Читать книгу The Best Man - Kristan Higgins - Страница 16

CHAPTER SIX

WHEN FAITH AND JEREMY BROKE up three weeks before the senior prom, it sent ripples of shock through Manningsport High. Who would be prom king and queen, if not the golden couple? Had Jeremy found someone else? If so, who was the lucky girl?

When Jeremy glumly informed Levi that he and Faith were “taking a break,” Levi asked if he wanted to talk about it and was relieved when Jeremy said no.

It was a strange time. All anyone could talk about was where they’d be in the fall. A couple kids were going to the community college, a couple would be going straight into the workforce, but most were headed away and talked endlessly about the need to buy supplies, clothes, a new computer.

As the only recruit in their high school class (though Tiffy Ames was going to the Air Force Academy, and George Shea was Navy ROTC), Levi didn’t have the same issues. His father had cemented the impossibility of college, and the Army felt like a good fit. But in addition to the sense of pride he already felt about serving in the military, a melancholy was descending. He tried to spend a night or two watching TV with his mom each week, knowing she was more worried than she’d say. He took Sarah fishing and read Harry Potter to her, hoping in the back of his mind that if something happened, she’d remember him. She was only eight.

He was ready. He wanted to serve, figured he’d be good at it. He’d passed all his tests, and his recruiter thought he might make a good sniper, based on the psych profile and his innate skill with a gun. Whatever the case, chances were high that Levi would be on the fast track to Afghanistan.

So things like Faith and Jeremy’s relationship status tended not to matter, aside from the fact that his buddy was glum.

Ted and Elaine Lyon had hired him for the spring. They made Jeremy do the same thing, though they didn’t pay him; said he was heir to the land, even if he did spit in their eye and decide to become a doctor (this statement was usually followed with a slap on the back or a hug). This week, however, Jeremy and Elaine had gone to California to visit relatives, so Levi was on his own. “If you don’t mind working solo,” Ted said, “the merlot trellises need checking. You just tie up the vines so the grapes won’t fall off or touch the ground. You’ve done that before, right?”

“Yes, sir. Jeremy and I did that last week in the Rieslings,” Levi answered. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery.

“Great! Thanks, son.” The lady from the tasting room gave him a bag lunch and a big bottle of water, and Levi headed to the western edge of the vineyard, close to Blue Heron, where the land got pretty steep, not too far from the woods.

He worked from the top of the hill downward, one row at a time. The sun beat on his back, and he pulled off his T-shirt after fifteen minutes. It was hot for early May, and he was glad he wore shorts. Might hit the lake for a swim later on, no matter how cold the water was.

He’d been working a good hour and was already damp with sweat when he heard the rumble of a truck. It was John Holland’s red pickup, identifiable anywhere due to its age and general filth...always mud-splattered and crusty. It stopped, and an enormous Golden retriever bounded out, followed by Princess Super-Cute.

She wore cutoff shorts, a white sleeveless shirt, the tails tied under her breasts, and a blue bandanna on her head. Levi felt a generic stir of lust. Nothing personal, Holland, he thought. He’d been stealing looks at her chest since he was fourteen.

The dog ran over to him, tail wagging, and barked once, then collapsed, rolling on his back. “Hey, buddy,” Levi said, rubbing the beast’s stomach.

Faith shaded her eyes and looked at him. “Hi,” she called tentatively. “What are you doing?”

“Tying up vines. You?”

She smiled. “Same thing.” She held up an apron, then tied it on. “My sister’s cracking the whip.” She paused. “I guess Smiley likes you.”

Smiley. Leave it to Faith Holland to have a dog named Smiley. Speaking of, the dog apparently had had enough of a scratch, because he leaped up and went romping through the vineyard rows, tail waving.

Faith, however, came to within two rows of where he was, and he braced himself for questions about Jeremy, or an explanation, or a discussion. Girls, he well knew, liked to talk about their feelings until they had nothing left to say, at which point they’d start repeating themselves.

Instead, she bent over and started doing exactly what he was. Except she was better at it. The apron held twist ties, and she didn’t have to check each shoot the way he did. She was kind of a pro, actually.

And when she bent over, there was that mighty rack on display. He didn’t have a lot of use for Faith Holland, but, man, that was a nice pair.

She glanced up. Busted. “I thought you were more of the princess type,” he said as explanation. “Run out of townies to do the grunt work?”

She just laughed. “If you’re a Holland, you’re a farmer,” she said. “If you’re a farmer, you work. You don’t just gaze out over the fields and sip wine.” She gave him a knowing look and twisted on another tie, her fingers fast and clever.

“Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess you were.”

She bent over again, and the lust felt much less generic. “So this is the property line, huh?” he asked.

“Yep. See that stone marker up there? That’s what divides Blue Heron from Lyon’s Den.” She secured three vines while she was talking, reminding him to drag his eyes off her breasts and get back to work.

She moved steadily, bending, sometimes kneeling, holding a cluster of the dusky grapes in her hand from time to time, and somehow, out here in the field, everything she did looked unabashedly sexual. She was soft and round and sweaty now, her red hair in pigtails, basically any male’s fantasy of a farm girl.

Jeremy’s girlfriend, dude, his conscience chided.

Except they weren’t together anymore.

“So how you doing, Holland?” he asked, surprising himself.

She glanced over at him, then stood up, taking the bandanna off her head and wiping her face, then retying it. Yep. Everything she did looked like she was on a Penthouse photo shoot. Except for the clothes. If she’d take off the clothes, things would be perfect.

Damn.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

What did he ask? Oh, right. Jeremy. Maybe he’d finally come out of the closet. Or maybe she’d guessed.

“When do you leave for basic training?” Putting her hands on the small of her back, she stretched, her breasts straining against her shirt.

“Uh, July twentieth.”

“Are you nervous?”

He started to say no and put forth some of the bravado expected. “A little,” he heard himself say. “I’ve never really been away before.”

“Me, neither.”

“You’re going to Virginia, right?”

“Virginia Tech. It seems like a great school, but now all I can think of is how far it is from here.” She gave him a funny little smile, half sad, half embarrassed.

“You’ll do great. Everybody likes you.” Aw. Wasn’t he being super-sweet?

“Not everybody,” she said, twisting those little ties with amazing speed.

“No?”

“You don’t.”

Well, shit. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

She laughed. “It’s pretty obvious, Levi,” she said. “You think I’m spoiled and irritating and ditzy. Am I right?”

Right now, I think you’re edible. But yeah, I think you should be able to tell the difference between a straight guy and a gay guy. “Pretty much.”

“Well, you’ve always been a snob.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You’re the one with the big house on the Hill.” He tied up a vine.

“Doesn’t make me a snob.” She flipped a braid over her shoulder.

“And I am?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “You never talked to me till this year, and even then, it’s only because of Jeremy. And even then, only when you have to.”

He didn’t answer, just tied up another vine. “So everyone has to adore you, is that it?”

“No. But we’ve known each other since third grade. We were both in that special reading club that Mrs. Spritz had, remember? And I invited you to our Halloween party.”

Oh, yeah. Pumpkin carving and apple bobbing and a haunted hay ride. That’d been a fun night, even if it had been weird, being in the famed Holland house. “Right.”

“But I wasn’t cool enough for you to talk to. And when my mother died, you were the only one in our class not to write me a note.”

He felt his face flush. “Quite a memory you got there, Holland,” he muttered, tying up a few more branches.

“Well, you always remember people who hurt your feelings.”

Oh, the poor little drama queen. “So you wanted to come to the trailer park and play?”

“One time,” she continued, “I sat next to you at lunch, not to be near you, just because it was the empty seat next to Colleen. And you got up and moved, like you couldn’t stand to sit near me.” She stood up and put her hands on her hips, and the lust stirred again, even as she was listing his sins. “So.” Her voice was calm with just a little edge to it. “Who’s the real snob here, Levi?”

Girls. Way too complicated. He missed Jess, who more or less used him for sex. At least she was direct. He bent over and tied up another dangling vine, lifting up the grapes carefully. “You’re not very smart in the ways of the world, are you, rich girl?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He gave her a look. “I would.”

“Why?”

He remembered how she and her mother used to come down to West’s Trailer Park once in a while with a bag of clothes for Jessica. Lady Bountiful and her little angel, visiting the poor. Sometime around fifth grade or so, he’d found Jess hiding in the little cave of scrub bushes they used as a fort, waiting for the Hollands to leave. She’d been crying. Even then, he understood. Being poor was one thing; having the people on the Hill decide you were their charity case was another. Levi’s mom may have had to work two jobs, and money was always a worry, but they’d done okay. Scrappy, his mom liked to say.

But the Dunns had been truly poor. Food stamps and electricity turned off kind of poor. No way they could turn away a bag of nice clothes and coats. Small wonder Jess hated Faith.

His silence seemed to make Faith mad. She grabbed a vine with gusto, her movements sharp, rather than flowing now. “It’s funny that you think we’re rich. We’re not. We’re not even close.”

“I grew up in a trailer, Faith. Your idea of rich and mine are pretty different.”

“Which made it okay for you to hate me all these years.”

“I don’t hate you, for crying out loud.”

“No. You just ignored me and made me feel like a lump, and God forbid we should ever be friends.”

“You wanna be friends? Fine. We’re friends. Let’s play Barbies and go to the movies.”

She rolled her eyes and bent down to tie another vine. “I never understood why Jeremy thinks you walk on water. I think you’re a jackass.”

“Now, see? I want to be friends, and you’re calling me names.”

“Jackass.”

“Does this mean no tea party later on?”

She glared. He grinned.

And then she blushed, her cheeks growing pink, color staining her throat and chest. Her eyes fluttered down his bare torso. Then she jerked her gaze back to the vine and fumbled for a tie. Dropped it.

Well, well, well. Levi’s smile grew.

“You’re doing a crappy job,” she said, glancing back at his row. “You need to use more ties, or the grapes will be too heavy, and you’ll lose the fruit.”

“Is that right,” he murmured. Actually, his work had gotten spotty only since she’d arrived.

She came over to his row and demonstrated. “This one, see, it’s off the ground for now, but when the grapes mature, they’ll get too heavy. See?”

“Yep.” She smelled like grapes and vanilla and dirt and sunshine and sweat. The stir of lust became a throb.

“Tie it up higher,” she said, kneeling down to demonstrate. Faith Holland, on her knees in front of him. How could he not picture what he was picturing? “Just go back along what you’ve already done and make sure you got everything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Her shirt brushed his ribs as she stood up and went back to her row.

Keep your eyes to yourself. And get going. The Lyons are paying you. You can jerk off later.

The mental advice worked for an hour.

She was much faster and steadier than he was, he had to give her that. He looked at the sky, which was a perfect, endless blue, and decided it was time to eat.

“You want some lunch, rich girl?” he called. She was twenty yards or so ahead of him.

“I brought my own,” she answered.

“Then do you want to eat with me? Now that we’re BFFs?”

“Such a jackass.”

“Is that a yes?” He lowered his chin and gave her a patient look, something that had always worked well with girls.

“Sure,” she grumbled.

Hey, idiot, his brain chided. She was dating your best friend a few days ago. What are you doing?

But the facts were blurring fast. First of all, there was the whole Jeremy-shouldn’t-be-dating-a-girl thing. Speaking of Jeremy, he wasn’t even in the Empire State at the moment. Then there was the breakup, or whatever they wanted to call it.

And let’s not forget the sight of a dewy and dirty Faith Holland in cutoff jeans and a shirt tied under her generous chest, and the fact that she was irritated with him, which Levi had learned generally meant a girl was interested.

She came over to him, taking out her braids and retying her hair in a ponytail. “There’s a nice place about five minutes from here. By the falls. Do you know it?”

He shook his head, looking at her steadily. She had blue eyes. He never really noticed before. Freckles.

She swallowed.

Oh, yeah. Faith Holland was feeling some feelings.

“Come on, then,” she said. They walked up to her father’s truck, the dog running ahead. Levi grabbed his shirt from where he’d dropped it and pulled it on.

John Holland’s truck smelled pleasantly of old coffee and oil, just as dirty inside as the outside, the dashboard and seats covered in dried mud and dust. Smiley jumped, his feathery tail hitting Levi in the face. “Sit, pooch,” he said, and the dog obeyed, his furry side pressed against Levi’s arm. Seemed like the Hollands always had a Golden retriever or two. There was always one in their brochures.

“You guys breed these monsters?” he asked Faith as she started the truck and put it in gear. The fact that she could drive a made-in-America pickup truck with a standard transmission only increased her hot factor.

“We belong to the Golden Retriever Rescue League,” she answered. Smiley licked her face as if thanking her.

“Just another act of mercy from the great Holland family,” Levi said.

“Jeesh! Stop being such a pain or I’ll push you out of the truck and eat your lunch.”

The truck jolted and rocked over the grassy, rutted paths that ran between fields, causing Levi to practically crack his head on the roof of the truck (but also treating him to a great view of Faith’s bouncing cleavage). After about five minutes, they stopped at the edge of a field that was being cleared...the Holland family owned a ton of land. Woods were thick on one side.

Faith grabbed a blanket from behind her seat and a thermal lunch box (Hello Kitty, could’ve called that one). The dog raced off into the woods, and she followed on the little path without waiting for Levi.

Birds called and fluttered in the branches. From somewhere not too far away came the rush and splash of a stream. Levi tried to imagine looking out and seeing land, acres and acres of field and forest, all the way down to the lake, and knowing it was yours, and had been in your family since America had been a baby. Levi’s mother’s family was from Manningsport, too, but there were people who’d been around, and then there were founding families.

Over to the left was the ruin of an old stone barn, the rocks covered in lichen. A sapling grew in the middle, the roof long gone.

“You coming?” Faith called from up ahead.

Thick mounds of moss blanketed the ground, and the leaves were so green the air seemed tinted with it. They passed a huge grove of birch trees, the white bark glowing, and the edges of hemlocks brushed Levi’s cheek as he walked. He slapped a mosquito, and a chipmunk peeped and ran across the narrow path.

The sound of rushing water was louder now. Faith had spread out the blanket on a rock and sat down. Juicy as a ripe peach. An image of her under him, legs around him, practically made him stagger.

He really had to stop thinking this way.

They were at the edge of a deep gorge, a waterfall cascading into a round pool about twenty feet below them. He wished he had a camera so he could look at this picture when he was deployed, baking in the sun of Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever the Army would send him. He’d show it around. This is where I’m from. I had lunch with a pretty girl right on this rock.

“Nice,” he said, sitting next to Faith.

“The pool’s pretty deep,” she said, pointing as she took a sandwich out of her lunch box. “Maybe twenty, thirty feet. Jack says it’s bigger underwater. Like a bell. He used to jump off that rock there.”

“Did you?”

She glanced at him and took a bite of her sandwich. “No. Too scary for me. Honor never did, either. Said we’d already—well. No reason to risk your life just for the sake of it, you know?”

“Sure.”

They ate in silence, the dog coming up to beg for a scrap. Birds twittered, the waterfall roared. Beside him, Faith finished her sandwich and seemed content to just watch the water. The mist of the falls had coated her hair in tiny beads, making her look like a slightly pornographic woodland fairy.

“Well,” Levi said, suddenly aware that he’d been staring at Faith for too long, all sorts of hot, red thoughts pulsating through him. “I’m going swimming. Which rock do I jump off?”

“Oh, Levi, don’t,” Faith said, jerking to attention. “My phone’s back in the truck. What if you hit your head or something? A tourist got a concussion a couple years ago. My brother broke his arm when he was fifteen. It’s not safe. Please don’t.”

It was kind of nice, her begging for his well-being. Then again, that pool was frickin’ gorgeous. He shrugged. “I’ll try not to break anything.” He stripped off his shirt, well aware that he was a pretty fine specimen. Pink crept into her cheeks, and she shifted her gaze straight ahead. “You coming, Holland?” It sounded like a proposition.

It was.

“Absolutely not,” she said, all prim and proper. “Don’t do it. I have to get back to work, anyway. So do you, right? And really, jumping is dangerous.”

“I’m going into the Army in two months, Faith. Jumping off that rock is probably less dangerous than an IED or suicide bomber.” He winked at her, went to the rock and looked down. The water was green and clear, churning where the falls poured in. “Geronimo,” he said, then pushed off.

He went in feet first, shooting down, the water swallowing him, cold and silky and utterly beautiful. Opening his eyes, he could see that Faith was right—the pool expanded underwater by about ten feet, the stone walls like a church. He’d always been a pretty good swimmer, was one of the first into the lake each spring. This, though...this was unbelievable, so smooth and deep and secret. He ran his hand over the stone, amazed and a little sorry that he’d never been here before.

The thought came to him that if he’d been Faith’s friend, he might’ve seen this place years ago.

Then he kicked to the surface, and looked up to see Faith’s worried face above him as she peered over the edge. “Come on in, Holland,” he called, treading water. “Live a little.”

“Live is the key word,” she said. The dog’s face appeared next to hers, looking much happier than she did.

“I’m still alive. Come on. I’ll catch you.”

“You won’t catch me. I’m not a little kid, and it’s a twenty foot drop.”

“I’ll be right here. Don’t be scared.”

Her expression changed. She wanted to, he could see that. “Rich girls,” he called up, swimming over to where a thin outcropping of rock stuck out into the pool, like a natural diving board. He grabbed onto it, aware that it would make his very healthy muscles bunch. “So boring.”

“I’m not rich,” she said.

“Well, you are boring if you just sit there and watch when you could be down here, having fun with me,” he said.

She hesitated. “I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”

“So?” Oh, yeah, he was making progress. Faith in a wet, white shirt, her red hair streaming down her back...even the cold water wasn’t keeping his body from appreciating that image. “Come on, Holland. Do it for me, a young soldier about to leave home to protect your freedom.” He grinned up at her, and after a second, her expression changed from worry to something else.

“Fine. But if I die, you have to tell my father in person, okay? And you have to take care of Smiley, because he’ll miss me. He sleeps on my bed.”

“I promise your dog can sleep with me if you die. Now get in here.”

She went to the edge of the rock, and even from his vantage point, he could see her bare toes clenching. Retied her shirt more firmly, hiked up her shorts. “Okay, Private Cooper. Here I come.”

Then she jumped, her hair sailing out behind her, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched. She cut into the water about ten feet from him, then popped up almost immediately, her hair in her face, spluttering and coughing.

Levi swam over to her, and she grabbed onto his shoulders instinctively, clutching him hard, her breasts pushing against his bare chest. He put his arm around her waist and swam over to the outcropping, which she grabbed with one hand.

Her other arm stayed around his shoulders, and her legs kicked between his, treading water, her smooth thighs brushing his. She didn’t need to hang on to him, but she did. Her heart thudded against his, fast and hard, and he realized she was scared. From the jump, maybe. And maybe she was scared of him...maybe that, too.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered.

This would be it. A moment to take with him, the feeling of her sweet, wet softness, her cheek against his, treading the clear, pure water as the waterfall gushed and the leaves rustled and sighed.

Faith pulled back a little, her eyelashes starry with water. He could kiss her. He could just lean in an inch or two, and their mouths would be touching, and he’d bet she’d taste so sweet. His hand slid up her ribs, so close to her breast that she sucked in a shaky breath, and lust, hot and heavy, flowed through his blood.

He kissed her as gently as he knew how, not wanting her to push away, wanting only this, just one kiss. Her lips were soft and cool and wet from the water, and he couldn’t help himself, he licked her bottom lip, she tasted so good. When she opened her mouth, he wanted a lot more, suddenly starving for the taste of her, abruptly rock hard. He pulled her hips against him, letting her know, and her fingers dug into his shoulders, her tongue answering his, a soft little sound coming from her throat, and it was so, so good he couldn’t think, he could just drown here, more than happy to have this be his last day on earth.

Then she broke away, pushing away from him and scrambling up onto the rocks

“I—I—I can’t,” she said over the rush of the water.

It felt empty without her against him. Empty and cold.

“See, um, Jeremy and I, I mean, we’re... We’re not really... It’s a break. We’re not officially... So I can’t. I can’t kiss anyone else.”

“Whatever,” he said idly. Except he was furious, all of a sudden. Not just with her, either. With stupid Jeremy, who’d probably never kissed her that way before, who had no idea how. With himself, for kissing his best friend’s girl. But, yeah, mostly with her. If she didn’t want to kiss him, maybe, just maybe, she shouldn’t have been hanging on to him like a spider monkey. She’d wanted that kiss, and he’d given it to her, and now she was Polly Purebred again.

Ah, crap. He’d just kissed Jeremy’s girlfriend.

“We should get back,” she said, her voice tight and pinched. She turned her back to squeeze the water out of her shirt. She did the same to her hair. Her hands were shaking, he noted. She turned around, her shirt clinging to her. If she’d been braless, he might’ve had to kill himself. As it was, the cold water (and rejection) were doing wonders for his condition. “Levi, I hope you won’t be...”

“Mad?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said casually.

She bit her lip. “Um...I don’t think I’ll tell Jeremy about this. I mean, it would just hurt him. Right? So I won’t say anything.” The plea in her voice was clear—And you won’t either, right?

He swam to the rocks and hoisted himself out of the water, watching as her eyes scanned him. That’s it, rich girl. Heterosexual male. Enjoy. He walked over to her and stood very close. “You know, I always did think you were ditzy and spoiled and irritating,” he said in a low voice. “But before today, I never thought you were a tease.”

With that, he made his way back up to their adorable little picnic area. The dog woofed at his approach and again offered its belly, but this time, Levi ignored him. Instead, he grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, picked up his brown bag and headed back to work for the Lyons, walking through the Holland fields in the bright light and hot sun.

Faith, he noted, didn’t return.

That weekend, Jeremy called him, his voice its usual bouncy tone. “How you doing, bud?” he asked. “Wanna hang out?”

“Sure,” Levi said. Whatever guilt he’d felt about kissing Jeremy’s girlfriend he’d managed to ball up and toss into the dirty laundry area of his conscience. Hell, he told himself, he’d have kissed just about any female under the circumstances. It had just been a bad case of...whatever. “How was California?” he asked.

“It was great,” Jeremy said. “And I have some good news. Faith and I are back together.”

“Not surprised,” Levi said. Like she was gonna dump the golden boy. The star quarterback. The future doctor. The heir to the Lyons’ vineyard.

Levi saw Faith at school, of course. Jeremy’s angelic girlfriend, who couldn’t tell the difference between a guy who wanted to bang her silly and a guy who didn’t.