Falling in Love...Again

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Falling in Love...Again Page 12

by AnonYMous


  After dinner, Cullen took me to a miniature golf course. I hadn’t played miniature golf since I was a teenager, and I wasn’t any good at it back then. By the time we reached the fourth hole, I’d proven that I hadn’t gotten any better over the years. Still, as I stood at the tee, Cullen stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, covering my hands with his. I leaned back into him, feeling the warmth and the firmness of his body against mine.

  “Smooth, easy strokes,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear. He drew my arms to the right about eight inches, and then swung them left. The putter nudged the golf ball and it rolled directly between two obstacles and straight into the cup. “Take it slow and easy and you’ll score every time.”

  His breath in my ear and the way his body pressed against mine made me feel warm all over. If it hadn’t been for the group of teenagers right behind us, I would’ve stayed in Cullen’s arms and let him teach me how to stroke the ball at every hole. Alas, we finally finished the course—after letting the teenagers play through on the ninth hole and a grandmother with twin boys play through on the fifteenth—with a twenty-three-point difference in our scores. Cullen was three under par.

  After golf, he took me to a drive-in hamburger joint. We sat at one of the outdoor picnic tables and shared a jumbo chocolate malt. Then we went home.

  There, Cullen walked me to my door and lingered while I slipped my key into the lock. I unlocked the door, pushed it open a fraction of an inch, and then turned back to face him.

  Before I had a chance to say a word, Cullen took me in his arms and kissed me. I didn’t resist; I didn’t even think of resisting. I just closed my eyes and melted against him.

  The kiss seemed to last forever, and when it ended I took Cullen’s hand in mine and led him into my apartment. I didn’t turn on any lights and I didn’t offer him a nightcap. Instead, I led him into my bedroom. Without saying a word, I slipped out of my clothes and slipped into bed.

  Cullen removed his clothes, folded them, and placed them on the chair next to my dresser. Then he slid into bed beside me.

  I lay on my back and he lay on his side, facing me. I could feel his arousal straining against my thigh and I imagined him already inside of me. Then he leaned forward and kissed me. His tongue slid into my mouth and I sucked on it, feeling the exquisite pleasure of his hand cupping my breast as he toyed with my nipple. It strained against his palm.

  Then he kissed my eyelids and my earlobes and the line of my jaw. He kissed my neck and my shoulders and the place between my breasts. His fingers tickled and teased me, gently stroking my skin, touching me in places like the backs of my knees and the swell of my hip that I’d never imagined could arouse me so. And then his hand drifted over the soft, dark curls below my abdomen. I parted my thighs and his fingers caressed me, making my breath come in gasps before catching in my throat.

  “Stop teasing me,” I whispered hoarsely. “I want you inside of me—now.”

  Cullen positioned himself between my thighs—and hesitated. He leaned down and whispered, “I didn’t bring any protection.”

  I twisted around and reached into the top drawer of my nightstand, where I always keep a box of condoms. I opened the box, pulled out a square, foil package, and tore it open with my teeth before handing it to Cullen.

  “Smooth, easy strokes,” I whispered huskily, repeating what he’d told me on the miniature golf course.

  And then he was inside of me—deep, deep inside of me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and thrilled to the mind-blowing sensation. He bent and kissed me again before beginning a maddeningly slow push and pull, push and pull. . . . My hips rose to meet each of his powerful thrusts as he began to move faster, thrusting harder. My heart raced, my eyelids fluttered, and my breath came in ragged gasps—and then I couldn’t stop myself: my entire body exploded with joy.

  A moment later, so did Cullen’s. After one last, powerful thrust, he collapsed on top of me. We lay entwined until Cullen finally rolled off of me, breathing heavily. I laid my head on his chest, listening to his racing heart, and he wrapped his arms around me. We didn’t say anything and soon I fell asleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, I found that Chloe had pulled Cullen’s jeans from the chair and was rolling around on them.

  “What are you doing, Chloe?” I asked her as I pulled the jeans out from under her. I brushed the cat hair off of them and tried to fold them. As I did so, Cullen’s keys fell out of one of the pockets and I reached for them. When I stood, I saw Cullen watching me from the bed, his arms folded behind his head.

  “Chloe is fascinated by your jeans,” I explained. “I was just putting them back.”

  “Catnip,” Cullen said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I knew you have a cat, so I rubbed catnip on my jeans last night before I came over.”

  “That’s so wrong,” I said. I stuck his keys in his pocket and laid the jeans on the chair. “That’s manipulation.”

  “So why did you wear perfume?”

  “That’s not the same thing,” I protested.

  Cullen smiled rakishly. “Do you have to be anywhere this morning?”

  “No.”

  He patted the warm spot beside him. “Then come back to bed.”

  We spent most of that day together, but Cullen returned to his own apartment that night. Then Chloe and I made ourselves comfortable and watched an old movie on TMC. I wasn’t sure of what to think about Cullen—especially considering my previous bad luck with men—but I couldn’t deny the way he made me feel.

  Work the next day seemed to zip right along. I checked people out in the morning and started checking them in during the afternoon. Except for one guest’s complaint about the view from her room—which she should have expected when she insisted on the least expensive room in the hotel—my day cruised right along.

  I returned home to find a message from the apartment manager tucked into my mailbox. I tapped on her door and waited until she answered.

  “You had a delivery this afternoon,” she said, chewing energetically on her gum as she spoke. She reached behind the door and brought forth a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers. “These came for you.”

  I took them from her. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me—thank Mr. Lucky.”

  “Mr. Lucky?”

  “Only two reasons why a man sends flowers to a woman—either he’s sorry for something he did, or he’s glad he got something. And you ain’t had a man in so long, there couldn’t be one sorry for anything.”

  I grinned. Mr. Lucky it is.

  I took the elevator upstairs to my apartment, showed Chloe the flowers, and then found a vase for them under the sink. After arranging them in the vase, I put the arrangement on my kitchen table. Chloe jumped on the couch and sniffed the flowers until I poured kibble in her bowl and distracted her. I changed out of my hotel uniform—dark blue skirt and blazer with a crisp, white blouse underneath—and into a pair of sweats and an old T-shirt. I was heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave when someone knocked on my door.

  When I glanced out the peephole, I saw Cullen standing in the hallway. He wore a dark suit and a white shirt, but the knot of his red tie had been pulled loose and his top button unfastened. I opened the door.

  “You didn’t have to dress up for me,” he said with a devilish grin.

  In my kitchen, the microwave beeped.

  “I was going to ask if you wanted to get a bite, but it smells like you’ve been slaving away in the kitchen all day.” He took a deep breath, inhaling the tasty aroma. “What is that delicious smell?”

  “Lasagna.” I stepped out of the way and Cullen stepped into my apartment and followed me three steps into the kitchen. “I can zap another one if you’re hungry.”

  “Hungry?” he said as he scooped me into his arms. “I’m hungry for you.”

  He kissed me and the kiss seemed to last forever. When it did finally end, I gave Cullen the dinner from the microwave and pull
ed another one from the freezer to zap for myself while Cullen sat at the table, admiring the flowers.

  “These are pretty,” he said. “Who’re they from?”

  I shrugged. “There was no card.”

  “Really?”

  “But the manager says they’re from Mr. Lucky.” I told him what she’d said.

  “You think she’s right?”

  I looked him right in the eye and lowered my voice meaningfully. “I don’t think luck had anything to do with it.”

  He laughed.

  Over the next few weeks, our relationship developed. We tried to pretend we didn’t live across the hall from each other; we tried to act like any other dating couple. Even so, we saw each other nearly every evening; we usually watched the news together. We made love a couple of times each week, but Cullen only slept over on weekends.

  Then about two months after our first date, I didn’t see or hear from him for three days straight. After watching the evening news—alone—on the fourth day (even the local news had coverage of the clean-up efforts in Texas where a recent tornado had destroyed most of one small town and parts of two others), I paced my living room in a tizzy because I still hadn’t heard from him.

  He lives right across the hall, for Pete’s sake! All you have to do is walk over there and knock, I thought miserably.

  Chloe watched me pace for about five minutes. Then she started grooming herself. “You’re right,” I told her. “It’s time I learned to take care of myself.”

  I marched across the hall and rapped on Cullen’s door. When he didn’t answer, I pounded on the door until a familiar-looking young woman answered. All she wore was a man’s white dress shirt . . . and only the bottom two buttons were fastened.

  Before either of us could say anything, I heard a man’s muffled voice calling to her from inside: “Hey, baby, come back to bed.”

  I looked the young woman up and down and then turned on my heel. She closed Cullen’s door before I even made it back across the hall to my apartment.

  Once inside with the door locked, I curled up on the couch with Chloe. “He’s just like all the others,” I told her woefully. “He’s controlled by his ‘little head.’”

  I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I didn’t do either. Instead, I opened a can of tuna for Chloe and a bottle of wine for myself. I tapped my wineglass against Chloe’s bowl and told her, “It’s just us again, girlfriend.”

  Chloe meowed and stuck her face in the tuna.

  Two nights later someone knocked on my door and I went to investigate through the peephole. Cullen stood in the hallway.

  I returned to the living room without opening the door.

  He knocked again, and then again—until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I opened the door, but only as far as the safety chain would allow.

  “What?”

  He started to push the door open, and then realized I had the chain on. “Let me in.”

  “Why?”

  “My sister told me what happened. I figure the only woman who’d come pounding on my door like that would be you.”

  “That’s a pretty good story. So, who was the guy?”

  He looked at me quizzically. “There was a guy?”

  I nodded. “I heard his voice.”

  “She didn’t tell me she had company.” He glanced back across the hallway at his apartment. “I’ll give her an earful about that, that’s for sure.”

  “Why was your sister in your apartment?”

  “Semester break. The school doesn’t let anyone stay in the dorms during breaks, and my place is the only place she can go.”

  “So where were you?”

  “I left a note under your door. Didn’t you get it?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t get any note.”

  “I slid a note under your door just before I left town, but in any case—allow me to explain.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I closed the door in his face and leaned against it.

  Chloe looked up at me.

  “He’s slick,” I told her. “But not slick enough.”

  I went to bed early that night, but found myself unable to sleep. I tossed and turned all night long.

  I found the note the following morning after scouring my apartment. Chloe had torn it in three pieces and left two of them behind the TV. I pieced the note together and it said exactly what Cullen had told me it said: He’d had to leave town on a moment’s notice; his work as an insurance claims adjuster required his presence in Texas at the site of the tornado devastation.

  Before I could do anything about it, someone knocked on my door. I rushed to open it, thinking it would be Cullen. Instead, the apartment manager stood there holding a dozen red roses.

  “Mr. Lucky do something wrong?” she asked, her ever-present wad of bubblegum conspicuous in the pocket of her cheek.

  I shook my head, took the flowers from her, and stepped back into my apartment. I put the roses in the same vase I’d used when Cullen sent me the first bunch of flowers, and I put the vase on the kitchen table like before. Then I crossed the hall to his apartment and tapped on the door. He answered almost immediately.

  “I found the note,” I told him. “Chloe tore it up and hid the pieces.”

  He grinned and invited me in. He showed me a photo of him and his sister taken at her high school graduation two years earlier. Indeed, she was the very same young woman I’d seen in his apartment. Then he told me what things were like during his stay in the devastated Texas town. At first, they’d had no electricity or running water and he’d lived out of the back of a rental car. He’d worked from dawn till dusk helping displaced people complete insurance claims.

  “It’s what I do,” Cullen said finally, shrugging. “Most of the time I sit in my office and move paperwork from in-basket to out-basket, and even when I do fieldwork, it’s usually local stuff. But every now and then when there’s a real disaster someplace, the company pulls adjusters from all over the country to help.”

  I’d heard enough. I silenced him with a kiss and then apologized for doubting him.

  That was almost a year ago. Since then I’ve met Cullen’s sister and he’s met all of my grandparents. Next week, my parents are flying in from the Coast to meet him, and we plan to announce our engagement at dinner that night. Even Chloe has grown to love Cullen—even when he doesn’t rub catnip on his clothes.

  Love, I’ve decided after everything that’s happened to me, means never having to use penicillin. THE END

  From The Celebrated True Love Wacky-Ways-To-Meet-Men Files!

  A TICKET TO HAPPINESS

  Getting pulled over by a hunky police officer is the best thing that ever happened to me!

  As I sat in the bumper-to-bumper traffic that Thursday afternoon, I could feel my frustration level rising. I was already twenty minutes late for my daughter’s second-grade open house, and I didn’t have a chance of making it if the traffic didn’t move—and soon!

  I knew that Shannon would be upset with me. I’d promised her that I’d be there.

  Being a single mom isn’t easy. I found it extremely difficult to juggle the demands of my job at the automotive plant and all the household chores while still tending to my daughter’s needs.

  I hadn’t planned on being thirty-two and single, and I’d certainly never intended to raise my daughter alone. But Roger, my former husband, had decided that one woman wasn’t enough to keep him happy. He’d left Shannon and me two years before and we rarely saw or heard from him.

  I had been dating some, but really, I’d been praying that God would send me a nice man to grow old with. Unfortunately, my prayers hadn’t been answered yet. Most of the men I met weren’t worth the effort; they either were too old or too young, married, irresponsible, on ego trips, and, well—the list went on.

  Seeing a small clearing up ahead, I quickly passed the car in front of me and pressed down on the accelerator. I wove in and out of traffic, trying to get ahead wher
e I could. After a few minutes of that, I reached the suburb where my daughter’s school was located. If I hurried, and got lucky with the traffic lights, I’d have a chance of getting to the school before Shannon’s teacher left for the day. I took a deep breath as hope rose inside of me. Just a few more blocks and I’d be there!

  That hope was crushed the minute I heard the siren. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a police cruiser behind me. Feeling nervous and extremely embarrassed, I pulled my car over to the side of the road.

  I took another deep breath and gritted my teeth as I waited for the officer to approach my car. I was angry with myself. Why hadn’t I just driven the speed limit? By driving faster than the law allowed, I’d only made matters worse for myself. I looked at my watch. Now there was only a slim chance that I’d make it to Shannon’s school before the end of the day. My daughter was going to be so disappointed.

  I slammed my hand against the steering wheel. “Idiot!”

  “Are you calling me an idiot?”

  I winced. “Certainly not, Officer.”

  “Good. License and registration, please.”

  As I dug around in my purse for the items, I wondered if there was any way that I could talk the officer out of giving me a ticket. Maybe he was a dad and would take pity on me. Maybe if I told him how much I regretted my actions, he’d show me some mercy and let me go.

  My luck didn’t seem to be running that way, though. We’d been very busy at work that week, and my boss wasn’t happy about me leaving early. Leaving early is what got me stuck in the heavy afternoon traffic, and now I was being stopped for speeding.

  I gave the officer my license and registration. I stared straight ahead because I couldn’t make myself look at him. I was too afraid of what I’d see. Was he a crusty, old policeman who should’ve retired eons ago? What if he were a young cop—headstrong, arrogant, and determined to give out as many tickets as he could?

 

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