City Girl (12 page)

He sobered and scowled. “As you saw, though, Gina’s not prepared to accept that, so friendship’s out, I guess. No matter. I can do without her brand.”

His expression, a blend of masculine confusion, concern, and embarrassment, did more to convince Liss than any of his words had, and all at once she felt lighthearted and carefree. “Friendship’s a fine thing to have,” she said, adroitly slipping out of his loose embrace. “I recommend it highly.” She grinned at him over her shoulder as she ran up the steps.

* * * *

“Are you going to be busy this morning?” Kirk asked as he came in for breakfast on Wednesday, Marsh at his heels. The dog lay down on his blanket in the utility room, while Kirk, after knocking the snow off his boots, continued on into the kitchen, carrying two large bottles of milk.

Liss set her crossword book aside and looked up with a smile that faltered as her pulse went mad. Dammit, when was she going to get used to seeing him come in, watching him tip that Stetson of his to the back of his head, smiling at her from under his thick fall of fair hair? When was she going to stop responding? Next thing you know, she told herself, he’d tip his hat back and she’d start drooling like Pavlov’s dogs.

“I’ve enrolled the boys in preschool,” she said, jumping quickly to her feet to pull a pan of hot biscuits from the oven. “This will be their first day, “ she went on, setting the pan on a cooling rack. “All I have to do is take them there and drop them off. Why, was there something you wanted me to do?”

She opened the refrigerator to put the fresh milk inside, and he leaned over her as he set his hat up on top. She drew in a deep breath of his outdoors scent, then quickly slipped away to fetch the rest of his breakfast from the warming oven. When he came in from milking, he came in starved. It took an enormous amount of food to keep him filled up.

“You said your furniture is arriving tomorrow,” he said as he sat down at the table, “so I thought if I’m going to get a carpet laid in the playroom, it would be easier to do it before there’s much stuff in there. How about I go with you to take the boys to school, and while they’re occupied, we’ll buy the carpet.”

“Sure,” she said. “But can you expect to find a carpet layer who’ll com on only a few hours’ notice?”

 He laughed as he tossed a biscuit from hand to hand, cooling it to touchable temperature before he spread butter on it, then popped half of it into his mouth at once. He tapped his chest with one finger as he swallowed.        “I’m the carpet layer, city girl. Out here, we do things for ourselves.”

“You know how to lay carpet?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never done it before, but I’ve read up on it.” He didn’t add that he’d been reading up on it the past couple of nights because, tired as he was from a long day of work, something—or someone—tended to keep him awake. So he read.

Liss laughed softly. “Carpet laying by the book. This,” she murmured, “I’ve gotta see.”

He grinned. “O ye of little faith . . .”      

* * * *

“What are those things for?” Jason asked. He tried to grab one of the narrow strips of wood, studded with tiny, sharp, angled nails, that Kirk had set on the floor immediately after they arrived back home.       

“Whoa!” Kirk lunged in time to prevent Jason’s hands from being lacerated. “Don’t touch! Those are called tack strips and they’re very sharp. They’d hurt you if you picked them up. I’m going to nail them along the floor like this, right up close to the        wall, with the pointed parts up. When I put the carpet down, it gets hooked on the little nails and stays where I put it.”

He had talked too long for Jason’s short attention span. The three-year-old had darted away before he was finished, and launched himself onto the roll of green rubber underlay. He mounted it as if it were a horse and bounced violently on it, shouting “Giddy!” repeatedly and with increasing volume.

 “Neat,” Ryan said, kneeling beside Kirk to peer at the tack strips, but not touching. “Can I help?” He picked up Kirk’s tape measure, pushed the button, and laughed wildly as nine feet of steel tape snaked back inside its casing with a wicked whish! Startled when the end whipped past his nose, Kirk jumped and knocked over a can of nails. They tinkled and rolled and spread over a great area.

“Sorry, guys, it’s nap time,” Liss said, seeing a crazed, trapped look enter Kirk’s eyes. “Let’s go.” The boys protested, but she got them settled in their beds. Within moments both were asleep, worn out from their morning at preschool. Liss smiled, remembering Jason’s expression earlier that morning when he’d realized she was leaving him at the school. He’d looked as though she were abandoning him in a leaky boat in shark-infested waters with a storm coming up. By the time she and Kirk returned two hours later to collect them, though, neither of the boys wanted to leave. They were hoping to stay for three hours tomorrow.

Back downstairs, she reentered the playroom. “Now,” she said, shoving her sleeves up. “Tell me what I can do to help.” This was the way to do things, she thought. Keep it businesslike. Nothing more than two partners working together on a project of mutual interest.

Kirk looked up from his task of fastening the last of the tack strips to the floor. “Believe me, you’ve already helped. Sometimes, too many hands make more work, especially when some of those hands belong to little guys.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? Why do you think mothers invented naps?”

His eyes danced. “I can see that naps are a real boon.”

He grunted as he heaved the roll of waffle like underlay over to one wall. “Stand on the end of this, will you, while I get the rest of it spread out.” She did as he asked, but as he unrolled the bulky stuff, her weight wasn’t enough to keep the entire end down. The two corners rolled back up and curled around her knees, then her waist, creeping toward her shoulders as Kirk got farther away.

“Uh, what did the book say about this?” she asked as she fought to hold the underlay back. Kirk turned from his task and gaped at her. “It . . . didn’t,” he said. “Hmm. Well, hold it down as best you can.”

She spread her feet apart, but that helped only minimally. She bent forward at the waist, putting her hands on the floor, too, and managed to hold down a larger area, but the awkward position was not one she could maintain for long. Spying a hammer in the doorway, she walked her hands forward and managed to grab it. With a grunt, she started back the way she’d come, inchworm-style. When Kirk burst into laughter, she glanced at him upside down between her knees.

“What are you doing?” he asked, kneeling on the floor and staring at her over his shoulder. “You look as if you’re playing Twister!”

“Getting . . . this,” she said. Twister? What in the world was that? She paused long enough to show him the hammer, then walked her hands back toward her feet while circling her feet around so she faced one corner. She tossed the hammer into the corner, and its weight held the underlay down—at least at that one spot. Then she collapsed onto her stomach, and found she could cover a much greater portion of the end by lying flat and stretching her arms as high as she could over her head. Wriggling, she positioned herself so that most of the edge lay flat under her, then gave Kirk a triumphant grin. “There,” she said. “That’s got it under control.”

He was still staring at her. “I think the author of that how-to book missed a bet.”

“Me, too. This is really quite comfortable. You were right to get the thickest, most expensive brand. Let me know when you’re ready for step two.” She closed her eyes.

Kirk’s mouth went dry as he gazed at her. Maybe the carpet pad was under control, but he sure wasn’t. The sight of her cute bottom sticking up in the air as she walked around on her hands and feet, her hair dangling down like a silky black mop, had set up the kind of reaction in him that he was fast beginning to associate with her. Now, seeing her lying there with her eyes shut and that perky grin on her face, her hair still tumbled all around, her breasts plumped against the floor, her backside, in delicious profile in her tight jeans, he had to force himself to get back to work.

“Well, damn,” he said as he wrestled with the rest of the recalcitrant stuff. When he arrived at the far end of the room, he discovered he had the same problem she’d had. As long as he stood on it, the pad stayed still—in  that spot. The moment he moved to try to reach something with which to hold it down, it sneaked up behind him and flopped over his back. If he turned and flattened that section of it, the other corner curled over him. After a few minutes of futile fight, he, too, lay down. He faced Liss across the length of the floor and laughed at her startled expression.

“Why not?” he said, resting his head on the heel of one hand. “You’re right. This seems to work. If we stay here a couple of weeks, the damn thing might behave. You game?” He dropped his head down and closed his eyes. “How do mothers feel about naps for big boys?”

Liss giggled and hoped Mrs. Healey wouldn’t come in and catch them lying on the floor like idiots. She’d tell Lester Brown on both of them. “Why don’t we hook it on the little nails?” she asked, turning from him long enough to cast a wary glance at the line of tack strip behind her.

“Because it would tear. Besides, the book said it had to be cut an inch shorter than the carpet on purpose, so it won’t reach the strips. Nope, it seems to me we’re stuck here. If either of us tries to stand, it’s going to roll up on us again. I only wish we were a little closer together. It seems a shame to waste an opportunity like this.” He patted the rubber. “You’re right. It is comfortable. Why don’t you slide on over here and we’ll get comfortable together?” His smile was full of teasing—she thought he was teasing. Her body, on the other hand, had a different idea. Her body wanted to take him seriously.

“Come on,” he urged, patting the floor beside him again. “You have one of your corners pinned down, so it’ll be less trouble for you to move than for me.”

She thought of all the trouble she could get into if she did as he asked. “I thought we were going to simply be friends.”

His eyes widened. “You think I’m being unfriendly?”

She shook her head, captivated by the power of his gaze, even though he was at least fourteen feet away. “No. I think maybe you’re being too friendly. I feel . . . safer with this much space between us.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “And safer is better?”

“I think so.”

“What if I were to prove something different to you?”

She laughed, feeling quite secure where she was-as long as he stayed where he was. “I don’t see how you can. As you said, it looks as if we’re stuck here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He rolled toward her experimentally. The underlay curled along behind him like a big green comber on a Hawaiian shore.

He turned over a second time, a third, a fourth, and then was gone, lost in the rolls of rubber. Liss laughed helplessly as he flailed exaggeratedly and beat at the stuff, shoving it off only to have it flop back down and cover him again. “Help,” he said, poking his head out. He was halfway across the room by now. “I’m being swallowed!”

“Stay right where you are.” She gingerly got to her feet and walked toward the doorway. The sticky rubber followed her, all but the corner that was pinned and the center where Kirk lay wrapped. “I’ll go and get some heavy things to put on the ends. Don’t move, or we’ll have to start all over again.”

She was back in minutes, to find him where she had left him, holding one arm erect to protect himself from the loose corner she’d left, the other fending off the rest of the roll. Pushing the corner flap ahead of her with one hand and taking long strides, Liss flattened the pad out before her. Once it lay properly again, she set a can of pumpkin on it, then followed along toward the hammer, setting down other heavy cans as she went.

“Okay,” she said, “while I get some more cans, you roll back to your end and I’ll get it pinned down, too.”

Instead, he snaked out a hand and caught her ankle, stopping her in her tracks. “Hey,” he said. “I was heading over here for a reason, remember? You go back there and lie down again and wait for me.”

She stared down at his hand. It was so large, it wrapped easily around her ankle. Slowly, he slid it up her calf as far as he could push the leg of her jeans. All the while his smoldering gaze was on her face, watching her reaction. “You have silky skin to go with your silky hair,” he said softly. “Come on down here with me. Lie beside me and we’ll roll over a time or two and no will ever know we’re in here. I bet you’re never been kissed inside a roll of carpet underlay.”

Liss tried to be serious and failed utterly. The picture his words painted was too ridiculous. She laughed. “That’s a bet you’d win.”

“Then why not try it?” He sat up quickly, thrusting aside the floppy rubber, and clasped her hand. He tugged until she fell half on top of him, half on top of the roll. “You might like it. Friends do things like this, you know.”

She shook her head and tried to scramble away, but the waffle texture caught at her socks and her knees and her elbows, while Kirk caught her around the waist, holding her easily. Still laughing, she subsided as the underlay flopped over them several times, then settled down, cocooning them in a private, green-tinged world.

He touched the scar on her chin as he gazed at her with sleepy, hooded eyes, his mouth only centimeters from hers and curved into a smile that snatched her breath away.

Slowly she lifted a hand and curved it around his jaw, discovering hard, strong bones under his skin and the short stubble of his beard. Excitement skittered along her nerves as he clenched his teeth and drew in a sharp breath, obviously affected by her touch.

“I’ve never had a friend like you before,” she said, her voice tremulous and throaty as she wavered on the brink of laughter.

“And I’m feeling very . . . friendly, Liss.” His voice was husky and his breath brushed her cheek when he drew her even closer. “I was attracted to you the first time I saw you standing in front of your house, with your hair all wind tossed and your skirt blown tight against your backside and those ridiculous, high-heeled city girl shoes making your legs look like a million dollars.” He ran one hand down over her hip, defining the shape of her thigh. “And then you arrived here, and it got stronger. It hasn’t quit any since. Kiss me.”