Page 17 of Fast Currents
Their playfight came with a soundtrack of cussing and piratical insults. Each colorful taunt was more ridiculous than the last, but the fools grinned the entire time.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or roll my eyes. At this rate, they’d both need eye patches for real.
It was too much and yet absolutely perfect. My sides hurt from laughing.
“Grog time, my crew,” Vi called from the kitchen. “Last one to the galley walks the plank!”
Clay slung an arm across Lee’s shoulders, bussing his cheek with a loud kiss. “Even pirates need a ceasefire. Truce… till next time.”
Thankfully, we got a break from the pirate talk during dinner, everyone more focused on inhaling the chili Drew made than exchanging pirate-themed barbs.
After dinner, we clustered around the kitchen table playing Plunder, rolling dice to move around the board and engage in combat. I’d just sunk the last of Clay’s ships when he turned to me, his grin my only warning.
“Will ye marry me?”
My laugh came too easily. “Nah if ye were the last scallywag on earth.”
The words were automatic. But the way he looked at me, eyes glittering, made my stomach dip. His tone had been teasing, sure. That was Clay. Always teasing. Until he wasn’t.
I shook it off, grabbing for the dice. Just a game.
So why did my cheeks feel too warm? Why was I suddenly aware of the brush of his knee against mine beneath the table?
Chapter 9 – Clay
By the time Lucy’s second art class at the visitor center arrived, the minor uproar over Gran Fenwick’s artistic choices had died down. But I’d still promised to supervise art class. I hope no one expected miracles, because Gran was a law unto herself. If I went too hard on her, she’d rally the rest of class and have them following her into nude territory. She was the Pied-Fucking-Piper of seniors: no fucks left and eager to mess with the next generation, just for giggles.
I took my job as park ranger seriously. The last thing I needed was complaints landing on my regional manager’s desk.
I spit into the sink.Right. I took my job so seriously that I was brushing my teeth again in the visitor center bathroom like a middle schooler trying to impress his crush.
When I got back to the tables, Lucy was already setting up. A black turtleneck and jeans made her look every inch the artist, like she’d dressed to blend and observe, serving as a backdrop that wouldn’t detract from the art around her. But it was a poor disguise for Lucy’s natural presence.
No one could skip over her or dismiss her so easily. She changed the energy in a room just by walking into it. Impossible to ignore. Especially not with that red-painted mouth. It signaled the truth: she was a force to be reckoned with. Her dark pigtails hinted at her playful side, but her red lips? They alluded to the wicked sense of humor and tart tongue that tempted me into saying things I shouldn’t. Every time I got too close, it was like grabbing the fence again, knowing damn well what it would do to me. I’d been shocked too many times to fall for the illusion of quiet control.
“Lucifer, what can I do to help?” I asked.
“Stay out of the way.”
She flitted about, dropping sculpting tools and a block of clay at each workstation.
A few minutes later, the activity bus dropped off the first round of students, and the small visitor center filled with school-age children. The next forty-five minutes was utter chaos. Ten sets of hands sculpted beads, animals, and houses, wiping clay on everything.
I scurried around with a wad of paper towels, wiping down surfaces and kids as soon as they got streaked with the cold, gummy clay.
Lucy seemed utterly unbothered. She was calm as you please, going from student to student, helping with their projects. By the end of class, she was covered in clay to her elbows, with a streak on her left cheek and another on her forehead, but she was the most relaxed I’d ever seen her.
By comparison, I was a hot, dirty mess. And not the fun kind.
The bus came back, exchanging older students for younger ones, and soon we repeated the process. The older kids were less messy. In theory. But every time I turned my back, I caught small pieces of clay flying through the air in my peripheral vision.
Lucy was the picture of serenity. Relaxed shoulders. Easy smile. Not so much as a chiding word for the students throwing clay.
A hunk hit my left shoulder, and I spun around, glaring at a gangly boy. “Knock it off!”
His eyes widened. He shrank in on himself, offering me a sheepish grin of apology.
After the final bus departed, I collapsed into one of the chairs. “We have how long before we have to do this all again?”
