A tensile thread of awareness stretched between them, taut and shimmery, and he was so busy trying to figure out what the hell to do with it that he completely missed Owen’s shot except for the swish of the net.
“That’s G for you. I win!” Owen exclaimed after Riley took a wild shot and completely missed the hoop.
“Good game, kid.”
“How about two out of three?” the boy said.
Riley looked at Claire. “How about another day? I should go say hello to your mom.”
“Okay. I have to pee anyway.”
Riley set the ball down on the standard’s base, paused to pet Chester’s brown droopy face, then headed up the three porch stairs, the memory of the kiss they had shared the last time he’d seen her playing over and over in his head. He relentlessly tried to shut it down by reminding himself of all the reasons why kissing her was a lousy idea.
Still, he couldn’t resist brushing her cheek with a light, friendly sort of kiss when he reached her. If he inhaled the scent of her, fresh and lovely as the spring evening, that was nobody’s damn business but his own.
“Thanks for playing with him for a few minutes,” she said and he wondered if he was imagining that slightly husky note to her voice. “It’s a little tough for me to go in for a layup right now.”
“And I would guess the cast on your arm probably plays havoc with your shooting percentage.”
She smiled. “I guess I’m a wuss in that respect. A cast doesn’t seem to bother Owen, obviously.”
“I hear you went back to work today,” he said after an awkward pause, perching on the white gingerbread railing that encircled the house.
“Wow. Really? I wasn’t aware it made the Hope Gazette.”
“I sometimes think the Gazette is a waste of paper around here. I mean, who really needs it because everyone knows everything anyway? Donna Mazell apparently stopped in on her lunch break. She told me about how you’ve got a nice comfortable chair set up by the register like the Bead Queen of Hope’s Crossing.”
“Queen Claire. That’s me. I forgot Donna came in. She was looking for polymer beads for a project she’s doing with her grandkids.”
He didn’t know polymer beads from pinto beans, any more than he’d been able to figure out just how exactly Donna had guessed with such accuracy that he might have a particular interest in the comings and goings of a particular bead-store owner of their mutual acquaintance.
“She said she walked out of the store with about seventy-five bucks in beads she hadn’t planned to buy and had no idea what she was going to do with.”
Claire smiled. “It’s the beaders’ curse. Knitters, too. They call it SABLE—Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. I’ve got more beads in my personal collection than I’ll ever be able to use. You tell Donna she may as well give in. Resistance is futile.”
Now there was something he could relate to. He had no power to resist the inexorable pull tugging him to her.
His bodily functions apparently taken care of, Owen burst through the front door and started to head back to his basketball, but Claire’s voice stopped him.
“You need to go make sure you’ve got everything you want to take to your dad’s tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Okay.”
He turned around and raced back inside at that full-throttle speed Owen seemed to use for everything.
“I didn’t realize they sometimes went with Jeff and Holly on weeknights.”
“Tonight’s a special night. Jeff’s birthday.”
“Ah.”
“We’re pretty flexible with the custody arrangements. Right after the separation, we tried fifty-fifty joint physical custody for a while, but it was tough on the kids. One week here, one week there. They never felt like they really lived in either of our places. After Holly and Jeff got married, we decided weekends with their dad worked better all the way around except for special occasions because that’s when he had the most time to spend with them anyway.”
“Macy doing homework?”
“She actually went shopping with Holly for birthday stuff after school. Owen would have gone with them, but he had Cub Scouts this afternoon, until a little while ago.”
This was nice, he thought. Sitting here on her porch in the evening while birds flitted through the trees and a light, mountain-scented breeze ruffled his hair. A curious feeling stole through him, so unaccustomed that it took him a moment to identify it.
Contentment.
Even with his unfulfilled attraction for her, the ache in his gut he knew would never be satisfied, he enjoyed her company so much he didn’t mind.
“I interrupted you. What were you working on when I pulled up? Something for your shop?”
Her eyes lit up with excitement. “We had this idea down at the store today.”
“I’m guessing by that you mean you had an idea.”
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear so the breeze couldn’t play with it anymore. “It really was one of those group-think situations, everyone throwing out ideas.”
“Everyone being?”