Susan Mallery: Two of a Kind

Mayor Marsha took a sip of her coffee. “Felicia, I’m sure you’re wondering why we wanted to meet with you today.”

Pia shook her head. “Right. The meeting.” She smiled. “I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations.”

The expected response, Felicia thought, not sure why the other woman was sharing the information. But then they’d hugged, so perhaps Pia thought they were closer than Felicia did. She wasn’t always good at judging things like that.

Pia laughed. “Thanks. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Ask poor Patience. I had a complete breakdown in front of her not that long ago. I’ve been forgetful and disorganized. Then I found out I’m pregnant. It was good to have a physical cause for my craziness and not have to worry about going insane.”

She cupped her hands around her mug of tea. “I already have three kids. Peter and the twins. I love my work, but with a fourth baby on the way, I can’t possibly stay on top of everything that’s happening. I’ve been wrestling with the fact that I can’t be in charge of the festivals anymore.”

Felicia nodded politely. She doubted they were going to ask for her recommendation on who should take Pia’s place. They would know that better than she would. Unless they wanted her to help with the search. She could easily come up with a list of criteria and—

Mayor Marsha smiled at her over her mug. “We were thinking of you.”

Felicia opened her mouth, then closed it. Words genuinely failed her—a very uncommon experience. “For the job?”

“Yes. You have an unusual skill set. Your time with the military has given you experience at dealing with a bureaucracy. While I like to think we’re more nimble than most city governments, the truth is we still move very slowly and there’s a form for everything. Logistics are your gift, and the festivals are all about logistics. You’ll bring a fresh set of eyes to what we’ve been doing.”

Mayor Marsha paused to smile at Pia. “Not that you haven’t been brilliant.”

Pia laughed. “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Felicia can be better than me. If she is, I won’t have to feel guilty.”

“I don’t understand,” Felicia whispered. “You want me to be in charge of the festivals?”

“Yes,” the mayor said firmly.

“But they’re important to the town. I know you have other industries, but I would guess that tourism is your main source of income. The university and the hospital would be the largest employers, but the visitors are the real money.”

“You’re right,” Pia said. “Don’t get me started on how much per person, because I can tell you within a couple of dollars.”

Felicia thought about mentioning she was the sort of person who enjoyed math, then told herself it wasn’t pertinent to the subject at hand.

“Why would you trust me with the festivals?” she asked, knowing it was the only question that mattered.

“Because you’ll make sure they’re done right,” Mayor Marsha told her. “You’ll stand up for what you believe in. But mostly because you’ll care as much as we do.”

“You can’t know that,” Felicia told her.

The mayor smiled. “Of course I can, dear.”

CHAPTER TWO

FELICIA DROVE UP the mountain. She’d left town a couple miles back and was now on a two-lane road with a gentle grade and wide shoulders. She took the curves slowly, not wanting to find herself grill-to-nose with any wildlife out foraging in the warm summer night. Overhead the sky was a mass of stars with the moon only partially visible through a canopy of leaves.

It was after two in the morning. She’d gone to bed at her usual time, but had been unable to sleep. She’d been restless much of the day. Actually since her meeting, she thought. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around what the mayor and Pia had suggested. That she run the festivals.

Her usual response to a difficult problem was to brainstorm solutions. Only this wasn’t that kind of problem. This was about people and tradition and an intangible she couldn’t identify. She was both excited by the opportunity and frightened. She had never shied away from responsibility before, but this was different, and she didn’t know what to do.

The result of which was her drive up the mountain.

She turned down a small, paved road that was marked as private. A quarter mile later, she saw the house set back in the trees. Gideon’s house.

She hadn’t known who else to talk to. She had started to make friends in town, women who tried to understand her and appreciate the effort she made to bond. Funny, charming women who all had a connection with the town. And that was the problem. The town. She needed an outside opinion.

Normally she would have gone to Justice, but he had recently gotten engaged to Patience. Felicia wasn’t clear on all the dynamics that went into falling in love, but she was pretty sure keeping secrets broke a major rule. Which meant Justice would tell Patience what Felicia said, bringing her back to needing an outside opinion.

She parked in the wide, circular driveway and got out of her car. There was a long front porch and big windows that would allow in plenty of light. She would guess that light and sky would be important to a man like Gideon.

She walked to the porch and sat on the steps to wait. His shift ended at two, so she would expect him to arrive shortly. He didn’t strike her as the type to stop in a bar on the way home. Not that she could say how she knew that about him.

The little information she had on Gideon was sketchy at best. Their time together four years ago had been more physical than conversational. She knew that he was former military, that he’d been assigned to covert ops and that his work had taken him places no man should have to go. She knew that he and his team had been taken prisoner for nearly two years. That had happened before they’d met.

She’d never discovered any details on his captivity, mostly because the information had been classified beyond her pay grade. Technically she could have gotten into the file, but Felicia was less concerned about if she could do something than if she should. What she did know was that Gideon had been involved in the kind of missions that were so exciting in movies but deadly in real life. The kind that if the operative got caught—no one was coming after him. Because of that, Gideon had spent twenty-two months in the hands of the Taliban. She assumed he’d been tortured and abused until death had seemed like the best possible outcome. Then he’d been rescued. The other men with him hadn’t made it out.

Headlights appeared through the bushes. She watched Gideon’s truck pull up behind her car. He turned off the engine, then got out and walked toward her.

He was tall, with broad shoulders. In the starlight there were no details—just the silhouette of the man. A shiver raced through her. Not apprehension, she thought. Anticipation. Her body remembered what Gideon had done, how he’d touched her with a combination of tenderness and desperation. His hunger had chased away any nerves.

While she’d studied the subject of sexual intimacy, knowing in her head and experiencing in person were two different things. Reading about the states of arousal had been nothing like experiencing them. Intellectual knowledge of why a tongue stroke on a nipple might feel good hadn’t prepared her for the wet heat of his mouth on her breast. And knowing the progression of an orgasm hadn’t come close to actually feeling the shuddering release that had claimed her.

“You’re unexpected,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

In the starlight, she couldn’t read his expression. She couldn’t see if he was remembering, too. “I need to talk to someone,” she admitted. “You came to mind.”