Chapter 19 #2
“You’re coming back to my place. Do whatever you want with it. Just leave his crappy coffee.”
“No argument there.”
Within five minutes, she’d shoved all her stuff into her bags, and Kell hauled them out to his truck. Calamine had fixated on the trailer hitch, climbing up on it, smelling it intently. Must have Randy’s scent all over it.
“What else do you need to do?” he asked, returning to the trailer.
“This.” Rachel held up her phone. Miraculously, bars appeared.
She pressed the Mom link in her contacts and set the phone to Speaker mode.
“Rachel! Dad told me all about your legal problem at work, and how you asked him for help. You made his month! I haven’t seen him this happy since he clinched that TikTok deal for–”
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“We’re on Speaker. I’m here with Kell.”
“Kell? Deanna’s hot son?”
“Hot son?” he mouthed. Rachel shrugged.
“I’m in love with a lumberjack in Maine and I’m going to try to get a job here and stay,” she said in a rush, the words making him grab her in a huge hug. He didn’t want to let go.
Her words were met with silence.
“I think the call dropped. My mom is never silent,” she whispered.
“Honey!” her mom gushed. “This would make a perfect Hallmark movie! Let me get a script consultant. I can play the role of the plucky mother. Oooo! If you play yourself, we can be just like Andie McDowell and her daughter in that Maid series! Margaret Qualley! We could be Andie and Margaret and my career would skyrocket and yours could be launched! Think of the publicity!”
Kell felt nothing but horror.
“I’m not an actress, Mom,” Rachel replied, in a tone that said they’d had this conversation hundreds of times before.
“No, but you could be! You were so good as the lead in Lysistrata at drama camp when you were nine.”
“It scarred me for life.”
“Oh, please. No one likes performing in the Greek dramas. It’s like eating grapefruit. You do it because it’s good for you, not because it’s enjoyable.”
“I meant the topic. Lysistrata is about a group of women who deny their husbands sex. A nine-year-old playing Helen of Troy was… questionable judgment at best.”
“Let’s not dwell on the past, Rachel. You said your hot lumberjack is there?”
“Hi, Mrs. Hart. Or Ms. Starman?” Kell said into the phone, earning a sharp intake of air followed by giggles.
“PORTIA! Goodness, Kell, call me Portia. If my daughter is going to give up L.A. for the boonies, you must be something special. Didn’t we meet when I was filming Love You Springs Eternal?”
“Yes. Once. I was the bearded guy in flannel,” he said with a deadpan expression that made Rachel whoop with laughter.
“Sorry. I don’t remember you. So many bearded guys in flannel in Maine. You’re like the state flower.”
Rachel caressed his beardless face and giggled.
“Look, Mom, I’m checking out of my trailer.”
“TRAILER? Is there already a movie you didn’t tell me about?”
“Not that kind of trailer. A camping trailer.”
More stunned silence. “You went… camping? In the Arctic?”
Kell rolled his eyes. Wow. Apple didn’t fall far from the tree. It hit him that he’d need to turn up the heat in his apartment with Rachel staying.
Though they were pretty good at making their own heat…
“I’m checking out of my hotel,” Rachel said, trying to use language her mother understood. “Just wanted to tell you the good news.”
“This is great! Way more interesting than all that science and space crap we have to listen to from Tim. I love that you’re out in the world doing interesting and romantic things, honey! You go, girl!”
“Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, Rachel. Remember: Confidence. Always–”
“Confidence,” she said, joining in with Portia.
As the call ended, Rachel laughed in surprise. “That was easier than I thought.”
“So much of life is, huh?”
As she opened her mouth to reply, the trailer shifted to the right, a sudden jerk. Through the door’s window, Kell saw Calamine scoot across the yard and under the truck.
Rhythmic shaking began, exactly like an earthquake. Rachel wasn’t kidding.
“Noooooooo,” she groaned.
“What the hell?”
“RANDY!” they shouted.
“Must be his way of saying goodbye,” Kell said, laughing his ass off as Rachel grabbed the edge of the top bunk and stabilized her legs.
“I thought Kenny cleaned off the pheromones?”
“HEY!” Kell called in the general direction of the trailer hitch. “GO AWAY! If anyone’s going to make this trailer rock, it’s me!”
She smiled at him. “Oh, really?”
A quick look at the clock showed they had seventeen minutes.
Calamine let out a yowl from beneath Kell’s truck, a ferocious sound followed by a hiss.
Randy stopped, a whuff of impatience all they heard before the crunch of snow told them he was in retreat.
“Go Cally,” Kell said under his breath, before he walked over to Rachel and kissed her, hand sliding up under her jacket, sweater, and shirt. Her squeal when his cold fingers rested between her warm shoulder blades gave him ample chance to tongue her teeth and deepen the kiss.
“Yes, really. We have seventeen minutes before we have to officially vacate the trailer.”
“Seventeen minutes?”
“You’re packed up. We can do it in fifteen.”
“Says the man who assured me the other day that he needs hours.”
“No, no, no,” he murmured as his hands went to the button of her jeans. “I said I wanted hours. But fifteen minutes for a quickie in a new place – that’s a challenge.”
“I love challenges.”
“So do I. I have to, to be with you.”
“You really need to work on your sweet-talking game, dude, if you want to score.”
“Think of it as an exorcism. We’ll keep Satan the Squirrel and Randy the Lovesick Moose away. My testosterone will permeate the trailer.”
“Kell?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you seriously trying to compete with a brain-injured moose?”
He just blinked a few times before lunging at her.
“Yes.”
“Then shut up and show me how you win.”