Called Up (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Fitz spent the night tossing and turning, alternating between telling herself that the kiss was the biggest mistake she’d ever made, cringing in embarrassment that she’d flat out run away from him, and wondering,
Oh, God, when can we do that again?

Once she fell asleep, there was no question how her subconscious felt. Her dreams were so X-rated she was an overheated mess when she woke up. She looked around for a minute, disoriented.

She was in her room, one hundred percent alone.

Thank God.

The rest of the morning passed...strangely. On a normal day, Fitz wouldn’t think twice about dropping in to see Deke. Today, though, she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to pretend the kiss hadn’t happened and go about business as usual, or if she should man up, seek him out and have the conversation so they could acknowledge it and move on.

Of course there was also the option of tracking him down at his bar, hauling him into the back room and acting out at least one of those dreams.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. She was a grown woman and he was one of her best friends. They could weather one kiss. Even a spectacular one.

The morning’s emails and phone calls weren’t nearly interesting enough to get her mind off it, so she left her office thinking she’d go get some coffee at Jules’s café. She was almost there when she heard Peggy call her name. Plastering a smile on her face, she turned around. “Hi, Peggy.”

“Did you order the extra tables I asked for?” the other woman said, launching into her demands without even a pretense of Iowa nice.

Fighting the urge to grit her teeth, Fitz answered, “Of course I did. The extra chairs, too. I even got them to throw in extra tablecloths at no additional charge.” Because that’s what she did; she made things happen. It just sucked big-time that as a co-sponsor of Inspiration’s Fifty-ninth Annual Father’s Day Little League Tournament with the local Jaycees, of which Peggy was chair, Fitz had to make them happen with Peggy Miller. God help her if she was still in Inspiration for the sixtieth.

Trying not to show her irritation as Peggy went through a to-do list of things Fitz had taken care of days ago, Fitz almost didn’t notice Peggy’s smile had suddenly grown wider, brighter, and sultry in a way Fitz could never pull off. In fact, Fitz was doing everything possible not to be blatant about readjusting her bra strap when...

“Ladies.”

The strap snapped into place as she spun around. Peggy smirked and took a step closer to Deke as though it were a requirement to have one golden person standing next to another so they could look down their noses at the little people. To Fitz’s deep satisfaction, Deke gave Peggy a bit of a frown and took a step away. A step closer to Fitz, in fact. Although Fitz couldn’t work the sultry thing, she had no problem whatsoever with the smug
Take That
smile instead.

Of course, realizing Deke was observing all this with amusement wiped the smirk off her face. She was thirty-two years old. Peggy might stoop that low but Fitz refused to.

Or, rather, she was at least embarrassed about it.

She turned to Deke. “Hi.” And that was it. She’d eaten lunch with the man practically every day for sixteen years and she was suddenly incapable of uttering a word.

Really. What was the right thing to say?
Did you mean to kiss me like that last night? Might you be interested in trying again?

As much as she knew neither of those would fly, she was one hundred percent certain they were both better than the other question running through her mind:
If I ran my tongue around your nipple would you be more likely to groan my name the way you did in erotic dream number one last night, or go the darker route, like in dream number two, and bend me over your knee and spank me a few times because I hadn’t asked properly?

“Fitz,” he said, his voice low and raspy and not helping at all. “You okay?”

Not if you keep looking at me like that.

Now it was Fitz’s turn to take a step back as she attempted to nod her head. She was feeling flushed and slightly dizzy. Not at all up to what was their usual sparring, although clearly Deke wasn’t going there either.

Obviously sensing she was losing the upper hand in the conversation—not that she ever had it but, being Peggy, she just assumed—Peggy shifted so she was partially blocking Fitz’s view and put her hand to Deke’s forehead.

“We should be asking
you
,” she said. “You’re looking a little pale, sugar. Are
you
feeling okay?”

First, the woman wasn’t southern. She’d lived in Atlanta for all of two minutes and had no business calling anyone “Sugar.” Second, her voice was so sweetly dripping with honey Fitz was concerned about a sudden swarm of bees.

Although Deke was a fan of Peggy’s, he wasn’t a proponent of PDA. Fitz figured that was due to not wanting to openly play favorites. So his gently but firmly taking Peggy’s wrist and pulling her hand away wasn’t a surprise. It
was
a surprise, however, that when he said, “I didn’t sleep so well last night,” He glanced at Fitz and smiled. “Maybe something’s going around.”

Fitz grinned.

She couldn’t help it. The last thing in the world she needed was to be flirting with Deke. No, the last thing in the world she needed was to be doing it in front of Peggy. Yet probably due to that very fact, she found herself saying, “Maybe next time you should call me. I know some excellent relaxation techniques.”

With a laugh that held more than a tinge of surprise, he answered, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

Every one of her cells jumped straight to attention.

Wow.
They seriously did. It was like pop rocks fizzing under her skin.

She barely even registered Peggy trying to figure out a way to work herself into the conversation. It was time to get things back to normal territory. Fitz said to Deke, “What brings you into town so early today?” Since Deke closed the bar on Friday nights, he usually didn’t appear until the lunch rush was over. He spent most Friday mornings helping Wash out on the farm, although Fitz had a sneaking suspicion they shot hoops with some of the farmhands for as much of that time as was humanly possible.

Wash called it team building.

Deke called it a business meeting.

Fitz called it bunk.

With a shrug, Deke glanced across the street at the bar. “Family meeting,” he said, his hand going up to his baseball cap and moving the brim from forward to back.

Deacon family meetings at the bar were unusual, though not concerning. The ones at home were the ones to watch out for. Those were along the lines of “Lola’s husband just died,” whereas family meetings at the bar covered topics more like, “We’re thinking of changing the size of the napkins.” With the senior Deacons heading out for vacation soon it made perfect sense.

It also meant Deke would be busy. There wouldn’t be time for any other conversations about, say, kissing. Good. Having a little more time to digest this wasn’t the worst of things. Maybe there would even be time for another dream or two before reality sank in and everything went back to normal.

Because the reality was, she couldn’t go around kissing one of her best friends. Not like that, at least. She especially couldn’t kiss a man whose idea of a long-term relationship was that he’d slept with the same woman two nights in a row.

Although, come to think of it, maybe he was the best one to be kissing, since she wasn’t exactly a big believer in the whole happily ever after thing herself.

Her phone rang right then, and with a glance down she saw it was Headhunter Doug. With a murmured, “I need to take this,” she turned her back on Deke and Peggy and walked up the street.

* * *

With Peggy in front of him, blocking his view, Deke had to practically crane his head to try and get a sense of who Fitz was talking to. All he heard was, “Hi, Doug,” as she turned and walked away.

Who the fuck was Doug, and why did she have to walk away from Deke to talk to him?

Okay, yes, Deke had specifically come into town early to find her. Just tear the bandage off. He couldn’t kiss her again—not when she kissed like
that
. Because that would then progress to the next step, sleeping with her, and that would be a huge mistake, even if not for the fact that Nate would probably kill him. Deke was getting entirely ahead of himself, however, since her jumping out of his car last night and hauling ass inside wasn’t exactly the best sign. But it all had him off balance enough that when Peggy had put her hand on him and practically pushed Fitz out of the way in order to assert her place, it had taken every ounce of willpower he’d had not to tell Peggy off. Hell, he’d had almost no willpower in the first place because the second he’d seen Fitz it had been almost physically impossible to keep from pulling her to him and doing exactly what he’d promised himself in the early morning hours that he would never do again.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Peggy asked, looking up at him again and sounding like she was genuinely concerned, rather than just trying to get between him and Fitz.

“I said I was, didn’t I?” he said, not meaning to bite her head off, yet realizing from the way she took a step back that he had.

Deke looked up the street again to see Fitz had now turned her back on them. What the hell? They didn’t keep secrets from each other.

But that wasn’t true. Fitz
did
keep secrets from him. Some majorly big ones apparently.

“Hon,” Peggy said, her hands back on him, as she looked up. “You certainly aren’t acting okay.”

He looked down at her as if he were watching from somewhere far above, not quite understanding his reactions. He
liked
having a woman’s hands on him. He
liked
women stepping up close and whispering suggestive things in his ear, especially when it was a woman as talented as Peggy Miller. He’d even liked Peggy, up until about ten hours ago.

He grabbed her hands again and pulled them away from his chest and his back—back being a euphemism for ass, of course—realizing belatedly he had no clue how to turn a woman away. He was an expert at deflecting when he wasn’t interested, and even better at making sure any woman he was with knew he was in it for the sex, period. But beyond that, not so much.

“Not right now,” he said, referring to whatever it was Peggy had just been saying. Something about, well, his cock.

“Seriously, Deke,” she snapped, taking a step back. “Being a dick isn’t a good look for you.”

Oh. Maybe that’s what she was saying. He honestly wasn’t paying much attention.

Really—who the hell was Doug?

Clearly realizing this conversation wasn’t going anywhere, Peggy switched tactics. “Okay, well, I realize you don’t exactly have a packed schedule...” He looked down at her sharply. Seriously? “But I’m busy with this weekend’s tournament,” she continued, “so it’s not like I have the time right now anyway.” With a huff, she looked over at Fitz. “Will you tell her to call me when she gets off the phone? We have a billion things to go over.”

And that almost made Deke laugh. The last thing he was going to tell Fitz was to call Peggy. “Probably not.” When Peggy’s head came up, he shrugged. “You should probably just call her when you can.”

“Call who when who can?” Fitz suddenly asked from right behind him, and parts of Deke snapped to attention in a highly uncomfortable way. Before he could respond, however, Peggy gave a thirteen-year-old worthy sigh, and from out of a huge leather bag she withdrew a planner stuffed with papers. “You. Call me. To make sure you’ve done everything on your list.”

“Really?” Fitz said, the slight snap in her voice the closest Deke had ever heard her to being irritated with anyone outside their circle of friends.

He usually loved it when she got agitated. It was like a little slice of Fitz that only the inner circle got to see and why he took such pleasure in teasing her. Of course, now he was aware there was a part of her he apparently
wasn’t
inner circle enough to know, it held less appeal. So, rather than protest when Peggy put her hand on Fitz’s arm and turned her toward Jules’s café, or be put off by the fact that Fitz didn’t seem to be in any more hurry to talk to him than he was to talk to her, he watched the women as they began to walk away from him.

He should’ve gone into his bar. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

“Fitz.”

Both women stopped and turned, irritation in Peggy’s eyes, wariness in Fitz’s.

“A minute?” he asked.

She hesitated before nodding, mumbling something that must’ve been for Peggy to go ahead, since Peggy headed towards Jules’s. Fitz’s look turned warier as he neared. As it should have, since this should have been the moment where he said what they both needed him to say. That whatever had been going through his head yesterday was gone, the kiss had been a fluke, and all of his circuits were back to functioning normally.

But when he got to her, all he could think about was how good she smelled.

“Your morning going okay?” he asked, for reasons he couldn’t begin to say.

The guardedness on her face disappeared, replaced by downright amusement. “It’s going just fine,” she answered, her eyes laughing at him. “And yours?”

He took a step closer, getting right up in her personal space for no good reason other than that it meant her hair brushed his arm in the morning breeze.

On his shoulder, his little devil friend was chanting,
Tear the Band-Aid off. Tear the Band-Aid off.
On his other shoulder, his Angel friend joined in, whispering,
It’s four little words, my friend. ‘We need to talk.’ Just four words.

Ignoring both, he reached out and twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. How could it be so damn soft?

Band-Aid
, he heard in one ear.

Four little words
, he heard in the other.

And then out of nowhere, a tiny little cherub dropped out of the sky and, Jeremy Renner-style, zapped the devil first and then the angel with his arrows.
All yours
, he said, before disappearing into thin air.