Chapter Eight #2
Vanessa drank the beer he’d abandoned and glanced around the cabin. She seemed unfazed by his freakout, and not concerned that his lungs would collapse. She’d said his vital signs were normal. This was temporary, like a bad trip.
Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe.
The little girl continued sleeping on the beanbag in the corner.
She had the cloth doll clutched under one arm.
Vanessa surveyed the living room with interest. She nodded her approval, even though the cabin’s furnishings were sparse and outdated.
Her backside caught his attention, because it was right there in front of him.
The thin fabric of her pants outlined her sweetly rounded shape.
“This is nice,” she said.
He murmured an agreement, but he wasn’t looking where she was looking.
“Are you hungry?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I don’t think I can eat. My throat’s too dry.”
“Drink your water.”
He drank.
She returned to the couch and flopped down beside him. “You said you have nephews.”
“Yes.”
“No kids of your own?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Any pets?”
He shook his head. He’d had a German shepherd, Gracie, who’d passed away last year.
The retired police dog had been an excellent companion.
When he pictured her in his mind, a wave of sadness struck him.
Throwing the ball for Gracie had been one of his favorite ways to relieve stress. No wonder he was a wreck.
Vanessa finished the beer, studying him.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-nine.”
“What do you do?”
“I already told you.”
He had to concentrate to retrieve the information. “ER nurse.”
“Very good.”
“You’re from Colorado.”
“Denver,” she confirmed. “But I was born here.”
Paul found her enchanting, and it wasn’t just the drugs talking. The time spent outdoors must have agreed with her, because she looked more vibrant. Her cheeks were flushed from the day in the sun and her eyes sparkled with vitality.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Houston.”
“What did you do in Houston?”
“This and that,” he hedged.
“You’re very cagey, for a stoner.”
Her tone registered as teasing but the point penetrated his brain fog. Evasive answers tended to arouse suspicion. He fumbled for the details of his cover story. “I worked for a security company.”
She shifted her attention to his mouth, which made him feel self-conscious.
He’d been looking forward to the opportunity to practice his deception skills but it felt wrong to practice here, with her.
His mind wasn’t sharp right now, and he regretted how he’d treated her earlier.
He’d accused her of being deliberately suggestive.
The truth was that her natural sensuality got under his skin.
“Did you get hurt on the job?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not great,” he said honestly.
“It might help to distract yourself with a quiet activity. What do you like to do?”
Only one activity sprang to mind, along with a dozen variations of it.
He clamped his lips shut in fear that an inappropriate comment would burst out.
Instead of waiting for him to respond, she hopped up from the couch again.
She crossed the room to a shelf that held a variety of paperback books and board games.
“How about Scrabble?”
Paul was in no condition to exercise his intellect, but he just shrugged.
He could stare at her while she moved letters around and try not to drool.
She brought the game to the coffee table, set it up, and sat cross-legged on the floor.
While she placed square tiles on the rack, she glanced at her sleeping daughter.
The little girl hadn’t moved. Then she formed a word in the center of the board: RATIO.
Paul blinked at his tiles owlishly. R-R-T-K-I-N-G. He added an N to the end of RATIO to make RATION, and arranged a few other letters to form KING.
She smirked as this attempt, which he considered admirable, and marked their scores on the tally sheet. It became clear that she wasn’t going to go easy on him. Her next word, GARGOYLE, blew him out of the water. She’d used all seven tiles. He couldn’t calculate the score.
He studied his own tiles. F-U-C-T-R-R-T. The best he could do was add FUC to KING.
She laughed, unoffended by the graphic choice, and scribbled more numbers.
The sound of her laughter filtered through him, bubbly and full-throated.
Her beauty took his breath away. Paul was mesmerized by the combination.
He thought of the strange battle they’d waged earlier.
He’d won the challenge by making her laugh.
Now she was laughing again, and he felt the same unfiltered delight.
They went a few more rounds. She continued to outplay him, keeping score in tidy script.
Her hands were slender, with short, manicured fingernails.
Paul’s attention strayed from the game board to her pretty features often.
He was clumsy and slow. He fumbled with his letter tiles and forgot to pick new ones.
She had to remind him to breathe. Although he failed at creating words that scored well or inspired laughter, the brain fog lifted at one point and the universe realigned.
After she played QUIP vertically, he added some tiles horizontally to form QUIM, which made her do a double take.
“That’s an unusual word choice,” she said.
“Are you challenging it?”
“Just asking for a definition.”
He paused to consider his response. Quim was a crude, old-fashioned term for female parts.
Most blue-collar workers wouldn’t know it, so maybe he should claim ignorance.
He remembered how she’d deliberately misunderstood the word vagrant to take the sting out of his insult earlier today. “It’s a kind of fruit.”
She arched a brow. “A fruit? Like a quince?”
His lips twitched at the question. This afternoon, he’d imagined eating her instead of eating lemons, which made no sense.
She would taste sweet, not sour. The absurdity of the idea struck him, and he couldn’t maintain his usual poker face.
When he smiled, she started giggling uncontrollably.
She fell over onto her side, pressing a palm to her flat stomach.
“You’re a liar,” she said, after she sat up again. “You know what it means.”
“I do.”
She gave him a curious glance. “How?”
“I’ve studied anatomy.”
This set her off again, though he hadn’t meant to amuse her.
Paul had actually read the word in a book, but he couldn’t remember which one.
He’d forgotten about the role he was supposed to be playing and he didn’t care.
What mattered was that he’d impressed her with his vocabulary and made her laugh.
He liked her, he realized. It wasn’t just physical attraction.
There was something else between them, a common thread of humor and humanity.
They’d both come here for sanctuary. They both needed to heal.
She had a sunnier outlook than he did, and he admired her tenacity. She was smart, stubborn, and resilient.
A warning bell sounded in his mind because he couldn’t afford to like her.
He couldn’t let down his guard or abandon the details of his cover story.
He was here under false pretenses, and she was angling for his cabin.
They were adversaries. If he gave her an inch, she’d take a mile.
He shouldn’t be smiling at her, ogling her figure, or trying to make her laugh.
He shouldn’t be spending time with her at all.
Paul kept playing with tempered enthusiasm. She continued to rack up triple-word scores. He continued to make four-letter words, but his heart wasn’t in it. She won easily.
“You don’t fool me,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“I don’t?”
“You let me win.”
“I didn’t let you win.”
“You didn’t try your best.”
“I’m high as a kite.”
“We’ll have a rematch when you’re sober.”
He made a noncommittal sound, although he was secretly thrilled by the prospect of spending another evening with her.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ll live. Thank you.”
She accepted his gratitude with a tired smile. Then she glanced at Emily, still dozing on the beanbag chair.
“Are you staying at the campground?” he asked.
“Yes. Emily left her doll under your picnic table, so we came back for it.”
Paul didn’t offer them shelter, even though his protective instincts were triggered.
Vanessa had helped him with a medical emergency.
She had a small child, and no suitable accommodations.
He doubted they were accustomed to roughing it.
But what could he do to solve this problem?
Letting her stay in his cabin was a bad idea.
It made his head swim with other, equally bad ideas.
“I’m going to use your restroom,” Vanessa said.
Paul nodded and rose to his feet. He took the empty beer bottle to the kitchen just to put some distance between them.
When she returned to the living room, she picked up her medical bag and lifted the sleeping girl into her arms. He opened the screen door for them.
The night was alive with chirping insects, the air cooled by a gentle breeze.
As she brushed past him, he caught a hint of her scent, a mix of shampoo and sunshine and soft skin.
He cleared his throat to say goodbye, and then didn’t. She also remained silent, evaporating into the dark like an apparition. He watched her car travel down the lonely road and listened to the sound of the engine until there was nothing left.