Even as he made his plans, there was a voice in the back of his mind that was thoroughly alarmed and wondering what the hell he was doing. Inviting her to dinner was starting down the slippery slope. However attractive she might be, he could not get involved with Norah. She needed things he couldn’t give and ignoring that was stupid to the point of insanity.
At the same time, it didn’t have to be a date, did it? Plenty of people cooked for their friends. Hell, Ben and Jonathon did it all summer long. Their cookouts were a staple in Corbin’s Bend. He didn’t even live in Corbin’s Bend and had been several times, at Ben’s invitation. It didn’t have to mean anything. They could just enjoy each other’s company. Couldn’t they?
He resolutely ignored the part of his mind that insisted on reminding him that going to a community cookout in a group in public was far different from the two of them having dinner alone. Particularly since he was already undeniably attracted to Norah, and unless he missed his guess completely, he wasn’t alone in that attraction. At the same time, he was a grown man, not some pubescent adolescent who couldn’t control his libido. He came across plenty of attractive women on a daily basis. That didn’t mean he needed to go jumping into bed with them or worse yet, diving into some sort of complicated relationship that would doubtless leave them both miserable. They could be friends. They could do things together. It wouldn’t hurt either of them to have company occasionally. That didn’t mean that it had to go any further. They would be fine.
And if he had to take a cold shower sometimes after spending an evening with Norah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Thus resolved, Caine gathered his gumbo ingredients and paid for them. Norah picked up a few more things before paying for her own purchases, and then they made their way out to explore other areas.
Owing to the good weather, the flea market was crowded today. Caine kept Maverick on a short leash close to his side, and more than once he found himself stepping to the outside of Norah to protect her from being run over by an oncoming group or guiding her with a hand on the small of her back. The first time he realized he had touched her that way, he drew back as quickly as he could, but she didn’t comment or protest. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to try to counteract the unconscious instinct, but it was no use. He still managed to find himself doing it several more times despite his best intentions. Finally, since Norah didn’t seem to mind, he gave up fighting it. After all, Norah was no shrinking violet. If it bothered her, she was perfectly capable of saying so.
They browsed for a while, making their way through booths filled with every sort of trinket and knickknack imaginable. Vendors sold everything from crappy DVDs to handmade crafts to actual vintage wares and antiques. Finally, Norah hit the jackpot when she stumbled on a booth filled with stacks and stacks of secondhand books. He knew in an instant that he’d lost her. She zeroed in on the potential merchandise with all the intensity of a homing pigeon. He watched her in amusement for a few minutes, but eventually Maverick got restless so he told her he was going to walk a little further and let Mav move around. Norah waved him off absentmindedly. He wasn’t entirely sure she had even heard him.
A booth at the end of the long aisle where he separated from Norah turned out to specialize in furniture, some antique and some custom. It was crammed end to end with various pieces. There was barely room to walk. Knowing Maverick wouldn’t appreciate the cramped quarters. Caine tied him securely to a nearby pole that supported the overhead shelter and made his way through to peruse the furniture.
Unlike a lot of things on offer at most of the places they had stopped today, the furniture here was a good quality. Good solid wood and competent craftsmanship from someone who clearly knew what they were doing. Eventually the proprietor came over to talk with him, asking if he were interested in a particular piece. Caine shook his head. There was nothing here he couldn’t do as well or better himself. Even so, he ended up getting into a discussion with the vendor about who was supplying them with their products. As he had suspected, the truly antique pieces came from estate sales. The custom pieces had been bought from here and there through various local craftsmen whenever a particular piece caught their eye. However, they had no regular suppliers. Caine dug into the pocket of his shorts, coming out with his wallet and pulling out a business card, explaining as he did that he made custom furniture himself. He could tell immediately that the seller was interested, and he was glad he’d taken the chance and introduced himself. If things worked out, this could be a mutually beneficial proposition for both of them. The seller could offer more custom pieces, and it would give Caine a steadier outlet for his work.
Though he had come into the booth simply out of professional curiosity, as they talked, a scuffed wooden headboard with a cracked board on the lower portion where it would have attached to a bed frame and mattress caught his eye. He walked over and maneuvered it out from behind the pile of other things where it was hidden in the corner, kneeling on the grass and running a hand over it experimentally, assessing and planning. Cosmetically, it wasn’t in great shape, but the structure was solid, and it could easily be recycled into something more functional. A bench perhaps. He had just worked out a deal with the seller when Norah found him. She had apparently been successful as well since she was carrying a midsize cardboard box filled with books.
“Looks like you found quite a bit,” he said, nodding in the direction of the box she carried.
“I did,” Norah confirmed, shifting the box into a more secure grip in her arms. “This isn’t all of it,” she admitted sheepishly. “They’re holding another box for me that I couldn’t carry. I came to see if you could help me, but it looks like you have your hands full too.” She eyed the headboard curiously. “Buying a new bed?”
Caine hauled the headboard up and secured it under his arm, half lifting and half dragging. “Nope. This is going to be a bench, the back of one anyway.”
“Really?” Norah said, intrigued.
“Really.” He explained his plans to add a seat and cushions to turn it into a hallway bench.
“Wow,” Norah said quietly. “I would’ve never seen that as anything other than a headboard, and a rather beat up one at that, but now that you’ve explained it, I can see the potential in it. In fact, I’d like to see it once you’re done. I might buy it myself for seating in the store.”
“I promised the seller here first rights to it in trade for the headboard, but if he doesn’t want it, it’s all yours,” Caine told her. “If he takes this one, I can always make you another one if you decide you would like one.”
“That’s a deal,” Norah agreed. While they were talking, the proprietor brought up a sort of flatbed hand truck and offered to let Caine use it to load the headboard. “Do you build things often?” Norah asked after they had loaded the headboard and her box of books onto the handtruck and were headed back down the aisle of stalls to pick up her other box of books.
Caine nodded. “All the time. The contracting pays the bills, but the furniture making is what I really love. One day I hope to make enough money with the furniture making to be up to giving up the contract work completely, and turn custom furniture into my full-time business.”
“You certainly seem to have an eye for it,” Norah told him, “but I’m glad you haven’t given up construction yet. If you had, I never would’ve met you, and I’m very glad I did.”
“I’m glad I met you too,” Caine said quietly. He was. He needed the work, but more than that, he had come to count Norah as a friend. He might, in the privacy of his own head, wish that they could be more than that, but even with knowing that could never happen, he didn’t regret it. He enjoyed spending time with her and would value her friendship for however long it lasted, be that days or years, and he was hoping for the latter.
Chapter 6
Norah, you in here?” Quincy called, coming into the bookstore a few days later.
“I’m in the back,” Norah answered from the storeroom. She w
as kneeling on the floor amidst cardboard boxes sorting and categorizing the books she’d bought from the yard sales and flea markets over the weekend. A moment later, Quincy appeared in the doorway.
“What’s all this?” she asked, gesturing around the room.
“Inventory,” Norah told her. “You’re looking at most of the romance and mystery categories of the used section of the store.”
“Where did it come from?” Quincy asked. “I know it wasn’t here Friday.”
“Caine and I hit the yard sales on Saturday,” Norah said. She shifted off of her knees, moving to sit cross-legged on the floor between several of the boxes, taking out books and sorting them into piles.
“Caine and you hit the yard sales?” Quincy echoed, voice rising sharply with interest and interrogation.
Norah nodded calmly without looking up from the books she was sorting. “He took me to the big flea market in Henderson.”
“He did, did he?” Quincy said curiously. “And how did that happen?”
“He was here when I was leaving,” Norah said. “He’d come by to check how things progressed on Friday. He didn’t like the idea of me going alone since I’m not familiar with the area and volunteered to come with me.”
“I see,” Quincy said in a tone that suggested she saw quite a bit more than Norah was actually saying.
“What?” Norah asked, looking up at her quizzically.
“Nothing,” Quincy said quickly with a carefully perfected air of innocence.
“Yeah, right. I can practically hear you thinking from here,” Norah said dryly. “Spill.”
“He just seems to be awfully protective and awfully interested in what you’re doing,” Quincy replied.
Norah shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. Well, okay, maybe it was like that for him. He was being pretty protective, but it wasn’t like that for me. I wasn’t giving into him being heavy-handed. I just decided it might be useful to have him around to help haul books.”
Quincy smirked. “If you say so...”
“I do,” Norah said firmly. She suppressed the urge to sigh. Why did everybody insist on making a big deal out of this? Was it so unusual that a man and woman could just be friends? “We enjoy each other’s company, but we’re just friends. That’s all. He’s not an HOH, and I’m not getting into a relationship that doesn’t have that kind of structure. Been there done that, have no intention of doing it again.”
“I hear you,” Quincy told her. “All I’m saying is he wouldn’t be the first vanilla to convert after falling for somebody here. You wouldn’t believe the number of people in the community who had no idea about the lifestyle when they first came.”
“Really?” Norah said. That was surprising. She’d been this way for most of her adult life, although there’d been a long time when she didn’t have words for it and even longer when she couldn’t be honest about it. Even then, however, there had always been something there. When she thought back on it, she had probably had a fascination with spanking since she was a small child. She’d never been spanked herself, and neither had anyone in her circle of friends that she could remember. It simply wasn’t something their parents did. Still, she had vivid memories of reading and rereading books that featured spanking. Little House on the Prairie, Tom Sawyer, so many of the classics. She’d had a strange fascination for as long as she could remember. As an adult, she had learned that this was common among many people who are interested in spanking and as such, had assumed that most of her new neighbors were the same. The idea that some of them had only come to this within the context of their current relationships was a revolutionary one. She had always assumed that, like her, spankos were born not made.
“Oh yes, honey,” Quincy replied, “Cadence Devon had no idea this was a spanko community when she first came here. Kieran O’Brien actually beat up Jim the first time he walked in on Jim and Angie because he thought Jim was abusing Angie. There are a good many converts around here. It’s not impossible.”
The thought gave her hope. Maybe there was a chance something more than friendship could develop between her and Caine after all. No. She forced herself to stop that thought as soon as it started. Going down that road was only asking for trouble. It was better to stay far away, no matter how tempting that fantasy might be. They could be friends, but that was all.
“I’d better go,” Quincy was saying. “I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing. I don’t want to leave Abby alone in the shop for too long.”
“Tell Abby I said hi,” Norah said.
“Will do,” Quincy replied, and then as quickly as she had come, she was gone.
After the conversation with Quincy had called him to mind, Caine haunted her thoughts despite her concentrated efforts to think of something – anything – else. Though the flooring had finally been finished, now there was painting being done so Caine was continuing to work out of his workshop at his house. It made sense for him to do most of his work there since he could focus on building the furniture she needed that couldn’t be done here. Still, she hadn’t seen him since they got back from the flea market on Saturday, and he hadn’t been here most of last week either owing to the flooring being done. Put plainly, she missed him. It was utterly ridiculous for her to miss him. She didn’t miss any of the other workers if they weren’t working here for a day or two. Heck, she didn’t really know any of the other workers. As far as she was concerned, they were all Caine’s people. She thought of them collectively, as a unit—the flooring people, the sheet rock people, the painters, etc. Caine was the only one she had any real interaction with, and the only one she thought of as an individual. So maybe it wasn’t exactly completely ridiculous for her to notice he was missing, to actively miss him though was something else again.
Still, she did miss him. There was no sense in pretending she didn’t, at least not in her own head. She wouldn’t have admitted it to anybody else for all the money in the world, but that was different.
Coming to the end of the box of books she had been sorting, she stacked the romance books back in the box and moved on to the next box that needed sorting. Mystery/crime thriller was the next largest category she had found so far so when the new box was empty she could store them in it. That decided, she started pulling stacks of books out of the new box and sorting them. Any romance got dropped in the box holding romance books and everything else got sorted into appropriate stacks on the floor. It wasn’t long before she was lost in the routine, working in a mechanical way that allowed her mind to drift elsewhere. Predictably, it drifted right back to Caine.
Okay, so she missed him. What was she going to do about it? She couldn’t exactly just call him and say so. That was beyond pathetic. She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed a man to function, and there was no way in Hell she wanted to give him that impression. She could just deal with it and do nothing, but she didn’t like that idea either. She wasn’t the type to just idly sit back and let life happen to her. If that were the case, she would’ve never made it past the first awful black days after John died. She would still be holed up in the apartment she didn’t like in the college town where she never fit in, and she would have never considered moving out here to chase this dream. No, she couldn’t just sit back and wait for something to happen. She had to do something, but what? Maybe she could invite him to dinner. No, going out to dinner seemed too much like a date, and that was a road they didn’t need to go down. It was better if they stayed friends. So what did friends do together? How utterly pathetic was it that she did not automatically know the answer to that question? The problem was, she hadn’t really had her own group of friends to socialize with since she was in college. Once she’d met John, their friends had become almost exclusively his friends—his grad school classmates, his coworkers, other faculty he was working with or wanted to impress. Her college friends had gone on with their lives and her life had revolved around his. The few friends she had made here were the first she’d had outside of work colleag
ues in a very long time, and so far, most of the things they had done together had been things in the community or things that they had suggested. Neither helped her at all with Caine.
That brought her back to her original question. Just how was she supposed to go about this? Okay, so dinner was out. Maybe they could go do something together? After all, the yard sale had been fun. Maybe they should try something like that again. Except that kind of thing was better on the weekends, and she definitely didn’t want to wait till the weekend to see him. She was making too much out of this. It couldn’t be that hard. What kinds of things had she done with her friends, even if it was years ago? Lunch or coffee, shopping, movies. That was it, she thought, remembering her conversation with Caine about The Princess Bride. He’d clearly missed some of the classics. She needed to do some serious movie reeducation with him.
Buoyed by the thought, Norah scrambled around to find her phone and dialed the number before she could talk herself out of it.
“Landry,” he said gruffly in answer. She thought she could hear a radio playing in the background. Belatedly, she hoped she had not interrupted him in the middle of some important moment on whatever project he was working on.
“Hi, Caine, it’s Norah,” she said.
“Norah, is everything okay?” he asked immediately.
“Yes, it’s fine,” she assured him. “Everything seems to be coming along fine with the store. I haven’t been out there much. I’m trying to stay out of the way, but what I’ve seen passing through looks fine.”
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