Chapter 12 #3
“Welcome home, and thank you so much! I got all my work done, and I’m four chapters into this awesome new Max Seeck book! I got us two falafel platters from downstairs and I can heat them up whenever you want.”
The rest of the apartment was how he’d left it, which was already neat. Only the Pulling for You desk had been messy.
And now it wasn’t.
“Kell?” Fear flashed in her eyes as she looked at him, then the desk. “Are you upset about that?”
“Uh…”
“Because it was just so disorganized. Easy to fix, though. I walked to the coffee shop when I needed a stretch, so while I was out, I went to the post office and got you some stamps. Then I walked back when I needed another break and sent all those estimates and invoices. That folder of old invoices was easy to sort out, so don’t worry.
You had over twenty-nine thousand in unpaid invoices!
I had no idea pulling poison ivy paid that much. ”
“I–”
Rachel stood, Cally giving him a look that said he was dead meat for interrupting her fourteenth nap of the day, and walked over to him.
He was still in his coat, sweaty and gross from so much work in the cold, the kind where you roast from the inside out but can’t take off too many layers or you’ll freeze.
He processed the moment in a haze of unreality.
Until she kissed him.
It was unexpected and sweet, and he forgot about his aches, ignored the idea that maybe he shouldn’t go there with her, pushed aside the uneasy worry that he was being played for a sucker again, and instead–just felt.
Touched. Kissed.
Enjoyed.
When they came up for air, her chocolate-brown eyes were filled with the same conflict he felt, but they were doing this anyway.
Whatever this was.
“Why would you help me?” he blurted out. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t. I wanted to.”
“Wanted to? You have more than enough work to worry about.”
“It took me an hour, Kell.”
“An hour! No way. There’s at least three days’ worth of work there.”
“I sent off some invoices, that’s all. You also had a lot of hand-scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad–looked like more estimates?
So I typed them up and found your letterhead.
Printed a sample for you to look at. I can print the other twenty or so and get them out in the mail, or you can email them. ”
“Most of my customers want both.”
“Okay, that’s easy enough.”
“Rachel.”
“Mmm?”
“This is amazing. You really didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s easy for me, Kell.”
“It’s torture for me.”
“It’s just organizing and mailing.”
“I know!” he groaned. “It should be easy for me, too, but it’s not. I have two weeks’ worth of voicemails from potential customers I’m ignoring. Who knows how many website inquiries in my business email. Doing the job–that’s the easy part. The running-the-business part, though…”
“You’re serious. You really are overwhelmed by this.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“No. It’s second nature. On the other hand, I’d be overwhelmed by climbing trees while carrying a chainsaw, or pulling poison ivy vines that can cause third degree burns.”
He was holding her hands, wondering why he was going on about his company when a gorgeous woman had just kissed him, bought him dinner, and organized his life.
“You surprise me,” he admitted.
“Good.” She squinted, the skin between her eyes tightening a bit. “Make you a deal. You help me get Lucinda and Boyce to sell, and I’ll get Pulling for You in great shape.”
“No way.”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
“That’s it? Fine? You’re not going to push?”
“Sure.”
“Your mom’s right.”
“My mother? What about my mother?”
To his chagrin, he realized instantly he’d made a mistake.
“Nothing.”
“You can’t just drop something like that on me and back out of it. What about my mother? You talked to her?”
“No. But my mom did.”
“And my mother said something to your mother about me?”
“Yes.”
“That has to do with this conversation?”
He sighed. Might as well come out with it. “She said you have no killer instinct.”
Shock made Rachel blink, the look on her face making him instantly sympathetic.
Until she burst out laughing.
“My–my–my mother said that? About me?”
“I know. Ouch.”
“Ouch? No! Not ouch! I’m impressed that my mother noticed anything about me that isn’t on my body or face!”
“Your body and face are very nice to notice,” he murmured, coming in for a quick kiss. “Look. I’m speechless, Rachel. Let me get out of these clothes and then we can talk.”
He heard what he’d just said.
“I meant, let me get out of these clothes and take a shower. Ten hours in the field working on trees has made me a sweaty beast, and I need a hot shower to unwind.”
A part of him wanted to invite her in with him. Imagining the soap all over her curves was making him hard.
But her offer made this all the more confusing. Help with his business in exchange for his influence with Boyce and Lucinda? Talk about ouch. The tit for tat felt too much like being used by Alissa.
No, it wasn’t the same, because Alissa straight up used him without offering anything in return, but Rachel’s proposal left a bad taste in his mouth.
Old doubt crept back in.
He gave her hand a quick squeeze and went straight to the bathroom, turning on the shower and stripping down as the water warmed up. Maybe a cold shower would be better, he mused, turning the knob back.
Tormenting himself with icy spikes was better than the alternative, which was to waffle between wanting to have sex with her on his kitchen counter or kick her out for possibly just using him again.
“Not again,” he muttered. “She didn’t use you the first time. That was Alissa.”
Why was he still fighting with himself? Leaving the past in the past shouldn’t be so hard. Rachel had urged him to forgive himself, and he had.
Kind of.
The what if drove him nuts, though. Some piece of him couldn’t let it go. Logic wasn’t part of this feeling. Reason certainly had no role.
When something made no sense, it was because it made no sense, his dad used to tell him. The tautology wasn’t helpful.
Kell was stuck.
Stuck in a loop he couldn’t stop.
Rachel was all he thought about. All he wanted these days. Her presence re-ignited him, his mind, body, and soul eager for more. She was quickly becoming the light of his life, an intriguing and alluring presence, opening doors inside him he’d long-ago shut tight.
When he was with her, he wanted more.
So why the inner battle?
“Do it, dude. Just let go,” he muttered, as if it would help.
Nope.
Jumping in the shower spray, he did steady deep-breathing exercises and soaped up fast, the two-minute cold shower something he was used to.
After listening to one too many podcasts while driving around in rural Maine, he’d stumbled across a neuroscientist who talked a lot about peak performance and cognition.
The occasional cold shower made a difference.
Right now, it just got his body to rev a little lower, so more blood could deliver oxygen to his addled brain.
As he climbed out of the shower, he dried off, then looked for his clean clothes.
Ugh.
In his rush to shower, he’d forgotten to grab some. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he walked out to find Rachel on the couch, nose in a book, until his presence made her look up and catch his eye.
Then do a long, slow inventory down his body.
So much for the cold shower changing blood flow patterns.
Without a word, he went into his bedroom, found some clothes, and got dressed, forced to tuck something into his pants a little more carefully than usual.
Running a comb through his long hair, he looked into the mirror.
Rachel was right.
He really was a different man than he’d been in D.C.
Once in a while, he tortured himself by pulling out old pictures from D.C. Clean shaven, hair closely cropped, he had that young executive look he’d worked so hard to achieve. Here at home, the long hair and beard kept him warm.
Or so he told himself.
Mostly, it kept him hidden.
And when he’d come back from D.C., hiding hadn’t just been his objective.
It had been how he survived those first few months.
In a sense, the beard and long hair were partially Rachel’s fault, then, he told himself, chuckling at the absurdity of it.
Was she more attracted to the old Kell? Should he shave and get a haircut?
“Shut up, dude,” he murmured as he rolled his eyes, shoved his feet in slippers, and went back out to find Rachel setting the table, if by “setting” it, you meant putting the recyclable paper containers on the table, adding two glasses of water and two forks, and motioning for him to come over.
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Good. Because I got this, and then I went to Love You Bakery and bought their famous heart-shaped brownies.”
“Around here, we say you got a loaded brownie at Greta’s.”
“Greta?”
“The woman who owns Love You Bakery. Locals just call it Greta’s.”
“I have a lot to learn about this town.”
I have a lot to learn about you, he thought, but instead of opening his mouth and making a fool of himself, he took a bite of falafel.
And groaned.
“So good, right? This is two falafel dinners in a row for me and it’s as good tonight as it was last night,” Rachel said, digging in.
They ate in silence, Kell finishing his in about five minutes, voracious appetite finally tamed by eating his entire container before Rachel had even eaten a quarter of hers.
“Wow. You must go through a ton of calories a day.”
“I use my body nonstop for a living. Eating well is a requirement.”
A little pink showed in her cheeks at that comment.
“Thank you,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “That was amazing and you did not have to buy me dinner.”
“Of course I did. You were so kind to me last night, and work was easy today. I have a big video review project and using any other internet has been a slog.”
He glanced at his desk.
“Now that you cleared it, use my desk. Keep the key. Work here while I’m gone.”
As Rachel finished chewing, swallowing slowly, he watched her take a drink from her glass of water, the way she moved entrancing him. Saying yes to more was getting easier and easier, all the past pain fading.
It was still there. Just a little less intense.
Would it be gone some day? How would life be if he gave over his heart one hundred percent to her?
“Kell,” she started, pushing aside her half-eaten container of food. “What are we doing?”
Here it came.
“I think we’re figuring that out second by second.”
“Then we’re experiencing this on the same wavelength, which is good.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t sure how to reply to that.
“But what are we doing? I don’t feel like there’s a plan here. Or even a path. We’re flirting, then we’re not. The town hates me, then they don’t. You thwart my every move, then you kiss me. It’s dizzying. Can we talk? Please?”
Her words took him back five years to the sidewalk outside EEC, a rolling duffel bag at his feet, filled with everything from Kell’s desk, his mind exploding from the simultaneous blows of being betrayed by Alissa and John, of news that his dad was injured from a fall out of a tree, and from feeling so much physical pain at the idea that Rachel had betrayed him, too.
Back then, she’d said:
“Kell, can we please go somewhere and talk? Please?”
It hadn’t been the words. It had been the tone that got him, the impossible contradiction between her betrayal and her seemingly authentic, earnest affect impossible to reconcile.
Now here she was, in his house, feeding him, taking care of his pain point in his business–and she wanted to talk.
This time, it was different.
Or was it?
“Yes. We need to talk,” he began.
And then his phone rang.
It was Luke, followed instantly by a call from his dad.
“What the hell?” The last time this had happened, it had been Mom and Colleen calling at the same time to tell him about Amber.
Amber being hit by a car.
“Luke? What’s wrong?”
“No one in the family is hurt,” Luke said, reading Kell’s mind.
“Thank God. What’s going on, then? Dad’s calling me on my other line.”
“Big car accident. Downed an electric pole, and the pole hit two dead trees that caused a chain reaction. Route 33 is blocked.”
“Got it. Let me talk to Dad. Plan for us to be there.”
Rachel’s face fell.
He clicked over.
“Kell, we have a situation on Route 33–”
“Luke beat you to it, Dad. On my way.”
“Good boy.”
The call ended and he gave Rachel an apologetic look.
“Sorry. Big accident on Route 33. We have to clear trees blocking it.”
“Doesn’t the town have a crew for that?”
“We’re part of the crew. We contract with them for bigger jobs. This is a multi-tree incident.”
“Oh.”
They both stood. Kell took her hands, looking down as she looked up, the glow of coming home and having dinner and good conversation at the ready making him want more.
Two big eyes stared up at him from her forearm, Leo the Lemur laughing at them. His thumb grazed the henna tattoo and she joined him in his chuckle, pushing up his shirt sleeve to find his matching lemur face.
Softly, slowly, he kissed her, their embrace deepening as their kiss lingered, until his phone buzzed and he had to go.
“You do so much for the town,” she said. “Is this normal?”
“I guess? For this time of year, especially. It’s very busy now for us. Always is in February.”
“Should I wait for you?”
The question carried so much meaning.
Hesitating, he weighed out the multi-tree blockage, the time he’d be gone, and the inevitable conversation with her that might lead to sex, might lead to nothing, might lead to a path he hadn’t even fathomed yet.
His hesitation seemed to give her clarity.
“I’ll pack up and see you tomorrow,” she said softly. “And I’ll take you up on the offer to use your desk. But remember my offer?”
“Uh… which one?” He winked.
“Hah! The offer to help you with your business if you help me with Lucinda and Boyce.”
His skin went cold.
“Right. That offer. We’ll talk later.”
It was easier to throw on his coat and boots and get to the accident site than to think about the implications of her words. Was this all just quid pro quo for her?
“Bye,” he said, shutting his front door, leaving her and Calamine to do whatever they wanted. Kell’s tired body took him to his truck, and soon he was on his way to clean up yet another mess so that other people could be safe.
He was great at cleaning up other people’s messes.
His own? Not so much.