Page 6 of Making a Mountain Man

I needed to interview him. I had to take the trust my old friend had in me and use it to get him to agree to a story. I took another drink of water to digest the idea. Building a career I loved but also was proud of was my focus, but this was Wesley. Maybe since it had been a year since he’d moved he’d be okay with rehashing the whole thing? There was one way to find out.

“So what have you been up to in the last few decades?”

He shrugged. “Became a plumber, worked and paid taxes. Now I’m back here.”

“How wonderfully vague of you. Anything else? Wife? Kids? Prison term?” I bit my lip, his relationship status more important to me than I’d realized.

He shook his head, his eyes flicking to my lips before turning back to watching where he was scuffing his boot against the floor of the deck. “You?”

I gave a humorless laugh. “Hopelessly single and the proud mom of three house plants that have managed to survive my erratic watering schedule. Career is number one for me right now. I’m a writer.”

“You always were the independent type.” If the idea of me being a writer put his walls up, he showed no signs of it.

“Except with you.” I felt a blush in my cheeks.

“Yeah, except with me.”

We slipped into a rhythm of conversation that had collected dust but came back easily. My article became the furthest thing from my mind. “Do you remember that time you tried to burn bugs off the front bumper of your dads car using a lighter? Man you thought that was such a good idea, until he came out and saw the paint damage.”

He chuckled and fiddled with the label on his water bottle. “You always learned from books and careful research. I was more of a fuck around and find out kinda kid.”

“Has that changed?”

The corner of his mouth ticked up. “I’ve had a lot of years of trial and error since the last time you and I did a project together. No more fires, I promise.”

I held out my pinky finger like we used to when we were kids. “Pinky promise?” He snorted a laugh but held out his hand and linked his pinky finger with mine.

Not being a doctor, I had no idea if there was a nerve that connected the pinky finger to the femalefun zone. There had to be with how quickly I felt that little bit of contact between my thighs. Granted, sex had been more of a memory than a reality in my life for the last few years. Even so, I did a lot of shaking hands in my job and had never had it send a tingle through me like this one did.

He gave my pinky a bit of a squeeze before letting his hand fall away.

As the sun moved closer to the horizon we traded in our water bottles for beers and Wesley threw some meat on the barbecue. I hadn’t planned on staying here this long, but being around him had the same calming effect on me it always had. Our conversation was flirtier than they had been when we were younger, but we weren’t hormonal virgins anymore, either.

“I’m really glad you stopped by,” Wesley said as he cleared out empty plates from the table. Even though I’d stopped after one beer I felt light and giddy. I could easily have spent the whole evening on his front porch as the air got cooler, but Wesley looked beat. Besides, I had shown up under false pretenses and I didn’t feel good about it.

I needed to go.

I’d forgotten just how attached to him I’d been. I’d underestimated how fast that bond would come back. I couldn’t have a lie sitting between us. “Thanks for dinner and letting me crash your afternoon chores.”

Wesley nodded, running a hand through his hair in a way that had his bicep flexing distractingly. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

My car was literally fifteen feet away, but I didn’t protest. We walked towards my SUV in silence but before I could open my driver’s side door he spoke. “Do you remember the last time I said goodbye to you? Before I moved to Vancouver?”

I turned to face him, leaning against my driver’s door and nodded. That had been the first and only time we’d kissed. It hadn’t been a goodbye kiss, though. It had been a tease of what we could have had but never got the chance to. It was a way for us to communicate what we meant to each other when the words were too hard to find. That’s what it was for me anyway.

“It was a pretty great goodbye.” His eyes dropped to my lips.

“Are you thinking you want to say goodbye the same way now?” Logically, I knew kissing him when I hadn’t told him the truth was a bad idea. But out here in the mountain, spending time just the two of us like when we were young, shoved all those thoughts to the back burner.

He rested a hand against the door of my car, angling his taller body so we were face to face. He smelled faintly of smoke from the barbecue. His pec flexed distractingly under his shirt as he leaned in.

My head was swimming. I wanted to hook my fingers into the belt loops of his sinfully well fitting jeans and pull him to me. I wanted to blurt out the secret that only I knew was between us. More than anything I wanted to feel the same connectionI’d felt when we’d first kissed more than two decades ago.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” he said, but didn’t make a move to follow through. He was leaving the decision to me, and for me it was no decision at all. I slid a hand around the back of his neck, feeling his sun heated skin under my palm and pulled his lips to mine.

He kept his body at a respectful distance - unfortunately - still, I melted under his kiss. The pillow soft touch of his lips had my knees forgetting how to function. The car and my desire not to lose contact were the only things keeping me standing. He was a complete gentleman, his tongue remained in his mouth, his hand stayed off my ass, but the way his breath caught in his throat had me holding him close for just a second longer.

Reluctantly, I let him go. I knew one thing for sure as my lips touched his for the second time in my life. I couldn’t write that article.

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