Tinkering with Love, page 7
The word impossible came to mind.
Alton crossed his arms and sighed. “We also have the tape and string.”
“So do they.” She waved a hand around to the other tables. “That doesn’t give us any advantage.”
“All I know is the clock is ticking and we are the only ones who haven’t done anything yet.” Taylor rested his elbows on the table.
“To be fair,” she countered, “Everyone else has been eating the marshmallows.”
Taylor reached for two and popped one in his mouth before offering the second to her. She took it with a slight smile and ate it. These were fast becoming a weakness for her.
“What if we give it a wider base and build up, narrowing it as we get higher?” Alton’s question yanked her focus from enjoying the sweet treat.
She looked at Alton. “Okay, like a square base or are you thinking hexagonal or what?” She inched her chair closer. “We could probably do that, then repeat it, so it’s wide, narrow, wide, narrow, like that.” Swiping a handful of marshmallows, she showed them.
Taylor looked skeptical but Alton seemed to be on board.
“Not sure that will hold up.” He swallowed. “But you’re the manager, so if that’s how you want to go.”
She immediately held up her hand. “No, no. I’m not the manager here. All I am is Falcon Cabin. You have an idea, let’s hear it. We’re a team.”
They decided on replicating the Chrysler building.
Head down, she got to work, building levels and trusting Taylor to put it together. He didn’t do a layer at a time, he got sections done and added them with Alton’s help. Dawson stuck to building the sections. She did it as quickly as she could while the guys spoke to each other about the best way to secure them together.
Even so, she couldn’t help but look over at the other tables. Okay, specifically, Tully’s table. All through breakfast she’d replayed the light brush of his beard against her skin this morning. Not to mention that body. Holy craptastic. The man was built. No spare inch of flesh on him, that was for sure.
What she wouldn’t give to have the privilege of spreading her fingers and moving along that hard torso…
“Dawson.”
“Huh?”
“Next section.” Alton reached out a hand.
“Right, sorry.” She picked it up and passed it over. Then she worked on the top. As she ate another marshmallow to try to hide her nervousness as the clock wound down from their not nearly long enough time, she slid back from the table, not wanting to jostle it.
“That’s time!” Picard called out. “Step away from your structures.”
Everyone moved with caution and Dawson figured most were holding their breath like she was.
“Rachel and I will come measure everyone’s and we’ll announce a winner and provide the prize.”
Maria’s table had the smallest one because it toppled before Picard and Rachel even made it to their table. Flora’s looked like the Eye of London. But it was Tully’s table who won, not by much, but then again, it didn’t take a lot to do so.
Still, it was impressive; they’d built theirs to replicate the Eiffel Tower, well, as much as one could with marshmallows and dried spaghetti. He, Ruby, and Elijah began dancing and singing that they’d won until the Eye came spinning through the air and smashed into their design, taking it down. Sending dried pasta and marshmallows—such a waste—to the floor.
They were given gift certificates to a local business.
“Okay, a ten minute break, then we meet back here for the next game.”
She went to the bathroom and washed her hands. When she walked out, she found Tully leaning up against the wall, barely under the protective awning. His features were unreadable but his body language was tense.
“Something wrong?” She realized in that second, despite everything, she trusted him to keep her safe. Unfortunate news she would have to think about later.
He grasped her wrist and put her against the wall, then caged her in with his arms. Those damn arms she couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Mr. Faulkner—”
“Tully, damn it. My name is Tully and you know it. This is a heads-up for you, Dawson Shay. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m dreaming about you. And right now, all I want to do is kiss you. I won’t, but I’m giving you a warning now that that’s what I want.” He leaned in closer and sniffed her neck. Dawson angled hers to the side, giving him more space. “God, do I want that.”
Then he was gone.
“And to think you were giving me shit about Elijah.”
Mortified that Flora had witnessed that moment of weakness on her part, Dawson shrugged. “At least we weren’t fucking in a cabin instead of team building.”
Flora grinned. “Oh, trust me, there was team building going on.”
Dawson rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” They walked out into the rain and headed back to the lodge entrance.
“And you’re jealous that you’re not to that point with Tully.”
She slowed and looked at Flora. “I’m not looking for a relationship with him, Flora.”
The women paused inside the building, away from the others, where their conversation couldn’t be overheard.
“Who said anything about that? Tap it and move on if you want. But I have to say, it will do you a world of good to get that stick out of your ass and loosen up.”
“Stick out of my ass?”
Flora sighed. “You’re a great person, Dawson. We love you but we also see how you are to Tully and honestly, we don’t know why. He’s a sweet guy, always there for his friends, and even if you aren’t friends, he’d give you the shirt off his back. But you seem to want to hurt him, and all we can figure out is you’re attracted to him and upset by that.”
“We? Who’s been discussing this?”
“Maria, Ruby and I. We talked last night after the campfire.”
Anger unfurled but she struggled to tamp it down. She’d asked, so it wasn’t right for her to be upset by the answer she’d received.
“I don’t think he is who you think he is. That’s all I can say. I’ll be nicer to him, though.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ll try.”
“We’re your friends, Dawson. You can talk to us.”
Patting Flora on the arm, she shook her head. “It’s fine. This is a thing between the two of us.”
“We already got on him for not listening to you before. He knows he fucked up there.”
God, they were laughing at her already. Perhaps her moving here had been as big a mistake as her mother was sure it was. “We should be getting back, wouldn’t want to get in trouble again.”
Dawson walked away, leaving Flora to follow. Instead of claiming her usual seat next to Ruby, Flora, and Maria, she lowered herself to a chair beside Lee and didn’t look over to the women, just kept her attention at the front of the room. And Rachel de Laroche.
“Okay, everyone ready for the next game?”
As before, only Maria cheered. Rachel frowned at the rest of them and looked around the room, her gaze slowing as it moved over Dawson.
Tully got up and walked around, placing small plastic bags in front of everyone. He came to her table last and sat beside her after distributing. Her heart kicked up to a new speed and she refused to look at him, pretty confident her hunger for him would be all over her face.
He wasn’t playing fair, telling her he wanted to kiss her and not doing it. Unfair.
Not that she would have been in better shape now if he had kissed her yesterday, but then she wouldn’t be sitting here wondering what it would be like to feel the press of his lips on hers.
“The clock will begin when I sit down. Remember, you have five minutes to build your design and we will go around the room and explain what we did. Thirty seconds for that.”
Rachel sat and Dawson realized she’d totally blanked out all the instructions again. This was becoming a bad, and potentially detrimental, habit of hers. She needed to stop thinking about the man she was supposed to be sabotaging and focus on bringing him down. Erm, nope, making him look bad.
Dawson exhaled sharply and shook her head. Here she was doing it again, losing time when she needed to be acting.
She stared down at the bag in front of her. Blue Lego bricks. Slicing her gaze around the table, she realized that everyone had them. Same color and it looked like the same amount.
Opening her bag, she pulled all ten out. It didn’t matter how many times she blinked, it didn’t change what she looked at or the fact that she had no clue what she should be doing. Other than building. But what?
“Were you daydreaming while our fearless leader explained the rules?” Tully’s voice was a feather of warm breath along her neck.
“No,” she lied.
His chuckle was soothing. Damn it! “Right, of course not. Build something that you are hoping to get from this week-long event.”
“How the hell am I supposed to build, ‘Get home alive’ with ten bricks?”
He laughed this time, drawing the looks of those around them. If it bothered him, he didn’t let on. Dawson refused to look over at Flora’s table. She was still working through that bit of betrayal in her mind.
Eyes firmly on her own bricks, she thought about it and started building. They’d been given ten and even though they weren’t all the same size, it didn’t take that much time to put together ten.
“Time!” Rachel stood and took in everything on each table. “Lee, stop messing with yours.”
The man continued to work. To Dawson, it appeared to be a heart of sorts.
“Lee!”
“I’m confused,” he said. “Are we going by our real names or our cabin names?”
“Whichever happens to come out of my mouth,” she snipped. “Stop working.”
Lee smirked at her but placed his hands in his lap.
“Let’s get started on finding out what everyone did.”
…
Tully didn’t give two fucks about what everyone else said about their structure. Aside from Picard, he’d been to school with them and had grown up around these people. He knew them.
With one exception. Dawson Shay.
He wanted to know what made her tick, and if that meant sitting through everyone else’s discussion, he would.
A hand rapped on the table and he blinked to see Lee glancing around Dawson—who definitely wasn’t looking at him—and gesturing with one hand.
“My turn then?” He grinned as he nodded in thanks to Lee.
“Thanks for joining us.” Rachel arched an eyebrow at him.
Beside him, he heard a soft snicker from the only woman he wanted to focus on. “I made a hockey stick.” He slid it forward, then laced his fingers as he rested his hands on the tabletop. “It reminds me not to take things for granted and to be grateful for what some of the smallest things can provide.”
Another snort from the woman at his side. “Small being the operative word.”
He bit back his retort until Rachel gave him a nod and moved on to someone else. Tully leaned in closer to her, inhaling that delectable scent around her. “Again, you are focusing on the size.”
“Not focusing, I forgot you are Otter. Small.”
He grumbled under his breath. “Legs, there’s nothing small about me. Nothing.”
“Especially your head.” Her tone sweet, words dagger sharp. “Don’t falcons kill otters?”
It was his turn to chuckle that he quickly turned into a cough. Dawson still didn’t look at him but to everyone else. She looked like she was following the short descriptions people were giving of what they’d built.
“No. Falcons and Otters can be the best of friends. Give it a chance, you’ll see that can happen.”
She didn’t respond until their bosses were no longer looking at them. “I’ll pass, but feel free to follow the otter and go play in the water. Maybe stay there.”
“Will you dry me off?”
“Keep dreaming.”
He grinned and nudged her leg with his under the table. “Oh Falcon, we already know that’s happening.” Then he focused on keeping his hands above the table.
“Nice, Maria.” Rachel pointed at their table. “The only one left is you, Falcon.”
Dawson pushed her wall with a small piece missing to the center. “I made a wall with a small hole in it. I’m hoping to learn to be a bit less closed off with the people I work with.”
Picard nodded. “I love that, Dawson.” He turned to his wife. “I’m sorry, honey, I can’t call them by their cabin names. We can assign things that way, but I need to use their names when addressing them.”
Rachel huffed.
“Let’s get this cleaned up and we will do a game that has us up and moving.”
Dawson didn’t jump up and move from his side, so he didn’t go anywhere, either. She meticulously took apart the structure she had created and placed the pieces back in the baggie.
“Okay there, Legs?”
“Fine.” She got up and dropped the bag in the bin he’d taken them from before handing them out, then walked away.
Yeah, that wasn’t the truth.
He watched her get a bottle of water and take a long drink. Tensing when Jamie walked up to her, he didn’t move, no matter how much he wanted to go over there and interrupt them.
Just on principle.
Just as he pushed back from the table, three women sat down.
“Yes, ladies?” He looked at Maria, who was across from him, then Flora on his left and Ruby on his right. “Something I can do for you?”
“You like her, don’t you?”
Tully wasn’t keen on talking about a relationship with a woman he didn’t even have.
“How about I cut the bullshit ready to fall from your mouth, Tully. I heard what you said to her outside the bathrooms.” Fiona drummed her fingers on the table. “She’s our friend and while I think, we all think, she will benefit from a good lay, that’s not in any way our endorsement of you hurting her more than you already have.”
“Hurt her? I’ve not done anything to her.”
“There are two emotions, love and hate, which elicit such strong reactions from someone,” Ruby chimed in. “I won’t say you’re in love with each other yet. So that leaves hate. And for hate like that, there has to be some pain involved. Which means, you hurt her.”
“Ladies,” he said with a calm he wasn’t sure he felt. “I appreciate you standing up for your friend. I think it’s great, but I haven’t done anything to her. Dawson had her mind made up about me from the first,” he smiled, “no, second time we met. I’m trying to find out what I did to her, but she won’t tell me.”
“Seems to me,” Maria said, “you should figure it out. Show her that there is more to you than the happy playboy we all know and love.”
“I’m no longer a playboy, thank you very much. Those days are behind me.”
All three snorted. “We went to school with you, Tully. We don’t believe you.”
Maria popped up and pointed at him. “Hurt her and I’ll key your motorcycle.” She walked off, the other two following after a glare or three in his direction.
That was a threat he wasn’t going to take lightly. Had she said she’d kill him, he would have laughed it off, but to threaten his motorcycle? Maria was serious.
Grabbing a drink as they waited for the next game to begin, he scanned the room. Dawson sat in a corner, her full lips turned down at the corners. He was halfway over to her before he realized he’d even moved.
He swiped a chair, spun it around, and straddled it before offering her his bottle of water.
“No thank you.”
“Everything okay?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t buy it. “What’s going on?” Tully watched her face. She was good, exceptional, really, at hiding her emotions.
“Is this part of your grand scheme?”
The venom in her tone shouldn’t have shocked him, but for some reason it did. Perhaps because of what he’d told her outside the bathroom.
“My grand scheme?” He took a drink and dangled the bottle between his fingers. “How conniving do you think I am, Legs?”
“Very.”
“Damn. How do you really feel?”
“I don’t know.” She held up her hands. “Ignore me. Better yet, leave me alone.”
He rocked toward her, holding that position until she opened her eyes and stared at him. “After what I told you earlier, do you really think I’m going to leave you alone?”
She didn’t respond. Tully took a chance and reached out and plucked one thick, glossy curl that hung down from her temple in two fingers and stroked it. Softer and smoother than he’d even imagined it would be.
There were about twenty seconds where they just sat there, eyes locked on each other, his fingers pleased to be wrapped up in her hair. The bubble around them shattered like glass when Jamie walked up.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“Nothing that concerns you.” Tully hated that their moment got broken. Especially by him. Jamie set off a vibe in Tully he didn’t like and he didn’t want that anywhere around Dawson.
It had been that way since they were in school. But now, working with him at the dealership, it hadn’t improved, though he’d not found anything specific other than his laziness. Tully couldn’t put his finger on it. Didn’t stop him from wanting to place himself between Jamie and Dawson, just to keep her safe and protected.
Dawson didn’t speak but she did pull her hair from his hold. He felt the loss but continued to glare at Jamie.
“Not very friendly, Tully.” The man pulled up a chair. “I’m just trying to get to know my coworkers.”
