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All these years, she’d been his buddy who happened to be a girl. Now, it was as if scales had suddenly dropped from his eyes and he saw her for the beautiful, sexy woman she was.
“Nice truck,” she said, interrupting his thought, which was just as well.
“Thanks. I got it last year.” Elsa had told him he needed something newer, bigger, faster—something that reflected who he really was. He liked it well enough, but he was just getting it to the point that it was broken in and comfortable.
He glanced over at Trudie, her profile etched in dark relief, familiar yet unfamiliar. He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel to keep from reaching over and tracing the curve of her cheek, wrapping his hand around the nape of her neck and tugging her to meet him until he felt her lips against his and tasted her mouth.
How many times had they shared the cab of his truck? Innumerable, but this time was different. Was it the truck? Was it her? Him? All of the above? Hell if he knew, he just knew it was.
He’d never been turned on by Trudie before. Apparently he was making up for lost time.
* * *
TRUDIE WAS surprised she could still actually breathe. Sharing the confines of the cab with Knox was simultaneously torturous and wonderful. Outside it was dark, cold and snowy. In here it simply smelled like man and dog...and unfortunately, Elsa’s perfume. Regardless, Trudie had more than missed Knox. She’d ached for him, been bereft without him. She would not, however, fall back into that feeling, that trap.
Outside, light spilled out of the storefronts lining Main Street, the windows decorated for the season—some more native-inclined, some geared toward the religious celebration, while others were simply festooned with ribbons, lights and greenery. A makeshift RV city had been set up in the empty lot that was the baseball diamond in the summer. A few hardy souls had actually pitched tents, but for the most part it was travel-trailers behind trucks and motor homes. Trudie noticed a psychedelic painted school bus with a big peace sign on the front hood. The Hatchers were here. They’d been coming for years. It really wouldn’t be Chrismoose without them, just as it hadn’t really been Chrismoose last season without Knox and Mormor. She had missed him.
“So, have you missed me?” Knox said.
His question startled her. She and Knox had spent so much time together for so long they used to complete one another’s sentences, but she’d figured some of that connection would have been lost. She certainly didn’t want him tapping into all of her thoughts and feelings. However, it had always been part relief and part frustration that he’d never tapped into the way she really felt about him. Now would be a bad time to start. Still, after the chasm that had separated them for the past couple of years, it was a little uncanny that his question echoed her thought.
“Have you missed me?” she countered. She tensed inside. His answer meant far more to her than it should have at this juncture. She needed to keep her perspective.
She caught the flash of white teeth as he grinned in the glow of the dashboard, the storefront lights of Good Riddance having been left behind. His smile set off her pulse like a runaway train. The headlights illuminated the world of snowy white around them. “I asked you first,” he said.
Trudie swallowed her disappointment at his nonanswer. She needed to lighten up. “Of course I have. I haven’t found anyone else I can beat at Scrabble as mercilessly as I can beat you.”
He laughed, the warm, rich sound filling the cabin, washing over her like warm water. “Ha.”
“You asked.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
Jessup settled his head more firmly on her thigh and she absently rubbed his soft fur with her left hand, finding comfort in the familiar contours and the press of his weight against her leg.
There was an arousing familiarity to Knox’s hands on the steering wheel—broad, strong hands. Heaven knew how much in the last year and a half she’d longed to feel his hands, his mouth, his skin against hers in the throes of passion. She had thought she’d finally put that behind her.
But, she couldn’t leave the issue Knox had raised alone. She’d answered his inquiry, now he could do the same. “You’ve missed me?”
“Sure. No one makes chocolate chip cookies quite like you do.” There was a forced heartiness to his declaration.
She’d set the standard with the Scrabble statement but nonetheless she wanted to bang him over the head. Her cookies? He’d missed her damn cookies?
He sighed quietly in the silence. “I have missed you, Trudie.” He paused, the words hanging between them, weaving deep into her soul, cracking through the hard shell she’d encased her heart in. “I’m sorry I never called.”
Suddenly everything seemed much better in her world with that one simple admission and his apology. “Thanks.”
While it was good to hear, where did it leave them? Pretty much nowhere. She consciously dialed herself back. She’d never trusted anyone the way she’d trusted Knox and he’d turned his back on her. He’d flat out walked away and left her standing alone and hurting and she’d be damned if she was willing to go there with him again. She’d be all kinds of a fool to open herself to that...and she was a lot of things but she wasn’t a fool.
“We were good friends—” she knew he wouldn’t miss the past tense there “—so of course we’ve missed one another, but that’s kind of life, isn’t it? There’s an ebb and flow to everything, especially relationships. We ebbed. It happens.” She shrugged. Once again, she reminded herself to lighten things up. “So, did you do any fishing last season? I caught a forty-pound halibut last year.”
Knox whistled beneath his breath, impressed. She hadn’t set a record or anything, but as fishing went it was big. “Homer?”
She and Knox had made the trip numerous times since they were teenagers. Homer, down on the Kenai Peninsula, offered the best halibut fishing in Alaska. “Of course. You caught anything good lately?”
“I haven’t been in a couple of years.”
“What?” Okay, she knew it was Elsa but she was going to play it. What the heck? Knox loved to fish. “You haven’t been fishing?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Busy? If she needed any confirmation—which she didn’t—that Elsa was so totally wrong for him, there it was. Of course, she could know it all day, but until he figured it out... “That’s a shame. Life’s too busy when you can’t take at least one day off or an afternoon.”
“Yeah. I know. But I’m going this spring.”
“Well, that’s good. You’ve got to make time for the things you love.” She found it sad, but in a way oddly comforting, that Knox hadn’t been fishing. She’d thought he must not care about her if she hadn’t heard from him, but if he hadn’t even been fishing, and she knew how he felt about fishing...
“I know,” he said, acknowledging her assertion that it was necessary to make time for cherished things. “So, who’d you go fishing with?”
He’d asked her countless times in the past what she’d done and who she’d done it with, but this time his question held a studied casualness. He was quizzing her.
“Dad and I went a couple of times and then I went with a friend.”
“Anyone I know?” There was nothing casual about the question.
“I don’t think so. Jeremy Lyons.”
“No. I don’t know him.” His tone was clipped. “Where’d you meet him?”
“At the fishing supply store. We were both checking out the lures.” She’d immediately liked the stocky, compact guy with the ginger hair.
“Ah. I see. So, have you seen him outside of fishing?”
Technically, it was none of Knox’s business, but she had nothing to hide. “We’ve been out to dinner a couple of times, caught a few movies.” They genuinely had a good time together...except he wasn’t Knox, which was irrationally confounding.
“Is he coming to Chrismoose?”
Once again, she was really close to telling him it was none of his business. There was a time when they would give one another the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on who the other one was dating. That, however, had all changed with Elsa. “Not that I’m aware of.” Jeremy had asked to come. She had told him she’d be busy and accommodations were sparse. She hadn’t offered him to stay at the cabin with her.
“You like him?”
“He’s a nice enough guy or I wouldn’t hang out with him, would I?” Actually, she had stopped seeing so much of Jeremy because he was obviously feeling for her what, at this point, she couldn’t feel for him.
“Guess not.”
The crunch of tires over the packed snow was the only sound in the truck. Coming with Knox had been a mistake. At the least she should’ve driven her vehicle rather than leaving it in the parking lot in town. Instead of the comfortable silences they’d once enjoyed, this was awkward.
