Kim Mckade - That Kind Of Girl

Colt stepped up to her and pulled at the pencil that held her hair up. “What’s this—uh-oh,” he said as her hair came tumbling down. “Sorry.”

Her hair fell, and his hand fisted loosely in it. Becca looked at him over her shoulder, and for a moment their eyes met, and held. Colt rubbed the slippery strands of hair between his fingers, then shifted his hand to cup the back of her neck. The cords of it felt fine and delicate beneath his fingers. Her eyes grew wide—dark green pools that looked bigger now that they weren’t hidden behind glasses. For an intense flash, Colt remembered what it had been like to kiss her, to have her on his lap, offering him everything. His eyes drifted down to her lips and watched them part almost imperceptibly.

Then she drew away, smoothing back her hair. “That’s okay,” she said. She fumbled with it, then finally let it drift loose down her back. She looked at the counter, the piles of chopped vegetables in front of her, anywhere but at him. “I hope omelettes are okay.”

“Anything sounds good to me right now,” he said. “Been a while since I’ve had a decent meal at all.”

He leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. What the hell had that been about?

Becca continued to move around the kitchen, chattering as if the moment hadn’t happened, chopping her vegetables. He hadn’t meant to scare her. But then, he hadn’t really meant to touch her. He had to admit, though, it had felt nice.

The last time he’d seen Becca, she’d been sitting on his lap, kissing him almost past the point of no return. It was hard to look at her now and not think of that night. He had assumed all these years that she wouldn’t remember; she’d been pretty drunk. But the look in her eye had him wondering.

He picked up the hunk of cheddar she’d set out, and the grater in the dish drainer, and began grating cheese into a bowl. “So, I thought you were going to Paris?”

“Who told you that?”

“You did, graduation night. You said you were going to New York to art school, then to Paris, because that was where all artists went.”

Becca made a show of concentrating on the eggs she was beating. She poured them into the hot skillet and tilted the pan to let the eggs spread evenly. “I said a lot of things that night. People do that when they’re drunk. They blather.”

“Sure they do,” he allowed. “And sometimes being drunk makes them relax enough to really speak the truth.”

“I wouldn’t know. That was the first and last time I ever enjoyed that particular experience— Do you like mushrooms?”

He nodded, and she sprinkled them in, along with a bit of chopped ham. She took the bowl of cheese from him and dribbled cheese in, too.

“So, what happened?”

“You know what happened. I didn’t get accepted into the art school. I believe I told you that.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

She looked at him then, and her face went still. “You do remember, don’t you. I was hoping you didn’t.”

“It’s not the kind of night a guy is likely to forget.” He couldn’t help the grin that started to creep up.

She mumbled something and turned back to her omelette, folding it over with a spatula.

“I figured you wouldn’t remember,” he said. “You were pretty wasted.”

“You don’t know women that well, Colt. Our most humiliating moments are the ones we remember most clearly. Wasted or not.”

She slid the omelette onto a plate and returned to work on the next, not looking at him.

“It wasn’t humiliating,” he said. “At least, it shouldn’t have been.”

“Come on, Colt. I acted like a fool.” She faced him, one hand gripping the spatula, the other on her hip. “I practically begged you to take me away with you. And I—I…” She sighed and turned back to the pan. “You know what I did.”

Oh, yeah. He knew.

He stepped up and took the plate she held out to him. He wanted to touch her again, but got the feeling he’d get a fork speared in his hand if he tried. Instead he rooted around until he found the silverware drawer, and carried two forks and knives to the small table in the dining room.

Becca followed with a tray containing her own plate, a smaller one with a stack of toast, two glasses and a pitcher of orange juice. Her face was flushed, but he didn’t think it came from standing over a hot omelette pan. He decided the gentlemanly thing would be to change the subject.

“The house looks nice. You’ve done a lot with it.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you do all the work yourself?”

“What I could. I had this window enlarged, and I hired Pete Huckaby to do it. He moved to Aloma after you left, I think. He just finished a few months ago. And there was some plumbing that needed to be redone, which I couldn’t do, of course.”

She tore off a bit of toast, but he noticed she didn’t eat it. She looked around the room.

“It was mostly cosmetic work. Paint and paper, and changing the furnishings. But it makes a lot of difference.”

He forked a bite of omelette and studied her as he chewed, thinking of the “cosmetic work” she’d done to herself. “Yeah, it makes a difference in the appearance. But underneath, it’s still the same house.”

She faced him head-on, and he knew from the steely glint that came into her green eyes that she caught on immediately. He knew, and was impressed when he saw her chin lift.

“Yes, it is. But then, the house was basically a good house, solid and strong. All it needed was cosmetic work and a little attention to make it a home again. So why not take it and make it into the home I always knew it could be?” She lifted one brow and almost defiantly stuffed a forkful of omelette in her mouth.

And for some inexplicable reason, that made him want to jump across the table and kiss her.

Instead, he just grinned and shrugged. “No reason I can think of.” He looked around at the design she’d painted on the dining room wall; deep green vines and morning glory climbing over a trellis. She was right—it did feel more like a home than it ever had when old lady Danvers lived here with all her dark, stuffy furniture.

“So you decided to just paint the house instead of painting the world.”

“I paint,” she said defensively. “I haven’t bowled the art world over with my talent the way I’d planned, but I do paint. And you saw the ads I draw for Dunleavy’s. That actually pays a little.”

“I suppose that’s enough, then.”

She glared at him, then sighed. “Yes, Colt, it’s enough. I didn’t go out and set the world on fire like you did, but it’s fine. I have a good life. And my painting may be more of a hobby than a profession, but it’s still mine.” She closed her eyes for a second, then shook her head and looked at him again. “Nothing works out the way you think it’s going to when you’re eighteen, Colt. At least, it hasn’t for me. But that’s okay. You know, when I think about it, not one thing has changed since that night in your pickup, and yet everything has changed. I’m a different person now, even though I’m still the smart girl who helps everybody with their algebra homework. I just get paid for it now. My life hasn’t changed that much on the surface. I’m still in Aloma, still in the same house, still a—”

She broke off with a sharp intake of breath. She clamped her mouth shut and looked at him with wide eyes, her cheeks flushing. He thought for a second she was choking, but she’d just gone very, very still.

And in that moment the thought followed itself through in his head. He dropped his fork to his plate and gaped at her.

“Becca, don’t tell me you’re still a virgin?”

He shouldn’t have laughed, he decided later. He was justified in being surprised, even shocked. She’d just admitted to being a thirty-year-old virgin, for Pete’s sake. Surprise was to be expected.

But really, he should not have laughed.

The clock on the wall behind him had ticked loudly in the silence that had echoed his question. She’d sat, her face flushed, and stared back at him. As soon as it dawned on him what she’d just said, or had tried not to say, he felt a grin start to build like he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

Becca Danvers, with her sweet kisses and carefully banked desires, was still untouched.

The thought had filled him with so much pleasure, in fact, that he laughed. Out loud.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Now he was trying unsuccessfully to stop the scene of the previous night from replaying itself in his head. Now he was working like a demon, hauling off old furniture and ripping rotten carpet from the floor of Doff’s house, in the hopes that hard work would erase the memory of Becca, her face a mask of complete humiliation, from his mind.

It wasn’t working.

Colt stood and rubbed at his aching back, surveying the damage he’d done to the house today, and thinking about the damage he’d done to Becca last night.

Many times over the years he’d imagined what it would have been like if he hadn’t turned Becca down when she offered him her virginity. Imagined it in vivid, Technicolor detail. But he’d assumed, of course, that someone else had eventually taken what he’d declined.

“Stop looking at me like I’m some kind of freak,” she’d said as she stabbed her fork in her omelette.

He couldn’t help himself, though. The only coherent words he’d been able to form, after he regained his voice, were, “How the hell did that happen?”

“It’s actually a matter of something not happening, Colt.”

She’d sniffed and swallowed, and he felt like a jerk. But still, the thought kept running through his head that no one had touched her. No other man had touched her. And the urge to laugh again welled dangerously close to the surface.

It was a wonder she hadn’t tossed him out on his butt. But then, that was Becca. Even when she was humiliated—or thought she was—she maintained that cool pride. It might have hurt to think he was laughing at her, but she’d manage to get over it quickly enough.

Even so, the memory felt sour in his stomach today. “Are the guys around here nuts?” he asked the empty room. He got a rumble in response, and noticed for the first time that the light outside had grown dim. He crossed the room and looked out the window; storm clouds were building in the west.

“Damn it.” He rubbed the small of his back and contemplated his options. He’d decided to tear out the old carpet—it was filthy and had probably been butt-ugly even when it was new—and refinish the wood floors underneath rather than replace it. The gleam of polished wood would help sell the house, but it was hell on his back.

It was a habit now to curse Doff when the pain in his back got bad. The pain was going to force him to call it quits for the day. His career was hanging by a thread as it was; he wasn’t going to jeopardize his recovery—and his chance to beat Doff—for the old man’s mess.

The thing was, he was loath to stay in the house one second more than necessary. He ate his meals, and even slept, on the back porch. With the rain coming, he wouldn’t be able to hang out there. And he sure as hell wasn’t staying in Doff’s house.

He didn’t realize he’d focused on the hole in the living room wall until he’d stared at it for several minutes. He’d put that hole there a dozen years ago. The last time he’d been in this house. The last time he’d seen Doff.

He reached for a cigarette, cursed again when he remembered he’d quit two months ago, and walked slowly into the kitchen. Out of spite—whether to himself or to Doff he didn’t know—he turned back to the living room and stared again at the hole in the wall.