Chapter 2 #2
Because she was the one part of it he missed desperately. He’d been left confused and looping for nearly a year, trying to reconcile how he’d let her in as a friend–and developed complicated feelings for her–all while she double-teamed with his ex to screw him over.
At least his ex, Alissa, had been fairly overt about using him. It was easier to get over her, his girlfriend for five months, than to get over the woman who’d been just a friend for nearly a year.
Emotions were nothing but trouble.
“No. Too hard to travel with it. TSA and all that.”
“Great. Just great. Most women with nails like yours have some on them.”
“Nails like mine?”
“Perfect nails.” He said it with an extra heaping dose of scorn thrown in.
She looked pointedly at his hands, grease around the cuticles, a few small cuts in various stages of healing dotting his fingers. His time in D.C. had been an aberration, his hands used only for office work.
These days, his calluses had calluses.
“You’re criticizing me for not having nail polish remover, but you didn’t have duct tape, and that’s what got us into this mess.”
“No. You touched the superglue when I told you not to, Rachel! That’s what got us into this mess!”
“Quit yelling at me!” Instead of moving away in fear, she took a step closer to him, stretching up to her full height, which, even in her heeled boots, was still shorter than he was. There was a fire in her eyes that was new.
That zing! shot through him again.
“I have every damn right to yell at you, Rachel. Look what you did!” Holding his hand–both their hands–up above them, he forced her to stand on tiptoes, her balance off on the snow. People from warmer climates weren’t good at driving in snow, much less walking on it.
She wobbled a bit, but held her ground.
“You can hiss at me all you want, Kell, but it’s not going to get us out of this mess. We need to go into town and get someone to unstick us.”
“Oh, now you’re reasonable?” he barked back.
“I’m always reasonable!”
He looked down at her boots and snorted.
“Give me your keys,” she ordered.
“What? Why?”
“Because we need to drive into town and get this over with. And you’re not ripping half the skin off your hand. We’ll be civilized adults and drive to the ER.”
Kell sighed, making a cloud in the air between them that was filled with much more than evaporated breath.
“Fine, but I’m driving.”
“I have to drive. That’s the only way it will work,” she said in that officious tone that drove him nuts. The old Rachel wasn’t like this. She sounded more like…
Alissa.
He’d left D.C. after they’d betrayed him, Alissa using him to get access to his uncle, Rachel helping her behind the scenes, and the two of them laughing about it in emails.
He had no idea what Alissa was up to these days.
Sure, social media meant you could stay in touch with anyone you wanted to, 24/7, but Kell hadn’t wanted to know.
Yes, he’d checked here and there right after coming home, but he just felt stupid when he cracked open that closed chapter of his life.
Maybe Rachel had gone to work in Big Oil, like Alissa. He knew they’d talked about it.
A chill ran through him, and he took a half-step toward her, anger spiking his blood.
“You’re here on business? What kind of business?”
She recoiled, but held her ground. “I’m here to help a local company sell to a larger company.”
Damn it.
“Who?”
“Who, what?”
“Whose land are you trying to buy?”
“Land?”
“You work for MonDex with Alissa, don’t you? You’re here to do a land grab for some pipeline project.”
Laughter poured out of her, but her eyes shifted everywhere, confused.
“Geez, Kell. It’s been five years and you still can’t let go, can you? You think I’m working for Big Oil?”
“I don’t know what you did with your life after EEC and I don’t care, but I do care what you’re trying to do to my town.”
“Trying to do to it? You make it sound like I’m here to steal all the children and salt the earth!”
He just stared her down.
“Look,” she said, shivering. “It’s getting dark, and I really, really need to pee.
” She looked at their conjoined hands. “Given how much you obviously hate me, I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to deal with that while we’re stuck to each other.
So how about we get to that ER, get unstuck, and then I can pee.
And you can spend the car ride there telling me all about how awful I am. ”
Her words were a combination of sarcastic and light, but the tone revealed a pain he wasn’t expecting.
He turned and they walked awkwardly to his truck.
Without asking, she grabbed the driver’s side door handle with her free left hand, opened it, and began climbing in.
Yanked toward her, he forced his thighs and core to tighten, holding his space, her left foot inside the car as she balanced herself.
“You can’t do that, Rachel. You’ll have to climb in through the passenger’s side.”
“Ugh!” Her left hand clutched the steering wheel, knee flexed, giving Kell a fine view of her… assets.
Logistics were his strong suit; his sense of balance and spatial relationships were intuitive skills that came easily to him.
They had to. When you’re two hundred feet up in a pine tree, harnesses and ropes your only protection, you’d better know exactly where your body, your saw, and your protective equipment were every nanosecond as you moved.
In a flash, his mind made a mental map of their situation, turning into a blueprint with 3D elements… and he almost groaned.
Letting Rachel drive made sense.
Instantly.
He shouldn’t fight it, because the alternative made him groan.
Literally.
Her right hand was glued to his left hand. She was right–letting her drive was the only option.
She reacted to the low, deep sound from the back of his throat with offense.
“Look, I know you’re frustrated, but so am I. I’m on the edge of losing it, so keep your nonverbal commentary to yourself!”
Smothering a smile was impossible, and as she got angrier and angrier, he found the whole situation funnier and funnier.
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“Because this is so ridiculous. And if you need to pee, go ahead. I won’t look.”
“I will pee in a hospital rest room like a civilized person, Kell.” She looked at their hands. “Besides, I’ll fall over if I try here.”
“In those boots, sure.”
“In general! Guys have no idea how easy they have it.”
“Because we can pee standing up? It’s not like that’s our fault. We didn’t design the plumbing.”
She shivered again, marching around the truck with him in tow, and angrily opened the passenger door.
“Let’s get going.” This time, she used her free hand to haul herself up, her butt in the air as she bent over. Her fancy ski jacket obviously wasn’t intended for the slopes because it hauled up over the small of her back, revealing a thin stretch of uncovered skin that must have been cold.
No tattoo at her sacrum. He half expected to see a butterfly or a tiny rose.
“I’ll just crawl over to the driver’s side,” she called back, her voice slightly muffled as her right hand stretched behind her, shoulder twisted at a rough angle.
Kell tried very hard not to stare at her backside, but it was inches from his face.
Besides, it wasn’t a bad view.
Tucking her right leg into the car, she moved sideways, contorting around the gearshift.
And then paused suddenly with a gasp.
“Oh!”
“What?”
“Your truck.”
“What about it? Sorry it’s not a Mercedes.”
“That’s not it!” Her voice went high with something close to hysteria. “It’s a stick shift!”
“Yeah?”
“I–”
Their simultaneous groan scared off a few birds in the trees.
“You can’t drive a stick?” he asked, incredulous.
“Who drives a stick anymore? Other than my dad, but that’s because he loves his Ferrari.”
“You grew up with a stick-shift car in the family and never learned?” Now he wasn’t just surprised. He was stunned.
“I hate the Ferrari!”
“You poor, oppressed child.”
Her butt backed up, nearly smacking him in the face.
“Shut up! Just shut up, Kell! It’s not my fault Dad taught Tim how to drive his stupid beloved car and never let me. It’s not my fault I have to pee and I am stuck in your truck and would you move?”
“I am stuck to you, Rachel. There’s only so far I can move.”
“Are you staring at my ass?”
“It’s impossible not to.”
“Are you seriously hitting on me in the middle of this mess?”
“No. It’s a physical impossibility not to stare at your butt when you’re in this position and our hands are glued together. Physics can’t be changed just because you don’t like it. Get out of the truck.”
Scrambling backward, she nearly kicked him in the face, and he wasn’t sure whether it was a close shave or a missed intentional hit, but he dodged it.
Red faced and squirming, she got herself arranged so she was sitting on the edge of the passenger seat, legs dangling. He was tall enough that they were nearly eye to eye.
“I guess you’ll have to drive,” she sighed.
Now he was the one who turned red, the heated blood racing through him as he realized she didn’t understand what was about to happen.
Her right hand and his left hand were glued together. There was only one way to get to town with him driving.
She had to straddle him.
Facing him.
In his lap.