One Week in Maine (14 page)

“
While I can’t say that I’m sorry you showed up when you did, I could’ve handled it, you know.”

“I know. But
Mikey crossed a line there, touching you like that.” I saw the fresh anger simmering behind his eyes.

“It’s okay, it’s done with. Forget it.”

“I’ll try, but I can’t promise that I won’t want to beat him to a pulp every time I see him,” he warned.

“You don’t strike me as the violent type,” I mused as I stepped into the shower and he followed me.

“I’m not. But I can be, if someone’s threatening what’s dear to me.” He pulled me close as the shower beat down upon us, but there was nothing sexual in his embrace this time. I snuggled against him, inhaling his marvelous scent. Even though I already knew that I meant a lot to him, to hear him say it out loud made my soul leap for joy.

He grabbed the shampoo and washed my hair, massaging my scalp as he went, stopping occasionally to pepper my bare shoulders and back with light kisses. After he rinsed
my hair and put in the conditioner, I grabbed the soap and washed him, sliding my hands over his exquisite body. Will was amazing, inside and out, and I counted myself lucky that of all the women he could have, it was me that he wanted. Me.

After out shower, we went to our rooms to dress. I was done before him, and he had left his door ajar, so I walked in just as he was putting a
hoodie on over his t-shirt.

“Do you want to come to get Dottie in a few?” he asked.

I remembered just how lonely it had felt to be alone in the Inn before, but now I looked forward to the time alone. I just needed a few minutes to mull things over by myself. Everything had changed in the last hour or two, and I needed time to digest it.

“I’ll stay here, thanks. But you better hurry back with that pizza–I’m starving!”

“Worked up an appetite, did you?” His eyes twinkled as he smiled at his own joke.

“I blame you!”

“I’ll take that blame, gladly.”

As we stood there teasing each other, I noticed that something was different in his room. It took me a minute to figure it out, but after a moment’s scrutiny, I realized what it was. All of Theresa’s pictures were gone. Where there had been practically a shrine to her was now just empty space. Every last picture had been removed.

I was dying to ask Will about it, but I didn’t dare. I sensed that this was a huge step for him, and I didn’t want to pry into his personal struggles. He would talk to me about it when he was ready to, if ever.

I hung out in my room while he went to grab Dottie and a pizza. Once he left, I checked my cell phone. I had a few messages from friends, just checking in to see how I was surviving my undeserved sentence in the backwoods of Maine.

It was hard to resist replying to brag about Will. I was dying to tell everyone I knew that I had met the man of my dreams up here, and that hitting that deer was turning out to be one of the best things that had ever happened to me, but I refrained. Somehow what I shared with Will felt private, as if to share it with the world would be to sully it somehow. I was in my own little bubble of happiness here with him, and I didn’t want anyone to burst it.

Dottie was full of fresh stories about her quilting club when she got home, and Will brought back a pizza, as promised. Dottie wasn’t hungry, but she sat with us at the kitchen table, chatting away as usual, while Will and I
filled our bellies.

“Well, I’ve talked your ears off long enough! Guess I should be getting to bed now; it’s been a long day for me.”

We wished her goodnight and she shuffled off to her room, leaving us alone in the kitchen.

“You ready for bed?” Will asked when we were both done eating.

“It’s a little early, don’t you think?”

“Well, we could always find something else to do upstairs.”
The smirk on his face confirmed that he was thinking exactly what I suspected he was thinking.

“Is there anything in this world you want half as much as sex?” I teased him with a grin. The man was an animal. Not that I was complaining.

“You,” he answered simply. “What I want most of all in this world is you. All of you.”

-15-

We spent the night in his room instead of mine. I have no idea what time we finally fell asleep, but I knew that it was late, very late, after another rambunctious round of making love. We slept tangled up in each other, a great jumble of intertwined limbs. Neither of us had bothered
to put our pajamas on.

I awoke early in the morning to the feel of Will’s hand caressing my bare ass.

“Do you even know how beautiful you are?” he whispered as he caressed my pale skin. “I’ve never seen anything like you.” He was dressed in a clean uniform for work, so I doubted that this would go very far, even though my body was already hungering for him again.

I rolled over to face him, completely exposed, and he traced a finger lightly down my sternum and then
my stomach before he trailed off down to my inner thigh.

“This is going to be a
very
long day at work, I’m afraid.”

“Why? When will you be home?” I mumbled sleepily.

“Oh, most likely the usual time. It won’t be long in that sense; it’ll just drag on because while I’m at work all I’ll be thinking about is being back here, with you.” His lazy finger worked its way back up my center, stopping for a moment to tease my left nipple into a rock-solid point. I moaned softly and pushed my hips up towards him, begging him to further explore me.

“Oh, I’m afraid I
don’t have time for that right now,” he mocked as he released his grasp on my nipple and slid his hand down to sample my wetness. He slid a finger into my hot inner core, and I rocked my hips to meet him. When he slid his finger out, I gasped in protest, but a moment later his mouth was there, sampling me.

The pressure within me quickly built up as he explored me with his lips and tongue. Jus
t when I thought I was about to shatter, he pulled away and smirked at me.

“
Oooh, would you look at the time? I’ve gotta get to work.” He caressed me with his tongue one last time before standing up.

“I hate you,” I muttered angrily. I didn’t mean it, of course. What I hated was how he was leaving
me in a lurch, right on the brink of orgasm. I could swear that he did it on purpose.

“But you’ll love what I’m goi
ng to do to you when I get home. For now though, I’ve got to run. I’ll leave the truck keys for you again, and you call me if you need me, okay?”

“I have a long list of things I need from you right now.”

“And I have a long list of things that I’m going to do to you later tonight. I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay?”

“Okay.”
I feared that he was right; this was going to be an unbearably long day apart.

And it was, even though
I did my best to keep busy. I spent most of the day helping Dottie with the cleaning, despite her protests.

“But you’re a guest!”

“A guest with nowhere to go, so I might as well pitch in,” I countered. I think she was actually glad for the help.

She sh
owed me were the washer and dryer were located, down in the basement, and I did a few loads of laundry since I was running out of clean clothes. When lunch time approached, I made lunch for us, turkey sandwiches again.

“So Will is sure in a better mood today,” Dottie commented off-handedly while we ate. “Did you two work it out?”

“Yes. For now, at least.”

“You two will figure it out. But what’s this I hear about some sort of trouble down at the café last night? Something about Will punching another man over you? Everybody was talking about it at my quilting club last night.” I must have looked surprised because she added, “It’s a small town, dear. News travels fast, and there isn’t much of it, so when something big happens, everybody knows. I di
dn’t want to ask Will about it in case it was something that he might be embarrassed to tell me about.”

“Well…” So I told her. I told her everything, though I didn’t get into the specifics of what they said to me. There was no way that I was going to explain to a woman old enough to be my grandmother the exact words or phrases the two men used to imply what they wanted to do with me. She got the gist of it, a
nd that was enough.

When I came to the part about
Mikey putting his hand on my thigh, Dottie became even more outraged than she was already.

“That
Mikey, he’s nothing but trouble! Always has been, always will be. His momma didn’t raise him right, that’s for sure! Putting his hands on a woman like that!” Her outrage might have been almost comical, if not for the subject at hand.

“…so Will punched him in the face and dropped him on the ground with a bloody nose before setting Dean straight on how things were going to be.”

Dottie clucked and shook her head disapprovingly, but I saw the pride in her eyes. “While I never condone men fighting like animals, sounds like Will gave those two just what they had coming!”

“He sure did.”

“You could do worse than Will, you know.”

“I know.”

“He’d make a fine husband, and father,” she prodded.

“I’m not ready for a husband or children!” I sputtered. “Besides, we haven’t even known each other a week yet!” My mind mulled over the whole no condom bit again, and I felt myself break out into a clammy sweat as I silently prayed that I wasn’t pregnant.

“Doesn’t matter if it takes a week or a decade, you know. If you’re meant to be, you’re meant to be, and no amount of denial can change that.”

“I don’t think we’re headed for all of that, Dottie. It just wouldn’t work out.” As I said the words aloud, my
stomach dropped because it was true, and it hurt my very soul acknowledge it.

After lunch,
Dottie and I did some more cleaning, but eventually she grew tired and needed to rest a bit. I watched the clock anxiously, eager for Will’s arrival, but the minutes dragged by slowly.

I grabbed a late shower, dressed, and carefully applied my makeup. I wanted to look my best when he got home.

It was odd, prepping myself and waiting for him to come home. Dottie’s words danced in my brain, and I laughed out loud. While I had to agree that Will would probably make an excellent husband and father for someone, it was ridiculous for me to even consider him in those terms, no matter what Dottie thought.

My heart grew heavy as the realization that this was only short term hit me again. Maybe it was for the best that way. Our time together was too brief to allow the worst in us to come out. Our limited time meant that when we ended it, we could end it on a good note instead of a sour one.
As long as I wasn’t pregnant. That would change everything.

Will came home at 5:30, and he ran right up the stairs to find me. I was in my room, just coming out to gre
et him, and he grabbed me by my waist, swung me around, and then gave me a big, enthusiastic kiss.

“What was that for?” I laughed.

“I missed you today,” he shrugged with a grin. “Can’t a guy say hello?”

“That’s not all you can do,” I purred as I began unbuttoning his shirt. While he looked good in anything he wore, there was something about the warden uniform that was a big turn-on.

“Sorry, not yet. Dinner will be ready soon.”

I
stopped undressing him and play-pouted at the news that we had to wait.

“Those lips!
I’ve got a few things you can do with those lips later on…”

“Sorry, not yet,” I mocked.

He reached around the back of me and gave my ass a solid smack as he grinned at me.

“
Oooh, spanking! I could get into that!”

“You’re insufferable. I’ll have to think of what to do
about that.” He nipped my earlobe playfully and I squealed with glee. “Now come on, let’s go see if we can help Dottie.”

When we got down to the kitchen, we were just in time to find Dottie putting the finishing touches on dinner. There
was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. My stomach rumbled as soon as the delicious aromas reached my nose.

The meal was a casual affair, as always, and Will filled us in on how he had spent his day at work. He and Dottie shared an easy rapport, and I found myself feeling a little jealous that I had no one in my life to share such a thing with. Except Will, but he didn’t really count since it was all just temporary.

In the middle of dinner, my cell phone rang. I excused myself and took the call in the front entryway.

“Hey, Calista,
Bobby here. Just wanted to let you know that the last of your parts came in today, and it looks like everything’s on schedule to have your vehicle fixed by Friday.”

I should have been ecstatic to hear this news. Just a few days ago, I couldn’t b
ear the thought of staying here until my SUV was fixed. Friday had felt ages away then, but now it felt like it was just around the corner. I was crushed to hear that everything was on schedule.

“Thanks,
Bobby. Just keep me in the loop, okay?” When the call was finished, I went back to dinner.

“That was
Bobby,” I announced carefully. “He says my car should be done on Friday after all.”

“Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?” Dottie asked brightly. When she caught the somber expressions on both my face and Will’s, she realized her error. “You’re welcome to stay here longer, of course, if you’re not ready to go on Friday. You could stay
as long as if you like, no charge. After all you helped me out today, it’s the least I could do!”

I caught Will’s anxious expression, and I knew that he wanted me to agree to stay a bit longer, but I wasn’t sure that it would be the right thing to do. It was tempting, but I wasn’t
sure that I wanted to delay my departure. I feared that it would only make it harder for the both of us.

“Thanks, Dottie. That’s really generous of you, but I think that I’ll have to head home as soon as my car’s ready.”

“Well, the offer stands, should you change your mind,” she assured me.

As soon as we were able, Will and I excused ourselves and went upstairs. We quickly
arrived right back where we had ended that morning, before he went to work, but there was something markedly subdued about it. Will was doing and saying all the right things, but it was all tinged with a certain sadness rather than the playfulness of earlier.

Finally, I could stand it no more. I pushed his head away and sat up.
My worries were distracting me from the physical pleasure he was bringing me, and I couldn’t take another minute of it.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“You tell me,” I replied. “You haven’t been the same since Bobby called at dinner.”

He sat next to me on the bed and held his head in his hands. Time ticked by as I waited for him to reply.

“I just don’t understand why you won’t stay, not even a few more days. What do you have to rush home to, exactly?”

“Not much,” I admitted quietly. “But I need to change that. I need to get back to
my apartment and get job hunting again. My life’s been upside down for a while now, and I need to get it back on track.”

“You could do that here, with me.”

Now this was something new. This was not asking me to stay a few more days, this was asking me to stay permanently. Not in so many words, but I got the gist of it.

“I can’t, and you know it. We knew this was coming, Will. It’s not like
it’s some big surprise here.”

“
You could stay, if you really wanted to. You could move up here with us, move into my room with me,” he offered cautiously.

“Will...I can’t do that, and you know it.”

“Why not? You could, if you really wanted to. You even said it yourself; it’s not like you have a job to rush back to.”

“That’s not fair and you know it! I have a life, Will, a life back where I belong, in Hartford. You have to understand that.”

“I do understand that. I just don’t understand why you want throw away what’s between us.” His voice was tense, and I sensed that he was hurting.

I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and rested my chin on his thick shoulder. “We knew this was coming, and I need to go home when it’s time. It’s not personal, and you know it.”

“I do,” he sighed, “but that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with it.”

“It doesn’t matter if you agree or not,” I reminded him gently. “Thi
s was always the plan from Day One, and it hasn’t changed. Unless…” It was a totally crazy idea, a terrific, crazy idea. “What if you came back to Hartford with me?”

“You know I can’t do that, Calista. I would be miserable in the city, and who would look after Dottie? This is where I belong, and this is where I’ll stay, with or without you.”

Anger flared within me. I couldn’t believe that he expected me to drop everything to move to the middle of nowhere to be with him, but he wouldn’t even consider moving to Hartford.

“I guess I was mistaken,” I declared as I moved away from him and stood up. “For all this talk about being together and making a go of it, it seems like you’re not willing to give anything up to do it.”