Unfinished Hero 04 Deacon (20 page)

He’d have pie.

I didn’t know how to express how happy that
made me, and I didn’t want to because if I did, he’d probably think
I was crazy.

Instead, taking a page out of his book, I
shared what I needed to say by leaning so far in to him, I was
giving him most of my weight, doing it tipping my head back and
smiling at him.

He took my weight and supported it by
rounding me with his arms.

He also dipped his face closer to mine, doing
this while taking in my smile, before saying, “Plans changed. Fuck
then you feed me.”

That caused a tingle.

“I’m down with that,” I whispered.

Deacon grinned.

Then he dipped his head further and kissed
me.

After that, he lifted me in his arms and
carried me to bed.

* * * * *

Much later, draped part on, partly down
Deacon’s side, my cheek to his chest, as I heard his breath start
to even out telling me he was close to sleep, I whispered into the
dark, “Did you like the pie?”

I got no words, but the arm he had curved
around me squeezed me tight.

He liked the pie.

I smiled against his chest, tightened my arm
draped over his stomach, and kept whispering.

“I’m glad you’re back.”

His body tensed for a moment before it
relaxed and he murmured, “Sleep, baby.”

I sighed.

Then I said, “’Kay. ’Night, Deacon.”

“’Night, Cassie.”

I smiled again against his chest.

Then I closed my eyes.

Eleven

The next day, I was walking through Home
Depot, trying not to let my head explode.

This was because I had been shopping in the
garden center. I’d been grabbing plastic trays of flowers that I
was going to plant in my window boxes and planters and I was doing
this babbling my grand plans of bringing floral beauty to Glacier
Lily. At the same time I was hoping out loud that we didn’t get a
late spring snow which would mean I’d waste hundreds of dollars
since all the plants would die and I’d have to do it again
(something that had happened once before and it didn’t make me
happy).

Eventually, I turned from selecting plants
and jabbering and found Deacon, who’d come with me, had
disappeared.

I was talking to no one.

The mini-welcome home party the night before
had gone great. It was simple: sex, then Deacon eating reheated
meatloaf and mashed potatoes, then more sex, and finally Deacon
crashing because he not only drove to get to me without eating,
he’d done it without sleeping, and this had taken two days. This
last had alarmed me, but then again, he was a thirty-eight-year-old
man. He might need a woman, but he didn’t need a mother. Therefore,
I kept my mouth shut.

The party continued in the morning with more
sex then bacon, eggs, and toast upon which I told Deacon that day’s
agenda included me hitting Home Depot in preparation for bringing
floral beauty to Glacier Lily.

Deacon had grinned (score two of the morning,
score one being a nearly-upon-waking orgasm). Then he’d said he’d
come with me (score three).

I had happy, hopeful visions of shopping with
Deacon (something I looked forward to in a way that might seem
weird to some, but being alone for years, it was not weird to me),
coming home, and Deacon helping me with the flowers.

This had a dual purpose. That being me
getting the flowers planted faster, thus having some downtime to be
with Deacon, and also working alongside Deacon. I had hope, what
with his comments about Grant being lazy, that he was not. That his
assertion that if things worked out between us and he would be
eighty and sitting next to me in an Adirondack chair meant he
didn’t intend to spend the next forty-two years having me cook,
clean, take care of the cabins, and him doing…whatever it was he
did until he quit doing it and ended up doing nothing.

Essentially, I knew it was his day off. Or at
least it was his downtime after being at it
twenty-four fuckin’
seven
for over a month.

But I still believed that working together
could be fun. And if not fun, at least it was together and that in
itself was good.

I continued to score through the morning with
another orgasm Deacon gave me during the shower we took together
and earning another grin when I was ready about five minutes after
he was whereupon I announced as much.

“You’re ready?” he asked, not hiding the
surprise in his voice, leaning a shoulder against the doorway to my
bedroom where he was standing.

“Yep,” I replied.

“No makeup?”

Suddenly, I was uncertain if I was ready.

“Do I need makeup?” I asked.

“No.”

That came quick and firm, so I relaxed. “Then
I’m ready.”

“Your hair isn’t dry,” Deacon pointed
out.

“We aren’t in one hundred percent humidity,
Deacon Deacon.” His lips started curving up at my response and I
kept at it. “The mountains are arid. It’ll dry in no time.”

“So it dries as beautiful as it is with you
doin’ shit to it?”

The warmth only Deacon could give me by being
his brand of sweet came back. It felt good. So I just nodded.

That was when I got the grin before he said,
“Then let’s go, Cassie.”

All went well from there. Me being back in
his Suburban. Deacon swinging into the Mexican Jumping Bean without
my even asking. Deacon being relaxed and calm while driving, even
when some guy cut him off to take a right turn, this making Deacon
brake when he wouldn’t have had to if the guy wasn’t being a
jerk.

Now all wasn’t well.

Now I’d had to leave my trolley with my
carefully selected trays of flowers and spiky and tailing plants
that would
so
work with my vision of floral beauty at
Glacier Lily in the garden center because I had no idea where my
man was and the big flat trolley I had was too unwieldy to shove
through the store.

Someone was going to snatch my plants, I knew
it.

And where could Deacon be? I’d looked through
all the aisles in the garden center (three times).

He was just gone.

I’d called his number, but he didn’t answer
(as usual).

Hurrying through the humongous store, then
going through the back aisles and doing it again, I saw him
standing at the far back looking at ladders.

Ladders.

What the heck?

“Dea…Priest,” I called.

He looked to me but said nothing.

I stopped two feet away. “You left me in the
garden center,” I informed him of information he well knew.

“Need a ladder,” he replied.

I stared at him, looked to the ladders, then
looked to him again. “I have a ladder.”

“Not tall enough,” he stated.

I felt my brows draw together. “For
what?”

“Gotta clean your gutters,” he declared. “May
have to replace some of ’em. Ladder in your shed won’t reach.”

“I don’t need to clean my gutters. I have
evergreens all around my house.”

He turned fully to me. “They drop needles,
woman. And you got aspens, some of ’em tall, not to mention those
three big birches at the front of your house and the elms close to
the river.” I was having difficulty processing Deacon’s knowledge
of my trees as he kept talking. “Rain last night was fallin’ over
the sides, not goin’ where it’s supposed to go. This means the
gutters are probably caked.”

I’d noticed that but it hadn’t occurred to me
my gutters needed cleaned, mostly because I liked that fall of
rain. Of course, not when it was pouring down, then that heavy fall
kind of freaked me out.

I still didn’t think about cleaning my
gutters.

Deacon did and this explained him looking at
what I thought were the trees last night. But it wasn’t the trees.
It was the rain coming over my gutters.

I wasn’t sure how to take this conversation
so I decided it was best to feel my way.

“Are you gonna clean my gutters?” I
asked.

“Not buyin’ a ladder for my woman to do
it.”

Okay, I knew how to take that, as in like it
a whole lot.

Now to the tough stuff.

“Did you think of maybe telling me you were
going to clean my gutters and needed a ladder to do it before
taking off to look at ladders, leaving me talking to myself?” I
asked.

“When I took off, you weren’t talkin’.”

I found this hard to believe, though I did
have to take a breath so perhaps he’d escaped when I did that.

“Still,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t drive to Wyoming, Cassidy,” he
pointed out.

“I didn’t know where you went.” My voice
dipped lower. “And I’ll point out, I phoned and you didn’t answer
again.”

His reply to that was “Phone’s on the
nightstand.”

I blinked.

Who left their phone on the nightstand?

He went on, “Don’t need one when I’m with
you.”

There was a lot there, including the clashing
feelings of being happy he was again demonstrating he was with me
as in
with me
and wanted that without any distractions and
the disturbed feeling that this might mean he didn’t have anyone to
talk to, not that he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t get into that. I stuck with the
matter at hand.

“You do when you take off in a store that’s
as big as three warehouses and I don’t know where you are.”

His head tipped slightly to the side and his
brows drew slightly together before he asked, “Are we havin’ this
conversation?”

In other words, this conversation was a
conversation he felt was ridiculous.

I didn’t agree.

I lifted my hands and dropped them, saying,
“Deacon, you took off and I didn’t know where you went.”

“Did it occur to you that I’d be back?” he
returned.

“Not really,” I shot back, and I knew he got
me because suddenly his face changed.

“Cassie,” he said softly.

“Okay,” I said briskly in order to cover the
vulnerability I’d just exposed. “I’m the woman in your life, not
your mother, so I’ll say this won’t happen often. But right now,
it’s gonna happen.”

The softness in his expression changed, his
lips twitched, and I wasn’t real fond of that (well, I was, just
not right then) but I carried on anyway.

“It’s sweet, you drove hell bent to get to me
but don’t ever do that again. You need to sleep and eat,” I bossed
and kept going so he wouldn’t say anything that might tip my
precarious mood, something I knew could happen because his lips
were still twitching and now his eyes were dancing. “Second, if
we’re at a store—a gigantic one, an average one, a fruit stand on
the side of the road—you don’t take off without telling me where
you’re going.”

“A fruit stand?” he asked and there it was.
That sound I liked so much. The thread of humor reverberating in
his tone.

“Don’t tease me when I’m borderline
pissed.”

“Thank fuck it’s only borderline,” he
muttered, still teasing.

“Just saying, I go back to my trolley and one
single pansy I selected has been taken by another customer,
borderline will be a memory.”

“Can you do that without me at your side so I
can get a ladder?”

I knew he was still teasing, I could tell by
the glint in his eye that made him almost cute, if that could be
believed.

I still didn’t like it (well, I did, just not
right then).

“Are you gonna shove a woman who spent three
weeks thinking that we were finished, and not liking it much, over
the edge in a home improvement store?” I demanded to know, slamming
my hands on my hips.

Half a second later, my hands were not on my
hips. They were on Deacon’s flat abs because he moved, leaning in
to me, hooking me at the back of my head, and yanking me into him
so I had to throw my hands out to brace against impact.

My head tipped back and his came down, so
close, the side of his nose brushed mine, his eyes were all I could
see, and I could feel his breath against my lips.

“No,” he whispered.

That was it.

No.

No, he was not going to shove me over the
edge in a home improvement store after I’d spent three weeks
hurting because I thought we were over. No, he was not going to do
that because Deacon just wouldn’t do that, but also because he
regretted that I spent that time hurting. And no, he was not going
to do that because he didn’t want us to be over either and he’d
thought we were and
he’d
spent that time hurting.

He said that all through his
no
.

But mostly he said it through pulling me to
him the way he did to whisper that one word to me.

Therefore, I leaned in to him to share how
this made me feel and I did it without even giving him a word.

I figured he got me because I was learning
Deacon was good at that.

He kept whispering. “This goes bad, Cassie,
we’ll talk it out. I will not leave you wondering and I will never
leave you hanging.”

“Okay,” I whispered back.

“You gonna return that favor?”

“I hope this doesn’t go bad,” I replied and
saw his eyes fire, showing me he hoped that too, something I liked
even better than standing close to him in the aisle of a home
improvement store, which said a lot. “But if it does, I’ll
definitely return that favor, honey.”

He held me close, looking into my eyes for
several moments, before he murmured, “Good,” brushed his mouth
against mine and let me go.

I teetered slightly when he did, and by the
time I had myself steady, his attention was back to the
ladders.

I watched Deacon studying the ladders. I
looked to the ladders to see there were a goodly number of them,
but only two tall enough to reach my gutters.

I looked back to him and asked, “How long is
picking a ladder gonna take?”

He looked to me. “It’s gonna take as long as
it takes.”