He saw the goose bumps, too.
And of course he remembered what she’d said: that she got them whenever she heard something particularly beautiful and true.
The way they both remembered, despite their busy lives, every single damn thing the other said.
“Oh, Eden! I’m so glad to have caught you!”
They both gave a start, as though they’d actually been caught in the middle of something other than goose bump perusal.
Jan Pennington, looking like a stinging insect in her bright yellow cardigan, was bearing down on them.
Gabe was off like a shot, perfidious man, to confer with a member of his staff, and Annelise was already skipping her way over to her mom and reflexively Eden reached out to scoop her into her body for a hug. “Good game, sweetie.”
“Since you missed the decorating committee meetings,” Jan said, with faint reproach, “I was hoping you could sign up the volunteers to man or woman our game and dunking booth.”
Jan thrust what appeared to be about ten sign-up sheets into Eden’s hands. Eden really didn’t have the right to say no to either: she knew it was all part of doing her share. All parents did, sick, well, busy, no matter what.
“Of course, Jan.”
But Jan was already zipping off again.
And Gabe had disappeared.
Chapter 10
Four nights later . . .
“. . . and then, if you can believe, they raised my flood insurance rates!”
“WHAT?” Gabe shouted.
“FLOOD INSURANCE!” Dion Gomez from the music store bellowed at him. Beaming.
Gabe just nodded sympathetically. He’d missed the entire first part of that sentence and had only caught a word here and there of the entire conversation, but he’d had about five shouted, tipsy conversations since he’d arrived at the Misty Cat for the Chamber of Commerce mixer an hour and a half ago, and his mood was rapidly abrading. Blue Room’s greatest hits were for some reason being played on an endless loop, and sometimes Gabe was in the mood for Jasper Townes’s uber-soulful rasp punctuated by the otherworldly howls. Other times he yearned for the days of LPs so he could take and smash it over one knee. Or hurl it like a discus.
He was three beers in because he couldn’t bring himself to drink the wine, and he’d started to feel them, which made him feel his age. And he was missing another softball game for this. Right about now he would love to take a hard swing at something, hear that SMACKing sound, and watch it soar to unfettered freedom.
No sign of Eden.
See, if she was here, no amount of shouted conversations or howling Jasper Townes would have made a difference.
She wasn’t here. And yet, after that soccer game moment, he’d been so sure they were reaching a sort of tipping point. After all, tonight was their cut-to-the-chase-aversary.
Greta from the New Age Store maneuvered through the crowd, then stopped and stared at him wide-eyed.
“What?” he said, this time a little churlishly.
“Gabe, your aura is really . . . well, you ought to have brought a fire extinguisher with you this evening, that’s all I can say, because that thing is . . .” Greta fanned herself with a hand and rolled her eyes in an ay-yi-yi fashion.
He scowled at her.
Greta just batted her eyes knowingly, smirked, amused, and took herself off to unnerve somebody else sufficiently enough to persuade them to buy a tarot reading in the back of her store.
Gabe took another few ill-advised steps toward the bar. Glenn was doing a booming business. He really liked all of Eden’s relatives, the ones he’d met anyway. He saw Glenn when he had lunch at the Misty Cat or drank after a game, at shows, at Annelise’s soccer games . . . if only Eden was as ubiquitous in his life as her dad was.
And there was still no sign of her.
Had she chickened out?
He was beginning to feel like he’d rearranged his schedule on a hope. Like a lovesick teenager. Not like a man who was patiently following a plan through to its conclusion.
What on earth was he doing? What were they doing? He’d been playing the long game, but the long game had begun to feel like a rubber band drawn way, way, way back, and everyone knew that hurt like a bitch when it finally snapped. Was her very elusiveness the attraction? Yet how was it that she didn’t feel elusive—she always seemed to reverberate through him even when she was nowhere near. But every little hit he took of her made him yearn for the next. He wanted her with a ferocity that made the sheets of his bed feel woven of burrs and thistles. That’s how much he tossed and turned at night lately. And he knew she wanted him, too. He’d never experienced anything like their chemistry. But, you know, life. It was what it was. Just because it felt meant to be didn’t mean it would, in fact, be. It seemed, however, inconceivable.
And then after all of that, when he turned around, there she was.
She was wearing a black dress. He’d never seen her in a dress. It hugged her slim curves and her knees were exposed, and a sweep of pale collarbone glowed and her hair was up and her neck was long and slim and pale.
It was hardly the uniform of a siren.
But he knew it was, so to speak, an anniversary present for him.
But all he could think of was pressing his lips to that place just above her heartbeat. Trailing his mouth down, down, down, closing his mouth on her nipple, hearing her gasp. Pressing her body against his.
He couldn’t say a damn thing. He stared, silent and hungry, mute with gratitude and relief, irritable that he should feel all of these things that made him feel as though he had no control at all. Understanding that things might be beyond one’s control didn’t stop him from wanting it.
She looked up at him, and he could have sworn it was like looking in a mirror. Her expression, that was.
And she made a beeline for him. Or, rather, she wove through the crowd, ninjalike in her black dress, and arrived before him, almost momentously.
She deserved a compliment, something gracious, eloquent, subtle.
She deserved to be maneuvered out into the moonlight and kissed like she was precious, made of blown glass.
She deserved a question, crafted in sweetness and subtlety, that would bookend the first part of this courtship.
What emerged from his mouth was: “What’s the best sex you ever had?”
What happened was her jaw dropped.
She stared at him in pure astonishment.
And then she yanked her phone from her purse and stared at it.
“Something’s come up, Gabe. I gotta run.”
She spun around and made a break for it just as fast as she’d arrived.
The next day . . .
Gabe grasped the sides of his skull gingerly. His brain was pulsing in there like a subwoofer. How much did he actually drink last night? It was a bad sign that he couldn’t remember. Cheap wine plus good beer plus . . . did he actually stay and do a shot after Eden took off like a . . . shot?
It was the first time he’d ever gone to school with a hangover, and he felt like a real sleaze. Even though he could cope, hands down. It wasn’t going to happen again.
That’s what enigmatic women would do to you.
Mrs. Maker peered in. “Mr. Caldera, I’m about to go pick up lunch. What can I get for you?”
“Oh, anything, Donna,” he said. “As long as it’s tuna on rye.”
Tuna was his preferred hangover food. Which seemed counterintuitive. Maybe it was a sort of punishment for overindulging.
She beamed. “I know just the thing! Oh, here’s Ms. Harwood. Thank you for the flowers, Eden, dear. They’re so lovely. I think he may have a minute or two before his next meeting, so don’t keep him long. I’ll be right back.”
And there she was in his doorway. Wearing jeans and a slim-fitting pale green ribbed turtleneck.
“Eden,” he said. Stunned.
“Annelise forgot her lunch—again—so I brought it to her. And I thought I’d bring this in here.”
&n
bsp; She came around to his side of the desk to slide something in front of him.
“Here’s the sign-up sheet for the dunking booth. Annelise thinks we’ll make the most money when you’re sitting up there, so we’re hoping you’ll take this shift.”
She leaned over to point at something, and when she did a long strand of hair she’d tucked behind her ear swung down and brushed against his jaw. It smelled like coconut and flowers. It was like a magic wand—it banished his hangover and filled his brain with what felt like helium and his blood with what felt like lava.
He was a man in quiet torment.
He stared down at it and said nothing.
For a long time.
Neither did she.
And then he finally looked up.
“Listen, Eden, I’m sorry about what I said last night. I was out of line.”
“Well, I did show you my clavicle. You were overcome. I get it. I didn’t run away because of that, Gabe. Sheesh. Sorry I did that.”
“Are you sure? Because it was practically like watching the roadrunner flee the coyote. Like a vrooming sound and cloud of dust.”
“You thought that question scared me?”
“Didn’t it?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. She tucked the hair back.
Damn.
“I thought about it all night, as a matter of fact,” she said.
He almost closed his eyes at the notion of her thinking about sex all night long.
He did and didn’t want to know the answer, he realized.
He wasn’t going to press the point.
“So why’d you split like that?” he asked.
“Mmm . . . well, Annelise texted that Danny—that’s my assistant and babysitter—had accidentally locked himself out of the house on the roof when he went up there to get Peace and Love down. Peace and Love can get his own sweet self down, but Danny is quite a Boy Scout and saw the need to do the rescue and . . .”
“Everything turn out okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got the ladder out, and Danny used it to get down and Peace and Love came down over the fence.”
“Oh good. Because I was on pins and needles there for a moment.” His voice had gotten softer. A little drowsier.
Somehow he—they—were closer now.
“Welcome to my life,” she murmured. “Thrills, chills, spills, never a dull mo—”
He stopped her sentence with his lips.
Why then? He didn’t know. It just seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. When you touch something hot, you jerk your hand away; when something you want overwhelmingly is right there, you take it.
His defenses were shattered by the hangover and the coconut hair.
After a millisecond of frozen astonishment, he could feel her go soft as smoke, yielding, which made him nearly savage with want in a very primal way.
But they ended that kiss.
Tacitly.
He sat back a little.
Closed his eyes. Sighed.
Opened them.
They remained motionless, their faces still a mere few inches apart. He could feel her breath, faster now, against his chin.
“God, Eden, it was . . . I’m sorry . . . your face was right there and . . . I couldn’t . . .”
What? Bear it any longer? Wait for one more millisecond?
He could see a faint old scar on her chin, probably from a childhood bout of chicken pox or some such. He was instantly ridiculously jealous of anyone who knew how it had gotten there. He wanted to know her life story. He wanted to protect her from future scars and heal all the old ones. It struck him distantly that these were somewhat feverish and irrational thoughts to be having three minutes before the class bell was due to ring, with the blinds slitted a little so that any determined person could peek in if they bent just so. Mrs. Maker couldn’t; sciatica was her besetting plague. Thank goodness for such mercies.
The second hand of the clock ticked forward.
“The stapler’s right there, too,” Eden whispered finally. “Are you going to kiss the stapler?”
She was a devil woman.
“I’ll kiss anything you want me to.” He made it sound like a blood vow.
Her pupils flared like black fireworks.
Above them, the skinny hand swept past another second.
She gasped when he slid his hand up through her hair and held her fast. This time he went in for a take-no-prisoners kiss, designed to melt bones, stop time, erase the memories of all kisses that had come before, what-the-fuck-did-they-have-to-lose kind of kiss. Molten, savage, skillful. They were on the clock.
He was a guy who knew how to make a point, and he never half-assed anything. Clearly, neither did she. Silk, heat, tongue, lips—the taste of her roared through his bloodstream, tightened all his muscles, sent red alerts to his groin. He curled one hand into the edge of his desk, a reflex against floating up to the ceiling, because suddenly whatever boundaries he’d once had melted away. And damn, she gave as good as she got. It was a hot, deep, dangerous tangle of tongues, the slide of lips. Nearly as carnal as fucking. Sweet. Jesus.
When she moaned softly, low in the back of her throat, guttural, helpless pleasure, he slipped his hand from her hair and sank backward into his chair.
One second before the bell rang.
Eden staggered back a few feet as if she’d just gone a few rounds on the roundabout out in the playground.
Classroom doors banged open. Rustling, the thunder of feet, shouts and laughter and the metal clang of lockers.
He closed his eyes briefly against the spin of the room.
He opened them again and turned his face up to hers.
If he’d had to assign a word to her expression, it would have been amazed. A little more nuanced than that, but still.
Her face was pink. Her eyes were hazy and hot.
He thought, I bet that’s what she looks like when she wakes up.
He thought right then he would literally die if he didn’t learn soon how she looked when she woke up.
There was a lot he could say right now: apologies and so forth. All of that would have been superfluous. She got the gist.
His fate was in her hands.
He didn’t regret it.
In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn’t so much taken a risk as issued a dare.
“Well, um, I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to get . . . get to . . .” Eden’s pitch, at least, was cheery. But her voice a husk. “See you tonight at the carnival, I suppose.”
She waved her arm vaguely at the hall outside his office.
“Of course.” His own voice had taken on a phone-sex timbre. He cleared his throat. It wouldn’t do for Mrs. Maker to think he was trying to seduce her when she delivered his lunch.
He would have stood up, like a gentleman, but he wasn’t eager to show off his erection to anyone else who might happen to walk in. “You know where to find me if you want me.”
He didn’t think he could make that any clearer.
She pressed her lips together. Then touched her fingers to them.
She turned and wobbled just a bit when she left, and he thought it was only right that a woman who had altered his own center of gravity to experience a little axis-tilt of her own.
It wasn’t easy to drive from the school parking lot back to Eden’s Garden while the dirtiest, hottest, sweetest kiss she’d ever participated in reverberated in her cells like a million dramatic little cymbal clashes, especially since she hadn’t scheduled “Get a grip” into her calendar that day. She didn’t even know how she’d draw that on her whiteboard.
Gabe Caldera should be a controlled substance. There was no way on earth anyone could kiss him and not want to do that again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
Such that logic and reason, when they finally ventured back into her awareness at around the third stop sign from home, felt like intrusions into reality, not a restoration of it.
; But ultimately they infiltrated her giddiness (“Dear Diary—Gabe Caldera kissed me!”) and a rather aggressive, almost punitive, sobriety set in.
Making out with the principal in the middle of the day when Mrs. Maker could unexpectedly pop in to ask, “Was that tuna or turkey?” wasn’t something any responsible mother should be doing.
But where did she think this was headed all along?
She’d been following a fascinating bread-crumb trail of questions right into the gingerbread house of sex. That’s what she’d been doing.
Maybe Jan Pennington had seen something in her all along. Some feral quality she’d managed to keep metaphorically trapped like a spider under a coffee cup, something she’d once done at the Misty Cat Tavern when she worked there as a teenager and completely forgot about, until it made a break for it the minute an unsuspecting customer lifted it. Whereupon said customer released a scream so blood-curdling another diner fainted face-first into her scrambled eggs. Boy, was her mom pissed at her.
So maybe this was who she was: tightly wound Eden unwound with a violent suddenness, usually with someone slightly scandalous, at least once a decade or so, the way a Corpse flower is said to bloom.
The last time she’d ended up with a pink plus sign on a stick.
And it felt like dangerous sacrilege that for the seconds she was kissing him . . . nothing else existed. There had been only her, only him, only need.
She had never felt that way before with any man.
And surely it was a perilous way for a mother of a ten-year-old to feel.
The carnival was clearly a roaring success, in part because it’s what happened in a town where the highlight of a given week was bingo at St. Ann’s, and in part because it was a chance for adults to mingle and have adult conversations with other adults while their kids ran happily amuck. There was a sort of tacit agreement that they had free rein to keep each other’s kids in line.
The grounds of the school field were studded with rented popcorn and cotton candy machines and carefully built game booths painted in blindingly cheerful primary colors, striped and polka-dotted and scrolled and labeled with suitably festive fonts, shiny, heavily glittered. Gabe paused to admire the “Fortunes Told Here!” sign and admired the “E” he’d painted.
The First Time at Firelight Falls Page 12