The cashier eyed him wearily over her half-spectacles. He shifted his weight as she scanned his items. Finally, she shook her head. “Honey, you should just go right on ahead and kiss that girl.”
“Excuse me?” Small-town mentality aside, this woman had no business telling him what to do. Besides, her advice was the exact opposite of what he kept telling himself—to stop thinking about kissing Bree.
“I heard her say you were friends, but the only people in this line you are foolin’ is yourselves.”
Owen glanced behind him at the elderly man in a white tee and blue jeans. He nodded sagely. Had the whole store been watching? He ducked his head and kept his face down, wishing he’d thought to wear a ball cap today. He almost always wore one in public, but this was a small town and no one seemed to care all that much about making a big deal out of him. Which was great. But it had lulled him into a false sense of anonymity.
“That’ll be one twenty-five thirty-six.”
Owen inserted his card into the chip reader, pushing so hard the machine jerked. His neck was hotter than the sun.
“Well? You gonna kiss her?” demanded the old man behind him.
“That—” Owen flipped around. “—is none of your business.”
“You don’t have to get so testy,” scolded the checker.
“I think I do.” Owen snatched his card and shoved it into his wallet. “Any relationship I may or may not have is not up for public discussion. Is that understood?” He leveled the two of them with a glare that he hoped would zip their mouths shut.
“We didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” mumbled the checker.
A warning voice cautioned Owen totake it easy.He splayed his fingers out and rolled his shoulders. “I know. Sorry.” He put his shoulders up around his ears, grabbed the cart, and headed for the parking lot without looking back to see if his apology was accepted or not.
He wasnotgoing to kiss Bree—especially not because some random store clerk thought he should.
Kissing Bree would be … out of character. As a general rule, he liked kissing women. Women were soft and strong, gentle and tough, and pretty much the highlight of God’s creation process. But Bree was different from the women he usually dated. They were models, actresses, and setups his agent arranged, dressed in the latest fashions and with bodies that attracted more attention than the opening game of the season. The last woman he’d asked out was his high-school sweetheart, and he’d sworn she would be the only woman he ever dated. He’d wanted to spend a lifetime with her. Heck, they’d named their future children.
His heart cramped at the memory of lying on a picnic blanket and watching the leaves shift in the breeze, the sunlight filtering through to warm Tammy’s skin before he kissed her shoulder. They were perfect for one another—except her family didn’t think so and told her as much, repeatedly. In fact, they repeated it so often that Tammy started to believe it too.
He tossed his groceries into the trunk of his Benz, not caring that the bananas were bruised or the potatoes punctured by his cleats. He would not kiss Bree. There was no telling what a kiss from her could do to him, and he wasn’t ready to open a bottle that had been placed on a shelf for a reason.
Chapter Fourteen
Bree strode across the tile mosaic floor, her hands clasped behind her back as she studied the intricate leaf design in the ceiling paint. Owen stood four feet away, his chin lifted as well. This was the third church on the tour loop. While they’d had cordial interactions, their previous comradery was absent, leaving her to wonder if she’d forced her way into this outing. Maybe he didn’t know how to tell her he’d rather be alone and had let her come out of a sense of chivalry or something.
Instead of his bike, Owen drove them in his fancy black car. While Bree appreciated the air conditioning, she was disappointed. On the bike, she got to sit close to Owen and hold on to him. In the car, she got to hold on to the leather door handle. Not even close to the same thing.
At least she had something to hold on to, because Owen’s mood had shifted between the supermarket and picking her up, and she wasn’t sure what she’d done.
“I heard that the priest applied for a grant to have the ceiling restored,” she said in a whisper. Her pastor said the Holy Ghost talked in whispers, and in a church, she didn’t want to drown out inspiration.
“That would be nice. The paint’s faded.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Probably not as much as we think. When the artwork was commissioned, pastel shades were all the rage.”
“Huh.” He made his way to the confessional to inspect the woodwork.
“The carvings were all done by hand,” she supplied. “By the priest who lived here over eighty years ago. There’s a joke that his sermons would put the Devil to sleep, but people came back week after week to see his handiwork.”
He ran his fingertips across the arch. “Did you grow up here?”
“I did.”
“What was it like?”
She studied him. “It was … I’m not even sure if I could come up with one word to describe the experience.” She began to meander down the side of the pews, her hand brushing the well-worn wood backs. Owen stayed on her right and just behind her. “My dad left before I was born—said he didn’t want to be a dad.” Her voice sounded hollow in the deserted building, though that might have been the echo of her father’s abandonment in her heart. “So it was just me and Mom. Mom worked and I would read.”
“It sounds—”
