Chapter Thirty-three
Fifteen minutes later, Nick sat on the floor with an ice pack on his foot as I admired his train set. “This is amazing,” I said. The plywood base, held aloft by cinderblock pillars, graced most of the large attic space. Manholes, cut artfully into sections of scenery, gave Nick access to all the areas of the layout. The rails ran through mountains and valleys, over sturdy bridges and through towns. The miniatures that defined each geographic region looked so real I felt like I was a giant standing over the earth.
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s my baby.”
I glanced back at him and smiled. “Oh! I forgot.” I retrieved the package by the door and handed it to him. “This came earlier. It’s why I’m here.”
He took the box and set it in his lap. “So, this isn’t a social visit?”
“It’s turning out to be,” I admitted.
Nick reached for a box cutter on his table and sliced the tape securing the package closed. Riffling through the packing peanuts, he carefully removed a shiny silver and black steam engine. The gleam in his eyes as he held the toy train reminded me of a child unwrapping his first big boy bicycle.
“Wow, that’s some train,” I said.
“This is not a train,” he replied quietly. “This is an Accucraft K-27 Live Steam Engine…One-twenty point three scale…modeled after the K-27 locomotives commissioned by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1902.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s great, Nick.”
He looked up at me and grinned. Shoving the box to the side, he hopped to his feet, forgetting about his injury and carefully placed the steam engine on his track. “It’s perfect,” he murmured.
He stepped back to gaze fondly at the train. I moved toward the door. He obviously needed some time alone with his Accucraft K-27…whatever else he said.
“You’re leaving?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Well, you seem busy, and I’m supposed to be at the grocery store…”
He grabbed my hand and eagerly dragged me to the other side of the layout. “You have to see this first.” He ducked under the base, hauling my body with him and emerging in one of the larger manholes.
I had no idea how he managed to maneuver in the small space with his large frame. Together, we were pressed, side to side, and a little uncomfortably close for my taste. But Nick didn’t seem to notice that little break in propriety. He propped an engineer’s cap on my head and positioned a metal box with buttons galore in my fingers.
“What are we doing?” I asked hesitantly.
“Playing,” he said as though I was purposefully being obtuse. “Here press this button…” I did, and a train loaded down with tankers and boxcars left the train yard.
“This switched the rails,” he demonstrated, “and these will turn on and off the affects.”
I watched the train lumber up a steep hillside and down to rush across a trellis bridge. As the train picked up speed, it zoomed across the landscapes with magnificent finesse, and I sampled some of the buttons on the remote.
“There you go,” Nick said in my ear as I switched tracks to send the train into a desert section. After a few passes, I grew confident on what I wanted the train to do, and I began to release the uneasiness from being so close to him. He chuckled as I controlled his train, and I laughed, delighted for the diversion from my emotional troubles.
“Wow, this is amazing,” I said.
“I believe you’ve said that already.”
“I know, but I’ll say it again. This is amazing.” I looked up to share my delight and blinked at the intimate proximity of his smiling face.
“I’m glad you like it, Min,” he rumbled softly.
I looked away and pulled the cap from my head. Setting his remote to the side, I said, “Th-thank you for letting me play with your train…but I should be going.”
I ducked under the wooden base and straightened to walk quickly to the door.
“Min, wait,” Nick called. In a second, he was next to me. “I’m sorry. I made you uncomfortable again, haven’t I?”
The lie was on the tip of my tongue. I squared myself to him and said, “Yes, you did.”
“I’d apologize again, but…I guess I’m not really sorry after all.”
“You’re not sorry you’ve upset me?”
“Not really, no.”
“Well, that’s…um, that’s just…I don’t know what that is.” I backed to the door, feeling my way with my hand.
Nick didn’t move. “I’m not sorry for feeling this way about you,” he clarified in a rush. “If that makes you uncomfortable, then…I can’t help that.”
“I don’t really know what to say.” Where was that door?
He watched my hesitant retreat with wary eyes. “I like you, Min. A whole bunch, and I know you’re in love with another guy, but that doesn’t stop how I’m falling for you… I do regret causing you pain, but some things can’t be avoided.”
I stopped and stared. “What things?”
He raised his chin and swallowed hard. “You remember that story about my little sister?”
“Clara…”
“Right, and you remember that I said I’d do anything for her?”
“I…I do.”
Nick’s gaze shifted to the window, seeing something that interested and saddened him. That window overlooked my house, but I couldn’t see through it from my vantage point. He turned back to me. As he advanced, I retreated, not sure what he was doing, but I overshot where I thought the door was behind me.
Nick reached out to it and closed it. The soft click echoed through my entire frightened body.
Oh God. This was Chris and Lee all over again.
*****
“What do you mean she’s not here?”
Mae waved him into the house. “We sent her to the store to get her out of the house. She’s being a pain today.”
Silas stopped just inside the front door. “Her car is in the drive,” he informed her. “Don’t tell me she walked.”
Mae peeked out. “Oh…then I don’t know where she is.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“About an hour.” Mae frowned. Mae never frowned. “I…I don’t know where she is,” she repeated. “I thought she went to the store…”
Nicole sat up in her bed, rubbing the side of her stomach and grimacing. “I saw a delivery man as she was leaving. I think she took something next door.”
Silas noticed how pale Nicole’s cheeks were. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just some backaches.”
“She’s been gone an hour?” He directed that question to Mae, who nodded. Great. He’d broken the speed limit to get back to Kingstown before dark and possibly talk to Min until they were both blue in the face about how much he loved her, and would agree to anything she wanted, just so he could hold her in his arms again. Just so he could whisper in her ear. Just so he could hear the music pound against his skull as their skin touched, their lips met, their hearts beat in unison…together…forever.
But no. She wasn’t home. She was over at her neighbor’s house…for an hour, nonetheless. Silas couldn’t get more that ten minutes alone with the woman, and she spent the better part of the evening with another man…doing no telling what.
Okay, don’t think like that. Trusting Min had become as natural as breathing for him in the last few weeks. He’d let go of Sarah’s bitter memory, and he’d accepted the fate of Min’s undying love and devotion.
Nicole said she was delivering a package. Silas vaguely remembered the man stopping by all last week asking if his train had been delivered. Min Meyer loved Silas Blake…and Nick Adams was just a man who lived next door. A man that helped save Ashley’s life. Silas could accept Min’s friendship with him on that account alone.
So, I’ll just go over and knock on the door.
But after several knocks, some short, quick raps, and one bursting pounding with the flat of his palm, no one answered. Silas cracked open the door and peered inside.
“Hello? Nick? I’m looking for Min. Is she here?”
No answer. No sound…other than a radio playing overhead. Silas followed the sound while repeating his greeting. Up to the second floor…
Another stairway led further up into the house…where the music came from. A closed door stood at the top of that staircase, but a light poured out of the crack under the door.
“Nick? Min? You up here?”
Silas could hear the steadily acceleration of his heartbeat above the thumps of a rock song. The wood stairs creaked under his weight…and yet, no one heard him. Softly, he knocked on the door, and with a gentle push, it swung open.
He’d found Min…and Nick…pressed together in an unabashed physical embrace.
*****
My head felt a little fuzzy. Nick had me wrapped up in a passionate kiss that I seemed to want…really, really want, but something triggered in the back of my head that…
It was gone. Whatever it was that itched at my scalp and laid my suspicions to buzzing, it was gone.
His mouth was hot – a little too hot, hotter than another man’s mouth…what was his name? The fuzzy dizziness returned as I tried to remember that other man’s name. For the breath of me, it skittered just out of reach… But Nick was there. I was there. We were there together, and I wanted…needed…desired him. Oddly, I felt all this without the adrenaline rush of passion. My mind did not seem to be mine, my body reacted to an unknown possession of emotions, my heart pounded in my chest from the incongruity of his kiss. I floated over the edge, grasping at some sort of reality, trying to get back to a semblance of control.
Yet, I couldn’t control it…this encumbered lust that filled my marrows and raced through my blood. My brain was firing all cylinders, and the rush of energy through my nerve endings told me everywhere his hands touched me, every miniscule corner of my mouth ached for a deeper kiss…a longer, more tempting delving of our bodies pressed together in urgency.
An eerie quiet infused the room… Room? Where was I? Nick backed away a fraction, and I whimpered as I drew closer to him.
“Sweetheart, we have company,” he murmured strangely. He sounded sad…and angry. Did I do something wrong? Hating the loss of control to my emotions – and loving it all the same – I arched up and nearly crawled his chest to return to his lips.
“Hmm?” I moaned, not caring about anything but the power he held over me. It was a delicious power…a dangerous power…and I just didn’t care.
Nick cradled my chin in his hands. I half-closed my eyes and bent into the touch, but he swiveled my face away and I saw a man standing nearby watching us. He looked familiar…he looked stunned and furious and hurt and…his flat gray eyes looked directly in mine.
Again that tugging on my heart…the man’s face swam into focus…but Nick’s thumb caressed my earlobe and all around me fell away.
“Min?” The voice came from a distance.
“Yes?” I asked softly, dwelling on the burning touch of strong hands that feathered down my neck and up again.
“What do you want, Min?” Nick’s breath tickled my hair as he spoke. I swayed closer, the vague vertigo returning.
“You,” I exhaled slowly as my head rolled and my vision blurred. “I want you.”
The air around us heated…became suffocating and hot with tension. As I struggled to stay on my feet, all the muscles in my legs turned to water…the indescribable lust warring with my unease.
In a daze, the other man reared forward with a guttural growl, and Nick’s head suddenly jerked back. He removed his hands from my skin…I stumbled sideways. Nick held his nose with both hands…streams of red trickled down his chin. The crack of bone meeting bone finally whistled to my eardrums…and then another distinguished crunch…and Nick crumbled to the floor as I dimly spied the whites of his eyes as they rolled back into his skull.