Page 13

chapter

seven

Don’t Speak – No Doubt

FONTANA

Henry’s voice droned in her ears, sounding like one of those unintelligible Peanuts adults. Fontana blinked herself back to the present, appalled to realize she’d drifted off.

Again .

It had been nearly a week since she’d kissed Campbell True, and for the life of her, she couldn’t erase that moment of reckless abandon from her mind.

It was his stricken look—there one moment, masked the next—that had stopped her from marching straight to the Rise and confronting him.

A split-second of vulnerability on an otherwise tough-love face.

That connection had hit her harder than the physical one.

Anyway, who cared? It hadn’t been a long enough kiss to make her knees weak, or rather, no kiss that short had ever made her knees weak before .

Bone-meltingly weak. Syrup through her veins weak.

Shadowing the unsettling realization that the man had gotten to her—and gotten to her good—was the equally distressing notion that, in her efforts to protect her sister and provide a home for them both, she’d missed a lot.

A whole lot.

“Fontana?” Henry asked, a hint of irritation sharpening his normally smooth, cookies-and-cream voice. “I have to leave in a few minutes, and I don’t want you to have a mess on your hands. The center’s opening next week, right?”

“Yeah, just thinking.” Thinking about how a mature, rational woman ends up asking an arrogant, feckless man to show her what she’s missed. The way he’d kissed her, as if he truly meant it, sent a rush through her, warming places that had once been barren and uninviting.

Pretending to inspect a spot of dirt on her wrist, Fontana glanced at Henry. Maybe she could ask him to show her. He knew everything Atlanta did, didn’t he? And Henry wasn’t about to sell her home out from under her. There was less risk of venereal disease, too.

He would say yes, not push her away as if she were contagious or something.

“Don’t know what was wrong with the other building ya’ll were using.

” Henry stretched to reach a far corner of the window, wash-worn denim pulling tight over his thighs.

Not bad, but nowhere near as impressive as Campbell True’s body.

If she was going to ask for a sexual tour, she might as well have the most virile and experienced guide possible.

“Too small, in disrepair,” she answered, swiveling from her perch on the top step of the ladder, her hand braced for a fall.

It was a little like surfing, riding this thing, exhilarating and frightening at the same time, like that damn kiss.

Items graciously donated when they should’ve been tossed on a garbage heap, but Fontana had learned early on that beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers.

“You have”—she glanced at her watch, the ladder shaking violently with the movement—“five minutes until your relief arrives. And unfortunately, your relief can’t reach the high places, so get to it.”

“Kit, huh?”

Shifting, she swiped a cobweb from the ceiling.

The faint smell of clove oil and bleach still lingered in the building, a former dentist’s office.

“Kit and John Nelson, if he’s up to it. I think Kit might bring Larson.

You know, that friend of his with the bright red hair?

Most of the other volunteers are coming this weekend to move in desks and chairs, preparing for the start of winter after-school activities. ”

“John Nelson can’t bring Kit. Didn’t Charlie revoke his license after he nearly ran down Nella Pearson driving over the diner’s curb last year?”

Fontana rubbed her hand across her thigh, adding another smear to her faded painter pants, ones she’d had since the early eighties that were now, magically, back in style.

“He hit the gas instead of the brake. An honest mistake, so they didn’t take his license.

He decided on his own to permanently park the car.

” Babbling. She was babbling. Because she knew exactly where Henry and his blasted frown were heading.

“True coming along, I guess.”

“True?” She scrubbed at a mark on the wall, a spark of what she assumed was lust tying her stomach in guilty, forbidden knots. She hoped he was coming. Hoped he would make her come sometime soon.

“True. Campbell True.”

“How should I know? Do I look like a photographer’s assistant?”

“Damn it, Fontana.” He threw his rag to the floor and shoved the windowpane until, with a squeal, it rose.

Muscles bunched beneath his shirt as he braced the heels of his hands against the wall.

“What am I supposed to think? He gives you a ride to Jake’s and leaves his driver’s license on the Jeep’s windshield.

Is that some kind of big-city come-on? You can bet that guy knows ‘em all.”

“I was afraid to hop in the man’s car, and he did that to, oh, make me trust him, I suppose.

” Fontana caught a rogue bead of paint with her thumb as it rolled down the wall.

“Plus, if you care to remember any of our previous conversations, my private life is none of your business—just as yours is none of mine.”

“I want it to be my business.” He drew a quick breath, a crimson flush spreading across his cheeks. “I have, from the first time I saw you.”

Fontana turned to the window, gazing at a sky the exact color of her mother’s eyes, wishing she could return his feelings.

Henry was a good man. Never married. Owner of a thriving construction business.

Desperately wanted children. More importantly, he wanted to find the love of his life.

If not for that terribly pertinent point, perhaps she could have pretended—for both of them.

“I can’t be the one. I’m not, no matter what you think.

If I were, wouldn’t I feel the same?” She patted her chest, her heartbeat steady as ever.

Not a skip or flicker. The liquid shots of heat currently belonged wholly to a man neither she nor Henry liked.

A situation that proved how senseless life was.

“I want more than building retaining walls and backyard decks for you. Talking to you over the pouring of concrete doesn’t cut it. Like I don’t have enough projects of my own.”

Fontana’s chin lifted, his comment hitting home. “I know we don’t pay you the highest rate. Jaime tells me what I could expect from another contractor. If you think?—”

Their gazes collided, battling across the short distance.

“I won’t let you go that easily. If work is all we have right now, I’ll take it.

” Climbing down, he stopped beside her ladder, his hand lingering over hers.

A dauntless glow—one she recognized—lit his pale gray eyes.

“Don’t kid yourself about True, Tana. I knew him really well once.

He’s come back to face plenty of ghosts, not to mention a score of old girlfriends.

I’m telling you, a driver’s license is all he can give.

All he has to give. As much as I want you, you’re my friend, and I’d hate to see you get hurt by that freewheeling bastard. ”

Looking away, she heard the door slam, Henry’s truck fire up a minute later.

She lowered her brow to the rough wooden step and heaved a weary sigh.

Who cared about Campbell True’s ghosts—or his army of lovers?

Her ghosts, her horrid memories, were scattered across a string of rural Northern towns much like this one.

She could match him point for point, she bet.

And as far as lovers went, there had been four, totaling eleven unforgettable sexual experiences.

If she counted the time she and Daryl Zinsky did it twice in one night in the back seat of his Z-28, twelve.

Twelve times by the age of twenty-seven seemed sad as hell. But she hadn’t been able to trust anyone—not at first, not for a long time. Not at, say, sixteen or seventeen, when the few friends she had were engaging in clandestine activities she wanted to engage in.

Her father had never touched her in that way, but he’d nonetheless messed her up.

The expression on Campbell’s face in the storage shed replayed in full color. It wasn’t the first time a man had looked at her like that and walked away. Sex was just sex. Feelings, emotions, the past —those were the baggage most men didn’t want to handle. They just wanted to get laid.

So, she'd been alone. Mostly.

Daydreaming for the fourth time in an hour, she was caught off guard by the laughter.

She realized she was falling when Campbell and Kit stepped into the room, wide smiles stretching across two remarkably similar faces.

As the ladder tilted, every seductive, whispered story Fontana had ever heard about Promise’s whiz-kid photographer rushed through her mind.

Instead of worrying about cement floors and broken bones, all she could think was: Were they true ?

A muscular arm slipped around her waist, palm flattening over her stomach.

Jerked against a solid chest, she didn’t have time to complain about the camera lenses digging into her hip.

A masculine scent hit her nostrils; a hot breath streaked past her ear.

Fontana glanced back, Campbell glanced down.

Their gazes collided in reluctant awareness.

The memory of his mouth covering hers exploded like a flashbulb, a bright, white light of memory between them.

She wondered if she was lost, and she wondered if he knew.

“What the hell are you doing?” He pushed her away with a gentle, two-handed shove. “Standing on this piece of junk?”

“A donation.” She wrapped her fingers around a paint-chipped rung, more to steady herself than to defend the shoddiest ladder she’d ever seen. “From Mr. Bekins, I think. We had a garage clean-up party last month. Guess that’s where it came from.”