Kiss and Tales 2: A Romantic Collection Read online

Kiss and Tales 2:

  A Romantic Collection

  The Indie Collaboration

  Copyright © 2015

  All rights reserved.

  Cedar Falls

  by Kristina Jacobs

  LeAnn closed the door of her trusty yellow Toyota and stood with hands on her hips surveying the land she grew up on. She pictured all one hundred and forty-two acres of lush farmland stripped of rocks by generations of her family and now it was hers. The problem was, she didn’t want it. Her biggest excitement the day she turned 18 and walked across the stage to accept her high school diploma was the knowledge that she could escape the farm, never to look back and no one could stop her. Her family was disappointed in her when she left, she still remembered her mom standing in the big square kitchen wearing an old-fashioned apron around her thick middle and wringing her hands with worry over her daughter who was off to the hateful Twin Cities.

  It wasn’t like LeAnn was going a world away. Minneapolis was only an hour away, but in a small farm town like Hinckley, that was a world away. Too many of the young men expected to inherit their land and work it had disappeared into the factories and the nightlife in the city, never to return.

  At least she was a girl, LeAnn thought, she wasn’t such a loss. But, that was before.

  Who knew back then that dad’s heart was weak and that his death would unhinge mom?

  Who could have known that both her older brothers, Jake and Sam, would be drafted and killed in a senseless and terrible war in a jungle a world away?

  Now, there was only her. The unwanted daughter who had dared to not be a boy, nor feminine enough to settle down and marry just to cook and clean and raise a brood of farm hands for some man.

  She was in Budapest reporting on a civil crisis when the telegram came with the news. She remembered it like it was yesterday, dad was found in the far field, still on his beloved Peterbuilt (never a John Deere) tractor, slumped over with one red suspender flying free from his mud covered jeans. She didn’t make the funeral, in truth she didn’t try. She’s escaped Hinckley once and had no plan to be guilted into coming back and staying forever.

  Her brother Sam had been the last of the family to speak with her, to try to make some kind of peace. She almost broke down and moved home when he called a year after she’d moved to the cities and started college. It was only a few weeks later when he’d sent her one last postcard from France, on his way to Vietnam.

  She found out her brother Jake had been drafted and later killed in the hardest way possible, rehearsing her part just before reading the casualty lists on the nightly Channel 9 news. She could never forget it. Her eyes were scanning over the text, almost sliding over that familiar name, so long ago lost to her…

  “and a local boy from Hinckley, Jacob Adam Wicklund, was killed today in the Pontoon jungle- caught in friendly fire from a B-52 bomber above as he carried out his mission. Mrs. John Wicklund was informed by two uniformed Marines at the family farmstead on November, 16. Local church women are looking after her until a daughter can be located in the Twin Cities.”

  LeAnn was that daughter. She’d sat, frozen, washed in guilt and regret, which is what she still felt today. Shaking herself back into the present, she walked carefully through the mix of mud and gravel in her suede boots, holding her deep green broom skirt to the side.

  She popped the hatch and withdrew the realtor’s sign. Edina Realty, it read, 142 acres for sale, will separate. The post-war economy was booming in the cities, but out here, things still moved at a slower pace, following the farmer’s life and the cycle of the seasons.

  The night she’d found out Jake was dead, she’d read her piece deadpan and without inflection, straight into the camera. Then, she’d begged for the first overseas assignment she could get, never breathing a word to anyone that she was the daughter that the family was so desperately searching for—

  It had taken a year and a letter forwarded and stamped so many times that no more than her name was visible under all the marker, dirt and international stamps before she let herself begin to think about what had happened.

  The letter wasn’t signed. She didn’t know the writing, but when she sat in the mud, huddling under broken walls six thousand miles from her childhood, it was in her flak jacket, and she could feel it, like a thread spun out across the world calling her back.

  Inside was a ¾ sheet of manila paper. For a long time, she wondered where the paper was from. She’d take it out and study it with her fingers in the dark, the pop and whistle of mortar bombs flying in the background.

  After a while, she decided that it was the faded bill that came strapped to lots of feed bags from the farm store in town back home. She was sure of it, she could close her eyes and picture those ¾ manila sheets with the number and weight of the order neatly printed in pencil, flapping in the breeze underneath the giant rubber bands the boys used to take and use as sling shots.

  The paper was creased and folded, she’d read it so many times it was starting to fall apart. The letters looked like someone unfamiliar with the slippery slide of pen on paper instead of the slow, gritty scratch of pencil. Pen was so much more permanent, she wondered why more farmers weren’t attracted to that, but maybe deep down pencil was more like the seasons, changeable. The letters were bold and strong, definitely a man, but she didn’t know who. It just said, “COME HOME LEANN.”

  Her mind had flitted to and dwelled on every man or boy who she’d ever known growing up in Hinckley. The preacher? she wondered. No, she knew his hand from a dozen years of Sunday school and Catechism class. Boys she’d dated in high school? No, she thought, even then, she’d chosen boys who set their sights beyond the farm.

  Sam and Jacob had always had a group of guys they’d hang out with after football practice and chase the girls with, but none of them had ever given her mousy self a second glance. Back then, they were too busy chasing the busty blondes who had the reputation of fast and easy.

  LeAnn came out of her reverie to see the dewy morning grass sliding greedily around her ankles as she walked. She stopped to set the real estate sign down with a sigh of guilt and returned to the hatchback for the rubber mallet.

  Wooden shaft in hand, she stepped carefully in her leather and suede boots and fought to balance the heavy sign and the giant unwilling hammer in order to force the sign into the hard-packed ground. One hand on the sign, she was using her knee to balance its top-heavy swinging frame. The other hand, she was hoping to use to hit the top of the wooden post.

  “One, two, shit, shit, shit, shit,” she cried, hopping around and dropping the whole mess with the sign leaning drunkenly. On the third hit she’d missed and smashed her thumb like a boob. It broke her fancy acrylic nail in buff pink clean in two and probably saved her finger, but as she sucked the offending digit she huffed herself into the grass to pout about it.

  Still fuming, she heard boots scuffing the gravel and a deep masculine laugh coming closer. Quickly, she shoved her rucked up skirt down her legs and habitually fluffed up her shoulder length brown hair, wishing for some of the lip gloss she’d eaten off hours earlier as she drove down from her hotel in Maple Grove. It was dumb to have taken a hotel hours away from her hometown when she could’ve stay for free in the house she grew up in, but at the time, she wasn’t ready and she couldn’t go back to the Twin Cities she’d abandoned so long ago either- so Maple Grove it had been.

  Even though she’d heard him coming, he still startled her when he approached out of the morning fog. Her first sight of him, he was laughing at her with a big smile. He had little crinkles at the corner of his eyes. Those eyes were currently lit up with a malicious glee at seeing
her so flustered. Noticing the sign hanging drunkenly and her sucking her thumb trying to soothe the irritated pound of the finger and her head, he just shook his head at her and smirked.

  Except for his gleeful laugh and enjoyment of her predicament, she couldn’t help but notice that he was gorgeous. 6’3” or 6’4”, if she stood, her head would rest right on his chest over his heart. He wore typical clothes for the area, well-worn jeans with a dark checked shirt, rolled up in the sleeves like he’d been working nearby. He wore his hair just a little long, curling over his collar. His eyes were an unusually piercing green that looked right through you and into your deep dark secrets. He put her on edge and his bold walk and carefree chuckle pinched her ego.

  “LeAnn,” he said softly, looking her up and down. She realized her thumb was in her mouth and moved it with a pop, wiping it on the ground and picking up sticky bits of grass, then wiping them on her shirt.

  “You’ve come home,” he said, still keeping his distance and growing more serious. Something about that phrase pricked her.

  “Do I know you?” she asked defiantly.

  “Humph,” was his only reply. He leaned in and offered her a calloused and sun browned hand to help her up. She took it resentfully, taking stock of what a mess she’d made of herself.

  “No reason to know me, buttercup. My name’s Darren. Darren Trifles.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she spat at him, her working woman’s pride ruffled.

  “Well, alright but you are sitting in a field of buttercups like some kind of sprite this morning so it’s only natural.”

  LeAnn looked around with fresh eyes. In the overgrown grass all along the side of the dirt and gravel road, buttercups were raising their yellow heads to greet the warmth of the morning. Strange that such a masculine man who obviously used his hands to make a living would notice such a thing, she thought.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to breakfast at Maude’s to celebrate the return of the prodigal daughter.”

  “I-I really can’t,” she stammered, but he was already pulling her up the road, back the way he’d come. “But-the sign-”

  “-will wait,” he said, tucking her arm in his and drawing her along his side as they walked. She was intensely aware of him being too close, invading her carefully preserved wall of confidence. Without trying, he was crumbling the aloof armor that she’d maintained for years as a reporter working in a third world country and risking her life daily like it was just so much claptrap.

  As they walked briskly up the road, crunching the gravel, she became aware of the pinching of her new leather boots, bought just for this return to Hinckley. Suddenly, she felt the cool wet of the morning that was never quite matched anywhere but home. She caught a whiff of the light scent of Old Spice that her dad used to wear when she was very young. She felt off balance, put upon, but somehow protected. They walked in a strange, but comforting silence for a while.

  Finally, she asked, “Maude’s? You mean Mrs. Greene is still around?”

  “Yep, she opened a diner on Main Street about seven years ago after Chuck died and she’s been holding all of us together ever since.”

  They rounded a corner and she saw his big Ford truck with extended cab and long bed filled with baling wire and a toolbox lying open along the fence. At least she knew who he worked for now, she thought. He must be a hand at the Jericho farm that bordered her own land.

  They farmed, but when she’d driven past she’d seen the unmistakable signs of livestock dotting the fields that used to produce the first soybean crop seen in their parts.

  How old would old Zebadiah be now?, she wondered. 80? At least he’d hired a young man to help him out, she thought. He left her by the side of the truck to pack up his tools and toss the box in the back. She couldn’t help but notice as she boosted herself up that he was a good worker, the line of fence that had been down for miles last week when she’d ridden out with the surveyor and appraiser to see the land was already neatly replaced, hanging shiny and silver in long rows as far as she could see.

  Maybe she could survive this “home coming” after all, she thought, already planning on having the biggest country breakfast Maude could cook up, on her new friend Darren, of course.

  The Henry Denning Affair

  by Chris Raven

  Dorothy carefully carried the tray across the living room, causing the bone china tea set to rattle with each unsteady step. It was her best set, the flowery one, the one she normally reserved for guests. She was struggling now, with the heavy teapot, a dead weight of hot brewing tea. A matching sugar bowl also sat on the tray, even though she hadn't taken sugar for over thirty years. Two cups completed the set, one resting inside the other, rattling and swaying on their base of stacked saucers like a tower block in an earthquake.

  It was a cold Saturday morning in September and ever since Henry, her regular house guest, had stopped calling she had stopped using a proper tea set. Until this morning that is. She reached the coffee table and gingerly lowered the tray onto its surface, berating herself for not using her hostess trolley.

  'What was so different about today?' Dorothy wondered as she walked towards the kitchen, rubbing a sore arm. She had woken that morning convinced she was expecting a visitor. She had no idea who but she always listened to her little premonitions, they were rarely wrong. She hoped it would be an apologetic Henry at her door, in just about a minute or two now she suspected, but she knew it wouldn't be him. She would just know if it was going to be her Henry. So who would it be instead? She hated uncertainty as a rule but consoled herself with the knowledge that she would be out of her misery very shortly.

  Dorothy took off her apron and hung it on a hook on the back of the kitchen door. Without thinking about it she quickly filled a bowl with soapy water and dropped one of her large sponges into it. As an afterthought she bent down to the cupboard under the sink and took out a bottle of stain remover, which she placed on the draining board next to the bowl. She then continued into the hall on her way to her front door, which chimed as she approached. "Right on cue," she said as she turned the latch.

  Dorothy opened the door to find a young man in a black suit standing on her doorstep. He was wearing sunglasses, indoors if you like, and he was carrying a clipboard. He quickly glanced down at it before rummaging with his free hand in his breast jacket pocket for his ID.

  "Mrs. Seers?" He enquired.

  "Ms. actually," She corrected him, "But never mind that, you had better come in. Apparently I'm expecting you."

  By the time Dorothy had led the young man down the corridor he had managed to extract a plastic ID card, which Dorothy dismissed with a wave of her hand.

  "No need for that," she told him, "I know you're from the Agency." She invited him to sit down and asked him how he took his tea. Incidentally, he did take sugar.

  "What's your name young man?" She asked as she tipped in the first spoonful of sugar.

  "Agent Montford," he replied, nodding at Dorothy's mimed invitation for a second spoon.

  "First name dear," she told him as she stood up to a pass the Agent his tea. He quickly stood up, fumbling with his clipboard as he reached out to take the teacup.

  "Oh, it’s Eric," he told her. He took the cup, which wobbled and rattled in its saucer as he sank back down into the armchair's cushions.

  "Why don't you slip that clipboard down on the floor next to your chair," Dorothy suggested.

  Dorothy sat on her sofa next to the coffee table and started to make her own tea. From where she sat it seemed that Eric's knees were higher than his chest. He reminded her of a young Henry, not that she had known him when he was that young.

  They had met some twenty years earlier, Henry appearing at her door one afternoon to welcome in the new tenant. She had expected him of course, this dashingly handsome still youthful despite his years, flowers in hand, thick wavy hair and that cheeky twinkle in his eye. He was confident and charming and immediately set about wooing her with fantastical
tales of his past, mostly exaggerated. She had allowed herself to be swept off her feet, silly woman; she had been a middle aged spinster after all! They had never formalized their relationship, never married, never made it public, they were both too long in the tooth to start all that silliness. For twenty years the two nights a week Dorothy had spent with her beloved secret agent (Retired) had been her sole source of companionship, affection and love. How she had loved to play Matta Hari to his bumbling Belgium spy. Henry always claimed to have met her.

  Dorothy remembered her current house guest as he patiently glanced round her sitting room sipping his tea. His eyes rested on her bookcase.

  "Oh of course," he said, "You're 'The' Dorothy Seers aren't you?"

  "Yes dear," she confirmed, "Nice of you to know."

  "Oh yes," he said, squinting at the books on the shelf, “My absolute favorite was always Sister Abigail and the Naughty Penguin.”

  “Yes, that one was quite popular,” Dorothy told him, “I suppose you’re here because of Henry?”

  "You reported him missing," the young man said.

  Dorothy confirmed that she had and emphasized, very strongly, that she had done so well over a month ago.

  "We have been looking," Eric was quick to defend the agency, "But we've not been able to find him yet." Dorothy put her cup back on the coffee table and sighed.

  “So he’s really gone this time.”

  “It seems so I’m afraid." The young man paused while Dorothy took this in. “But we've not given up looking," he added carefully, "He's very important to us, you all are. This is why I am here. We need your help.”

  Dorothy asked what help she could possibly offer and the young man said he was interested in any 'insights' she might have, especially regarding a spate of vandalism the previous year.

  “You mean the milk bottles?” Dorothy asked, shaking her head, “That was all sorted out last winter.”

  “A young man was found to be responsible I understand.”

  “What! Young Tom upstairs? No, he had nothing to do with it,” Dorothy insisted, “He was blamed for sure, but it wasn’t him.”

  Eric ask why she was so sure, so she told him about a meeting Henry had mentioned earlier in the year, February, or was it March. It had taken place in the Globe and Compass, a grimy public house that Henry was want to frequent.

  Eric reached down the side of the armchair for his clipboard and asked if Dorothy minded if he took some notes. Fumbling with both clipboard and tea cup he carefully lowered the latter to the floor, looking up at Dorothy for permission to set his cup down by his feet. Dorothy nodded but she wasn’t very happy about it.

  “This meeting,” Eric continued, “Who was there?”

  “Henry told me a story about an old friend and adversary," Dorothy told him, "A Russian.”

  “Grigori da Nayk?” The young man asked surprised, quickly scribbling down notes.

  “Yes,” she confirmed, “But I believe the meeting was more a catalyst than a cause for Henry's disappearance.”

  Eric asked how so and Dorothy explained that Henry had been out of sorts ever since that meeting, he had seemed restless and distracted. She had tried to talk to him about it but he just put it all down to a late midlife crisis.

  "I just think he wanted to go adventuring again,” Dorothy concluded, "you know, before he got too old."

  "What?" The young man quickly checked the notes on his clipboard, "He's what, in his seventies, maybe even his eighties, biologically speaking that is."

  "He's still quite spry," Dorothy told him and unable to resist, she raised a wry eyebrow, adding that she should know.

  The young man burst out laughing, which set Dorothy off too.

  "Please, Mrs. Seers..."

  "Dorothy," she corrected him through suppressed giggles.

  "Dorothy, Ma'am, please, I'm trying to be professional here."

  "You are dear, you are," Dorothy managed as she brought herself under control, "Oh dear, I haven't laughed like that for a while."

  "You miss him," Eric ventured and Dorothy sat silently for a few moments before quietly admitting yes.

  "We'll do our best," Eric tried to reassure her as he started getting up from his seat. Dorothy however wondered if it wouldn't be better just to leave Henry alone, he had left for a reason, she had no doubt about that. Why did she report him missing in the first place? 'Stupid woman.' But young Eric was right, she had missed him and she had become so desperately worried. Poor Henry, he had started looking so ill, in the months between that meeting in the Globe and his disappearance. He had seemed haggard even, having lost so much weight. He thought he had kept it from her, the silly man. How could he possibly think she would not notice? The frequent appointments at the Hymns Veil Medical Centre, the sudden investigations at Green Heath Hospital and then him giving his best and warmest coat to that old tramp, the one that had started loitering around the shops downstairs the previous summer.

  Of course she knew he was ill but more than that, he was scared. Scared of running out of time. She could see him watch his death come creeping ever near, and Henry was never one to take such things lying down. No, she thought, let things be, let him end his life with one more big adventure.

  The agent broke her train of thought with a polite cough.

  "Well, if that's all, I'd best be going then."

  Dorothy looked up and saw that Eric was already on his feet. Before she could remind him he had caught the edge of the saucer with the tip of his shoe, catapulting the cup and its contents across Dorothy's light cream carpet. Dorothy looked up from the uneven puddle of tea spreading out from an upturned and now chipped and handleless tea cup, one from her best set, to see Eric's nervous and embarrassed face.

  "I'm really sorry," he managed to stammer as he knelt down to pick up the broken crockery. Dorothy sighed, she realized she was more annoyed at having one saucer too many then she was at the loss of a cup. Besides, this was the set she always brought out when Henry stayed over and now she knew she would never see him again. She expected it would stay in the cupboard from now on. It just wouldn't be right to bring it out for anyone else. She would just keep one cup and one saucer for those quiet evenings to come, when she found herself missing him the most. As for the carpet, now that was an entirely different matter.

  "Young man," she scolded, fixing Eric with a disapproving stare, "You'll find everything you need in the kitchen, on the draining board.”

  Statement of Affection

  by G.P. A. (Greatest Poet Alive)

  I wrote this for her…

  perhaps facing Eastward, at any given place and time, would you pray with me?

  nothing need be on my mind or heart troublesome. it need not be that anyone’s life force has completed,

  waning, or in peril.

  but maybe we sit in front of a meal and just join hands. before, during, and after a day of blessings, a vacation, or the preparation of consummating our relationship with vows sacred, it could be either and all of those.

  Lady, would you pray with me?

  change those shoes to Air Max or something comfortable, and if you aren’t terribly put out, would you walk with me?

  there is a park not far from my house that is quite pastoral and picturesque; it is composed of water, trees, and people upon their own business.

  but we could hold hands and become part of the scenery, immersed in God’s order of things. Every day I go outside with Scooter the Beagle to give him exercise, and if your are so inclined, you could join us. we only go a mile or so, and if you were cool with it, you could take hold of his leash.it is great exercise as well, and we could do that too.

  Lady, would you walk with me?

  my heart has not had many addresses; discretion is ever the part of valor or so it has been said.

  with you is a warm,

  inviting, inspiring, and soft place.

  and after doing the above with you, I realize your are the continuing apex of my affection
’s focus.

  the corners of my mouth now touch my ears from smiles I have more often.

  normal ,cocky stride still evident but skip a tad when en route to see you or having unfortunately departed your company. but not unrealistic my thinking because I comprehend that coexistence frequently means doing so in separate spaces.

  yet, whether it be for a spell after a game, us having been out on the town, when our words have not been the most pleasant, and more importantly, when our hairs are tainted with gray, the decades have multiplied, and we have seen children have children, will you stay with me?

  I am humbled by you; in my pocket,

  my ego rests.

  clueless am I because I’ve been by myself for longer than a while.so there are answers and actions I may not know right away because you are not her, her, her, or her, and that is a blessed thing.

  take a look into these brown eyes of mine,

  place your hand upon my heart, and let the truth be told to you.

  this isn’t a poem. but what this is a statement of affection from me to you because I know you are reading this. so, in whatever fashion it needs to be, whatever elements we need to include or exclude, and no matter how much of forever do we need to use, will you be with me?

  She Said

  by G.P. A. (Greatest Poet Alive)

  She said

  with my poems I touched her heart and wrote her pain away

  captured her in every syllable that my baritone voice spoke

  read nothing, heard nothing but what I wrote or said

  that I held her enthralled waiting for the next

  She said

  that I she saw humility in me and drew closer

  chuckled when I said that I wasn't humble, and gave reassurance I was

  my heart longed to be somewhere safe, and she was the haven when she could be

  that I was an amazing man

  She said

  that I forgot her ad what we shared

  that the man that she saw no longer existed

  that I was conceited, self-indulgent, and a jerk

  she didn't want to leave me alone, but she did.

  No phone call

  No text message

  No inbox

  No email

  her silence was all she said