Page 54 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

One breath. Two.

Then I look down at the string lights caught in her hair, and I set it down. On purpose. First time in two years. It can sit in the grass till morning.

She tips her head back. "Owen?"

I look at her mouth. She catches me doing it. Neither of us moves for one second, two, and then her fingers curl into the back of my neck and that's the last vote counted.

I kiss her.

On the green, under the string lights, in front of God and the pie table and every gossip in three counties. Slow. No hurry in it at all. Her toes press down on my foot and her breath catches against my mouth and somebody two tables over whoops, and then it spreads, scattered clapping, Debbie Sue's whistle sharp over all of it.

Nellie pulls back an inch. Her eyes are wide.

"They're clapping," she whispers.

"Small town."

"Owen, the whole—"

I kiss her again. She quits arguing.

***

I don't know which of us moves first. That's the honest report. One minute we're on the grass and the next her hand is in mine and we're behind the bandstand where the lights don't reach, and she's got two fists in my shirt and her back against the plywood and I've got one hand braced over her head.

"This is a terrible idea," she says against my jaw.

"Terrible."

"You're injured."

"Not where it counts."

She bites my bottom lip for that one. I deserve it. I chase her mouth back down and she opens for me and the kiss goes from slow to something with teeth in it.

Her hands find the hem of my shirt. Slide under. Flat and warm on my stomach, and my whole body pulls tight like a line under load.

"Nellie."

"Shut up." Her palms move higher. "I've been changing your bandages for five weeks. I've earned this."

I get my mouth on her throat and she makes a sound that the band, thank God, covers. Her head tips back against the plywood. My hand finds the curve of her hip, the give of her waist, then the bare skin of her thigh where the dress runs out.

I slide up under the hem. Slow. Giving her the whole trip to stop me.

She doesn't stop me. She says my name against my ear, ragged, nails biting into my shoulder, and my fingers find lace and the heat of her through it, and we are one bad decision from doing this at a town festival with half the county eating pie forty feet away.

The bandstand wall creaks.

We both freeze.

The band plays on. Nobody comes.

She looks up at me in the dark. And she doesn't pull my hand away.

She presses it closer.

"Owen."