involved the previous week and what had happened on Saturday morning.

  “And you think he’s just a repeat of Noel?” Nissa asked when Megan was finished.

  “Well, maybe not a repeat. But it seemed like there were a lot of similarities.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  That surprised Megan. “Why not?”

  “For one thing, you got Josh in here for acupuncture. You never could get Noel to try it. And now Josh must be telling people not only that he had it, but that it worked because so many of your appointments this week can be traced back to him. Noel wouldn’t even tell anyone what you did for a living. Or let you tell them.”

  “True. But—”

  “And for two, didn’t you say when you met that couple on the street and you did your sex-of-the-baby prediction he just laughed about it? Can you imagine what Noel would have done? He’d have been mortified. He would have gone on and on abo
ut how he’d never be able to face those people again.”

  That was true, too.

  “So what are you saying?” Megan asked defensively. “That I was wrong about Josh?”

  “I don’t know. Obviously, I didn’t get to know him. But from what you’ve said about him he doesn’t sound like a Noel-clone.”

  “So maybe I made a mountain out of a few molehills?” Megan muttered as it started to seem that way.

  “Do you think that’s what you did?”

  “I think I better think about it.”

  The bell over the office door sounded to announce someone and Annissa glanced in that direction. “That’ll be my four-thirty. Guess I’ll leave you to your thinking. But do me a favor and don’t turn on the hot plate. I swear you’re going to burn us out with that thing and your wandering mind this week.”

  “Sorry,” Megan repeated as her sister left the break room.

  Being alone again was all it took for thoughts of Josh to spring back to life for Megan. Only now the thoughts were on a different track as she wondered if she really had taken a few minor things about him and built them into condemnable flaws.

  Annissa was right about the acupuncture and about the sex-of-the-baby prediction. Josh’s behavior on both counts was very different than Noel’s.

  Noel had had severe pollen allergies. But he’d popped numerous pills with just as numerous side effects all the while adamantly refusing to so much as consider giving acupuncture a try. Certainly he would never have touted the benefits of it to anyone else either; that would have required him letting it get out that acupuncture was actually what she did for a living.

  And mortified was a good way to describe what Noel would have been in the same situation with the sex-of-the-baby prediction. Mortified. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Rattled.

  But when Megan thought about it, she realized that Josh hadn’t seemed to be any of those things. In fact, he’d joked about it and said he was going to hold her to the prediction. But she’d never had any indication that it was the big deal to him that it would have been to Noel.