The Best Man
Page 28
So she wouldn’t remember that he’d called her “sweetheart.” That was probably a good thing.
She didn’t say anything more, other than to compliment him on the meatballs. The sleet and wind kept up, and while it had made him a little jumpy before, it now felt...safe.
When he and Faith had been in sixth grade, they’d had this really crappy science teacher. Mr. Ormand, was it? The guy hated kids. Every day, he’d single out a student and just eviscerate the kid, mocking him or her for getting an answer wrong or missing a step in the lab. Didn’t matter if you were getting a D or an A; if a kid was smart, he’d mock that, too. “I guess we know everything, don’t we, Miss Ames? You must be a genius! Class, we have a genius among us! Isn’t it thrilling?”
Then one day, Faith had raised her hand and asked about studying for an upcoming science test, and Mr. Ormand had said something like, “Perhaps you could read the textbook, Miss Holland? Perhaps that might help?” his voice dripping with customary sarcasm. And much to the shock of everyone, Faith had snapped back in the exact same tone, “Or perhaps you could actually teach, Mr. Ormand? Instead of sitting there complaining about how dumb we are?”
There’d been a collective gasp, and Faith was ordered to the principal’s office. But as she’d left the room, Levi had muttered, “Nice job, Holland,” and winked. She’d looked at him, and he’d have thought she’d be scared, getting in trouble for the first time that he could recall. But instead, she’d grinned, and for that second, he’d thought maybe Faith had a little bit of bad in her. Maybe she wasn’t quite the Goody Two-Shoes she always seemed. Also, she already had boobs. Just another thing to appreciate.
Not long after, Faith’s mother had died in a horrific accident. The guidance counselor had come in and told them not to ask questions, but Faith’s father had wanted to make sure everyone knew she’d been in the car, had had a seizure and mercifully didn’t remember anything.
When their homeroom teacher had instructed them to write her a note, Levi couldn’t. What did you say to a kid who woke up trapped in a car with the broken, lifeless body of her mom? “Sorry?” Everything had sounded pathetically small. The teacher had glared at him, so he’d scrawled a few lines on a piece of paper, surreptitiously stuffed the note into his pocket and passed in a blank page instead.
When Faith had come back to school after a few weeks, she was a ghost of the cute girl who’d sassed their mean teacher. She’d been popular before, but her mother’s death shot that into the red zone. Everyone had flocked around her, fighting to be the one to sit next to her, to give her their Twinkies or have her come over to their house after school and pick her first to be on their team in gym class.
Levi had done none of those things. Hadn’t gone to her mom’s wake, hadn’t picked her for his team, hadn’t said he was sorry. For some reason, he couldn’t. He’d just...ignored her. He’d been an adolescent boy, not an age group famed for emotional insight.
But one day when he’d been fishing in the stream behind the trailer park, he’d spied something gleaming on the shore. He’d brought it to school the next day, and then, after he’d wrangled a detention from Mr. Ormand for not passing in homework, when the halls were empty and Levi was the only one around, he’d taken the little treasure from his pocket, wrapped it in a scrap of rough brown paper towel and shoved the rose quartz rock through the air vent in Faith’s locker.
A rock she’d kept for almost twenty years.
There was an odd pressure in his chest.
“You want to watch TV?” he asked, clearing her plate.
“Sure. Maybe a movie? Netflix came today.”
“What have you got?”
“A zombie movie. Supposed to be very gory.”
He glanced at her, surprised.
“What?” she said. “They can’t all be romantic comedies.”
If Levi wasn’t mistaken, Netflix had just sent a very gory zombie movie to his mailbox today. “Sounds good,” he said, tidying the kitchen.
“You’d make a great housekeeper,” she commented, settling onto the couch with her blanket.
“In addition to babysitter and chef, you mean?”
“Exactly.” She smiled at him again as he sat in the blue chair, feeling a little awkward, at least at first. But Faith was a movie talker, it turned out, and didn’t need him to carry on an entire conversation. “That girl only looks dead. Ten bucks she bites the cute cop. And there you go. Ten bucks, Levi. Oh, come on now. He’s hiding under the bed? Has he never seen a horror flick? They always find you there.”
And as the sleet pattered against the windows, eventually changing to rain, and as the zombies killed everyone in great sprays of blood and fire, Levi couldn’t help thinking this was one of the best nights he’d had in a long time.
* * *
WHEN FAITH WOKE UP in the morning, Blue was not the only one in the room with her.
Levi Cooper, police chief and babysitter extraordinaire, was sitting in the chair next to her bed. He’d taken Dad at his word; though she’d argued and yes, whined a little, he’d dragged the chair in here nonetheless and kept watch, ever the good soldier.
A tired soldier, too. He was asleep, his head tipped back against the chair, arms folded. And what arms they were. Her girl parts purred as she stared. The lower half of a tattoo showed where the thick muscle curved—10th Mountain Division. His dark blond hair was rumpled, sticking up in front a little bit.
Oh, man. Levi Cooper was really, really...hot. She’d managed to put that out of her head for quite a long time now. For more than a decade, she hadn’t allowed even one thought about his hotness, and really, how had she avoided it? The Man. Was. Delicious.
Even in sleep, his face held a slight scowl. But his eyelashes were straight and long and unexpectedly sweet, and his mouth was...yeah, okay, that was a nice mouth, full and sulky, and really, she should not be thinking these thoughts. He’d seen her in full blown seizure mode—oh, hemorrhoid—and he’d been nice enough to do her a favor (or do her father a favor, if you wanted to be technical). So fixating on his hotness...that was a one-way ticket. Because she knew what she looked like during a seizure (thank you, older brother): like one of the zombies from last night, stiff and jerking, possibly drooling for that extra dose of sex appeal, eyes wide and scared, snorty little pig noises thrown in for flair.
Faith looked at Blue, who was eyeing her from his half of the bed. “Stay,” she whispered, then slipped out from under the sheets. She went into her bathroom and started at her reflection, flinching a little. Hair matted, crustiness in one eye, mascara smudged, a crease running down one cheek courtesy of her pillowcase. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and washed her face mercilessly, then brushed her teeth. There. At least she was clean now. Oh, the sweatshirt. Nice touch. And let’s not forget the doggie pajamas. One could practically hear the bass of p**n o music pulsing.
Well. It was Levi, after all. He wouldn’t be thinking p**n o, not with her.
It was funny; she hadn’t had a witnessed seizure for a long time. Two times, she’d had them in Jeremy’s presence, that first time when he’d carried her to the nurse, and another time, when he’d been visiting her in college. He’d always treated her like a spun-sugar fairy princess, almost like her epilepsy made her more attractive (which she hadn’t really minded, to be honest).
But Levi...it didn’t seem to sway Levi one way or the other. He could’ve made her feel like an idiot last night, and he was gifted in that department, after all. But for some reason, last night had been oddly...fun.
“Right, Faith,” she muttered to her reflection. “Why don’t you have seizures more often, huh? The entrée to a good time—epilepsy.”
“You okay in there?”
She jumped at the sound of Levi’s voice. “Yes! I’m fine. Thank you! Out in a sec.” Pulling her hair out of the ponytail, she fluffed it, then rolled her eyes at herself. Kind of a lost cause at the moment.
She opened the door to find him standing there. “Do you always eavesdrop on women in the bathroom?” she asked, inching into the hall.
“You feeling all right?” he repeated, glancing at his watch.
“I’m fine. Thanks again, Levi. I’ll tell my dad what a good boy you were.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but maybe there was a gleam of amusement there. No smile, of course. This was Levi Cooper, after all. “See you around,” he said.
“Okay. Thank you again. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He didn’t move, just stared at her impassively.
Then he closed the small distance between them and kissed her.
She wouldn’t have believed it if there wasn’t proof, but nope, no, he was definitely kissing her, his lips firm and, oh, wow, really good at what they were doing, and his big, bulging manly arms slid around her, pulling her against his solid, warm frame. One hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her hair, and Faith’s mouth opened in a bit of shock, and holy moly, he was frenching her, tasting her, and she melted against him in a purely primal—oh, yes, primal—reaction. Her arms slid around his lean waist, hands sliding up the smooth, hard muscles of his back, his skin hot under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, his mouth moving against hers.
Then the kiss was over, and she was panting in shaky gasps, as if she’d run all the way up to the barn. Her eyes needed a second to focus, and her legs wobbled.
Levi did not look similarly affected. He blinked. Twice. “I didn’t see me doing that,” he said, frowning down at her.
“Oh, well, you know...you could do it again,” she breathed.
He stepped back. “I don’t think so.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up even more.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Yeah. That was a bad idea. That was a mistake. I definitely shouldn’t have done that. Sorry, Holland.”
She just stared at him for a minute. Nope, he was serious. Dead serious, from his expression.
Men. Just...men! Was there ever going to be a normal man in her life? Huh?
“Out you go,” she said, shoving his hard chest. “Bye! Thank you for everything, you jerk. And you know what?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Get out.” She hustled him to the door, opened it and waved. “Bye.”
Levi stepped into the hallway, and Blue bounded out as well, then attached himself to the horrible man’s leg. As goes the slutty owner, so goes the slutty dog. “Blue, get back here!” she ordered. Her dog obeyed, and she took one more look at Levi’s expressionless face. “Have a nice day.”
Then she slammed the door. Opened it and slammed it again, just in case he missed the point.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GOOD NEWS WAS, the barn was going beautifully.
The arborist had come in and removed five trees, which opened up the view just enough. She’d hired Crooked Lake Landscaping and a very cute Irish stonemason (married, sigh) to work on the parking area, a wall along the path and the retaining wall. Samuel Hastings, a Mennonite carpenter, and his son would build the deck that would extend out over the hill. The electric had been run, and things were clicking along.
Faith was doing a lot of the work herself. That wasn’t usually the case; as the designer, most of her work was done at a computer, figuring out things like water runoff rates and soil retention. But this was Holland land, and the barn was her baby. Faith wanted to filter the dirt and help build the rock walls, dig holes and loosen root balls, and hear the sound of hammers ringing out over the hill.
She’d been working a lot. At the library, studiously not looking across the green to the police station. At the other vineyard. Up here at the barn.
She didn’t say anything more, other than to compliment him on the meatballs. The sleet and wind kept up, and while it had made him a little jumpy before, it now felt...safe.
When he and Faith had been in sixth grade, they’d had this really crappy science teacher. Mr. Ormand, was it? The guy hated kids. Every day, he’d single out a student and just eviscerate the kid, mocking him or her for getting an answer wrong or missing a step in the lab. Didn’t matter if you were getting a D or an A; if a kid was smart, he’d mock that, too. “I guess we know everything, don’t we, Miss Ames? You must be a genius! Class, we have a genius among us! Isn’t it thrilling?”
Then one day, Faith had raised her hand and asked about studying for an upcoming science test, and Mr. Ormand had said something like, “Perhaps you could read the textbook, Miss Holland? Perhaps that might help?” his voice dripping with customary sarcasm. And much to the shock of everyone, Faith had snapped back in the exact same tone, “Or perhaps you could actually teach, Mr. Ormand? Instead of sitting there complaining about how dumb we are?”
There’d been a collective gasp, and Faith was ordered to the principal’s office. But as she’d left the room, Levi had muttered, “Nice job, Holland,” and winked. She’d looked at him, and he’d have thought she’d be scared, getting in trouble for the first time that he could recall. But instead, she’d grinned, and for that second, he’d thought maybe Faith had a little bit of bad in her. Maybe she wasn’t quite the Goody Two-Shoes she always seemed. Also, she already had boobs. Just another thing to appreciate.
Not long after, Faith’s mother had died in a horrific accident. The guidance counselor had come in and told them not to ask questions, but Faith’s father had wanted to make sure everyone knew she’d been in the car, had had a seizure and mercifully didn’t remember anything.
When their homeroom teacher had instructed them to write her a note, Levi couldn’t. What did you say to a kid who woke up trapped in a car with the broken, lifeless body of her mom? “Sorry?” Everything had sounded pathetically small. The teacher had glared at him, so he’d scrawled a few lines on a piece of paper, surreptitiously stuffed the note into his pocket and passed in a blank page instead.
When Faith had come back to school after a few weeks, she was a ghost of the cute girl who’d sassed their mean teacher. She’d been popular before, but her mother’s death shot that into the red zone. Everyone had flocked around her, fighting to be the one to sit next to her, to give her their Twinkies or have her come over to their house after school and pick her first to be on their team in gym class.
Levi had done none of those things. Hadn’t gone to her mom’s wake, hadn’t picked her for his team, hadn’t said he was sorry. For some reason, he couldn’t. He’d just...ignored her. He’d been an adolescent boy, not an age group famed for emotional insight.
But one day when he’d been fishing in the stream behind the trailer park, he’d spied something gleaming on the shore. He’d brought it to school the next day, and then, after he’d wrangled a detention from Mr. Ormand for not passing in homework, when the halls were empty and Levi was the only one around, he’d taken the little treasure from his pocket, wrapped it in a scrap of rough brown paper towel and shoved the rose quartz rock through the air vent in Faith’s locker.
A rock she’d kept for almost twenty years.
There was an odd pressure in his chest.
“You want to watch TV?” he asked, clearing her plate.
“Sure. Maybe a movie? Netflix came today.”
“What have you got?”
“A zombie movie. Supposed to be very gory.”
He glanced at her, surprised.
“What?” she said. “They can’t all be romantic comedies.”
If Levi wasn’t mistaken, Netflix had just sent a very gory zombie movie to his mailbox today. “Sounds good,” he said, tidying the kitchen.
“You’d make a great housekeeper,” she commented, settling onto the couch with her blanket.
“In addition to babysitter and chef, you mean?”
“Exactly.” She smiled at him again as he sat in the blue chair, feeling a little awkward, at least at first. But Faith was a movie talker, it turned out, and didn’t need him to carry on an entire conversation. “That girl only looks dead. Ten bucks she bites the cute cop. And there you go. Ten bucks, Levi. Oh, come on now. He’s hiding under the bed? Has he never seen a horror flick? They always find you there.”
And as the sleet pattered against the windows, eventually changing to rain, and as the zombies killed everyone in great sprays of blood and fire, Levi couldn’t help thinking this was one of the best nights he’d had in a long time.
* * *
WHEN FAITH WOKE UP in the morning, Blue was not the only one in the room with her.
Levi Cooper, police chief and babysitter extraordinaire, was sitting in the chair next to her bed. He’d taken Dad at his word; though she’d argued and yes, whined a little, he’d dragged the chair in here nonetheless and kept watch, ever the good soldier.
A tired soldier, too. He was asleep, his head tipped back against the chair, arms folded. And what arms they were. Her girl parts purred as she stared. The lower half of a tattoo showed where the thick muscle curved—10th Mountain Division. His dark blond hair was rumpled, sticking up in front a little bit.
Oh, man. Levi Cooper was really, really...hot. She’d managed to put that out of her head for quite a long time now. For more than a decade, she hadn’t allowed even one thought about his hotness, and really, how had she avoided it? The Man. Was. Delicious.
Even in sleep, his face held a slight scowl. But his eyelashes were straight and long and unexpectedly sweet, and his mouth was...yeah, okay, that was a nice mouth, full and sulky, and really, she should not be thinking these thoughts. He’d seen her in full blown seizure mode—oh, hemorrhoid—and he’d been nice enough to do her a favor (or do her father a favor, if you wanted to be technical). So fixating on his hotness...that was a one-way ticket. Because she knew what she looked like during a seizure (thank you, older brother): like one of the zombies from last night, stiff and jerking, possibly drooling for that extra dose of sex appeal, eyes wide and scared, snorty little pig noises thrown in for flair.
Faith looked at Blue, who was eyeing her from his half of the bed. “Stay,” she whispered, then slipped out from under the sheets. She went into her bathroom and started at her reflection, flinching a little. Hair matted, crustiness in one eye, mascara smudged, a crease running down one cheek courtesy of her pillowcase. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and washed her face mercilessly, then brushed her teeth. There. At least she was clean now. Oh, the sweatshirt. Nice touch. And let’s not forget the doggie pajamas. One could practically hear the bass of p**n o music pulsing.
Well. It was Levi, after all. He wouldn’t be thinking p**n o, not with her.
It was funny; she hadn’t had a witnessed seizure for a long time. Two times, she’d had them in Jeremy’s presence, that first time when he’d carried her to the nurse, and another time, when he’d been visiting her in college. He’d always treated her like a spun-sugar fairy princess, almost like her epilepsy made her more attractive (which she hadn’t really minded, to be honest).
But Levi...it didn’t seem to sway Levi one way or the other. He could’ve made her feel like an idiot last night, and he was gifted in that department, after all. But for some reason, last night had been oddly...fun.
“Right, Faith,” she muttered to her reflection. “Why don’t you have seizures more often, huh? The entrée to a good time—epilepsy.”
“You okay in there?”
She jumped at the sound of Levi’s voice. “Yes! I’m fine. Thank you! Out in a sec.” Pulling her hair out of the ponytail, she fluffed it, then rolled her eyes at herself. Kind of a lost cause at the moment.
She opened the door to find him standing there. “Do you always eavesdrop on women in the bathroom?” she asked, inching into the hall.
“You feeling all right?” he repeated, glancing at his watch.
“I’m fine. Thanks again, Levi. I’ll tell my dad what a good boy you were.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, but maybe there was a gleam of amusement there. No smile, of course. This was Levi Cooper, after all. “See you around,” he said.
“Okay. Thank you again. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He didn’t move, just stared at her impassively.
Then he closed the small distance between them and kissed her.
She wouldn’t have believed it if there wasn’t proof, but nope, no, he was definitely kissing her, his lips firm and, oh, wow, really good at what they were doing, and his big, bulging manly arms slid around her, pulling her against his solid, warm frame. One hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her hair, and Faith’s mouth opened in a bit of shock, and holy moly, he was frenching her, tasting her, and she melted against him in a purely primal—oh, yes, primal—reaction. Her arms slid around his lean waist, hands sliding up the smooth, hard muscles of his back, his skin hot under the thin cotton of his T-shirt, his mouth moving against hers.
Then the kiss was over, and she was panting in shaky gasps, as if she’d run all the way up to the barn. Her eyes needed a second to focus, and her legs wobbled.
Levi did not look similarly affected. He blinked. Twice. “I didn’t see me doing that,” he said, frowning down at her.
“Oh, well, you know...you could do it again,” she breathed.
He stepped back. “I don’t think so.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up even more.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Yeah. That was a bad idea. That was a mistake. I definitely shouldn’t have done that. Sorry, Holland.”
She just stared at him for a minute. Nope, he was serious. Dead serious, from his expression.
Men. Just...men! Was there ever going to be a normal man in her life? Huh?
“Out you go,” she said, shoving his hard chest. “Bye! Thank you for everything, you jerk. And you know what?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Get out.” She hustled him to the door, opened it and waved. “Bye.”
Levi stepped into the hallway, and Blue bounded out as well, then attached himself to the horrible man’s leg. As goes the slutty owner, so goes the slutty dog. “Blue, get back here!” she ordered. Her dog obeyed, and she took one more look at Levi’s expressionless face. “Have a nice day.”
Then she slammed the door. Opened it and slammed it again, just in case he missed the point.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GOOD NEWS WAS, the barn was going beautifully.
The arborist had come in and removed five trees, which opened up the view just enough. She’d hired Crooked Lake Landscaping and a very cute Irish stonemason (married, sigh) to work on the parking area, a wall along the path and the retaining wall. Samuel Hastings, a Mennonite carpenter, and his son would build the deck that would extend out over the hill. The electric had been run, and things were clicking along.
Faith was doing a lot of the work herself. That wasn’t usually the case; as the designer, most of her work was done at a computer, figuring out things like water runoff rates and soil retention. But this was Holland land, and the barn was her baby. Faith wanted to filter the dirt and help build the rock walls, dig holes and loosen root balls, and hear the sound of hammers ringing out over the hill.
She’d been working a lot. At the library, studiously not looking across the green to the police station. At the other vineyard. Up here at the barn.
