Chapter 10 Quilting Guild Intelligence
QUILTING GUILD INTELLIGENCE
Ronnie: Did you see bears?
Matt: Wait, are there really bears?
Jeff: Dude. We are so trapping a bear.
Matt: You’re messing with me.
Charlie: We are not trapping bears.
Matt: So, there ARE bears?
How the gremlins got my number, I don’t know.
Had I been added to the phone tree? For now, they kept me amused.
If left to their own devices, I’m sure we’d have a Lord of the Flies on our hands.
Poor Matt, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t make it out alive.
I tucked the phone into my breast pocket, coming back to reality.
I sat in the truck for almost twenty minutes before killing the engine.
If I opened the door, the experience would become part of the past tense.
The confused look on Nick’s face, the squeal as his bare ass hit the chilly water, and the thought of him nestled in my arm would go from adventure to memory.
My fingers hung on the door handle. One more minute.
He had exited without a word. No ‘thank you.’ No, ‘let’s do this again.’ It’d have been rude if his fingers hadn’t lingered on my knuckles while I fought with the stick shift. The peak and valley, caressed with his thumb until it finally slid over my pinky knuckle, and we broke contact.
“We’ve got time for that.” The words were meant to bring this connection to a crawl. It didn’t feel that way when I woke to a beautiful cub using me as a pillow.
I squeezed the stick, fighting a smile. The silence couldn’t be any more awkward than waking in the morning to find it hadn’t been a dream.
If that wasn’t enough to leave an impression, I’m pretty sure a raccoon had stolen my skivvies.
My return to nature had been a success, and not for any reason I predicted.
“Just go inside,” I mumbled.
With a groan, I shoved the door open. Grabbing the rucksack, I made my way to the garage. Mum stood on the front porch. The look on her face wasn’t any different from the one Seamus had as we crossed his yard. Curious, but not enough to ask whatever questions they had on their mind.
Seamus spotted two men walking out of the forest. I’m sure he had assumptions about what might have occurred.
It didn’t help when Nick waved with a hearty, “Tell Patrick I said hello.” After the vastness of Mother Nature, that one statement reminded me of the smallness of Firefly, and not in the liberating way the stars had.
I hope that wasn’t the same thought running through Mum’s head.
“Did you leave him for dead?”
“What?”
“I saw you leave with that boy yesterday.” I thought it was cute that she still referred to every man pre-midlife crisis as boy. “Charles, where did you hide the body?” Mum looked at me like I was a murder suspect. To be fair, I did look like I’d just buried a body in the woods.
“If I told you—” I wiggled my eyebrows. “—you’d have to testify.”
Her hand went to her chest as she made an audible gasp. She wobbled to the porch railing. Step. Thump. Step. Thump. Leaning over, her eyes narrowed as she looked down at me. “You look like him, but that’s impossible. Charles, a joke? Who are you?”
I shook my head as I lifted the garage door.
The fantasy of last night vanished as I confronted the workbench.
The levity with Mum whooshed out of the space, replaced with a gnawing sensation that didn’t leave room for joy.
In the woods, I could believe he watched down over me.
But here, reality only reminded me of his absence.
Step. Thump. Step. Thump.
The door between the house and garage opened. She had a hand against the frame as she caught her breath. For a woman with a sprained ankle, she hustled like I did when somebody offered cake.
“I dropped him off at Valhalla.”
She hovered as I dropped the bag on Pop’s workbench.
If she thought that by not asking, she respected my privacy, she had never seen herself biting back a burning question.
Mum gnawed on her top lip as if it were an appetizer and she had skipped lunch.
Every so often, she’d lick her lips in such a deliberate way—
“Just ask!”
“What?” Coy is not a trait anybody in this house wielded with accuracy. “Oh, that.” Subtle as a brick to the head. “I didn’t recognize your new friend.”
She might as well have thrown up air quotes.
I had no doubt she had already called around trying to discover his identity.
With the way Lacie threw herself into the town, I’m sure somebody had given her all the details.
At best, they knew him as her friend, at worst, and more likely, they had his life story, and they dished it over a pot of coffee.
“He’s a tourist I met the other day at the market.”
“You took a tourist you just met on a camping trip?” When I explained to Mum how ride-shares worked, she’d be the first to say, “In my day, you didn’t get in a stranger's car.” If only she knew how friendly gay men could be. I’m pretty sure it’d shatter her worldview.
“He’s not exactly a stranger.”
“You don’t say.” Dammit. I had walked right into her trap. From the corner of my eye, I spotted the canary-eating grin. I was about to shut her down, to close ranks and suit up in my armor. For her, I would skip the scathing muttering under my breath, but I’d mastered the art of the redirect.
Not this time.
“He’s visiting with his friend. They’re here to…” I paused, scrunching my brow as I tried to recall the exact reason. “Honestly, other than a curse and an ex-boyfriend, I don’t know why they’re here.”
“An ex-boyfriend, you say?”
“Subtle, Mum.”
“I’m your mother, subtle isn’t a requirement.” It was her turn to wiggle her eyebrows. “Though, to be honest, I expected to see you sweet on somebody with a few— Does he have any tattoos?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm.”
Had I just confessed to my mother that I had been in a situation where I could say Nick didn’t have tattoos?
With anybody else, I would have clammed up and stormed off.
They might poke and prod, but nobody knew me well enough to read between the lines.
That is, anybody but my mother. She had perfected the art, and she spoke fluent Charlie.
“Get your mind out of the gutter. He’s only here for a few days, and then he’s on his way.”
To be fair, I didn’t know that for a fact.
I dropped the rucksack on the floor, ready to tear through it and dry out my sleeping bag.
As I pulled at the straps, I realized, for all the time we spent together, we had barely scratched the surface.
Where was the line between being genuinely curious and prying?
Firefly had put me on the defensive, and perhaps I had taken it to an extreme?
“When are you seeing him again?”
She wouldn’t let up until she had a wedding invitation.
“I don’t know.” Though now that she brought it up… I wouldn’t mind another night with him as he traced my tattoos. “I’m sure I’ll bump into him.”
“Or you could call.”
“I don’t have his—”
I glanced up to see her holding a folded sheet of paper. This. This right here is why I walked away from Firefly. I had spent a night with a handsome cub, and already, Firefly, Mum included, came storming in. They’d push boundaries until they were the third in our relationship.
“What did you do?”
“Quilting Guild. We had a new member.”
“Lacie,” I said as if it were a swear.
“Can I offer a piece of motherly advice?”
“Can I refuse?”
“Charles, stop being a pain in the ass.” She said it in the most motherly tone she could muster. “If you dropped this tough boy act once in a while, you’d see there are more people rooting for you than against.” The motherly tone faded as her eyes narrowed. “Got me?”
Whoa. Mum had dished out a harsh reality as if it were a pecan brownie. She was right, damn her. I kept my armor in place to keep them at bay. That wasn’t going to change anytime soon. But she made it obvious that my strategy had problems.
She hobbled down the step and put the piece of paper on the workbench. “Maybe he’ll get you out of your shell.” She gave a faint smile before exiting the garage. I wanted to give a smart-ass reply, but I had just been schooled by my mother.
I cracked a smile.
Tugging at the sleeping bag, I unzipped it and hung it off the side of the bench.
My eyes never left the little sheet of paper.
How many people had overheard my mother ask Lacie for the number?
Though… my eyebrow went up, why did she ask for it?
She couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t have added his number already.
Did she know me that well, or were Firefly hijinks at play?
I snatched it off the table. As I reached for my phone, it vibrated.
Unknown: Your mother left an impression.
Unknown: Lacie will never leave.
Unknown: Still no sign of your underwear.
Maybe their meddling wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.
Charlie: Next time, extra socks and jocks.