Page 30 of Small Town Hero
H e got up bright and early and made Birdie her coffee exactly the way he had observed she liked it. Well, hell, last night had been unexpected and amazing. He hadn’t thought that would happen. And he hadn’t imagined that it could be so . . .
He’d known the sex would be good. Hell, the two of them had enough spark between them to generate a whole forest fire—that much was true.
But he hadn’t realized he would feel so much.
Or that the issues of being her boss and all of that would fall away so easily.
But it just didn’t matter to their relationship.
Because she was Birdie. Because he had shared so much of himself, and they really were more like friends than boss and employee.
Friends.
He mused on that as he poured his own coffee.
He’d never had sex with a friend before.
But maybe that was what the sex had been missing.
He’d never had an emotional connection to a person he’d been with. Maybe that was why it had never been this good.
He’d meant what he’d said to her too. They could walk with each other for a little while. Hand in hand. It could be nice.
And why not?
Except, it was far too easy to imagine walking along together for many, many years. Watching that copper hair turn silver.
He felt lanced with emotion then.
His father hadn’t gotten that with his mother.
He had never seen anyone get that in his family.
What made him think he would?
He wanted it though, so much in that moment that it stilled his breath.
“Lord Almighty,” he said.
“Are you praying or summoning me?” came the impish voice behind him. He turned and came face-to-face with his favorite troublemaker of all. Birdie.
“Good morning. I made your coffee. Exactly how you like it.”
“How do you know how I like it?”
“I’ve been watching very carefully.” He passed the cup over to her.
“Be careful. A girl could get used to this, and then you might end up with a permanent roommate.”
Her eyes caught his and held for a little bit too long. And he realized that the idea of Birdie being his permanent roommate really didn’t bother him.
He had never imagined sharing his life with another person.
Not the way she made him think he might want to.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
They drove the truck out to the back pasture again. Birdie didn’t need instruction at this point. She also didn’t complain.
They both worked until they were sweaty, and then he suggested they take a lunch break.
“You feed me so much,” she said.
She looked happier. A little more filled out in her cheeks than when she had first come to work for him. She looked beautiful either way. Always.
When he thought about how much he had disliked her when they were younger, he began to wonder if it had something to do with how carefree she had seemed. How good she was at covering herself in her own sunshine, and doing what felt fun and not necessarily what she was bound to do by duty.
He couldn’t understand that. He had always felt burdened.
That cemetery had always loomed large.
She got a wicked little glint in her eye right then, as if she knew the kind of thing he was thinking about. Her mischief.
“We should go eat down by the swimming hole.”
“If you want,” he said.
“It’s just through that thicket, isn’t it? Because I do remember sneaking onto your property a few times when I was a kid.”
“You know exactly where it is, because I chased you out of there.”
“Well, why don’t you chase me in there.”
He was about to protest, because he had all the food, but Birdie took off like greased lightning, and he could only run after her.
By the time he got through the thicket of trees to the shore of the swimming hole, he was out of breath, and . . . laughing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like that.
“You almost caught me,” she said.
He held the bag up. “I was the keeper of the sandwiches.”
“It’s fine. Not everybody has the killer instinct to do what needs to be done. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”
“I’m never sacrificing my sandwich.”
She laughed. “You are such a serious man, Gunnar Parsons.”
“Less so with you around,” he said.
She sat down on a bulging tree root and reached up a hand. He gave her a sandwich, and then placed a cola in her other outstretched paw.
She grinned. He leaned against the tree to eat, watching her the whole time.
And he had the vague, unhappy realization that this wasn’t how things would always be.
She wouldn’t always be here. Things would go back to normal. A life where he came home to an empty house, and didn’t have anyone to share his deep, terrible thoughts with. Didn’t have anyone to help him find light, not-so-terrible thoughts. He finished his sandwich, and it didn’t feel satisfying.
When he looked at Birdie again, she was swallowing the remains of her cola. Then she set the can against the tree root and stood up. She looked over at the water, and then she looked back at him.
And with one mischievous grin, she stripped her top off and unhooked her bra, throwing both onto the ground.
He could only watch. Then she stripped the rest of her clothes off and took a running jump off the shoreline, straight into the swimming hole.
“Oh no,” she said. “Here I am, skinny-dipping on Parsons land. What are you going to do about it?”
“Birdie . . .”
“Gunnar,” she said, mocking his warning tone.
He took a step toward the shoreline.
“Take your clothes off, cowboy. Join me.”
“I don’t skinny-dip.”
“You don’t? Looking like that, it’s a crime you ever put clothes on at all.”
The compliment stunned him. “I . . . well. That’s a kind thing to say.”
“A kind thing to say,” she said, laughing. “As if I’m talking about the weather and not—Come on, Gunnar. Live a little bit. Before you make your way up to that cemetery, maybe you should live a little bit.”
He took a sharp breath and stripped his shirt off over his head. Then he undressed, and before he could think it through, jumped straight into the cold water.
When he resurfaced, Birdie was howling with laughter. “Yes!” She threw her arms up, and he caught a glimpse of her breasts just above the surface of the water. “I did it. I was a bad influence on Gunnar Parsons.”
“Come here,” he said, swimming toward her.
She yelped and disappeared beneath the surface of the water like a siren.
That’s what this was. Some kind of witchcraft. Something had grabbed hold of a deep part of himself and changed him. As effective as a spell. Because it couldn’t just be real life. What else but magic felt like this? What else could do this to a man?
She resurfaced a moment later and rolled onto her back. The vision that she made like that took his breath away. Her coppery hair floated around her, and he was reminded of a painting he’d seen one time.
“I wish I had a bouquet of lilies,” she said solemnly, as she pressed her hands over her breasts. “I’m like the Lady of Shalott, floating away in my untimely, watery demise.”
“All right. That’s where I’ve seen it.” Some classical painting. And he vaguely remembered the poem.
“Do I look like that? Like a tragic, doomed maiden?”
“Do you want to?”
She went upright, treading water. “I did used to pretend I was.”
“Do you like stories like that?”
“Oh yeah. I mean, I was never any good at school, but I really liked reading. I love Greek myths, and Arthurian legends. I really like those old stories, because people are flawed. And who’s really a good guy, after all? Not the gods, but often not people either. Plus, the tragedy is so dramatic.”
“I never did much like reading. I was more a numbers guy.”
“Ooh. Math. No wonder I felt wary of you from the jump.”
“I like to hear you talk about stories though,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad that when you looked at me, you knew what I felt I looked like.
” Then she laughed. “That’s very silly. I used to pretend in these woods all the time.
Yeah, sorry. I sneaked onto your family land more often than you knew.
But I wanted to be somewhere else. I loved The Boxcar Children , because the kids were on their own, living out in the woods, harvesting blueberries and keeping milk cold in the river.
I loved Anne of Green Gables , because she was an orphan .
. . And I used to dream about becoming an orphan and going to Prince Edward Island because it seemed nicer than here.
I liked The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle .
Because she befriended the crew on her ship’s passage to America and became a pirate.
I just loved the idea that I could strike out on my own to become something different.
A tragic, romantic figure, maybe.” She sighed heavily. “But I’m just Birdie.”
He didn’t know what he would’ve thought that meant a couple of weeks ago. But he was stunned by the idea that she could be just anything.
She was filled with dreams. Such a small person who was overflowing with hope, even if she didn’t see it that way.
“You mean the toughest, bravest, most miraculous woman I’ve ever met?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean that, actually.”
He could see it. She was gearing up to swim away from him, or maybe even start a fight.
Anything other than cry, and he decided that he was going to cut her off at the pass this time.
So he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, her body wet and slick against his.
And he took her chin in his hand and kissed her.
“Amazing,” he whispered, rubbing his lips over hers.
She trembled, and he began to take the kiss deeper.
He knew she thought he was kind of a stick-in-the-mud, but he knew when passion was appropriate. He knew how to touch a woman. But everything was heightened with her. Better.
He knew exactly what to do for her.
He took her in his arms and swam them both to the shore, carried her to a patch of grass and laid her down in it before going and fetching his jeans and wallet.
Then he kissed her, deep and long.
But it wasn’t enough to just kiss her. He wanted to give her every good thing she had been denied in life. He wanted . . .
He kissed her throat, her breasts. He had done all this last night, and it still wasn’t enough. He traced the same path—she had said no man had ever done this for her before, but how was that even possible? So he did it. He pleasured her again and again. Until she was crying out his name.
And then he took out the condom, and she put her hand over his.
“Shouldn’t I return the favor?”
“You can. Someday. But I don’t need you to pay me back. This isn’t a transaction.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, and he tore the condom open, rolled it onto his length and pressed her back down into the grass.
He kissed her, kissed away the tears that were rolling down her cheeks.
Oh, Birdie. Beautiful, glorious Birdie. Maybe she wouldn’t fly away if he made her a nest. Maybe if he became the tree branch. The tree. The mountain that it grew out of. Maybe if he found a way to become a part of her ecosystem, she would stay with him.
And yeah, that scared the hell out of him. It really did.
But as he thrust into her body and kissed her lips, he knew what he wanted. More than ever. More than anything.
He loved Birdie. She was the piece of him that had always been missing. The wild unknown that had never been part of him.
He could be her safety.
They could be with each other. They could share all this delight.
He could give her a wide, warm bed and the same kind of coffee every day. She could make him laugh.
He could tell her the most messed up things about his childhood, and she wouldn’t even blink. And he would rail against the unfairness in hers.
They completed each other.
As sure as the sky was blue.
But then he couldn’t think, because he was inside her. And he loved her, and that made it like the first time, like the first person.
Different from anything else, and perfect because it was out here.
At this watering hole where he’d once chased her away.
The one thing he needed.
Had that been on purpose? Had he known even then that the scariest, best, biggest thing ever to come into his life would be Birdie Lennox? Had he acted out of instinct because he’d wanted to keep himself safe?
Birdie wasn’t about safety.
She was about living. About wild joy.
She was everything.
He touched her between her legs, in time with his thrusts, and she cried out. Only then did he take his own pleasure.
And then he held her. Listening to the sound of the water, the sound of the breeze through the trees.
He wanted to keep her. He didn’t know how to say that quite right. He decided not to say anything today. He wanted to take her home one more time, sleep in the same bed, sleep in his house.
He wanted her to really understand what he was offering.
Gunnar Parsons hadn’t ever wanted forever; it had always seemed like a dangerous thing.
But he could also see the way his dad had lived unhealed.
He would always miss his dad. Would always be grateful for everything his old man had done for him.
But he didn’t need to pattern his life after his father’s.
He wanted to live. He wanted to feel things.
As Birdie said, he ought to before he ended up in that graveyard.
Because that was where he would go, inevitably.
Whether he lived or not. Whether he loved or not.
He was choosing love.