Lucky in Love (9 page)

My cheeks flushed and I quivered reflexively inside at his words. Except, Chance probably meant to sleep. And how the heck could I be thinking of sex when there were corn monsters out there waiting to eat me?

"I'll just stay in here," I said. There was no way I was going out there with the
creeptastic cornfield. Chance could be standing outside my window naked, beckoning to me with chocolate bonbons in one hand and a frosty bottle of beer in the other, and I still wouldn't go out there.

"Suit
yourself," he shrugged. He turned the car off, and got out.

I sat there for about twelve seconds, listening to the ticking of the engine and absorbing the fact that it was probably 3:00 in the morning and there was no moon to conveniently light up anything that might be skulking towards the Buick. I didn't know what was worse—the stalk-
stubbled ground illuminated by the headlights or the complete absence of light. I threw open the door and jumped out, running smack into a solid figure. A short scream escaped me and I started flailing with my fists. Strong hands manacled my wrists and a deep laugh penetrated my hysterical moment of piss-yourself fear.

"Damn it all, Chance, you scared the shit out of me!"

"Calm down," he said, pulling me to his side and draping an arm heavily over my shoulders. The weight was comforting. "I know about your cornfield phobia, remember? I wasn't going to leave you out here all by yourself."

He opened the door to the camper. "You got a flashlight in here?"

I was mad at him for scaring me but I wanted to get the hell out of the open.

"Yeah," I said, reaching around him to the side of the doorframe, where I'd mounted a flashlight to the wall. It was a big steel mag-lite style torch, vintage, of course, and I shook it to make sure I'd remembered to put batteries in it. Flicking the switch, I breathed a sigh of relief when the beam shone out brightly.

The flashlight easily lit up the small space that felt even smaller with Chance pressed in behind me. To the right was a bench seat that pulled out into a double bed. To the left, a kitchenette, with a tiny sink and doll-sized stove. Against the far left wall, a dinette booth that could comfortably seat a couple of children. In front of us, an itty-bitty closet held a few spare outfits. Everything was covered in cheerful chrome, blonde veneer, glossy baby blue paint and vintage-inspired cotton prints. As a kid, I'd always wished I could shrink down and live in my dollhouse. As a grown up, I'd found a way to do it. 

"Girly," was all he said.

I climbed up, the floor shifting a little under my feet.
If this trailer's rockin'…
I thought, and smothered a punchy giggle.

Chance moved up behind me. In about a half a step, he was on the other side of the trailer, looking very big and masculine against the kitschy owl-print curtain behind him.
The side of his mouth quirked up in a grin. "It suits you."

I flushed a little. "We're going to have to bunk together," I said. "Accommodations are limited." I pulled the bench out and adjusted the cushions into a mattress. The cupboard above held blankets, and I pulled down a few warm Pendleton wool ones. The temperature was chilly and it wasn't going to get any warmer.

Or maybe it was. My mouth went a little dry as I watched Chance kick off his boots and strip off his jacket. In jeans and a white t-shirt that hugged muscles in his chest that had only been hinted at in high school, he was gorgeous. Except for the shoulder holster with the mean-looking gun he was currently unbuckling. I shivered, and he misread it.

"Hurry up—you're cold."

I quickly turned my back and took off my knit cardigan, slipping out of my red Converse flats.
Ooh, sexy,
I thought to myself wryly, glancing down at my black ankle socks with the white stars all over them. My wide-legged sailor jeans and black and white striped top were old-Parisian cute, but definitely not pin-up material.

"You take the inside," he said a little gruffly. "I'll be close to the door in case of any trouble."

Nodding, I climbed into bed, pulling one of the plaid blankets over myself. The wool was scratchy, but warm.

The wooden legs of the pull-out bed
creaked a little as Chance settled in beside me with a blanket of his own. He switched off the flashlight and pulled out his phone to set the alarm. "Get some sleep," he said. "We're going to be in Vegas by tomorrow night, and this is your last chance for some uninterrupted shut-eye."

I nodded, even though he couldn't see me.

It wasn't the biggest bed and Chance wasn't the smallest guy, and I could feel his heat radiating down my right side. My heart twisted a little—he was so close, but really, really far away at the same time.

"Chance," I whispered after a few minutes, staring up toward the ceiling.

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't you come back?"

"When?" He sounded half-asleep already.

Seriously?
I thought, my temper sparking. "Uh, after high school?"

I felt him turn, looking toward me. "Lucky," he said slowly. "I explained everything in my letter."

Now it was my turn to be surprised. "There was no letter," I said. "Jack told me you went to visit your grandma in Alabama before you started classes at Columbia, and for months after, every time I asked him, he just told me he hadn't heard from you and you must've found a girlfriend there."

"Jack always was an asshole." Far from sounding shocked, or even annoyed, Chance just sounded reminiscent. Meanwhile, the mercury in my internal thermostat was about to explode and spray fury everywhere. "I gave a letter to him to give to you before I left. You really had no clue I had enlisted?"

The haircut. The mention of IED's—not IUD's. The tracery of scars networking his forearm and the one I didn't remember that cut through his eyebrow. Hell, even his posture was different.

I sat up suddenly. "You're in the army?" I yelled.

Chance just folded his hands behind his head. "Was. And I was a Marine, actually. I've been out a year or so now. I wondered why you never wrote back—I just assumed you were still mad because I hadn't told you I was talking to a recruiter."

My eyes narrowed. "Okay, so Jack never gave me the letter—which he will be answering for—but why did I get a 'Dear John,' anyway? Why—" I almost brought up our first and last time together, but stopped myself.
"Why a letter? You couldn't tell me in person?"

Chance sighed.

"It was years ago, Lucky. I was a kid. We had this thing going on." He, too, verbally danced around the elephant in the camper with us. "And you had all these stars in your eyes…."

"Oh," I bit out. "So you just assumed I'd tie you down and you wanted to get on with your big, fun adventure of life."

"Would you have wanted to wait around for me?"

"You idiot," I said, slamming my fist into his stomach in an awkward punch. To my horror, tears lurked in my voice and I swallowed them back. "Of course I would have waited for you. I loved you." Crap, I had not meant for that to slip out.

He sat up, rubbing his stomach.

"Okay, that was high school love, which never lasts. Don't try to guilt me into believing you've been waiting around all this time for me. Every time I talked to Jack, he couldn't wait to update me on all the guys you'd been seeing. You didn't even wait a month after I was gone. I mean, come on. Kenny Switzer?"

That startled a laugh out of me. "Oh, you should have known right then he was lying. Kenny Switzer was dating Addy. Jack couldn't stand Kenny Switzer. And neither could I, for that matter. All he ever talked about were soybeans. Remember, he was FFA and his plans after high school were to move to Nebraska and farm? And, not that I'm anti-ginger or anything, but his head looked like a house on fire."

Now Chance was starting to look pissed and I felt a little better. For sure, my brother had a lot to answer for. And he would pay. Oh, how he would pay.

"Matter of fact," I added. "Kenny married Kelly Harrison—remember her? They did move to Nebraska, and I saw on Facebook that they have four adorable kids with hair just like his."

"Well at least someone's happy," Chance snarled.

Ironically, my mood brightened as his turned foul. Sure, my brother had probably screwed us both out of a possible happily-ever-after, but it wasn't
me
. All these years, I'd figured I had some deep fatal flaw that I couldn't recognize in myself, when I really just had a sociopath for a sibling.

"That's all I needed to know," I said, lying back down and scooting deeper within my blankets. Chance didn't move and I could make out the dim white outline of his t-shirt. "It's not like I never moved on or anything—I've had plenty of relationships," I felt compelled to add. "I just always wondered."

Chance turned so quickly, I squeaked.

His came down over me, his arms bracketing my head, and his face was so close to mine, I could smell the mint of a stolen
Altoid on his breath and catch a faint glint from his eyes in the gloom.

"You really never got the letter?" he demanded in a low, urgent voice.

"No," I whispered, half wondering if I'd already passed out from sleep deprivation and this was all an awesome dream.

His mouth crushed down on mine. Automatically, my hands struggled free from where they were tangled in blankets and trapped between our bodies, and I did what I'd
been wanting to do since I first saw him again in the church parking lot. I slipped them underneath his t-shirt, sliding them over his hot, taut belly and up his chest.

For Pete's sake, the man was built. If this was a dream, I wanted to relish every second of it.

Chance must have thought the same thing because even as he caught my lower lip between his teeth—I couldn't believe he remembered how much I loved that—he groaned and tangled his fingers in my hair, holding my head still while he ravaged my mouth.

My hips shifted, rubbing against him in blatant invitation, straining toward him. Even through a layer of wool and two of denim, I could feel the heat and hardness of him and it made me dizzy.

Then, incredibly, I had to turn my head away. It was too much, too fast, like running headlong up Mount Everest. I was overwhelmed.

"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely, burying his face in the side of my neck, fighting for control. I was so sensitized that I swear I could feel each hair on my neck tingle as his breath touched it.

"It's just that, all these years, I thought—"

"It doesn't matter," I interrupted softly. "You were right. We were just kids. It probably wouldn't have worked out anyway."

He kissed me on the forehead, and I was glad it was too dark for him to see the stricken look on my face. He rolled away, while I struggled with what felt like the goodbye kiss I never got the first time around.

"Probably a bad time to rehash the past anyway.
We've got other things to think of." His voice was controlled again, like the past three almost-orgasmic minutes had never happened.

I shifted to my side, my back to Chance, and pressed my face into the cardigan I'd wadded up for a pillow.
Tried to focus on the fact that the tip of my nose felt frozen. Tried not to feel like my heart had been broken all over again.

Chapter 15

I woke abruptly, sun streaming in through the tiny, cheerful owls flecking the curtain in front of me. The trailer rocked heavily as Chance jumped to his feet, and there was a rumbling, squeaking, rolling roar sounding deafeningly outside. We were under attack.

I fought to free myself from the blankets as the roar subsided to a deep, grumbling whine that seemed to shake the ground under us. Chance slipped the gun from its holster, and flung open the door to the trailer, keeping his hand with the gun out of sight of whoever was out there.

"Howdy," came a yell over the din. "You know this ain't no campground, right?"

Pulling back the curtains, I peeped through to see a wizened old man in
Carhart coveralls spit off of his perch on an ancient Farmall. The keeper of the creepy cornfield, I assumed. He turned off the engine of the tractor, and it subsided with a wheeze and a grunt.

"Sorry about that," Chance apologized, lying the gun down on the countertop unseen before stepping out in his bare feet. "I'm afraid we got a little turned around on the road last night and this looked like as good a place as any to stop." That wasn't all that got turned around, I suddenly remembered with perfect clarity and a pang of remorse for spilling my guts the night before.

The farmer studied Chance with inquisitive black eyes that reminded me of a robin and then turned his attention to the Roadmaster. "Aaah," he sighed enviously. "That's one prime piece of car you've got there."

I quickly stuffed my feet in my sneakers and shoved my arms into my sweater sleeves.

"It's mine!" I clarified quickly, jumping down from behind Chance. I had no idea that my hair was spiraling out every whichway in wiry reddish sprigs and I still had some post-wedding mascara smudged under my eyes.