“No. My old car was a lease and the lease was up. This one was used, so I could pay cash. That means no payments! And it appears to be in great shape.”
“Sounds like a good way to go.” He looked down at Arlo. “Is he empty? Because some body parts I’m rather fond of are gonna start freezing off if we don’t get back inside soon.”
“I agree. Let’s go.”
They returned to the house and Beth busied herself lighting a fire in the fireplace. Drew sprawled out on the sofa. “How’s the job search going?”
Beth crouched in front of the hearth and rubbed her hands in front of the warmth. The fire looked like it was going to stay lit. “Not very well. I have not seen much that I want to do.”
“Which is what?”
She stood up. “I don’t know. That’s part of the problem.”
“Oh, come on. You always know.”
She shoved at Drew’s leg. “Move over. I know I don’t want to work for a defense contractor. And RTP doesn’t want me. I have no idea. I signed up for a stained-glass class.”
He straightened a little and the weary look left his eyes for a moment. “Really? That sounds like fun.”
Beth looked at his face again. Something was definitely wrong. “You seem a bit subdued. Did the soup make you feel bad? Sometimes Mom can be a little heavy-handed with the spices.”
“It was great, Beth. I’m just tired. Usually I take a trip to somewhere far away after I finish a book, to clear my mind. But I have Little Miss Dixie here. And then I agreed to house-sit.”
She grinned. “So you’re trapped in Alpine Grove. Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar.”
“Very funny. I always get like this when I finish a book. When I write these things, I get all involved in the story and then when it’s done, everything feels a little empty for a while. It probably sounds stupid, but I miss all the characters.” He rearranged himself and put a throw pillow behind his head. “We sure spent a lot of time on this couch.”
Beth smiled. “I know. That summer, being a latchkey kid was not so bad.”
“Neither was naked Monopoly.”
“I spent a lot of time looking at that clock on the mantle, worrying my mom was going to walk in on us.”
“I spent a lot of time thinking about you naked.” He raised his eyebrows in response to Beth’s expression. “What can I say? I was eighteen.”
“So was I. It feels like a million years ago.” She touched the back of his hand. “Until I’m sitting here with you and it doesn’t feel like that at all.”
Drew pulled his hand away and glanced at the floor, where Dixie was quietly gnawing on the sofa leg. “Dixie, no!” He reached down, picked up the puppy, and put her in his lap. He looked back at Beth. “I think your mom is going to kill me.”
“Uh-oh.” Beth examined the shredded upholstery. “Maybe I can find some way to fix it before she gets back.”
Drew pulled out a piece of stuffing. “I don’t know about that, unless you have some serious sewing skills I don’t know about.” He held the dog out in front of him with both hands. “After that unfortunate pillow episode, we talked about this, Dixie. Fiberfill is not good for you.” The little dog wagged and wiggled in his grasp and Drew snuggled her up to his chest.
“She ate a pillow at The Moose?” Beth giggled. “I knew they were going to love you there.”
“A pillow, among other things.” Drew stroked the puppy’s head. “When I checked out, the woman at the front desk may have said some unflattering things about Dixie’s heritage.”
“With all the traveling you said you do, I am surprised you opted to keep Dixie. I thought for sure you would have talked one of our esteemed classmates into taking her by now.”
“I couldn’t do it. Plus I’ve been thinking about getting a house. Actually having a home-base somewhere.” He looked down at Dixie, who had fallen asleep. “Preferably with a really big fenced yard.”
“That’s so sweet. I know I love my house. I’ve been enjoying it even more lately, since I’m not running off to work every day.”
“Being a lazy underachiever does have a few advantages.”
“Ha-ha. You’re just so humorous. I have already apologized for that more than once.”
“I know. I’m just saying that spending a little time just thinking and doing nothing isn’t always such a bad thing. You didn’t mind all those times we spent just sitting around, looking out at the lake, after all.” He grinned. “Well, when we weren’t making out anyway.”
“I thought about that when I was driving around Tucson the last few days.”
“What? Making out?”
She leveled an oh-spare-me glare at him. “No. Our conversations and all the things we did that summer. For years, I’ve been so busy with work, I haven’t seen many of the Tucson-area attractions, even after living there for so long. There are some great hiking trails, for example. I enjoyed the hikes we used to take.”
“Desert hiking is great. Have you ever hiked during a full moon? It’s amazing, although you do have to watch out for snakes.”
“Thank you for sharing that herpetological tidbit. How disturbing. Perhaps I’ll confine my explorations to daylight hours.” She pushed off her shoes and put her feet up on the coffee table, wiggling her toes in the thick socks. “I guess it just feels like I’ve missed out on some activities I used to like.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s part of your Type-A thing.”
“I know. I think after that summer with you and my freshman year of college, I may have overcompensated.”
“Overcompensated for what?”
“Being irresponsible.”
“Right. You were irresponsible. And you say I make up stories.”
“I didn’t adjust to life away from home as well as one might hope. In my desperate and largely futile efforts to make friends, I made some poor choices.”
“My leg is falling asleep. This little animal sleeps like the dead.” Drew readjusted Dixie on his lap and looked at Beth. “What choices? You mean like going out with Cindy’s brother?”
Beth shook her head. “No, that was mostly just a demoralizing blow to my ego because Joel dumped me so quickly and efficiently. I mean in Tucson. The University of Arizona’s reputation as a party school isn’t unwarranted.”
He smiled. “Oh really? Are you saying you may have partaken of a few open bars?”
“Yes. There was a bar near campus that ran a promotion on Wednesdays. Anything with white alcohol was discounted, and for a period of time, I became quite a White Wednesday enthusiast.”
Drew stroked the fur on Dixie’s back. “That would cover a pretty wide range of liquor.”
“Yes, it does, and I think I tried most of the possible beverages containing them. There was one night that I had a little bit of difficulty finding my way back to my dorm. I ended up, well, resting on the lawn in front of a fraternity building. I was lying there, the world was spinning, and I was trying not to vomit. At some point, I realized that my contact lens had popped out.”
“Wow, Beth, you even lose your contacts when you’re wasted?” He chuckled. “Why does this not surprise me?”
“I found it. Although technically, it was actually the next day. I remembered where I was and returned.”
He looked at her. “Beth, why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to let you know that you haven’t cornered the market on irresponsibility.” Beth waved her arms in exasperation. “I feel like I haven’t talked to you in so long, I have to catch up.”
Drew moved Dixie’s small furry body off his lap and into his arms. “Well, on that note, now that Dixie has eaten your mom’s sofa, it’s been a full day. I should probably go. After all that writing, my inner slacker is calling. I have large plans to do a whole lot of nothing tomorrow, except keep my dog from eating her way through Mrs. Oliphant’s house too. Thanks for dinner.”
Beth reached out and touched his arm. “Do you have to go already?
”
“You have a store to run tomorrow. And you’ve gotta be sick of talking to me by now.”
“No I’m not. That never happens. I want to find out more about you. Here I am running on and on again. But I don’t know how you are doing.”
Drew stood up, cradling Dixie in his arms. “Now that I met my odious deadline, I’m fine. It’s been fun talking to you again, but like I said before, us spending time together isn’t a good idea. There’s a whole lot of precedent that indicates that although we are incredibly compatible in certain, well, let’s just say, ‘lustful’ ways, we’re really different people. You made that abundantly clear to me a decade ago. And because of that whole historical lust factor, I doubt your boyfriend would be too excited to find out that you spent the evening with me.”
Beth stood up to face him. “I don’t plan to mention it. He certainly does not divulge his extra-curricular activities with me.”
“What?”
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Beth knew they were true. She’d been kidding herself for years. “Graham has been cheating on me for a long time. I haven’t wanted to believe it and ignored every indicator. But I know he is.”
“Did the guy tell you that?” Drew looked down and stroked Dixie’s head with his fingertips.
“Not in so many words. But I’m quite sure of it.” She had been pretending everything was fine for far too long. But it wasn’t.
Drew shook his head. “I know it doesn’t reflect too well on me, but I gotta say, you’ve got some seriously bad taste in men, Beth.”
Beth gently took the sleepy puppy from his arms and locked her gaze with his. “Not entirely. I think my choices simply deteriorated over time. I was looking for something that didn’t exist. Expecting people to be something they are not.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Drew’s eyes widened and he caressed her cheek with his fingertip. “Are you serious? After all the things you said to me before? Do you really feel that way?”
Beth nodded and smiled. “I am not making this up.”
His gaze slid downward and he stepped forward, bending to kiss her while arching around her body to avoid crushing Dixie, who was starting to squirm in Beth’s arms.
The kiss was even more exhilarating and arousing than the ones in Beth’s dreams. Scorching and intense, the kiss deepened, and it was all Beth could do to continue to hold Dixie. Breathing heavily, she pushed against Drew’s chest with one hand. “I’m going to drop your dog on your foot if you keep doing that.”
He grinned and took the puppy from her. “It was so cold, I didn’t want to walk over here. I drove and Dixie’s crate is in the car. She likes to sleep in there, which is good, because all of a sudden, I have a serious hankering to play naked Monopoly again.”
Later, after bringing in the crate and settling Dixie in for a nap, Drew ran up the stairs, followed by Beth. He stopped at the doorway of her bedroom and walked in. “It looks exactly the same.”
Beth shrugged. “Mom keeps saying she’s going to turn it into a sewing room, but she doesn’t really sew. I told her if it ended up as yet another storage haven for books, I would never stay here again.”
He turned and ran his hands under her shirt as he bent his head to kiss her. With a lascivious smile, he whispered, “I think I’d like to pass ‘Go’ and collect my two hundred dollars now.”
Beth mumbled, “The Reading Railroad seems quite appealing as well.”
Drew released her from his embrace and stripped, throwing his clothes in a heap on the floor. “If I land in jail, you know what happens then.”
Beth looked at him appraisingly. “Well, it seems jailbirds work out. I’m afraid I have not been quite as diligent about an exercise program until fairly recently.” Approximately one week ago.
He pulled her to him, “You look fine to me, Bethie. Way better than fine.” He turned and yanked the covers down on the twin bed, “Dang, it’s freezing in here. Does that radiator work?”
“I doubt it. Sometimes Mom talks about getting it repaired when she mentions the sewing-room idea.”
Drew leaped into the bed and jerked the covers up to his chin. “You better get in here fast before icicles start forming on my toes.”
Beth began removing her clothing, slowly and carefully folding them and putting them on her dresser, enjoying Drew’s look of appreciation. Shivering, she crouched down next to the bookshelf and pulled out a copy of Gone with the Wind.
“Please tell me that’s not the same ones.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “No, I had some condoms in my purse and I was afraid my mother might look around in there for some reason. So I hid them in the hole in the book. I still feel bad for cutting it up.”
Drew grinned. “I don’t. The South could rise again, you know.”
As she crawled into the small space left in the bed, she could feel the heat of Drew’s body course down the length of hers like a current of electricity. He wrapped his arms around her and said in a low voice, “It’s about time. You were making me crazy. I was thinking of breaking out a Community Chest card and assessing a school tax on you.”
“You would never do that. But it does appear that your building and loan has matured. You know that Chance cards never lie.”
“So I get a hundred-and-fifty bucks?”
Beth grinned as another shivery thrill went down her spine at the touch of his fingertips on the curve of her back. “Oh yes, if you keep doing that, you definitely do.”
Much later, Beth was awakened by Drew crawling over her to get out of the narrow bed. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him, “Where are you going?”
“I heard Dixie rustling around in her crate downstairs. Did you know that puppies have to go out every four hours or so?”
“No.”
“Well, I gotta tell you, it’s a depressing thing to find out when it’s four degrees outside.”
“When you return, maybe I could buy a hotel.”
He stroked her cheek, “I’d like that.”
The next morning, Beth woke up to the sound of Arlo barking downstairs. She and Drew were intertwined, and although she hated to extract herself from the cocoon of warmth, if she didn’t, Arlo would undoubtedly commit a heinous act in the kitchen. Moving her leg against Drew’s, she attempted to wiggle her toes against his ankle. “Drew. Wake up. You need to move. I’m trapped and I think Arlo is awake.”
He disentangled his legs from hers, rolled over on his back, and put his arm behind his head. “Fly, be free.”
Beth crawled out into the cold and stood next to the bed, popping her contacts out of her eyes into her palm and closing her fist around them. “Ugh, I forgot to take them out last night. My eyes feel like sandpaper.” She groped around the nightstand for the case and put them away. Putting on her glasses, she glanced at Drew, who had an amused half-smile on his face. “What?”
“It’s just kinda cute when you’re all cold, naked, and blind, that’s all. Like a baby bird.”
She gathered up her clothes and bent to kiss him, running her fingertips through the hair behind his ear. “Don’t look so smug. We all know little miss ‘bladder the size of a blueberry’ has to go out again by now too.”
Drew groaned and sat up. “I hate morning. Why do they make it so early? Could you throw me my shirt?”
After a frigid outing, Beth left Drew in charge of the dogs so she could go take a shower. She was barely going to make it to the bookstore on time, since she had definite issues keeping her hands off Drew’s enticing body. That certainly hadn’t changed, either. It was like she’d degenerated from a normal rational adult into a lust-obsessed teenager again.
As the warm water washed over her, Beth wondered what her problem was. Maybe she was just an extraordinary slut. For years, she’d managed to rationalize sleeping with Graham, even with all the student rumors and after they’d had some rather horrible arguments. Last night with Drew, it
had been way too easy to forget Graham entirely.
The sheer magnitude of her denial was unbelievable. Why had she pretended he was perfect for so long? She was a smart person. You’d think she might have noticed she was fooling herself. And now she was equally willing to jump into bed with Drew, even though she knew next-to nothing about him. Did she have no self-control whatsoever? What was wrong with her?
In the clear light of day, it seemed she was a complete idiot when it came to matters of the opposite sex. Although Beth had a habit of blabbing endlessly whenever she was near him, Drew was remarkably circumspect about what he had revealed to her. Questions swirled in her mind. How long was he going to be in Alpine Grove? Where had he lived before the reunion? Where was he going to live after he was done house-sitting? Did he plan to write more novels? Maybe not, given that he just killed off one of the main characters in his series.
What did it mean that he had just killed the fictional version of her? And what was he going to do with himself? Did Drew have any plans at all? Or was he just as aimless as ever, floating through life on the largesse of his family’s wealth? Not everyone had that luxury. She certainly didn’t. At some point, she’d need a job. She wasn’t a kid anymore. What if she couldn’t pay her mortgage?
Beth scrubbed the shampoo into her hair vigorously, as she became increasingly annoyed with herself. Drew was right—her taste in men was abominable. A few conversations with him and she was right back where she’d been when she was a stupid, irresponsible teenager. Had she learned nothing? She was supposed to be a mature adult with a house and a grown-up life. What was wrong with her? Perhaps she’d inherited her ineptitude in relationship choices from her mother, along with her inability to drink socially like a normal person. Thanks, Mom.
After getting dressed, Beth padded down the stairs in her stocking feet. Where were her shoes?
Drew was sitting on the sofa reading a book, with Dixie in his lap. Arlo was nowhere to be seen. Usually when the dog disappeared it was because he knew he’d done something bad. Uh-oh.
Drew looked up, “Hey, look at you, all squeaky clean.”
Bark to the Future (An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy Book 5) Page 15