Brandon had been checking out his guitar again, and Luke got the overwhelming feeling he should ask the kid if he played. Next thing he knew, he was in their living room giving an impromptu lesson.
Luke had no idea what kind of depression Brandon had, but in their short time together, he’d seen the kid open up, just a bit. He hadn’t realized what a big deal that was until he’d found Natalie slumped in a corner of the kitchen, hugging her knees to her chest, crying.
It was a knife to his gut.
He didn’t need another overwhelming feeling to know he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Let me put on some shoes and get a sweater before we go to the orchard,” Natalie said, touching the back of her hand to her wet cheek, not meeting his gaze. She didn’t need to be embarrassed about crying. She didn’t need to be anything but herself. Her kind-hearted self.
She met him on the porch wearing a pair of knee-high black rubber boots—a charming contrast paired with her little white and blue-striped, spaghetti strapped dress.
“Ready?” she asked, sliding her arms inside a white cardigan, glancing at him quickly then away. Wordlessly, she led him to the other side of the house, past a big red barn, and through a gate. Luke knew where the orchard was and could have explored it by himself if he’d wanted. But he needed to be with Natalie, though he didn’t know why.
Beyond the gate were dozens of trees, maybe a hundred, standing in precise rows, each bearing more red apples than its neighbor.
“Whoa,” Luke said. “That’s a hell of a lot of cider.”
“It takes four pounds to make one liter,” she said, walking to stand between two trees. “That’s nearly sixteen pounds to make a gallon. The taste used to make me gag.” She shook her head and dropped her chin. “I was so ungrateful. I had no idea what I had. Life can change so fast.” She was blinking rapidly.
“Natalie.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Let me just say—”
“Luke, don’t.” Tiny tears clung to her lashes, gutting him again. “I don’t want your pity—I couldn’t stand it. Not after…” She stopped like she couldn’t say the next word. “Not after everything.”
“Pity?” he repeated, wanting desperately to understand, but falling short like he always did with her.
She turned to him, looking pale and so unhappy. “I know that’s how you feel, and I know what you’re thinking.”
She knew what he was thinking? He didn’t know what he was thinking, or what he was feeling. When he looked at this woman in the short dress and rubber boots, her hair blowing in the breeze around her tear-streaked face, he tried to pinpoint his feelings, name them. But there were so many he couldn’t grab hold of a single one.
All he knew for sure was he admired the hell out of her.
No, it wasn’t admiration he felt. It was something else, something that made his heart pound when he looked at her, when he thought about her kindness, her stubborn determination, the way everything she did made him want a bigger life than even he’d planned, while driving him absolutely out of his head…his screwed-up head that wasn’t ready for a relationship.
Or was it?
“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” he said. “No idea what I’m feeling—about you.” He walked to her, reached out and touched her cheek. “But we both need to find out.”
Chapter Fourteen
She couldn’t let it happen again. She’d compromised everything, made the worst possible decisions since the second she’d seen Luke at Hershey Lounge. But the way he touched her cheek, the way he was looking at her…
“Luke, please don’t,” she whispered, almost completely out of energy. “I can’t think straight about anything. I’m so exhausted.”
“I know you are,” he said. “Give me five minutes.”
She bit the insides of her cheeks and shook her head. “I don’t have five minutes. You saw for yourself what’s going on. But what you don’t see is my family is falling apart. I have to take care of them, my parents, my brother. And Ivy’s dating this new guy who’s awful, and because of me and this impossible deadline, her job’s on the line—”
“Okay, I hear you,” he said. “You do a lot for other people.”
Natalie was about to say she had no choice, but didn’t bother.
“Will you just… Let me do one thing for you, Natalie. Please.” Slowly, he closed the distance between them, opened his arms and wrapped them around her. “Five minutes of this,” he whispered, cupping the back of her head, easing it to his chest.
How did he know this was exactly what she needed right this second? To be held by him and no one else in the world. When she inhaled a snivel, Luke tightened his grip and his hand ran a circle across her back.
She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his chest, feeling his heart beat against her. It was strong and steady, and just hearing it calmed her. Everything about being inside Luke’s embrace calmed her, made her warm in spite of the autumn air. She fisted the back of his shirt and he dipped his chin, nuzzling his face to the side of her head. Her own heart was pounding now, because, despite all the laundry lists and caution flags, this was where she wanted to be.
And that scared the hell out of her.
She thought her heart was safe from him. Their physical chemistry was like fire, but she also wasn’t safe from the goodness he’d shown her today. She’d never seen it on display like that. He’d had no personal motivation to hang with Muff, to treat him like a friend and not like a patient. He’d done it because that was who Luke was.
“My five minutes are up,” he said, his soft words drifting to her ear. She felt him loosen his hold.
“No.” She hugged him greedily.
“Okay.” He laughed into her hair. “You’ll hear zero complaints out of me.” He tunneled his fingers through her hair, resting his hand at the back of her neck, skimming across her skin. She repositioned her cheek against his chest, feeling his muscles contract, his heart pick up speed. His other hand ran up and down her spine, awakening the tender corners of her insides.
Since when was she content to just hug Luke? They’d always been in a hurry, caught in a frenzy, as Luke might say. It was like they both knew it was okay to slow down now. She loved the security of his arms around her, not just his lips.
“I love hugging you,” Luke said. “I love how our bodies fit when we’re still. But I…” His fingers pressed into her back. “I feel like a broken record when I say I know there are a hundred reasons why we shouldn’t, but Nat, I really want to kiss you.”
So do I! Her already erratic heart slammed against her ribs. She pulled her head from his chest and met his gaze, those piercing blue eyes seeing all of her for the first time.
“Think we can put a pin in our problems for a second?” he asked. “Research project will keep, our jobs will keep, but I can’t keep.” Before giving her a chance to answer verbally—the answer was clear on her face—he leaned down and kissed her.
Heat shot straight to her lips. Instead of kick-starting another frenzy, Luke held the sides of her face, kissing her slowly, deeply. His sweet, steady thoroughness made her muscles go weak and new tears spring to her eyes.
They pulled back at the same time when they’d depleted their oxygen. “We’re in the middle of the orchard,” Natalie said.
Luke touched his forehead to hers. “I like kissing you in the daylight. It’s a new concept for us.” He ran his index finger from her temple, over her lips, down her neck. “And I’m not through.”
“Neither am I.” She stood on her toes, ready to get back to it, but Luke pulled away.
“When I am through with you, we need to talk.” He cocked his head. “Okay?”
She knew they had to talk, too. There was still so much she needed to get straight. When her mind started flooding with all the glaring conflicts, she put a pin in that too, took Luke’s hand and gave it a tug.
“Follow me.” She led him to the far inside corner of the orchard where the
fences intersected. “This is the most privacy we’ll get,” she said, stepping backward up onto the middle railing.
Luke’s mouth curved into a sexy, heart-stopping grin as he moved in front of her, a head shorter than her now. He held her hips to make sure she was steady. She was, and to prove it, she took his face, tipped his head, and kissed him.
Like before, their connection began slowly, but then his body bolted forward, pinning hers to the fence. She wrapped her legs around him, her dress riding up her thighs as he balanced her in his arms. The sun was on her face, his breath on her neck; she smelled ripe apples mixed with a heavenly, intoxicating scent that seeped from the top of Luke’s head.
“I think it’s time to talk,” he said in a husky voice, even as he hoisted her body higher.
“Shut up,” she whispered.
Luke’s shoulders shook from a silent laugh. “I’d set you down, but you seem to have lost your boots.”
While attached to his body like a lumberjack to a redwood, Natalie peered over his shoulder at her feet. Sure enough, she’d somehow kicked free of her rubber boots and was barefoot. “Huh.”
“That’s the second time you lost your shoes today.”
“You saw that with my flip-flops?”
“Baby.” He smiled. “I see everything you do.”
The rest of her stubborn, work-obsessed core melted like a Hershey bar in the sun. “You can put me down. My feet are tough.”
But Luke didn’t let go, not at first. “If I put you down, that means we’ll have to talk.”
“And you’re worried about that?”
He walked them until they hit the fence, but she was high enough now that he slid her onto the top railing to sit. “No,” he said, running his knuckles under her chin. “But you are.”
Luke hadn’t been even close to wanting to let go of her soft body that had been clinging to him. And though holding her had given him the strength of twenty men, in about a minute, that strength would’ve been channeled into an act that would traumatize the Amish population of Intercourse.
Natalie had told him her heart wasn’t ready for that. And maybe…his wasn’t either. Because now, it really would mean something.
Also, their talk was overdue.
“I am worried,” she admitted.
He ran his hands down her long legs, all the way to her cute bare feet. “Tell me why.”
“We’re taking the pins out? All of them?” she asked, sliding off the fence and onto the ground.
He put his hands on the tops of her shoulders and eased her forward, kissing both of her lowered eyelids. “Yes,” he said, stepping back to give them plenty of space. “Start wherever you want.”
Her eyes remained closed for a moment, as if still feeling his kiss, then she looked up. “Brandon’s been suffering from depression for three years.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out. “When I was writing my senior thesis, I read about a study in the French medical journal, La Revue de Médecine Interne—two studies, actually. They weren’t connected at all, one was about this root in the Amazon, and the other was about a cocoa plant that grows only a few feet away from the root.” She paused and smiled. “Chocolate, of all things.”
He laughed. “Go on.”
“It wasn’t what I wrote my thesis on. It wasn’t even my field of study as a food chemist. By then, I knew my career path was Hershey, but both studies stuck with me.” She dropped her chin. “This kind of depression can run in families, but Brandon didn’t show signs until he was thirteen.”
“Nat.” He knew their touching time was over, but he couldn’t help cupping her chin, making her meet his eyes. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You know that.”
“I do,” she said. “Intellectually. And it’s not that I’m ashamed—that’d be like being embarrassed you have cancer; it’s no one’s fault. Once my career got going in the R and D labs, I saw firsthand how ideas went from someone’s daydream to being patented and on the shelf.” She turned toward the sun and squinted. “When Muff got sick, I remembered those studies about the root and cocoa plant, and I wondered what would happen if they interacted. I researched some more, talked to a lot of experts, and before I knew it, I had an actual recipe. I had results and statistics and a plan that didn’t get me laughed out of the room when I presented it to the submission board. I know you don’t agree, but I truly believe in my soul that what we have will work.” She paused and twisted her fingers. “We just need this chance.”
Her explanation moved him and made him want to take her in his arms and tell her what a brave, caring, inspiring woman she was. It did not change what he’d studied his whole professional career, however. How he felt in his soul about it.
But Natalie’s research project, the whole reason they’d been thrown together, was not her side against his side. Chocolate versus broccoli. “You’re getting your chance right now,” he said. “And you’re doing great. I’ve had a front row view of it.”
“Good thing, too. Last night, I read the clause in the contract about you.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Missed me that much, huh?”
“Um, no.” She tugged a strand of hair. “I was actually seeing if I could fire you.”
He threw his head back to laugh. “And?”
“Seems once a proctor is contractually required, the trial can’t continue unless he’s there.” She poked his shoulder, but then she touched his cheek, slid her fingers along the side of his hair, making him able to only halfway concentrate on what she was saying. “So it looks like I’m stuck with you.”
Luke closed his eyes and breathed. Yes, you are.
“I’ve been thinking about something else, too.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
She didn’t answer, so Luke opened his eyes.
“You know that…that part of my body that wasn’t ready to move forward with you?” She placed a hand over her heart.
Luke tried to swallow. “Uh-huh.”
“I think it is now.”
Of course, he knew what she meant. My head, her heart, not ready. Something had changed for her. Something had definitely changed for him, though it had happened so subtly, he couldn’t remember when.
Every single muscle in his body tightened, ready to enfold her right that second, Amish onlookers be damned. But they were at her family’s farm. Her brother was inside the house. He’d sipped hot chocolate in her mother’s kitchen. Natalie was at the farm that day for a reason.
He’d have to wait. And he would. For her.
“Um, I don’t think we should be in this orchard anymore,” he said. “I’m having visions of you wearing nothing but strategically placed apple blossoms.” Natalie was blushing and smiling and biting her damn lip. “Weren’t you talking about making a big breakfast for everyone, even though it’s almost lunchtime now?”
Food. That would take his mind off…her.
“I could eat,” Natalie said, while staring toward the house. “But you already said good-bye to Brandon, and my parents think I’m working and won’t expect me to be here…” She tilted her head. “How about lunch at my apartment?”
Luke’s mind jumped two steps ahead. “Can Brandon bring your car to you later?”
Natalie was right with him. “Let’s go.” She left her rubber boots by the fence and took off in a feminine run, her bare feet kicking up dust. Luke stood and watched for a few seconds, captivated by the sight. “You coming?”
He followed after those long legs in the little striped dress. When they reached the back porch, Natalie whirled around, holding her index finger over her mouth. “Meet me at the Jeep.” He nodded as she tiptoed up the stairs and disappeared behind the screen door.
Luke wanted to laugh. All this sneaking around. They were twenty-eight years old, for hell’s sake. But it brought out the kid in Natalie. And he wanted to give her that, let her escape for a while.
A few minutes later, she bolted across the driveway wearing sandals a
nd carrying a grocery bag. “I swiped food,” she said in a breathless giggle, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Got any bologna in there?” He craned his neck to look in the bag.
“And the rest of the chocolate whipped cream, just for you.” She winked.
Luke winked back, slammed the Jeep into first, and—despite their earlier stealth—peeled out, the tires spraying gravel in their wake. Natalie squealed a girlish laugh and grabbed the dashboard.
While they cruised west down Old Philadelphia Pike, Natalie gave Luke a driving tour of Lancaster County, stories about things she’d done in tiny villages with names like Dutch Wonderland, Lealock-Leola-Bareville, and Fertility. Her hair blew in the breeze as they slowed to a crawl behind two Amish buggies on the outskirts of Zooks Corner.
Luke tipped his chin and inhaled, feeling warmth on his face, enjoying the smell of farmland and the feel of sunlight, easing him into a slower way of life without a second thought. He’d never considered settling down here—never. It was unheard of. Even though Natalie had freely admitted she hadn’t loved growing up in the nothing town of Intercourse, he could see she loved it now. It fit her, too…just like Hershey. Like Philly or DC never would.
But he put a pin in that thought.
“Take a right on Cocoa Avenue,” she said. “Then a left on Maple.”
Pedestrians and bikers spilled onto the sidewalks, enjoying the sunny weather. Luke had never noticed how people-friendly Hershey was, though it shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d just never taken the time to appreciate it.
“In there.” Natalie pointed to a cluster of red brick buildings. “My unit’s on the end.”
“You actually live in Sugar Central Apartments?”
“You expected less?”
He laughed, and without thinking, put his hand on her knee. After realizing what he’d done, he didn’t draw it away, but ran his thumb along her skin, testing the water.
The water didn’t need a test. They weren’t here to eat lunch, and they both knew it. From out of nowhere, Luke felt a rush of nerves. He was that kid in the boathouse, psyching himself up for his first real rite of passage with a girl. The one he’d shared with the woman in the seat next to him.
Kissing Her Crush Page 17