The First Kiss of Spring

by Emily March

  Oh crap. She wanted to talk. She was a talker. He wasn’t. He didn’t talk after sex. He slept. A little five-minute nap did wonders for a man. “Mmmm…”

  “I have to tell you, that was definitely the Worst Sex Ever.”

  His eyes sprang open. He turned his head just enough to look at her. She wore a cat-in-the-cream smile that sent shivers running up and down his spine.

  Under siege. Oh crap.

  She leaned forward and repeated. “Worst. Sex. Ever.”

  Following a moment’s pause, she added, “When can we do it again?”

  * * *

  Josh ran. Not literally, but that pretty much described what happened next. He mumbled. He made excuses. He beat feet as fast as humanly possible. It was the closest thing to a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sexual encounter he’d ever participated in. When he was sober, anyway.

  He wasn’t proud of himself. He tried hard not to be a jerk when it came to women. That was part of being the man he’d fought hard to become. The thing with Caitlin … he felt like he’d given into a craving and fallen off the wagon.

  Wonder if there is a twelve-step program for jerks?

  Still, he’d warned her, hadn’t he? He’d given her the opportunity to say no. It wasn’t all guilt rumbling around inside him. Josh was angry. Seriously pissed off. At himself. At her. At the circumstances.

  At Fate, the bitch.

  For all the good that did him. He could stand in his front yard and wave his fist at the clouds like Homer Simpson, but it wouldn’t change a thing. He could dig up the roots he’d sunk in Eternity Springs and go somewhere else, but that wouldn’t keep trouble from following him. He couldn’t change his past or the path of tornadoes or the identity of the new girl next door. Once Fate decided to play with him, he might as well lie back and enjoy it.

  In the meantime, he had three cars waiting for him that needed oil changes.

  Josh halfway expected Caitlin to come knocking on his door that afternoon, but it didn’t happen. Neither did she seek him out the following day. When a third day passed without his hearing so much as a peep from her and he’d developed what he feared was a permanent crick in his neck from looking over his shoulder all the time, he decided something needed to be done.

  What sort of siege was this, anyway?

  Deciding reconnaissance was in order, he went to Murphy’s for a burger and a double scoop of gossip.

  Shortly after dawn the following morning and after tossing and turning much of the night, he got up, put on his running shoes, and jogged to the rental house on Third Street which he’d learned she’d leased for a year. When she answered his knock looking mussed and sleepy and delicious, he said, “You want to go running?”

  She gave him round owl eyes. “What?”

  “You told me you like to run. Come with me.”

  “It’s not even seven o’clock yet!”

  “Early bird catches the worm. Besides, I open the shop at eight thirty.”

  She scowled at him. “Why do you call it a shop? It’s a garage.”

  He shrugged and checked his watch.

  “If you say ‘tick tock’ I’ll slam the door in your face.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Give me five to get dressed.” She opened the screen door and said, “C’mon in.”

  He was too curious to wait outside.

  The house was small, a two-bedroom Craftsman that appeared to have been updated within the past few years. A tower of moving boxes sat stacked against one wall, yet to be unpacked. The only furnishings in the front room were a sofa and a reading lamp.

  He picked up the paperback lying on the sofa and checked the title. A romance. “Figures.”

  He opened the book and started scanning the pages. Cindy Christopher had read historical romance novels when he lived with them. Josh would never admit it, but he’d read a few of them. Okay, a lot of them. Back then, he’d liked escaping to a world of rules.

  “Don’t make fun of me for my reading choices,” Caitlin said when she entered the room zipping up a running jacket.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He meant it. “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be. It’s cold out this morning.”

  “Great running weather.” Then, because Fate was running the show, after all, he bent down and gave her a quick friendly kiss. “Let’s go.”

  Caitlin was right about the chill in the air. When Flynn Brogan brought his Explorer in for an oil change yesterday, he’d mentioned the possibility of snow by the end of the week. While some of his neighbors claimed to dread the arrival of winter, Josh enjoyed the changing seasons for the same reason he liked the mountains. Nothing Malibu about Eternity Springs.

  They didn’t speak as they took his usual route through town, running side by side. He turned up the winding road to Cemetery Hill and at the cemetery gate, Caitlin called, “I need to sit for a few, Josh. Altitude.”

  He let her take the lead. She wove in and out of the rows of headstones until she reached an iron bench. There she bent over, rested her hands on her knees, and caught her breath. Josh removed his water bottle from his waist pack and silently offered it to her. After quenching her thirst, she sank onto the bench.

  “This is killing me. I haven’t run since I left New York.”

  “You should have told me to skip the hill.”

  “No. No. It’s good. It’s all good.”

  Josh took a seat beside her. He gestured toward a marker off to their left. “You have family here. Roots. Your people were an Eternity Springs founding family. I’ve toured the historical society’s museum.”

  “Yes. The Silver Miracle mine provided the basis of my mom’s family’s money. I inherited a share of it when my grandfather died. That’s the money I’m using to open Gingerbread House.”

  He pictured the Munster Mansion and imagined it restored to its former glory. “Nice name.”

  “I like it.”

  “Are you going to live there?”

  “No. I’ve worked from home enough to know that I’m happier keeping my work place separate from the place where I live.” She glanced at him then and asked, “So what are we doing here, Josh?”

  “You’re catching your breath.” He sucked in a breath, then added, “It’s what I’ve been doing since I made a beeline out of your attic.”

  She nodded. “You did escape awfully fast.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t well done of me.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “At least I remembered to haul that trunk to your car. What was in it? Lead bricks?”

  “Silver bars.”

  “Seriously?”

  Caitlin nodded. “It’s quite the find. In addition to the silver, the chest held a pair of photographs and some legal documents. Celeste is going to attempt to track down the rightful owner.”

  “Cool.”

  After that, they both fell silent. Josh watched the sun rising above the mountain peaks and searched for the words she deserved. Eloquence seemed to be beyond his capabilities at the moment, so he decided to keep it simple. “I owe you an apology and an explanation. I wasn’t thinking clearly the other day. Lust has a way of hazing a man’s mind.”

  “A woman’s too,” she said lightly. “Apology accepted. You needn’t worry that I’ve been sitting around stewing about it.”

  “Good.” He darted her a look. “So … you haven’t been around. Have you changed your mind about … well … laying siege?”

  “After the Worst Sex Ever?” Caitlin stretched out her legs, crossed them at the ankles. “Not hardly. But I’ve been busy. We started demo yesterday. Jax gave me a long list of decisions to make.”

  Josh really wished she hadn’t brought up the sex. He didn’t need to be distracted. “Ah … okay. Well, in that case, you should know why I’m dead serious about my intentions—or, I guess I should say my lack of intentions. I’m not just being a guy who isn’t ready to settle down or someone who shuns commitment. I’ll never change my mind an
d after what happened between us the other morning, I think you should know why.”

  “You are making it sound ominous.”

  “‘Ominous’ is a fitting word. So is the graveyard location for the telling of it.”

  Caitlin gave him a searching look. “Someone broke your heart, didn’t they?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking. Let me start from the beginning.”

  He pushed to his feet and began to pace. Caitlin watched him, distracted by the way his sweaty running shirt clung to his torso. He was a fine-looking man. Very fine.

  He dragged his hand down his face, then began. “Growing up, my life was anything but normal. I will not talk about it, so don’t bother asking questions. The pertinent information is that a few years back, I was feeling pretty good about life. I decided to make a run at normal.”

  Now she was intrigued. Nothing like someone telling you not to ask about something to make you want to ask about it.

  “There was a little girl living upstairs in my apartment building. Kelsey. I met her when she was four years old.”

  A child? Caitlin sat up straight upon hearing the obvious pain in his voice.

  He turned away from her, his hands braced on his hips. “I haven’t talked about this in a very long time. It’s not easy to do.”

  “Why don’t we walk?” she suggested.”I always find that difficult things are easier to talk about when I’m moving.”

  He nodded his agreement and Caitlin led the way. They walked almost to the end of the line of grave markers before he continued. “She was a little redhead with big green eyes. Eyes like yours. She was cute as a button, a little shy, but once she got to know you, she opened up. She and her mother had a hard time of it. Janie—her mom’s name was Janie—worked retail and her ex was always late on his child support. She struggled to keep a job.” He darted a look toward Caitlin and with a rueful smile added, “Daycare was a problem.”

  “It certainly can be,” she replied, keeping her tone even. Now was not the time to say I told you so.

  “I helped her. Took care of the kid a time or two. Janie and I got to be friends and then more than friends. Kelsey’s dad was never around. She took to calling me Daddy.”

  The naked pain in his voice caused her heart to catch, and Caitlin knew in that moment that this story was not one she wanted to hear.

  “I loved her. I fell head over heels for that little girl. Janie and I decided to get married. I was happy. We were happy. We were in the process of creating a family. We picked June tenth as our wedding date because she wanted to be a June bride.” He stopped abruptly and his jaw went as hard as the gravestones that surrounded them. “But April tenth came first.”

  Caitlin had an idea of where this story was headed. She wanted to hug him, but his manner held her off. Instead, she reached out and gave his arm a comforting touch.

  He glanced down at her. “Have you heard the story already?”

  “Not details, no. I know there was a storm.” She had not heard about a fiancée, however.

  He leaned back against a Davenport family gravestone and folded his arms. “Springtime in Tornado Alley. When a storm is brewing, the air has a certain feel to it. It’s heavy and still. There’s a sense of anticipation to it. We call it tornado weather, and if you live there, you know what it is. When the weather feels that way, you learn to keep an eye on the sky, an ear out for phone alerts.

  “The afternoon of April tenth felt like tornado weather. Janie managed a health food store in a strip mall, and she was due to get off at five. I didn’t like the way things were shaping up—I had a weird feeling in my gut—so I asked her to close a little early and come on home. I picked up Kelsey from daycare and brought her home. Janie drove up just as I pulled into the garage. I’d bought a house by then. The girls had been living there four months.

  “A little after four p.m. the storm sirens went off.” Though he gazed off toward Murphy Mountain, his thoughts were obviously somewhere else. He cleared his throat. “I will never forget stepping out onto my back porch and seeing that thing coming toward us. It was huge and black, horrible and compelling at the same time. You wanted to watch it. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Kelsey started crying. She was scared.” He dragged a hand across his mouth and repeated, “So scared.”

  Tears welled up inside Caitlin. She wanted to tell him to stop. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to know, didn’t need to know. Instead, she bit her lower lip and listened.

  “We huddled up in the bathroom at the center of the house. I even had a little helmet for Kelsey to wear. But as my luck would have it, this turned out to be an F4. Wind speeds well over two hundred miles an hour. You know how they always say that a tornado sounds like a train? It’s true. A train bearing down upon you. This happened almost a decade ago, but I hear that sound in my dreams. A big black monster of a train.”

  He swallowed hard, then said matter-of-factly. “We took a direct hit. Things started flying and falling down. Then the wind roared over us. Picked us up. It sucked Kelsey right out of my arms. I couldn’t hold her.” He blew out a heavy breath and repeated, “I couldn’t hold on to her.”

  Caitlin covered her mouth with both hands. She couldn’t hold back the tears. Such raw pain filled his expression. Her heart literally broke for him. “Oh, Josh. No. I’m so sorry.”

  He closed his eyes against the sorrow in hers and allowed the memories to wash over him. The brutal, unstoppable force. Bone-chilling fear. “Something whacked my head and knocked me out. The last thing I remember was losing my grip on Kelsey. The next thing I recall is Janie screaming.”

  “Help me. Help me. Help us. Josh, get up. You have to help us.”

  “The storm didn’t carry us far. Dropped all three of us into what had been the front yard. The only injury I had was a bump on the head. Janie…” He blew out another heavy breath. “The wind blew a shard of wood through her leg. Sliced an artery. She was bleeding out.”

  And she was crawling … crawling … trying to get to her daughter. Screaming. “Kelsey! Kelsey! Oh, God. Kelsey! Get up. Get up, baby!”

  Kelsey, a little rag doll lying still and broken in the debris of what had been their lives.

  “You didn’t hold on to her. Why didn’t you hold on to her? For God’s sake, Joshua. Get up! Get up! Help me. Help me. Help us!”

  He gave his head a shake, flinging away the memories. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Janie bled to death. Kelsey’s neck was broken. The great irony I learned later was that neither Janie’s store nor the daycare were hit.”

  Tears had spilled from Caitlin’s eyes and trailed down her cheek. “Josh, that’s the most horrible thing I ever heard. My heart breaks for you.”

  “It … messed me up. And, it fundamentally changed me.”

  “I’m sure it did. How do you deal with something like that?”

  Mainly drugs and booze.

  “How do you get over it?”

  You don’t. He shrugged.

  “Did you talk to someone afterward?”

  “A shrink, you mean?” Josh laughed and pushed away from the headstone. He continued the walk, his gaze snagging briefly on a stone angel set among the markers. If she only knew.

  “A mental health professional of some sort. Anyone would need help dealing with the aftermath of an event like the one you went through.”

  “Yes. I talked to a shrink.” Every day for three months, twice a week for months after that. “I thought I had a handle on it until the next storm got me a couple years later. Well, not me exactly. It took out my car. I’d loaned it to a friend. A girl I was dating.”

  Caitlin looked at him with dawning horror. “Josh…”

  “She wasn’t hurt. Storm blew through the parking lot where she worked. After that, I … backslid … a bit.” That was a nice way to put it. “The girl and I didn’t make it.”

  “You stayed in Oklahoma?”

  “Yep. Three more years.” Though of course, he’d been in
California a good chunk of that time. Clawing his way back seemed to take longer the older he got. “I mean … I’d been hit twice. I figured the odds of it happening again were slim to none.”

  “But it did?”

  “Yep. An F3 blew through my home and business, a marina that the bank and I owned on a lake about an hour from Oklahoma City. Only a hundred and eighty mile-an-hour wind this time and no one was hurt. We rode it out inside a tornado shelter. However, it flattened everything I owned. I had seven employees at the time. The previous owner had lost the business during the drought, but the year I bought it, the lake filled up and boats came back and were doing great.”

  “I can’t believe that. Three times? You’ve been hit by a tornado three times? What are the odds?”

  “Four times, if you count the house and business separately. As far as odds go…” He shrugged. “I’m snakebit.”

  “I understand why you would feel that way. What I don’t understand is why these horrible events have caused you to swear off relationships.”

  He took her hand and laced their fingers. “I’m tired of fighting my way back. Bone-tired of it. I honestly don’t have the fight left in me to do it again. I decided to make some changes so that I will never again be put in that position. First, I moved away from Tornado Alley. Second, I decided that I’ll never again be responsible for another person’s livelihood. I’ll either work for someone else, or for myself in a one-man operation. Finally…” He tugged her to a stop, released her hand, and placed his hands on her shoulders. Looking her square in the eyes, he stated, “… I decided that I’m done with relationships. I will not love again. Not a woman. Not a child.”

  He saw her subtly stiffen, but he pressed on. “Caitlin, before you and I go any further, I need you to hear what I’m saying. I refuse to be responsible for anyone else, ever again. I’ll be your friend. I’d like very much to be your friend. I’ll be your lover. I’d like that even more. But I will not fall in love with you. Ever. You need to believe me when it say it.”

  Some emotion he couldn’t name flickered in her eyes, but he didn’t let it stop him.

  He released his grip on her shoulders and slid his hands down to hers. Squeezing them gently, he insisted, “You deserve more. You deserve to be loved. You are a ‘forever’ kind of girl and you deserve a ‘forever’ guy. I can’t be that for you, Caitlin. I have nothing to offer you beyond the casual. You can’t let the notion that you might find ‘forever’ with me get in the way of finding ‘forever’ with somebody else. Call me a superstitious fool. Call me a coward. Both are probably true. But I’m not going to marry anyone, ever. I’m not going to fall in love with anyone, ever. You can lay siege all you want, but it’s not going to change those basic facts. It’s not going to change me.”