Page 16 of Kandie Shoppe

“Same. I think that’s her signal for a dance,” I say when Nat looks our way just as an old song, “Just to Be Close to You,” comes on.

I see some overeager cowboy striding over to Kandie. Of their own volition, my feet start moving. Maybe it’s because I saw my mom and dad dancing to this song so many times. I don’t know. All I know in that moment is I don’t want any other man touching her.

“This one’s mine, partner,” I say to the guy, not bothering to even look at him. I can’t. She is the only thing I was to see right now in those tiny shorts and way too little shirt barely covering her tits. The boots she’s wearing are doing the Lord’s work, making her smooth calves stand out. Her skin gleams under the lights like it has been kissed by the sun and dusted with fairy dust so that it shimmers.

I stand waiting for her to tell me to go to hell. The way my heart soars when her hands slide up in an attempt to curl around my neck is the stuff of legends.

I look down, allowing myself to drown in her soft pools of mahogany. Her dimples sit deep into her cheeks, giving her a look of innocence.

“Um,” I start, then stop when she shakes her head.

“Don’t ruin it,” she whispers, tilting her head back just gazing at me.

For the longest time, she just looks seeming to take every one of my features in with the slowest drag of her eyes over my face.

I swallow. Her eyes track the movement of my Adam’s apple. I wet my lips. She mimics me, and I don’t even think she realizes it.

My hand splays across her back. I can feel the softness of her beneath my calluses, and I’m almost ashamed to touch her. She’s so pliant. Our bodies rock in the slow rhythm of the song. We slow drag the same way I’m sure we’ve seen older couples do, just as they do around us now. No one is here but she and I at last. That’s what it feels like as I drown in her.

Kandie Love could end me right now and I wouldn’t care as long as she held me while she did it.

All too soon, the song ends and we step apart with the all awkwardness of pre-teens at a school dance. I watch her drift away melting into the crowd. Knowing she doesn’t miss the look of longing on my face just as I can’t ignore the one she bears.

“Would you like to join us at the club? I know Mother and Daddy would love to see you.” Natalie beams at me as I take a sip of the spring water.

“Um,” I hedge, thinking of the sheer hell that would be.

“Nah, babe. He has other plans,” my cousin cuts in, his gaze following mine as we watch Kandie dancing in a circle with a bunch of little girls to “Who Rules the World.”

“Well, boys will be boys,” Natalie says good-naturedly. “At least you won’t be wasting your time. Word is she’s a sure thing.”

“Catty much?” Mathias narrows a hard look on her for good measure.

“I’ll be over to see you before you go back,” Mathias says, all but dragging Natalie with him. It’s not uncommon for women to show their claws when they are intimidated, but Natalie haseverything that Kandie doesn’t — a solid family, wealth, is in college.

To say her words bother me would be an understatement. I spend way more time than I like watching a woman I should want absolutely nothing to do with — not only for the part she played in my father’s death, but the mess she’s made of her life since then. There wasn’t one day that went by before I left that I wasn’t made aware of some antic she’d been up to. Stealing bikes back for immigrant kids when city kids would take them. Stealing books from the library because of the county policy forbade them from getting them because they didn’t have a permanent address. This one caused such a fuss that her grandparents stepped in and made them change the policy. The town was split. Some people calling her a Robin Hood type heroine and others, a criminal.

The DJ calls the last dance. Surprisingly, she steps away, casting a look over her shoulder at me right before she dips out.

Skirting around the tent, it takes me no time to catch up with her.

“Where are you headed?” I ask, looking down at her head as she keeps walking toward the woods.

“To get my bike and then home.” She slides a look to me. “You?”

“Wherever you’re going.” I wait for her to rebuff me. Instead, she shrugs like she hasn’t just taken all comers on the dance floor and didn’t have a line of guys pouring shots down her pretty little throat. Fuck, why did I let my mind go in that direction? This walk, however long, is going to be long as hell if I don’t get my dick under control.

“Come on.” She turns away from Big Love Park, heading to a nearby residential area.

“Let me get that,” I say, taking the ten-speed Schwinn over my shoulder.

“Oh, now you’re just showing off,” she huffs but is still unable to hide her admiration at my carrying the bike like it’s nothing — it isn’t.

“Day one of Seal training, we have to carry our body weight, not a regular weight regular Marines carry. I’m two-twenty-five. I had to hump that load the whole training then actual guys. This ain’t nothing,” I inform her with surety of my strength.

“Oh, so you’d have no problem picking me up?” She waves a delicate hand at her luscious curves.

“It’s gonna be my pleasure picking you up, darling.” My voice takes on a roughness that has her eyes blooming right before she ducks her head with a shyness that defies everything I thought I knew about her.

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