They finished their cider in silence and climbed back in the truck. Callie immediately twisted around in her seat to check on their new passenger. “Will he be all right back there?”
“He?”
“It’s a male pumpkin.”
“Of course. Pumpkins have gender?”
“Everything has an essence that defines its sex.”
Nick struggled not to laugh. Her serious expression forbade it. “I see. It’ll—he’ll be fine. Are you sure you don’t want to buy him a lady friend before we go?”
“I’m sure.”
Nick just shook his head. Faerie logic would be the death of him yet.
The morning’s destination was a scenic overlook abutted by a crumbling, moss-covered stone wall. The view rivaled anything visible in the Fae realm and made Callie homesick. She shivered in the autumn breeze. Nick put his own jacket around her shoulders, and her heart thumped wildly.
“It’s colder than I expected up here.” He stood close, and Callie leaned into his warmth, wishing for the endless summer of her world. “There’s the road back to Bayerville. If you look past that farm and along the tree line, you can see the hiking trail that leads to the skating pond.”
Callie followed Nick’s tour of the fiery landscape lit with brilliant gold and orange foliage. Country traffic meandered along thin ribbons of road that wound through the hills. Here and there, the familiar shapes of grazing horses and cows dotted the hillsides, and not a single cloud interrupted the endless blue of the October sky.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, fighting to keep her voice light. “It reminds me of home.”
“What’s your world like? Do the seasons change?”
“Not like they do here. We have a time when the leaves change color and a time when the flowers bloom, but it never becomes unbearably hot or cold. We don’t get rain…unless we want to create some. It never gets dark.”
Nick surveyed the land spread out before them. “Rain isn’t so bad. Sometimes it can be…sort of comforting.”
“You love it here, don’t you?”
Nick seemed reluctant to answer, but Callie felt his thoughts. He wanted this to be his home, but he didn’t want to need it so badly.
“It’s nice here. It’s nice in a lot of places I’ve been.”
“You love open space. You hated the time you spent in the cities, didn’t you?”
He nodded, snaking his arm around Callie’s waist, making her stomach flutter. “I hate smog. Traffic. Subways.”
“I bet you love snow, don’t you?”
He grinned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Snow is nice. It’s a little too cold for me. What else do you love?”
“I love sleeping in hammocks and cold lemonade and…”
“What else?”
His eyes narrowed on her, and she sensed his discontent. “I can see right through you, Tinkerbell. This is some kind of lesson, isn’t it?”
Callie feigned innocence. “I just want to know more about you.”
“I hate mind games and psychobabble.”
Callie pulled away from him, though she was reluctant to leave the safe circle of his arms. “It’s not a game, Nick. When love is gone—it’s all gone. You’ll lose it all.”
“I said I’d help you with this mission of yours—”
“It’s for both of us, Nick. Not just me. I want you to understand that.”
“I’m trying.” He stepped forward and tilted her chin up with his fingers. “Tell me what you love.”
His lips hovered close to hers, and Callie’s breath caught. She could kiss him now and make him feel something he wouldn’t want to lose. But that wasn’t her mission. She moved back just enough to break the hypnotic pull between them.
“I love helping people fall in love. And I don’t want to lose that.”
The rest of the day passed in a blur of crimson leaves and blue sky. They drove through the forest and back and had dinner in a small café that sold hand-churned ice cream and dusty antiques.
Nick stayed close to Callie, aware of the glances of other men and feeling proprietary. By the time they returned home, the buzz of arousal had replaced the light mood of their afternoon.
He followed her up the stairs and hesitated before unlocking the door. “Did you have a good time today?”
“I did. Maybe we can do this again sometime before…”
“Before what?”
“Before I go.”
“We don’t have to think about you going right now, do we?”
“No.”
He centered his gaze on her lips, pink and moist, still sweet from the peach ice cream he’d bought for her. He wanted a taste, and the sleepy-sultry look in her green eyes told him she did too.
He leaned in, his fingers creeping up under her jacket. A second later his lips nearly collided with the doorframe, and his hands closed on empty air. He caught himself before he stumbled, face first, through the door as she opened it from the inside.
“Hi, Nick.”
“What was that about?” He leaned one arm above her head on the doorframe. “I almost kissed a brick.”
“I’m sorry about that, but we’re not here to fool around.”
“I wasn’t fooling.”
“Nick.” She put a soft finger across his lips and leaned close. The faint smell of roses teased him. “No distractions.” She turned and walked into the apartment, disappearing into the kitchen.
Nick watched her go. He’d been shot down before, not often, of course, but there were certain women on which the Garrett charm just didn’t work. Somehow, his borrowed intuition told him Calliope was not one of them. He’d seen desire in her eyes, felt it each time their fingers touched. Something held her back, though, and he vowed to figure out what it was. He needed to uncover all her secrets, and he wasn’t going to let her disappear without knowing exactly what she was all about.
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Cherrie Lynn, Sweet Disgrace
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