After Her Flower Petals: A Second Chance Romantic Comedy (The Svensson Brothers Book 7)

by Alina Jacobs

  “Nice,” he repeated, faintly.

  I pouted at him. “It’s hard to be satisfied when I could have so much… more.”

  He leaned over, moving my hand aside to replace it with his own. He circled my nipple with his thumb. I smiled, arching into it.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

  I flicked my gaze down to the front of his pants where his dick was straining against the fabric. I reached out to lightly run my fingers along the bulges, making him hiss.

  I licked my lips. “I was thinking of riding you again.”

  “Steering wheel might get in the way.”

  “That’s why they let you scoot the seat back,” I said chidingly and sighed as he switched from one breast to the other. I had come down completely from my earlier orgasm and now felt the slow anticipatory warmth as I started to climb back up again.

  “How do you want it?” he asked again, this time with a bite of impatience.

  I smiled, slow and sultry. “It’s a nice view. Seems to be a shame to waste it. What I want,” I said, biting the word, “is for you to fuck me from behind. Here and now.” I did a little mental cheer as his breath caught in his throat.

  “I thought you said you didn’t want anyone to see you.”

  “Better make it snappy, then.”

  “Oh, I’ll make it snappy.” He growled.

  I laughed as I got out of the car. He practically raced around and pulled me into a kiss, pushing me up against the expensive vehicle.

  My dress was still unzipped from the front, but I made no move to shrug it off. As he kissed me, Hunter’s hands slipped up the hem of my dress to pull my panties down. I did a little shimmy to help them fall free.

  “Come on,” I murmured, catching his bottom lip between his teeth. “You’d better make me get off before a minivan full of sightseeing seniors pulls up to view the river.”

  He made a face. “That’s a mental image.” But he seemed to have no issue with it as he turned me around and shoved me against the car.

  I spread my legs wide. This was so hot and dirty—anyone could drive up on us. I loved it.

  Hunter flipped up the hem of my dress over my back to expose my bare ass. I heard the zip and the crinkle of foil as he put on a condom.

  “No really, take your time. Not waiting to get off or anything,” I teased. Inside, my pussy was already clenching. I couldn’t wait to feel that hot shaft drive into me.

  “You want it fast?” he asked, his voice way too casual for my liking.

  “I want it good,” I snapped. “You think you can give it to me?”

  His hand came down in a quick crack across my bottom. I jumped and then moaned and, in the next moment, felt the head of his thick cock press against my pussy.

  He pushed in, taking me hard. I gasped, and my next breath came out in a grunt as he pulled out and rammed back in, hitting the exact spot that made my toes curl.

  I moaned, wanton as he fucked with a quick, brutal pace. My breasts bounced, brushing lightly against the cool metal of the car, and my ears were filled with the sound of the rushing river water and the slap of his skin against mine.

  I didn’t know whether it was the excitement, the thrill of being discovered at any moment, or the glorious mountain air. Hunter took me higher and higher with every delicious thrust of his hips into me.

  Orgasm hit me in a delicious rush. I cried out, my nails scratching the paint. I think I might have scared some birds from the trees.

  Hunter came a few moments after with a tug on my hair that had me clenching anew around him.

  My breathing slowed as we disentangled, and I fixed my clothes.

  Hunter looked slightly dazed.

  “You want me to drive?” I offered.

  “This is my car,” he said, incredulous.

  I pushed him in the passenger’s seat then got in the driver’s seat and rubbed my hands together. After dealing with my cruddy station wagon, knowing that I could charge my phone and sink in a comfy seat and drive faster than forty miles an hour and that the radio worked was a blessing. “I’m in heaven!”

  “Did you just bang me so you could drive my car?” Hunter complained as I put the car into reverse and peeled out of the overlook.

  “No, of course not,” I said. “I banged you because you’re extremely fuckable.”

  The Broughton estate was a ways out of town, close to where the Svenssons’ estate was.

  I relished the easy driving of Hunter’s car, the smoothness as we flew down the road. It was pleasurable and enjoyable; I didn’t have to worry about if the car was going to break down, or if I was going to lose a tire, or if all the moss growing in the trunk was going to suddenly jolt to life and try to eat me.

  This could be your life, I reminded myself, if you just accepted Hunter for who he is—a little abrasive but ultimately lovable. He could buy you nice things. He wants to move in with you. He is great with his brothers. You literally have no other good prospects.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still trying to pull a fast one over on me.

  Hunter’s fingers traced the back of my hand that rested on the gear shift stick.

  There’s no such thing as the perfect man, I reminded myself as I turned down the drive to the Broughton estate.

  Avery had inherited it from her grandmother, and she and Blade had fixed it up and turned it into a wedding venue and bed-and-breakfast.

  After parking the car under a large oak tree, I stepped out. “I haven’t been here recently,” I marveled as Hunter offered me his arm. “She’s really done a lot of work.”

  “Would you get married here?” he asked conversationally.

  “Hmm, depends on who to,” I quipped, squeezing his arm. “The feral cat guy? Probably not.”

  Hunter laughed, then he turned me toward him. “What about to me?” His face was serious.

  My heart soared. “Well, I—”

  “Hunter!” his little brother screamed, piling out of the bus that was parked under a tree. Hunter ran over to him, and he scooped up several of them.

  “You really wanted to come to the flower festival?” Hunter asked them.

  “No one is at home to take care of them,” Weston said, herding several of the teenagers in front of him.

  “Where’s Remy?” I asked.

  “Oh, uh… he’s gone to—”

  “Just on a trip.” Hunter shot a glare at his brother then flashed me a broad smile.

  I frowned slightly. Why was he being so cagey?

  “There you are!” Avery said happily, running out from the historic mansion, Blade trailing her. “We’re all set up around back on the terrace.”

  Hunter put his arm around me. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was hiding something.

  He wants to marry you. Who cares? Just let it go!

  But I couldn’t.

  62

  Hunter

  “And Crawford didn’t want to come?” Meg asked me. She couldn’t just drop it. She was in full-blown lawyer mode, prepared to ferret out any inconsistencies or half-truths in my story.

  I forced myself to remain relaxed as we took our seats at the judges’ table on the wide stone terrace that looked out over a broad lawn. Then I spun my web of lies.

  “Crawford is back in Manhattan with Greg,” I said smoothly. “You know my brothers—they always have some deal in the works.”

  “But Remy usually doesn’t,” Meg said with a slight frown. “He was looking forward to the flower-arranging competition. He told me at the last Rural Trust meeting I was at. He’s not sick, is he?”

  “He’s fine! He and Crawford just had to deal with something.”

  “Family stuff?” she asked.

  God save me from lawyers. I’d seen Meg in a courtroom. Once she got a hold of an idea, she would pick apart her witness, or the opposing argument, and wear the opposition down.

  “Hunter,” Garrett said sharply.

/>   “Excuse me,” I told Meg, standing up.

  Garrett grabbed me and hauled me inside, out of the way of the various caterers and servers streaming out to the tent setup at one corner of the lawn.

  “What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to tip Meg off.”

  “She already knows something is up.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Garrett retorted. “This plan is stupid. I knew it was stupid, especially if it hinged on you.”

  “Has there even been any word for Crawford and Remy?”

  “Of course not.” Garrett scoffed. “We probably won’t hear from them until they’re in prison or dead. But on the two percent chance that their plan does work, you will not fuck this up.”

  “She doesn’t trust me.”

  “Shocking,” Garrett said. “You’re such a trustworthy guy.”

  “I’ve sacrificed for this family.”

  “Fuck you, all of us have,” Garrett retorted, eyes glittering.

  I shoved him off of me.

  “You have one job,” Garrett said as I turned to go back outside. “Make Meg love you.”

  “What did Garrett want?” Meg asked. Her hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence.

  I forced myself to turn the charm up to three hundred. “He wanted to know if I was proposing to you,” I crooned. It did the trick and threw her off balance.

  “Are… are you?”

  “Not today! That would ruin the surprise.”

  She turned in her seat and sat forward then turned back to face me. “We haven’t even discussed it!” She waved her hands.

  I grabbed them. “Meg,” I said, putting all my love and dreams for a future between us into my gaze and voice. “I adore you. From the moment I saw you, I knew you were mine. I’ve waited for you for years. I would marry you today right here, right now.”

  She opened her mouth to protest. I gave her a smile, hoping she didn’t see the sadness in it. The terrible and beautiful thing was that it was all true. Garrett was wrong. No one had sacrificed more for this family or ever would than me. My brothers all had found the loves of their lives. I was sacrificing mine.

  “Well,” Meg said, blinking. “At least it’s not today; I’m not dressed for it.”

  I kissed her hand. “You look lovely. But I know you want the big public proposal and the big wedding. And even if you didn’t, I don’t think the town would stand for anything less.”

  “Did I hear someone say marriage?” a short plump young woman said gleefully, bouncing up to the terrace with a huge towering flower centerpiece. The flowers and greenery cascaded onto the table as she set the arrangement in front of us and fluffed it out.

  “If we do,” Meg said, “I’ll have Weddings in the City plan it, of course, Amy.”

  “You better!” Amy said. “I have money riding on you two.” She wagged a finger at me. “Don’t screw it up, Hunter!”

  “Why do I get the blame?”

  She grinned. “Men always get the blame!”

  63

  Meghan

  “Hunter wants to marry me!” I announced giddily, dumping out my freshly washed laundry and flopping onto my bed.

  “I hope you washed the sheets,” Kate said, eyeing the bed apprehensively.

  “Of course,” I said. “Hunter had to go back home Monday morning to deal with his brothers, so he wasn’t even here.” I frowned. “For some reason, Remy is out of town. I think he’s usually at the estate.”

  “The reclusive Svensson brother?” Kate asked. “I talked to Grant about Remy. Grant said he had heard of him in the Marines. Apparently, there was a nasty firefight. Rumor has it that Remy has pretty bad PTSD and doesn’t do well out of his comfort zone anymore. I wonder what happened to make him leave Harrogate?”

  “That is weird,” I concurred as I carefully folded and rolled the rest of my clean laundry, Marie Kondo style. “All the time I’ve lived here, Remy has never left.”

  “Aren’t you guys close-ish?” Kate asked Susie.

  “We’re not that close.”

  “You guys were both in the military,” I teased. “Maybe when Remy returns, you can ask him on a date.”

  “Why don’t we not talk about my nonexistent love life and instead talk about the fact that it wasn’t even three months ago that you and Hunter were at each other’s throats, and now he wants to marry you.”

  “Do you think it’s suspicious?” I asked my friends.

  “It’s totally romantic!” Kate insisted. “We have to plan a humongous wedding.”

  “Maybe I’m going crazy. Or maybe he’s up to something.”

  “Honestly,” Susie said, “after hearing about you complain about Hunter and fret about him and cry about him, I just want some resolution. After all he’s put you through, the least he could do is marry you. Then if it doesn’t work out, at least you can get alimony out of it.”

  “I like a pragmatist,” Kate said, grabbing a bottle of champagne that she had been chilling in my freezer. “Where do you think he’s going to propose? I would want to be proposed to in the town square under the gazebo. If Hunter timed it right, he could have the whole thing decorated with flowers and surprise you.”

  “Ooh, I like your idea better than mine,” I said. “I was thinking maybe at a town hall meeting.”

  “Good gracious,” Kate exclaimed. “Girl, you need a vacation. Hunter can’t propose to you at work.”

  “What if he did it with the train somehow, really made an event about it?” Susie suggested.

  “We need to make a Pinterest board with your favorite rings together,” Kate suggested. “Just in case Hunter asks one of us for what he should propose with.”

  “I don’t want too big of a diamond,” I said as we crowded around my laptop.

  “Maybe something antique?” Susie said. “Remy told me that they found a bunch of rings and jewelry hidden in the Harrogate house during renovations.”

  “Maybe you could do a sapphire ring, like Princess Diana,” Kate said.

  I pushed away any feelings of doubt about Hunter over the next few days. I didn’t have a chance to spend any alone time with him—we couldn’t seem to get our schedules synced up. But he always seemed to have a little gift waiting for me in my apartment. It was sweet and made me feel so loved. It was nice after years of stress just to feel desired.

  The rational part of me fortunately stayed fairly quiet, and I spent my evenings with my friends planning my wedding.

  “Where do you want to go for your honeymoon?” Minnie asked me one afternoon. I was at the Grey Dove Bistro after work, sipping a green tea latte.

  “I don’t know,” I mused as Minnie scrolled through honeymoon destinations on her tablet.

  “You have to go to Paris,” she said.

  “No, London!” Rose said, bouncing in her seat. “You can stay in a castle like a princess.”

  “You should do a whole tour of Europe,” Minnie suggested. “We’re reading Victorian period books in school—they’re so romantic! The Victorians would take these long trips all over continental Europe. You could go to Athens and the French Riviera. You have to buy all new clothes and hats and cute shoes!”

  “And Hunter can buy you a huge house to move into when you come back,” Rose said with a sigh.

  “You can’t just rely on men,” I scolded them. “Women need to be responsible for their own money.”

  “You weren’t responsible with it,” Minnie argued. “You let Uncle Barry piss it away.”

  “Watch your mouth,” I admonished her. “Besides, we’d probably have to, I don’t know, live with the Svenssons if Hunter and I got married.”

  “I’m not living with the Svenssons!” Minnie cried.

  “I thought you liked Isaac?” I teased.

  “Yes,” Minnie said primly, “but I’m not giving it away until I have a ring.”

  “Dayum,” Hazel said. “You play hardball.”

  “Isaac said he would propose to me once we were eighteen.”

  “Over
my dead body,” I told her. “You will not be getting married as a teenager.”

  “It’s better than waiting until your late thirties when you’re a penniless spinster,” Rose said with a sniff.

  “Jeez, you really are hitting the Jane Austen pretty hard,” I remarked.

  “Yeah, that was harsh,” Minnie agreed. “Besides, Isaac said Hunter is absolutely marrying you.”

  “He did?” I was giddy. I’m getting married!

  “Yup! Garrett told him he had to.”

  “Garrett?”

  But my sisters were already off on another topic.

  “Hunter has to buy you a house that we can all live in, then he needs to buy you a pied-à-terre where you two can hook up,” Rose listed off.

  “Yeah, you can’t do that in our house, married or not,” Minnie added.

  It was a dose of cold reality on my dreams. I couldn’t leave my sisters to fend for themselves. We were clearly not moving in with the Svenssons. Surely Hunter, after living with all his brothers, did not want to move into a house that he had to pay for and that also contained hormonal teenage girls. Besides, there was no way he was leaving his little brothers.

  We couldn’t get married. It was impossible.

  Still, it was fun to fantasize—to plan my perfect wedding, pick out my dress, daydream about the flowers and the cake and the decorations. It kept me from thinking about the dire state of my finances, from thinking about what Hunter was hiding, and from worrying about what was going to happen with the election.

  Real life was harder than a fairy tale.

  It was a few days before the final debate, and I was in my campaign office, working on my arguments.

  Now that Hunter and I were a thing and sleeping together on the regular, I was not going to be able to dress sexy, have him start drooling, and handily win the debate. I needed to bring my A game. Though I may be the one drooling if I saw Hunter. I hadn’t had him, let alone fucked him, since that day outside. I shivered just thinking about it.

  My phone buzzed.

  Hunter: I want to come by and make all your dreams come true.