"I spoke to Simon at the real estate agency," Gina interjected. "He said to give him a ring when you want to start looking at houses. There aren't many on the market at the moment, apparently, but you might find one you like."
"A house?" Al raised an eyebrow. "That is serious."
"As a heart attack." He grinned, and was he imagining it or did her cheeks pink just a little? "Graham Mitchell's looking for some help while he replaces one of his regulars," he added. "He offered to take me on for a bit while I work out where I'm going from here. They say it's like riding a bike, so I should pick it up again fairly quickly."
Alannah's shoulders stiffened, and his mum made as if to comment but was interrupted by the ringing phone. "I'll just be a mo," she announced, and the two women shared a look Rex couldn't translate before she left the room.
Silence stretched between them for a long moment before Alannah managed a slightly forced smile. "So, building houses again? You spent that whole summer peeling from the sunburn across your nose."
"I've actually worked out how sunscreen works in the last eight years, so hopefully I won't go back to looking like I've got a skin disease."
"A girl can dream. I've still got the pictures somewhere." She propped her forearms on the table and Rex tried not to groan at the sight of the valley of her cleavage.
"How about you, what are you doing these days?" he asked, partly to distract himself.
"I'm an architect. I did a couple of the houses in town. You might see a few if you're house hunting with Simon."
She cocked an eyebrow, and Rex bit the inside of his lip. Was she trying to be cute, or was everything she did just naturally flirtatious? She hadn't been like this before he left, but back then, she was not quite eighteen and as gangly as he'd been. He remembered her clumsiness after her sudden growth spurt in their late teens, trying to control her newly coltlike limbs at a time when their other friends were well-practiced and comfortable in their grown bodies. Not long after, he'd enlisted and left Shepherd's Creek.
Part of him couldn't realise he'd missed watching Al grow into this stunner.
The rest of him was too busy trying not to let his eyes pop out of his head when she licked cream from her scone off one finger.
The expectant look on her face when Rex managed to return to himself said either he'd failed and looked exactly as aroused as he felt, or she was waiting for him to say something.
"Sorry, what was that?"
"Is it strange, being home—being back—after so long?"
"Very." He wasn't sure how to put the rest of it into words. "It's all different, but the same."
"I get that. Well, if you need someone to chat to, I'm right next door. I work from home two days a week, and I'm not doing any travel to look at new sites the next few weeks, so I'll be around if you're feeling lonely."
Rex had to physically bite his tongue to avoid announcing just how lonely he was and requesting she be the one to resolve that particular issue. "I won't be disturbing anyone if I pop over unannounced, will I? It's just you over there?" Nice one, dickhead. Really subtle.
Al's face fell, and he saw the same tension creep into her posture as before, the same forced smile spreading over her pretty pink lips. "Yep, just me." A moment of hesitation, like she was deciding whether to continue. "It's kind of nice, actually, having it just to myself. I did the design for the renovation, so it's been my own little project. Enough of Mum mixed in to keep things homey, but it's all my own space now."
"That sounds great, Al. I'm sure your mum would be proud. As long as you've kept her gigantic oven, of course."
"I had to. I don't want her haunting the house, surrounded by the ghosts of all the cupcakes that can't fit in a normal oven." One side of her mouth quirked up in a smile, just like it used to, and he could again see the tousle-haired child that she had been. "I hope she would be proud. I think she mostly just wanted me to settle down and have a family, but at least I made a home, right?"
He ducked his chin in a nod of acknowledgement, free to stare at her as she traced patterns in the condensation on her glass.
When Alannah's eyes lifted, he was immediately arrested by her gaze. "You could come look around, if you like," she said, and he wondered if he was imagining the note of huskiness in her voice. "Come and see what I've done with the place, while you were off saving the world."
Al knew the shorts were too short the minute she finished cutting her tatty old jeans, but since she mostly wore them while gardening, it didn't matter. Or at least it hadn't mattered, until the veritable mountain that Rex Castlereagh had grown into rattled into town in that shitty car and made her aware of every inch of exposed skin. Including, if she bent over, about a third of her ass cheeks.
Damn my non-existent tailoring skills. Next time, she'd put the scissors down about six inches earlier, and then maybe Rex wouldn't have his eyes fixed resolutely above her neck, like he was offended by the scant denim. Were the shorts really that bad, that they could unnerve a man who'd just spent eight years surrounded by soldiers? Hadn't he been to war, shot guns, seen dead people? How bad could this be, in comparison?
Maybe he was just shocked at the audacity of her attire. If she'd been planning on leaving her own home today, she would have been too. Bad enough that the temperature was so high that she couldn't bear to put on her other gardening pants today, leaving these as her only alternative. Lady Gaga and The Bachelorette might have made it to Shepherd's Creek, but scandalous, thigh-hugging mini shorts might still be beyond what this town could endure without people talking. Mrs. Mooney from across the road, who gossiped more than the entirety of Shepherd's Creek High School, had probably already spotted the too-short shorts and set the rumour mill creaking to life. Shepherd's Creek's blue rinse brigade, who everyone knew were the true rulers of their town no matter whose name was on the mayor's office, would have a field day. Did you see Alannah Green? Won't stay single for long if she keeps showing off the goods like that. Only just shot off one fiancée, is she trying to snare another so quickly?
She shuddered at the thought and pushed open her front door, wondering what had possessed her to invite Rex over for a tour.
Al's house was more than just her home—it was something like a manifestation of the inside of her mind. She rarely brought people over because it felt like exposing herself to them, naked and vulnerable. How had she become so addled by him in Gina and Andrew's kitchen, risking this kind of bareness when he'd only just returned? She hardly knew him, and now she was going to let him see inside her head?
Not that she didn't want to be exposed around Rex. She'd have to be blind not to see the great mass of muscle that he'd bulked into in the last eight years, and even then, the heat radiating from him would have been a hell of a clue. The moment she foolishly flung herself into his arms, she'd felt his rock-hard abdomen against the front of her body and she'd had to prevent herself from following the path between his abs with her fingers just to check she had it right. And as a result, she'd devolved right back into gawky, nervous Alannah, constantly fidgeting and fiddling with her hair, rather than the cool, successful woman she told herself she'd grown into. Even Harry had never made her feel this, intensely off-kilter, as if she were trying to balance on the roof of a moving vehicle.
Don't think about Harry. The directive was almost distressingly easy to follow, since she had Rex strolling through her doorway like it was no big deal, apparently oblivious to her pounding heart and sweaty palms. She wiped them on her shorts as surreptitiously as possible and tried to bustle through the open space like it was no big deal.
"Not a fan of walls, Al?"
"What?" Actually, come to think of it, she was a little jealous of the half-height one he turned to lean against, what with the amount of his bulk pressed up against it. She could imagine having all that man pressed up against her, his size dwarfing her, his big hands resting on her hips as they had when she'd hugged him earlier, his scruff-covered jaw rough against her skin.
"You've taken them all out. The walls." He ambled toward her, and Alannah wondered if her blatant appreciation of his big body was written all over her face. If he would take it as the invitation that a little part of her secretly wanted it to be.
"I wanted the space." Why did her voice sound so damn breathy? "I like the light coming all the way through from the kitchen."
"Afternoon sun make it hot?"
"The windows are triple-glazed, so it's not too bad. Stops it from getting cold in winter too. I did the design, and Graham Mitchell's guys built it. It was my first big project."
"You did good, Al. You did good. Mind if I look?" She nodded, and he passed her toward the kitchen. She held her breath when he came close, releasing it as quietly as possible after he'd moved behind her kitchen bench.
He gestured to the muffin trays in the rack by the sink. "You still bake?"
"When I have time. Not as much as I'd like. Your mum's scones are still much better than mine."
"Explains why you still smell like sugar."
"I smell like an afternoon spent in a vegetable garden," she countered without meeting his eyes, suddenly embarrassed by her appearance.
She didn't even realise he'd come closer until she felt him take a deep breath right above her head. She leapt back, colliding with the table, and Rex's hands shot out to catch her elbows and stop her falling. Alannah gasped as her body met his ridged abdomen, soft yielding to hard, an intoxicating blend of citrus and fresh rain filling her nose.
She yanked away, darting around the bench on the pretext of filling another glass of water to put some distance between them. "Nice reflexes."
"My CO would have been very unimpressed if I lost them so quickly."
His half-smile had her nipples tightening, so she turned away. "Do you want to see the rest?"
"Sure." His voice was a dark rumble behind her as she started walking away, trying not to think about how much of the rest she'd really like to show him.
"The laundry's just down the hall, and there are bedrooms upstairs." Is it obvious to him that I want to give him a tour of mine? She hastened to cover the slip. "And, you know, um, bathrooms. And my drawing room, but that's maybe a rumpus room for the kids one day." Al started up the stairs, mouth going a mile a minute. "Not my kids. I mean, maybe my kids, but I figured it could be useful if someone with kids bought the house."
"You planning on selling?" his voice came from so close behind her, she startled, misjudged a stair, and went down face-forward, catching herself on the heels of her hands.
The creaking of the stair told her Rex had stopped too, shifting his weight like he'd rocked back down a step.
"I swear I'm not normally this clumsy," she announced, levering herself back to her feet, but before she could turn to catch Rex's eye, his hands were on her hips, guiding her up the last few steps. When he didn't guide her any further, she spent a moment standing frozen on the landing. The step between them put them at about the same height, and she felt him inhale next to her hair.
"You all right?" His voice was rough.
"Fine," Al said unevenly. "Good. I'm good."
"That's good." Still, he didn't release her hips, and Alannah didn't want to breathe for fear she'd break the spell. He had huge hands, large enough that his spread fingers covered most of her stomach and seeing them gripping her when she looked down had heat gathering low in her belly. His thumbs pressed into the tight muscles of her lower back, and her voice stuttered when she tried to speak.
"D-do you want to see the rest of the house?"
"These shorts need to come with a warning label, Al." His voice was husky in her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. "Either that, or you do."
"They're, um. They're a bit much, aren't they?" she stuttered
"They're a bit little. Don't like you showing off this much skin. Especially not if you trip on any more stairs."
She would normally be outraged by the presumptuousness of that statement, no matter how protective he'd been of her when they were teenagers, but he'd apparently massaged her into a pile of goo. She tried to muster some indignation. "What—"
"If you're bending over in these shorts, Alannah, I'd prefer it only be in front of me." Rex's grip on her hips tightened, and she strangled a gasp at the rough treatment. "Next time you do it, I'll keep you in that position for a long damn time."
She couldn't control the low moan that escaped as the air left her lungs, pushed out by a wave of arousal too big for her body to contain. "Rex—"
The seduction of silence was interrupted by a blast of music from the floor below. Rex's hands fell from her hips like he'd been burnt. The muscles in Alannah's shoulders, taut with anticipation, sagged.
The song's chorus cut off, then began again. Al half turned her head so she could almost meet Rex's eyes. "It's Kayla. If I don't answer, she'll just keep ringing."
She felt the loss of his body heat against her back as he stepped aside, letting her slip past him to collect her phone from the kitchen. When she risked a look at him, his closed-off face told her nothing. But the stairs weren't that wide, and Rex was a big man, and a woman had to know whether she was the only one being consumed by arousal. So, yeah, she definitely went out of her way to brush up against him.
The point was, she felt his erection plain as day, and all the heat that had rushed out of her when the phone rang was back in a whoosh like a stack of tinder going up in flames.
The music rang out again, and Alannah risked the briefest moment of eye contact with Rex before fumbling her way down the stairs. The moment she picked up the phone, Kayla's voice was ringing in her ear, all the words about something her boyfriend Sam had done blurring into a mush of syllables in Al's arousal-soaked brain. And then Rex was there, letting himself out her door with another snatch of eye contact and a half-grin that had her legs shaking all over again.
"Kayla," Al said, wondering whether there were enough batteries in the world to help her overcome the sexual frustration he'd left coiling in her belly, "I'm going to have to call you back."
Chapter 2
Someone without military experience might have called 0700 an odd hour for a job interview, but Rex had been running on army time for so long, it felt like half the morning had already passed. Or at least, it did when he hadn't been up half the night trying to get rid of the world's most determined boner. His arm was sore from pumping his swollen cock, trying not to imagine the unexpected view he'd received of Alannah's ass when she'd tripped on the stairs. The fraying seam of her cut-offs—barely two inches of fabric that separated the juncture of her thighs from his hungry gaze—had been yanked tight against her sex, outlining her so closely, he could pick her pussy out of a line up.
He was halfway to straining a muscle before he'd even started the construction job.
Graham Mitchell's office was a few blocks back from Main Street, dusty plastic blinds only half-containing the light spilling into the dim morning. Though he acted more as contractor than labourer these days, Mitch had always worked the same hours as the men he employed, clocking in early in the morning, finishing early enough that he could collect his kids, and now his grandchildren, from school. Even during the summers during high school that Rex had worked as unskilled labour on some of the projects, they were finished in time for Mitch to spend time with his family in the afternoons. Mitch's wife Leila was a lawyer who worked long hours, and it was well-known in Shepherd's Creek that Mitch wouldn't take a job if he couldn't work it around his parenting timetable.
Though some of his fellow soldiers had families they visited when deployment permitted, this family-first attitude was one of the things that Rex had missed while he was gone. It shamed him a little, the way he had set aside his responsibilities to his own family while he was gone. None of them would ever have called him on it, but in truth, it had been his family that brought him back to Shepherd's Creek. He wanted to be surrounded by his people again.
Mitch was sitting at his desk, a half-drunk cup
of coffee in front of him, phone held to his ear despite the early hour as he scrolled down his computer screen. His blond beard was greyer than it had been when Rex saw him last, but the older man's sharp-bladed nose and ruddy cheeks gave him the look of a picture book farmer, drawing life from the land he worked.
In a way, that was an appropriate description of Mitch. He'd been running his business since well before the Castlereaghs came to town, and about every third building in Shepherd's Creek had at some point been worked on by Mitchell Construction. Now Mitch's two sons—and their own crews—did the majority of the labouring. With Rex looking to rediscover his hometown, there was no better way to find its heart.
Mitch ended his call and poured Rex a coffee from the jug on a crowded side table. "Welcome back, mate. Better get that car looked at. I could hear you coming from the moment you pulled out of your own front gate."
"I've been planning on it."
"New mechanic isn't a local," Mitch said with the air of one describing a cardinal sin, "but he gets the job done, and he doesn't charge city prices. Name of Thompson, and his wife plays bridge with Leila. She'll pass on to expect you sometime this week. Best get it done before you become a menace on the roads."
"Uh, thanks," Rex said, slightly disconcerted to be so rapidly managed. "I'll get to it soon as I can."
"See you do that." He changed topics smoothly. "Your mum told me you've been keeping up your carving since you left."
"When I can, sir. Easy to find a stick and a knife, places I went. Been a while since I made any furniture, though, if that's what you're after."
"Sir!" Mitch snorted, not answering Rex's concern over his lack of recent experience. "You really did hit the army, didn't you? Last time I had you on one of my sites, I wouldn't catch you calling the bloody Prince of Wales 'sir'. How long did it take them to get you into the habit?"
He Comes Home Page 2
