Sugar Creek (16 page)

Rachel simply lifted her gaze. “I still say I got the better deal.”

And they all laughed. And Rachel couldn’t deny how nice it was just spending a lazy, breezy Saturday afternoon with her best friends. She’d felt bad leaving Edna with the day-trippers, but she had Brian Cahill with her, and she’d insisted, afraid Rachel would end up rushing around on her ankle.

As for Mike, even if Tessa was right and it was just another power trip for him, it still caught her off guard. He’d struck her as a man who would be all about his own satisfaction when it came to something like sex—yet in the concession stand, and again at Edna’s, he’d surprised her. And if he
was
a guy who took pleasure in
her
pleasure—well, she could only see that as a win/ win situation.

A few minutes later, the girls had wandered to an empty playground, settling onto a row of wooden swings. As Rachel gently scraped the toes of her shoes through the sandy dirt beneath her, she remembered: “I didn’t tell you guys the rest of the story, about when I fell.”

Tessa shoved a windblown lock of brown hair behind one ear. “Good God, there’s more?”

“Not about Romo—about Edna,” Rachel explained. Then she told them what Edna had said after Mike had
left. It was one thing to have Edna regale her with the story of losing her virginity, but…“When did she start thinking it’s okay to talk about penises with me?” she asked as they departed the play area, strolling through more swirling leaves toward the pretty white gazebo in the center of the park.

Amy pointed out, “
You
talk about penises with
us
. Sometimes.” Then she added, “Sometimes more than we’d prefer.”

As they settled on the gazebo steps, Rachel shot her a look. “Are you saying you don’t want to hear about Mike Romo’s penis? Fine—I can cease and desist with all details right now.”

But Tessa held up her hands in a stopping motion. “Wait a minute. I, for one, am interested in penises. I haven’t seen one in quite a while, after all.” Soon after Rachel’s return, Tessa had confided that she hadn’t had sex in a few years.

“It’s this town,” Rachel told her, happy to blame Tessa’s lack of a love life on Destiny. “You came back here and haven’t had sex since then, am I right?”

“True,” Tessa conceded. “But you, on the other hand, came back here and had sex in record time.”

Hmm. Oh. “Good point.” Which firmly negated the Destiny-is-death-to-your-sex-life theory. “But I definitely didn’t plan it that way.”

Tessa let out a teasing, long-suffering sigh. “Sure, the girl who needs some fun and romance in her life can’t get any, while the girl who
always
has lots of fun is getting still more. Figures.”

Although Rachel only scrunched her nose in reply. “I’m not sure Mike Romo qualifies as
fun
. Exactly. I’m not sure
what
he qualifies as.”

“Sounds pretty fun to me,” Tessa replied. “Although…what happened to it being a one-time thing?”

“Yeah, I was wondering that, too.” Rachel bit her lip.
“But it’s definitely over now. He kind of…asked me out, and I said no.”

And they both glared at her, as if she’d done something heinous.

“What?” she asked, taken aback. “Look, it’s bad enough I’m in Destiny, period—no way am I getting involved in some small town affair. It’s just…not me. And besides, the date was to a family thing, a
Romo
family thing. And it was hardly a romantic invitation. So I turned him down. I mean, I didn’t want him to think I actually…like him or anything.”

Tessa rolled her eyes. “How very sixth grade of you.”

“Well, since when
do
we like him?” Rachel argued. “He was mean to your Aunt Alice, remember?”

“Whatever,” Tessa said. “So he’s mean when he pulls people over. Some things are more important.”

“Like sex?”

Tessa just widened her eyes as if to say a resounding
yes
.

Just then, someone yelled, “Hey Freckles—heads up!” And Rachel raised her eyes in time to see Amy leap from where she sat on the steps to catch a football—which sent Rachel and Tessa ducking for cover.

When she decided the danger was over, Rachel looked up to see Logan Whitaker walking toward them in an orange Cincinnati Bengals jersey, complete with tiger stripes on the sleeves. More importantly, behind him came Mike Romo, wearing a Steelers jersey, along with another guy in a red hooded sweatshirt sporting an Ohio State emblem.

As usual, just seeing Mike sent a chill fluttering through her, but she tried to tell herself it was the brisk fall air. As he approached, she sort of found herself wishing she hadn’t
just
finished telling Amy and Tessa about what had happened on the couch—she felt like they were thinking about it now. She knew
she
certainly was. The only question remaining: Was Mike thinking about it, too?

“What’s up, ladies?” Logan asked with a sexy grin that might actually have made Rachel a little hot for him if she wasn’t already struggling with so many bizarre emotions for his best friend.

“Just hanging out,” Amy replied. Then she pointed toward the guy in red. “Rachel, you remember Adam Becker, right? From high school?”

Oh, wow, that was Adam? She hadn’t realized at first—too busy obsessing over Mike—but the one-time prom king and Bulldogs quarterback looked as handsome now as he had then, even if a little more rugged. “Of course,” she said, still seated on the steps with Tessa. “It’s nice to see you, Adam.”

“You, too, Rachel,” he replied with a winning smile. “Welcome back to Destiny—the place has been quiet without you.”

She returned the smile, appreciating the comment.

And was she imagining things, or did Romo actually look…a little jealous? Hmm…Despite herself, she liked the idea of that. And couldn’t stop herself from doing something to egg it on a little. “I hear from Amy that you’re in landscaping—all that outdoor work must be good for you, since you look great.”

Adam grinned, and she thought she saw Mike’s chest heave, like he was trying to keep himself in check. “Thanks,” Adam said. “You’re looking fine yourself.”

“
How’s that ankle, Farris
?” Officer Romeo cut in, stern as ever.

She casually shifted her gaze to him. “Fine now, thanks.”

“Good. I didn’t want to hear you complain about it.”

Okay, whatever. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about the couch. But she still thought he was jealous. Not that she knew why she cared. She’d turned down his stupid invitation, after all, committed to keeping this what it was: a weird sexual thing. But wait, that didn’t sound very
nice. Okay, a
hot
sexual thing. Which, like she’d told her friends, was over now anyway. Because hot didn’t override the fact that he was still a Romo who wanted the Farris Family Apple Orchard. And sex with him, no matter how good, still felt like a strange betrayal of some kind. Not a Romo/Farris kind of betrayal, though, she realized suddenly—but more a betrayal to…herself.

Because this wasn’t her—this small town life, this small town guy. It just didn’t fit with who she’d become. And even if she loved Edna and her friends here, she’d worked hard to leave everything small town about
herself
behind.

Whoa. It was startling to suddenly realize her reasons for stopping things with him had to do with something much deeper inside her than a family feud or all the things she didn’t like about him—that it actually had to do with
her
. And it even made her feel a little…guilty, for maybe being arrogant, or “too good” for Destiny. But it
wasn’t
arrogance, she realized. It was just…not wanting to go backward in life.

“What’s wrong, Farris? You look sick.”

She swallowed, then met Mike’s gaze. “Like I said, I’m fine.” She’d put a little bite in her voice, to make sure he heard it, and that she
felt
it. She
was
fine. She was stuck in Destiny for a little while, and had maybe let herself start getting a little too involved with life and people here, but she was fine. She’d
be
fine. As soon as the dumb apples were harvested and she could get the hell back to Chicago.

“So what are you guys up to?” Amy asked, bouncing the football in her hand. She’d always been sportier than Rachel and Tessa.

“We were supposed to play some touch with a few guys from Crestview,” Logan said, “but they didn’t show.”

“Touch?” Rachel asked, happy for a distraction from her thoughts.

“
Football
, Farris,” Mike said as if anyone would know that. “Touch
football
.”

It was then that Logan looked speculatively toward Rachel, Tessa, and Amy—then to Mike and Adam. “
They
could play with us.”

“They’re girls,” Mike said with all the maturity of an eight-year-old.

Logan shrugged. “They’re better than nothing.”

“All right, stop with the flattery already,” Tessa said, and Logan and Adam laughed. Mike, on the other hand, still appeared to be his usual gruff self—at the moment, Rachel saw no signs of the seductive Mike or the Mike who sometimes teased her and made her laugh. So all the better that their weird, hot—whatever—liaisons were in the past; his unpredictable moods were just one more thing not to like about him.

“All right, so we’ve got ourselves a game,” Adam said. “Three on three.”

Rachel glanced at Tessa. “Did we agree to this?”

Yet no one paid any attention to her, and Logan said, “Amy has to be on
my
team.”

“Why?” Rachel asked, blinking her suspicion.

“Well, because she’s…” Logan trailed off, looking like he’d been caught at something.

“Good?” Rachel asked. “Meaning that Tessa and I are rotten?”

Logan laughed and held out his hands. “I never said that.”

And Adam piped up to add, “Guess this is your chance to prove yourself.”

But it was only when Mike Romo looked her way, drawing Rachel’s eyes back to him instantly, that she got that horrible, wonderful fluttery feeling between her thighs again. And it hit even harder when he said, “So, Farris, what do you say? Wanna play?”

P
lay what?
But she held her tongue. In case that might sound flirtatious, or sexual. Since that’s suddenly how she was feeling at the moment. But she
couldn’t
feel that way around him anymore, damn it—she just couldn’t. So instead she replied, perhaps too softly, “I don’t really know the rules of the game.”

“You’ll learn as we go,” Mike said, a little less brusquely, their eyes still locked.

And she had no idea why an exchange about football in front of all their friends was tightening her chest and turning her stomach to mush, but she simply said, “Okay,” in a voice that sounded far meeker than she liked. And she’d long since forgotten about flirting with Adam.

As she pushed to her feet, she began to wonder what she’d gotten herself into—but she followed along with the rest of the gang to a large open green space nearby, barely able to focus on the conversation taking place around her.

On the perimeter of her brain, she heard Amy ask Mike why he was a Pittsburgh fan when they lived much closer to Cincinnati. And in her peripheral vision, she saw him toss a derisive glance at Logan and his Bengals jersey before he said, “Simple. Super Bowl victories.” Everyone laughed and then Logan started explaining—clearly for Tessa and Rachel’s benefit—how the game worked, and indicating where the goal line and boundaries were. Fortunately, Rachel had a cursory knowledge of football—she just hadn’t actually played it before—so she was able to get the basics despite her heady state.

Yet even as Logan kept talking, she couldn’t help noticing that Mike’s black Ben Roethlisberger jersey suited him somehow. Maybe because it made his shoulders look just as broad as they were. And he appeared so comfortable, confident—clearly in his element. Kind of cuddly, too, which struck her as weird, since little about his personality would make anyone think of him that way. And he hadn’t shaved in a few days, either. He’d been clean shaven again when she’d seen him at Edna’s, but now he was back to being all stubbly and, as before, something about it turned her on.

Wait. Cuddly? You think he’s cuddly now?
So much for getting him out of her system.

“All right,” Mike said, “if Logan’s taking Amy, I’ll take Adam.”

Rachel blinked, drawn back to the game. Wow, he didn’t even want her on his team. Not that she cared. She and Tessa, obviously the losers in the crowd, just looked at each other.

Ultimately, she ended up on Logan and Amy’s team, and a few minutes later, as they huddled, Logan surprised her by announcing she was their secret weapon.

She made a doubtful face, still wondering how her quiet walk in the park—meant to prevent strain on her ankle—had turned into
this
. “How so?”

“Amy will go out for a pass,” Logan began, “and they’ll assume I’m going to throw it to her, since she’s…”

“Good,” Rachel supplied, again filling in the blank.

“But I’m really going to hand it off to you,” Logan said, “then drop back and fake a pass.” He demonstrated the motion, showing her how to stand, and how to attempt hiding the ball once she had it.

“What do I do then?”

“You run like hell.”

Hmm. “I’m coming off a twisted ankle,” she felt the need to point out.

“Just do your best,” he told her, then gave her an encouraging pat on the back.

“Won’t the other team tackle me?” She really didn’t want to re-injure that ankle.

“No, this is
touch
football,” Logan explained. “No tackling. It’s like tag. Once they touch you, the play’s over.” Then he put on his game face and spoke louder, so the other team would hear. “
Are we ready to kick some ass?
”

“Ready!” Amy said, slapping upraised hands against Logan’s, clearly a lot more into this than Rachel. But she was willing to try. Since she liked the idea of beating Mike Romo at something. She just hoped she didn’t come out of it humiliated again.

As the teams lined up, she ended up across from Tessa, who looked at her and murmured, “This is stupid.”

“I know,” she muttered back.

Then the play began and Rachel did her best to turn the way Logan had instructed, just in time for him to shove the ball against her stomach. Then came the “run like hell” part and, trying to keep the ball hidden, she took off down the grassy stretch toward the sapling that marked the goal line.

She easily made her way past Tessa—and Adam was across the field guarding Amy, as Logan had planned.
Rachel ran like crazy then, picking up speed as the sapling grew closer.

However, it was as Mike Romo came barreling toward her like a Mack truck that she knew for sure she liked football a lot better when she was on the sidelines with pom-poms. As he tagged her shoulder, she stopped running—only to have him trip over her feet and send them both crashing to the ground.

She landed on her back—with Officer Romeo sprawled on top of her. Fortunately, other than the initial
thud
, nothing on her hurt.
Un
fortunately, Mike didn’t seem to be moving—and when she met his gaze…
oh
. The way he looked into her eyes, even now, made her surge with moisture, damn it.

His hand molded warmly to her waist. “Did I hurt your ankle?”

“No,” she said as he lifted off her slightly—yet still held her pinned to the grass. “But I thought you weren’t supposed to tackle me.”

“I wasn’t. Your feet got in my way.”

“Well, maybe you can let me up now.”
Instead of looking like you want to rip my clothes off right here in front of everybody.

“How about that family picnic next weekend?” he said, catching her off guard.

“How about it?” she retorted.

And for the first time that day, his expression changed—the corners of his mouth turning up into not-quite-a-grin. “Come on, change your mind. I need a date.”

Oh brother—not this again. She tried to push him off her, her hands to his chest, but he didn’t budge. “And you can’t get one?”

“I can get plenty.”

She didn’t doubt it. Sometimes
hot
did make up for a lot. “Then why does it have to be me? Is it bring-a-Farris-for-show-and-tell day?”

This time he came closer to smiling, and those intoxicating brown eyes even softened a little. “It’s not like that.”

Again, she tried to get him off her, wrapping her hand around his arm and pushing. “What’s it like?”

He didn’t move an inch, instead sounding a bit exasperated now when he said, “I don’t know. I just felt like asking you again, damn it.”

“You are a silver-tongued devil, Officer Romeo,” she informed him.

That’s when he traded in his exasperation for a wicked little grin, arching one eyebrow. “You haven’t even
seen
what I can do with my tongue yet, Farris.”

It made her gasp—and left her totally without a comeback.

“So is that a yes?”

Oh Lord. She really
couldn’t
agree to this—but it seemed the only way to get out from under him. And…well, maybe the promise of the tongue thing had intrigued her a little, too.

Yet she still tried to sound very aloof, rolling her eyes as she said, “
Fine
. I’ll go if you insist.” And then she told a lie. “But it has nothing to do with your tongue.”

He kept his hot gaze on her to say, “Well, be nice and maybe you’ll find out anyway.”

Oh my. She knew this was a bad idea. Yet the tongue thing
was
making it seem a little less bad, and a little more…thrilling. “I thought you worked me out of your system,” she pointed out. “In the concession stand.”

“Guess I’m not quite there yet,” he told her—finally beginning to get up. When he reached a hand down to her, she saw, with relief, that no one was close enough to have heard their conversation. In fact, it appeared they’d all purposely kept their distance—so Mike went on. “And I don’t think you are, either. But I’m sure if we try, we’ll get tired of each other pretty soon.”

She took his hand and said, “Again, you’re a smooth talker.”

As he pulled her to her feet, he simply cast a confident look and shrugged. That shrug said it all:
I don’t need to be.
And it was beyond her at this point to argue or deny it. The chemistry between them was that strong.

So ridiculously strong that
now
…oh Lord, she’d agreed to go to Grandma Romo’s birthday party?

The next day found Mike and Logan fishing at a spot just off the road next to Blue Valley Lake. No houses were in view from where they sat and Mike didn’t even know who owned this particular land, but they’d been coming here for years.

The weather was chilly, same as yesterday, and Mike set his rod and reel on the ground next to him to zip up his hooded sweatshirt. They’d been sitting on the little embankment above the lake for nearly an hour without even a bite, and Mike was in a sour mood.

“I hate fishing,” he said, picking his rod back up. The revelation had just hit him.

“Yeah—me, too,” Logan agreed.

Mike looked at his buddy. “Then why do we do it?” For two guys who hated fishing, they fished pretty often.

But the question didn’t throw Logan, not even for a second. “Because we fished with my dad.”

True enough. Logan’s dad had died after a heart attack about five years ago, and he’d been like a second father to Mike. Ron Whitaker had taken them fishing all their lives—but for him and Logan, Mike guessed maybe it had been more about that whole male bonding thing. And the truth was that, as a kid, Mike had been a little afraid of water after losing Anna right next to a lake—one big theory being that she’d wandered in and drowned—but Logan’s dad had taken them fishing and swimming enough that it had forced him to get over it. So now, Mike
supposed Logan was right and fishing was about remembering time spent with Ron.

“So…you laid on top of Rachel Farris a long time yesterday,” Logan said out of the blue. Okay, apparently he was done reminiscing about his dad.

“Yeah, guess I did,” Mike admitted. But it left him all the more irritated.

“Are you still gonna tell me you don’t have a thing for her?”

Mike sighed. He felt tired. “Nope. In fact, I’m taking her to my grandmother’s birthday party next weekend.”

Logan turned to look at him, jaw dropping. “Shit—really?”

Mike only glanced up briefly, then looked back out over the water, slightly choppy today from the fall breeze. “Yep.”

“Well, then you might want to consider being a little nicer to her,” Logan pointed out.

Made sense, Mike supposed. The only times Logan had been around the two of them together, Mike had been pretty surly. But, of course, there was a lot Logan didn’t know. “Don’t worry,” he said, reeling in his line just a little, keeping his eyes on the bobber in the water. “I’m plenty nice to her—in my own way.”

He felt his friend’s sharp gaze. “What’s
that
mean?”

“Well, I’ve given her about three orgasms so far.”

Logan’s fishing rod dropped from his fingers to the ground below. “When the hell did
this
happen?”

Mike just bent down to retrieve his buddy’s fishing pole, shoving it back into his hand. After which he filled Logan in on what he’d missed—how getting locked in the concession stand had led to sex, and how carrying Rachel into the house had led to…other creative types of fooling around.

“With Edna in the next room,” Logan repeated numbly when Mike was done.

But he played it off. “She was asleep.”

And Logan just shook his head. “Man, I don’t get you sometimes.”

Finally Mike looked back up, narrowing his eyes on his friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I begrudge you having sex in weird places—I myself
like
sex in weird places—but it’s not like you.”

Huh. Mike didn’t want to admit it, but Logan was right. And it wasn’t that Mike minded sex in weird places, but just that he wasn’t usually that…haphazard. He could usually wait to get a girl home into bed. If he was gonna seduce someone, he usually orchestrated it exactly the way he wanted. Only with Rachel…“Hell,” he finally said, “that woman’s been driving me crazy since the moment I met her. I don’t know what it is, but…when I’m around her, I do things I don’t plan to do. And when I see her, I want her. Bad. It’s strange, like I don’t have any power over what I’m doing.”

“No, it’s normal,” Logan said. “Sometimes. With a girl who really does it for you.”

But Mike’s brow knit. “It’s not normal for
me
.”

Logan nodded in agreement. “Well, yeah, that’s what I meant a minute ago. Usually you have to run things exactly the way you want ’em—so it threw me to hear you did it with Rachel in a freaking concession stand. I mean, you’re usually so…by the book. You plan things out. You’re controlling.”

Mike slanted him a look. “Controlling? What, are you suddenly Sigmund-fucking-Freud?”

“Just stating the facts,” Logan replied, and left it at that. Because it wasn’t a new topic of conversation, even if Logan had never used a psycho-babble term like “controlling” before. Logan insisted Mike had had certain issues ever since the day Anna disappeared. He always claimed Mike had been a regular easygoing kid before that, but
had right afterward turned into the same my-way-or-the-highway guy he was today.

Mike couldn’t decide if that was true, if he agreed—because for him,
everything
had changed after they’d lost Anna. So he couldn’t pick out particulars in his own personality—he just knew that before that day, life had been good, and easy, and happy; and after that it had been mostly shit, for a very long while. But he didn’t spend much time
caring
whether Logan’s theories were true, either—he
was
who he
was
, and he didn’t worry about it much.

“So why am I just hearing about all this fooling around with Rachel
now
?” Logan asked.

Mike only gave another shrug, eyes back on his line. “I didn’t know you were so interested in my sex life.”

“I’m not,” Logan said. “But dude—sounds like you at least owe me a beer for not showing up at the concession stand.”