Chapter Eight
Conner pressed himself into her, mindless with the need that was pouring through him. Andie whimpered again, a soft sound in her throat that made him wonder what noises she would make when he had her clothes off, when he slid into her in one long, satisfying stroke.
He skimmed his hand under the edge of her bra, feeling the smooth weight of her in his hands, rubbing his thumb over the tip of her. She moaned out his name, and Conner had the vague thought that there were far too many clothes between them. He slipped his hands free of her bra and slid them to the edge of her shirt, then tugged. It took him a moment to realize her hands had closed over his. That she was saying his name now in a way meant to get his attention.
"Conner," she said again.
He took in a ragged breath, then held it, using every ounce of will power he had to still his hands, to lift his head away from her neck. He looked down into her eyes, clouded still with desire for him, and had the thought that if he had two more minutes, he could make her forget everything else, forget everything but him and the pleasure he could give her.
"Conner," she said, "I can't do this. Not here, not now. Not like this."
Conner let his head slump forward, rest on her shoulder. He breathed in the scent of her, somehow like cookies baking in the oven, sweet and delicious, and felt his heart squeeze in his chest.
She was right, he knew she was right. Hell, they were in the middle of an old courtroom. Not only that, one whole side was windows. Things couldn't have gone any farther then they had, probably shouldn't have even gone as far as they did. He knew too, that if they got physical, their relationship would go to a whole new level, a level he wasn't sure he was ready to commit too, a level that would make it damn hard to walk out of Port Haven, to take his dream job in Montana.
But he wanted her, wasn't sure he could go on living without having her.
He let his lips slide along the side of her neck, tasting her one more time and felt her shiver with it. He ached for her, ached so badly it was like having the flu. Letting go of her, taking the three steps back, was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.
They stood there, in the pale spill of morning light through the windows, and stared at each other. He knew they couldn't go forward, he knew she knew it too, but damn if either of them could take that step back that would release them from the desire he could all but see shimmering between them.
"Mr. Morgan?" a woman's voice called from somewhere in the building. "Mr. Morgan? The door was open. Are you here?"
Conner swore. "Real estate agent," he said to Andie, then walked over to one of the corners and pretended to be studying something. He took several deep breaths, willing his body to calm.
He saw surprise flash across Andie's face, and then loud laughter spilled out of her. She laughed until she was holding her stomach, until she was doubled over with it.
"You think this is funny, huh?" he asked. He kept his voice rough, but he could only keep his face straight for a second or two before he felt a grin crack across it. "Okay. Maybe it is. Can you go stall her please? Do something?" He could hear the desperation in his voice, and didn't care. The real estate agent sounded like she was only a room away now.
Andie laughed again, a bright clear sound, one he had only heard a handful of times since he'd come home. She stepped over to him, wrapped her arms around him from behind and gave him a fierce hug. "Oh, Conner. God, you make me feel so... alive again. I forgot what it felt like, you know." She squeezed again, then let go. "Okay, okay. I'm on it." She ran her hands over her clothes, her hair, to make sure everything was in place and then walked out of the room.
And Conner finally let his knees buckle, sliding down the wall until he sat on the floor. He drew in one hard, shaky breath, trying to erase what had happened from his mind. Not because he regretted it; he could never regret it. It had been one of the sexiest movements of his life, despite the fact that nothing had happened, that they hadn't even taken any of their clothes off. Damn, all that fierce, wild need pouring from her, the raw aching want for her burning through his body. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
He had never wanted someone as badly as he wanted Andie. More than that, when she was near, he couldn't seem to think straight, to focus on anything but her; the seductive sweep of her lips, the soft curves of her body, the tantalizing smell of her, the taste and feel of her. He knew that if he had her naked and moving beneath him, once wouldn't be enough. It would never be enough.
It couldn't happen. He couldn't tie himself to someone that way. He'd never be caged like that again; desperately waiting for approval, acceptance. Love, a little voice whispered in the back of his head. And finding out that everything about him was wrong, that he'd never be good enough. It was better to be free, to escape those harsh chains, to live his own life free of emotional cages.
Conner stood, raked a hand through his hair and then strode out of the room, following the sound of the two women talking. He couldn't let anything happen between himself and Andie. He couldn't. The easiest way to do that was to sell the building and get the hell out of here.
*
The nurse at the front desk looked up as Conner swung through the doors of the nursing home. She gave him a once over, then pressed her lips together, like she didn't like what she saw. And hell, wasn't that the story of his life?
"Good evening, Mr. Morgan. Your father had a hard day today, but I believe he's still up."
Conner strode over to the desk, his feet squeaking on the chipped, over-used floor. "What do you mean, he had a hard day? Is he okay?"
The puckered prune of the nurse's mouth relaxed a little. "Well, now, don't go getting upset. He had his physical therapy, and that wears a body out, but I think he's feeling a little blue, too." She didn't say the rest, but she didn't have to. He could see what she was thinking; a good son would cheer him up, not need a warning not to make it worse.
Conner jammed his hands in his pockets, took a deep breath. "Can I go see him?"
"Yes. make sure you aren't back there too long." She slid her glasses down her nose, gave him a good hard look.
"Yes, ma'am." The words were automatic, left over from growing up in a military household, but the nurse must have liked it because, for the first time, she smiled at him. Sure, it was a tight little smile that didn't reach her eyes, but still.
Conner left his hands in his pockets as he walked down the hall. As he passed each open door, heads swiveled to get a good look at him. TVs blared so loud his ears shuddered, and he passed more than one dinner cart loaded with trays of chicken, mashed potatoes and Jell-o. The food didn't seem terrible, but he had a feeling it didn't taste as good as it looked. They probably didn't use any butter or salt here, which would make the food tasteless and bland. A little trickle of pity worked its way down Conner's chest before he pushed it away. He wouldn't feel bad for his dad. He wouldn't.
Conner stopped in the doorway, the room in front of him lit by the flickering blue light of the television, and waited for his dad to realize he was there.
His dad looked away from the documentary he was watching, something about sharks. "You're back."
"Yeah." Conner took a step into the room.
"Didn't expect I'd see you again. Didn't expect you'd still be in Port Haven." His dad muted the TV, let the remote rest on his chest. He was wearing a sweatshirt with a sailboat across it, and Conner felt his eyes narrow as he took it in.
"Where'd you get that shirt?" Conner knew that shirt, had seen it a couple times now, hanging in Andie's shop.
His dad glanced down. "This one? I can't say as I remember."
Conner strode over to the bed, let his hands curl around the metal rail. "Don't lie to me, Dad. Did Andie give you that shirt? Has she been to visit you?"
His dad looked up at him, frowning now. "Why do you want to know, son? I have few enough visitors. Would it bother you to know that she was here, that she checked on me, tried to make me comfortable?"
"Yes!" The word exploded out of Conner's mouth without him really meaning for it to, but since he'd said it... "Yes! It bothers me! I don't want her here, don't want her messing around with you, trying to get us back together. Damn! Can't she leave well enough alone?"
His dad sat up as straight as his bad hip would let him, his thick, black eyebrows drawing together like smoke from a grease fire. "She came to see me. She was worried about me. She said she knew I was alone and that she'd be happy to help me in any way that she could. She never talked about you once. She wanted to help, which is more than I can say for some."
Conner brought one fist down on the railing, making the bed shake. "Don't give me that crap, Dad. If you wanted a son who cared then you should have raised one. I'm a product of my upbringing." He felt a sneer twist his face. He'd heard those words more times than he cared to remember, usually in his high-school guidance counselor's office.
His dad's lips went pale, like he was in pain, but he never let his body slump, never let his rigid demeanor slip for a moment. He gave sharp jerk of his head. "That's a fact, I'll give you that. I made mistakes."
Those three words sliced across Conner's heart. He'd never heard his father admit to screwing anything up, not once in his life, but it wasn't enough. It couldn't be enough, not after the decades of misery and hurt his dad had pounded him with. "Admitting that doesn't make it okay. It doesn't change anything. Do you expect me to forget how you never once showed me you were proud of me? How you made me feel like what I did wasn't ever good enough, how I wasn't ever good enough for you?"
His dad wrapped his hand around the metal railing and held on. Conner took his hand away, unwilling to be that close to him, unwilling to let their hands accidentally touch.
"No," his dad said, "I know that doesn't make up for it. I don't know how to make up for it."
Again, his unexpected words shook Conner right to his core. He felt each harsh breath as it dragged through his throat, felt his chest expanding with them, but somehow, he still felt like he was suffocating.
The walls of the room seemed to press closer, caging him in. He stared at his dad, his mind filled with a roiling blackness that slithered to every corner, making thought, speech, everything impossible.
His dad stared back, his eyes wide, his breath coming as rapidly as Conner's. They remained like that, frozen like bugs in amber, for a moment more, before Conner got the feeling back in his legs. And as soon as he did, he used them to stalk out the door.
*
The whiskey burned in his throat as he tossed it back, the taste making him want to wince.
"Another, boss?" Johnny asked from behind the bar, and Conner shook his head.
"No. Give me a beer, a Honey Weiss." He asked for his favorite beer, from the Leinenkugel's brewery in ChippewaFalls. He never drank hard liquor, hadn't acquired the taste for it. Give him a good, American beer any day.
Johnny set the bottle in front of him and he took a good long swig, then another. It might take longer than whiskey, but beer would do as fine of a job emptying his brain.
Shawn slid onto the stool next to him. "What are you doing here?"
Conner eyed him without turning his head and wondered for a brief moment if he could pretend that Shawn wasn't there.
"Dude, what's wrong?" Shawn gave him a good hard elbow jab in the ribs.
Nope. He wasn't going to be able to ignore him.
"Nothing," Conner said and took another deep swallow of his beer.
Shawn signaled to Johnny that he wanted two beers, then turned on his stool to face Conner. "You do know that we were best friends for almost two decades, right? Are you really going to sit there and try to lie to me?"
Conner rubbed at the sudden ache in his temples. "Why are you here? Don't you have someone else to bother?"
"Yeah, I do. I'm bothering that cute little brunette over there." He winked at a woman wearing a skimpy black tank top, shaking her butt to the music thumping out of the massive speakers. "But I have time to bother you too."
"Go away," Conner said.
Shawn gave him a long, cool look. "Seems to me, you're still a smart guy. What I wonder is, if you're so smart, how come you're here, miserable, getting drunk, when my sister is stuck at home, not six blocks away, with Logan having a Transformers movie marathon? Seems to me, that's the kind of thing that you'd enjoy. You've never been about booze, and bars, and forgetting your troubles. That's not you." And Shawn grabbed the beers and threaded his way through the crowd of bumping bodies and over to the girl who had to be a good five years younger than him.
Conner shut one eye and looked down into his beer bottle. Empty. He could stay here, order another, chat up the blonde girl currently bumping hips with the brunette chick. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't going to happen, that there wasn't a single spark of interest for that girl, or the beer, in his entire body. He wanted Andie. He'd told himself he couldn't have her. He'd used all his will power to keep from getting too close to her. His willpower was long gone now. To hell with what might happen after. He wanted her and he was going to have her. No point in fighting himself any longer. He was done with that crap.
Conner stood, nodded once at Johnny and walked toward the door. He was fully aware that Shawn was grinning like a jerk behind his back. Conner knew if he turned around, acknowledged the idiot, he'd have to stay, for appearances sake.
So he didn't turn around. Instead, he pushed through the glass door and out into the night. The air slid like ice cubes along his face and his breath puffed out in a silvered cloud as he walked.
Within two blocks, he was away from Main Street, away from the streetlights. The stars overhead were so big and so bright, he felt like he could reach up and tickle one to make it twinkle. He didn't imagine the stars could be any more beautiful in the wide-open skies of Montana than they were now, hanging over the largest, coldest lake in the world.
Conner shook his head, pulled his leather jacket tighter around himself. He wasn't going to go there, not tonight. He wasn't going to think about his dad, or the job waiting for him in Montana, or how, in the last few weeks, something had started to grow, to change inside of him. How, suddenly, there was this tiny little voice in his head, whispering, whispering, that maybe he did have something to stay here for after all.
He knew it was foolish. It wouldn't pay to listen to that voice. He had before and all it had gotten him was a rusted out Jeep and an empty bank account. But tonight, with the cold air making him feel more awake and alert than he had in years, tonight was about impossible possibilities.
He was on Andie's front porch in minutes. Metal crashed against metal, booming out of an excellent sound system, rattling the windows slightly. The door swung open about five seconds after he knocked. Andie stood there, silhouetted against the golden light behind her.
"Oh, thank God," she said, then reached out, fisted her hand in his shirt, and yanked him inside. "Logan! Look who's here!"
The boy leaned his head over the arm of the couch, a grin sliding across his face when he saw Conner. He vaulted over the back of the couch, not willing to take the extra half a second walking around it would have cost him.
"Dude! Did you bring your puppy?"
Conner shook his head. "Nope. He's out with Diana and her mom tonight, keeping the predators away from the apples."
Logan threw him a doubtful look. "Do apples have predators?"
"Yeah! Are you forgetting about raccoons? And porcupines? And hey, what about woodchucks? They love to sink their long, yellow teeth into an apple!"
"Yeah, I guess. Wanna watch Transformers? It's not fun watching it alone."
"You're not alone. Andie's watching it with you," Conner pointed out.
"Yeah. I guess, but she keeps asking girl questions."
Conner slanted Andie a look. She shook her head and muttered something about how she still didn't see how giant, metal machines shaped like humans could possibly be aliens from outer space. For the first time in a long time, Conner felt a laugh bubble up in him, a laugh that wasn't from a momentary amusement, one that would be gone in a second. No, this one was because of the deep and sudden surge of happiness flooding him. Which, yeah, scared the hell out of him, but damn if he wasn't happy too, so why not live it, right?
"I hate to tell you this buddy, but girls don't get this kind of thing." Conner shook his head like it was the saddest thing in the world. "Why don't you go save me a spot on the couch and I'll see if I can't talk you're sister into making us some kettle corn."
Logan cocked his head to the side and gave him a squinty-eyed look. "The real stuff? Not some microwave crap?"
"Please. What do you take me for? If I can't get her to make us the real stuff then I'll relinquish my badge as the master."
"Yeah, all right, but don't take too long, guys. The good part's coming up!" And he ran three steps, leaped into the air and disappeared back behind the couch, oblivious to the way the abused piece of furniture shuddered as its two back legs briefly left the floor, then came crashing down.
Conner watched as Andie shut her eyes, and began to move her mouth, like she was silently saying a prayer for patience. This time, Conner let the laugh out, let it roll through him, shiver off his skin, and shake his whole chest.
Andie stared at him a second, then gave him an offended little sniff as strode away into the kitchen.
Conner felt his chest suddenly tighten in anticipation. This was going to be fun.
*
The cast-iron Dutch oven made a satisfying crash as Andie brought it down on top of the stove, but still, it was nowhere near as loud as the crashing and screaming she'd already endured for the last three hours. She'd begun to seriously regret that she'd grounded Logan for two weeks after the egg throwing stunt. She was pretty sure she was getting more of a punishment than he was. Whoever had invented grounding was a sick, sadistic jerk.
She dumped some canola oil and a whole bunch of sugar-in-the-raw into the pan and clicked the burner on. She was reaching for the jar of popcorn kernels she kept in the top shelf next to the refrigerator, when she felt Conner sidle up behind her.
His hands cradled her waist, then slid around under her shirt, his rough, warm palms gliding over her stomach as his mouth found the side of her neck. "Mmmm." The sound of pleasure hummed low in his throat. "You taste so good."
And like that, all the irritation sparking and sputtering through Andie's system vanished, replaced instead with a smoldering ache. She let her head fall back against his chest. A low moan slipped from her throat.
"Shhh," Conner whispered. "Logan's in the next room."
"I know. We shouldn't be doing this," she said, even as she let her hands slide up around her neck.
His hands slid under her bra, his fingers smoothing across her skin as his mouth moved to her ear.
"Conner." Andie moaned his name, totally unable to control it. The low, rough sound of her voice seemed to snap something in Conner. Suddenly his hands were turning her instead, so that he could take her mouth with his, press himself against her hard, and still harder, like he couldn't get close enough to her.
He slid his tongue between her lips, filling her with the taste of him, the scent of him, and with an arousal so strong the room seemed to shimmer around her.
Conner tore his mouth away from hers, skimmed it down the column of her throat, then lower still until he found the slight swell of her breast that peeked above the v-neck of her shirt.
"Oh, God, Andie. I want you so bad." His voice was muffled against her skin, as if he couldn't bear to tear himself away from her, not even for a second.
Andie let her hands skim down his back, pulling him hard against her, feeling every inch of his body, the way it shook with his need for her. She felt his mouth on her skin, his arms holding her close. She felt his heart, booming rapidly under his ribs.
"You do want me." She said it as a quiet whisper, but even she could hear the shock in her voice. Who would have thought that eleven years ago, they'd have come full circle? That they'd be standing here in her kitchen, wrapped around each other, shaking with need, her nerves alive and sparking with fire?
Andie had thought at the time that she'd never see him again. At sixteen, everything feels like the end of the world, but his rejection, her broken heart, had stayed with her for years. Somehow, some way, here was her second chance, if she was brave enough to take it. And thank God that this time, she was old enough that she could experience the whole range of benefits this chance was going to give her. No way was she letting this slip through her fingers.
Andie threaded her fingers through his hair, swept her tongue against his. "Conner," she murmured against his lips. "Did you know that kissing under the mistletoe actually originated with pagan festivals? And that the plant is a very ancient symbol of virility and anybody standing beneath it is signaling that he or she is sexually available?"
"What?" His voice sounded husky, dazed, as he cupped her bottom, squeezing her body against his in rhythmic pulses. "What are you saying?"
Andie smiled, her lips curving against his. "Ask me out. On a proper date. Drinks, dinner. Invite me in for coffee." As she said the last word, she let her hand trail down his body, down the hard planes of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, past the button on his jeans.
Conner's whole body jerked and he moaned like he was in pain.
"Ask me out." And she pressed her hand against him.
Conner's head slumped forward, his breath coming out in harsh gasps, like she was torturing him. "Andie. Please. Please." He took a deep breath, then another. "Will you go out with me tomorrow night?"
Andie let her hand slip away from him. She gave him one slow, tender burn of a kiss, then stepped back. "I can't tomorrow. Diana's got her first chemo. I promised I'd be there, but I don't have anything planned for Friday. And Logan does; he's got a sleepover with Trent Peterson."
Conner leaned over the counter, bracing his fisted hands against it, his eyes closed, taking in one long, slow breath after another. Finally, he opened his eyes. "I don't know if I can make it until Friday. I think I might die first." He looked at her, his eyes dilated with desire.
Andie laughed, then spun in a circle, her arms out at her sides, like she was flying.
"Um." Logan stood in the doorway, his eyes sliding uncertainly back and forth between Andie and Conner. "Is the kettle corn ready?"
Conner grunted something about needing some air, then strode out the back door and onto the deck. Andie laughed again, reached down and grabbed Logan's hands and spun him in a circle. She didn't stop until they both tumbled to the braided rag rug on the floor.
"Man, grownups are weird," Logan said, flopping onto his back, but his cheeks were pink and he was smiling.
Andie flopped down next to him. "Life is weird. Weird and wonderful and sometimes, the most beautiful thing in the world!"
Logan looked over at her, squinted one eye. "Well, does this beautiful world have any kettle corn in it or what?"