Tempted Again (24 page)

“It’s only nine thirty.”

Marissa felt like she’d lived through three days’ worth of issues in the past few hours. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Start wherever you want.”

Marissa looked around. The café closed in an hour so there weren’t many customers still hanging out.

“I can’t dance,” she said abruptly. “It’s my sister’s birthday today. And my ex just married the woman who broke up our marriage.”

“Are those three things connected?”

“No. I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t know why I can’t dance. It’s not that I don’t how. I have this weird panic that prevents me from dancing. Even when I’m alone I still can’t do it. And I don’t have a clue why. I don’t have a clue about a lot of things. But I have lots of panic. Tons of it.”

Deb patted her arm. “It will be okay.”

“Will it? I’m not so sure.” Marissa choked back a tiny sob. No way was she going to cry in Cups Café. Maybe meeting Deb in a public place had been a bad move. But Marissa had needed to escape from her apartment and Connor.

“Does the dancing thing have something to do with your sister’s birthday?”

“I have no idea.”

“How long have you felt that way?”

“As long as I can remember,” Marissa said.

“As you know, I’ve read a lot of self-help books. Tons of them. This dancing phobia sounds like people who have the naked dream. They’re at work, or at dinner, and suddenly realize they’re naked. But it’s not really about
being naked. It’s about a fear of exposing your worst weakness—the something you’re ashamed of—the something you believe nobody could love you for…if they knew. Your fear of dancing could be the same thing.” At Marissa’s blank look, Deb added, “Or not. Never mind. Like I said, I’m a self-help junkie. Let’s skip the dancing and deal with the ex.”

“I shouldn’t care and I don’t. It’s not like I still love him or anything. But the news just made me feel like such a failure.”

Deb nodded her understanding. “Like you were rejected all over again.”

“Is it supposed to be this difficult?”

“I don’t know if it’s supposed to or not, but it just is. Especially when one spouse cheats on the other. It’s hard to trust again. You get gun-shy.”

“I’ve made a mess of things,” Marissa said.

“Because you got divorced?”

Marissa shook her head. She was once again at a loss for words. She was too ashamed to admit she’d gotten cold feet about having sex with Connor tonight.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Deb said. “Starting over is tough.”

“Yeah, it is. I feel like such a wimp for not being able to cope better,” Marissa admitted. “It feels like I’m constantly screwing up.”

“Why do you say that?”

Marissa shrugged.

“You’re not the one who screwed up. Your ex is.”

“Clearly he’s able to move on. I want that,” Marissa said.

“You want to get married?”

“No way. I want to move on, but I have all these emotions I don’t know what to do with. Panic and fear and anger and confusion.”

“Want to know what I do to cope with those feelings?”

Marissa nodded.

“I get out my secret weapon,” Deb said.

“Cherry Garcia ice cream?”

“No. My Nerf baseball bat. It’s this big green foam bat. I get it out and I hit the couch with it. It’s out in the car if you want to borrow it. I think you need it more than I do tonight.”

“No, I couldn’t take your secret weapon.”

“I’ve got another one at home.”

If Marissa couldn’t dance even when she was alone, would she be able to bash her couch with a kid’s toy? There was only one way to find out.

An hour later, Marissa stood in her apartment. She was still wearing the khaki pants and white shirt that she’d worn to Cups Café. She wasn’t sure what the proper attire was for couch bashing. It wasn’t like her couch had done anything wrong. Maybe she should bash her bed?

She moved from the living room to her bedroom. The covers were still rumpled from her massive make-out session with Connor earlier. She tentatively tapped the bat on the foot of the bed.

Perhaps this was poetic justice after all because her troubles had all started with a bed back when she’d found her husband in bed with another woman. This time, she whacked the bed harder. Once she started, she found she couldn’t stop.

Whack, whack. Wham, wham, wham!
Over and over again until her arms trembled from exhaustion.

Deb was right. The anger was dissipated. Now Marissa was too tired to feel anything.

Even so, she ripped the bedding off and put new sheets on the bed. She could still smell Connor’s clean scent so she stuffed the old bedding into a big black garbage bag and put it in a corner of the dining room to wash it tomorrow.

Connor’s scent might be gone and Marissa’s anger at her situation might have diminished, but her memories of Connor’s mouth on hers and his body blanketing hers stayed with her throughout the night, taking hold of her dreams and leaving her aching with unfulfilled need.

*  *  *

The trouble with a small town was that whenever you didn’t want to see someone, they were there right in front of you. Hopeful was no exception to that rule. There was no escape. Connor knew because he tried. But he kept running into Marissa. Not that they’d spoken. Not yet. But they’d have to at the teen meeting at the library tonight.

Weeks ago, Marissa had given him an agenda with each meeting’s scheduled topic. Tonight’s was the July Corn Festival, which Ruby Mae claimed was even bigger than June’s Rhubarb Festival.

She also claimed that Connor was being crabby. She didn’t seem to understand that he was the sheriff and she was supposed to answer to him. That was the chain of command. On paper, maybe. But clearly not in Ruby Mae’s mind.

“Something is going on with you,” she told him Wednesday morning. “You’ve spent the past four days
doing double overtime. You’ve practically moved in here at the office.”

“We’re short-staffed.” One of his full-time deputies was on vacation in Mexico and two others had come down with food poisoning so bad it landed them in the hospital.

“Yes, we’re short-staffed and you’re short-tempered,” his assistant said. “Your mom isn’t coming back to town for the Corn Festival, is she?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve got no reason to be such a pain in the butt.”

Connor glared at her.

She glared back but looked away first. “Usually you’ve got this kind of easy-guy-next-door machismo thing going on that makes you so likeable.”

“Likeable?”

“That makes you a sexy chick magnet,” Ruby Mae said tartly. “Does that sound better?”

He shrugged. The one sexy librarian chick he wanted didn’t seem to be feeling his machismo magic.

Not that he was telling that to anyone. Not even his best bud, Sully. But then, Connor was a pro at keeping things to himself. After all, he’d had years of practice.

“This perpetual bad mood of yours wouldn’t be caused by a woman, would it?” Ruby Mae asked.

Connor resumed his glare, adding icy disapproval this time.

“Fine. Be that way. But be that way on your own time, not on ours.” Having stated that, she marched away in a huff.

Connor’s mood hadn’t improved by the time he walked into the library several hours later. Marissa
appeared surprised to see him. She also looked damn great in a simple black skirt and light blue top.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she said.

“I honor my commitments.” He gave her a look intended to communicate the fact that he didn’t promise one thing and do another. Like her taking him into her bed and then kicking him out just when things were getting really hot.

He would never have taken her to be a tease. He didn’t know what her problem was and he didn’t care. So what if she was still hung up on her ex? Not his problem. Getting hooked up with her would clearly be a big mistake. So he really shouldn’t be looking at her as if he wanted to devour her with whipped cream and a cherry on top. He immediately stopped.

Marissa blushed and looked away.

Jose observed the interaction with interest. Connor directed a glare in his direction. “What are you looking at?” he growled.

Marissa immediately came to Jose’s defense. “Don’t talk to him that way,”

“The sheriff is in a bad mood,” Nadine muttered under her breath as she no doubt tweeted that info on her smartphone before setting it down on the table.

Connor was tempted to pick it up and throw it against the wall.

“Let’s get things started,” Marissa said briskly, avoiding eye contact with Connor. “The Corn Festival is coming up next month and once again the library will have a booth at the event. And once again, the teen group will have a presence there.”

Marissa paused to pass around a bowl of wrapped granola bars and packets of trail mix. Connor had
deduced that she’d managed to scrounge enough money to pay for snacks and drinks at their meetings. She tried to keep them on the healthy side and they all went fast. You’d think the kids hadn’t eaten in a week.

Now that it was summer and classes were over, the school lunch program wasn’t in effect. Connor knew Marissa worried about the teens’ well-being. He’d heard how Marissa had assisted Tasmyn’s mom with filling out the necessary paperwork to get food stamps until she got another job. But times were tough and jobs hard to come by.

Connor had pitched in and brought food, too—junk food, which the kids all grabbed and consumed in seconds.

“Potato chips have a high sodium content,” Marissa told them all.

“So you’ve said,” Connor replied, popping a chip into his mouth. He noticed the way she was staring at his lips. Good. He hoped she was wishing his mouth was on hers right now.

“We’re hoping that things go even better at the Corn Festival than they did at the Rhubarb Festival as far as our fund-raising efforts go,” she said briskly.

“People are broke,” Red Fred said. “They already donated last month. Why should they do it again?”

“Because we’re going to have the sheriff in the dunking booth,” Marissa said.

Connor’s head whipped around to glare at her.

“Just kidding,” she said weakly.

“It was an idea of ours,” Red Fred said. “But Marissa said you wouldn’t go for it.”

“She’s right,” Connor said. “I’ll be working during the festival.”

“So will we,” Red Fred said. “It’s hard work trying to get people to hand over their money. I don’t think it’s going to go well.”

“I did a new T-shirt design,” Jose said. “Corn never looked so good.” He proudly pointed to the T-shirt he wore. “This is a bad-ass cob of corn.”

“This time they don’t have to buy anything,” Red Fred said. “Anyone can just make a donation to help out those in need.”

“We’re donating the money we raise to the local food pantry.” Snake spoke up for the first time, shifting his focus from his laptop to his surroundings.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to be on the computer during meetings,” Connor said.

“I was just putting the finishing touches on our web page.” He turned the laptop so Connor could see.

The kid had talent. Connor knew that Spider and Nadine had pointed out gaps in the sheriff department’s computer system. He shouldn’t take out his frustration on them. They were good kids.

“Nice job,” he said.

Spider smiled at him. “Thanks. I thought so, too.”

Connor spent the rest of the meeting focusing on interacting with the teens and ignoring Marissa. The Fourth of July festivities were next on the calendar—before the Corn Festival in mid-July—which meant there was another parade and another chance for Marissa…No, he wasn’t going to think of her giving that royal wave at the Founders’ Day Parade her first day back. Instead he talked about the danger of messing with store-bought fireworks.

“Sully already dropped by with a batch of brochures about this subject,” Marissa told him.

Connor wasn’t happy to hear this news. He sure as hell didn’t appreciate the fact that Sully was interacting with Marissa. Was he jealous? No way. Sully was his buddy. That didn’t mean, however, that Connor wanted him within a hundred yards of Marissa.

“I heard the library book cart drill team is going to perform in the Fourth of July parade,” Molly said. “Are you going to participate, Marissa?”

Marissa shook her head.

“She already was in the Founders’ Day Parade,” Jose said. “With that loco lime car of hers.”

Connor hadn’t been the same since she’d crashed that parade back in May, and he was starting to wonder if he’d ever be the same again.

*  *  *

Three and a half weeks later, Marissa found herself once more manning the library booth for the Corn Festival. For the most part, she’d managed to limit her exposure to Connor to the teen meetings. But that didn’t stop her from thinking or dreaming about him. And it didn’t stop her from wanting him. She missed him.

His black Mustang was absent from his parking space at their apartment building more times than it was present. She’d worried about bumping into him coming or going but that rarely happened and when it did he barely acknowledged her with a nod. Not that she could blame him.

She’d spent the Fourth of July with her family, remembering that the last time they’d all gotten together Connor had been there at Jess’s birthday party. Her mom and sister noticed his absence. “He’s working,” she’d said before quickly changing the subject.

Since then, Marissa had focused her energy on the Corn Festival event this weekend. Centennial Park was packed with wall-to-wall people. One of whom was Brenda from Marissa’s divorce support group.

“We invite artists young and old to create art that best represents their interpretation of corn. We’re open to all types of mediums including not only drawings and paintings but also jewelry, garden ceramics, clothing, music and poetry to name just a few,” Brenda was saying.

“I had no idea,” Marissa said, even though she sort of did know all that. But Brenda was on the organizing committee and seemed a little nervous or lonely or both.

Some might not understand how it was possible to be lonely in such a large crowd but Marissa did. The sight of a couple walking hand in hand reminded her that she wasn’t part of a couple any longer. The sound of laughter from a young woman drove home the fact that Connor hadn’t stopped by the library booth to tease her. He’d stayed out of touch and out of reach, although he’d managed somehow to help the teens set up last night during the brief period of time when Marissa had had to take a bathroom break.