AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I pushed against him, furious that he’d taken on a smug, amused expression, and I stumbled backward in my haste to put some distance between us.Goddamn it, June, I thought, mentally slapping myself.Stop that. Bad June. Bad. You may not lust after your boss. He’s the enemy.
Amos chuckled, low and full of sexy potential.
I fast-walked ahead of him, but a squeezing tickle clenched in my chest and up to my throat, and I coughed hard, bending over. Wilderness. I hated the wilderness. My body hated the wilderness. I felt a wheeze constrict my air as I inhaled hard, and then coughed again, angling my mouth into the crook of my arm and bracing myself on my knee with the other hand.
Amos tilted his head. “Hey, you okay?”
I nodded through the coughing fit and croaked out, “Allergies.”
“Doesn’t sound like allergies,” he stated.
I shook my head as I righted myself, wiping tears from my eyes and willing my lungs to even out. “It is,” I said thickly. “Just bad this year. I always get it.”
“Hm,” he said, unconvinced.
We entered the thick foliage on a hiking path. The trees cast cool shadows overhead, and we moved up an incline as the path headed toward the base of the mountains. It wasn’t the easiest hike. Rocks and roots conspired to twist my ankle with every other step, and the further we walked, the steeper the path sloped. It didn’t take long for the straps of my shoes to dig into my skin, either, and I cursed Amos forthat, too.
After a few moments of silence, in which my lungs burst into flames, I asked, “So, what’s the deal? You’re a clergyman or something?”
“A what?” he asked, almost offended.
“Like, a Mormon bishop or something?” He gave me a confused eye squint. “My dad is the first counselor in the fifteenth ward.” I swallowed, trying valiantly to hide how out of breath I was. “So, you don’t have to like… hide it or anything. He doesn’t like cursing, either.”
“First of all, what Mormon do you know who hides their religion? They talk about it incessantly. Secondly, I think you have me confused with Andrews,” Amos said, smiling slightly and moving gracefully up the path. “He’s the bishop in one of the LDS churches. Not sure which. It’s why he looks like he’s had twenty years drained from his lifespan. That and seven kids. Why would you think I’m Mormon? Lots of people don’t like cursing.”
I gave a shrug. “I don’t know… You’re the only dude I’ve ever known who didn’t have condoms in your gym bag or desk.”
He blinked. “Why on earth would I bring condoms to work?”
“Uh,” I faltered. He had me there. I liked to play it cool, but the truth was, I didn’t have the first idea what sexually active people did, having never been “active” myself.
“So, when you snooped in my office,” Amos said, stopping to put his hands low on his hips, “you found a lack of condoms, paired it with my distaste for cursing, and came up with ‘clergyman?’”
I halted on the path, one foot on a raised root and sweat already gathering along my hairline. “Uh,” I panted, trying to catch my breath, “yeah. Pretty much.”
“Matthews,” he shook his head and moved forward again. “You are something else.”
I hurried after him. “Well, fine, then you tell me why you don’t like cursing. What’s the deal with that?”
Amos looked away in thought and then finally answered, “Usually, I tell people it’s unintelligent and crass, and I don’t like it.”
“What a charmer.”
“But really,” he pressed on with an annoyed glance, “it’s because my dad cursed at me. A lot. And… I hated the way it made me feel. When people curse at me, it brings back those feelings.”
Guilt punctured my heart with a dozen stab wounds. Wow. I was a dick. I had unfairly assumed that he didn’t like cursing because he was overbearing and annoying, and I hadn’t thought to give him one charitable assumption that, if I had stopped to think about it, made perfect sense. Even if he had been an LDS clergyman, I should have respected that.
I floundered for a few seconds, wondering how I could adequately respond to such a vulnerable confession. Finally, I reached out my hand and touched his arm, stopping in the middle of the path. Amos stopped, looking me up and down with a silent question. “Amos, I’m really sorry,” I said. “That was insensitive of me. I should have asked earlier.”
He sighed through his nose, took a step closer, and hooked a finger under my chin with a playful bump. “You’re fine, June. I cuss in my head often enough, and I don’t care if it’s said in jest, but being cursedatisn’t my favorite. Maybe if I were more honest with people about it, I could avoid the whole grouchy bear reputation.”
“Doubt that,” I teased with a smile.
He bobbed his head back and forth, his lips pressed into a smile. “Yeah, maybe not.”
As we started again, I gasped. “Oh my God!”
“Wha—?” he started to ask.
