“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Humor me.”
“You said you were done embarrassing yourself. When do you think you did that?”
“You know.”
“In case you haven’t realized, I’m not in the habit of asking questions that I already know the answer to.”
“You’re angry.”
“I’m annoyed. You followed me to prove to Rooster and maybe to yourself that you’re not a coward, but I’m not certain anything you’ve said demonstrates that. Tell me straight, Laurel. When do you think you embarrassed yourself?”
Laurel pressed her lips together. Her nostrils flared slightly as she breathed deeply through her nose. She emptied her lungs on a long, calming exhale. “At the falls,” she said. “What I did with you there...”
“I kissed you. You kissed me back.”
“Yes.”
“How is that embarrassing?”
“I hardly knew what I was doing.”
“Did it seem as though I minded?”
“So then youdidrealize how green I was.”
“Why is that important? May I point out that you took to it like a mouse to cheese?”
Laurel flushed. “A mouse to cheese?” She tapped the holster at her side. “I’m wearing my gun.”
A slim smile touched Call’s mouth, the first one since he’d turned and seen her. “Yes. I noticed. What about like a blossom to sunshine?”
Laurel’s flush deepened. “Stop it.” She nearly put out her hand again before she thought better of it. More softly, said, “Just stop.”
“I’m not much for pretty verse. Sorry.”
She gave him a withering look.
“Is there anything else?” he asked. Call was more at ease with that withering look than the penitent expression that had initially greeted him. “Anything else embarrassing, that is?”
Although he posed his question innocently enough, Laurel felt challenged. Her spine stiffened and her chin came up. “I wanted more,” she said baldly. Was she still flushed? she wondered. Whatever she said would hardly be effective if her face was still pink. She was embarrassed by what she had been thinking then, not by what she was saying now.
“You wanted more,” said Call.
“Yes.”
“More kissing?”
“That,” she said. “And more.”
“All right. And that embarrassed you?”
She nodded.
“There’s nothing wrong with what you were thinking, maybe even hoping for.”
“Maybe not, if it’s reciprocated. It wasn’t. I’m green, Call, but I’m not ignorant. I knew the direction we were heading. You had other ideas, and I could barely help myself. If you had given me the least encouragement, I would have thrown myself at you.Thatis embarrassing to me.”
A clearer picture of the last three days was forming in Call’s mind, this time from Laurel’s perspective. All of the avoidance, the absurdity of speaking to him through an intermediary when she simply wanted the potatoes passed, was because she was afraid of giving herself away, of doing something that would reveal her mind to a man she thought was not of a similar one.
