Sins & Needles(29)

“We used to humiliate each other all the time. You’re trying to make me look like a cross-dressing Tom Selleck.”

“That’s different. And we had our own rules back then. You knew how I was, so you’d only dress me in pants or long skirts.”

His lower lip moved back and forth as he studied me. “I thought you’d have gotten over it by now.”

My eyes nearly bulged out of my head. “That’s not exactly something you can get over, Camden.” The absolute nerve of him. “I’m not like you. I can’t just get over every shitty thing that gets thrown my way.”

He focused on me intently. “I don’t get over everything.” His voice had dropped a register or two and flowed out of him like a snake.

I broke away from his gaze and took my hand off the hanger. “Well, so then you know. Look maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. I mean, we’re twenty-six years old and playing dress up…”

I took in a deep breath and turned to face the changing rooms. My face looked back at me from the mirror. I didn’t like that view either.

Suddenly I felt him behind me and his arm going around my waist. He turned me around and pulled me to him, then embraced me in a hug. All our clothes and hangers dropped to the floor, and over his shoulder I saw the cashier getting off her stool to look over at the clatter.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m being an insensitive jerk.”

He squeezed me tight enough to make breathing hard. I patted him lightly on the back, not wanting to see this side of him, not over something like this.

“It’s fine,” I told him, trying to sound breezy and not at all caught off guard. “I just get a little touchy over it. It’s…it’s something I’m working on.”

He held me in a pause of silence. I heard the buzz of the dim overhead lights and the rustle of the newspaper as the cashier resumed reading.

“You’re still such a brave girl, Ellie,” he said softly, sadly. “It’s too bad.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant it was too bad I was brave or the situation was too bad. While I was mulling that over, he let me go and scooped up our clothes. To my relief, he stuck the skirt back on the rack and focused behind him where the women’s pants were. In seconds he had plucked out a pair of skin-tight, orange leopard-print leggings. Insanely tacky. It was perfect.





CHAPTER SEVEN





After the antics at the thrift shop were over and we walked away with a hideous mix of materials, our next stop was to pop into the grocery store and stock up for our meal. Thankfully, we were only wearing our crazy outfits for dinner and didn’t have to go into the store looking like total lunatics.

Camden decided on filet mignon which he wanted to grill on his new barbecue, with a side of asparagus. You couldn’t get a sexier meal than that, unless you threw in some oysters. To Camden’s brazen credit, he did check at the seafood department but they didn’t have any. I decided to supply the wine and picked up two bottles of deep, bold reds.

“Do we look like alcoholics if we have two bottles?” I asked him, holding them both up, one in each hand.

His eyes sparkled. “Hold on, stay like that.”

“Like with wine in the air?”

He put down the grocery basket and came toward me while I stood frozen. I was like a statue of the world’s most enthusiastic wino.

He pressed himself against me, leaving barely any room between us, and with those searing baby blues trailing from my eyes down to my lips, he cupped my face with one hand. I closed my eyes, gripping the necks of the bottles extra hard, and felt his lips press against mine. They were soft, warm, and sweet. It felt like I didn’t have a hard bone in my body, just this lightness and sunshine.

Then I felt the wet brush of his tongue along the inner rim of my lip and I almost dropped the bottles.

He pulled back before I could readjust my grip and attack him more voraciously. That was probably a good thing considering we were standing in the middle of Safeway in Conservative Old Person Central.

“What was that for?” I asked breathlessly, finally lowering the bottles. My arms had been shaking but from the strain or the kiss, I didn’t know.

He picked up the basket and gave me a nonchalant look. “You looked cute. What can I say?”

“I thought maybe I looked easy, with the wine and all,” I joked, hoping my cheeks would stop flaming.

“Oh. Well, that too.”

A half an hour later, while my lips still tingled from our first kiss (well, second kiss, if you wanted to get really technical), we were back at Sins & Needles and taking the groceries up to where he lived on the top floor. The front of the house with the porch was the entrance for the shop, while the entrance to the upstairs was from the side of his house, also where he had a small garage. I noted that it was used as a woodworking shop instead of for keeping the Jeep.