“Just hard to imagine you belonging anywhere in this town, let alone so close to a manure pyramid.”
“Belonging might be overstating things,” he says acidly.
“So where are you staying?”
“Well, I usually stay at the cottage,” he says. Another sidelong glance at me through the dark. “But that wasn’t an option.”
His smell is so uncannily familiar, but I still can’t place it. Warm, with a slightly spicy edge, faint enough that I keep catching myself trying to inhale a lungful of it. “Then where?” I ask. “Your childhood bedroom?”
We pause at the dead-end street the cottage sits on, and Charlie sighs. “I’m sleeping in a race car bed, Nora. Are you happy?”
Happy doesn’t begin to cover it. The image of stern-browed, highly polished Charlie tucked into a plastic Corvette and scowling at his Kindle makes me laugh so hard it’s a struggle to stay upright. He’s probably the last person I could picture in a race car bed, aside from myself.
Charlie hooks an arm around my waist as I keel over. “Little reminder,” he says, keeping me moving down the gravel lane. “That is far from the most embarrassing thing one of us has said tonight.”
I get out, “Were you, like, a NASCAR kid?”
“No,” he says, “but my dad never stopped trying.”
I devolve into another fit of laughter that threatens to tip me over. Charlie pulls me against his side. “One foot in front of the other, Stephens.”
“Mutually assured destruction indeed,” I cry.
He starts to lead me up the hillside, and immediately my heel sinks into the mud, pinning me to the ground. I take another step and the other heel punctures the mud too. An indignant half shriek rises out of me.
Charlie stops, sighing heavily as he eyes my shoes. “Am I going to have to carry you?”
“I am not letting you give me a piggyback ride, Lastra,” I say.
“And I,” he replies, “am not letting you destroy those poor, innocent shoes. I’m not that kind of man.”
I look at my mules, and a miserably petulant sound squeaks out of me. “Fine.”
“You’re welcome.” He turns and hunches as I hike up my dress and say a fond farewell to the last remnants of my dignity, then hook my arms over his shoulders and hop onto his back.
“All good?” he says.
“I’m getting a piggyback ride,” I reply, adjusting the umbrella over us. “Does that answer your question?”
“Poor Nora,” he teases, his hands settling against my thighs as he starts up the steps. “I can only imagine what you’re going through.”
A realization clangs through me, chaotic and emphatic as church bells: the reason his smell is so familiar. It’s the same subtle gender-neutral cologne I wear. A cedarwood and amber blend called BOOK, meant to summon images of sunbathed shelves and worn pages. When I found out the company was going under, I put in a bulk order so I could stockpile it.
I would’ve placed it sooner, but it smells different on him, the way Mom’s signature lemon-lavender scent hits different on Libby, a note of vanilla drawn out that was never there before. Charlie’s rendition of BOOK is spicier, warmer than mine.
“Awfully quiet back there, Stephens,” he says. “Anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable? A neck pillow? Some of those tiny Delta cookies?”
“I’d take some spurs and a riding crop,” I say.
“Should’ve seen that coming,” he grumbles.
“I’d also accept a sworn affidavit that we’ll never speak of this again.”
“After the way you disparaged my last contract? I don’t think so.”
When we reach the front steps, I slide off Charlie’s back and try to pull my dress back into place, which is a struggle because I didn’t do an amazing job of keeping the umbrella over us, and we’re both fairly drenched, my dress plastered to my thighs and bangs stuck to my eyes.
Charlie reaches out to brush them away. “Nice haircut, by the way.”
“Straight men love bangs,” I say. “They make women approachable.”
“Nothing more intimidating than a forehead,” he says. “Although I sort of miss the blond.”
And there it is: that mushroom cloud of want low in my belly, a twinge between my thighs. “It’s not natural,” I announce.
“Didn’t think it was,” he says, “but it suits you.”
“Because it looks vaguely evil?” I guess.