One More Kiss (7 page)

“Certainly is,” Betty said, smiling again like she knew precisely what was bothering him, and went back to the text.

The seconds ticked by slowly. The air in the shop hardly moved. Sunlight seared bright squares on the floor, heating up the space even more. He caught a whiff of Betty’s scent—it reminded him of whipped cream and lavender—and his body temperature ratcheted another few degrees. Without thinking, Randall pushed up the sleeves of his sport coat. Betty lifted her eyes from the bulletin text as he did so.

“This is wonderful, really perf—” She stopped, staring at his forearms. For a moment, everything in the store was frozen, including Betty. “Are those
tattoos
?”

She stared openly at the brightly colored ink etched into his skin that he had, momentarily, forgotten.

Only he never forgot.

He never showed his markings to anyone. It could be a hundred and ten degrees out, and he’d still find a way to cover them.

Shoving down his sleeves, he stepped away from the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you weren’t meant to see that.” His heart was pounding. No one in this town knew he was tattooed.

That is, no one until now.

He immediately asked God to forgive the string of curse words coursing through his mind.

Betty walked from behind the cash register to stand next to him. “I never knew you had those,” she said, staring at his now-covered forearms.

“That was the point,” he said, looking over her head so he didn’t have to see the curiosity in her eyes.
The tattooed pastor.
He clenched his jaw, knowing what was coming next.

How did you get them? Why do you have them? What do they mean?
A picture of his brother flashed through his mind, and he grimaced. Betty must have seen the motion. She stepped closer.

“Hey, easy there. I’m not going to tell anyone if you’re worried about the whole town knowing about your ink. It’s no big deal.”

Instead of plying him with questions, she inched closer still. His chest tightened as she placed her fingers on his forearm. He felt the searing contact, even through his clothing.

Her head came just above his shoulder. Her golden hair was so close. He could rest his cheek on top of it if he wanted to, and feel the silken softness of it. Instead, he stayed rigid and unmoving, terrified of what would happen if he allowed himself an inch with this woman. He would take her for everything she was worth, and ruin them both in the process.

He watched as she gently pushed up his sleeve. Her movements were slow and deliberate, as if she was trying to get close to a wild animal. Nothing quick, nothing startling.

He wanted to pull away. He wanted to rip his arm free and tell her this was his secret, his past,
his
story
, and she had no right to it. Only he couldn’t. He was immobilized from her touch, from her gentleness.

She slid his sleeve almost up to his elbow. With one hand holding his wrist, she used her other hand to trace the outline of his markings. She touched the feathered wings of his Phoenix, its tail ending in flickering flame. She followed the creature’s path with her finger as it reached for the branches of a knotted, gnarled oak tree. Her touch was both agonizing and wonderful. It burned through him like wildfire as she outlined the rough bark of the oak, the twisted branches, all the way to the tips, which eventually became wrenches and bolts and drill bits. His breathing had turned ragged. He never wanted her to stop.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. She looked from the ink to his gaze, and he was surprised to see wonder there. Not amusement or, worse, distain for the bawdy design on a Lutheran pastor. “It’s stunning,” she said, “truly.”

Now
, he told himself. Now he would rip his arm from her grasp and stalk out of the room, hoping to avoid her until at least Sunday. Instead, he lifted his arm—her fingers still touching his skin—and placed his palm against her face. He exhaled at the rightness of it. He had wanted to touch Betty Lindholm for months.

She leaned into it and closed her eyes. She clutched him harder, as if trying to stay upright.

He watched her, tensing. His body was warning him all over again that his secrets were dangerous because
he
was dangerous. His heart couldn’t be trusted.

Except right here, touching Betty’s face, he didn’t feel dangerous. He felt as much at peace as he did in the sanctuary, when he delivered his sermons and prayed to God.

“Betty,” he said. It came out sounding like a plea—but whether to stop or keep going, he wasn’t sure.

She licked her lips and he was instantly hard. He wanted to taste her, to rip off her skirt and do untold things to her. He held back, though. He couldn’t let himself have all that.

He was a pastor, after all. And he wouldn’t take those things without love and commitment—and God help him, honesty—underscoring all of it.

Would he?

Oh, but she was right there. She was so close.

He leaned forward and her eyes flew open. There were scant inches between them. He could feel her breath on his skin, sweet and warm. He inhaled, moving his hand from her cheek to the back of her neck. Her eyes dropped to his lips.

“My brother and I had matching tattoos,” he said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. Something about her had him determined to speak the truth. He pulled her body closer to his. He wanted her to feel his heat, to feel his desperation and the darkness of his past. He wanted her feel it and know the visceral facts of it and run far away from him.

She
should
run.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her gaze unflinching.

“What happened?” she asked.

He let himself feel the fire of hot want for her. He let the past come back so that its blackness could cover them both, and so she would know the truth of who he was. And leave him alone—forever.

“We repaired old cars together,” he said, his voice low and full of an edge that sounded like pain, “and called it Phoenix Autobody because we said it was like getting old junkers to rise from the flames again. And my brother, Shawn, he was good at it. So was I. We got the tattoos because that business—that was what we were going to do. The two of us, working side by side as brothers and as best friends.”

He took a breath. Betty tightened her arms around him. “And?” she asked.

“
And
the only problem was that we didn’t just fix cars. We drank. Hard. We partied and we lived life like it was something we had to conquer. We were young and full of ourselves, and for a second there, it was glorious.” He could still feel the wild, reckless abandon of it, and the joy that had come from living life hard, with no restraints.

He shifted. Betty held on. He inhaled her scent and forced himself to go on. To tell her all of it.

So that when he was done, she could get away from him.

“Until,” he said quietly, “our older brother Gus held an intervention. He was in med school at the time, he was always such a good kid, and he wanted to help us. I blew him off, but Shawn listened, and he decided enough was enough. He started to go to some AA meetings with Gus’s help and it was like—well, I wasn’t there yet. I wanted to keep going, to keep partying and never stop. I wanted us to be wild brothers together. I didn’t know how to be anything else. I loved him, and I loved our reckless life. We were—this sounds nuts—but we were like legends in our hometown up on the Iron Range.”

“Tell me,” Betty whispered, her lips nearly grazing his. “Tell me what happened.”

He almost took her then. He almost brought his hot, searing lust down on her and ripped at the tights on her legs to put something between them besides this story. To distract them both with lust and desire. But he steeled his resolve and forced himself to finish the story.

“There was a Camaro,” he said finally, “that we’d been working on. We’d just about finished up on it, and I took it for a spin. I’d had, I don’t know, five or so beers by then. I was eating up the back roads, blasting the stereo, and feeling like a king. I was thinking, screw Shawn, and I was wondering if maybe I should go into business for myself. I knew I was good, but more than that, Shawn was ripping me up inside. He was nagging me about things constantly once he started AA—about my messes, about being on time and not hungover for things—and I was sick of it. More to the point, I was hurt by it. Like he suddenly thought he was better than me or something. And honestly, at that time, I couldn’t find any middle ground when it came to him. Like either we were two halves of the same person, or he was a stranger to me and I hated him.

“So then the Camaro gets this shimmy, and I bring it back to the shop, and I’m going to work on it, when Shawn says
he’s
going to take the car for a spin. And I should have told him. I should have said, ‘No, man, there’s a weird shimmy and I need to work on it first.’ But five beers in, I handed him the keys and thought, ‘If you’re so much better than me at everything, you figure out what’s wrong.’

“Only he never came back. The shimmy was a broken strut, which isn’t a big deal by itself. But we were on these crazy back roads. And Shawn, he hit a huge bump on a curve, and he lost control of the car. It flipped and hit a tree. And then he was gone. And I—I killed him. I killed my own brother and now…” He trailed off, pain tightening his chest.

“Now what?” Betty asked, a small tremor in her voice.

“Now,” he said, staring deeply into her blue eyes, “I have vowed to live enough of a life for Shawn and me both. I have begged for Gus’s forgiveness and in the process I promised to let my guilt make me good. I have promised that I’ll never go back to that untamed place again. I’ve promised that my heart will never be wild again. I am frightened of losing control. Of what that can do.”

Betty stilled when he was done with the story. She didn’t move. Their faces were nearly touching, his body was rock hard, tense, and unmoving. He expected her eyes to widen with shock or even horror at what he’d just told her. Deep down, part of him wanted her to untangle her arms from his neck and tell him it was too sad a tale and that she had no need for it. To let him walk to the door and let that be the end of it.

The other part of him wanted Betty to do exactly what she did. Which was look at him with steely determination and redouble her grip. “You didn’t kill him, Randall. You didn’t.”

He shook his head. “I did. After it happened, I went to seminary and became a pastor, to let a higher power take control of my life, but I haven’t let myself feel anything like I did back then. That wild passion. I haven’t known it for a long time. I haven’t
wanted
to know it. Until…”

He clutched the back of her neck. He tilted her head so they were perfectly aligned, should their lips meet.

“Until now?” Betty asked.

Their breath mingled. Her whole body trembled.

“Until now,” he answered in a whisper.

“Is it so bad?” Betty asked. “This passion? This feeling?”

“No,” he replied, pressing against her so she could feel the hard length of him. She inhaled sharply. “That’s the problem. It’s glorious. And I don’t trust it. I don’t trust myself with it.”

“Even now? All these years later?”

“Even now. Shawn is still dead. And I can’t trust that my behavior won’t lead to destruction all over again.”

“You won’t harm me,” Betty said. She strained under his hand. He could feel desire coiling in her body, same as it was in his.

“I might,” he said, even as his desire heated a few more degrees. It was a wonder the two of them didn’t melt together.

“I’m strong enough to take a chance,” Betty said. Her lips were wet. He wanted to taste them so badly his jaw clenched. “Test me, and let’s find out.”

She lifted her hips against his. “Betty, I don’t—”

“Kiss me.”

His body ached for her. He almost relented. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a pastor. I can’t just…make out with you.”

Her mouth curled into a slow smile. He loved watching the motion. “You’re a pastor, but we’re also two consenting adults. You should kiss me.”

“What if I can’t stop?”

“That’s a question I’m not afraid of.
Kiss me.
”

His muscles twinged with pain. His body strained. He wasn’t going to make her say it another time.

He brought his lips to hers, hard and determined, in an explosion of feeling. Bright white light blazed behind his closed eyelids as he tasted the woman he’d desired for so long.

Her mouth was hot and alive. She moaned and twined against him. He felt the fullness of her breasts against his chest. He palmed his way from her waist, up her ribs, grazing her sides. She raked her fingers through his hair, pulling hard enough to cause pain. He didn’t mind. In fact, he welcomed it.

“Randall,” she breathed, and his name on her lips sent molten lust coursing through his bloodstream. He kneed apart her legs and hiked up her skirt. The tights were black and thick. He reached for them, wanting to tear away every inch of clothing that stood between them. He grabbed the fabric and wrenched it from her skin, the rip like a sound of victory.

She gasped as his fingers found the flesh of her inner thigh, creamy and white and suddenly exposed. Her body shuddered.

“Touch me,” she said, her back arching slightly.

He inched his fingertips higher, and her body quaked. She clutched his shoulders, her fingers digging into his skin, even through his sport coat.

“I want you,” he said, even as he knew he should profess something besides raw desire. Commitment probably. They should start with that. They should take it slow. He should conduct himself with more integrity.

Nevertheless, his fingertips strained toward her center. She moaned again.

“Tell me how it feels,” he said, sliding the fabric of underwear aside, and touching her. She was soft and wet and he almost lost himself right there. His blood was pumping in a way he hadn’t known for years.

She answered him with a kiss instead of words, driving the motion of it, letting her tongue lead his in strokes and swirls. It seemed impossible that he could want this woman any more than he had previously. But his body was somehow engulfed even more, his brain was filled with her scent, the small noises she made deep in her throat, the solidness of her fingers grabbing at him.