Hanging out with a woman who was more than she seemed, but who knew this wasn’t serious.
That was his story, and he was sticking to it.
17
When Lance pulled into Kaci’s parking lot Saturday morning to the sight of her Jeep parked sideways across two spaces with a canoe on the top, he might’ve felt another of those unwelcome happy pangs in his heart.
For all the trials she brought with her, she knew how to show a guy a good time.
She stepped out of the redbrick apartment building, tight hips swinging in painted-on jeans, shitkicker boots on her tiny feet, and a gauzy white blouse hanging open over a pink tank top that expertly put her breasts on display. Her hair was tucked up under a ball cap and her eyes were hidden behind bigsunglasses. She swung a hard-sided lunch cooler while she marched to her Jeep.
He’d been too tied up with managing his ex-bride-to-be and wedding plans this past summer to go floating. A day on the river sounded damn perfect.
He hopped out of his truck. “You pack beer?” he called.
“Does a fish have scales? Of course I packed beer. Hope you like peanut butter and jalapeño sandwiches.”
“Sure. Love fluffernutters best though.”
She gave him a mock stern glare. “You been snooping in my cabinets?”
“Yep.”
He reached her side and looped his arms around her back. She smelled like sunscreen and marshmallows, and the combination went not just to his head, but it also made his groin twitch and his heart beat faster.
“Hope you know how to paddle,” she said. “Gonna be cold if we fall in.”
“Just gives me an excuse to warm you up.”
She shivered, but her grin told him it was a good shiver. “Don’t go making promises you can’t follow through on. Glad to see you wore something trashy.” She thumped the big BamaAon his chest, then slid out of his arms. “Let me go say bye to Miss Higgs, and we can get going. You got a hat?”
While she disappeared inside, he retrieved his own ball cap from his truck, along with the small tackle box and collapsible fishing pole he kept tucked behind his seat.
Twenty minutes later, they were flying down the road, old-school country rock blaring from the speakers. She’d let him drive—“Whatever the gentleman wishes,” she’d said with an overly dramatic sigh—and given him full control of the radio.
Other than the way she kept checking her phone—worried about her cat, she said—Kaci’s sass was back in full force today. They bashed each other’s college football teams. She insulted his pumpkin-chucking skills. He teased her about her aim. And when he pulled the Jeep to a stop at the river an hour later, he realized he’d been smiling almost the entire ride.
Wasn’t something he could’ve said about his time with Allison.
Or even with his buddies.
“You put this thing up here yourself?” he asked her while he untied the canoe.
“Could’ve if I’d wanted to,” she replied.
“You want to get it down?”
“Nope.”
“You sure? I could do the woman’s work and get out lunch while you do the big manly things.”
She tilted her sunglasses to hit him with the full effect of her sharp blue eyes. “Sugar, big manly things are why we have wars. And ifyou don’t want to walk home, I suggest you get that canoe down and hope you can beat me to the back of it. Because I know you’d take a bunch of ribbing if those friends of yours found out you let a woman push off the bank for you.”
“Only because they’d be jealous.”
She laughed, and that spot behind his breastbone went warm.
Her phone beeped, and she dove for it.
