Chapter 9 #4
“Um, are you guys okay?”
“No!” they said in unison.
“Whatever’s going on might be better done outside. We have a zoning board meeting in two minutes.” She was clutching a file folder against her hip like a warrior grasping a spear before heading into battle.
“Any penis signs up for review?” Luke asked.
“Given we’re talking to a new Christian church, I would expect not,” Rachel said diplomatically. The chagrin and embarrassment on Luke’s face almost made Colleen soften.
Almost.
What actually did melt her a little was Moore’s reappearance.
His light cologne, mingling nicely with the charcoal gray suit he wore, made her recall woodsmoke. Hands on her thighs. Fingertips digging into her round ass.
His face between her legs.
Smiling.
Luke started to say something to Moore, but his walkie-talkie squawked. He listened to something unintelligible as Rachel stepped away. Moving to the committee table, she began neatly centering all of the microphones, the cords parallel to each other, order restored.
An aggravated sigh rushed out of Luke, sounding like a wind tunnel.
“You,” he said, pointing in Moore’s face. “We’re not done.”
“How could we ever be done? We’re best friends. Cradle to grave. Remember?” Moore held out his pinkie, hooked.
Luke gave him an eye roll to end all eye rolls, hands on his hips, the walkie-talkie sounding like a broken drive-thru microphone.
“You want the grave part of that to happen sooner? Keep this up.”
“Keep what up?” Moore asked innocently, making Colleen’s skin tingle even more. Suppressing laughter at Moore torturing her little brother was definitely an old, familiar feeling.
Being the object of conflict between them most certainly was not.
“Bye, Officer Caveman. Go do your job.” Colleen dismissed her little brother with the derisive sneer of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Luke’s mouth tightened. The machine on his hip barked at him.
As her brother marched away in his red uniform, the thick red down coat he swung across his shoulders like a blood cape, she flashed back to Officer Tomes at the airport, when Tim called her a witch and the world was so much simpler.
The cop’s uniform had looked so strange to her, but Love You, Maine, was the oddity. The sleepy little town followed a different set of rules. Luview made its living peddling visions of love.
Literal visions–the signage requirements were a symbol of that.
“Now that Little Red Riding Luke is gone, can we really talk?” Moore asked her, leaning down to whisper in her ear. His hand went to her shoulder, the one that was still healthy and worked fine.
His touch nearly made her moan.
When Luke had first donned his uniform, years ago when he joined the Luview police force, Moore had been the one to give him that infernal nickname.
“You started that nickname.”
Moore grinned.
“Sure did.”
Come to think of it…
“And you gave me my nickname!”
“What nick–oh.” He had the decency to wince. “Yeah. I did.”
“Third Date Colleen. You’re a master at finding the smallest number of words to trigger the biggest amount of shame in someone.”
He went still.
“Never thought of it that way.”
“I don’t think you do it intentionally.”
“I–Colleen. I never meant to–”
What had she just done? Turned the conversation in a direction she hadn’t seen coming, that’s for sure. All the attraction was still there, her arousal too strong to push aside, but suddenly, the moment was serious. A whole new can of worms had been opened.
“Come here,” she said to him.
Her impulse was to take Moore’s hand but propriety forced her to remember how things were before the accident. Before the cabin. To move through space in public with him as her friend.
Just her friend.
Nothing more.
Which might be true right now, too. Was she just a friend? Having settled for that status for so long, she should have been able to easily slip back into that role. Play that part.
Smile. You’re on camera.
Instead, this was excruciating, a different kind of separation from him. From herself. Overthinking every moment around Moore was so much harder than just walling it all off and living a life that wasn’t complete.
It had a Moore-shaped hole in it. Yes, he was there, but that hole, that missing piece, had plagued her, forcing her into constant denial.
Denial she couldn’t allow any longer.
Not when the memory of him in bed was burned so deeply into her body and soul that she’d never be the same.
Finding a small meeting room, she walked in. The table was just big enough for four people, three chairs in a crooked line along one side. A black office phone with multiple lines sat on the table; the window blinds were closed.
Moore shut the door behind them.
Striding over to the whiteboard on one wall, he picked up a red dry-erase marker and wrote List of Reasons Why Moore Is a Dumbass in his crooked, left-handed script.
“We’re gonna need a bigger board,” she cracked.
His arm was in mid-air, suit jacket askew, ass on beautiful display. He re-capped the marker and set it down, then picked up the eraser and slowly wiped away the words. Turning around, he caught her eye.
Oh, no.
She wasn’t imagining a thing.
He burned for her, too.
“Colleen,” he began, taking a step toward her. One hand went to his forehead, where his fingers raked his short hair. Dark and a bit wavy, it matched the neatly trimmed beard well. More of his cologne filled the air as he moved, and she realized the room was so tiny.
And her arousal was so big.
“Yes?”
“I keep trying to see you. Talk to you about what happened at the cabin. Luke’s made it–”
“Hard.”
“Right. But it shouldn’t be hard. It should be…” Voice trailing off, he squinted at her, the same face she’d seen hundreds of thousands of times looking at her in a completely new way.
“It should be what?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh, no. Not letting you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Put it all on me.”
“When you left the cabin, it seemed like…”
“Like what?”
“You know.”
“MOORE!” she hissed, heart pumping so hard, it shot heated blood to the tops of her knees. “Just say it!”
“Say what?”
“How do you feel about me?”
A rush of raw emotion covered Moore’s face, his eyes glittering. Every breath felt like years were filling her lungs, so much shared experience, so many happy moments. But he wasn’t her old friend now, he was a man she wanted. Deeply and wholly, but more than anything else, she wanted an answer.
A sense of closure.
A decision.
One way or another, they were going to go down a path. Either they turned around on the path and went back to being friends, or they moved forward through the unknown passages of the heart.
His mouth took hers in the softest of kisses, so featherlight that she gasped, those years she’d inhaled all coming out and surrounding them as if witnessing a vow.
His hands wrapped around her waist, palms and fingers splayed against the middle of her back, pulling her close, his grasp telegraphing his need. As her lips parted, she invited his tongue in, the kiss the answer she’d desperately hoped for.
Still ambiguous, but one part of her confusion was now allayed:
He wanted her.
Whatever happened next, she knew that much.
Wearing a cast while kissing him turned out to invite klutzy drama, because when she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck, passion filling her, she clunked him on the ear with her pink monstrosity.
“Umph!” he said into her mouth, his teeth banging against hers, his hands clasping her tighter as she inhaled sharply.
“I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine,” he soothed, laughing. “Comic relief.”
“I was rather enjoying the moment. Nothing funny about your kisses.”
The look he gave her made it clear her words were warmly received, his new kiss one of determination, the earlier one an exploration.
This one was a declaration.
A claim.
Maybe even a dare.
“Moore,” she whispered against his mouth. “I really want you to know that–”
He moved against her suddenly, hips sharp against her belly, the thrust completely out of character. Until he made a small sound of pain, she thought he was joking around, but then she looked over his shoulder, shocked to find her mother standing there, shoving the doorknob into Moore’s backside.
Her mother.
“Oh, my goodness!” Deanna Luview exclaimed, eyes wide and crawling all over the sight before her. “I had no idea!”
Moore shot across the room as if Colleen had stung him.
“Hi, Mom. Thanks for knocking.”
“I–I… you two? What?”
“Mom. Stop.”
“This is so wonderful!” Deanna gushed.
Colleen’s eyeballs fell backwards into her head, rolled down her cheekbones, kissed her tonsils and landed on her tongue. Moore looked about the same.
“MOM!”
“I mean–why are you kissing in a conference room like this? Is it a secret?”
“MOM!”
“It’s just–”
“You. Saw. Nothing! Do you understand?”
“I saw more than enough. Was your hand on his–”
Hampered by her cast, Colleen didn’t have her normal dexterity, but pure embarrassment fueled her enough to be able to grab Deanna’s arm and pull her close.
“Luke’s being unreasonable. Moore and I are figuring stuff out. Now you’re invading our privacy–”
“I was looking for you! I’m your ride, remember? You can’t drive yet. I went to the committee meeting but Rachel said you’d left, and then I find you making out with Moore!”
Who looked like he was wishing for a magic portal to transport him to another dimension.
He reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out his phone, fooling no one.
“Uh, text from my dad. Gotta go.”
“Liar,” Colleen hissed.
“I gotta go.”
“Less of a liar.”
He closed his eyes for a second, then turned to Deanna with a firm expression. “Don’t say a word.”
“I–”
“Deanna,” he said in a commanding tone Colleen still couldn’t get used to. “I mean it.”
“What–what is this?”
“Our business,” he replied.
“You can’t keep this a secret! You’re lucky Nadine didn’t walk in on you.”
All three of them shuddered.
“Mom,” Colleen pleaded, changing her tone. “Moore and I went through hell with the accident. Luke’s added another layer of purgatory to it. We’re just starting to talk. Can you try to understand? We need time. Privacy. Discretion.”
Appealing to her mother’s mushy emotional core was absolutely the right tactic. Deanna’s eyes filled with compassion and mercy. She reached for Moore’s face and held it in her hands.
“You. You deserve to be happy,” she said to him as he froze.
“I do?”
“Of course! I’ve been saying for years that you two belong together.”
“Who have you said that to? Not me!” Colleen choked out.
“Your father. Luke. Kell,” Deanna said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, geez,” Moore groaned as he stepped out of her mother’s grasp.
“Luke thought I was joking,” Deanna said with a wicked grin. “Hah! We’ll see who was right now.”
“No, Mom. No, we won’t. You won’t. No betting pools arranged at Greta’s. No subtle hints designed to reveal us. We don’t even know what us is. Don’t–please don’t,” Colleen begged, her voice shaking at the end, surprising even her.
“Oh, honey!” her mom exclaimed as Moore moved in closer, his arm going around Colleen’s shoulders, protective and team-like. Deanna stood before them, bewildered but also respectful.
“Deanna,” Moore began, but her mom cut him off.
“Zipped lips. I won’t say a word.”
“You are second only to Nadine when it comes to town gossip,” he replied slowly, earning a shocked look from Deanna.
“I am not!”
Colleen burst out laughing.
Deanna’s mouth formed a straight, angry line. “Fine. But you two better figure this out.”
“You make that sound like a threat.”
Her mother flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her, leaving Moore to press his hands against the wall and lean forward, letting out a huge breath.
“That went well,” Colleen half joked.
“That was a–”
“There you are!” Moore’s nephew, Joey, poked his head in. “What’d you do to Deanna?”
“Nothing,” they answered in unison.
Joey gave them a look that said he definitely thought otherwise.
“Moore, the delivery guy from Boston says he was rear-ended on the way here. Some crystal items broke. I know it’s after hours but I need your help.”
Relief filled Colleen. For as much as she wanted to talk with Moore, and certainly kiss him again, this was all overwhelming. A little space would be welcome.
“We’re done here,” she piped up, earning raised eyebrows from Moore.
“We are?”
“Done for now. We can pick up where we left off next time.”
Joey’s phone rang. He answered it while Moore stared at her.
“You sure?”
“Exactly where we left off,” she assured him.
While Joey took his call, Colleen slipped out the door, walking down the hall to the nearest exit. As she looked around for Deanna’s truck, the cool winter air gave her a brisk wake up.
Which she desperately needed.
“What am I doing?” she whispered into the chilly air, as if it had an answer.
It didn’t, of course.
And neither did she.