by Ruthie Knox
Julie had failed to mention that the spare room was part of her living quarters. They were at opposite ends of the sprawling attic, but they shared a bathroom. They could ignore each other all day long—and did, once breakfast was done with—but when the sun went down, they each had to strip naked and get wet within ten feet of the other.
At least he was making rapid progress on the kitchen job. Sublimation could be productive. He spent mornings working at his dad’s, afternoons on Julie’s ceiling, and he still had more energy left than he knew what to do with.
“Lotta ceiling,” he agreed. “I’m uncovering about a three-foot clean strip with every can.”
“Taking more than one pass, like you thought?”
“Yeah, twice over, letting it sit on there, then spot treatments and scrubbing with the toothbrush.”
“Better you than me,” Bruce said with a smile.
“Yeah, no kidding. So have you got four or five more cans?”
“I think so. Check the shelf, and if there’s not enough, I’ll look in the back.”
Carson wound his way through the narrow aisles of the store to the row of aerosols. “You decide yet if you’re going to lacquer it when you’re done?” Bruce called.
“Going to let Julie decide.”
He’d talk to her about it. It would give them something to discuss at breakfast besides the weather.
Carson wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Julie had managed to become even more distant and haughty since their first conversation in the kitchen. She served him breakfast in the formal dining room, elaborate omelets and scones with currants, linen napkins and heavy silver. Every time he got a conversation going, she remembered something he ostensibly needed—ketchup served in a little ceramic dish with a doily underneath it, a refill on his coffee. Then she cleared the table and went to work, and he didn’t see her until the afternoon, when she’d already had lunch and was usually on her way out to a meeting with the historical society or the Methodist ladies that kept her through dinner.
She disappeared into her room at night, and he sat on the couch in her living area, watching TV alone for hours.
Carson ran a finger along the row of aerosol cans.
“You need to put some kind of sealant on there,” Bruce shouted. “It’ll discolor on you if you don’t.”
“I hear you, Uncle.” His finger stopped at the oven cleaner. Six cans still sat on the shelf. He swept all of them against his chest with one arm and carried them up to the front.
“Leo was in here the other day,” Bruce said.
“Leo Potter?”
“You know another Leo?”
Carson shook his head. “He still a self-important wanker with too much money and no common sense?”
Bruce made a tsking noise. “Shouldn’t speak ill of him. With his dad gone, he owns the whole town these days.”
“Bet he acts like it, too.”
“He’s not so bad. Was askin’ me about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Carson wondered if that was supposed to spell trouble. What could Leo Potter care about him these days? They hadn’t spoken since high school. Their ancient, juvenile animosity couldn’t possibly carry weight any longer.
“Wanted to know why you were staying with his girlfriend.”
Or maybe it could. His fingers balled into fists, which he shoved into his front pockets for lack of anything better to do with them.
“Julie’s going out with Leo?”
“She has a few times.”
“How many’s a few?”
“Ask the ladies over to the cafe. They keep better tabs on that kind of thing than I do.”
“I’ll ask Julie.” His voice came out sounding exactly like his father’s. Irritable and bitter.
“There’s an idea. Tell her I said hello, will you?”
“Sure.”
Bruce rang up the oven cleaner, smiling because it was his default expression, and because he took great pleasure in making trouble.
“That girl’s a marvel,” he said. “If I were your age, I’d be half in love with her myself. Pretty, smart, and she’s made a world of difference in this town.”
“All right,” Carson said, handing over a fifty. “That’s enough.”
“You don’t put a ring on her finger, somebody else is going to do it soon enough. I heard Leo Potter was looking at ’em down at the mall in Fenimore.”
“Who told you that?” The idea of Leo shopping for rings at a down-market mall jewelry store was absurd.
Even more absurd, how it made Carson’s vision constrict to a tunnel.
“Your father.”
He shoved out his hand and took the change Bruce was trying to give him, crumpling the bills and coins into his pocket in an inelegant lump.
“You two are a pain in my ass.” Carson grabbed the plastic bag full of cans and headed for the door.
“Let me know about the lacquer,” Bruce said to his retreating back. “It’s gonna have to be a special order.”
“See you later, Uncle.”
“And put those in your coat. You don’t want them freezing on you on your way home.”
“Gotcha.”
The wind slammed into his face when he pushed the door open, and Bruce’s “So long, Nephew,” reached him from far away, a weak radio signal transmitted over a long distance.
Yesterday, they’d gotten the predicted ten inches. He tucked the bag under his arm, put on his hat and gloves, and zipped the cans inside his coat, all while crossing the parking lot at a diagonal that would take him toward Julie’s place.
Where he and Julie would be stuck alone together by another eight inches of snowfall if the weather report turned out to be right.
He spent the half mile back to the Comstock Pond Bed-and-Breakfast breathing in the cold air as deep as he could without coughing and trying to banish from his head any and all obsessive thoughts of Leo Potter, engagement rings, and Julie Long.
It didn’t work, so he focused on a very specific fantasy of Julie in the shower, wet and willing.
At least that one kept him warm.
It was curiosity that did her in. She ignored Carson’s presence in her kitchen as long as she could, but finally the chemical smell and the sound of bristles rubbing over metal drew her to him like a Siren’s song.
You just want to see how it’s going, she told herself. You don’t need to see him.
But, of course, she saw both. Half her kitchen ceiling stripped to the bare tin, and Carson Vance stripped down to a T-shirt, standing on the ladder, the muscles of his shoulders and arms flexing as he scrubbed at a stubborn spot.
He didn’t hear her walk in. The radio was on, blasting some rock station out of Syracuse. She got a glass of water from the tap and leaned against the counter, giving in to her impulse to watch him because she couldn’t give in to any of her other impulses, and every girl needed a vice.
Carson was hers.
His body had changed over the years, broadened and filled out. When she’d met him, he’d been slim, just growing out of skinny. Tall men took awhile to reach their finished size. Now he was beautifully proportioned, his back an inverted triangle that drew the eye down to his ass, his arms long and powerful, with a wingspan that made her jealous.
After a lost period of ogling, it began to sink in what he was doing. Working with oven cleaner. Bare-armed. Two small windows stood open, and both the hood on the stove and a spare fan sucked the dangerous fumes out of the room, which suggested Carson wasn’t entirely stupid, but his eye protection and gloves and long-sleeved shirt were heaped up on the kitchen counter, and she hated to think of all that golden skin stippled red and raw with chemical burns.
“Don’t you have any sense?” she snapped.
He wobbled, grabbed at a rung, then whipped around and fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. “I’m not the one surprising the man on the ladder.”
“Oven cleaner is dangerous. You’re asking to get scarred or go blind, working up there with no
sleeves or glasses.”
“That would be true if I were working with oven cleaner.”
“You’re not?” The smell of it hung in the air.
“No. Finished two rounds of stripping; now I’m cleaning it off with mineral spirits. This part’s pure elbow grease. Not dangerous.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his arms. “Guess it makes you hot.”
He climbed down from the ladder and turned down the music so they wouldn’t have to shout. “Guess it does.”
When he stopped moving, he was three feet away from her, separated by nothing but empty air. That was when she realized her mistake. She’d meant to just pop in and pop out again, not to engage him in conversation. Now she was stuck in her kitchen with an irritated Carson, whose T-shirt stretched across a chest that tugged at her hands like a magnet.
The whole thing was so ridiculous. Julie had been with other men. She’d fallen in love with Jason Kaas and would’ve married him if their relationship hadn’t imploded in a flurry of navel-gazing and recrimination a few months before the wedding. She’d had long-term boyfriends, short-term affairs, a memorable fling with a traveling businessman who stayed at the B&B five or six times. And then Leo, comfortable Leo, and their on-again, off-again, might-as-well-have-a-dinner-date-and-hook-up-again thing.
And yet here she was with Carson, staring and wanting like she always did. One barbed exchange from across a room, and she got wet. Carson was her weakness, her drug of choice, and she wondered how much of her life she’d spend trying to kick the habit. Was it because he’d been her first, or was it something else?
He got himself a glass of water and drained it in six long swallows while she tried not to watch him and failed.
Something about the sight of his throat muscles working set a tuning fork vibrating inside her. The life in him. The energy. She wanted to set her hand over his heart and feel it beat, tuck her nose against his neck and smell his skin as she found his pulse with her lips.
Always, he did this to her. Always.
She tore her gaze away. “The ceiling’s coming along really well.”
A lot of it was still a peeling mess, but he’d exposed and cleaned about half of it, and four or five strips of bare tin shone with a dull glow that exactly matched her fantasy of how it could be.
“You like it?”
“It’s great. How did you get it all glowy like that?”
“Polished it with steel wool.”
“Doesn’t that scratch?”
“Very fine steel wool. Have a little faith, woman.”
It gave her goose bumps when he called her “woman.”
She needed to leave.
“Did you check on your dad today?”
Oops.
“This morning, yeah.”
“How’s he doing? Is he all right with the snow?”
“I shoveled and salted the walk, filled the bird feeders, and made him some breakfast.”
It wasn’t like Carson to evade a direct question. “So is he all right?”
Carson leaned a hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “He’s alive. He spent the whole visit criticizing my shoveling technique and the way I scramble eggs. I’d say he’s fine.”
As long as she’d known them, the two men had never gotten along. Glory used to say Martin was a perfectionist, and his idea of the perfect son was a son who did everything exactly like him. And the fact was, Carson had a lot in common with his dad. They’d both rather do something than talk about it, and they wanted to do everything right, turning their math-teacher and engineer brains on every situation as if the world succumbed to logic.
All those similarities, but he never matched up to his father’s ideal, so at some point he’d stopped trying and started making a point of being different. Which meant that the way Martin saw it, he’d taught Carson everything he knew, and Carson had spit in his face.
Theirs wasn’t a relationship that could be repaired in a short visit, and short visits were all Carson could endure.
Thinking of how sad it would have made Glory to see them like this, Julie slipped up and said something stupid. “You could invite him over here for dinner.”
Carson’s eyes flashed. “Wouldn’t that be cozy?”
“What’s wrong with dinner?”
“Nothing. Only it’s just what he wants, isn’t it? The two of us playing house, and him to play the honored elder?”
“Does he?”
“He practically pushed me out the door to stay at your place. He wants us shacking up. Making babies by Christmas.”
“Don’t be crass.”
“I’m just telling you how it is, not what’s going to happen. I’m not interested, and even if I were, I understand you’re taken.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Bruce said you’re going out with Leo Potter. Congratulations.”
“On what?”
“On landing the richest guy in town. I bet he can pay for a lot of repairs on this place. That is, if you even end up keeping it. With a guy like Leo, you might be too busy doing trophy-wife stuff.” He picked a strand of her hair up to rub between his fingers. His lip curled into a sneer. “Getting your hair done and lunching with the ladies. I didn’t realize you wanted a ticket back to all that, but I guess it makes sense, with your background.”
“Why are you being a dick?”
But she knew. She knew why. He’d moved closer when he grabbed her hair, and now there was all this crazy heat moving between them, this full-body magnet insanity that made her want to strip off all her clothes and press up against him.
He was being a dick because that was how they got the lit match into the puddle of gasoline. That was how they short-circuited civility and jumped straight to sex.
And, God, she was letting him. His pigheaded, jealous taunts had her pulse hammering in her wrists, and her eyes jumped from his mouth to his dilating pupils to the base of his throat, the breadth of his chest. Soaking him up.
“Are you really going out with Leo?”
“Now and then.”
Really, more then than now. It had been a few months since she’d been on a date with Leo, and she understood that he was seeing a woman in Albany who owned her own restaurant. But Julie would be damned if she told Carson that.
He glowered down at her. When had he gotten so close? If she rose on her toes, she’d be kissing him. She didn’t want to kiss him.
She needed to.
“You’re fucking him,” he said.
And why did that release a pulse of slick heat between her legs? She’d have to analyze it later. Some primitive, disgusting reason having to do with possession and mastery and caveman sex.
“Now and then.”
Carson’s nostrils flared. “He any good?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Not really. How’d you two get together?”
“He asked me out.”
“Why’d you say yes?”
“He’s nice.”
“That’s all it takes to get into your pants these days?”
“I don’t know, Carson. If you were even capable of being nice, you could try it and see.”
Color rose up his neck to his cheeks, always flushed when he got turned on. His eyes black, his hair black, his mouth set in a cruel line. She’d seen this face when he was on top of her, his arms braced on either side of her head, holding her wrists down as he thrust. Vicious-looking, though there really wasn’t any viciousness in him.
Punish me, she thought.
Kiss me.
Oh my God, kiss me.
But he didn’t. The blather of the DJ on the radio gave way to the opening notes of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” and Carson surprised her by dropping his eyes and looking away out the window. For long seconds, he said nothing. Then he broke into a wide, lopsided grin that made her woozy.
“What?” she asked.
“We have a problem.”
They did.
They had such a problem.
“Seeing as you have a boyfriend, and I’m leaving town before too long, I’m going to do my best not to make it worse.” He turned the smile on her. “Can you help me?”
I don’t have a boyfriend, she wanted to say. But it wouldn’t be helpful to tell him that. And she did want to help, if by help he meant figure out a way for us to keep our hands off each other.
She defaulted to her frosty voice. “What might that entail?”
“I’m not exactly sure. You could start by not moaning my name in your bedroom.”
He’d heard her. Oh, Jesus. She hadn’t even known she’d said it, but it was all a bit of a blur, because she’d woken up from dreaming of him and slid her hand into her pajama pants, desperate for release. The orgasm had just about killed her.
And now all the blood in her body was painting her face red with mortification.
So much for frosty.
Carson shook his head, disgusted with himself, or with her, or more than likely with both of them.
But he was smiling—just a little bit.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad—the way they’d never been able to kill off the attraction. When he went back to college, she’d given him her blessing. She’d thought she could be an adult about it, that time would take care of the abject misery she fell into when she realized he was really gone. That after a while she would stop feeling like she was going to die of it.
And she had. She could live without loving him. She could love other people. She could find purpose and experience a meaningful, fulfilling life. She’d gotten by fine without Carson.
It was just her body that refused to give him up.
His hazel eyes held the same souped-up lust that burned through her, and he cupped her shoulder briefly, his hand heavy and hot before it dropped away.
“I want you, too, Julia Marie. But I’m not going to take you, and that’s all there is to it.”
Chapter Five
Carson turned the wad of steel wool over in his palm, exposing a clean surface to buff the ceiling with. He had a permanent crick in his neck, and his right shoulder ached from so many days spent working with his arms above his head—left to brace with, right to spray, scrape, clean, polish.