by Misty Simon
His smile did things to her equilibrium, and she teetered for just a moment, even in her sturdy sneakers. Righting herself was instantaneous, but she still felt a little like she was rocking on the deck of a ship.
Ruthlessly she steadied herself with thoughts of her child and the life she was making for both of them. It enabled her to smile at him and not lean into him the way a part of her wanted to.
“Well, if you’re going to pass on the wine, then at least let me say the invitation is open-ended. Perhaps you’ll take me up on it another time.”
She was the one to reach out this time, laying a hand on his strong forearm. “Jack, I appreciate your concern, but I’m a big girl now. I signed up for this knowing full well what I was getting myself into.”
He looked down at her hand, then covered it with one of his own. “You might be older, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need a shoulder every once in a while. If nothing else, I’d like to be friends again.”
Ignoring the “if nothing else,” she smiled up at him, feeling a little jittery inside. If it had been another time and another place, another life, she might have jumped at the chance. But she had this life and this time and wouldn’t miss out on Mazzy for anything in the world.
“Thank you, Jack, but I’ve got it.” And she walked away. It was a lot harder than it should have been.
****
Two hours later, Jack found himself down in his speakeasy with Chelsea. Mazzy was in the library playing with her grandmother after being bribed with another round of board games against him in the afternoon.
He had been dragooned into hanging large plastic tarps on the wall and covering all the furniture with washable linens. Yet he had no idea why he was doing it other than at Chelsea’s request. The place looked like he was closing up a summer home for the winter.
Until right now, he hadn’t realized how big this part of the house truly was. But while he was blindly trying to make sure every available surface had some sort of covering on it, it struck him as huge. The bar was cleaned off and covered. Pictures that had hung on the walls for all the years he’d been here were either taken down or covered. The enormous mirror on the far wall had been completely hidden with two shower curtains. The bottles of alcohol had been taken down from their shelves, boxed, and tucked away in a closet.
“So why are we doing this, again?” he asked, pulling a thumbtack from his handy piece of cardboard and sticking it into the corner of yet another sheet of plastic. This one covered the door to the storage cellar where he kept all the paper supplies he stocked up on throughout the year. There was nothing worse than being out of toilet paper in a storm, especially with a house full of guests. He’d never make that mistake again.
“I already cleared it with Paige on the phone, earlier. She said it was fine and for you not to worry. Besides, I can’t tell you or I’d have to kill you.” She mumbled the words around a tape dispenser stuck between her teeth, but he was pretty sure that was what she said.
“Somehow I can’t believe telling me would be a killing-worthy offense. I do have to ask if you’re going to ruin anything.” He didn’t want to sound like a jerk, but he had to know.
“I hope not, so therefore we are putting up plastic to make sure of it.”
“Are you going to be throwing water balloons? Balls of shaving cream? Mud wrestling?”
“Nope, nope, and not even close.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Where do you come up with such ideas?”
“Well, when you won’t tell me, and make it sound like a state secret, I can’t help but wonder. And I have a very fertile imagination.” Nothing proved that better to him than the fact that he was standing here wondering what she would look like with her voluptuous body in a bikini and slathered with chocolate pudding.
The vision itself was, of course, ridiculous, but he had fun with the thought for a moment before clearing his throat. Many years ago he’d seen her get into a huge mudslinging fight at the lake with a few of her friends at the camp where they were counselors. Obviously, it had done things to him that lasted past his adolescence.
“It might seem stupid to you, but I really have to make sure it’s not something that’s going to hurt the house. I don’t think I have enough dishes in the house for you to wash to work off any damage that would need this much plastic. So if you could just tell me...”
He was wheedling, but she had truly piqued his curiosity.
Her impressive chest rising and falling, she huffed out a breath. “If you absolutely must know, we’re going to be doing some original wall art for Belinda’s new house. She likes to have very different and unique pieces on her plain white walls. She hasn’t mentioned it since she said something in passing almost a year ago when she got engaged, but I wrote it down at the time. I thought this would be the perfect time to work on the project with the women who love her most. Then we’ll frame them and sign them. They’ll be presents that will last a lifetime. Much longer than a toaster or a set of frying pans.” She dusted her hands together. “Sorry it’s not kinkier.”
He returned the smile that popped out on her face. “Mud is much kinkier.”
“Mud is much dirtier. I clearly remember not being able to get that gunk out of my hair for almost a week after camp. You know, that time when Alicia Fristsen started throwing mud at me because she wanted to be your girlfriend.” Her hands flew over the plastic, tucking it here and moving it there.
Grabbing a cardboard box from under the table, she began unloading tubes and tubes of paint and tray after tray of brushes. She was obviously serious about what they were doing. Hopefully, she was as organized with the sitting room they still had to decorate for the bridal shower afternoon tea.
“I thought the two of you were friends and just having a play fight,” he said.
She chuckled. “Ah, boys, so naïve, so trusting that what they see is what they get.”
“Hey, now, I might have to take offense here.” With his foot on a short stepping stool at the base of the last wall, he gave her a mock scowl.
A stray cinnamon-colored curl escaped the headband she’d put her new hairdo up in, teasing her temple and him at the same time. “You can take whatever you want, but the plain truth is everyone thought you were after me and she would not believe it wasn’t true.”
But it had been true. Didn’t she remember their kiss on the last night of camp, at the dance for just the counselors? He couldn’t have dreamt that up. It had been so much harder that year, once they were back at home. But he had put it aside and been her buddy again because he didn’t want to lose her altogether, and he didn’t want to cause waves between Paige and Chelsea, or between Paige and himself. It had been one kiss that he had chalked up to an experiment gone wrong.
“Interesting,” he said, because he really couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t sound hokey over ten years later.
There was that quirked eyebrow again. He was beginning to liken it to a challenge of some sort.
“What?”
“Interesting?” she asked, her hands on her hips. “Interesting? That’s all you can say, when I took a mouthful of lake silt over a relationship that never actually happened?”
“Would you take my sincere apology?”
“I would if it was really sincere.” She turned back to put another piece of tape on a large sheet of white paper, then stuck the whole thing up on the wall above one of the booths.
Another sheet was secured to the table top. Now he saw the advisability of the plastic. That table was solid oak, and while it would survive paint, he wouldn’t want it ruined.
“It really is sincere. In fact…” Against his better judgment, he took the plunge. “You didn’t take that silt for nothing. Alicia wasn’t wrong.”
While she laughed in the act of turning, the sound abruptly stopped when she faced him. His expression was as sincere and serious as he could make it.
****
Well, that was certainly not what she had expected to come f
rom their trip down memory lane. It had been harmless fun to recall days gone by, days when she didn’t have all the baggage she carried now. But his full mouth was no longer smiling and his blue eyes no longer crinkled. He looked entirely too serious.
She did what she could to lighten the moment that should have never happened. Why did she always seem to step right into it?
“Come on! I would have known if you harbored a crush on me. We grew up together. The three of us were inseparable that summer, but it was all buddy-buddy stuff. Not anything to get smacked in the face with dirt over. I was so much younger than you, and Paige would have killed me if we’d dated. You never looked at me that way. I was always just that kid Paige hung out with.” She really wished Mazzy would escape from Grammy and come downstairs about now to get her out of this extremely awkward conversation.
“Maybe not for you, but I was definitely into you that summer.”
“Cut it out. You were not.” Her face felt flushed, so she turned away just in case she was turning red. And why she should be embarrassed now, all these years later, was a mystery to her. A whole lifetime had nearly passed since then. Even if he had wanted her with his seventeen-year-old heart, that had no bearing on today at all.
But if it were true, then she had made a terrible mistake in bringing it up. And their fake engagement could be that much more awkward.
She felt his presence behind her, a solid wall of man, heat emanating from him in a way she shouldn’t feel through her T-shirt and jean shorts. She dared not turn around when she heard a soft step bringing him even closer. The hair on the nape of her neck tingled. She was torn between leaning back and running away.
His breath was warm on her cheek a second later, a second where she still couldn’t decide what she wanted more, for him to back off or to move in closer.
“Don’t you remember that kiss?” he asked in a soft voice, husky and way too appealing. “We were dancing to a really old Madonna song from the eighties, something about being crazy, we were standing arm’s length apart because of that stupid personal-space rule, and we were shuffling from side to side when I leaned forward and kissed you.”
She stood up straight, twisting around and almost knocking him right in the nose. “Oh, my God! I do remember that. I thought you were leaning in to make fun of the way Missy Cartwright was dancing, so I turned my ear toward where I thought you were going to whisper and instead your lips landed on mine. You jumped back so fast I thought it was an accident.” She put her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. “That was a kiss?”
He took a step back. “Well, it was supposed to be.”
Between his disgruntled words and the way he shoved his hands in his pockets, he looked adorable. The urge to pat him on the arm and assure him “no harm, no foul” was nearly overwhelming, but she was all too aware of the fragile male ego.
“That rewrites history for me then, Jack. Thank you.”
His frown turned into a look of bafflement. She did pat him on the arm this time.
“I always thought Jake Betancourt was my first kiss. It was a disastrous episode in tenth grade, with slobbering and sucking noises that made me a little ill. Now I know it was you, and that makes life just a little bit sweeter. Thanks. Then and now.”
He looked disgruntled when he said, “You’re welcome.”
“Oh, Jack, don’t look so pouty. As far as kisses went, I’m sure it was wonderful. Or would have been if I had understood what was going on.”
He grumbled again, and Chelsea thought for a moment about lifting up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek, but that would be skating too close to the edge of reason. No matter how squishy she was feeling inside to know her first kiss had been something much more romantic than Jake Betancourt and his wandering hands of doom.
Putting her hands back on her hips, she stepped back before she could do anything foolish. “All right, I think we’re mostly done here. I have a box of gift bags upstairs I’d like to put together, if you have a flat surface I could use. I know Frank is working in the kitchen and everyone is out and about, but I’d like to try to get them done in secret if possible. Do you have somewhere I could go?”
“Of course. There’s a linen room on the second floor. It has a folding counter. No one should bother you, since it’s not laundry day.” He gestured up the stairs with a sweeping hand.
She felt more on even footing again and graced him with a smile as her world gently rested back where it belonged. Thank God she hadn’t done anything stupid like kiss him on the cheek. She hadn’t touched him—other than the pat on the arm—much better for her unsteady equilibrium.
And that was the last clear thought she had before Jack said, “Damn it,” and pulled her into his strong arms, his lips unerringly landing square on hers.
****
It took a moment for Chelsea to kiss him back, but when she did Jack held on for the ride. Her lips were soft and pliant beneath his. Her hands snaked around to his back, holding him at the waist. A small shudder ran through her body and his own responded in kind. Somehow he had known Chelsea Moore would be a good kisser, despite that dismal try in the past. He was very gratified to find out he was more than right. Soft in all the places she should be, she curved into him and they fit like two parts of a whole. However, he didn’t get to enjoy the pleasure for long. She pulled back with a gasp just as they were getting to the good part.
Her touch and taste had made him oblivious to his surroundings to the point he’d missed the little girl who came trundling down the stairs while he was lost in Chelsea. But he couldn’t miss the way Chelsea separated herself from him, stepping back with her left hand tucked around her ribcage. And he couldn’t miss the way her other hand fell on her daughter’s shoulder as the little girl took a step toward him.
“My turn for kisses!” she yelled, ducking out from under her mother’s hand and launching herself at his knees.
She tugged at his pants until he knelt down to her level. All the while he kept an eye on Chelsea. She just shook her head and blew out a breath.
While he didn’t know what that meant, he was distracted from it by the small fry standing in front of him with her hands clasped in front of her narrow chest.
“My turn, Big Man. I want my kisses! Maybe you’ll turn into my prince.”
“I highly doubt that,” he heard Chelsea mutter under her breath.
He ignored her. He’d felt something in that kiss before she pulled away. Whether she’d admit it or not was a dilemma for a different day.
Down on one knee, he took Mazzy’s hands from her chest and held them loosely in his own, marveling at how truly small they were. With a gentle brush of his lips, he kissed each of her cheeks in turn.
“Mommylove always kisses my nose, too.”
So he kissed her nose. Placing his hands on his knees, he moved to stand up, but Mazzy’s hands captured his face and gave him a smacking kiss on his cheek.
“Just for you,” she said, before she giggled and went back to her mom’s side to hide with her hand covering her eyes.
He cleared his throat, then said, “Thank you,” and continued straightening up to his full height. Towering over Chelsea and her daughter, he didn’t know how to move beyond this moment.
He searched Chelsea’s eyes, but she gave nothing away as she told him, “Well, I guess I’d better let you get back to what you were doing.”
At this point he couldn’t even remember what that was. Until he looked around at all the plastic and recalled the painting party. Which brought his life back into focus.
He had an inn to run and guests to keep happy and satisfied for the upcoming wedding. Flirting was not on the schedule. They also had a fake engagement that he desperately wanted to be real right here and right now. Dangerous territory, Barton.
Grateful for the reminder, he took a mental and physical step back from the two females in front of him. He could not forget his goals or Chelsea’s continued reminders that this was all fake and for just a
week. No matter how good she had felt in his arms, she had a life elsewhere, concerns that were not his. He had the inn. That was enough for him.
****
With her lips still warm from Jack’s kiss, Chelsea fought the urge to touch them just to see if they were really as swollen as they felt. He’d kissed her thoroughly, more thoroughly than she had been kissed in years, and he’d made her insides quiver. And they’d quivered further when he’d taken her daughter’s hands as if she were precious, giving in to her demand in a way he hadn’t been required to.
But now they stood in a strange triangle she wasn’t sure how to break without cracking something inside herself.
Leave it to Mazzy, though.
“Big Man wants to take me upstairs to get my wooby and a snack, don’t you, Big Man?”
Chelsea face heated. “Oh, sweetie,” she began, but got cut off.
“Absolutely, Miss Mazzy. Our guests have their requests filled here. I bet Frank has something that’s just right for you—if it’s all right with your mom?” With his inquiring gaze zeroed in on her face, she was helpless to feel anything but confusion.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said in a low voice.
But instead of answering, he held out a hand for Mazzy. She jumped at him, grasping his hand as if she were sure of him and that he would take care of her. Chelsea wasn’t so sure, yet there was a part of her that wished she could be sure, that she could trust.
But she’d tried once before, and it hadn’t worked out. In fact, that was an understatement. It hadn’t just not worked out, it had been disastrous. Something she was still picking up the pieces from.
“Please, Mommylove!” Mazzy pleaded. “Big Man will take care of me, and Mr. Frank wants to feed me. I just know it!”
Chelsea had to laugh at her audacity. “I’m sure Mr. Frank would love to feed you when you had breakfast only a little while ago. Isn’t the kitchen getting ready for lunch, Jack?”
“I know people,” he said with a wink. “I’ll find something for her if Frank has too much going on.”