by Jessa Chase
The Ferris wheel completed it’s circle once before heading back around. As they rose again, Daniel saw his chance to relive one of his favorite moments with Claire.
He pulled her closer and kissed her.
He loved the way she melted against him instantly. He loved the way she softened in his arms, and the funny little noises she made in her throat when he deepened the kiss.
Their seat rocked gently in the breeze, but as far as either of them was concerned, they were in their own little world.
“Mmmm,” she moaned against his lips. “Is it everything you remembered?”
“Oh it’s much, much better.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. This time around I actually know what I’m doing.”
He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger, watched her expression change as he traced his other hand along the sensitive skin near her collarbone. She arched her back and groaned.
Too soon for either of their tastes, the rides started forward again and before long they were back on solid ground.
*
“Oh, wow,” she said with a smile as they walked down the middle of the fairgrounds. “Do you remember when we came here and had our palms read?”
“I do. I remember she said we were star-crossed, destined for heartache and greatness.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Star-crossed. Daisy would have eaten that up with a spoon. Don’t you dare tell her that, she’s already got some ideas.”
Daniel laughed. “Oh, I don’t know, that girl’s got ways of getting a guy to talk.” He pulled her closer to him and whispered in her ear.
“Have you tasted her strawberry waffles?”
Claire swatted him playfully on the arm. “I’ll give you that, she’s a hell of a cook.”
Claire leaned forward until her lips just barely grazed his. She held herself there, just out of reach, until Daniel couldn’t stand it any longer and he pulled her toward him.
“Are you two going to stand there all day, blocking my customers?” An older lady swathed in a colorful cloth dress stepped out from behind the palm-reading booth curtains. She had her hands on her hips and looked for all the world like a disapproving Aunt.
Claire blushed and Daniel laughed. He put his hand on the small of her back and they walked together, away from the tent and back out onto the main concourse of the fair.
The sights and smells reminded Claire so much of the night they’d visited the fair, it seemed like only yesterday though she had to admit it was closer to almost a decade.
“How did we get to be so old?”
“I wasn’t aware we were.”
“I mean, I look around this place and it feels like nothing has changed. I’m walking through the fair and you’re touching me and it all feels so good.”
“One big difference,” Daniel said quietly. She thought for a moment about all the things that had changed. Even if it felt like nothing had changed between the two of them, the truth was that they had both gone through a lot in the past few years. They were different people than the love-struck teenagers who’d snuck out to the fair so many years before.
Claire turned to face Daniel and looked up at him.
“One big difference?”
Daniel leaned down and kissed her passionately.
“We’re not teenagers anymore. You don’t have a curfew, and neither do I. If I wanted to ask you to spend the night here in Puyallup with me, all I’d have to do is ask.”
Claire bit her lip.
“So? Ask then.”
Daniel grinned, his whole face lighting up. “Will you stay the night with me?”
Claire nodded vigorously as he grasped her hand.
The rest of the fair seemed to fade away, and although they visited half a dozen other booths, she couldn’t say her heart was in any of them.
Her mind rushed as she considered the possibilities. She felt like a teenager again, like she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to do.
But there was nothing wrong with what she was doing that night. Nothing wrong with being with the man she cared about. The man she-
The man she loved?
“Do you want to get out of here?”
“Depends, I suppose.” She hedged.
Daniel grinned. “On what?”
He turned her toward him, held onto her by her elbows and looked into her eyes.
“On what you’re looking for, with me.”
“I’m looking for you. I’ve been looking for you since the last day I saw you.”
Claire felt herself blush a deep red.
“In that case,” she said quietly. “I’d very much like to get out of here.”
Daniel leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. He held himself there for a moment, and Claire savored the sensation.
It was a hell of a thing: kissing the man you cared about, right in front of everyone.
DANIEL
It was a short walk from the hotel office to the room they’d rented for the night, made longer by periodic pauses in the hallway to kiss.
Daniel was nervous as hell but he struggled not to show it. He was pretty sure his heart was about to jump right out of his chest by the time they made it to the door of room 203.
Claire dangled the keys from her fingers and smiled coyly. He was comforted by the fact that she looked a little nervous as well.
She pushed the key into the lock and Daniel couldn’t spend another moment without touching her. He pressed her up against the door and did his best to kiss the life right out of her.
It wasn’t easy, this balancing on the knee walker while trying to hold her in his arms, but he was giving it his damnedest. Daniel was suddenly very thankful for all the time and hard work he’d put in, tooling around Logan’s backyard. He’d managed to build up enough new strength in his core muscles that he was no longer the injured weakling he’d felt like when he’d been in the hospital.
“We better get inside,” Claire murmured against his lips as Daniel’s hands began to meander across her midsection. She was right, if he stayed out in the hallway much longer he’d completely forget all social propriety and probably get them both arrested for indecent exposure.
“Agreed,” he replied, replacing her hand with his on the doorknob and turning the key. It unlocked with a clunk, and together they did a backwards dance inside the room.
Claire laughed when he kicked the door closed behind them.
“Nice trick there,” she said with a smile. “You really are getting a hang of that walker.”
“Hold onto your applause, because I’m still pretty ungainly once I take it off.”
Claire grasped his hand in hers and held it to her sweet pink cheek. She smiled.
“No applause. No judgment. Just you and me.”
Daniel kissed her then, and he hoped she could feel every emotion he was channeling through to her through that kiss. It was all the misdirected anger, the shame and fear and darkness, transformed inside of him into a new kind of gentleness, a love. A renewed feeling of hope that surprised him even as he was feeling it. He wanted her to see how much she meant to him, he wanted to show her what she’d done for him.
Together they made it to the bed, the back of her knees pressed against the plush mattress.
He broke their embrace to unstrap himself from his walker. His emotional state made his fingers feel fat and useless; he fumbled with the first strap and swore under his breath.
“Here,” Claire said as she scooted to the left of him. “Sit. Let me help.”
Daniel paused for a moment, unsure of himself, unsure of what direction she was taking things, but when he saw the look in her eyes he felt an overwhelming sense of calm. He did as she asked, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Claire knelt in front of him and unstrapped his leg from the walker with quick, studied movement. She stood and climbed into his lap, and Daniel suddenly couldn’t remember what he’d been so nervous about in the first place.
Her bo
dy against his was magical. Her softness contrasting against his hardness. She moved with him like they’d been together for years, learning each other’s every desire, every pleasurable angle.
Clothes came off, tossed in the corner and forgotten. The room was warm but Daniel saw goose bumps standing up on her arms and legs. He rubbed his palms against her skin, warming her with his touch. She moaned happily, reveling in the feeling.
It was when she directed him to her softest place, and he felt himself bathed in her warmth, that he truly lost all nerves and rode the waves with her to ecstasy.
“I love you,” he whispered against the soft skin of her neck as an array of tiny fireworks exploded behind his eyes. “I love you so damn much.”
“I love you too, Daniel.”
CLAIRE
Claire sat up in bed with a start. At first she wasn’t sure what had shocked her from her comfortable dream, but when a loud thunderclap shook the hotel window, she knew. Springtime storms were pretty common in their area, but they never ceased to terrify her.
“Are you okay?” Daniel was lying next to her, his eyes bleary and half-open. “Lay back down.”
Claire laid her hand on her chest and felt her heart pounding a mile a minute. She was suddenly very wide-awake, and couldn’t imagine lying back down just then.
“Thunderstorms still really wig me out,” Claire said with a shiver. “And it’s not like the heebie-jeebies either. I’m talking about the shakes and the hyperventilating and everything in between.”
It took him a minute, but Daniel got himself into a seated position and put his arms around her. He held her close to him and murmured sweet nothings into her ear. She felt the warmth of his body against hers and soon it started to quell some of the fear in her heart.
“I used to really freak out on a regular basis in early grade school, when there was a storm brewing.” She said quietly. “I swear, Madelia was the thunderstorm capital of the world when we were kids. And you’d think my parents would have felt some kind of sympathy, for their only child. Man, was I wrong. My mom, she’d get so angry every single time it happened. Like I was doing it on purpose to ruin her day.”
“That doesn’t really surprise me,” Daniel replied. He tucked her head under his chin. “She wasn’t always the kindest woman.”
“That’s being pretty generous of you, considering how she treated you.”
Daniel shrugged. “Even if I disagreed with it, I could kind of see her point of view at the time. I mean I was this pain in the ass teenage boy who she probably figured would be in jail before I turned 20. She didn’t want you around that kind of bad influence.”
Claire moved back until she could look him in the eyes. “That doesn’t make it right. When I think about all the time we missed out on because of them, I just...I get so mad.”
“Can I give you some completely unasked for advice?”
Claire nodded.
“Let go of it. I’m speaking from recent experience here, and being mad at somebody like that doesn’t do anybody any kind of good. All it does is hurt you, now and down the line too.”
She paused for a moment and let that sink in. “Who were you mad at?”
“Pick a person, really. I mean I was mad at my whole situation, with my leg, but I was mad at people too. I was really pissed at Logan, for making that choice when I couldn’t. Do you know what helped me get over that?”
“What?”
He hugged her tighter. “When I realized that if he hadn’t made that choice to amputate, I would have gotten sicker and sicker, and eventually I would have died in that hospital bed. I wouldn’t have come back here to Madelia, I wouldn’t have had a second chance with you.”
Daniel tilted her head up until he could press his lips to hers.
“Knowing all that, how could I possibly be mad anymore?”
Claire smiled. “When you put it that way...” She snaked her arms around him and deepened their kiss. Daniel, in turn, pulled her onto him until she was straddling his lap, the bed sheets pooled around them in a tangled mess.
“I guess if they hadn’t kept us apart for so long, we wouldn’t have had a chance to reconnect like this.”
Daniel grinned. “That’s what I’m saying. And speaking of reconnecting...”
He used all of his core muscle strength to push forward so that Claire landed with her head against the blankets and he followed the motion along with her. His arms strained and his muscled bunched with exertion, but damned if he didn’t love the view as he hovered above her.
He lowered himself and groaned when he felt her soft body connecting with his. This was it; this was exactly where they needed to be.
The two of them.
Together.
Outside, the thunderstorm continued on, but Daniel and Claire stopped listening to anything beyond their own heartbeats.
Chapter 9
CLAIRE
Claire scooped a level cup of soft, dark potting soil from the bag beneath her windowsill, pouring it into the bottom of the three pots she’d been preparing. It was finally the day to transplant her willowy seedlings into bigger pots. Claire was new at home gardening, but she found the activity to be extremely relaxing.
Today, her mind wandered and her heart sang as she went about her task. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her night with Daniel since, well since it happened. It wasn’t like it was the first time the two of them had been intimate together, but it was also a very different experience this time around. They were both much more mature, and worldly. They had both experienced the joys and sorrows of life, and were each changed people because of it.
Claire reached for the first of her seedlings, releasing it from the recycled yogurt cup she’d been growing it in. It was going to be a lovely basil plant, but at the moment it was one of the smaller of her seedlings. It had just begun to show its true leaves, and it was barely bigger than Claire’s thumb.
She tucked it into the pot she’d chosen for it, painted a bright yellow that reminded Claire of sunshine and happiness. She then added some more of the potting soil around the seedling, and spritzed it with her water bottle.
In a few months, Claire looked forward to plucking the leaves, using them in her cooking. She even dreamed of one day drying out the leaves, putting them in jars and using them all year round. She was still learning a lot about cooking and gardening, but with the help of a few fantastic blogs she followed, she was really starting to enjoy the two hobbies.
They not only relaxed her, they invigorated her and inspired her. Not bad, considering how reasonably cheap and easy they both were.
As she reached for her second seedling, Claire’s phone rang. She sighed, put the plant down and stripped off her gardening gloves in order to answer the phone. It was a landline, an old throwback that Claire hadn’t been interested in, but was installed at the insistence of her parents when they’d purchased the flat.
“Hello?” Claire balanced the receiver on her shoulder as she tugged her gloves back on.
“Claire, you sound tired.” Her mother announced from the other end of the line. It wasn’t a question, not quite an accusation. Just a statement of fact, from a woman who was not accustomed to being corrected about anything.
“It’s just the weather,” Claire replied with a sigh. She’d learned a long time ago that it didn’t do any good to argue with her mother. It was easier to give her an explanation like the weather, something that even her mother couldn’t blame on her. “How are you doing?”
An exaggerated sigh traveled across the phone line, followed by a silence so long that Claire almost thought the line had been disconnected.
“Your father is dragging his feet on our Cabo trip this year.”
Claire bit her tongue so hard she could practically taste blood. If ever there were a conversation she didn’t want to have with her mom, it would be about their yearly Cabo trip. Every single year, she found something insignificant to dramatize and be upset about, because what was
a vacation without something to grumble about?
Claire busied herself with her second seedling transplantation while her mother buzzed in her ear like an errant bee.
“The house girl that usually stays in our villa down there isn’t going to be there for half of our stay, and your father actually suggested we pay Marta to come down with us instead. He completely ignored my request to the contrary. My God, Marta is annoying enough stateside, I just cannot tolerate her while I am supposed to be relaxing and enjoying myself.”
Claire made the requisite hmm and uh huh noises that she knew were the only things her mother actually required of her side of the conversation. Her mother never called to actually talk to Claire, she called to throw words at a wall until she felt better about whatever decision she’d already decided to make.
“Well, Claire?” her mother said, surprising her enough that it made her nearly spill the potting soil.
“Oh, um, well. I think whatever you decide to do will be the best decision for you.”
Claire’s mother harrumphed on the other end. “Well that’s absolutely no help at all to me. Why did I even call you?”
“I don’t know, mother. Was there something else you needed? I’m a little busy here.” Before the words were even completely past her lips, Claire felt like slapping her hand across her mouth. It was the closest she’d ever gotten to talking back to her mother.
The silence on the other end of the line was immediately telling. She’d shocked a woman she didn’t know was capable of being shocked.
“Well if you really must know, I’m calling because I heard some positively dreadful gossip and I couldn’t believe it myself.”
Claire waited, knowing her mother did not expect any sort of reply to that statement.
“Minnie tells me that the younger McAllister brother is back and causing trouble again.”
“What?!”
“You heard me. And don’t play naïve either because you haven’t exactly been subtle around town, from what I’m told. Making lovey-dovey eyes at a convicted felon, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”