A Perfect Mistake (16 page)

Make love.

Verity.

Verity.

I still felt like
shit, but I couldn’t sit in that house one more minute, and
besides, I wanted to see her. I groaned at the thought of touching
her skin, kissing her mouth, burying myself into her…and I
couldn’t freaking remember. Not to mention the fact that she’d
been a virgin.

Fuck me.

That thought
penetrated right to the core of me. I’d had my share of sex,
and I’d had sex with virgins. After all, I was not a damn
saint, but Verity, the girl who had been off limits to me, had made
the choice for me. To say that I would have done things differently
was a huge understatement. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have
participated fully in sex with Verity. But I also recognized the
reluctance in me to make our relationship only about that.

I don’t know
what it was. It confused me, because it was usually easy for me to be
with a girl and then walk away. I’d done it before, especially
in high school. I didn’t lack for partners. But the thought
that Verity and I had sex and she’d left the following morning,
living a whole year without knowing that the only reason I didn’t
pursue her was because I couldn’t remember? That bothered me.

I pulled up to the
church, grabbed the sketch and the dimensions. As I got out from
behind the wheel, Verity came out of her house.

Today she had her
hair pulled back off her face and I felt breathless at her beauty.
She was wearing a pretty white dress. I think it was called eyelet
lace. My ma had something like that, and I think that’s what
she called it. It hugged her rib cage, the scalloped hemline just
touching the tops of her thighs. She looked pretty. She walked across
the open yard and right up to me. She smiled and I smiled back,
feeling like my heart would just float out of my chest.

“Hey, Boone.”

“Hey yourself,
darlin’.” I held up the gazebo stuff. “I think
your daddy wants me to get started on this.”

“Well, it’s
actually more my momma and I who really want it.”

“Right, the
Christmas lights.”

She nodded. “Are
you going to build it?”

“Actually,
I’ve got a carpenter who’s going to do that part, but
I’ll help to assemble it. I’ve built water installations
before and pergolas, but with all the stuff I have going on right
now, I couldn’t spare the time. The landscaping is going to
take a lot of my time, and I may have a huge job coming up.”

“A lot of
digging in the dirt.”

“Yeah, getting
my hands dirty.”

“Let me show
you where we’d like to have it.”

She passed me and I
swallowed at the creamy expanse of her back. She was three steps away
from me before she looked back.

“Enjoying the
view?”

My eyes popped up to
hers and, caught red-handed, I grinned. “Best I’ve ever
seen.”

She waited until I
came abreast of her. “How are you feeling?”

“Still not
great, but better. Do you wanna feel my forehead?”

“As a matter
of fact, I do.” She glanced back at the house.

“You worried
about your daddy seeing us? I’m guessing he wouldn’t
approve of me, Verity.”

Her eyes came back
to my face. “No, Boone. I’m not worried about that. I-I
want to kiss you. I don’t want to share that with anyone. Just
a hello kiss.”

I took her hand and
pulled her behind the corner of the rectory. Out of sight of the
house and sheltered enough from anyone inside. That soft, honest
admission ran through me hard, cutting me, straight to my core. My
brain was on fire, but it had nothing to do with a fever and
everything to do with Verity. “Feel my forehead. Give me a
hello kiss. I’m dying for that.”

She leaned the back
of her head against the house and looked up at me. I hadn’t
really realized how much taller I was. It made me feel powerful and
male the way she was so small and female. She reached out and slid
her fingers across my face, across my eyebrows, the lines of my
cheekbones above the faint beard stubble I hadn’t bothered to
shave off this morning. Along my jaw, across the curve of my lips.
Then trailed up to my forehead where she pressed her palm and left it
for a split second.

“Seems like
your fever is gone.”

She was wrong. My
fever was building. Arousal didn’t wash down through me. It had
already arrived between my legs, hard, and hot, and heavy.

“Are you
sure?” I whispered. “Maybe you need to go all over my
face like that again just to double check.

She smiled. “Ah,
there’s that bad boy.” She reached up and clasped the
back of my neck, her thumb stealing behind my ear and rubbing against
my hair and skin. I cupped her face and lowered my mouth to hers.

I took it slow, and
for a long, endless minute, I kissed her, my tongue sliding deep, my
mouth slanted over hers, just letting the taste and softness of her
seep into me.

Breaking off the
kiss, she smiled. “You are such an Outlaw. Let’s go rob a
train.”

I laughed. “Go
all Bonnie and Clyde?”

“I think you’d
look much better with a six gun on your hip and spurs. Mmmhmmm.
Gunslinger wins over gangster.”

“You trying to
corrupt me, Miss Verity, darlin’?”

“It had better
wait until after we talk about the gazebo, or my daddy will have your
hide.”

“I think when
he finds out I’m kissing on you and you’re feeling me up
for a fever, he’s gonna have my hide anyway.”

I went to pull away
from her, but she didn’t let go of my neck. “I’m
starting to make up my own mind about things that are important to
me, Boone.”

“I kinda got
that about you, Verity.”

“So, when it
comes to you, I guarantee you, I’ll make my own decision about
what I want and don’t want.”

My insides tumbled
over themselves, and I got a little scared. Scared that if I got in
too far with her I couldn’t get out. She said she was leaving,
and what if I fell hard? I was probably halfway there as it was.

What was the
alternative here? I could walk away and not ever find out what it was
like to know her. I could protect myself from the promise of pain to
come, or I could go for it. All the way. Get in too far and drown,
drown in the ocean that was Verity.

Like her, I was
sitting on the fence.

Just then Billy Joe
fucking Freeman came around the rectory. When he saw us, his eyes
narrowed and his mouth tightened. Something ugly flashed in his eyes
and I immediately felt protective of Verity.

Verity didn’t
move. She wasn’t at all upset. She looked him directly in the
eyes and slipped her hand from the nape of my neck into my hair.

“Verity,”
he bit out. “I need to speak with you.”

I straightened, and
my short leash with this guy just got shorter. There was something
about him that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Every protective instinct in me jumped to attention. I didn’t
want this situation to turn into a dogfight, but this guy was giving
me a bad, bad vibe. Could it be because when I saw him and the way he
looked at Verity, I just wanted to deck him? Without explanation.
Without any preliminaries. Punch his fucking lights out.

She looked at me.
“I’m busy with Boone and the gazebo right now.”

“Fine, I’ll
be in the church when you’re done.” His tone was clipped
and nasty.

When he walked away,
my gut clenched. I didn’t like it that he was always around
here. I, on the other hand, wasn’t always here, but I was going
to change that. “Really, how is that guy a good choice for
preacher training?”

“I don’t
know,” Verity said, her eyes were focused on me. “I don’t
care about him, Boone.” Her voice was soft and warm. “He
should have those rare qualities you possess. And, you? You should be
a jerk and a bastard, according to your reputation. Just goes to show
you that people in this town don’t know a darn thing about
anything.”

“We better get
to that gazebo.”

She sighed and let
me go.

After she showed me
where she wanted the gazebo built, I staked it out so that I could
visualize the space. She didn’t say anything while I typed
notes to myself into my iPad.

“You look
so…responsible, doing that.”

I chuckled, still
working on the math in my head, and how much wood I would need.
“What?” I said absently.

“Working.”

I took my eyes off
the iPad and looked at her. “It fills me up to the top. I love
my job. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

“Of course,
not. You belong here, part of the bayou. I see that clearly. The
business is doing well?”

“Stellar,”
I said, going back to my calculations and notes. “I’ve
got a job over in Lafayette to do an English garden. I did one for
another lady over there and word’s spread. I’ve had five
more inquiries. Not sure I can even take them on. My cousin just
asked me to landscape Eula Downs.”

“That’s
pretty impressive. I was wrong about you. Did I even apologize for
that?”

“I don’t
know. Everything since that night has jumbled up in my head. I was
getting the fever then.” She stared at me, looking torn up
inside. “Ah, Verity. Let’s just put all our past shit
into the past.”

She slipped her
hands into her pockets, looking like she wanted to touch me again.
Geezus, I wanted to get this girl alone. But I wasn’t going to
do that. Not yet. Verity and I had some getting acquainted to do
before we took that step. I knew we were going to take that step,
because I had missed out on remembering what it was like to have her
in my arms. I got all pissed off again, just thinking about it. But
if I made new memories with her, and she decided to leave, I might
wish that I would forget.

“Maybe I’m
having a hard time doing that. Not sure I should be let off the hook
that easily.”

“I tell you
what, darlin’. When I get you alone and we don’t have
eyes on us, I’ll let you apologize to me any way you like.”

“I have a
feeling you’re going to be a bit more to handle
without
a fever.”

“Outlaws are
never easy,” I said, closing down my iPad. “All done.
I’ve got to head out to Lafayette in a few, but I’m going
to walk you to the church and kind of hang around while you talk to
Freeman.”

“Why?”
she said.

“Because I’m
a jealous fucker.”

She laughed. “All
right.” We turned toward the church. “Outlaws
aren’t
easy,” she muttered under her breath.

I hung back and
checked my messages and returned a few calls. Called Deke and told
him to get over to the church. I needed to get his advice on some of
the dimensions. That kid was a whiz and would make sure my
calculations were correct, then I’d have him pick up the
materials we needed. I watched Verity out of the corner of my eye.
She was being her peach pit self and I wanted to cheer.

I couldn’t
hear their conversation, but all of a sudden it seemed that there was
trouble.

I walked closer to
the sanctuary. Billy Joe gave me a glaring look. “What do you
want?”

“Just checking
to see what’s wrong.”

“You couldn’t
help even if you wanted to. It’s about hymns. What a joke. What
do you know about hymns?” he scoffed.

“I sing all
the time with my demon friends in hell. I know something about
hymns.”

“Right,
Boone. You are just blowing smoke, as usual.”

I knew that was a
reference to my drugged-out time in high school. I looked him in the
eye and inhaled. The words for “Grace Like Rain” filled
my head, the melody clear.

Without music or
accompaniment, the first part of the song mimicked “Amazing
Grace” which happened to be one of my favorite songs to sing.
It was the slow part of the song. When I hit the first verse,
Verity’s eyes riveted to mine, and as I hit the bridge and the
chorus, I dug in with my voice, getting into the song. My singing
voice is deep, with a kind of smoky quality to it. The sound of it
echoed throughout the church, the notes resonating and pouring out of
me. I had perfect pitch and knew music like I knew plants, both
integrated into who I was. All three of us could sing, but I had a
much larger range then my two brothers, and the confidence to sing á
cappella. As I hit the second verse, I wiped that snotty, skeptical
look right off Billy Joe’s face. It was almost as good as
decking the fucker.

It was a song about
redemption, and I knew about remaking myself and changing my life. I
didn’t have to fake the emotion in the song. Singing “Grace
Like Rain” made the connection snap into place and was a
natural extension of my own transformation. That’s what music
was all about, evoking that emotion in others when you let the music
in you fill you up. That’s how the magic happened, how you
reached out and touched people who listened and, better yet, heard
the message in the voice and in the song.

I lost myself in the
music in my head as the passion inherent in the song flowed out of
me, and I lost myself in the middle part and played my voice like an
instrument.

As the last notes
died, I gave Verity an Outlaw grin to end all Outlaw grins. Applause
had me spinning around. Lindsay and her kids, the people who worked
for the reverend, and Deke all stood there.

I bowed with a
flourish and Deke laughed.

“Who was just
singing?!” Reverend Fairchild stood at the entrance to the
church, and I spun to face him as he walked up the aisle.

“It was
Boone,” Verity said, breathlessly.

“Boone Outlaw.
I had no idea you could sing like that, and it seems that our prayers
have been answered.”

Uh-oh.
I thought.

“We need you
for the next two Sundays.”

I just stared at
him. “You want me to sing…in church?”

“Yes, boy. Our
singers are stranded in Arkansas with a washed-out bridge. You
shouldn’t keep a voice like that under wraps.”