Jodi Thomas - Twisted Creek

“Your mother’s gone for good?”

I shook my head. “She’ll be back, but I’ll be surprised if the lawyer takes her case. If she thought she had a chance of getting this place she wouldn’t be out here trying to make a deal.”

He took a step closer. “You still mad at me?”

“Right. I forgot. I’m not talking to you.” He was three feet away and I swore I could feel the warmth of him.

“Good.” He smiled and closed the distance between us.

His kiss came hungry and wild. A midnight kiss of promise, not a good-morning kiss at all.

For a moment, I just stood there letting all the passion wash over me. His hands gripped my arms and held me tight, his body pressed hard against mine. The man who’d agreed to simply hold me last night was gone with the morning.

I reacted as I always did to Luke. I kissed him back. No. It was more than a kiss. Kisses are for people who are teasing, learning, preparing. This was none of that. This kiss was need-liquid and raw. The kind that makes you forget to breathe.

I wrapped my arms around his neck. He was wrong for me. Not the right kind of man for me. But deep down I needed him more than I had ever needed a man. In the core of me, where none of the layers of who I pretend to be matter, I was already his.

Luke seemed to read my mind. His hands moved over me with a boldness that I should have been shocked by. When I didn’t stop kissing him, he shoved his hand beneath my blouse and spread his fingers over my breast.

He groaned with pleasure, and passion washed over me like steaming water on a cold day. Every cell in my body came alive.

“You feel so good,” he whispered as his mouth moved down my throat.

The screen door slammed.

Luke caressed my flesh one last time, then pulled an inch away.

I would have tumbled to the floor if I hadn’t been holding onto him.

He kissed my nose and smiled, but his eyes were still full of fire. “At this rate I never want to talk to you again. Stay mad at me, Allie. It allows us to communicate in other ways.”

I stared at him, wondering how he could make me feel so completely lost in lust. “I agree.” I had a hundred questions to ask him, about his job, his past, his future, but they could wait. “I don’t want to talk either.”

“Good,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you at the dock after midnight.”

“Great, a date.” I tried to act more sophisticated than I felt. “What should I wear?”

“I don’t care,” he said against my ear. “You won’t be wearing it long.”

I heard Micki banging through the door with this week’s orders. “Allie,” she yelled loud enough for half the lake to hear. “You up yet? I’m early this morning, but I got a double load to deliver down the road so I thought I’d start here.”

“Come on in,” Nana shouted from the kitchen. “The first batch of biscuits is cooling if you got time for one. I set out butter and honey.”

“I’ll be right there.” Micki must have let the dolly fall because the rattle echoed through the building.

I looked at Luke, who blocked my way out of the office. “I have to go.”

“I know. Me, too.”

We stood, neither wanting to look away. Both remembering what had just happened between us.

Then, with a groan, he turned and walked away. I stood, needing time to step back into my life. A life of forgetful Nana and hateful Carla and running a store hoping to make enough money to keep going.

A life of waiting until midnight so I could step into another world. A world with Luke.

Closing my eyes, I hid away the anticipation and walked out of the office.

“Brought the jerky you ordered,” Micki mumbled as she ate a biscuit. “And the wool socks and extra popcorn.”

“Good.” I tried to act normal, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she saw “been kissed recently” written all over my face. “Nana says she’s going to make popcorn balls and hand them out every Saturday in October as a pre-Halloween treat.”

“You won’t get many, if any, kids out until Christmas break.”

“I figured that, but the fishermen can eat them or use them as bait.”

Micki agreed, wiped her fingers on her trousers, and started counting out supplies. She was still there when Timothy came in.

“Got any coffee yet?”

Nana motioned him toward the kitchen and he followed.

Micki leaned over toward me. “Don’t get too close to that boy. He’s trouble. I hear he’s going to kill himself any day. That’s the way with kids who have too much. His dad owns a big CPA firm in town and he stays out here hiding so he doesn’t have to work for the old man.”

She waited for me to add to the story. I looked at her and saw her clearly for the first time. If I stayed long enough, she’d eventually tell me something bad about everyone. I’d allowed her to color my reactions to Willie, but not Timothy. Not a boy who’d risked his life to save someone he hardly knew.

“Thanks for making the delivery early,” I said, watching her flicker of disappointment when I didn’t add to her story.

She shifted. “Oh, you’re welcome. I know business gets bad in the winter. I hope you and Nana will be able to hold on to this place.”

Fishing, I thought. “We’ll be fine,” I said. No catch here. Micki will have to go somewhere else for her gossip.

She folded up and moved to the door. “Looks like we’re in for good weather for the next few days.”

I joined her as she moved onto the porch. “Yes, it does.”

She waved and climbed into her truck. I went back inside and joined Tim at the bar for breakfast. I was glad he’d been in the kitchen when Micki talked about him. “You’re up early, today,” I said as I pulled a biscuit open and watched steam lift out.

“I’m heading over to Mrs. Deals’s. She says I’ve got to teach her how to use her computer or she’s tossing it into the lake to confuse the fish.” He smiled. “She’s tough as an old boot, but I don’t mind. One good thing about growing up around my dad, I lost all fear of people. I used to think my dad would murder me in my sleep and eat me for breakfast if I didn’t do everything he said.”

Tim grinned. “He threw a fit when I moved out here, but he’s been out twice this month and hasn’t said a word about it.”

We ate for a few minutes in silence, then he added, “Mrs. Deals told me I reminded her of her son.”

“How many children does she have?”

“I don’t think she has any anymore. I think her only boy died. You know what else she said?”

“What?”

“She said I’d make a good teacher. Imagine that.” He ate the rest of his biscuit and mumbled between bites, “You know, I think I might like that. High school maybe. I liked talking to Dillon.”

I decided old Mrs. Deals had done something no one else seemed to be able to do. She’d given him a direction.

Willie banged in carrying two fishing poles he claimed washed up near his place during the last storm. He dropped the poles like he thought I ran the local Lost and Found. “Morning, Tim.” He sat down on the other side of Timothy at the bar. “You going out to the middle of the lake this morning?”

“No,” Tim answered. “I’m heading over to Mrs. Deals’s. I hoped I’d see you here. Any chance you could give me a ride? I won’t get another boat out before Monday.”

“Sure, be glad to.”

“Should you take her cookies over?”

Both men said no at once.

Willie spoke first. “Mrs. Deals doesn’t want to admit she has a sweet tooth. Jefferson always said she wanted to come in and be treated like a stranger when she was on her weekly cookie runs. Like he wouldn’t notice she bought the case one bag at a time.”

Nana handed Willie two biscuits wrapped in waxed paper. I didn’t miss the way he touched her shoulder in a silent thank you.

Willie thanked me for the coffee and followed Tim out.

I slipped my arm across Nana’s shoulders. “Willie’s a nice man.”

Nana put her arm about my waist. “That he is.”

I hadn’t been fair to the old man.

Tuesday

October 1

2100 hours

Luke strapped the small Colt to his ankle. He’d spent the day piecing together theories about the operation at the lake and talking the agents in Lubbock into believing the threat was worth checking out.

“Ready?” He glanced at Nathan McCord, a young agent out of the Lubbock office. Nathan was runner-thin and would be able to keep up no matter what they faced, but his inexperience worried Luke. He’d spent most of his two years since the Academy doing office work.

“Almost.” Nathan tugged on his bulletproof vest. “I think you’re on to something big here, Morgan.” He muttered as he worked. “That guy you call Skidder sounds just like a man we hauled in a few months ago but couldn’t get enough evidence to make a charge stick. He kept saying his boss would flatten him if he so much as said ‘good morning’ to a cop. When we asked who his boss was, he went all wild-eyed and crazy.”

“Did he have a record?”

Nathan shook his head. “Funny thing, three years ago he was a respectable car dealer. We don’t know how he got messed up with drugs, but we could trace the slide. His business went to shit, then his wife left him. Six months ago he lost his house and disappeared off our radar. Word on the streets is his habit is so big that he works for product.”

Luke had seen it a hundred times before. Once they started to fall, there was only one of two endings: prison or death. A few make it through rehab, but only a few.

“If he’s the one blinking the light in the trees, we’ll pick him up.” Nathan went over the plan one more time. “Nobody will probably miss him for a few days, and by then he’ll be needing a fix so bad he’ll tell us anything we want to know.”

“I want the top man on this.” Luke wasn’t in this for a quick, small-time bust.