by Julie
Greg looked in both their faces and knew they had him nailed, that he'd been doing exactly what they thought he had: chasing after Annie, warming up to kissing her and touching her and doing things to her that no twenty-year-old guy should be doing with a girl her age.
He'd apologized. And he'd meant it to the depths of his soul. By the time they left, Hank had cooled off a little.
Ted had clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a good man, Greg. We think the world of you."
And Greg had sworn to himself he'd never let Hank - or Ted - down again.
After that, it went just as Annie said. He avoided her as much as possible. He only talked to her when there were other people around. More than once, he caught her watching him, a sad look on her face, a searching light in her eyes. But they never spoke about it. He made sure there were no opportunities for any heart-to-heart discussions of why he'd chased after her and then suddenly stopped.
He supposed, by the time of the accident, he was used to things the way they were. He'd gotten into the habit of seeing Annie in a certain way.
They lost Hank. And he and Annie grew close. But he'd always kept strictly to the promise he'd made that day when Hank and Ted came to see him.
He'd never again so much as considered putting a move on her.
Until that Friday night.
And since then, everything had gone haywire. He was walking around like a shell of himself, going through the motions of his life without really living it. And Annie was leaving town.
Late Tuesday afternoon, when he got off duty, Greg went home to the three-bedroom house on Alamo Court that he'd bought a year and a half before on an FHA loan. Lately, the damn place seemed kind of echoing and empty, though until that Friday, he'd been contented as a cat in a creamery there.
He got a beer from the fridge and a Man's Meal dinner from the freezer and turned on the oven. Then he parked himself at the round oak table he and Annie had refinished together. He stared at the salt and pepper shakers as he sipped his beer.
The oven beeped and the doorbell rang at the same time. Greg got up, put the dinner in to heat and went to the door to find Ted Grant standing on the porch.
Ted smiled that low-key, easy smile of his. "Got a minute?"
Greg shrugged, though a sudden uneasiness tightened the muscles between his shoulder blades. "Sure. Come on in."
Greg got Ted a beer and they sat at the table together.
"Place is lookin' good," Ted said.
Greg knocked back a big gulp of brew. "I'm working on it."
Ted leaned a long, skinny arm on the table. "Haven't seen you around much lately."
"Yeah. Sorry. Been busy." Lame, Greg thought. Really lame.
Ted sipped, set the beer down and picked at the label. He glanced up at Greg from under graying brows. "You know, there's nothin' I hate more than meddling parents."
Greg's stomach knotted up the way it was always doing lately, and the tension between his shoulder blades pulled all the tighter. "Is this about Annie?"
Ted let out a heavy sigh. "Yeah. 'Fraid so."
Greg shoved back his chair. "I think I need another beer."
Ted grunted. "You know what? Get me one, too." Greg did the honors and then dropped back into his seat. "So, all right. Hit me with it."
Ted took a long drink, and then plunked the beer down. "You in love with my daughter?"
Greg swallowed. Hard. His heart galloped as if it was trying to race itself out of his chest. And then he said it, he confessed it. "Yeah. I guess I am."
"Well, hot damn," said Ted, looking nothing short of relieved. "It's about time."
Greg drank more beer, a big, long guzzle of it - and then almost choked. Somewhere in mid-guzzle, his throat had locked up tight.
Ted added, "Truth is, we been waitin' for years now, your mom and dad, me and Naomi."
Greg managed to speak. "Waiting for...?”
“Why, for you two to come to your senses about each other."
Greg realized his mouth was hanging open. He shut it - and looked away.
Ted must have known what was going through his mind. "Come on, man. That was nine years ago. Annie was too young. When you started coming around to see her, we all got worried. You two could have burned the house down with those looks you were giving each other. I knew I had to step in then, or there'd be trouble on the way. But now..." Ted seemed to run out of words.
Greg prompted, "Now, what?"
"Son, I'm not tellin' you - either of you - what you should do, how you should live. But it seems only right I should at least let you know that I - and Naomi, too - we're completely aware that this ain't nine years ago. And whatever's gone wrong between the two of you, if you work it out and end up together, you'll make Naomi and me about as happy as two old folks are likely to be, and that is no lie."
After Ted left, Greg took his dinner out of the oven. Though it was his favorite - Salisbury steak and cheesy potatoes - he tossed it in the trash. His appetite had vanished. He got another beer out of the fridge, opened it - and then left it on the counter untouched.
He wandered into the living room. For a while he stood at the big front window, looking out at the yard, thinking he really needed to get going on the landscaping he and Annie had talked about. Put in a few bushes, sod the muddy patch of lawn.
When staring out the window got old, he meandered back to the kitchen again - and then out the kitchen door to the garage.
He went straight to the hunk of chrome and steel in the corner and whipped the tarp away. Beneath it, the big, low bike gleamed, silver-metallic paint catching the light and shimmering, the detailing fresh and sharp as new.
He swung a leg over, straddling her, gripping the fat rubber handles. She was, according to just about any source you might name, the most primitive ride on the planet. On the open road, she shook like an overloaded dryer in a cheap Laundromat. But so what?
As Hank used to say, God didn’t make motorcycles for sissies to ride.
Greg sank back on the seat and his gaze kind of wandered to the shelves on the far wall - to the two dusty black helmets waiting there, side by side. One had been Hank's, the helmet he should have been wearing the day that he died.
Somehow, Greg had ended up with it. Two helmets, he thought, and for what felt like the first time in a week and a half, Greg Flynn let himself smile.
Chapter 7
Annie stood at the open refrigerator trying to decide what to fix for dinner. Muffy sat on the floor a few feet away, purring in contentment and giving herself a nice bath after polishing off a full bowl of Fancy Feast.
"So, Muffy," Annie said to the cat. "You think chicken? Or hamburger steak?"
Muffy stopped bathing long enough to give Annie a low-eyed contented look, then went back to licking her paw.
“No input from you, huh?" Annie reached for the plastic-wrapped tray of chicken breasts.
And right then she heard it. Coming down the street. That low, rough rumble...
Annie tossed the chicken back into the fridge, shoved the door shut and ran to the front window as the sound came on louder - deep, hard and mean.
At the window, she paused, eyes tight shut, wishing...
Daring, once again, to dream. And then she looked down and... Greg!
On his beautiful silver Harley, right there in the driveway, black helmet gleaming in the fading sunlight He gunned the engine. The sound rose to a rumbling roar.
Annie pressed her face to the window - and he saw her! She waved as she spotted the other helmet strapped on behind him. He turned in the seat, got it free, held it up.
"Five minutes!" She mouthed the words at him through the glass. Her heart suddenly so light it seemed to lift her right off the ground, she signaled with five fingers spread wide and then whirled from the window headed for the bedroom to yank on some jeans and her sturdy Acme boots.
Below, Greg watched her vanish from view.
Not ten
seconds later, Ted and Naomi emerged from the main house.
"Lookin' good," said Ted.
"Just beautiful." Naomi, trailing her dishcloth, beamed at him.
Greg turned off the rumbling bike, his mind, his heart, his soul, the whole of him filled with Annie. "Takin'Annie for a ride. Five minutes and she'll be down, she said."
And Ted threw back his graying head and laughed. "If I were you, I wouldn't want to wait that long."
"Go on." Naomi beamed and waved her dish towel at him. "Get on up there. You know you want to."
It was all the encouragement he needed. Greg jumped off the bike, kicked the stand down and grabbed the key and the extra helmet. With a last, quick wave for Ted and Naomi, he headed for the stairs that led up to the apartment. When he got to the door, he pulled back the screen, raised his hand to knock - and then reconsidered. He tried the doorknob first. It opened. He stepped through, easing the screen gently shut.
Muffy sat on the floor in the kitchen, watching him through wide green eyes. He took off his helmet. "Hey, Muff."
The old cat gave him a soft, welcoming "Reeow."
He set both helmets on the kitchen counter as he strode by, moving fast, toward the bedroom.
He stopped in the doorway.
Annie was right there, facing the far wall, pulling on a pair of jeans over those long, slim bare legs of hers. Her high, round little bottom was pointed right at him. The view was terrific; she wore a purple satin thong.
He cleared his throat.
She jumped about a foot in the air. "Oh! I was just..." Blushing red as her hair, she hobbled around to face him.
He couldn't wait any longer - to touch her, to kiss her, to do all the things he'd denied himself for so damn long. He shoved the door shut.
She let go of the jeans. They dropped around her ankles and she straightened up, eyes wide as headlights, mouth all trembly and soft.
He reached her in three big strides. "Annie..."
She bit her plump, trembling lip. "Oh, Greg..."
He didn't know where to start, didn't know how to tell her. "Annie, everything you said the other day..."
"Yeah?"
"It was dead on." She blinked. "Yeah?"
He nodded. "Somehow, I've had it all mixed up in my head - you and Hank, the accident. Annie, I gotta tell you true, after all these years..."
"Yeah?"
"When you were fifteen - I did want you then. So damn bad."
He'd never seen her look so happy. She sighed. "Oh, I knew it."
"But it was wrong then, you and me."
"I know that, too - oh, not then. I wouldn't face it then. It broke my teenage heart when you turned away from me. But as I've gotten older, as I've grown up, I've come to understand that it wouldn't have been right, not then."
He touched her hair, traced the perfect shape of her ear. "I spent a lot of bad nights dreaming of you then, training my mind not to go there, you know?"
"I do. I think I do."
"And then, when Hank died...I don't know, it all kind of got messed around in my head, just like you said. That I could take his place a little, be like the brother you lost, that if I kept you a kid in my mind, it would be..." His throat clutched up.
She suggested softly, "Like Hank wasn't gone?"
He gulped. "Yeah. Yeah, like that. Though it's crazy and makes no damn sense and I know it, somehow, I did think of it like that. Damn. Annie..."
"Yeah? Say it."
"When Heather broke it off with me?”
“Yeah?"
"She told me, then...”
“Told you...?"
"That she felt like the odd one out whenever you came around, that I ought to face the fact that you were the one I wanted, and not go breaking any other poor girls' hearts trying to convince myself that they could take your place."
"No. Really? Heather said that? She said that two years ago?"
He confessed, "Yeah."
"But you wouldn't listen to her?"
"That's right. I told her she was full of it. That she had it all wrong. But Annie, she had me pegged. And I was damn furious at her for it. It's crazy. Wild. Now, I'm kind of starting to think that everybody in Red Rock knew you and I should be together. Everybody had it figured out."
Her smile was wide and bright as a new day. "Everybody except you."
"Damn," he said. "Annie..." He looked down at her shining face, at her soft breasts swelling beneath her purple T-shirt, at those beautiful bare legs, at the purple polish on her pretty toes. He looked down - and pure lust slammed through him, heating his blood, tightening his jeans. He muttered, "I was going to take you for a ride.”
“But?"
"All I can think about is laying you down on that bed."
She lifted those slim arms and rested them on his shoulders. "Well, how 'bout this?”
“What?"
She surged up on tiptoe. "You take me for a ride, right here and now, on my bed." She gave him a beautiful, very naughty grin. "And then later we'll see about getting out on that bike."
What could he say to that? What did he need to say to that?
Not a damn thing.
It was a moment for action.
So he wrapped his arms around her and lowered his mouth to hers. She opened for him instantly, surging up tighter against him. He put his hands on her satiny bare bottom and tucked her up close, grinding himself into her. She moaned his name and he whispered hers as he let go of her mouth and kissed her cheeks, her chin, her sweet, freckled nose.
He took the bottom of her T-shirt and tugged. She raised her arms and off the thing went. Her purple satin bra came next. And then, after she stepped out of those jeans that were trapping her ankles, he took down that sexy little thong. He took all her clothes away, every last stitch.
And when she stood before him, naked at last, pale skin flushed, red hair feathery-soft around her heart-shaped face, breasts high and full and tipped in pink, he could hardly believe his own eyes.
He and Annie, like this...
Again.
At last.
He sank to his knees before her. She put her hands on his shoulders, her eyes met his - and a shudder went through him. He kissed the shining red curls at the place where her creamy thighs met and then he lifted a hand and petted her there. She eased her thighs apart, moaning, and he put his mouth against that soft, secret place.
"Oh," she said. "Greg... Oh, Greg..."
He pulled her body close, his hands cupping her bottom, and she moved against him as he kissed her, a deep, purely sexual kiss. He ran his tongue along that hot, wet groove and he slid his fingers in from behind, stroking.
She clutched his shoulders. She cried out. And then she sighed.
And then she went still, except for the quivering that started where he kissed her and spread out, until her whole body shook and her knees gave way and he caught her as she sank to the floor.
He helped her to stretch out and he moved above her. He kissed her some more, in that secret wet place between her thighs, kissed her until she begged for mercy and the quivering started all over again.
A hundred slow, deep kisses later, they lay on her bed, both of them naked, facing each other. He held out his hand.
She took the condom from him. Brown eyes shining, she whispered, "I like a man who plans ahead."
He admitted, "I've been a little worried. About last time. We didn't use anything and I - "
She put a finger to his lips. "It's okay. We were lucky."
He kissed the tip of that finger. "No baby on the way?"
She shook her head against the pillow. "No baby...”
“But someday…"
She nodded, eyes shining even brighter. "Yeah. Definitely." She reached down between them. He groaned when she touched him. Slowly, she slid the condom on. "There..." She encircled him with her soft hand.
And he groaned again.
And then she wrapped her top
leg around him and guided him home.
Greg threw his head back and pushed into her so deep. The world flew away. There was only him and Annie and the magic between them.
He held on so tight. He didn't think he could bear it, didn't think he could last. And yet somehow, he did. They moved together, slow and deep and so very good.
At the end, when he felt himself going over, he pushed in hard and high. She clung to him. He felt her slick inner muscles contracting around him.
He let out a cry. She cried in answer.
And the hot, sweet, wet pulsing began.
"About you leaving town," he said sometime later, when he could think again. "If it's something you think you have to do..."
She kissed his chin. "Not now I don't. Oh, no. I'm staying right here - though I am considering driving into San Antonio a couple of times a week. There are some really good floral-design schools there."
"You're sure about staying in town?"
"I am absolutely positive."
He brushed a few strands of flame-red hair out of her eyes. "Did I tell you I like your hair?"
She giggled then. "As a matter of fact, no."
"Well, I do. And I'm sorry I was such a jerk before. I was just used to it long, that's all."
"You were used to a lot of things."
He faked a scowl as he let his hand wander down over her cheek and her obstinate chin, along her satiny throat and lower still. He cupped a beautiful, full white breast and flicked the nipple with his thumb. "I was a damn fool."
She gasped, a tiny, delighted sound. "I'm so glad you got wise."
"Yeah. 'Bout time, huh?" He bent his head, licked that tight pink bud.
She groaned and clutched his head. "Oh, yeah. It sure is."
He let go of that tempting nipple and lifted up to take her mouth. They kissed. And then they kissed again.
Finally, he pulled away and reminded her - reminded them both, really, "We still haven't gone for that ride."
"That's right. We should do that." But she only held on tighter. "In a minute. Oh, it's crazy. But I'm afraid to let you go."