“But you said they liked the column.”
“They do. And they have questions. Lots of them.” She rolled her head to the side and looked at him meaningfully. “That they somehow think I can answer.”
“Well, that sounds like the idea for a continuation of the column. You can tackle some of their baking or cooking questions and find the answers that work. Keep the whole column thing rolling.”
“See, that’s the thing. That was Fran’s immediate response, too.”
“That’s great! But you don’t look excited. Listen, I know it pushed you to step outside your comfort zone, but it looks like taking that chance is paying off.”
“Will, I don’t want to be the bumbling baker forever. I don’t even want to be one for the next—however many days are left. I mean, I’m thrilled that I found a way to make this thing work, and I can’t thank your sisters enough for coming through with some recipes, but it’s not something I wanted to start, much less continue. It was just a means to an end, and the only way I could keep working at the paper at that moment. I don’t have a love for cooking or baking. What I do have is a healthy respect for not burning anything else to the ground. I mean, I do see now why Lily and Abby love it and I get the challenge, the reward. But it works for them because they had a natural love of the process. I have a natural fear of it. Funny for a few columns, but—”
“Not the future you’d imagined for yourself.”
She shook her head and let it tip back on the couch again. “Even less than being an advice columnist. What I want to write are stories about people, about what’s going on in our town and beyond. Nothing hard-hitting or gritty, we’re a little mountain town, we don’t really have hard-hitting and the only grit is the stuff on the roads after the snowstorms. But we do have people with amazing everyday life stories to tell and I’d love to be the one to tell them. Some cautionary, some motivating, some inspiring, rewarding, covering life’s ups and downs. And definitely not in a question-and-answer format.”
“So, have you pitched that to Fran?”
“I did when I was first hired on, but she had an urgent need to fill some slots and I was willing to be a team player, thinking it would earn me respect and I’d eventually win her trust and get to where I wanted to be. Instead I ended up getting moved from writing about resort events to giving advice, then getting fired from that and clinging on by a skinny string of Christmas cookie sprinkles.”
“The positive reaction to the column has to help put points back in your column, though, right?”
“It should, but I know Fran and she isn’t about to walk away from something that has readers already excited. She sees advertising dollar signs. And I see . . . I see being thankful I have a job—and I am—but I also see a future doing something I’m not cut out for. Again.”
“Have you thought about quitting? About relocating?”
She lifted her head, honestly surprised. “To where? The Gazette is our only paper. I don’t want to do big-city journalism, I want small town.”
“Bealetown is a small town. So is Riverside. I know they’re not your small town, but they’re still local to the area and to your background. At the very least, maybe the idea that you’re willing to walk might make Fran sit up and pay attention.”
She started to say something, then paused, then just looked at him, something close to wonder in her eyes. “You know, that also terrifies me. But kind of in a good way.”
He grinned, surprised by how much pleasure it gave him to see her light up . . . and see the wheels start to spin. He focused on her foot massage.
Still smiling, she tipped her head back again and closed her eyes.
“I remember the first time you did that.”
He took in the dreamy look of pleasure on her face, how relaxed she was, comfortable with him, trusting him. And, he couldn’t help it, it made him wonder what she would look like when she climaxed while under him, which immediately had him shifting a bit so her feet were a little further away from the bulge growing in his jeans.
“It was that all-nighter for the chem lab final, remember? We were sitting in the library on those godawful wooden chairs. My feet fell asleep for like the third time in an hour and you pulled them up in your lap and used those magic hands. God, it was like the best thing ever.” She sighed. “Still is.”
Santa shouldn’t put him on the naughty list. Santa should give me a freaking medal is what Santa should do. He wished he’d never sat on the couch. Wished he’d never promised friends first. Because they were already friends. Yes, a lot had happened to both of them since college, but the core things, the essence of who they were and why they’d connected, hadn’t changed at all. At least not as far as he could tell. In some ways it was as if they’d just picked up right where they’d left off.
Rationally he knew that wasn’t really possible, and that she was right. They didn’t really know each other in the sense of how they’d gotten from where they’d left off, to where they were today. But how much of that mattered? He wanted to know everything, every day of those gap years, all the ones that mattered anyway . . . but just how much of that did he have to know before he could kiss her again?
He’d thought about it a lot while driving to and from town. Hell, he’d thought about little else while he was supposed to be getting his office set up, too. He’d decided that it wasn’t really about the things that had happened in between. Clearly they were still interested in each other, still retained whatever goodwill they’d created as friends, still felt that unshakable bond. They were still attracted to each other, and, from what he could tell, Parker was just as interested as he in shifting their friendship to something more serious, or certainly more adult. He understood she didn’t want to make another relationship mistake. He wasn’t looking to add to her list, either.
But, to him, what mattered was what was happening now. What they shared now. What they learned about each other now. For lack of a better way of stating it, they had to do what other people did when figuring out a new relationship. They needed to date. To do the things couples did when they were first starting out.
Which seemed silly, in some respects, because they weren’t strangers to each other. But how else were they going to figure things out? How else to build the kind of trust needed for the kind of intimacy that friends didn’t share . . . but lovers did? He wasn’t even sure when it had happened. That first day in science lab? The night of the burned popcorn in her dorm? Or right that very second, sitting on the couch in his cabin, feeling so right and natural together, he couldn’t imagine coming home to an empty cabin now.
All he knew was that his heart was thumping and his palms were sweating. He wanted a lot more than sex with Clara Parker. He wanted it all.
But how did he ask his old college buddy who happened to be living with him out on a date?
“So, are you going to bake Lily’s cookies today? Do we have what you need? You should have called, I could have picked up—”
“I was going to, and realized I don’t have your cell phone number.”
“Sure you do—uh . . . no, wow. Now that I think about it, I guess we never did that.” It was another little reality check on where they were on the getting-to-know-you spectrum. Hell, even folks who were just dating for the first time had each other’s damn phone numbers. He picked up her phone from the coffee table and punched in his number. “Now you have it.” He pushed the number he’d just set, making his own phone ring. He dug it out and silenced it, then saved her incoming number. “And now I have yours. Sorry, should have done that when you got here.”
“We were a little deadline distracted.”
We were a lot of things distracted, he wanted to say. “I did bring you a little something else from town.”
“You did? I love little somethings.” She sat up straighter and slid her feet from his lap.
He should have been relieved, but he already missed the contact. “Well, you might not be as in love with this as I thought you
would, but I had Nick pick up the issues of the Gazette with your cookie column in them when he was over there doing some work today.”
She instantly broke out in a wide smile. “That’s the nicest thing. Despite my less-than-gracious comments on my future as a food columnist, I would like to see how Fran laid the thing out and where she positioned it.”
Will reached inside his jacket and slid out the papers he’d folded and tucked in the inside pocket. “I only kept the pages with the column, sorry, but I’m guessing you can get a pretty good idea.”
She shifted closer and took them, sliding her glasses down as she unfolded the sheaf and read through them. He had to curl his fingers into his palm to keep from tucking her next to him and reading them over her shoulder with her. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do . . . and yet . . .
“I like it.” She flipped to the second one. “I really do. Good placement, and I like how she set it up, more like an article with a recipe attached than the standard Dear Abby kind of thing.”
He grinned. “They used the photo. Cute.”
She smacked him with the paper, but was smiling. “It’s ridiculous, but sadly accurate. Thanks for taking that, by the way. You should have gotten photo credit. I told Fran.”
He slipped one of the papers away from her and looked more closely. “Hey, I did.” He shot her a wink. “I have my first published photographer credit. If I ever get tired of taking forensic photos of burned stuff, I’ll have a fall back.”
“Well, actually, that’s not far off. I am missing an eyebrow.”
He squinted. “The photo is too small to tell.” He glanced at her. “The dusting of flour on your cheek and smear of chocolate on your chin is sexy.”
She slid off her glasses. “Here. You clearly need these more than I do.”
He took them and perched the tiny lenses on his nose. “How do you see out of these things? Maybe that’s the baking problem right there. You’re only seeing half the recipe.”
She laughed and reached for her glasses, which he lifted out of reach, causing her to fall hands first in his lap. With fists landing in a very unfortunate place. His eyes might have crossed as he let out a little squeak of pain. Her efforts to scramble off of him only made the situation worse. So much worse. Until he lifted her off him and plopped her at the other end of the couch, then tried to take the throbbing pain like a man.
“Will, I’m so sorry!”
He merely nodded and gritted his teeth in what he hoped passed for a natural smile. “Fine,” he managed. “It’s all fine.” Or would be. Someday. If he never wanted kids.
“Maybe I should go to the store, get the stuff I need,” she offered. “You’ve been running around and taking care of me like some housebound invalid, but I’ve driven in this weather my whole life—”
Will cut her off with a shake of his head. It took a few more moments to form actual words, then sentences. “The roads in town are clear.” He shifted in his seat, winced again, then shook it off, or pretended to. “But living up here above town, the wind keeps blowing the roads shut with all the snow. With the plow it’s no big deal, but with that weight on the front, it doesn’t drive like a regular truck. I don’t want you out there.”
One partially singed red eyebrow lifted, but rather than the “I am woman, hear me roar” lecture he’d half expected, she said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. I almost burned down one house. We don’t need me on snowy mountain roads operating heavy machinery. Would it be too much of an imposition to ask you to drive me down for a little grocery store excursion? You can just drop me off if you have things you need to do at your new office or wherever.” She picked up her phone and smiled. “I could text you when I’m done.”
He smiled. “That’s a date.” Not exactly what he’d had in mind, but it was a start.
Chapter 8
Clara scowled as the little incoming mail alert chimed again. She shouldn’t have synced her new cookie column e-mail account to her cell phone. It had been dinging every other second since she’d stepped inside the grocery store. It was a miracle she didn’t have hive splotches all over her body by now just thinking about how she was going to respond to all of them. Or any of them. She’d thought a lot about Will’s idea while wandering the aisles. The more she considered it, the more she liked it. And only partly because it would give her an escape from having to play the bumbling baker one day longer than absolutely necessary. It wasn’t that she minded being the proverbial butt of the joke. In fact, that was the easiest part. She could just be herself.
She just wished she could be herself, writing about something that mattered to her.
As soon as she got home, she’d have to log in and start reading through them. Home. Will’s home, not her home. Although, admittedly, the cabin was where her mind had automatically gone. “Home base,” she corrected. And it was home base. Until she got contractors into her cottage, which she’d found out wasn’t going to happen until after the holidays. She’d gotten one of the local guys to go over and tarp, tape, and otherwise secure the back wall behind the cabinets where the fire had gone through the plaster and insulation, stopping just shy of going all the way through. But it wasn’t stable, and with the weather being unpredictable, Stan the contractor guy had recommended she cover it all up until it could be looked at by the insurance inspector, who also wasn’t coming until after Christmas. Which was yet a week away.
“Home base,” she repeated as she unloaded her cart onto the conveyor belt, her thoughts drifting to Will’s little cabin, tucked away up in the woods on the side of the mountain. It felt like more than simply a base, a rest stop. “Feels like home.” The check out girl gave her a questioning look, and Clara covered with a quick smile. “Talking to myself. Lists, always making lists.”
The young girl gave her the kind of half smile people did when they were pretty sure they were talking to a loony person, but figured it was better to play it safe and be nice. Clara was also pretty sure the girl was checking out her missing eyebrow. She tugged Will’s wool cap down a bit lower on her forehead, and stowed the filled grocery totes in her cart. She had bigger things to worry about. Like her e-mail.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out enough to see who was calling, then let out an embarrassingly loud laugh-snort when she saw the name on the screen. She answered the call, ignoring the grocery girl’s expression of pity. “Rescue Ranger? Really?”
“Well, you knew who it was, right?” Will’s deep chuckle warmed her right down to her previously numb toes.
She even grinned at the clerk before wheeling her cart toward the sliding front doors. “I’m just now getting done, are you close?”
“Very.”
She barely stopped short of running the cart right into him. “Cute,” she said into the phone.
“No, you are,” he said into his phone.
The familiar childhood tease shouldn’t have made her blush. Maybe it was the dimples. Maybe it was the fact that she’d been living for three straight days now with a guy who posed half naked for firemen calendars and was so sexually frustrated that it was a miracle she could walk straight. Whatever it was, she felt her skin go hot and her legs get a bit wobbly. Something about being outside the cabin, in the real world, changed things, made it seem somehow less safe, less predictable. Which made no sense given at least now there weren’t two beds and a very comfortable leather couch within close proximity.
She hung up her phone and pushed the cart so it rolled forward and bumped against his legs. “Good timing. You can steer.”
Still dimpled, tousled, and sexy as hell, he tucked his phone away and easily commandeered the cart. His smile faltered momentarily when he noted the number of grocery totes lining the inside of the cart. “I thought you said you just needed a few things. What are we baking?”
The “we” shouldn’t affect her like that, either. He used it so easily. So casually. At least that’s what she kept telling herself. In the three days she’d
been living under his roof, he’d been gone for large chunks of time, doing whatever it was he needed to be doing to get his new office set up. But since that first day when he’d manned the oven and anything having to do with potential fire hazards, he’d always been there when it came time to do the hands-on baking research part of her new job. And as much as she wished she could say otherwise, she was really going to hate it when the time came that she’d be doing it by herself. Yet another reason to think hard and fast about his idea of reaching for the job she wanted at another paper.
It was more than that, though. She liked working with him and it wasn’t lost on her how quickly and naturally they’d seemed to find a perfect rhythm. It was sort of like being chem lab partners again, only this time they got to eat the results of their experiments. Well, most of them.
“I’ve been cooped up in the house for two straight days now, with all that snow outside,” she said. And wanting to jump your bones for pretty much every single second of it. “I might have overcompensated a little with some additional comfort food.” Not that comfort food was any real substitute for sex, but it was better than nothing. Or it had felt that way when she was loading her cart.
“You should have said something, I’d—”
“No, it’s okay, really.” She sucked in her breath as they stepped outside into the bitter cold. “I should have eaten something before going shopping, but I also got things to restock your pantry and fridge. You’ve been kind enough to house me under unfortunate circumstances; the least I can do is contribute to the grocery bill. Speaking of which—” She turned, only to find he was a lot closer behind her than she’d thought. He’d parked the cart under one of the metal sidewalk barricades and was pulling his keys out when she more or less smacked right into him.
“Whoa there,” he said, smiling automatically, taking her arm and steadying her as if it was second nature. And, sadly, with her, it pretty much had to be. But he was always that. Right there for her.
The Sugar Cookie Sweetheart Swap Page 10