“I know!”
Aspen shook her head. “Go talk to him, Gina! This can’t all be coincidental.”
Aspen chanced a glance—turned in her seat and looked back toward the order counter. Sure enough, he was there—the same UPS guy from the bookstore and the Special Shapes Rodeo.
“Do it, Gina!” Aspen ordered in a whisper.
But Gina shook her head. “No. Let’s just go.”
“B-but…” Aspen began to argue.
Gina stood, hurriedly gathering up the remains of their lunch trash and piling it onto a red plastic tray.
“Let’s go before he sees us,” Gina said. She reached over, dumping the trash on the tray into the nearby garbage can and stacking the tray on the counter next to it. “Hurry up.”
“Wait!” Aspen began, but Gina was in escape mode. There would be no stopping her.
Yet as they turned toward the door, they heard his voice—heard the handsome UPS guy say, “Hold on, man. I left my wallet in my truck.”
Aspen and Gina both watched as the handsome UPS guy strode toward the door, easily reaching it before they did.
Gina blushed as the man held the door open, flashing a brilliant smile and saying, “There you go, ladies. Have a nice day.”
“Thanks,” Aspen said as they walked out the door.
“You’re welcome,” he said, still smiling.
As they walked to the car, Aspen jabbed Gina in the ribs with one elbow.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You didn’t even thank him.”
“Because I thought I was going to die!” Gina grumbled. Aspen started to scold Gina, but Gina interrupted, “And don’t go nagging me! Who was it that didn’t have the guts to talk to the hot guy jogging through the park a couple of months ago?”
It was true. Aspen couldn’t argue that point. If it hadn’t been for that stupid spider, she might never have met Rake.
“Okay,” Aspen relented. “But promise me. Promise me that the next time you see him, you’ll say something. Maybe go wild and say, like, hi or something brazen like that.”
“I’ll think about it,” Gina said. She sighed, obviously discouraged. “Come on. I’ll be late getting back to work.”
Aspen wouldn’t press Gina any further. She had no right to. Still, it upset her that her normally outgoing, confident friend should look so defeated in those moments. She’d talk to Rake about it—later that day, after work. She was supposed to meet him at the shop so they could run to the mall and pick up some new jeans for him. Maybe Rake could give her some comfort, some encouragement where her worries over Gina were concerned. She was sure he could. Rake always made her feel better—about absolutely everything.
“Hey, baby,” Rake greeted, smiling at Aspen as she entered his workshop. He didn’t pause—simply gathered Aspen into his arms, pulling her body flush with his as he kissed her. As always, Aspen felt her knees turn to jelly, goose bumps racing over her arms and legs—a blissful wave of pure pleasure! His kisses were teasing at first—playful and restrained. His kiss grew more demanding—drinking pleasure from her lips—drowning her in euphoria!
The taste of his kiss, the scent of his skin, the wonderful feel of his whiskers against the tender flesh around her mouth—all of it was familiar now—marvelously familiar!
“We don’t have time for this,” Aspen breathed as his mouth toyed with her neck a moment.
“Time?” he chuckled. “You belong to a watchmaker, mi hija.” Aspen smiled as she watched him reach over to his workbench and stop the pendulum of the mantel clock he’d been working on—cease its rhythmic timekeeping tick-tock. “See? I can stop time. Now we have plenty…plenty of time to bathe in kissing…the dangerous kind of kissing.”
Aspen’s heart—already entirely aflutter—leapt in her chest.
“The dangerous kind?” she asked.
“You know what I mean,” he mumbled, his mouth only a breath from her own. “The kind that would get us in trouble…if we ever let it.”
He started to kiss her again but paused, smiling.
“What?” she asked, reaching up to run her fingers through the softness of his hair.
“It just hit me,” he began. “The time of Aspen Falls.”
“What do you mean?” Aspen asked.
“I’m a watchmaker,” he explained. “Actually, I control time, right? I mean, you’ve just seen it—my power over time.”
“Yeah,” she giggled, playing along.
“Well, don’t you see? I control the time of Aspen Falls. Not only that…maybe I am time itself…the time of Aspen Falls. Cool! I’m in the poem now,” he said.
Aspen smiled at him and traced his rugged jaw with the back of her fingers.
“You were already in the poem, Rake Locker,” she whispered.
“How?” he asked.
Aspen smiled, no longer shy about reciting the poem to him.
“‘For the moon is the gypsy’s lover,’” she began, tracing his lips with one finger, “‘And no sight makes the moon shine more’—”
“Than her golden ribbons of Aspen,’” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. He cupped her chin, caressed her lips with his thumb, and added, “And the rubied jewels at her door.” He smiled. “So I’m the moon, huh? And you’re the mountain gypsy?”
“Yes,” Aspen giggled.
“Ooo,” he breathed. “‘For the moon is the gypsy’s lover.’ I like that…especially the lover part.” Aspen giggled, desperate for his kiss. “‘And the rubied jewels at her door,’” he repeated. He kissed her lightly. “I get it now. Your lips are the rubied jewels, and your mouth…” He kissed her again. “Your mouth is all I can think about sometimes—actually, most of the time. And there’s that time thing again.”
His mouth captured hers in a deep, driven, demanding kiss at last. She loved him! It’s all she could think of. As he kissed her, held her in the power of his arms, all other thoughts were gone from her mind. All Aspen could fathom in those moments was how entirely she loved Rake Locker.
“Hello? Rake? Are you still here?”
Rake sighed as he broke the seal of their mouths. Aspen smiled at him and wiped the excess moisture from her lips with her fingers. It was a man’s voice that had interrupted them—probably a customer.
“It sounds like Sean,” Rake said, smiling at Aspen and brushing another strand of hair from her face. “Looks like you were saved by the UPS guy.”
“What?” Aspen asked.
“It’s my friend Sean,” he explained. “He works for UPS. Gina would probably totally dig him.”
Aspen felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as Rake called, “I’m comin’, man! I’ll be right there.”
“Y-you have a friend who’s a UPS guy?” Aspen asked.
“Yeah,” Rake said. “You’ll like him. He was on the crew for that new special shapes UPS balloon this year.” He took her hand and began pulling her toward the showroom. “Come on. I want you to meet him.”
Aspen gulped—literally quit breathing—when she entered the Clock Shop showroom to see Gina’s handsome, wavy-haired UPS man standing at the counter.
“Hey, man,” Rake greeted. He dropped Aspen’s hand, shaking the offered hand of the UPS guy. The two men bumped opposing shoulders and patted each other once on the back. “What’s going on?”
“Looks like you’ve got some new parts, man,” the UPS guy said to Rake, although his eyes were fixed to Aspen. “I saw you today at Blake’s,” he said. “And the Special Shapes Rodeo too, I think.”
“Y-yeah,” Aspen stammered. How could it be? How could it be that Rake was friends with Gina’s dream man?
“You know my woman, dude?” Rake asked, looking from Aspen to the man and back.
“I’ve seen her a couple of times,” the man said. “But we’ve never actually met.”
“Well…Aspen…this is Sean. Sean, this is Aspen. And don’t get any ideas. I saw her first.”
“Ni
ce to meet you, Aspen,” Sean said, smiling and offering a hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Aspen said, accepting his handshake.
“You gonna play this year?” Sean asked, handing a scanner and a stylus to Rake.
“I don’t know,” Rake said, shaking his head. “I guess I’m in…if Aspen’s willing to waste her time coming to some basketball games.”
“He’s a mad roundballer, Aspen,” Sean said. “Our team won’t win one game if you don’t let him play.”
“Let him play? Wh-what do I have to do with whether or not he plays basketball?” Aspen asked.
Rake and Sean looked at each other, an expression of amused mutual understanding passing between them.
Rake used the stylus to sign on the scanner. Handing the scanner and stylus back to Sean, he said, “Sean knows that if it comes down between time spent with my woman and playing basketball with a bunch of sweaty men….”
He shrugged as Sean said, “Us sweaty men will lose by a mile.”
“When’s the first game?” Aspen asked. She had an idea. She not only wanted Rake to play basketball—wanted to watch him play, knowing it would be fabulous—but maybe she could coax Gina into coming to one of Rake’s games and meeting Sean!
“Next week,” Sean said.
“You should play,” Aspen said, taking hold of Rake’s arm. He smiled but frowned a little too, curious about her anxious reaction.
“Okay,” he said, his smoldering eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“Cool!” Sean said, nodding toward a box on the counter. “Meet me at the gym on Thursday, and we’ll hoop it up.”
“Okay, man,” Rake said, still looking at Aspen.
“Nice to meet you, Aspen,” Sean said. “I can see why Rake’s been off the grid for so long.”
“’Bye,” Aspen said. She tossed a wave at Sean as he left the shop.
“Okay, baby,” Rake said. “What’s going on? You sure took to Sean like a kitten takes to tuna.”
Aspen smiled. “It’s him! Rake…it’s him!”
“Who?” he asked. Aspen thought he looked a little worried—jealous maybe.
“Gina’s UPS man!” she explained. She wanted him to understand—understand it was Gina who was interested in his friend, not her.
His frown deepened. “The one that’s always showing up wherever she is?” he asked. Aspen had mentioned Gina’s mystery UPS man to Rake on occasion. She was delighted he remembered. “You’re kidding me.”
“No! We saw him today at Lotaburger. It was weird! He ordered the same exact thing Gina gets,” she explained.
“My friend Sean,” he said, pointing to the door. “He’s the UPS guy Gina has been bumping into all over town?”
“Yes!” Aspen giggled. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you knew him!”
“I didn’t know I did…know the mystery UPS dream man, I mean.” He smiled, his eyes suddenly lighting up with mischief. “He’s single, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yep!”
“Girlfriend?”
“Nope. Not for a while now.”
“Gina keeps seeing him, Rake,” Aspen explained. “It’s like they’re meant to be.” She wondered if he would doubt her—think she was silly for believing Gina was seeing Sean everywhere for a reason.
He grinned, gathered her into his arms, and said, “It might be. Kind of like the way my mouth and your mouth fit together so perfectly…as if they were two pieces to a puzzle.”
“Exactly,” Aspen said.
She recognized the fiery smolder in his eyes, but he didn’t kiss her.
“Let’s go…before I lock that door, stop every clock in this place, and have my way with you, Aspen Falls,” he said.
“What if I want you to—” she began.
“Don’t tease me about that today, Aspen,” Rake interrupted.
Aspen frowned. He always teased her about having his way with her, and she always reciprocated. It had become a running joke between them.
“But we always—”
“Today’s different,” he said.
“Why?”
He smiled, tracing her lips with his thumb as he laid a palm against her cheek.
“Because today…I’m not teasing.”
“Oh,” she breathed, an impish delight rising in her. “Okay then,” she said, taking his hand. “Let’s go get you some new jeans. It’s getting to where the whole world knows what color of underwear you’re wearing.” It was true too. Aspen couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Rake in a pair of jeans that didn’t have some progression of holes at the corners of the back pockets.
Rake watched Aspen as she piled three new pairs of Levi’s on the register counter. She was too adorable! His mouth watered; every inch of his flesh seemed on fire.
“Do you need anything else while we’re here?” she asked. “I get the feeling you’re not into shopping. So if you need anything else…maybe you should get it now.”
Rake looked down at the front of the blue-and-white flannel shirt he wore—the same one he’d been wearing the day the hot air balloon bumped the sandbar and dumped some passengers out of the basket. He’d torn the shirt—ripped a couple of strips off the tail.
“Maybe a shirt,” he said, smiling at her. He glanced around and saw a display of flannel shirts stacked on a nearby shelf. He reached out, pulling an extra-large, red-and-white shirt from the pile. “Here,” he said, tossing it onto the counter on top of the stack of jeans.
Aspen giggled. Shaking her pretty head, she looked at the cashier and said, “That’s it, I guess.”
The cashier glanced at Rake and then to Aspen. Rake watched the cashier blush, smile, and say, “With a man like that…I’m guessing the fewer clothes the better.”
Rake quickly looked to Aspen. Would she be mad? He’d expected her to lose her cool so many times at the way women flirted with him, but she never had—not yet—at least not that he could tell. She seemed to have accepted it and had an easier time than he had accepting it when he caught other men checking her out. He watched her face for some sign of blame—of blaming him for the woman’s insinuative remark.
Aspen smiled, however, nodded at the cashier, and said, “Oh, you have no idea!”
Touché! He couldn’t help but grin at Aspen being so quick on her feet.
“I’m sure,” the cashier mumbled as she scanned the items Aspen had placed on the counter. “That’ll be a hundred and thirty-two ninety-seven. Will that be debit or credit?”
“Debit,” Rake answered, taking his wallet out of his back right pocket. Instead of taking his debit card out of his wallet, however, he handed the wallet to Aspen. “Use the gold one,” he said, winking at her. He leaned forward, whispering the pin number to her. He could tell by the smile on her face that she was delighted. There was something about trusting a woman with your debit card that made her feel trusted and important.
Aspen opened his wallet, removed his gold Visa debit card, and started to slide it through the cashier’s card machine.
“Oh! Are you sure you don’t want to try this shirt on first?” she asked.
Rake glanced around the store. He counted at least five women staring at him and Aspen. He didn’t understand it—why women always stared at him the way they did. He knew he was better looking than a lot of men but nothing to deserve the kind of staring he’d always had to endure. His temper was a little tweaked in that moment. Fine! They wanted a show, then he’d give them one.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
Aspen felt her mouth gape open as Rake put his hands to his chest. The quick snips of snaps unsnapping echoed through the room as Rake pulled his old flannel shirt open, stripping it from his body and handing it to Aspen. He opened the bag the cashier had put his purchased items in and removed the shirt. Breaking the white plastic tag fixture, he tossed the cost tag to the counter and put the shirt on. He nodded at Aspen as he buttoned the buttons up the front of the shirt.
“It’
s fine,” he said.
Aspen—mouth still gaping—slid Rake’s debit card through the card reader. She glanced around a moment before entering his pin number. Every woman in the store was staring, smiles plastered on their faces, eyes bright with delight.
“H-here’s your receipt,” the cashier said, blushing as she continued to stare at Rake.
“Thank you,” Aspen said. She wrapped the receipt around Rake’s debit card, put the card back in his wallet, and handed his wallet to him.
“Thanks,” Rake said. He shoved his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the bag off the counter. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Aspen said. She shoved his discarded shirt in to the bag she was still carrying from another store and nodded.
She smiled when Rake put one strong arm around her shoulders. He kissed her mouth rather ravenously as they left the store.
“You are a naughty boy,” Aspen giggled once they’d cleared the store’s entrance and were walking in the mall once more.
He shrugged. “Sometimes you just gotta…you know…do stuff.”
Aspen giggled, and Rake smiled.
“I guess so,” she said.
The Time of Aspen Falls Page 22