Too Friendly to Date. Nicole Helm
tiptoes. Too close. Her mind told her she was way too close and it was time to step away, but for the first time in years, her body simply wasn’t listening.
Even in the dark she could make out his eyes on her face. Maybe even her mouth. No, he would not be looking there because—
With no warning, no preamble, he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers. A kiss. A real on-the-mouth kiss. Brief. Brief enough she couldn’t even react or reciprocate, and, oh, thank God for that.
He pulled away. “There. Now that’s out of the way. Good night.” And he stalked to the back door of the house.
And she...she was pretty sure she died.
* * *
JACOB STOOD IN the mudroom and scrubbed a hand over his face. He kept thinking if he scrubbed hard enough he could make some sense out of what had happened.
But he couldn’t. He rubbed a little harder, then gave his hair a quick tug. Nope. He’d still kissed Leah. On the mouth. He’d done that.
And he could pretend it had been to get over the jumpy nerves between them. He could maybe even, after a few hours, convince himself it was completely platonic. It was all about the fake relationship.
And nothing about the way her lips had felt on his skin, the gentle pressure of her hand on his shoulder, the smell of old house that lingered in her coat.
But he’d need a few hours to get there and to get the images from that damn movie out of his mind. Out of his imagination somehow tied up with Leah.
“Are you okay?”
Jacob laughed. He couldn’t help it. Just the weirdest damn night of his life. He looked up at Grace standing at the top of the stairs and knew he had to manage a way to not seem guilty. She might think he couldn’t lie, but she really didn’t have a clue.
“What were you two doing?”
“What?”
“I heard your truck pull up at least fifteen minutes ago. What were you doing?”
If she was teasing him, maybe it wouldn’t bother him, but she had that concerned big-sister look on her face and it blanketed all the uncertainty and weirdness and even the kind of giddy confusion.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? I’m worried.”
“We were talking. That’s it. Don’t make this into something I’m doing to hurt Leah. Because I’m helping her.”
Right. Because kissing her was a real big help.
“Jacob, I don’t know why you think I’m trying to hurt your feelings by being worried about you and Leah. I’m not saying you’re a jerk. I’m only saying Leah looks at you a certain wa—”
“Just don’t.” And he walked away. Because if he didn’t, he’d get angry, or worse, he’d want to know all the ways Leah looked at him. He’d had enough angry this year, and he had no business thinking about his friend that way.
Not when Grace was right. For whatever reason, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t make relationships work. And having something not work with Leah was never going to be an option.
LEAH DECIDED TO skip working on rewiring for the morning and focus on errands. Errands that could plausibly wait until, oh, say, next year, but she wasn’t going to let herself dwell on that.
Because, yes, of course she was avoiding Jacob after last night. What the hell else would she be doing?
Leah sighed heavily and glanced at the stoplight. It was getting close to lunchtime. Usually when she was doing errands downtown around lunch and Grace was working, she’d text her and see if she could take a lunch break.
Leah didn’t feel much like seeing Grace right now, either. Or Kelly or Susan, the rest of her MC family who would be back at the big house with Jacob, Susan doing her administrative duties or Kelly working on the interior design of the Council Bluffs project.
If she went back to MC and talked to them, she’d be tempted to tell them about Jacob kissing her and hell to the no.
She didn’t know why she kept saying it like that. He hadn’t really kissed her. Okay, he had, but it was his let’s-get-the-weirdness-out-of-our-system plan. Because if it was a real kiss you didn’t say, “Now that’s out of the way” directly after as if it was some dreaded chore you’d finally crossed off your list.
But damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Quick. Surprising. Completely out of left field, and she still couldn’t stop playing it over and over in her head. She hadn’t even reacted in the moment. She could not read anything into it.
But that was exactly what her idiotic mind was doing.
The play of shadows. The contrast of cold air around her, except where he’d touched his mouth to hers.
Aw, crap, this was trouble.
Maybe what she really needed to do was plan a breakup. It was still a lie, but she wouldn’t have to do this stuff.
Of course, then her mother would hover. Ask if she was okay. Start hinting Leah should move back to Minnesota so someone could watch after her. Just in case.
Just in case.
As an adult she could find more understanding in her mother’s smothering. As a teenager it just felt like an affront, but now she could see it through the lens of a mother desperately worried about her daughter’s health. A legitimate worry considering.
Leah wanted to be able to let that understanding make her easy with it. Accept it without having to make up a boyfriend. Maybe even accept it enough that the thought of moving back to Minnesota didn’t make her throat close up with anxiety.
But she lacked whatever decency would allow that.
She needed her space, her autonomy. She’d never be considered 100 percent healthy, but she was the healthiest she’d ever been. She managed her allergies and her asthma, except for when she was cleaning the other night. She took her medication, only occasionally indulged in alcohol. Ate rightish. Exercised more often than not.
It had to mean something. Not just that she could take care of herself, but that she wanted to. Needed to in order to be happy.
Leah drove back to MC with a heavy weight in her chest. It was strange that this impending visit from her family could twist her up in knots, push all those old insecurities and suffocating feelings to the forefront when all she wanted was the family that had caused those feelings.
She wanted Mom to send her care packages with homemade nut-free cookies. She wanted to talk with Dad over a car engine. She wanted to tease her big brother about being as straight as an arrow stick in the mud.
She’d lost all that in the self-destructive years. The support, the comfort, the family. She didn’t want their suffocating ways of showing they loved her, but she did want their love.
Maybe it was too much to ask for. Maybe she simply wasn’t cut out for it.
She groaned into the silence of her truck cab. Once she pushed it into Park, she rested her head on the steering wheel.
She was not going down the self-pity hole. If the past seven years had shown her anything, it was that she was capable of building the life she wanted. So, all she had to do was keep working at it.
And if that meant things getting momentarily weird with Jacob, well, she’d survive it. She’d survived a lot more than some weird inappropriate crush and a fake relationship.
On a deep breath and determined shoulder straightening, she stepped out of her truck and walked into the back entrance of MC.
Voices drifted through the mudroom from the kitchen.
“You’re