Page 70 of Perfectly Matched: Harbor Falls Romance Collection

“Do you want to do this standing up or lying down?”

Lucki Stevenson shrugged.

“I don’t care. What works best for you?”

“Standing—and hurry up. Bend over the table.”

Turning away from Sam Kirk, Lucki did just that, placing her elbows square on the table to brace herself. She stared at the back wall of Sam’s kitchen, focusing on the sunflower print his mother had hung there years ago, and waited for what seemed a small eternity. She was anything but embarrassed. She was furious.

“You’re going to feel a little pop, then a sting. No big deal.”

“Just do it!”

Grimacing, Lucki gritted her teeth and waited. Pop. Sting. She squirmed. Yeah, he was right. Not a big deal. A minute later, she was numb.

“All right. It’s in there pretty deep, but I think I can take care of it.”

For an undetermined amount of time, Lucki stared at the print while he probed. Okay, let’s get this over with.

“Hold on. I’m going in with the tweezers now.”

Tweezers?

“I’m halfway in. Hold still. I’ve got to widen the point of entry just a little bit more.”

Lucki gripped the edges of the table, and then felt the final tug.

“There!”

Sam emitted a satisfying sigh behind her, followed by a definite ping.

“There. Got it.”

Thank God.

“Was that it? Did you get the damn thing out? Are you finished?”

“Not quite. Let me clean up the blood. Douse it with some antiseptic. I think you may need a stitch or two. And you probably should get a tetanus shot.”

“Stitches!”

Lucki jerked and tried to look behind her.

“Dammit, Lucki! Hold still. Now you’ve got blood all over me and I’ve got a date in twenty minutes.”

“Well, la-de-dah!”

Lucki rose further on her elbows and turned to look Sam dead in the eye.

“At least you don’t have a BB imbedded in the cheek of your butt!”

He tossed her a sarcastic grin.

“You don’t either now, smart ass, thanks to me. Now turn around and hold still while I finish up here.”

Turning, Lucki waited until she felt a couple of tugs on the wound. Stitches, she guessed. Maybe it was better she couldn’t see.

“Thanks to your little brother and his equally bratty friend, I am enduring this humiliation.”

“Lay off J.J. and Spud, will you? I’ll take care of them.”

“Oh, yeah? Like the time they put that mangy old cat in the cab of my truck all night? The animal peed all over my carpet and ate the last of my donuts. You didn’t do a thing but make them apologize.”

She glanced back again.

“Do you know how bad cat pee smells?”

Sam grimaced and soaked a cotton ball with something cold and dabbed it over Lucki’s wound. She flinched.

“What did you want me to do? And why do you keep donuts in your truck cab anyway?”

“I keep them there so I can eat on my way to work. It’s quicker that way.”

“Most people keep their donuts in the kitchen.”

“I’m not most people.”

“How well I’ve learned that over the years.”

Lucki stared at the print again. Sunflowers. Sam’s mom had loved sunflowers. Lucki instantly felt a pang. She’d loved Sam’s mother almost as much as she loved her own. Martha Kirk could make the best-damned butterscotch-oatmeal cookies. Lucki grinned. She’d eaten a million of them with milk at this table.

Now this is a twist. Bet Martha never expected anyone to have minor surgery on her antique oak pedestal table.

Damn those thirteen-year-old, adolescent, scoundrels. When she got hold of them, she would give them a tongue-lashing they wouldn’t soon forget.

“I think you ought to take the guns away from those boys.”

“I said I’ll handle it, Lucki.”

Lucki snorted. All she was doing was minding her own business, washing her pick-up truck, and the demons had to shoot her in the butt with a BB gun, right as she bent over to pick up the sponge from the bucket.

She’d slung suds and water for fifteen feet chasing after them, but the sting of the BB got to her pretty quick, and then she realized that the damned thing had actually penetrated her cheek, just beneath the leg opening of her bathing suit bottom. Damned, skimpy, thigh-cut suits.

If Sam hadn’t been home, she didn’t know what she would have done. Thank God, she didn’t have to go to the emergency room. She could hear the laughter all over her office tomorrow. Nothing in Harbor Falls stayed quiet for long.

He placed a bandage over the wound and then taped it in place.

“All done.”

Lucki stood and grimaced at the pull of the bandage. She tugged her bikini bottom down over her cheek and the bandage and faced him.

Sam continued, all doctor-like.

“It’s going to be sore for a few days. Keep it clean and let me see it tomorrow.”

Feeling a little saucy, Lucki sidled up to Sam, put one finger on his chest, and said.

“Doctor, are you just trying to get me to drop my pants again?”

His eyes suddenly rounder than buttermilk biscuits, Sam grabbed her hand and shoved it downward.

“Stop it, Lucki. That’s enough.”

The mood had changed and even though she didn’t know what had possessed her to do such a thing, she drew back and reassessed. Staring Sam directly in the eyes, she lifted two fingers to her forehead and thrust them out in mock salute.

“Yes sir! Dr. Kirk.”

“Cut it out, Lucki.”

Sam turned away and washed his hands. Lucki studied his back. She hadn’t noticed before, but Sam was dressed to go out, complete with shirt, tie, and his Sunday trousers. She glanced to the kitchen chair beside of her. His best sports coat.

“Who’s your date?”

He turned slightly and dried his hands on a kitchen towel. Then, he wet the edge of the towel and dabbed a little dishwashing detergent on it. He brushed at the bloodstain on his pants, and then tossed the towel in the sink. After a minute, rolled down his sleeves and buttoned his cuffs, and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Missy Hawkins, why?”

Ugh. Missy Hawkins. You can do better than that, Sam Kirk.

Lucki shrugged, wondering if she should offer to clean his pants.

“Just wondered. You’ve been seeing a lot of her lately.”

“Some.”

His gaze caught hers, his expression difficult to read.

“You know what you are getting into there, right?”

He stared at her.

“Don’t go there, Lucki.”

She shrugged.

“Okay. So, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Where are you going?”

“Dinner and a movie, probably.”

“Oh.”

He slipped the jacket off the chair and put it on.

“I have to run. I’m late already. You know the way out.”

Lucki nodded and smiled.

“I’m leaving.”

She started for the back door then turned around. Sam was watching her.

“Tell Missy I said hi.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Missy. It was just that Missy was, well…? Seasoned might be the best word.

“I will.”

“Thanks for, well, you know.”

He nodded and flashed her a wicked smile.

“Yeah. See you at church in the morning.”

“Sure. In the morning. Have a good time.”

Then he was gone. Lucki lingered at Sam’s back door and stared after him as he left. Abruptly, she turned and headed across the driveway to her house, the screen door slapping hard behind her.

She didn’t bother to lock up. No one in Harbor Falls locked up—at least not in their neighborhood.

****

From her perch in the choir loft, Lucki had an excellent view of the parishioners of the First United Methodist Church of Harbor Falls. Her parents, Jim and Elaine, sat in their usual pew, three rows back on the left side, two thirds down from the center aisle. Until she had started singing in the choir when she was twelve, Lucki had sat there too, wedged between them like a book between bookends. She wasn’t that great a singer, but once she’d realized what fun it was to watch the parishioners during the sermon, she’d volunteered her services to the choir ever since.

Mayor Harold Crandall made a habit of falling asleep just after the offering and the singing of the Doxology. That’s why he always claimed the very back seat in the last pew beneath the balcony. Everyone pretended not to hear his snores. If Lucki stared closely, she could see his jaws flap from the choir loft. Ralph Myers, owner of Ralph’s Grocery, hadn’t moved a muscle the last sixteen years, to her knowledge, sitting stiff and stone-faced as he listened to Reverend Peters. Ralph was row two, front and center. No one at the First United Methodist Church of Harbor Falls, North Carolina ever sat in the first row. It was darned near sacrilege.

Once, when Sarah Harper’s cousin, Sue Ellen, visited from Memphis and plopped down square in the middle of the first pew, the entire congregation heaved in a collective gasp. Sue Ellen never came to church with her cousin Sarah again.

Sweeping the congregation, Lucki shifted in her seat, and gazed out over the growing crowd of parishioners. The pillow she’d brought to sit on wasn’t helping matters. Her wound was sore and itchy. Then her gaze landed on Sam sitting in the pew directly behind her parents. He gave her a knowing wink and a sarcastic smile. She was tempted to stick her tongue out at him but thought better of it. Eloise Hunter, the local piano teacher, Sunday School Superintendent, and the First United Methodist Church of Harbor Falls, North Carolina pianist, had an eye on her. Dear Eloise always had an eye on someone.

Besides, since Sam had returned home a year or so ago, she’d felt like she was reverting to her childhood. He brought out the worst in her. Twenty-eight-year-old women with responsible careers weren’t supposed to stick their tongues out at anyone, especially in church.

Sam had always sat in the same pew, especially when his parents were living—that is, before he’d gone off to college and medical school and opened his own practice in Charlotte. Martha and Kip Kirk were Jim and Elaine Stevenson’s’ best friends. Living next door, they had shared so many warm and funny times together over the years. Sam and Lucki had practically grown up as brother and sister. It was great, she’d had no siblings of her own. But Kip died when Sam was sixteen and things started to change. Then last year, when Martha died unexpectedly, Sam returned home to raise his younger brother where he knew his parents would want J.J. raised—in Harbor Falls.

The choir stood. Geez, her daydreaming was getting to her again. She rose carefully, the stitches in her rear beginning to pull, and turned to page 142 of the hymnal and began mouthing the words to All Ye Sinners Come to Rest.

Her gaze shifted to Missy Hawkins then, jammed up next to Sam. Lucki felt her eyes narrow. She wasn’t sure about Missy. She’d graduated high school with Lucki, one year behind Sam, had been married and divorced twice in the past ten years, and clearly had designs on Dr. Samuel Kirk.

Lucki tried to warn Sam about her, but he would hear none of it. She just guessed Sam had lived in the city so long that things like divorce and infidelity were of no concern to him. It obviously didn’t matter that Missy Hawkins wasn’t exactly the innocent bystander in the breakup of her marriages. She’d scratched her itches whenever and wherever she’d wanted. Sam didn’t seem to think it was an issue.

At least he wouldn’t discuss it with her, telling Lucki it was none of her concern.

Lucki thought it was.

Then again, maybe Sam really didn’t think it was an issue. Maybe he was a lot more important to Missy Hawkins, than she was to him.

She knew that over the years, Sam had entertained a steady stream of girlfriends. He didn’t stick with one long. He paraded them past her when they were in high school. He brought them home with him from college. All passing fancies. All beautiful, exciting, and they never stuck around. Missy Hawkins wouldn’t stick around for long, either. Sam was just like that. He loved women. Wooed and cooed and dined them to the hilt. Then usually let them down easily before he moved on to another.

It was a pattern Lucki had witnessed too many times over the years. No wonder all the girls around Harbor Falls and deemed him The Heartbreaker by the time he was out of junior high school. And Lucki, an innocent bystander for the most part, hadn’t escaped the heartbreak only Sam could bring, either.

But it was just the once.

And she’d gotten over it quickly.

Or so she continued to tell herself.

At any rate, she didn’t care to think about that fact or the incident for too long. She rather preferred to forget about it. Because she and Sam had shared something else—friendship. Best friends, they’d always said. Best friends to the end.

That’s why she wasn’t going to make too much of an issue with Sam over the Missy Hawkins deal. She would be gone soon enough.

She hoped.

Eloise Hunter ended the hymn on an off-key note and the choir sat. Lucki squeaked out a late, Amen, and quickly sat too, and then wished she hadn’t plopped down so quickly.

Finally, the sermon began.

It wasn’t five minutes into Reverend Peters’ less-than-fire-and-brimstone monologue that Lucki put a bead on J.J. Kirk and Spud Jones in the balcony, perched over Missy Hawkins’ head—dropping spit wads, no doubt made from the church bulletin, onto Missy’s bleached-blonde, over-teased, black-rooted hair.

And, obviously there was so much hair spray Missy couldn’t feel the wads dropping or notice the extra weight on her head. Soon, she looked like one of those gaudy, tacky gold Christmas ornaments with fake snow dripping from them that Ralph’s Grocery always hung on their artificial tree in the front of the store.

But that was Missy for you. Gaudy. Tacky.

Lucki smirked inwardly. Really, Lucki, she told herself, you are in church. You shouldn’t be so catty. You shouldn’t be so critical. You shouldn’t be so—

Abruptly, everyone stood again. Was Reverend Peters finished already? Lucki glanced at her watch. Eleven-fifty-eight. The thing about the Methodists of Harbor Falls, North Carolina, was that they never held church service past noon. Which was a good thing because the Methodists always beat the Baptists to Buddy’s Buffet. It was good Reverend Peters understood the rules of the First United Methodist Church of Harbor Falls. Once they had a new minister who didn’t know the rules. He’d preached past twelve-fifteen one Sunday and the Baptists got the good tables at Buddy’s and had picked over the fried chicken by the time the Methodists had arrived. Harold Crandall only had landing gear for dinner that day—legs and wings—and Harold used his mayor authority to make sure the sermon never went past noon again.

Reverend Peters arrived the next week.

The Gloria Patri was sung, the blessing given, and Lucki glanced into the sanctuary. Missy, who shook back her stiff hair while rising, sent paper wads flying like a December snowstorm. Lucki stifled a grin and watched J.J. and Spud exit the balcony in a flash. Lucki mingled a moment with the rest of the choir before she hung up her robe and headed toward the front of the church.

****

“Why Reverend Peters, that was the most meaningful sermon I think I’ve ever heard.”

Lucki stepped out of the vestibule just in time to witness an eye-batting Missy laying it on thick to the good Reverend.

Reverend Peters took her hand.

“Why, thank you, Melissa. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Mine, too,”

she gushed, the lashes batting again.

What a suck-up. Lucki rolled her eyes and whispered a brief prayer of forgiveness. She was on church ground. She shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts.

Stepping up to the trio of Sam, Missy and the Reverend, Lucki interjected.

“I especially enjoyed the part about casting the harlots out of Harbor Falls, um...I mean, Jerusalem, Reverend Peters.”

The Reverend’s puzzled glance fell on Lucki.

“I don’t believe that was this sermon, Lucinda.”

Lucki grimaced. He was the only body in Harbor Falls who called her Lucinda. It might be her name on the church roll, but she needed to set him straight soon.

“Oh, then I must be remembering another one.”

She cast her smiling gaze to Missy, and then turned to Sam with an arch of her brow. Reaching out, she plucked a paper wad off his shoulder and flicked it away. Sam eyed her suspiciously. She shrugged.

“Well, we better get started to Buddy’s before the Baptists beat us,”

she said.

“Coming Reverend Peters?”

“I believe I will, Lucinda.”

“Sam? Missy?”

Sam looked to Missy who stared back at him in adoration with eyes big as her Aunty Emma’s Sunday saucers. “Well,”

Sam started, “Missy?”

J.J. and Spud suddenly arrived on the scene and parked themselves in the midst of the crowd.

“Did I hear something about Buddy’s, Sam?”

He glanced quickly from adult to adult.

“Spud and me sure are hungry.”

Sam glanced to Missy who had just turned up her nose at the sight of J.J. Lucki frowned. J.J. was a great kid. All legs and freckles, a mischievous streak that ran a mile wide, but the sweetest disposition of any kid around—most of the time. He was suffering from a bad case of early-adolescence and a feeling of loss since his mother had died. She didn’t like the way Missy reacted to him just then.

“You can ride with me, J.J., if Sam says it’s all right,”

Lucki told the boy.

J.J.’s eyes widened.

“Can I Sam?”

Sam glanced to Missy who gave him her nod of approval. Damn that woman, she just wanted J.J. out of the way. Lucki immediately bit her tongue. She was still on church property.

“Sure, J.J.”

“Spud, too?”

Lucki nodded.

“He has to go ask his mother.”

Spud ran off. Poor kid, Lucki thought. With a name like Spud he’d never live down the fact that when he was born he had a head shaped like an Idaho white. Lucki had to think a minute what the child’s real name was. Benjamin, yes. That was it.

“You should have seen Lucki yesterday, Reverend Peters.”

Lucki turned to the voice. J.J. was grinning from ear to ear.

“You’re heading down the wrong path, kid.”

Lucki glanced to the smiling child and then threw Sam a warning look.

“Sam had to dig a BB out of Lucki’s butt on Mama’s kitchen table.”

Missy Hawkins’ penciled eyebrows shot up. Sam’s eyes narrowed. Reverend Peters leaned forward.

“Spud shot her with his BB gun,”

J.J. continued.

“That’s enough.”

Sam’s expression toward the kid was stern.

“We watched him take it out. We peeked through the kitchen window.”

J.J. turned to Lucki.

“It looked like Sam had to go in deep. He was poking in around back there for a long time.”

Sam groaned. Lucki gritted her teeth and spoke out of the corner of her mouth.

“You’re dead meat, kid.”

“Of course, Sam being a doctor and everything, he had every right to feel around on your rear end while you were laying there over the table. Sam was only trying to get the darned thing out. I bet it hurt a little, didn’t it, Lucki? I’m sorry about that. Spud and me think we should apologize. We talked about it in church. We feel bad.”

“Of course, you do.”

She gritted her teeth tighter.

“And you should. That wasn’t funny, J.J.”

He nodded.

“I know. Of course, you did have on that skimpy bathing suit,”

J.J. interrupted.

“It was kind of natural that when you bent over to pick up that sponge, that me and Spud would think about shooting you in the butt. It was too tempting. But it was Sam that gave us the idea.”

Lucki lifted one eyebrow, then turned her gaze on Sam. Now his eyes were big as Aunt Emma’s Sunday saucers and Missy’s were narrowed to slits.

Reverend Peters leaned closer, rubbing his chin, glancing back and forth from Sam to Lucki.

“You don’t say,” he said.

“What do you mean Sam gave you the idea?”

Missy bit out.

Reverend Peters stepped back two steps as Lucki strode toward Sam.

“You gave them the idea?”

“Lucki, it was just a joke.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Sam.

“What did you say?”

“They misunderstood me.”

“What did he say, J.J.?”

She directed her question to the kid, but her glare was still connected with Sam’s.

“J.J., so help me, if you ever want to bite into another fried chicken leg at Buddy’s, you’ll tell me this very instant what your brother said.”

There was a brief pause. Lucki watched Sam’s Adam’s apple move up and down, and then J.J. spoke up.

“He said you ought to be shot for wearing a bathing suit like the one you were wearing. He said it showed too much T and A, whatever that is. And he said if you didn’t stop parading around your back yard dressed like that, he might not be responsible for his actions. That’s when he went inside and said he was going to take a cold shower. He was all grumbling and everything when he said it, too.”

J.J. grinned from ear to ear.

Lucki’s mouth dropped open.

Sam threw Missy a sheepish grin.

Reverend Peters laughed out loud, then covered his mouth with his hand.

Missy Hawkins turned slowly toward Sam then and slapped him square across the face—right there on the church steps—and told him before she stomped off, in front of the good Reverend Peters, God, and everybody, that she hoped his slimy carcass rotted in hell. She even suggested that his mother wasn’t married when she’d given birth to him.

Sam rubbed his cheek and watched her walk away.

Lucki suppressed a bewildered grin and a surprising giggle.

Reverend Peters stepped up to the next couple.

Spud and J.J. ran.