Chapter Twenty-One
Luke
Something is very wrong with Cassidy.
She says nothing all the way to the bank, and when I return with my temporary debit card, she can barely muster a thumbs-up.
This is not the bubbly chatterbox I’ve been traveling with, and it makes me uneasy as hell.
I drop back into the driver’s seat, anxiety tensing my muscles. Mountains loom in the distance, offering me a jagged skyline to stare at as I consider my options.
Given whatever she’s going through is none of my business, I should ignore it and leave her to stew in peace. It’s what I’d want.
But she’s not me. She thrives on human contact. Ignoring this doesn’t feel right.
I swipe the phone from her lap. “Give me a quick second to check something and we’ll be off.”
I perform a quick search and delete the history after finding what I’m looking for, because if she discovers what I’m planning, she’ll insist it’s a waste of time.
It probably is. But I’m not sure what else to do.
When we pull up to the Antique Washing Machine Museum, it’s abundantly clear that she paid zero attention to our rural surroundings as we approached. I snuck us off the highway in plain sight.
“Luke,” she says warily, leaning forward in her chair. “What is this?”
“What does it look like?” I park the car in a gravel lot and throw Price is Right arms at the tiny, weathered building. The wood-paneled siding gives the museum a log cabin look, as does the wraparound porch. Two rocking chairs stand guard over the front door. It’s all rich wood and rustic, but behind it lies a giant eyesore of a warehouse. “The Lee Maxwell Washing Machine Museum.”
She looks out her window and back at me. “Why are we here?”
“For fun.”
“Again, why?”
“It’s on my bingo card.” I lower to meet her gaze. She’s not laughing at the joke. “It was on the way. I thought it’d cheer you up. I’m a washing machine collector. Which of these reasons appeals to you?”
Her gaze clouds over into something stormy.
My pulse trips. “If you’re worried about the time this wastes, it wasn’t even out of the way. And I already plan to drive until my eyes are crossed tonight—”
She shoves open the door and storms out of the convertible, slamming it behind her. The noise rattles a group of birds who take off in a flurry.
I launch out of my side, shut my door, and follow after her. “What? What’d I say?”
She stomps away four steps, kicking up gravel. When she wheels around, her finger is pointed at me. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop messing with my head. Stop doing nice things for me. Stop letting me sleep on your lap, then acting like it’s no big deal. Stop solving my problems and looking at me like you care. I know you’re just being nice, but it’s messing with my head.”
I gape at her, unsure how to respond. Her words are like a tablecloth ripped off, sending glasses and plates flying everywhere.
Panic flashes in her eyes. “Oh god, just forget it. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. This was a nice gesture because I was sulking. But we should just drive. We both have a life to get back to.”
She’s exactly right, and dammit if it doesn’t sting like hell anyway. I take a beat, a breath, trying to slow my raging heart.
“You’d do this for anyone, right?” Her arms drop to her side, and her chest rises and falls fast. “Luke? Please say something.”
This woman is impossible.
She shouts at me one second and demolishes me with the softest, most hopeful look in her eyes the next.
I run my hand down my face, scrambling to make sense of her. “You are…”
“I’m what?” She tilts her chin, an air of defiance in her eyes. “Finish the sentence. I’m…‘something else?’”
“Confusing.”
“I’m confusing? Look in a mirror, Luke!”
The late afternoon air is infused with woodsmoke and sap, and it’s too cold for us to stand out here fighting. But the idea of getting back in the car and pretending everything is fine is insufferable.
I step closer, desperate to make her understand what I, myself, don’t fully understand. “I’m not messing with you, Cass. I wanted you to feel better. That’s why we’re here.”
“A weird museum is exactly the kind of thing that would make me feel better,” she says quietly. “You were right.”
I throw up my arms. “Then what’s the problem?”
She moves closer.
It’s the Wild goddamn West. One step at a time.
“It’s…” Her face flushes, and she blinks skyward. “I am so confused about your intentions. Your feelings. The way you touched me last night—I know it was in the name of medicine, but it felt like…” She runs a finger across the hollow beneath her bottom lip, her skin and mouth turning a deep pink. “I liked it a lot more than I should’ve.”
Desire seizes my body hot and heavy, and I have to replay her words three times in my head to be sure I heard her correctly. This woman who now occupies my every waking thought, who I ache to touch and hold, liked my hands on her. A lot.
Her gaze slides back to mine.
With the ferocity of a bursting dam, the part of me I keep locked away—the undiluted want and need I don’t let myself entertain—breaks free.
I close the distance between us, and my hand moves to her like there’s no other option but to touch her. I twist her hair around my fist and lift it off her neck. My other hand brushes up her skin, behind her ear, over her cheek, skirting her mouth, generating a thousand volts of electricity that threaten to rip through my restraint. “It felt like torture, touching you without really touching you. Worse when I had to stop.”
“Luke…” She leans into the brush of my fingers, my name a whisper on her tongue.
My hand slides behind her neck, my control all but gone.
Get back in the car.
This ridiculous need to go out of my way to help her, to learn her, to touch her is more dangerous than any cracked plane, old train, or smashed automobile. It’s the ultimate betrayal to my carefully constructed plans.
Her hands land on my stomach, and her gaze follows her fingers as they slide toward my collar. It’s slow, the sensation painfully light.
I grip her waist, reeling her in with a jerk, anguishing over the brush of her body against mine as she pushes up on tiptoes.
Our mouths tease without touching, her lips toying with mine as if in a dare.
I hesitate for the duration of three raging breaths before the last thread of my resistance snaps. I slant my mouth over hers, catching her gasp in my mouth.
She kisses like she’s exploring a new place, so fucking sweet and slow I’m gripped with the simultaneous needs to protect what’s soft and show her hard.
She pulls back and searches my eyes just long enough to find whatever she’s looking for before crashing her mouth back into mine. Her palms graze the side of my face and slide behind my neck, pulling me in and urging the kiss deeper. With the first questioning flick of her tongue, I groan and plunge my fingers into her silky hair, coaxing her mouth open until her hesitation dissolves. She nips my bottom lip, and I stop myself shy of devouring hers. She answers with an aching sound that sets me on fire.
I swipe a thumb inward across her cheek, landing on the lips I’ve been begging myself not to fantasize about since the minute I met her, interrupting our kiss so we can catch our breath.
Our mouths barely separate, sharing hot air as I tease her lip with the pad of my finger. Her eyes stay shut as her raspy breaths come faster at my touch. That lasts all of a few seconds before my hand falls away and my mouth is on hers again. Breathing can wait.
I snake an arm around her waist and lift her off the ground, walking until her back hits the side of the car. Every caress of her tongue shoots straight through me until my coherent thoughts fall away. She lifts a knee to my waist, and I drive my weight against her, pinning her in place. Our kiss grows sloppy, fire licking everywhere our bodies touch.
If we take this any further, I’ll lose all rationality and take her right here against the shiny red Mustang.
But I don’t want to think. All I fucking do is think.
She presses words into my mouth between frantic kisses. “We should—”
Her quiet words are interrupted by the sound of tires spinning gravel. A truck whips into the parking lot from around the side of the museum.
I jump backward.
Cassidy steadies herself, her hands bracing her cheeks.
The slate gray Dodge parks almost on top of us. It’s not really a spot at all. The driver just comes to a stop diagonally, nearly blocking the stairs.
The tinted driver’s side window slides down, revealing an older man. He drops a long, sun-weathered arm out of the window. “Hi there.”
“Hi!” Cassidy blurts. “Do you work here?”
“The wife’s been trying to get me to stop, but it’s a bit of a habit. I’m Lee Maxwell, owner and operator of the museum. You kids have a tour scheduled?”
“No, sir. Didn’t realize it was appointment only. We’ll be on our way.”
“Nonsense.” He throws open his door and lumbers to the ground. He presses the heel of his palm into the center of his broad back as he walks past. “We usually only do private tours after four p.m., but I’d be glad to show you around at the public entry rate.”
“Well, we could—”
“—should probably get going—”
Cass and I exchange a heated look. She delivers an entire monologue with those baby blues. Certainly something in there about not being rude and it’s weird if we say no.
I thought this museum would be a quick stop where we walked through on our own, just enough to cheer up Cass. I didn’t bank on the owner-operator breathing down our necks.
Cass’s now very swollen lips are pressed together as she awaits my answer.
Maybe a tour of this place, where we are very much supervised, is just the thing I need to get my body under control before we get back in that tiny car.
…
My thoughts are just as muddled when we exit the museum as when we walked inside. Perhaps it had something to do with the way Cass kept brushing against me as we maneuvered through tightly cramped aisles between rows of machinery, giggling at Lee’s terrible jokes and acting like it was the most exciting tour she’d ever taken.
Lee showcased the goods in the expansive, airy museum. I know more about the evolution of pumps than I care to forget. But nothing—not even a washing machine with a wood treadmill attached, once powered by a running goat—could stop me from thinking about that kiss.
Every inch of me is still tightly wound.
It must’ve dropped five degrees in the thirty minutes we were inside. Cass hugs herself tightly as we cross the parking lot.
As soon as we’re tucked away in the car, she exhales like she’s been holding it in for a century. “Wow. Fifteen hundred washing machines.”
“And more in the warehouse.”
She buckles her seat belt. The click is strangely loud. “Thanks for paying.”
“We’re still not even.”
We fall quiet.
She picks at the hem of her shirt. “What’s the plan for tonight?”
Now would be the time to tell her kissing can’t happen again. That it’s me, not her.
It should be simple. Four words: I can’t do this.
But fuck, that kiss was more than I ever could’ve imagined. Every square inch of my body surged to life with her hands on me. The smooth slide of her lips and tongue scorched me.
But more than all of that? My heart beats just as fast in this moment, when she throws her feet up on the dash and flashes me a tentative smile, as it did when I kissed her.
Dread lodges in my stomach. Even one night with her would be too much. I’m not sure either of us could come back from it unscathed.
I know I wouldn’t.
Her hands wring together in her lap.
She’s nervous.
So am I.
She turns her head and meets my eye, and the borrowed ease falls away until we’re staring at each other. That I would gladly look at her all day and night, and it would still not feel like long enough, is exactly why we need to keep moving.
“I won’t stop driving until I pass out at the wheel,” I say quickly, forcing my attention back to the road. “I know you’re eager to get home.”
“Right.” She nods and casts her gaze out the window. “Got it.”
God, I never should’ve kissed this woman. Now I’ll have to drive a thousand miles knowing how she tastes.