Page 89 of Waiting on You

“You know who else has a high pain tolerance?” she asked, still talking to Bryce. “Paulie Petrosinsky. She’s totally badass.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bryce said. “Did you know she can pick up a car?”

“I do know,” Colleen said. “That is hot, my friend.”

“Stop matchmaking,” Lucas whispered, his lips touching her soft little earlobe. Good enough to bite.

She turned her head a little. “Can you stop nuzzling me?” she whispered. “I realize you don’t get this close to many women, but it’s getting pervy. You, me, the Brussels sprouts, Team Menopause watching.”

He nuzzled her again, smiling as her breath hitched.

Mrs. Johnson wrapped up Bryce’s hand in gauze. “Is your tetanus shot up to date?” she asked. “You don’t want to come down with lockjaw.”

Actually, Lucas wouldn’t mind Bryce coming down with lockjaw. His cousin had not once paused for breath this entire day. Reluctantly, he disentangled himself from Colleen and stood up, then offered his hand and pulled her to her feet. “You good?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. Her cheeks were pink.

“Eat something,” he said. “Come on, Bryce, let me take you to the doctor. I’ll be back tomorrow, Mrs. O’Rourke.”

“Jeanette,” she said, rubbing an ice cube on her chest. “Bye, boys.”

Colleen walked them to the front door, the Brussels sprouts still in place. “See you, Coll!” Bryce said happily, loping to the pickup truck.

Lucas turned to Colleen. “See you around, hotshot.”

“Don’t play with me, Lucas,” she said tightly.

His smile evaporated.

“You’re not back in Manningsport for me, and I’m betting that as soon as Joe dies, you’ll be back to your life in Chicago. And that’s fine. But the kissing and the flirting and the nuzzling...it has to stop. I don’t have a problem with you, I really don’t. You’re a good guy. I know that. You’re very welcome at O’Rourke’s. You’re welcome at my mom’s house. But you left me.”

“Actually, you left me,mía.”

“Yeah, right. I didn’t marry someone two months after our first fight. And don’t call memía.” She seemed to realize she still had the bag of vegetables on her head and lowered her arm. “You broke my heart, Lucas,” she said. “It was a long time ago. But I’m not dumb enough to let history repeat itself. So don’t mess with me. Are we clear?”

He looked at her a long minute, the noise of the chattering women in the background, the birds twittering in the bushes outside. And as much as he would’ve liked to tell her yes, sure, he’d leave her alone, he couldn’t.

Colleen had a pull on him. That same sense he had when he first laid eyes on her in that classroom so long ago, that locked-in feeling, as if he’d waited all his life to see her...that still pulsed between them.

She felt it, too. She licked her lips, and the pink stained her cheeks again. He could swear he heard her heart beating.

“What seems clear,” he murmured, stepping a little closer so that they were almost touching, “is that this is going to happen. You and me. It’s just a question of when.”

She looked at him a long minute. Then she pressed her forefinger into the hollow at the base of his throat, gently, forcing him to take a step back.

Closed the door in his face. Didn’t slam it; just closed it.

Lucas found he was smiling all the way to the truck.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

INTHETHREEweeks he’d been in Manningsport, Lucas had had no success in pinning Bryce down on his hopes and aspirations, careerwise. Nope. That was a black hole. Lucas, on the other hand, was acting as project manager for the public safety building, had been asked to consult on a new wing for the senior citizen community and was putting on a new room for Colleen’s mother. A couple had asked him about building a superdeluxe chicken coop for their free-range chickens, and while Lucas didn’t particularly want to be building that sort of structure, he’d sketched out a plan for them nonetheless.

It had always been that way. Work found him.

Work cowered from Bryce. And his cousin, let’s be honest, excelled at laziness. Bryce had been rather thrilled with his injury, and while it had been a little on the gruesome side, it really was something that he could’ve taken care of with a couple of Band-Aids, rather than the wad of gauze he was currently sporting.

Since construction was clearly not going to work (Bryce had knocked a pallet of shingles off the roof, lost his hammer seven times and dropped his phone into the roofing tar before mishandling the nail gun), Lucas had talked to a few people, studied Craigslist and had gone over to Didi’s to rouse Bryce out of bed for a little swing through town.

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