Love's Embers (Canon City Series) by Lauren Marie Page A

and pursed her lips. “No, I think I’d like for you to be my first kiss ever. Have you ever kissed a girl?”
    Charlie shook his head and turned to face her. He took her hands and looked her in the eye. He started to lean toward her and put his lips lightly to hers. After a few seconds, he sat up straight and they both opened their eyes. “Huh,” he said. “Maybe we should try the other way.”
    “Okay,” she answered. “But, what do we do with our mouths open?”
    “I don’t know.” He shrugged and leaned toward her with his lips parted.
    She closed her eyes and felt his mouth close on hers. She let her lips open and his tongue moved around the front of her teeth. She started to grin and moved her tongue to meet his.
    They’d continued kissing for a while and on the ride back to the Hirsh Ranch decided maybe they should consider being boyfriend and girlfriend. When they got back home, they’d spent a little time giggling in the driveway and made plans to go down to the river the next day to give kissing another go.
    That night Lark saw red lights flash in her bedroom window. She jumped out of bed and looked out. She saw police cars at Charlie’s house and an ambulance and a van with Coroner written on the side. She put on her tennis shoes and ran down the stairs. In the driveway, she found her Gran watching and went up to her. Gran wrapped her arms around Lark.
    After a bit, the policemen came out with Charlie in handcuffs. They didn’t find out until the next day what happened.
    Lark slammed the photo album closed and stood up. “Damn, damn, damn,” she mumbled and went up to her room. She crawled under the comforter to get warm and closed her eyes, but it took a long time for sleep to come to her.

Chapter Seven

    The next week crawled by slowly for Charlie, and it was a mess. The furnace man came over the weekend and said the furnace couldn’t be turned on until they got the air-ducts blown out. He had crawled around under the house and repaired some holes caused by varmints, but said Charlie had families of mice living in the ducts. If they didn’t blow the pipes, he’d have baked mouse odor in the house and it would be a health hazard. Unfortunately, the furnace man couldn’t make another appointment until the following week.
    Then Charlie dealt with the plumber. He got the water running to the downstairs bathroom, but the pipes in the kitchen had frozen at some point and would have to be replaced. Charlie felt relieved to be able to shower and not have to run upstairs every time he needed to use the restroom, and it had become a pain in his backside to have to carry water downstairs just to make coffee. Now that water was downstairs again, even though it came from the sink in the bathroom, he wouldn’t have to bring it from the upstairs anymore.
    He also, wanted to get his truck over to Pueblo and get it sold. He needed something smaller just to go to the grocery store, but with all the workers coming in and going out, he didn’t want to leave during the day, just yet.
    ****
    Lark’s week at work was busy. The Mile High email got inundated with orders for the holidays. It was good for the business, but hard work to get the orders packed and out to UPS for delivery. About half way through every day, she’d think they were getting caught up, when a whole new batch of orders would print off the web-site. There’d been a few hiccups with the folks that delivered their stock, but so far, everything was going smooth.
    Lark left work at five or six o’clock in the evening, exhausted, and came home to a warm dinner and bath, and then she crawled under the sheets and sleep straight through the night.
    On Friday afternoon, she decided to leave at four and headed home. When she walked into the house, she realized there were no heavenly smells coming from the kitchen.
    “Gran, I’m home,” she said and took off her coat. There was no response to her greeting. She frowned. Her grandmother’s car was