Chapter Five
A fter they finished the dishes, Abigail made some fuss about not needing her dining-room light fixed, but Mel rolled right over that silly resistance.
He went out and got his tools and went down into the root cellar to pull the fuse for the dining room.
When he came back in, she was bent over at her open refrigerator, organizing leftovers.
She didn’t say anything as he headed through the kitchen to get to work.
She’d been quiet since the last part of their washing up. In fact, the temperature between them had been slightly cool for most of the evening. Not anything dramatic, just a vague impression of tension, an eggshell or two under their feet.
He wasn’t sure if he’d said something wrong, or if she was tired, or what.
For his part, he figured he was thinking a little romantically about her tonight, and that had put him off his feet some.
He’d feel better if she was into it, but she’d given him nothing to work with.
Maybe that was rubbing up a blister on his subconscious tonight.
Setting those thoughts aside as he finished fixing the light—decrepit wiring in the housing that would eventually have caused a much bigger problem if left unattended—Mel decided to shake off whatever weight sagged between them and leave on a lighthearted note.
He was not a man who enjoyed a beef. He preferred to be on good terms with everyone, and especially Abigail.
It felt like a black mark on his soul to have a woman like her feeling even slightly bad because of him.
He packed up his tools and returned to the kitchen.
She wasn’t in there, and the kitchen had the distinct look of having been closed up for the night—only the light over the sink on, the faucet gleaming beneath it, everything put tidily away.
Through the old screen door, he saw Bogie perched atop the porch steps and knew she was out there.
Looking through the mesh of the screen, he saw her standing at the porch railing, gazing up at the night sky.
Moonlight edged her in silver. The hem of her flowery blue dress caught the breeze and danced over her bare calves.
She had her house shoes on—lime green Crocs with little charms. Ariadne and Lilith, her two cats, a matched set of pure white fluff, sat primly on the rail beside her, taking in the same view.
Sleepy sounds filled the night: the low susurration of crickets and frogs, the occasional tinkle of a windchime, and the gentle song of a single whippoorwill.
Mel paused at the door and soaked in that serene, lovely moment. This was country quiet, more peaceful than silence, and a major reason he had no desire to live anywhere else ever again.
The spring of the wooden door creaked pleasantly as he pushed through, and Abigail smiled at him over her shoulder. “All done?”
He smiled back and set his toolbox on the painted plank floor. “All done. The wiring in that box is at least eighty years old, Abs. I spliced some good wire in at the connection points, but that’s not a long-term fix. We should talk about rewiring the house.”
“Mercy!” she said. “That sounds expensive.”
The cats jumped down and came to Mel to offer head butts and demand scritches, then they strutted to the door, puffy tails waving. One of them—he couldn’t keep them straight, though Abigail insisted they weren’t identical—used a paw to open the screen door, and they slipped inside.
Bogie turned his tawny head and gave him a look and a blink, which Mel interpreted as the canine version of Hey . Then he returned to his quiet surveillance of the property. Bogie rarely clocked out.
Mitch was in the yard, chewing a stick. He was all about the work-life balance.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Mel said as he went to stand at Abigail’s side. “You know the labor’s free, and I can get the parts and supplies at cost.” The cost of a rewire was mostly in the labor, anyway, and it was labor Mel would be delighted to take on.
Looking up at him, she sighed. She turned back to the view before she answered, “You mean the labor’s free because you’d do it.”
“Well, yeah. ‘Course.” When she shook her head, Mel felt a surge of frustration, but he pushed it back down. “I’m an electrician, Abs. It’s what I do, and I want to do it for you.”
“It’s too much, Mel. I don’t know what I’ve got to offer in exchange for somethin’ so big.”
He meant to end this evening on a good note, but his frustration was growing—so much so that his right hand curled into a fist. Every time he offered to help in some way, she had to offer something in return.
But he didn’t want anything in return. He’d happily sit at her table and eat delicious food she’d made, but for him, it was about her company more than her cooking .
.. and about letting her feel she’d given him something in return.
He simply wanted to do something for this person he liked. She made the world better every time she woke up and started her day. Why couldn’t she just let him be good to her?
“Why do you do that, Abigail?” he asked directly.
She turned to give him her full attention, her moonlit brow folded with confusion. “Do what?”
“Turn everything I offer into a transaction.”
Her beautiful blue eyes went wide at once, but she took a moment before she answered.
“I suppose it is a transaction, but I don’t mean it in the way I think you do. I don’t mean it as a business dealing. I mean balance.”
“You think we’re not balanced?” Could she mean she felt beholden to him? Well, that was funny, since he was a little bit in awe of her. If they weren’t in balance, it wasn’t him pulling the weight.
You know what? he thought. What the hell. With thorns suddenly sprouting between them, why not just go for it? Why not say it all?
Before she’d formed an answer to his question, he laid some shit out for her.
“Seems like you think it’s a burden for me to come out here like I do and help out where you need it.
Seems like you think eating at your table and bringing your food home with me is nothing but what’s owed.
Let me tell you something, Abigail Freeman.
I’m here because I want to be. I help out because I want things here to be nice for you.
I want you to be safe and happy, and it makes me feel good to know I can do something about that.
You are an amazing cook, and I will eat your food breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of my life, but it’s not payment for fixing your light, or your truck, or anything else.
You make the world better just by waking up every day and being in it.
You make my life better just being in it.
I’m here because I want to be where you are. ”
As he finished, he snapped his mouth shut, suddenly doubtful. That was a lot. It was all true, but it might be too much. Probably it was too much.
Abigail had stared up at him throughout that speech, her eyes wide and her forehead furrowed. She continued staring for about ten times longer than he could comfortably abide, but he let her take her time.
“Those were beautiful words,” she finally said, her voice soft and uncharacteristically hesitant. “But I’m not sure what all they mean.”
Mel’s most powerful desire in that moment was to kiss her—to grab her perfect, heart-shaped face in his hands and plant his mouth on hers. That should clear up the question handily.
But if she pushed him off ... in this moment, he thought that clear a rejection might cut deep enough to bleed. He could take a verbal rejection far better than a physical one, and he’d put himself out there already about as far as he could and still retain some dignity.
So he gave her the chance to say no. “It means I want to kiss you, Abigail. It means I like you like that.”
He didn’t know how to interpret her swift intake of breath.
In for a penny ... his grandfather muttered inside his ear. As a final foray, Mel asked still more directly. “Can I kiss you?”
Still she only stared, now without even a gasp to wonder about. The pulse point at the side of her throat fluttered like she’d trapped a butterfly there, but he didn’t dare try to guess what that might mean.
When the silence seemed endless, he finally backed off. “Okay. Sorry, I—”
She grabbed his shirt, hooking her hand in the space between the plackets, over the topmost closed button. Her fingers brushed against his bare chest, and Mel felt that feathery touch like each fingertip was a live wire.
“Please,” she whispered.
Was that possibility he sensed in her quiet word?
“Please what?” he asked, pitching his voice to a murmur like hers. He stepped in again and covered her hand with his. “What, Abs? Just tell me.”
“Please kiss me.”
An electric jolt slammed into his chest. “You want that? Want me?”
Her eyes still wide and fixed on his, Abigail nodded.
He’d been waiting, hoping, for a sign, some indication that she’d felt the same pull he’d been feeling for weeks. Until now, there’d been nothing. But that nod was no mere sign. It was an answer.
Cupping her soft cheeks in the work-toughened palms she’d studied earlier, Mel kissed her.
As his lips touched hers, she sighed, the same soft, high-pitched sound she made when she slipped the first spoon of her homemade peach ice cream onto her tongue.
Mel couldn’t help but chuckle, and it made her do the same.
Then her hands skimmed over his arms, from wrist to shoulder; she slid her arms around his neck, and he felt her fingers sink into his hair.
Encouraged, Mel deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue between the plush pillows of her cupid’s-bow lips.
She tasted like a fading memory of apple cider and lemon blueberry crumble, she smelled like something woodsy and floral, and her soft, ample chest pressed snugly to him as she took in a breath and sighed it into his mouth.
That wild current surged through his chest, speeding his heart and frothing his blood.
All summer he’d thought of her. First with worry and protective outrage; then friendship had rooted, and with affection came the sprout of something more.
For weeks now, each thought of her had brought on the telltale twitch low in his gut, the one that ushered in a more pronounced twitch farther south.
And now here she was, in his arms, their tongues moving together, learning the choreography of their pairing, a dance new yet familiar, too. And he was so hard he hurt, an intensity he hadn’t felt in, shit, probably decades.
It really had been decades since he’d felt this hot for a woman.
Since his twenties, he’d preferred easy encounters, convenient sex, the kind that literally dropped into his lap, was over when it was over, and everybody went back to what they’d been doing.
It kept his life streamlined and simple, his obligations and burdens few. It was the life he wanted.
Or maybe it was the life he’d thought he’d wanted.
For this particular woman, he was on fire. All five of his senses were so full of her he thought he might start hallucinating, a sixth sense forming to handle the overload.
Hit with a sudden need to imprint the whole of her wonderfully soft body on his skin, he dropped his hands from her face, sent them around her, and drew her tightly to him, taking the kiss deeper as well.
That was the moment Abigail retreated. She closed her mouth gently and tipped her head back, her face tilted up but her eyes still closed. Her fingers were linked on his nape, and she didn’t release them.
She hadn’t pulled any farther back, she didn’t seem ready to let go of him, and Mel didn’t know what to do.
“Abs?” he asked in a whisper, hoping not to break the spell.
She sighed softly, and her eyes fluttered open, as if she’d been napping—no, as if she’d been dreaming.
“That was lovely,” she murmured as a tiny smile played over her lips, still shining in the moonlight with the traces of their kiss.
“Yeah, it was. Are we done?”
Again, she considered him for far longer than he’d like. But she didn’t let him go or seem anxious to be let go. So he looked back, enjoyed the sparkle in her blue eyes, and waited.
“For tonight, yes. We’re done.” With that, she let her hands slip back down his arms.
Mel didn’t let go of any part of her yet. “Just for tonight?”
Her gaze sharpened. “Well, I think that’ll take some talkin’ betwixt us.”
He grinned. “You worried about my intentions?”
“Well, yeah, “ she said, deflating his grin. “Though I guess I wouldn’t say worried. ‘Curious’ works better. I think your intentions and mine should be headed in the same direction before we do anything like that again.”
Setting her hands on his chest, she pushed free of his embrace and took a couple steps toward the house. “But it’s too late for all that now, so why don’t you go on home. I got some Tupperwares for you to take ‘long with you.”
As he watched her grab the handle and pull the screen door open, Mel felt like his right-side tires were sunk in mud. Thirty seconds ago his tongue had been mapping the terrain of her mouth, his brain had been conjuring all sorts of possibilities, and now it was all just ... over?
“Abigail!” he called before she crossed the threshold.
She turned back with a bright smile that sent her cheekbones so high they changed the shape of her eyes. God, how he loved that smile.
“Yeah?”
He had no idea what to say. He’d called her name to reclaim something that was already in the past, and now he didn’t know what anything meant.
He didn’t even know what he meant by all this.
Abigail was no club chick, no easy fuck.
She’d want commitment and exclusivity and .
.. and ... what had she said? They should be headed in the same direction before anything like that happened again.
What direction? What did she want? What did he want?
He liked his life as it was. Didn’t he?
He’d had his fill of being responsible for another person. Hadn’t he?
Everything he’d been sure of was now a question.
But was it a question for this moment alone, or was he truly considering changing everything about his life?
When he left the circle of this woman’s witchy home, would he settle back into the comfort of his usual thoughts?
Or was this a moment to be preserved at any cost?
In the end, uncertainty and cowardice claimed him, and all he said was, “You sending any of that crumble with me?”
She blinked, and, for half a second, her smile faltered. Then she beamed at him again. “Of course!”