Inn & Out (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 2) (6 page)

“Here. Let me help,” Thor says and takes my hand in his.

I try to think of sand, but all I can think of is his hand around mine, of his gentle touch, of the caring way he removes the splinter without hurting me. And then there’s the way he looks at me after he removes the splinter. That’s a big one. I’ve never noticed him looking at me this way, but it seems like he’s had practice because he’s doing it very well. He could win the gold at the Olympics if they added a, look-at-a-woman-so-her-toes-curl event. His eyes study mine and then look down at my mouth. I lick my lips, and his eyes grow dark. I don’t think he’s thinking of sand, either.

I’m sure of two things. First, Jean’s lunch is going to be late, and second, Jean was right…Thor and I are going to pork.

Thor entwines his fingers with those on my right hand, and his other hand makes its way to the small of my back. His cheek caresses mine, and he breathes me in. My entire body is on alert. Every square inch of me has superhuman powers of awareness. I want this to happen. I want it more than I want a deep-fried Snickers bar, and I want one of those real bad.

“Remember our agreement,” I say. My voice sounds like Lauren Bacall with razor blades in her throat.

“Of course.” Thor pulls me close and nuzzles my ear.

“We agreed. No hanky panky.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” he murmurs against my earlobe.

“What you’re doing now. The ear thing. That’s hanky panky.”

He pulls back. “You don’t like it?”

Of course I like it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever felt. My ear is on fire. Thor could get a Boy Scout badge from starting a fire with the power of his lips. More than that, if he could bottle his nuzzling ability, he’d make millions. “It’s okay,” I say, my gravelly voice barely audible. “But we had a deal. We’re purely professional.”

Thor lets go of me and steps back. “Fine. I read the situation wrong, I guess.”

He read the situation perfectly. He’s the king of reading situations. He could teach a course in it. But I don’t let him know that. Now that he’s out of reach, I can finally breathe again, and I’m grateful. I have a plan, and I need to stick to it. No nuzzling. No porking. No Thor. This is a temporary situation, one that I have to suffer through until I can leave and start a new life with my vision boards and my compound interest. Nothing will screw that up, especially not screwing.

“Oh, look at that,” he says, staring at my cheek.

“What? Is it a spider? Get it off! Get it off!”

“It’s not a spider,” he says, calmly. He lightly touches my cheek and shows me his finger. “Look. An eyelash. Make a wish and blow.” He’s delighted. There’s a big smile on his face, which blinds me. I think back to his wish at the fountain. Obviously, he’s a fan of wishes.

“Blow?”

He nods. “Yep. Like a birthday candle. Make a wish and blow it away.” He puts his finger with the eyelash on it by my lips. We lock eyes, and I blow lightly on his finger, sending the eyelash into the air.

I forgot to make a wish, but it doesn’t matter. There’s something bigger than wishes happening between us.

“You look so good naked,” I croak, surprising myself.

Thor arches an eyebrow and cocks his head to the side. “Help me out here, because I might be reading the situation wrong again.”

I don’t say a word, but I don’t break eye contact. His blue eyes have turned big and black, and whatever he’s reading in this situation, I have the feeling it’s dead on. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me in tight. Lifting me slightly, he bends down and takes my mouth hard.

Here’s the thing about kissing. It’s just like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead: Once there was a girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad, she was horrid.

And kissing is just like that. There’s a multitude of variations on the horrid kiss. Too much slobber. Too much teeth. Too tentative. Too rough. And the worst of all…no chemistry.

Then there’s the very, very good kisses. A little chemistry. Just the right amount of tongue. An assertive man.

But I can’t categorize this kiss with Thor. It’s possible that the kiss has blown several blood vessels in my brain and that’s why I can’t pinpoint it. But I do know that it’s holy hell fabulous. He’s holding me up, otherwise I would fall to the ground in a melted heap of estrogen jelly. Thor’s lips are on mine, and my mouth opens to welcome his tongue. He’s got a very talented tongue, and when our tongues touch, another couple of blood vessels pop in my brain, and my lower half goes up in flames.

I can’t feel my feet. I know that I have them, but I can’t feel them. Probably my body is shunting the blood from my feet to my reproductive system, getting ready for what will probably be the biggest orgasm of my life. And that’s just from the kiss.

Anyway, I don’t need my feet because I’m floating and Thor has got a hold of me. My hands are splayed on his back, and he’s holding me with one arm, and his other hand is traveling downward, where it finds my ass and cups it.

Oh.

I like having my ass cupped. Who knew?

My pelvis squirms against his. He’s got a great pelvis. So great that I squirm some more. Thor holds me like a man in charge, like a man who knows what he wants, like a man with a lot of sperm. I try to remember why I don’t want this. I try to remember why men are bad, bad, bad, but his hands and his mouth feel good, good, good, and he’s confusing me.

I want to be a smart, modern woman, but my brain is giving me an overload of duh. Kiss, touch, grind. These are all good things. Men who provide so much pleasure can’t be bad, right? Sure, my last boyfriend secretly hid drugs in my apartment, which the police found and sent me to jail, but he kissed great, too.

Wait a minute.

Now I remember.

I’m a bum magnet. If I like Thor, he’s probably plotting my next trip to the correctional center.

Putting my hands on Thor’s chest, I step backward. “I thought we had a deal,” I croak. I’m breathing hard, as if I just ran the hundred meters in Rio.

Thor is bent over slightly and looks at me through hooded eyes. His lips are red and swollen, and his hair is mussed. His six-pack is still on display and his muscular chest is going up and down with his heavy breaths. “Holy shit,” he says, and I guess that pretty much says it all. “You need to stay away from me, lady.” He puts his hands on his hips and takes a deep breath.

“You need to stay away from me. I’m already staying away from you,” I say.

“Then what’s this?” He gestures to me and back at his mouth.

“I can’t help it if you want me.”

Thor groans and walks in a circle between the trees. “I’ve tried to be a patient man, but you’re wearing on me.”

“Listen bud, if you had two nickels to rub together, you could buy me out of this dump, and I’d be on my way.” My feelings are hurt. He used to be nice, but now his military commando training is kicking in to attack me with killer aim, and my instincts tell me to fight back.

“And that’s another thing. You don’t give a shit about this place. This house, this inn, is my world, my life, and you don’t care if it burns down.”

“I do care if it burns down,” I insist. “I need to sell it and nobody wants to buy a burned building.” Thor stomps around in the underbrush. I think about the house burning. Would that be such a tragedy? “Out of curiosity, is the inn insured for fire?” I ask.

Thor stops and shoots me a death stare. “Are you kidding?”

I’m sort of kidding. “Of course I’m kidding,” I say. “Besides, I’ve figured out a way to make this place start paying right now.” There. I’ve spilled the beans. He would have found out sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.

Thor’s mouth settles into a rigid line, and he squints at me. “What did you do?”

“It’s good. It’s good,” I insist, taking a step back.

“What did you do?” he demands, taking a step toward me. Instead of the crunching sound of his shoe stepping on leaves, there’s a loud metal clanking noise when his shoe lands on the ground. Thor freezes.

“What was that?”

He looks down at his feet, and all of the color drains out of his body. “Get out of here and call 911. Don’t come back.”

“What’s happening? Why aren’t you moving? What did you step on?”

I walk toward him. “Stay where you are!” he shouts. “Don’t come any closer!”

“Geez, you really hold a grudge, you know that?” I walk closer, and then I see it. His foot is on a circular metal disk, about eight inches in diameter and half buried in the dirt.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a landmine,” Thor says. “So back away slowly and get help.”

“A landmine? Are you crazy? This is a tourist island off of Southern California.”

“There were all kinds of military exercises on this island during the war. They’ve been finding unexploded ordnance here for seventy years.”

I don’t know what ordnance means, but it sounds bad. “Which war?” I ask.

“Beryl, I’m about to get blown up. Do you mind getting help? We can have a discussion about the history of Summer Island at another time.”

The reality of the moment hits me like a train going full speed. I run screaming up to the house. “He’s going to blow up! He’s going to blow up!” I shout. I open the back door and run in, looking for Jean and Bert. “Call 911! He’s going to blow up! Hurry!”

Somehow, Bert understands that there’s a real possibility that Thor is going to blow up, and he calls 911. Jean and I wheel Bert outside, and we get back to Thor just as the emergency services arrive at the inn for the second time in a week.

Poor Thor is standing on the landmine, barely breathing and not moving an inch. “Boy, what have you gotten yourself into?” Jean grumbles. In a generous offer on his part, Thor insists that we leave the blast zone. He’s just like a hero in an action movie, telling the others to “save yourself.” But we don’t move a hair, not because of any undue bravery on our part, but more from curiosity. There’s something sort of unbelievable about an inn keeper walking onto a landmine in his backyard. I need to see how it plays out.

“Hello, there,” one of the paramedics says, sidling up to me. It’s the same guy who asked me to the Summer Sizzle Festival when Bert fell through the floor. He’s got dark hair and bright eyes. Not bad-looking, but his breath smells like something’s dying in his mouth. Something really gross. I’m about to tell him off, but out of the corner of my eye, I spot Thor watching us. It’s as if his imminent death by exploding body has been forgotten, and now all he can focus on is the slimy paramedic making eyes at the woman he can’t stand.

“Do you have a light?” I ask the paramedic because I can’t think of anything else to say with Thor’s eyes on me.

“A what?”

“Are you going to pork him, too, now that Thor is going to explode into smithereens?” Jean asks me.

“I’m not porking anybody. Nobody. Why are you obsessed with my porking?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she says, looking me up and down, craning her head to get a good look at my backside. I don’t think it’s obvious at all. I’m totally off men.

A Segway drives through the trees and parks behind the fire truck and ambulance. An old man steps off of it and shakes his head. “Hello, Paul!” Bert calls to him. “We got ourselves a pickle situation.”

“I see that. I see that,” Paul mutters, walking toward Thor.

“Get back. I’ve tripped the mine,” Thor says.

Paul nods. “I got you, son. I got you.”

“Paul served in Italy, Thor. Took out a thousand mines,” Bert says.

“Two thousand mines,” Paul says. He kneels at Thor’s feet and stares down at the mine. I’m pretty sure that everyone’s stopped breathing. Even the birds have stopped chirping, and there isn’t a breath of wind. Thor hasn’t moved a muscle as Paul studies the mine. If I were him, I would have peed my pants already, but he’s as cool as a cucumber. He’s not shaking or sweating or throwing up. I hope that Paul can save him.

Paul squats and studies the mine even closer. All of sudden, he digs his hands into the dirt and starts digging. “What the hell?” Thor shouts, finally losing his cool. My body tenses, as I prepare for the explosion, but nothing happens. Paul keeps digging.

“Move back, boy,” Paul says. Thor’s eyes flash toward me before he looks down again, and then in a moment of lunacy or extreme bravery, he jumps backward. Free of the landmine, Paul digs deeper and shoves his hand into the dirt, grabbing something, which he pulls out quickly, holding it over his head, triumphantly. With the item securely in his hand, Paul stands.

“What the hell?” Thor asks.

“I have no idea,” Paul says. He’s holding a circular metal object with a long wooden handle.

“Holy smokes,” Jean says. “I know what that is. It’s an antique bed warmer.”

“A what?” the paramedic, who didn’t know what a light was, asks.

Paul gives the bed warmer to Thor, who looks like he would have preferred to have been blown up by a landmine than be the new owner of an ancient way to heat sheets. He thanks the fire department and Paul, and we watch as they leave.

“About lunch,” Jean says, once the trucks and the Segway are out of sight.

“Fine,” Thor says, looking down at the ground. With the bed warmer clutched tightly in his hand, he marches up to the house without looking back.

“No fish!” Bert yells after him.

***

It’s the quietest lunch we’ve had since moving into the inn. Thor has put on a shirt and prepared cheeseburgers, homemade French fries, and a salad. They’re the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever eaten with blue cheese, some kind of fancy bacon, and thick slices of heirloom tomatoes. I sit across from Thor, but he focuses entirely on his plate. Bert starts to say something, but Jean shoots him a look that could freeze the sun, and I’m pretty sure she kicks his good leg under the table. The bed warmer is leaning up against the wall in the corner of the kitchen and seems to taunt Thor because every once in a while he looks back at it and sneers.

“Whatcha got for dessert?” Bert asks after he polishes off his meal.

“Don’t make me kill you, old man,” Thor says. Nothing makes a he-man, ex-SEAL more pissed off than standing on an antique bed warmer for forty-five minutes.