Chapter 17 #2
They pulled the canoe to shore under a canopy of pine and oak trees.
Straggly bushes dotted the bank. Just a few feet farther in, they were in a semi-private alcove, listening to the river go by.
Kaci unpacked a massive quilt for a picnic blanket, a stack of peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches, chips, beef jerky, grapes and apples, and set out a second cooler with an assortment of microbrew beers in bottles.
Lance kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the quilt. Blue sky peeked through the trees. Leaves rustled in the breeze. A lock of Kaci’s hair had fallen out of her cap and across her cheek while she set their lunch out. “You come out here often?” he asked.
“Just once, this past spring. My Physics Club kids all got together for a day trip. They were disappointed I didn’t bring my potato gun.”
“Still waiting for you to pull out some firecrackers or a collapsible catapult.”
She shoved a beer at him. “Hush, you.”
He set aside the beer and snagged her hand. When he tugged, she didn’t resist but instead curled up beside him, her hand resting over his heart. He flipped her hat off, and all those silky blond strands cascaded down onto his shoulder. “Pretty day,” he murmured.
“Peaceful,” she replied on a sigh.
“You like peaceful?”
“More than I like to admit.”
He traced a slow circle on her hand. “Nobody watching. You could go to sleep.”
She inched her leg along his. “You could go to sleep.”
Even through their clothes, her touch set his skin on fire. His pulse ricocheted through his veins, and all his blood surged south of his belt. “Didn’t say I wanted peaceful,” he said.
“Sugar, you’re with me. Not wanting peaceful is a given.”
“Not always.” He rolled them so she was on her back beneath him.
Her fingers settled on his cheeks.
He pulled her sunglasses off and tossed them aside. Her eyes were big blue questions, a peek at the vulnerabilities and insecurities she kept hidden from the world. She was full of big talk, but he’d seen her with her students. He’d seen her fight for her students.
Kaci Boudreaux had a soft side he suspected few people were privileged enough to know about. “Kaci—”
“No talking,” she whispered.
He should argue, but she tilted her lips up and brushed them against his.
He’d missed her kisses. Her touch. Her laugh. Her smart mouth. Her bravado.
That soft side.
He was deploying soon. She’d damn well better go to Germany, and who knew if she’d still be here when he got back? She could be recruited to go work for a university overseas.
When he left, he didn’t want to leave with regrets.
He wanted to leave with good memories.
So he lowered his mouth, suckled her bottom lip, and lost himself in the world that was Kaci.
Kaci woke up with a start when her Jeep stopped moving. A steady pitter-patter of raindrops plinked off the canoe up top.
They were home.
She needed to go check on Miss Higgs.
“You know you drool in your sleep?” Lance was aiming those soft, kind eyes at her again.
Not the smoky, let’s get naked again eyes he’d used for two more stops along the river, or the amused you’re being obnoxious, but it’s strangely enjoyable eyes he’d used when she’d been, well, her all afternoon.
But the gentle, understanding we can still be friends after we quit sleeping together eyes he’d used the few times she’d reminded him that they were temporary.
As if he knew exactly how bad she’d fallen for him, but he didn’t want to embarrass her by pointing it out.
Because he was that kind of nice.
“Kace? You awake?”
She forced herself upright and rubbed at a kink in her neck. “Shoot, if you’d driven any slower, we would’ve been going backwards. How many old grandpas passed us on the way?”
“Twenty or thirty,” he said with a smirk.
It should’ve taken another ten minutes to get to her place, and she suspected he knew it as well as she did.
“Any of ’em moon us?”
“Just the one. You need to put the canoe away somewhere?”
“Rented it from the school.” She stifled a yawn. “I’ll return it Monday.”
His fingers tangled in her hair. “Best date I’ve had in a long time,” he said softly.
Her heart swelled. She stifled her smartass imagine if it’d been with a nice girl comment and instead leaned closer to him. “Doesn’t have to be over. I mean, I guess we’re even for the flight stuff, but if you wanted to come up…”
She let her words taper off, because his easy smile tilted down. Sympathy overtook his dark eyes.
He was done with her. Finished. Tired of her.
Their deal was over.
She lunged for her door. “Never mind. You got things to do. Don’t let me keep you.”
“I’m flying tomorrow,” he said. “Crew rest starts in thirty minutes.”
Nice excuse. But dang if her heart didn’t feel as if it were being squeezed like an underinflated balloon at the thought of him up in the air. “Sure. Fly good tomorrow.”
“You like camping?” he said.
“Old-fashioned or pampered?”
“Either.” But that snicker-grin said he’d laugh at her if she asked for a camper or a cabin.
“You know I can’t resist a good campfire.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up Friday night.”
Her pulse fluttered, and she couldn’t even muster a sassy but what if I have plans? “I’ll take care of the firewood.”
He hooked a hand behind her neck and pulled her in for a lingering kiss.
She didn’t want to stop at a kiss. She wanted to toss him in the backseat and have her way with him. They had twenty-nine minutes still.
And spending the day with him hadn’t been enough.
She splayed her hands across his chest. His heart thumped beneath the solid wall of muscle.
He pulled out of the kiss and rested his head on her shoulder. His breath came in ragged gasps that pulled at something deeper and higher than the longing between her legs. “I cannot understand how you can be this sexy,” he said.
Captain Swaggery Pilot God was one to talk. “It’s a gift.”
He chuckled, his breath hot through her thin blouse. “Suppose it is.” He pressed his lips to her collarbone one last time before reaching for his own door handle. “I’d offer to carry something inside, but I’m afraid of the lecture I’d get.”
“Wimp,” she teased.
If he carried something inside, maybe he’d stay.
He winked at her. “Don’t miss me too much this week.”
“You’re not even going to offer me your shirt as an umbrella?” She was bordering on pathetic, but she didn’t want him to leave.
Who knew if he’d come to his senses before Friday and change his mind about camping?
He treated her to a wicked grin. “I’m gonna sit in my truck and watch your shirt get wet.”
“Your momma would be appalled.”
“Yep,” he agreed.
One more flash of that boyish grin, and he was climbing out of her Jeep. Raindrops pelted his Bama shirt. He lifted his hand in a wave before he dashed the four parking spaces over to his truck.
Kaci touched three fingers to her lips and told herself the comforting lie that another date—an overnight date, complete with a bonfire and probably her potato gun—wasn’t any big deal.
They were friends.
With benefits.
And she could totally handle it.
“You’re hopeless,” Tara declared ten minutes later.
Kaci dropped her coolers in the kitchen. “Yep,” she agreed. “But I’m a pretty satisfied hopeless.”
She joined Tara on the couch, where Miss Higgs was squeezed between Tara’s belly and her laptop. “Write anything good today?” she asked.
“No. My dang hillbilly Sleeping Beauty story fell apart when I couldn’t convince my brilliant astrophysicist princess to kiss the weirdo passed out in the room over the bar.” She slid a meaningful look at Kaci. “You could learn a thing or two from her.”
“You haven’t even asked how it went.”
“Don’t have to. You’re still wearing that sappy grin.”
“I know it’s not serious with Lance,” Kaci told the dark TV screen. “But it’s dang fun hanging out with a guy who seems to like me for me.”
Miss Higgs shuddered out a snore.
“Has she been eating okay the last few days?” Tara asked.
Shivers prickled Kaci’s skin. “She’s been a little picky, but she’s always been persnickety like that.”
Tara didn’t call her out on the way she was stretching that truth so thin even a blind man could’ve seen through it.
Miss Higgs had been ridiculously picky about her food this week. And Kaci had been telling herself it was simply because the cat was crotchety.
She reached over and scratched the kitty’s head too.
“She’s a sweet cat,” Tara whispered.
“She found me after a horrific beauty pageant,” Kaci murmured.
“I was fixin’ to toss a homemade cherry bomb into a dumpster behind the auditorium, and this little white ball of fluff charged me.
She’d speared a wine cork with one of her teeth, so it looked like she was smoking a short, fat cigar.
She kinda wobbled like she’d been drinking the wine too.
But she stopped me from tossing that cherry bomb and probably stopped me from ending up in juvie. ”
“Only you, Kaci.”
“My momma said she probably had fleas and we couldn’t keep her, but I threatened to rip the shoulder pads out of my pageant dress and then cut up all the ruffles, so we compromised.
Miss Higgs got to come home and have a flea bath, and I agreed to enter the Miss Grits pageant.
” She stroked her fingers softly over her cat’s fluffy head. “She hated Ron.”
“She’s a good judge of character.”
“She’s getting old.” Kaci’s throat went tight.
“Here.” Tara lifted the cat and gingerly put her in Kaci’s lap. “I think you two need each other tonight.”
Kaci buried her face in Miss Higgs’s fur. The cat’s rusty purr vibrated against her chest.
She’d moved to Georgia determined to find stability.
But even though she had no intention of moving, life kept changing on her anyway.