Chapter Seven
“I’m still not sure if Mason understands I’m technically your boss, not your, um, step up the social ladder,” Eve mused, after they’d said their good-byes to Nick’s friends and climbed into his truck. There was one Diet Mountain Dew left in the little cooler, and she unscrewed the top and chugged it, even though she’d definitely reached her caffeine quota for the day. Then added, “Oh God! You don’t need any steps anywhere. On any ladder. That was— I mean, that I’m not your girlfriend. He’s the one who said—”
Nick was laughing at her. “You would definitely be a step up the ladder for me, darlin’. Did you not just meet my last girlfriend?”
Wait.
“She was your last girlfriend?”
“Uh…”
“And you moved away from here five years ago?”
“Uh…”
“Seriously? What have you been doing for the past five years?”
“Abusing myself?” He shot her a crooked smile, and at her open-mouthed stare, said, “I’ve dated.”
“But have you, um… you know…since you moved away?” Stupid question. Of course he had.
“You know?” he asked. “Is that new slang for ‘hooking up’?”
“Yes. It also means I can’t believe I asked that. Of course you’ve hooked up. Just because you haven’t been seriously involved with someone since Misty doesn’t mean you haven’t…you know.”
“Okay.” A moment’s pause. Then, “Not that I’d say Misty and I were seriously involved. At least, I wasn’t.”
She looked at him. He looked at the road.
The late afternoon sun slid behind a hill and cast them into shade for a moment, then reappeared.
“Oh my God. You haven’t?” She swallowed the last of the soda and put the can in the cooler with the other—six—empties, next to Nick’s two water bottles. Way too much diet soda for one day.
He rubbed his neck, but even his golden tan couldn’t camouflage the red creeping up from under his collar and staining his cheeks.
“Oh my God,” she repeated, turning back toward the road, too, so she could think about the implications of this.
He was the hottest guy ever. And he was funny and smart and flirty and… “Oh my God. Are you gay?”
“What?” He jerked the wheel of the truck as though they’d been broadsided by a hurricane-force wind. “No! I mean… I’d tell you if I was, I guess. I’m just…not.”
“Well then, why haven’t you been involved with anyone?” And why was she being such a nosy Nelly? He’d kissed her just a couple of hours ago. And it had been brief, but it had been the best kiss she’d had in recent—or distant—memory.
“Wait. You’re a priest. You moved away from Napier County to join a monastery in Tennessee. Oh my God. I kissed a priest. I fondled a priest in a bar.” Her brain was spinning about a thousand miles an hour and her mouth wouldn’t stop sucking her foot in farther. “I’m going to hell. I’m so sorry. I’ve never corrupted—”
“Eve.” Nick had pulled the truck to a stop along the side of the road and put it into park. His eyes were soft and patient, but also laughing.
“What?”
“I’m not a priest.”
Her breath went out in a gust of relief. And then she sucked it back in again. “But—”
He shook his head. “I’m not a monk. But as for relationships…I’ve been…busy. Getting my life together. And I live with my mom.”
“Not like, in a Norman Bates psycho-killer kind of way, right?”
He laughed. “No. You can call her and ask her if she’s still alive or stuffed in the attic if you want.”
“But I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was really her. Maybe it would be—”
Her comment was cut off because Nick had unbuckled his seat belt and leaned across the center console of the truck and kissed her. With all the heat and tenderness of someone who really knew what he was doing. He used his lips, his tongue, his teeth to coax her to kiss him back. So she did. It was even hotter than the last one. She unhooked her seat belt and met him in the middle, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, tracing her fingers over the muscles of his back.
His hands stroked along her sides, almost, but not completely touching her breasts.
She inhaled, just to see if she could push her body out a little bit and into his hands, but no luck. He put one big hand on her jaw, holding her just so, pulling at her lips with his.
And then he leaned away, dragging all that heat and energy with him.
She sighed and opened her eyes to see him watching her. What was he thinking? Was he thinking he needed to get the hell out of this state before she ruined his dry spell? Or was he figuring out how he could get her naked? She wouldn’t tell him all he had to do was ask.
At least, not yet.
“We should get you home. I think you might have overindulged today.” He re-buckled his seat belt and put the truck into gear.
“I did not. I didn’t even taste that beer.”
“I know. I’m talking about the Diet Mountain Dew.”
“Oh.” She thought about that for a minute, vibrating in her seat, though that was probably as much from lust as from caffeine overload. “You might have a point.” She needed to regroup. She’d gotten way off track today. Her planner was in her hand and opened before Nick flicked the turn signal on and merged into traffic.
Nick slowed the truck in front of the McGrath house, a red brick monstrosity with a wrap-around porch, which looked like it belonged in the subdivision next to the country club. Instead, it floated out here in the middle of a few acres of green heaven, holding court over all it surveyed—a mishmash of distillery buildings and rick houses surrounded by black four-board fences. On the other side of the distillery, farther up a hill, was a large log home, which Eve told him belonged to the Morgans, the other family that owned Blue Mountain with hers.
“I’m trying to convince Mother to buy a condo closer to Lexington, but she won’t dream of leaving Blue Mountain,” Eve said. “I think she’s afraid she won’t be allowed back in if she leaves for very long.”
“Why would she think that?”
“She had kind of a rough upbringing.”
“My dad told me he knew her when she was younger.” He didn’t tell her that Raleigh’d said her mother was hot.
“Yeah. I guess they went to the same high school. She grew up over on the South side of Napier’s Bend.”
“Oh. That’s…” The area they’d called the hillbilly ghetto when he was a kid. Drugs and generations of poverty and all that went along with that.
“It was pretty rough even then.”
His dad’s family hadn’t been rich, and the alcoholism thing had run through the generations, but they’d lived in the country, not so close to Napier’s Bend. “How did she meet your father?”
“Ironically enough, in a bar. She was working as a waitress and had big ambitions. And big other things, too,” Eve snickered. “My dad went in one night with some friends and, he said, it was love at first sight.”
“What does she say?” Nick was curious about the uptight, prim-and-proper Lorena. He didn’t picture her working in a bar, even a classy one. And if she’d come from South Napier’s Bend…it wouldn’t have been a classy one.
“She says my dad chased her for weeks. Begged her to go out with him. She didn’t believe he was really interested in her, thought he was just after the challenge.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“Apparently not. Though I don’t think she was as hard to get as she claims to have been. She finally agreed to go out with him and I was born nine and a half months later.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Then they proceeded to be miserable for the next twenty years.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It was interesting, living in our house.”
Just like his had been. Interesting. More like hell. Her mother had dealt with an alcoholic husband just like his mother had. Only Lorena hadn’t gotten out. She’d stuck with Eve’s dad until he died. Maybe they had some sort of prenuptial agreement that would have left her with nothing. Not that his mom had taken anything when she’d gone. And thanks to Nick, not even her health. But things were different over here in Crockett County. It would have been hard to leave all that money.
“The thing is, though,” Eve continued, unaware of Nick’s thoughts, “I think she really loved him. She certainly hasn’t moved on. Men ask her out all the time, and she won’t have anything to do with them.”
“Not to be cynical, but maybe she’s once burned, twice shy,” Nick said. “If she and your dad didn’t get along.”
“Oh, they got along. At least on the surface. But there was always this…tension. Like she was waiting for something terrible to happen. When he was really drinking a lot, she would spend all of her time chasing him around town, calling people, checking on him. She’d never go out and get him, because she didn’t want to embarrass him or make a scene, but she’d still make excuses to look for him at night. She needed him to pick something up at the store on the way home, or some little thing was malfunctioning around the house…” She laughed. “When I was twelve, I bought Home Repair for Dummies so I could fix all the things that kept breaking. Until I realized Mom was the one breaking things, just to get Daddy to come home.”
His parents just yelled at each other. Everything would be fine for weeks. Dad would have a couple of beers at night while he swore at the news. Then he’d gradually ramp it up. He’d come home, all fished up and telling stories, jokes, bullshitting with everyone, and his mom would tolerate it as long as she could, then she’d let him have it. His dad never laid a hand on her, but Mom didn’t have any qualms about throwing a plate or a coffee cup at the wall to make a point.
Usually about that time was when Nick would escape to Mason’s house. He had no idea how many nights he’d spent with his friend, climbing up the tree in the side yard of their house and through the open bedroom window. Mason’s mom would have totally let him in the front door—she always knew when he was there, but let him think he was being sneaky.
Until he got older and used his own chemical means to run away in his head.
He looked at Eve, so pretty and clean and…functional. Organized. That was her thing, he realized. He pictured her adolescent self with a pair of pliers and an open book trying to rewire a lamp, or whatever. She’d coped with the uncertainty and pain in her childhood by overcompensating and making sure things ran smoothly. She was still doing that.
“So, anyway.” She bent to pick up her bag from the floor with its notebooks and cell phone. “I guess I should let you get on with your evening. Franklin’s probably wondering what happened to you.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t want her to go. “Hey, thanks for coming with me today.” Lame. Thanks for holding my hand through walking into a bar. For getting me through that awkward meeting with my ex and my best bro, who I haven’t seen in forever, because I haven’t made the time because I’m a chicken shit.
“I had fun.” She blushed. “You know, doing stuff. I mean—the kissing, that was nice, too.” She fumbled for the door handle and yanked it open, before he got the crazy idea to kiss her again, right here in front of her mother’s house. All she needed was to give Lorena another reason to want Nick gone from the tasting center job. “Everything was really nice. Um, I gotta go.”
“Okay.” He waited while she clambered out and shut the door, then pushed the button to roll the window down on that side so he could talk to her. “Mason said he’d meet me out at the barn tomorrow morning to start demo.”
She turned and beamed at him. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re taking this project on.”
He wanted to accept her thanks, along with her trust, but couldn’t. He had to make sure she understood. “Well, until Raleigh’s back on his feet, I’m all yours.”
She recovered so quickly he almost missed the way her smile dimmed.
There were no promises in his world. He couldn’t see more than a day or two into the future at a time—because he might not be drinking today, but he was still an alcoholic, and that could go to hell at any minute. And the last thing Eve needed was another drunk screwing up her own tenuous serenity.