Like the good martyr he was, Canaan offered to stay over last night. Like the “prudent” woman I was, I told him that wasn’t necessary and sent him packing. To the garage apartment a whole hundred yards away.
This morning I woke up to blue skies and a lightness inside, as though whatever clouds had been lingering within me had been forced out. I didn’t realize I’d been carrying a heaviness until it was gone.
I refused to think about why that might have been, because if sex with my ex was the answer I guessed it was, what did that say about me? Canaan might have been a master in that arena, but I couldn’t be one of those people who believed sex was the cure-all to life’s problems. Not that it seemed like such a bad philosophy, now that I’d gone against my warning and was thinking about it. People used pills, alcohol, retreating from the world as cure-alls. Sex, as far as coping mechanisms went, didn’t seem like such a bad thing compared to the alternatives.
Of course realizing that forced me to accept it wasn’t just sex, but who it had been with. Reed could have given his best performance and I would still feel like the world had lost its shine a moment later.
Too many thoughts were fighting for space in my head, so I decided to leave Grandma’s house and see what kind of distractions I could find. Harassing Rachel at the bowling alley was a possibility, or I could always check in with John for a rummy rematch. The appeal of driving straight to Canaan’s shop and vying for a repeat of last night was so intense, I actually repeated to myself under my breath that I would not drive straight to Canaan once I got behind the steering wheel.
As soon as I opened the front door, I froze mid-step. So much for trying to avoid Canaan. I didn’t need a note or a confirmation to know who the flowers on the porch were from. They were all handpicked from the surrounding area, resting in the same old vase he used to bring me flowers in back when we’d been kids and nothing more than friends.
I couldn’t help contrasting them with the generic red roses Reed had sent me. Canaan knew what I liked, he took the time to find what I liked, and he made an effort beyond the bare basics. It wasn’t enough to say you cared for someone; you had to show them or it was nothing more than noise and wind.
Once I’d set them inside and taken a moment to admire the mix of flowers, I found myself checking the driveway for Canaan’s truck. It wasn’t there; he’d probably left hours ago for work. The itch to head straight to his shop struck me again, so I went back to repeating to myself I would not hunt him down with the intent of seducing him. Not that Canaan ever required much, if any, seducing before.
Once I was in my car, I headed in the opposite direction of Canaan’s shop, finding myself pulling into an all-too-familiar cemetery a couple miles later. Most everyone in town had family buried in the Holy Names Cemetery, mainly because it was the only cemetery in a fifty-mile radius. However, for a person as young as I was, I’d spent way too much time huddled graveside while watching a casket lowered into the ground, bearing a body whose life had gone decades before its time.
It was where my grandma would be laid to rest in a few short days, but something about a person dying at a ripe old age, after they’d gotten to experience and do so much with life, made death easier to cope with. More a celebration somehow.
Pulling the car over, I took a breath and stared out the window. It had been years since I’d visited my parents’ graves, but there wasn’t a day that passed that I didn’t think about them.
From the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help noticing the manila envelope containing the stack of papers I’d handed Canaan the first day I arrived. I hadn’t touched them since tossing them back in the car after he refused to sign them, and I found myself wondering in what type of condition they’d be in when I left Farmington in twenty days. Would they remain unsigned? Or would he sign them, letting me go once and for all?
I wasn’t sure which possibility worried me more, but that was what got me out of the car and moving toward the place my parents had been buried, side by side, much like they’d spent most of their short lives.
My grandma had visited their graves regularly, I knew that, and I expected to find dried flowers in need of clearing. I did find flowers decorating their graves. But they weren’t dried. They looked almost as fresh as the ones that had been on my porch this morning.
A ball formed in my throat as I stood in front of their headstones, reading each one half a dozen times, though I’d memorized the words years ago. Someone was still leaving them flowers, probably stepping in now that Grandma wasn’t here to do it. It could have been so many people—the list of friends and loved ones my parents had had in their lives wasn’t short—but I also knew that with time, allegiances and memories faded. For an orphaned daughter, it was different, but for the casual friend, nearly twenty years had passed. Yet still, someone was leaving them flowers.
I stood there for a while before wandering farther into the grounds. There was one more grave I needed to visit. One more loved one gone far before his time.
Asher Matthew Ford’s headstone was shining in a patch of grass where the sun was poking through the large maple looming nearby. It was fitting, since Asher was one of the happiest, most light-filled people I’d ever been around. Where Canaan was brooding, Asher was carefree. Where Canaan came across menacing, Asher was gentle. For a pair of brothers from the same parents, they couldn’t have been much more different. I thought that was why they’d gotten along so well. Why Canaan had taken his little brother’s loss so hard. Asher had had the type of spirit a person felt almost a sacred duty to protect—to save that kind of unrestrained innocence.
That was why the world would never be as bright as it had been when Asher Ford had been a part of it.
As I got closer, I found the same arrangement of flowers on Asher’s grave as I’d found on my parents’. The exact same.
It was Canaan. He was the one who’d left the flowers. Some for me, some for his brother, and some for my parents.
The lump returned with a vengeance, so after crouching down to rest my hand on Asher’s grave for a moment, I turned to leave the cemetery. No matter how immaculately the grounds were kept, no matter how many flowers sprouted from the manicured beds, a cemetery could never be a cheerful place. It was where the living came to visit the dead.
I didn’t waste time starting my car when I crawled inside. I’d be back in a few short days anyway, to bury yet another loved one. Of the people I’d cared for most in my life, I’d lost three of four. It wasn’t until I’d passed through the cemetery gates that I realized who that fourth person was.
Sure, I had friends in Chicago and friends here. Yes, I’d spent two years with a man I thought I’d shared some kind of bond with—only to be served a rude awakening that I was nothing more than a temporary fixture in his life. But Canaan had been with me—beside me—through the storms in life. He’d stayed beside me. He was still beside me.
Screw staying away from the shop.
Punching the gas, I sped down the road, exceeding the posted speed limit by close to double. At least if I got pulled over, there was a good guarantee I’d babysat for or gone to school with the officer.
When the Ford Vintage Body Shop came into view, I eased up on the accelerator some and fought the urge to “bump” into the fancy hypochondriac car still sitting outside.
Canaan’s truck was parked along the side of his office, but I didn’t slide into the space beside his. Instead, I broke right in front of the open garage, kicking up a cloud of dust in the process.
I didn’t see him at first, but as I shoved out of the car, he slid out from beneath the car he was working on up front.
“You bring a storm with you everywhere you go, woman.” A grin settling into place, Canaan waved at the plume of dust billowing behind me.
I rushed past my car into the garage. When Canaan noticed me working at the button of my shorts, his smile fell.
“Is there anyone else in here?” I asked, my feet slapping against the cement as I moved closer.
He shoved up from the floor, his eyes already darkening. “Vince just left on his break. He won’t be back for a half hour.”
“Then don’t let me go for the next twenty-nine minutes.” I was still working on my zipper when I threw myself into his arms, my mouth crashing into his.
Canaan didn’t stagger back; he’d been expecting it. Shuffling forward a few steps, he punched something and the garage door screeched closed.
“My office?” he rasped against my mouth, his hand slipping into my shirt toward my chest.
“Right here. I need to feel you.” My teeth grazed his bottom lip before sinking into it. “Now.”
He jolted, shuddering right after, when I bit him again. “Yes, ma’am.”
Stumbling forward a couple of feet, he lowered me to the floor, twisting me around until my ass was nuzzling his hard need. His fingers curled around my denim shorts, yanking them so hard they wound up straight at my ankles. Then he shoved his body against mine, bending me over the hood of the car right in front of me.
I heard a zipper being lowered, I felt the slide of my underwear as he tugged them aside, I smelled the scent of him come over me—all sweat and man—then he was inside me.
My cry filled the entire garage, his own sounds of pleasure seeming to reverberate the stone at my feet. His hand dove back into my tank, squeezing my breast in the same ungentle fashion he was fucking me. I heard his cock shuttling in and out of my body, I felt my need for him coating the insides of my thighs, I tasted his scent on my tongue it was that strong.
He kicked my legs farther apart, spreading my arms above my head and holding them there with one powerful hand. “Get your ass up in the air, Maggie.” This time it was his teeth that bit into me, making me buck against him. “I want to feel all there is of you to feel.”
As I arched my butt up as high as I could get it, Canaan’s hands moved down to my hips, his fingers gripping them as he sank into me as deeply as I’d ever been taken. “Canaan . . .”
His name barely registered on my lips, but that seemed to be his undoing. As soon as I said it, he thrust inside me one last time, his release jetting through me, spurring my own.
“My god, woman.” He got back to moving inside me, knowing I liked being fucked hard when I came. He must have also remembered the way I liked something else.
Because just as my orgasm was winding to an end, a sharp smack slapped against my ass, drawing out my release that much longer.
He was still rocking into me, his hand now rubbing the place he slapped, when my body started to tremble. Canaan leaned forward, his chest resting against my back, and whispered sweet words into my ear. Such a contrast to the way he’d just taken my body, quite possibly the sweetest words to have ever been spoken.
My legs were shaking, what was between my legs aching, my breaths still uneven, when, from out of nowhere, I started to laugh.
“What?” I heard the smile in Canaan’s voice as he nuzzled my neck. “Tell me.”
“I needed that,” I managed to get out in one breath. My chest got back to rocking from my laughter. “God, I needed that.”
Canaan’s chuckle vibrated against my back. “Yeah, I have five years of needing that.” His fingers ran through my hair, trying to slide the mess of it from my face. “Christ, Maggie. Last night and now this.” His hips circled against my backside. “I’ve been out of commission for half a decade. This right here’s a guaranteed way to break a man.”
Tipping my head so I could see him, I smiled. “You don’t feel broken to me.” It was my hips that swiveled that time. “Not even a little bit.”
“You better be careful what you’re talking about when you say the word little. Or else I’ll feel obliged to remind you just how very not little this is.”
His fingers curled into the shelf of my hip, a sigh rising in my throat as I felt him harden inside me. The next noise that sounded surprised us both—a metallic rapping echoed inside the garage.
Both of us jolted like we were a couple of kids my grandma had found messing around on the couch.
“I thought you said we had thirty minutes.” I spun around, searching frantically for my shorts. “It’s barely been five.”
“That was for Vince. I can’t control the other thousands of people in this city who might decide to show up at any given time.” Canaan snagged my shorts from the garage floor and tossed them at me as he focused on zipping himself back up.
Another knock sounded on the garage door.
“Shit,” I hissed, wiggling into my shorts as the sheen of sweat coating me made that a difficult endeavor. “Who is it?”
“Let me just look in my glass ball to see who.” Canaan gave me a look as he wiped the sweat from his forehead on the back of his arm.
“Aren’t you funny?”
“Aren’t you flustered?” he tossed back, his finger hovering over the garage door button as he waited for me to finish adjusting my tank so it was covering more of my chest than less. “It’s not like you have to worry about it being the . . .”
“Reverend Holloway!” I shrieked when the garage door opened enough to reveal who was waiting on the other side of it.
At the last second, Canaan bit back the colorful vernacular that had been about to escape from his mouth.
Reverend Holloway was standing there with an easy look on his face that suggested he was none the wiser as to what had just been going on ten feet away. “Maggie. What a pleasant surprise.”
Canaan grinned, shoving his hands in his pockets. “That’s the same thing I told her when she barreled through my door too, Rev. What a plea-sant surprise.” If his enunciation didn’t do it, his waggling brows did.
Running my hands down my tank to make sure it was in place, I combed at my hair next. How was it not obvious I’d been getting screwed against the hood of a car a whole minute and a half ago?
“Since we’re all here and our last discussion was a bit heated, how have things been between you two? If you don’t mind me asking?” The reverend looked between us with a nice smile, oblivious. “Have you managed to figure out a way to be around each other amicably?”
Damn, Canaan was positively smirking now. Rubbing the back of his neck, he motioned at me. “I think I better let Maggie answer that. What do you say, sugar? Have we figured out a way to be ‘amicable’ with each other?”
I shot a quick glare in his direction before plastering on as innocent of a smile as I was capable. “Everything’s working out great between us, reverend. Thank you for asking.”
“And when she says great, she means really, really great, Rev. Like the kind of great that has a way of putting a smile on a man’s face and a spring in his step.”
If Reverend Holloway wasn’t facing me straight on, I might have chanced waving my middle finger a certain someone’s way. But I figured I’d already been humped up against some poor stranger’s car by the man I was trying to get a divorce from—I didn’t need to add flipping off said ignoramus in front of a reverend to my list of sins to need forgiveness for.
“Isn’t that splendid?” The reverend clapped his hands together. “That just goes to show that forgiveness is a powerful thing.”
“You know what else is a powerful thing?” Canaan’s hips pitched forward.
Before he could answer that loaded question, I stepped forward. “Is there something we can help you with, Reverend?”
Canaan gave me a look that suggested he knew exactly what I was doing, while I tried not to fidget from the realization that I was wearing thin underwear, short shorts, and had just had sex. God, please don’t let anything of a dubious content roll down my legs.
“I just stopped by to see if my Caddy was all ready for me to take home like you thought she’d be.” The reverend’s gaze drifted behind me to the very car we’d just been . . .
When my head whipped in Canaan’s direction, he had to cover his mouth to disguise his laugh.
“Are you shitting me?” I mouthed at him, with the reverend’s focus on his beloved car.
Canaan’s answer was more laughter coughed into his fist. Once he’d regained control of himself, he swept his arm at the Caddy. “She’s all ready for you, Rev. We just finished up with her actually.”
Reverend Holloway sauntered into the garage and stopped right in front of the bumper. “I didn’t know you worked on cars too, Maggie.”
I was too mortified to know how to answer that. He was staring at the very hood I could see actual sweat impressions of X-rated parts of my body imprinted on.
“She does some of her best work on cars actually, Rev.”
Another warning glare flashed Canaan’s way, but he was having the time of his life.
“You don’t say? A multi-talented woman.”
“That’s Maggie, all right.”
With a rag from a nearby pile, I swiped my naked sweaty impression before the sun moved and Reverend Holloway started asking questions. Canaan meandered over to the pegboard to retrieve a set of keys.
“This is perfect timing, Canaan. I was hoping to take the family out to Lloyd’s Creek for a picnic dinner. Thank you for finishing with her so quickly.”
“I wouldn’t say I finished with her that quickly, but I wanted to make sure I covered every inch, really got the job done to everyone’s satisfaction.” As he passed by me, he pinched my butt all discreet-like.
My flinch wasn’t so discreet.
“Are you okay, Maggie?” The reverend’s expression was all concern, like I was coming down with the plague or something.
“I’m fine.”
Canaan cast an injured look at me. “Fine?”
My eyes lifted. “We shouldn’t keep you, Reverend. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to get ready for your picnic.”
Finished wiping the hood of the Caddy, I swiped the keys from Canaan’s hand and walked them over to Reverend Holloway. I couldn’t help crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t burst into flames when I came within a couple feet of a holy person after doing such unholy things on the hood of his car.
He took the keys from me, moving straight toward his car. Then he paused. “Maggie? How have you been doing with everything?” He angled himself toward me after opening the driver’s door. “It’s been a while since we talked last.”
I gave his question a moment’s thought. “I’m doing better than I was. That’s a good start, right?”
The reverend’s soft smile settled back into place. “That’s a very good start.” His gaze traveled between Canaan and me before he crawled inside the car. “If you need to talk—or even scream—you know where to find me.”
Acknowledging that with a wave, I stepped aside when he turned on the engine and pulled out of the garage. Canaan gave a little salute, watching the Caddy drive away until it had disappeared from sight.
“Reverend Holloway’s family car?” I moved up beside him, staring at the place the car had disappeared from view.
“After what we just did on it, that car will probably never run better.”
My arm bumped his. “You could have mentioned that the car’s owner was the same person who preaches about purity and condemns sex outside of marriage.”
Instead of nudging me back, Canaan’s arm roped behind me, pulling me to him. “You were the one who came blazing in here in a sex-crazed frenzy. It was the rev’s hood or the garage floor, and there’s no way I’m laying my girl on this filthy floor.” The toe of Canaan’s boot scuffed at the garage floor. “And Rev would have nothing to ‘condemn’ about our ‘relations’ because, technically, we are married.”
A long exhale came from me even as I leaned into him. A minute had gone by before I realized he’d brought up the fact that we were still married and it had gone unchallenged by me. When I caught him glancing at me, he seemed to be as surprised as I was.
“I think I’ve committed enough mortal sins for one day.” I returned the butt pinching favor as I pulled away. He barely jolted, instead grinning like he was into getting a tiny piece of his flesh squeezed and twisted. “I’m going to leave before I’m tempted to commit anymore.”
Canaan followed me out of the garage. “Already hungry for more?”
“There’s more than just one mortal sin, you know. I know you weren’t forced to sit through Sunday services like I was, but it’s common knowledge.”
Canaan swung my door open for me before I could get to it. “Why be good when being not good is so much more fun? And satisfying?”
Turning my key over, I threw on my sunglasses and rolled down the window after he’d closed the door behind me. Then I gave him a crooked smile. “Hell if I know.”
Whipping out of the parking lot, I saw Canaan in my rearview as I drove away. It was impossible to not remember the last time I’d watched him through the reflection of the same type of mirror. Before, he’d chased me, begging me to stay. This time, he stayed where I’d left him, letting me go.
The two might have been totally different circumstances, but I couldn’t help feeling a stab of disappointment and appreciation at the same time. I wanted him to chase me, if I was being totally honest with myself. At the same time, I wanted him to let me do what I wanted and needed for myself.
The last time, he’d chased me for him. This time, it was clear he was staying where I’d left him for me.