Chapter 8 #2
“Whatever you are thinking, you’re wrong,” he told her.
He took out a paper napkin from the front pocket of his shorts and started wiping her sticky fingers.
Not wanting to touch him—okay, she did, but she’d rather stab herself in the eye with a hot poker than let him know that!
—she snatched it out of his hand and wiped her thumb, giving the task far more attention than it deserved.
“Are you a mind reader now?” She lifted her chin and nodded to Madam Calliope’s psychic shop across the road. “Maybe you should ask her for a job.”
He tipped up her chin with his thumb and index finger and forced her to look at him. “Wren,” he warned.
She jerked her head away. He didn’t speak, and she pushed an agitated hand through her hair. “If you’re just going to stand there like an oversized statue, let me pass.”
He folded his arms and widened his feet. “I didn’t kiss you because we were in the middle of the road. Your godmother was about twenty feet from us, watching us; Hayes, too. Tad and his cronies were five feet away, and I could name another ten people in the general vicinity.”
“I also can’t help remembering that, just a week ago, you pulled back and ran away like your pretty ass was on fire.”
She twisted her lips and looked away. Okay, fair point.
“Wren, when I kiss you, and I am going to kiss you, preferably sometime soon, it’s only going to be when you are ready to take this to its natural, adult conclusion. And it won’t be with half the town watching. And probably commenting.”
It took a while for his words to sink in, for him to make sense. She hadn’t noticed anybody else; her entire focus had been on him. Unlike her, he’d been conscious of the world around him.
“I was a soldier before I was a doctor, Wren. Situational awareness is part of my DNA,” he explained. How did he always seem to know what she was thinking? It was a little reassuring, and a lot annoying.
Right. She huffed out a sigh and then remembered that he’d said that he intended to kiss her sometime soon, and without an audience. Heat flared once again.
“If you’re going to look at me like that, I’m going to say to hell with it and go for it,” he warned her. “Don’t blame me if it’s the main topic of conversation at Spirited Grounds or at the bookshop tomorrow morning.”
Right. Town gossip. As well as discussing their relationship, she didn’t put it past the town to rate their kiss and score it for entertainment value and skill. Wren’s shoulders slumped. Dane was right, damn him.
“Are we good?” he asked.
She sighed and nodded. She still felt like a fool, but not as much as she did before. Thinking that she didn’t want any crossed signals—something she’d mastered the art of with both Alex and Kyro, but in opposite ways—she rubbed the back of her neck.
“Okay, so it’s pretty obvious I’m attracted to you,” she said, keeping her voice low. She swallowed and waited for his nod. “And you are to me, right?”
“Very.”
She appreciated his quick, brief answer. “Okay. Um … I’m not sure how far we’ll go, or where we’ll end up—”
“Hopefully in bed,” he stated, still calm. Still so very steady.
Wren held up her hand. “But maybe I should tell you that if that does happen, and I’m not saying it will, there’s no possibility of it going any further. I’m not interested in a relationship.”
He looked at her for a long, long time, his expression inscrutable. “At all?”
Wren shook her head. “At all.” She cleared her throat. “If you are, then maybe you should…” She couldn’t finish her sentence; hell, she could barely handle the thought of him with anyone else.
“This isn’t about wanting sex. It’s about wanting you.” Dane slid his hands into the pockets of his shorts, a tiny frown pulling his eyebrows together. “But since we’re both only in H-Town for the summer, not looking for more makes sense.”
It did, of course it did. But despite being happy he was on the same page as her, she rocked on her heels, feeling disconcerted.
Part of her wanted to take his hand and ask him to take her home, but a bigger part of her wasn’t that brave.
When Dane just looked at her, she swayed from side to side.
How could he be so calm while she felt so off-balance?
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “Or say.”
A small smile touched his lips. “Why don’t we carry on walking down the street and maybe grab a drink in the beer garden?” he suggested. “And if you buy me a drink, I might be persuaded to get onto the dance floor with you.”
She winced. “Oh God, do you have to?” she whined, teasing him.
He lightly pinched her waist. “As my dance teacher, you should be encouraging, not dissing me,” he told her.
Wren grinned, felt the buzz coming from her back pocket, and pulled out her phone to see Poppy’s name on her screen. She swiped to answer and lifted it to her ear. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Benji left earlier for a last-minute boys’ weekend with his golfing buddies, so I, impulsively, hopped in my car and headed your way. I want to eat my body weight in ice cream. Plus, I need to offload some stuff about the wedding.”
“Sure!” Wren said. “Are you here yet?”
“I am, I’m just parking the car. And I intend to scoff ice cream until I puke.”
Wren had seen that happen, and it wasn’t pretty. “I’ll toss you in the lake if you throw up,” she warned her, her laughter bubbling.
“Deal. Where are you?”
Wren squealed, thoroughly overexcited. It had been ages since she’d spent any quality time with Poppy outside of video calls and long text threads.
Could anything be better than eating ice cream and catching up with your person in your favorite town?
She eyed Dane… Well, she could think of one thing.
Shaking her head—get behind me, temptation!
—Wren arranged to meet Poppy by the bandstand in five.
She shoved her phone in her back pocket. “I’m so sorry, but Poppy, my best friend, has just arrived unexpectedly, and I need to find her.”
Dane nodded, utterly unfazed. “I get it,” he said, not seeming at all annoyed that she was blowing him off. “I’ll see if Hayes or Thom are in the beer garden and join them. Head over there with your friend, and I’ll buy you both a beer.”
“Thom’s Boston-based and has gone home. We’re not sure when he’ll be back in town,” Wren told him.
“Got it.”
Wren nodded, started to leave, but Dane’s hand holding on to her arm held her back. She looked up at him and took in his intense gaze, his heat-filled eyes. “If you want to pick up where we left off, later, you know where I live.”
Old Mrs. Kitchener’s place. She knew it well. She shoved her hair out of her eyes. “I’m not promising anything, Dane. Even if we sleep together, there’s no chance of more.”
His expression was more tender than she expected, and he loosened his hold on her arm to brush his thumb against her lower lip, pressing down in the center before dropping his hand. “Have fun with your friend, Wren.”
She nodded and walked away, surprised by how much effort it took to put distance between them. But being with Poppy, the person who knew her best, was what she needed right now. Girl time, Poppy’s honesty, and a little distance from Dane would straighten out her thoughts.
But she absolutely refused to look back, in case temptation was too much to resist.
* * *
After sampling far too many flavors of ice cream—because Poppy’s philosophy was try everything twice and Wren was incapable of saying no—they stepped into the entrance of the beer tent … and straight into chaos.
Wren scanned the crush and sighed. It was packed.
And the first person they found was Luna, arms out wide.
She wore an ice-cream-cone inspired costume, with waffle-fabric leggings, and a pink and pistachio-green bodice, boobs about to spill.
She looked like a dangerous sugar rush. “My two favorite girls!” she boomed, her voice carrying over the loud music.
“What do you think? Doesn’t my tent look fabulous? ”
“It’s amazing, Luna,” Poppy told her after stepping into her arms for a tight hug as Wren struggled to take in the orange and black fairy lights strung across the pumpkin-orange fabric.
Paper bats, suspended on fishing line, swooped low, and skeletons lounged against the support poles, looking like they’d had one too many craft brews.
It was chaotic inside and smelled like pretzels, burnt sugar, beer, and the whiff of sunscreen left over from the day.
Casting her eye around, Wren spotted long wooden tables jammed with festivalgoers—sunburnt tourists, costumed residents, a combination of both.
The servers wore costumes befitting a 1950s ice cream parlor, candy stripes in pink and green, and they maneuvered through the crush, carrying trays heavy with beer bottles and violently colored cocktails.
In front of the wooden dance floor, a band dressed as vampires belted out popular, get-on-the-dance-floor hits.
“I am, even if I have to say it myself, very good at organizing the crap out of an event,” Luna stated, then took a sip from her bowl-like glass of red wine. Wren, noticing her overly bright eyes and her slight slur, knew that this wasn’t her first drink. Or maybe not even her second.
“How are you getting home, Lu?” she asked. “You didn’t drive here, right?”
Luna slapped her shoulder, harder than she meant to, and Wren winced. “Darling, what a question! I’m taking my broom.”
“Luna—” Poppy started. Then, finally noticing that Luna was as plastered as a poltergeist, she grabbed her arm to stop her from swaying dangerously. “Oh God. Remember that time Luna got drunk and swam naked in the lake, singing ‘Mary, Did You Know’?”
Wren remembered it well. Christmas six years ago was a day she wouldn’t quickly forget. Dammit, it looked like she would be on Luna duty and would have to put her godmother to bed. She’d rather attend a séance. Naked.