Chapter 3 #2
“That’s disgusting! I am completely in control of my body!”
“Good. Because you’re doing a piss-poor job of controlling your emotions.”
“Hey!”
“Oh. Sorry. Shouldn’t have said piss.”
“You think that was the offensive part?”
“Come on, Rachel. I’ve got places to be and things to do, and we’re not going to change our outcome by arguing. Get in the truck and let’s go.”
“I–”
Another howl, followed by what sounded like screaming women in the far distance, made Rachel instinctively move closer to Kell, who put a protective hand on her shoulder.
“What’s that?” she whispered. “It sounds like a bunch of women being attacked!”
“That’s the other serial killer, doing his work.” He gave her a hideously evil grin. “We split up all the women whose cars break down by the side of the road and I got stuck with you.”
“STOP IT!!”
A frustrated sigh came out of him.
“I don’t know. A pack getting into a turkey den? Maybe some foxes eating something? Coyotes? Lots of options out here.”
As fear flowed through Rachel’s veins, replacing every other emotion, she realized with dismay that their options were limited to one.
One neither of them wanted to face.
Reality sucked.
Rachel closed her eyes and moved out of Kell’s orbit of warmth, madly searching for an alternative.
“How about I drive, and you just do the gear changing?” she asked, peering into the truck and examining the stick shift. “It’s not that hard, right?”
“Do you understand how to drive a stick?”
“Sure. You move up through the gears, then down.”
“And the clutch?”
“Nothing about this situation is clutch!”
A pained look made his face tighten. “No, Rachel, the clutch pedal. You’d have to push the pedal at the exact right time, with calibrated pressure, whenever I shift gears.”
“There’s a pedal?”
He let out a low growl of frustration.
“Fine. I can’t drive at all, then.”
“Not without losing control of the truck. Also, you ever driven on ice?”
“Hah. No.”
“There’s a hill up ahead that is so bad, sometimes you have to fishtail your way up it.”
“I don’t even know what you just said, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not.”
She thrust her chin up with determination and said, “All right. Let’s do this with as much dignity as possible.”
“That’s… not a lot.”
Kell walked around the truck and, having no choice, she followed. He climbed into the driver’s side, easing the seat back as far as it could go, using their conjoined hands to reach the mechanism on the left side panel.
As she watched, his body stunned her. The Kell she knew five years ago had been bigger than the other guys she knew in the city, but not like this.
This man was big. Strong. Full and muscled, his body made clear that he used it for a living. Thick thighs filled out his jeans, and his flannel shirt and vest strained over a powerful chest and honed arms.
“Welcome to Kell’s Amusement Park.” With his free hand, he gestured across his lap. “All riders must be at least this tall to ride the Kell Train. Fasten your seatbelt and–”
“Shut up.”
His throaty laugh was a cover for his own embarrassment, she knew, but it really didn’t make a difference.
This was going to be humiliating, no matter what.
Might as well get it over with.
“My purse!” she suddenly exclaimed, coming to her senses. “And my luggage.”
Kell looked in the back seat of his truck, her gaze following his. It was stuffed with greasy-smelling boxes.
“I’m moving some equipment and filing for my dad. You’ll have to put it in the back of the pickup.”
“I’m not letting my Louis Vuitton luggage ride outside in the snow!”
“Then leave it. We can get into town, call Deke, and he’ll come up here and fix the car.”
“Deke is a real person?”
“Sure. Runs one of the local auto repair and breakfast diner places.”
“One of? There’s more than one ‘auto repair and breakfast diner’ establishment? What else do you have? Nail salons in laundromats?”
“No, but that’s a great idea.”
“I need my purse,” she declared, taking a step toward her rental car and nearly going flat on the ice when Kell didn’t move a muscle.
“You fall, you’re taking half the skin on my hand with you.”
“Then get out and help me! It’s under the seat!”
Kell climbed out and tromped over to the car with Rachel right behind him. He opened the door and fished under the driver’s seat. “This it?” he asked, holding it up.
“Yes.”
“Your purse is the size of a small child.” A long shoulder strap, thick like a man’s belt, made it easy to sling over his shoulder and keep his free hand free. That he didn’t balk at wearing a woman’s purse for the sake of practicality made her start to smile, but she smothered it fast.
“Now you’re a fashion critic? The tree guy reviews purses, too–like the auto repair and breakfast diner?” she teased as they went back to his truck.
He tossed her bag in the back seat, on top of a box, and said no more as he climbed back in, eyes hooded with a curmudgeonly stare straight ahead.
She gripped the steering wheel with her left hand and pulled herself up awkwardly, her core tightening as she focused on balancing herself. Thank goodness for Pilates.
Her instructor probably didn’t have this maneuver in mind when she taught classes, though.
“What if I sit over there,” she said, jutting her chin toward the passenger seat, “and we stretch our hands? I’ll sit backward.”
“Try it.”
She moved over hopefully, but then looked at Kell, who was bent so far with his left arm that his right shoulder rested on the console. He mimicked steering and shifting gears with his free hand.
“As long as I don’t have to see, and have the reflexes of a hummingbird to shift, I’m good,” he said dryly.
“Fine.” She looked in the back seat. “How about I ride behind you?”
“You have monkey arms? Because you’d have to have abnormally elongated limbs, Rachel, and last I knew, you weren’t an elastic superhero.”
“Cut it out with the cracks!”
“It’s a king cab with an enormous console. Nothing about this truck was designed to be compact, and they sure as hell didn’t have this scenario in mind. Get on my damn lap so we can get out of this damn mess and go our separate ways.”
His cursing surprised her. Yes, it was mild, but it was rougher than she expected.
“You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“Mean? That’s me being very patient, given how much you’ve tested me.”
Screams from the woods made her jump in her seat, the sound closer.
“Will they try to eat us?”
“If they do, your boots will make it easy for me to escape.”
“See? Mean.”
He sighed. “Just get in my lap and let’s get it over with.”
“That’s what she said,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth as she lifted her right leg and went for it, planting it on the driver’s side, knee sliding between the door and Kell’s thigh.
A loud laugh from Kell, revealing unexpected humor, was what she faced when she settled in, her butt raised up so she wasn’t literally straddling him.
“There,” she said to his fading chuckle. “Let’s go.”
“Can’t.” His single word blew hot breath on her nose, a hint of coffee attached to it. Ripples of arousal turned her skin to one big erogenous zone, her pulse picking up between her legs, her thighs aching.
Biology, Rachel, she lied to herself. It’s basic biology. This means nothing.
“What do you mean, can’t?”
Grateful for having popped a breath mint in her mouth when she crossed the New Hampshire-Maine line three hours ago, she now wondered how to avoid having her face collide with his for the entire ride.
“Your ass is on the steering wheel.”
“No, it’s not.” Moving a bit to prove him wrong, she set off the horn, the blare scaring her into a small scream.
“The horn begs to differ.”
Was his palm on her butt? Did he just pat her?
Being inches from his mouth, their eyes filled with doubts and tension, made this harder. Her right arm bent painfully behind her as Kell moved their conjoined hands to the steering wheel.
Balance was impossible now.
Slumping forward, forehead resting on his shoulder, she accepted reality.
“There you go,” he murmured against her ear. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Her whole body went ablaze at those words.