“Fiona’s aunt,” Peter said, turning back to Mrs. Sullivan. “She’s local—or at least she was, before the fire. Do you still have—”
Mrs. S was already tapping on the computer keyboard, and she interrupted before he could ask. “She was cut from the same unpleasant cloth as the father. I mean, yes. I have her work and various home phone numbers right here—” she pointed at the screen “—but I wouldn’t be shocked if, when I called her, she also refused to talk to you.” She looked from Peter to Shayla, widening her eyes substantially. “Oh! But if you’ll excuse me for just a few minutes, I realize I forgot to start the pot of coffee in the back room. I must do that immediately.” And with that, she turned abruptly on her sensible heels and disappeared through the door to the back, this time closing it firmly behind her.
Shay looked at Peter. “Was that the invitation to break the rules that I thought it was?”
“Yeah.” Peter nodded.
She smiled. “Go, Mrs. S!”
But the little half-door built into the room-long counter was securely locked—and it was designed so that students couldn’t simply reach over from this side and unlock it.
Peter put his hat down and was about to push himself up and over the barrier so he could look at the contact info Mrs. S had left up on the computer monitor for them to see, but Shay stopped him.
“Let me,” she said. “I’m a civilian. Let’s not get you into trouble.”
“I don’t mind trouble,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him off, kicking off her sandals. “Navy SEAL. Middle name’s trouble, I got it. Still. Let’s not tempt fate. Give me a boost.” She made a classic foothold by interlocking her fingers as example, and when he did the same, she stepped into his hands and he lifted her effortlessly up so that her butt was on the counter. She swung her legs over and slipped down, and…There was the info they needed, right on the screen. “Susan Smith—oh, God, yes, with that name, she’d’ve been hard to track—Mrs. S, you are an angel.” She rattled off the phone numbers—home, work plus extension, and cell—as Peter put them right into his phone. “Ooh, as long as we’re here…” A simple downward scroll revealed info—separate no doubt because of divorce—for both Fiona’s father and mother, and Shayla read that to Peter, too. Phone numbers and addresses in—bingo!—Sacramento.
It was easier to get back over the counter from this end, since there was a desk-level surface that she could climb onto with her knees before squatting and getting her bottom up onto the counter. She swung her legs back over.
And then Peter was there to catch her—not that she needed or expected him to do that. In fact, he made her dismount awkward, because she ended up doing a full-length slide down the entire front of his body. His extremely solid uniform-clad body.
Like that wasn’t distracting.
She landed with her toes on the ground, with her hands braced on his shoulders. His hands were on her hips as he still held her tightly, his face mere centimeters from hers.
Up close, those eyes were crazy beautiful—the blue was streaked with white and black and even gold.
Up close, the lines on his golden-tanned face—from wisdom and laughter and spending too much time unprotected in the sun—were even more attractive.
He’s not as young as you pretend that he is.
Yeah, she could see that from this proximity.
Shayla knew that this was a moment. They were having a moment, or maybe she was having a moment, and he was having something else entirely—something weird and embarrassing and awkward. Whatever it was, time suspended and hung as he didn’t let her go and she, likewise, didn’t pull away. But he also didn’t lower his head to do something like, oh, say, kiss her. In fact, he didn’t freaking move.
So kiss him!
Peter’s pretty eyes flickered down to her mouth and then back, because, God, she’d obviously just looked hard at his mouth. And now she was the one who was flashing hot and cold with weirdness and awkward embarrassment, but she still couldn’t pull away.
It’s up to you. He’s too much of an officer and a gentleman.
Or maybe not. Maybe Peter just didn’t want to kiss her. She was, after all, the neighbor—they were friends. Help-him-write-deeply-personal-stories-about-his-teenaged-love-affair-with-his-daughter’s-mother kind of friends. Not touch-the-roof-of-his-mouth-with-her-tongue friends.
KISS HIM!
“No,” Shayla said forcefully in response to Harry’s head-filling demand—except, whoops, she’d just shouted in Peter’s startled face.
He, of course, immediately let her go with a quick “Jesus, sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“No, no! I didn’t mean you! I wasn’t talking to—shit!” she countered quickly, but in scrambling away from him, she stepped on her sandal exactly the wrong way. “Oh, God!” It was reminiscent of a Lego to the bare arch in the dark of night—a full ten on the parental agony WTF scale. This was compounded by the fact that she’d just released the crazy krakens in a verbal geyser that couldn’t be easily explained. That no I just shouted in your face was in response to my invisible friend. Yeah, that was going to go over well.
She completed her current circus act by tripping on her other sandal, and would’ve gone down to the floor if Peter hadn’t lunged to catch her again. She grabbed for him, too, her hands now on the warmth of his skin—deliciously smooth over the hard steel of those insane muscles—as she tightly held on to him just above his elbows and below his shirtsleeves.
And then, because she was an idiot, she opened her mouth and blurted out the words he’d said to her in the truck: “Nice arms.”
It was supposed to be funny or clever or maybe both funny and clever, but nope. And yes, now they were definitely both sharing the exact same type of moment—the weird, embarrassed, awkward kind.
“Yeah, wow, um,” Peter said as he made sure she was steady before he let her go.
Shay’s mind was blank—solidly, stupidly blank—save for the sounds of Harry’s deep sigh and eye roll.
Say something, Harry then urged.
“Did you know that some people can actually taste words?” Shay asked Peter.
Not that. Harry started to laugh his despair.
“No, seriously,” she said, straightening her clothes—her shirt had pulled up a bit, kind of the way Captain Kirk’s did in his classic Trek uniform. The actor, William Shatner, had learned to compensate for the low-budget design by grabbing the bottom hem and giving an authoritative tug downward, and it had become an iconic gesture of decisiveness and command. She now did the same. See? Totally in control. Except for the sound of Harry’s laughter echoing madly inside of her head.