Page 25 of Mountains Divide Us

“It’s what you meant,” she argued as I turned onto Durango Drive. “I live—”

“I know where you live.”

Her question sounded like an accusation. “How do you know that?”

I looked at her, waiting till her eyes met mine. It was kind of my job to know where everyone lived in Wisper. Wasn’t that obvious?

With a bit of attitude in her voice, she said, “Your sternly arched eyebrow doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

SAMANTHA

“Small-town deputy, remember?” Frank said. “I know where everybody lives.”

“This is my house here,” I said needlessly, pointing to my gramps’s one-story house on Durango Drive. “Well, technically, it’s my gramps’s house, but he’s in Florida.” I was really feeling like an adolescent now. Oh hi, you’re really old and hot and sexy, and I live with my grandpa. You can drop me here since you had to drive me ’cause I don’t even have a license!

He didn’t respond as he pulled into the driveway.

I opened my door while he climbed out the other side, sensing that it would irritate him. He probably wanted to open it for me, but something was making me want to defy him. Just a little. Seriously, we were already at odds. It was clear a relationship wouldn’t be a good idea. “Okay, well, good night. Thank you for dinner.”

He held the door open as I slid out of his truck, and my boots made a slopping sound in the snow on the driveway. Frank didn’t mention my small act of defiance, but the tick of annoyance was clear in the way his eyebrow popped up again. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

This was too much. We were too different. From different places, different lifestyles. Even different eras, for crying out loud. If someone my age had driven me home after a date, they probably would barely have stopped the car. They definitely wouldn’t have gotten out and walked me to the door. Or had I just been dating the wrong kind of guys?

When we were standing on the porch, I squared my shoulders, looking up at him. “Thank you for dinner, Frank. I really like talking to you, when you actually talk, that is, but I don’t think this can work.” It didn’t mean I didn’t want to jump his bones though.

I so did.

He gave a slow nod, lips pursed. “Already got your mind made up, huh? Without even knowin’ me?”

He did have a point, but— “We’re too far apart.”

“Apart from what?” he asked, and he stepped forward. He was an inch away from me. I couldn’t move or look away. I felt like I was trapped, but in a good way. How was that even possible? My heart was beating so hard, I worried for a second Gramps’s neighbors would hear the thumping.

Without breaking eye contact, he lifted his jacket from my shoulders, the leather creaking softly as he slid his arms through the arm holes. The sweet, musky scent of his aftershave was dissipating, leaving me wanting.

He reached up to cradle my face in his hands again. Was he aware of how much it made me melt? No one had ever looked into my eyes the way Frank did. “You know, Samantha, there may be a pretty good age gap between us. I admit that it’s… unusual to go out with someone almost twenty years younger. And to be honest, I don’t have the first clue what I’m doin’ with you…” He shook his head a little, scrunching up his nose a bit like he had at the library when I told him it was okay to break the “no pets” rule. “But the thing you’re failin’ to see here is that, in the nineteen years I lived before you were born, I was experiencing things you can’t even imagine. And you know what that experience taught me?”

My answer was a squeak as his eyes drilled holes into mine. The scrunch fell away, and suddenly, he was as serious as a heart attack.

“Skills,” he said in a low voice. A gravelly, sultry, totally sexified voice. “All manner of skills, things you probably couldn’t guess.” The distance between us became a thing of the past. He leaned down, and then his warm lips were pressing against mine, not asking permission, but demanding to be let in.

I couldn’t deny him. I didn’t want to.

His hands moved down my neck like the glide of warm velvet, down my arms as I shivered, and they landed on my hips, the tips of his fingers pressing insistently into my skin. It felt like I wasn’t even wearing a dress. Suddenly, I remembered Juneau’s “get you some” comment, and I wanted to untie the wrap dress and fling it into the snow-covered bushes.

Watching his eyes close, I opened my mouth, and he tilted his head as he began to kiss me deeper, his tongue moving in slow, firm strokes. I closed my eyes, too, and focused on how even the texture of his tongue was sexy. It was soft and warm, but his tastebuds were rough, and I couldn’t help imagining what they would feel like if he were tasting some of my other, more sensitive places.

My entire body broke out in goosebumps. I breathed a moan. Age difference? What age difference? All there was in that moment was a man kissing a woman. Ravaging her mouth, to be precise. Making her fall apart at her seams.

Abruptly, he stopped. He pulled his head back, dropped his hands to his sides, and cocked a smile. “Night,” he said softly.

“Wha—”

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