Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set Read online

“Duane, you remember when we were kids? And we used to argue about everything? I mean, it didn’t matter what it was. If I said the sky was blue you would say it was purple.”

  “Sometimes the sky is purple. Right now it’s indigo, almost black. You can’t just make a unilateral statement that the sky is blue.”

  “See? This is what I’m talking about. I don’t know if we can call a truce. All we know how to do is argue.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Jessica,” he whispered, “arguing with you is one of my favorite things to do.”

  My heart set off at a gallop and my breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t his words so much as how he said them, all soft and sincere. I had to blink several times to keep from melting against him. How it was possible for me to melt when I was surrounded on three sides by near-freezing water made me again question my mental fitness.

  I cleared my throat and endeavored to stay focused. “One of your favorite things to do? You mean like playing practical jokes on me? I think you’re trying to rewrite the past.”

  Again, I felt his small smile on my skin. “You liked playing jokes on me, too. Don’t deny it.”

  Without really meaning to I found myself grinning and reminiscing. “I liked your reaction to the jokes, like that time I switched out the cake part of your strawberry shortcake with a sponge and you took a bite.”

  “Or how about the time you tricked me into thinking you were eating flies?”

  I giggled. “That’s right, I’d forgotten about that. Best use of raisins ever. And you were so grossed out, I thought you were going to throw up.”

  We were quiet for stretch, perhaps both lost to our memories of each other. It occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t trying to rewrite the past. Maybe he was encouraging me to see our shared history in a new light.

  I was speaking my thoughts before I realized words had left my mouth. “I loved how you’d lose your temper and threaten me with retribution.”

  “Exactly. And I always kept my promises.”

  “Yes, you did…”

  We were quiet again, the sound of gently lapping water against the embankment our only companion. But then his hands slid lower, grazing my hips, and providing just the right amount of sobriety.

  I shook my head and leaned a fraction of an inch forward, clearing my throat before speaking my mind. “If we did start over, why do you even want to be friends with me? Didn’t you call me a brat earlier?”

  He nodded and his arms shifted, which made his hold feel more like a hug. “Yeah, I called you a brat, because you were acting like one.”

  I grunted my irritation. “I wasn’t the one who lied and I’m allowed to be angry. I don’t know,” I stopped, swallowed, and debated my next words before continuing, “I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive you.”

  “Even though I asked for forgiveness, I reckon I’m not sorry it happened.”

  “You’re not sorry?” My voice sounded loud and screechy to my ears and I gritted my teeth. Despite being surrounded by frigid temperatures, my blood pressure spiked.

  “Nope. Not sorry we kissed.”

  I laughed again, but this time it was because I was peeved. “So you’re telling me you’re not sorry for making me think you were Beau?”

  He shrugged, nuzzled my neck, warming me. My brain told me to stop him, but my body vetoed, To hell with pride, I’m freezing!

  At length he said, “For the record, I never said I was Beau and you didn’t ask.”

  I opened my mouth and a small sound of incredulity escaped. “You’re unbelievable.”

  He ignored my statement. “And I don’t want to be your friend.”

  “You don’t want to be my friend? Then what are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about starting over.”

  “To what purpose?”

  He hesitated for just a second then he said, “Because we should see each other more often. I think we’re suited.”

  I wasn’t surprised.

  I was flabbergasted.

  I was sure I must’ve heard him wrong.

  Then I realized my mouth was wide open.

  Then I realized a full minute had passed and I’d said nothing.

  I blinked at the stars in the sky. “I’m sorry, I think I must misunderstand your meaning. So…what do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. We’re suited for each other.”

  “You think we’re suited?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what? Debating the color of the sky? Practical joke wars?”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want to do or talk about. I’m going to take you out.”

  “Out? Out where?”

  “To nice restaurants, to movies, camping, for ice cream—on dates.”

  “On dates?”

  “We could go to Genie’s, go dancing.”

  “You dance?”

  “Yes, I dance, when it’s good music and I’m in the mood.”

  “You would dance with me?”

  “Hell yes. I’d dance with you right now if you’d let me and I wasn’t freezing my balls off.”

  I laughed again, shaking my head because this entire conversation had taken a detour to Unexpectedville. I couldn’t comprehend the idea that Duane Winston thought we were suited for each other.

  In what universe would he ever think such things?

  And why did these things he said not sound crazy? And why did these things he said make my heart twirl with excitement?

  “I don’t…I can’t….” I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know what to think.

  The evening had been too eventful and I hadn’t a spare moment to digest what had occurred. Obviously, I needed time and I needed distance. I wasn’t staying in Green Valley, not more than a few years at most. Being suited with Duane Winston had the potential of being a huge confounding complication. My eyes were on the prize, namely leaving town with no debt, no regrets, or reasons to stay.

  I cleared my throat and whispered, “I think it’s been fifteen minutes.”

  When I pulled away he let me go. Cold water hit my lower back and thighs, replacing the warmth and protection of Duane’s body. Hugging myself I turned toward the forest and forced my stiff legs to move. This did not go well. I stumbled, slipped on a rock, and crashed sideways into the water.

  The wind was knocked out of me as I hit the lake, forced from my lungs by the shock of cold. Immediately my legs straightened, pushing my head up and out. Just as I was gathering a greedy gulp of air, I felt Duane’s hands reach around my side and lift me off my feet and out of the water, cradling my front to him and carrying me with an arm around my torso and under my legs.

  When I found my voice I said through chattering teeth, “Put me down.”

  He didn’t respond, just continued trudging to the embankment.

  “Duane Winston, put me down.” I felt breathless, confused, dizzy. Pressed together like we were, and without the chilly water keeping me sober, my body was warming to his. Our skin was slippery, my breasts against his chiseled chest, his strong arms around me. I was too exhausted to be aroused, but it felt improper.

  Improper? Really? Now you’re feeling improper? I’d traded lunacy for sense.

  “I’ll put you down, but I don’t want you running off throwing my pants in a tree.”

  “You deserved that.” I knew to which adolescent encounter he referred, and I couldn’t help a very little smile at the memory.

  “Yes, I did.” He nodded then hoisted me a few inches in the air like I was a sack of potatoes, readjusting his grip when I came down.

  We were out of the water now, some feet into the forest, and I was just about to complain again when he set me down gently, but wrapped a big paw around my upper arm.

  “My clothes are back there.” I tugged halfheartedly away, my body too cold and tired to put up much of a fight. Goosebumps had broken out everywhere and I was shaking violently.

&
nbsp; Duane bent to retrieve something. In one smooth motion he released my arm, shook out what I realized was a large blanket, and tossed it over his shoulders. He then yanked me forward and wrapped me in the soft fabric and his embrace.

  “You need to dry off, warm up first,” he said, rubbing my bare back. It was then I realized how cold he was, that he too was shaking.

  Without consideration or caution, I snuggled closer, instinctively wanting to give and share warmth. I hugged him, rubbed the broad muscles of his back, and buried my face in his neck. Yes, we were naked. But first and foremost we were near-frozen, heat-seeking bodies.

  Practicality won out over the lunacy of prudishness.

  The blanket must’ve been huge because it covered us from his neck and the tips of my ears, and pooled around our feet, giving the impression of a cocoon. I was grateful he’d planned ahead. Whereas I’d just run off into the woods, relying on my anger and inexplicable jealousy to keep me warm.

  The memory of and the reason for my earlier ire reared its ugly head: a flash of an image, Duane’s expert kisses shared with his ex. He was still clutching the blanket around us, holding me close, rubbing feeling into my arms and back. His hands were big and divine, strong and skillful. His heart beat against my cheek. His smooth skin, his granite stomach and shoulders under my fingertips made me feel greedy and muddled.

  He was muddling me and I began to hear my brain soundtrack, this time it was Touch Me, by The Doors.

  Suddenly I was warm, we both were, and it was much faster than I’d anticipated. As true physiological numbness receded, his hands on my body ignited something else. Soon the shared heat changed from necessary for survival to something evocative and abruptly ripe with decadent tension. His hands slowed and I realized belatedly that my breath had quickened. I wasn’t aroused, it wasn’t like before. I was…caught. This time my heart was involved, not the crazy part of my brain.

  I glanced up at him, found him watching me. His eyes reflected the stars, and I was close enough to see they were on my lips.

  “Jessica,” he whispered, swallowed, his hands now motionless on my waist.

  I shook my head slightly; really, the small movement was me telling myself to cease feeling. Duane was all around me, and he felt intoxicatingly good. I need to end this, whatever it was.

  So I blurted, “I’m not kissing you.”

  His eyes lifted to mine, his expression unreadable, but I felt him tense.

  I huffed. “You lied to me, you pretended to be your brother—”

  He cut me off, yanked his head back. “And you want Beau.” His tone was cold.

  I gripped his biceps to keep him from moving away. “No, no—that’s not it. It’s the lie, and my sexy bee cousin.”

  “Your sexy bee cousin?”

  “Yes. Tina Patterson, my dad’s sister’s daughter. Remember her? You kissed her. You kissed her right after you and I...” I couldn’t finish because I was confusing myself. I used to kiss boys all the time and it never meant anything. Yet I couldn’t finish my sentence because I was beginning to think Duane’s earlier kiss—even shrouded in a veil of deceit—had meant something to me.

  He licked his lips before he asked, as though reading my mind, “Did our kiss mean something to you? Not,” he shook his head and glanced around the darkness, “not when you thought I was my brother, but after, when you found out it was me?”

  I answered honestly, my words pouring out of me. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. And I don’t get why you’re pushing this so hard now. I feel like I don’t know you at all. One minute you’re the Duane Winston who throws rocks at my cat, kissing another girl, making me feel like I have heartburn, arguing about the color of the sky, and the next minute you’re telling me we’re suited for each other. I don’t trust you.”

  “Jessica, we’re standing in the forest naked. You trust me a little.”

  I pushed against his chest lightly, shaking my head, tired and exasperated and not ready to let him go. It was the strangest of combinations.

  “Of course I trust you that way. I know you’d never murder me or take advantage—well, not take too much advantage. I mean, you did get a penis stroke out of me earlier and did really fantastic things to my nipples.” A little shiver raced through me at the memory. “But now that I think about it, you stopped me before I could—”

  “Jessica, please stop talking.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re making everything…really hard.”

  We stood motionless for a long moment as understanding dawned; his words held a delicious double meaning and, even in the inky darkness, I could tell he was struggling. I wavered back and forth between wanting him to do something, and hoping he wouldn’t. Our breath mingled. His fingers dug into my hips.

  Then his eyes closed and he set me away. He didn’t let the blanket slip. Instead he pulled it from his shoulders, stepping out of our little oven, and wrapped it firmly around my shoulders, tucking it under my chin. I was mummified in our residual warmth.

  Duane left and quickly located his pants. I watched his outline pull them on then move to the tree where I’d discarded my clothes. He brought them back and held them out.

  “Here,” he said.

  Once I had the folded pile I sensed him turn away.

  I stared at the back of his neck for a beat, just the dim outline visible to me, then slowly began the process of getting dressed.

  I rewound through the evening and our time together; all of my actions. I was too honest. He made me feel naïve and mindless. I wasn’t used to the disorientation brought on by excellent quality physical intimacy. Plus, he and I knew each other. We had years of history.

  Maybe my immature, fantasy-based feelings for Beau had dispelled so abruptly because I’d been given a taste of reality, of an actual adult liaison. The way Duane touched me felt like a brand.

  The beginnings of an uncomfortable blush crept its way up my neck to my cheeks. When I was finished dressing I cleared my throat and glanced at him. I could just make out the shape of his bare back.

  “I’m all done.”

  He twisted, his eyes moved over my body still wrapped in the blanket, and he nodded. “Okay, let’s get back.”

  Duane took a few steps, carrying him maybe ten feet, but then stopped. I hadn’t yet moved as I was more or less swimming in a sea of mental melancholy. He might be right, we might be suited, but so what? Nothing could ever come of it other than a few months—at best, years—of being together.

  In my typical fashion of getting ahead of myself, my mind leapt to a time two years from now when I would be ready to leave Green Valley. What if Duane and I were extremely well suited? What if we became serious? What if I couldn’t leave him?

  I glanced up just in time to sense then see him returning to where I stood. Instinctively, I took a step back; but he held me by my arms and halted my retreat.

  “Tina, your cousin,” he said, his voice thick with both hesitation and ferocity.

  “Yes, Tina is my cousin.”

  “She dared me to kiss her.”

  I pressed my lips together and swallowed, feeling again like I had heartburn. “You did kiss her, and she’s your ex-girlfriend.”

  “She was never my girl.”

  I didn’t want to argue semantics. “Right, you’ve been with Tina since before I left for college, but she was never your girl. What about her?”

  He hesitated for a beat, then said, “You remember who I was with before you left for college?”

  I responded through gritted teeth, “Duane, what about Tina?”

  He seemed to shake himself before starting again. “Tina…” He nodded, then took another step, bringing him firmly inside my personal space. “When I kissed her earlier, it didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, it looked like something to me.”

  “It wasn’t. Not with her. But with you, at the community center, I meant what I said. I’ve always wanted you. And I am sorry you didn’t know i
t was me, because you deserve better than that and …” His voice lost its fierce edge, but roughened, his next words emerged sounding like an aching confession. “I’d really like for there to be a next time.”

  Chapter 5

  “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”

  Judith Thurman

  ~Jessica~

  I was distracted.

  Not even Rick Steves’ Europe could hold my attention.

  It was all Duane’s fault. His words and lips, and hands, and eyes, and his penis’ fault.

  He had a nice one; at least it had felt nice in comparison to the only other penis of my acquaintance, thick and long and smooth and rock hard. I didn’t get a peek at it backstage or when he’d dared me to go skinny-dipping. However, I could recall with surprising clarity what it looked like when we were younger, when he’d been naked chasing me through the woods, or the time before that when a bunch of us went skinny-dipping in the waterfalls near Burgess. He was circumcised. I’d noted it as a teenager because I’d just finished eighth grade health class (also known as sex education).

  I never expected to be fixating on Duane’s circumcised penis. Yet there I was, sitting at my desk at work, grading pop quizzes, trying to recall the glorious weight of him in my hand…

  How irritating, because now I was having a lusty hot flash.

  I groaned, letting my red pen drop as my face fell into my hands.

  How had I even arrived here, in this purgatory? Yes, I was drooling over the memory of his sexual magnetism from afar. But it was more than that. So much more. And this more was beyond distressing. Duane’s admission—that our time backstage at the community center had been something he’d wanted for a long time and he wanted a repeat—felt overwhelming.

  I’d known him forever. I knew all about him, or I thought I did.

  His confession felt like finding out my cat—Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest—could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower…