by Lila Felix
“We, um, can do something else. We don’t have to go back to the house.”
“Hmm? Oh, come on Stock, I promise not to break your—whatever tool you use.” Obviously, I‘d cracked into whatever deep thoughts she was floating through and paid the sarcasm price. I loved her smartassery. But she still had a foot in her thought cloud—so I decided to mess with her.
“You’re not gonna break my tool?” She was looking out the window.
“No,” She was getting aggravated at my meddling, “I won’t break your tool, I won’t misplace your tool, I won’t even touch your tool, I promise.”
“Well, there’s no point in getting you alone then.” She turned to face me so fast, I thought she’d put a crick in her neck—her reddening by the second, smooth as polished metal, warm as a blazing fire, neck.
“Sarcasm and innuendo at the same time? Stockton Wright, I thought you were a gentleman.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You can’t use those big words around us hillbillies. Not all of us finished college.” I grinned as wide as I could without being creepy—which was difficult since I had the reputation of not smiling.
She rotated fully in the seat, giving me an all access viewing pass to her legs. Even encased in jeans it was difficult not to steal glances. They begged me to get to know them better.
“So you finished some college? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I went to Vandy for two years.”
“That’s a pretty good school. What was your major?”
“Business. I—had big dreams of making my dad’s operation into something huge. I was a small town kid with big empty pockets and overzealous goals.”
I stopped the truck and threw it in park, but she showed no sign of getting out. I liked her here like this, by herself, no pretentions or expectations on either part—just me and her. If I could, I’d have this moment wrapped in plastic wrap, layered all around the truck, keeping it fresh in my mind forever.
“Why did you stop?”
My eyebrows pulsed in a downward motion, confused as much as I was. Did no one tell her? She hadn’t talked about this with Will? I thought the tale of my parents’ death was attached to my name like a Junior or the Third. Oh, him? The burly, grimy one over there? Yeah, that’s Stockton Maxwell Wright Killed His Parents With Visions of Grandeur. He lives down past the Blankenship’s. Certainly someone could’ve done me the favor so I didn’t have to belittle myself by dragging her through the vomiticious details. Thank you Town of Constance for your disservice.
Well, I guess I’d just have to break her bubble myself.
“I came back after my parents died. Will was only fifteen.”
I didn’t wait for her reaction. I just bolted and tried to change the subject as quickly as I could. I went around to her side of the truck—it wasn’t the passenger side anymore, it was her side. I opened the door and to my dismay she’d already taken her seatbelt off.
“Thank goodness you’re not wearing heels again; I would’ve had to carry you around everywhere.”
She reached out two slender hands and grabbed the front of my shirt, “My mistake. I’ll have to wear heels from now on.” The blaze from her touch, sizzled through the fabric of my shirt and nestled itself against the skin of my stomach. If she ever actually touched the bare skin there, I was sure it would be the spark that lit my whole body aflame.
Both of my grotesquely huge hands cupped her calves, reminded by my eyes of how they flexed and showed off even in a field of sheep with their owner raged beyond compare. She was that brink of light in my day and my need for her presence multiplied by the second. Cami was my reprise from the forge.
“Show me where you work your magic,” she tugged once at my shirt.
“I thought you wanted to see the shop,” I teased and took her hand to help her out of the truck.
“Ha—ha.”
She was having trouble clopping through the dry parts as we’d had some rain during the night and the path from the driveway to the shop was one solid puddle, save for the spots of high and dry here and there. Someone was smart enough to outfit this girl with rubber boots. She slid on one mound and grabbed onto my back pocket for balance.
I turned and grabbed her up; it was futile to continue to watch her suffer. Unashamedly stealing another chance to touch her, my hands cupped the back of her thighs and I sighed with the sensation. I’d never felt skin so soft before. I crossed the threshold of my shop and propped her up on one of my chairs, an old barstool from when Mick’s was refurnished and my father couldn’t pass up the good deal. We actually bought the lot of barstools and then ended up giving them away because he couldn’t figure out what to do with all of them. My mother threw fits until he was rid of them, except the two in the shop.
“Your throne, Duchess.”
She looked confused, “What’s wrong Cami?”
“Why are you always rescuing me? I need to learn to do things by myself.” She let out a huge sigh—and I loved her defiance.
“I,” It couldn’t be helped. I let my fingers comb through the object of their desire. I’d wanted to touch her hair since I saw her and her bad manners in the bar. It was finely spun hay, the color of a perfect cream rose. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t think you can’t do it yourself. I just enjoy making things easier on you. Especially if that means getting to touch you one more time.”
She leaned into my hand, now tangled in her hair right above her ear.
Friends, you moron—she said friends. The voice inside me promptly threw ice water on my coals.
“Do you want to see everything? Or are you ready to do something else?”
She made triangles with her fists glued to her hips, “Are you cheating me out of the full tour? Not fair.”
“It’s not all that interesting, Cami. There’s the tools. My dad, kept them in that exact spot. If you moved them, well, it took that parental phrase, hot poker on your ass, to a whole new level.”
“Is that what parents say around here? Jeez.”
“What do parents say in California?” I took the other stool. This should be rich.
“Well, parents back home-if they are the ones raising the children and not the nannies, maids or cooks-are all about being P.C. and they’re always reading about the latest parenting techniques, so, no negative tones or phrasing, no yelling or raising their voice, and absolutely no spanking. And I guess it works. I mean, the kids there, or at least the ones I knew were all destined to be spoiled and entitled anyway. But if the hands-off method doesn’t work, then we are sent to therapy three times a week and if that doesn’t help, we’re shipped off to rehab. Well, unless you’re me. Apparently there just weren’t enough parenting magazines, therapists or seminars to teach the nannies or the parents how to handle me. I was banished from the entire state of California to fix my problems. But it turns out I don’t fit in here either.”
Hearing her come down so hard on herself was enraging at the least. She was young, free, who wouldn’t have tested their limits?
“Why? Just because you can’t wrangle sheep or drive a tractor? Those things don’t define you Cami. It’s just learned skills. I bet I’d be lost in California—and completely out of place.”
She rubbed her hands on her thighs. I hoped she was warming them up for touching me again.
“Sure, Stockton. But I am redefining what being new to town means.” She shrugged like it was a bad thing.
“Something new might just be what I need—these people—people around here need,” I mimicked her shrugging.
“Really?” she stared at me and I shuddered under her perusal.
I outlined the basics after starting the fire. She paid attention. And I thought I’d feel self conscious about her studying me. The opposite was true. Her watching me work was empowering. I was a stronger man when her eyes bored into me.
“Do you want to try?”
“Only if you can promise I won’t set my eyebrows on fire.”
I gave her the hammer and she nearly took her own shins out before we even got started. I had to catch it mid swing. She was left handed; which was perfect so my dominant arm could take on the task of holding her as close to me as possible. It was far from an imposition. I’d gotten a sliver of a taste for it back at Mr. Lambert’s house when she squealed to high heaven at the sight of the squirrel. But now I had a chance to savor it.
I widened my stance so her more petite one could concave into mine. Her rounded shoulder blades pressed against my chest. I slid my hands down her arms starting at her shoulders—she shuddered in front of me. The opportunity hammered me and I took it, I leaned my chin on her shoulder and inhaled through my nose, branding my lungs with her smell. I swore her skin was engraved with the smell of sunshine and the ocean and it unleashed a fury within me, both protective and primal.
“Is it necessary for you to smell me while I do this,” she asked snarkily.
I moved in tighter, tucking her deeper within my frame, “No, I just love the way you smell, is that okay, Duchess?”
She nodded and twitched a little inside the envelope I’d wrapped her in.
“Ok, so when the metal gets just the right color, almost like a tangerine glow, strike it with this hammer.”
We waited a few minutes for the metal to reach temperature and I placed it on the anvil in front of us, holding it steady for her. She raised the hammer, using two hands and just when I thought she’d give it all she had, she furiously tinked the metal. I’d struck the hammer down harder when I was five. I thought maybe she needed some inspiration.
“Cami, you remember Mallory and Henry giving you the what for after you lost the sheep? Or the cold, hard, rage that sparked through your veins when your parents dropped you in this nowhere town full of toothless inbred hicks?”
It must’ve worked because the second time she raised the hammer she struck with such muscle—I wondered if she’d hurt herself. It was coupled with a grunt that rivaled a tennis player gunning for the win. She let out a faint sound and I had to pull her hair back from her face to see if it was a cry or a laugh—it was a laugh.
“How’d that feel?”
She put the hammer down and I put the metal to the side before someone got burnt.
She wound her arms up behind her. I thought she meant to move away from me and a short stint of disappointment shot through me. I was wrong. They craned around my own neck and pulled me down closer to her, “You just know how to spark that anger in me, don’t you?”
I chuckled and it rumbled my chest and her back together, “I wouldn’t call it anger—more like passion.”
She turned her head to the right and her mouth was next to mine, both inhaling and exhaling the same heated air. Her hands dropped and this time covered mine and brought them to her waist, just one of the many curves I’d longed to get my hands on again and again. I ran them the length of the dip until they flared out just enough to grip her hips, so completely female and seductive. Her eyes were on my lips but she was testing me—teasing me and seeing who would be the first to break—I just knew it.
Me—I would be the first to break.
Hell, she’d already broken me.
She opened her mouth and I let the myriad of things I wanted her to say in this moment flicker through my head, “I want to do it again,” she whispered.
But she wasn’t getting away that easy.
I lowered my lips from just a breath away from hers and pressed them to her supple neck, letting the sweet, obsession inducing taste of her linger on my lips and then on my tongue. Her knees buckled the tiniest bit and I caught her, hands around her waist.
“What’s gonna happen when I really kiss you, Duchess? You gonna pass out on me?”
“Oh, it so won’t be me passing out, trust me. Plus, you said we were just friends.”
“Only after you stonewalled me, Cami. Let’s get some more of that aggression out. Pick up the hammer again.”
We stayed there for an hour and despite her thin frame, she was strong. After she was done, the metal was flatter, misshapen and flanged—but she’d done it.
“You did well. I’m proud of you.”
She flinched and I thought I’d said something wrong.
Shit, I’ve done it again.
“I’m sorry—I just meant…”
She turned in my cocoon. I put the metal to the side and took the hammer from her hands, just in case she wanted to slug me.
“No one’s ever told me that—like ever.”
“What? That they’re proud of you? That’s a damned shame. Let me try to make up for it. I’m proud just to be in your presence. I was proud of you today for being so incredible with Beth and her children. And I’m proud to be your—friend.”
A spring of tears bubbled above her lids and it shattered my heart—a beating organ which had been stagnant too long. I cupped her face in my hands, dirty as they were, having no business defiling her precious sun-kissed skin, “Don’t cry, Cami.”
I used my thumbs to wipe away the tears that chose to break free of their bonds and smudged her face in the process.
“See, this is why we can only be friends. One day with me and I’ve already spoiled you.”
“What,” her eyebrows creased and asked the question in lieu of her mouth.
“You’ve got dirt on your neck and face now. We’d better get you cleaned up before someone thinks we’ve been stoking more than the fire in here.”
She smiled through the curtain of fresh tears and wiped at them, smudging the dirt even more.
“The bathroom is across the hall from Will’s room. I’ll get everything put back while you clean up.”
She grinned at me and ducked away, leaving an icy absence despite my proximity to the fire beside me. I decided then and there, smothered by who I was and the care for her that grew like moss on an oak, that if I did this, I would do it right—the right way to make a woman fall in love with you.
And the only way I knew how was by example.
I smiled to myself as I remembered the stories told around the table that made my mother blush even after years and years of marriage. And if anyone was worth it—Cami was worth every solitary second.
With everything in its place, I stomped through the puddles towards the house, a warmth rippling through me at the sight of my boot marks next to hers. It wouldn’t bother me at all if they were solidified in concrete for me to witness every day. I walked in the house, purposefully letting the screen door slam behind me in case she was doing something—girly. But I didn’t hear a sound. A quick trip to the bathroom revealed no one and she wasn’t in the rest of the house either. I took one split glance out the back door window to see her there, hanging onto a splintered post for dear life and looking out towards what used to be the barn.
“Hey, you ok?” I asked as I opened the back door and closed it behind me.
She reached a hand behind her and I took it without a second thought. She drew me closer to her with a small tug and I went willingly. I’d go just about anywhere with her willingly.
“Was—was that the barn?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, her tiny, fingers pulsed, laced within mine.
“Mmmhmm,” the word yes refused and rebutted in my throat.
“Do you miss them?” It was an absurd question in my book but I realized that in hers, it may really be something to weigh. But the weight of how much I missed them was heavier than the anvil I took my aggression out on every day.
“Every day,” I paused to clear my throat. “Will looks just like my dad, and so do I. She makes a face when she’s aggravated and it’s like he’s alive again. Bridger and West take after my mother in personality, sweet, quiet—but still look like my dad, dark hair but with her blue eyes.”
“Like mine?” she asked.
“There’s no color in the world that compares to yours.” She bowed her head and I saw the blush creep up the back of her neck.
; “You never rebuilt the barn.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No—it just didn’t feel right. You knew already. Why’d you ask me if you knew?”
She switched from holding my hand to grabbing my forearm, “I didn’t. I mean, I knew they died in a fire in the barn, Aunt Mallory told me that much. But I didn’t know that’s why you left school. I didn’t even know you had been in school. I wouldn’t have asked…”
“It’s ok,” I wrapped my arm around her waist, “You can ask me anything, anytime. I trust you.”
She pulled back and looked at me like I’d just burned her prom dress, “You do?”
“Absolutely. Now, are we going to stare at the past all day or are you gonna let me treat you to lunch?”
She narrowed her gaze on me, “Sounds like a date.”
I raised my hands, palms out, “No ma’am. You said I missed that train. But I am gonna try to stay on the friendship train as long as you’ll let me.”
“Fine. But you have to change and clean up. You look like you got in a fight with the fireplace and lost.”
“Deal.”
I ran back inside, took the quickest shower of my life and put on clean clothes.
“Ready,” I asked her as she swung on my porch swing. She looked so good on it—like it was made for her pleasure and my perusal.
She nodded and we jumped in the truck. I brought her to the local diner and hoped to God she ate hamburgers, though her tiny waist denied it—called me blasphemous.
We sat on either side of a booth and she didn’t open her menu.
“You’re not gonna read the menu?”
“Nope, I thought I’d let you just get me whatever you got.”
“Sounds good.”
The waitress approached and we exchanged niceties, Mary Shannon and I had gone to high school together. I ordered a double cheeseburger with Swiss cheese instead of American, onion rings and a Coke—and then I doubled it.
When Mary Shannon left, I looked back to Cami who was covering her mouth with her hand.
“What?”
“She’s totally got the hots for you—like bad. She was so ready to ask me to leave so she could show you just how hot on this table.”