Sensual Winds

When they entered the store, Doreen veered off toward the wallpaper department.

“You coming?” he asked.

“No, you go ahead. I think I’ll look around. See what I can find.”

Lucas hurried over to the lumber department, pulling on his gloves, just as another man reached the same section of wood. They split the remaining wood and Lucas loaded it onto a spare cart.

He bypassed the cutting area in search of Doreen.

There was no custom cutting on pre-storm days. Sheets were split in half, and that was it. If the line had been shorter, he’d have saved himself the trouble of opening his workshop and cutting the wood himself. But that would add an hour to his wait, and he didn’t want to waste the time.

He grabbed a pack of blades and more gloves, and stopped himself from picking up more duct tape. Several rolls of it were somewhere at home. He just had to find it in the shamble of a workshop. Organization hadn’t been a priority. Not with everyone hurrying to get the house done in time for Emma’s arrival.

And now she wasn’t ever going to come. The irony wasn’t lost on Lucas.

Walking the top of each aisle, he looked for her and found Doreen a couple aisles down looking at flashlights, a basket on her arm.

Doreen acknowledged him with a smile and came toward him. Men turned and followed her movement as if she were on a runway.

Her clothing was completely wrong. The black short-waist jacket with the big metallic buttons hugged a chest that was curvaceous enough to make men glance first, then openly admire her. The fitted black pants complemented a figure that visited the gym and spinning class on a regular basis yet didn’t say she was a gym rat. He hated “I have zero percent body fat” type people anyway, and Doreen wasn’t one of them.

She’d once confided how much she loved working out. It calmed her down when she got tired of working with frustrating people. He couldn’t help wondering what else helped calm her down.

Lucas wondered as to the direction of his thoughts, given that he’d just broken up with Emma. How could he be thinking about Doreen when he’d just ended things with his fiancée?

He slowed his cart as Doreen approached, and smiles fell off the faces of the men that she passed. When she stopped in front of him he almost expected lights to flash over his head like he’d won a jackpot.

Lucas looked into her basket, filled with safety glasses, sturdy work gloves, flashlights, gum, and a men’s magazine on fitness that boasted an article on what men wanted. The top had an official seal on it and he regarded it closely. It was the word official that struck him.

The relationship with Emma had been over for a long time. They’d just made it official today. Lucas sighed, having come to the sound conclusion he’d known in his heart for a long time.

“You could have just asked,” he said to Doreen, referring to her magazine. “I could have told you what men want.”

Embarrassment crept over her face. “You’re such a know-it-all.”

He guided her away from two men who’d begun a heated argument over two remaining bags of sand and he steered Doreen into a slow-moving checkout line.

“You’ve got nails?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you hammer them right into the house?” she asked, shifting from foot to foot in the long line.

Lucas nodded. “That’s right.”

“No boards to protect the frame or anything?”

The question sounded odd to him, but he didn’t ask for clarification. “No.”

“So every storm you put new holes in the house?”

Other people in line who could hear their conversation smiled at Lucas, but Doreen was oblivious as she flipped through her magazine.