She reached for a condom with a mischievous smile. “Perfect. But I think we’d better do a lot of practicing to make sure we get it right.”
As he slid inside her, fully sheathed and so madly in love he’d do anything for her, Cole gazed into her eyes and saw all the emotions he felt reflected back at him. Their bodies joined together like they were made for each other, and when he was buried deep, they both stilled. He sealed his lips over hers, kissing her with all the surety he felt, all the passion that had been building since he’d first set eyes on her, and all the love that had grown in the days since. Her hands slid into his hair, and she clung to him, kissing him hungrily as he tucked his hands beneath her ass and lifted her hips. He moved slow and deep. Pulling nearly all the way out before pushing back in again, sliding over the sensitive places that made her gasp tiny bits of air. She tugged at his hair and he quickened his pace, heat coiling at the base of his spine. Their lips parted and her head fell back as she panted for breaths. He slid one hand between them, homing in on the one spot that he knew would send her over the edge.
She dug her nails into his scalp, rocking her hips to meet every thrust. He was ready to come from the sight of her flushed cheeks, the sheen of sweat between her breasts, and her slightly parted lips that just last night had been stretched around his cock.
“Oh God, Cole—” She bucked off the mattress as she came apart beneath him.
Her inner muscles tightened, pulsing waves of pleasure through Cole. He had to taste her, feel her energy as she fought for air. Their mouths crashed together in a clash of tongues and teeth, in a greedy, wet kiss. As heat shot through him and he gave in to his own intense release, she was right there with him, another orgasm engulfing her, and they spiraled over the edge together.
They lay together for a long while, bodies spent, hands clasped tightly together.
“Cole?” Leesa whispered into the early-morning silence.
“Mm?”
“Let’s pack up my stuff and get out of here.”
He opened his eyes and assessed her excited gaze. “Now?”
“After we shower, yes. I’m ready. I’m ready to be Leesa Avalon for real now.”
He pushed up on one elbow and smiled, matching her beautiful smile. “So, I shouldn’t call you Annalise?”
She sat up and pulled the sheet over her chest. “Only when you want to play a naughty role-playing game.” She slid off the bed and said, “But then I get to call you something else, too.”
“Like?” he challenged.
She shrugged, but the wicked glint in her eyes told him that she was about to rile him up.
“Sam?”
She shrieked and laughed as he leaped from the bed and chased her into the bathroom. He pinned her arms above her head against the bathroom wall and nibbled at her neck.
“You’ve got a thing for my brother?”
“No,” she said with a dreamy sigh, craning her neck so he had better access. “I knew it was the only way to get you out of bed.”
He trapped both of her hands above her head with one of his, and his other slid down her hip. He glared into her eyes and she pressed her hips against his growing erection.
“And into my shower.” She went up on her toes and kissed him.
“Woman, I have a feeling you’re going to try me every step of the way.”
She wrapped one leg around his hips and said, “Oh, but what tantalizing steps they will be.”
***
BY MIDAFTERNOON LEESA and Cole had boxed up most of the things she wanted to bring with her back to Peaceful Harbor. They’d planned to take whatever would fit in their cars, and they’d come back on the weekends to grab a few things until she was done.
“What about your furniture? We’ll make arrangements for movers to bring whatever you want,” Cole said as they carried boxes out to the car.
“You have such nice furniture already.” She hadn’t put any great thought into that yet. She set the box in the back of her car and watched Cole doing the same. His shirt clung to his muscles as he wiped sweat from his brow, but it was his easy smile that had her walking to his side and wrapping her arms around him.
“How about we just bring the hammock from the backyard. Do you think you and your brothers could finagle a way to hang it up?”
He pressed his lips to hers. “Anything you want, angel. If I haven’t told you already, I want you to know that I’m really proud of you. You came here to do something that most people in your shoes never would have considered. You really are a courageous woman.”
“Or really stupid. I’m not sure which.”
He kissed her again. “Courageous. How did it go when you called Darlene to say you weren’t taking the job?”
“Fine. I think she expected it. I just can’t get the look on Andy’s face out of my head. I know I did the right thing by forgiving him, but he looked so tortured.”
“Tell me what you need. Do you want to try again to talk to him? I’ll go with you if you do.”
She gazed up and saw the sincerity in his eyes and knew he would. “No. I think I just have to realize that he put himself in that box. I did what I could to help him climb out, but really, it’s not my place to do anything more.”
They spent the next hour loading boxes and closing up the house for their return to Peaceful Harbor. Leesa and Cole were rolling up the hammock when she heard a car in the driveway.
“I’ll see who that is.” She came around the side of the house as Mr. Darren helped Andy out of the passenger’s seat and into his wheelchair. Her heart nearly stopped. She’d just gotten to a good place. She didn’t want to leave town on the heels of another argument.
If it weren’t for Cole’s comforting arm landing on her shoulder and his whisper in her ear, “It’s okay, angel. I’m right here. I won’t let anything happen,” she might not have remembered how to breathe.
Cole walked ahead of her, placing himself between Mr. Darren and Leesa.
“Sir?” Cole’s tone was firm and questioning.
Andy worked the wheels on his chair around Cole, and Cole reached down and stopped the chair by grabbing one of the arms. Leesa held her breath, having no idea why she was more nervous today than she’d been last night, but conflicting emotions warred within her again. The urge to run to Andy and make sure he was okay and the urge to run in the opposite direction tore at her.
“Hi, Andy. I’m Cole.”
Andy blinked up at him without saying a word.
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” Mr. Darren finally said with a tight jaw and a stern look on his face. “My son has something to say to Annalise.” He looked over Cole’s shoulder and said, “And so do I.”
Cole turned and reached for Leesa’s hand. “Angel?”
She took his hand and stepped forward, forcing words from her lungs. “Hi, Andy.”
Andy’s eyes dampened. His fingers clung to the arms of the wheelchair so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Ms. Avalon, I…” He looked down, then flipped his hair from his eyes with a quick flick of his chin and said, “I’m sorry for lying. Once I realized what happened, I wanted to tell the police I had lied, but—”
His father stepped to his side and placed a firm hand on Andy’s shoulder. “But I didn’t let him.”
“You…? Why not?” Leesa couldn’t believe her ears.
“Annalise, by the time he came to me and said he wasn’t telling the truth, the harm had been done. The investigation was almost over, and your reputation had already been damaged.” He looked down at the boy he’d been nothing but stern with, and the tight lines in his jaw and forehead softened. “He’s a kid who made a very big mistake. He’s already feeling like he’s behind the rest of his peers with his injuries, and as his father, I didn’t want him to have to battle the reputation of being the kid who lied and ruined your life, too.”
Leesa’s eyes filled with tears. “So you let everyone think I did something I didn’t do.”
His tone soften
ed. “People in this town didn’t buy the accusation, not when the police and school administration found no evidence of harm. It was wrong of me to hold him back, but I did it to help my son, not to hurt you. I’m terribly ashamed of my decision, but I hope, on some level, you can understand why I did it.”
“Mr. Darren—”
Leesa squeezed Cole’s hand to stop him from saying anything more. She needed to handle this, even if she wasn’t quite sure how. “While I guess I can see why you chose to do that, to protect Andy, I have to ask. Do you realize what your actions were teaching him?”
“I told him,” Andy said.
“Andy—”
“No, Dad. I need to say it. Ms. Avalon, I’m sorry for lying, and I’m sorry for not saying that sooner, but my dad’s not a bad guy. I get that you think he’s teaching me to lie to cover my butt, but I don’t think that’s the lesson I learned.” He placed his hand over his father’s and said, “By keeping up with the lie, I learned how bad it really was. It’s been killing me, and I think that’s why my dad finally let me tell you the truth. You’re a cool teacher, and you didn’t deserve to lose your job because I was mad. I know you said you forgive me, but last night I realized that I need more than that. I need you to know the truth and forgive my dad, because if you can’t, I’m not sure I can, either.”
Leesa crouched beside Andy’s wheelchair, trying to reel in her emotions. The anger she felt toward Mr. Darren was no match for the pride she felt in Andy at that moment for the courage it took for him to come clean. She squeezed his hand, unable to find the words he needed to hear. She pushed to her feet and approached Mr. Darren.
“I don’t have children, so I can’t speak from a parental standpoint, but I know I would have done anything to help your son pass his classes and feel good about himself. You were willing to throw me to the wolves, to have my career, my life, torn to shreds in the very town where I grew up in order to protect your son.” She shook her head. “That’s a really horrible thing to do.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Yes, you’re right. And I’m so very sorry,” he said.
His eyes held so much grief and regret that it was hard for Leesa not to simply accept his apology, but she couldn’t. She had to spell out her feelings to him. He needed to understand that words couldn’t give her back what they’d stolen from her.
“‘Sorry’ can’t fix what happened. An apology can’t return my life to what it was. It can’t erase the doubt from the minds of everyone around me, or give me back everything I worked so hard for, in the town where my father raised me.” Fresh tears sprang from her eyes with thoughts of her father. She drew in a deep breath and held her chin up high, feeling a weight lifting from her shoulders. All it needed was a little harder shove for her to be able to breathe again. “But for Andy’s sake, I forgive you. Maybe you’re right. His life didn’t need any more upending than he’s already experienced. But that doesn’t make what you did right. I just hope you’ll both learn something from this.” She reached for Cole’s hand. “Luckily, things for me have turned out okay. And I hope for Andy’s sake, things for him will, too. If you’ll excuse me, I have a life to build.”
Leesa walked back into her childhood home, her fingers laced with the man she loved, and finally—Lord, finally—she understood how things had gone so wrong.
Cole closed the door behind them, and she melted into his arms, happy that at least everything in her life finally felt right.
Chapter Twenty-Five
COLE AND HIS siblings, along with Leesa and Tegan, made quick work of moving Leesa’s things into Cole’s beach house the following weekend. Leesa listed her old furniture on Craigslist, and by the end of the following weekend, her childhood home was empty. She’d kept most of her father’s books and all of his most treasured belongings, pictures, and other memorabilia from their lives, but her favorite thing was the hammock. Since there were no trees on the beach behind Cole’s house, Cole, Sam, and Nate had constructed a wooden cradle and rigged the hammock up on that. It was, like everything Cole did, perfect. He’d cleared space for her in every room, including shelves in the living room for her father’s books, and they’d even hung a few pictures of her and her father in the boat.
It’s our life, not just mine. I want to feel your presence everywhere, he’d said.
It was Saturday afternoon, and Leesa sat on the stone wall in Cole’s parents’ backyard, watching Cole and his brothers toss a football. Ty, his youngest brother, had come back from his assignment for the get-together, and like the rest of Cole’s family, he’d embraced Leesa without hesitation. He was big and strong, like the rest of the Braden men, and every bit as reckless as Cole was cautious. He wore his hair longer than the others, and the mischief in his eyes rivaled Sam’s. Leesa saw a look that could only mean trouble pass between Sam, Ty, and Nate while Nate reached back to throw the football, and she held her breath. Ty tackled Cole when Cole caught the ball. Nate and Sam were quick to pile on top of them, and their laughter rang through the air like a celebration.
“They’re still boys at heart,” Ace said as he sat down beside her.
“They must have been quite a handful when they were growing up.” Leesa tucked her hair behind her ear as a breeze swept off the water.
“Oh, yes. I hope that never changes.” Ace turned a friendly smile in her direction. “So? You did it. You faced your past and moved forward.”
“Yeah, I did. Thank you for the talk. It meant a lot to me,” she said honestly. “And I’m sorry about overstepping my bounds.” She still felt guilty for asking about his leg.
“Do you know that you picked up on the thing no one else did?” His gaze turned serious, and her stomach clenched.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He patted her hand. “I called the docs at the VA hospital, and they put me in touch with a therapist out in Pleasant Hill. I start mirror therapy next week.”
Leesa felt her eyes widen. “You do? So you’re not upset with me?”
“I’m not a complaining man, Annalise, but when you brought up what you saw on my face, it made me wonder. What if my family saw it but never said anything?” He looked across the yard at Maisy and smiled. “I asked Maisy about it, and she reminded me that she’d asked about it for two years after the accident, and apparently I brushed her off so often that she stopped asking. You know, I think I lived with the discomfort for long enough that it became part of who I was.”
“And now?”
He laughed softly, and it sounded so much like Cole’s laugh that her eyes were drawn across the yard to the man she loved. Cole waved and blew a kiss. She waved back as Ace responded.
“Now it’s time to accept my past and move forward.”
“But you said the pain was a good thing, a motivator,” she reminded him.
He pushed to his feet and reached for her hand, drawing her up beside him. “I think I’ve had enough reminders of what I left behind. Look at my beautiful family.” His eyes moved from the boys to Shannon, Tempe, and Jewel, who were headed their way, and then to Leesa. “There is no better motivator than the people in this yard.”
“Dad, Mom wants you to start the grill,” Tempe said as the girls joined them.
Leesa watched Ace walk away. “You guys are so lucky. Your dad is wonderful.”
“Yeah, we are,” Shannon said. “But your father must have been pretty incredible, too. Look how you turned out.”
“Thanks, he was.” She handed the notebook she’d been carrying to Tempe. “I’ve added my ideas for the Girl Power group. And I was thinking, I really enjoy working at Mr. B’s, but I also miss teaching, so I thought maybe I’d also start doing some tutoring on the side.”
“Please can you help Krissy? Her creative writing is not nearly as strong as her creative dancing,” Jewel said.
“Yeah, I’d like that.” She watched Cole and his brothers heading toward them.
“You’re really ready?” Tempe asked as she leafed through the note
book.
“I am.” She reached for Cole’s hand as he came to her side.
“Hi, angel. You doing okay?” Cole asked.
“Yeah, perfect. I was just telling Tempe that I’m ready to think about starting the Girl Power group.”
“And she’s offered to help Krissy with her schoolwork,” Jewel added.
Cole tugged her in closer. “Both excellent ideas.” As he lowered his lips to hers, Shannon sighed. Cole shifted his eyes to his sister.
“Go ahead, kiss your woman,” Shannon said with a wide grin. “I cannot wait until I have someone who looks at me the way you and Nate look at Leesa and Jewel.”
“Well, you’re not going to find him in the Colorado Mountains.” Ty ran a hand through his shiny dark hair. His long bangs fell right back in front of his eyes. “I’ve been on nearly every mountain across the world, and I’m telling you, you won’t find love on any of them. Sorry, sis.” He draped an arm around Shannon and smiled at Leesa and Cole. “Besides, you got years before you’re as old as Cole.”
“Hey,” Cole said.
Leesa laughed.
“I didn’t know love had an age requirement,” Jewel said as she snuggled up to Nate.
“I’m kidding.” Ty gave Shannon’s shoulder a squeeze, then released her. “Seriously, though, sis. Why the hurry?”
“I’m not in a hurry.” Shannon gazed at their parents, hugging by the grill across the yard. “It just seems nice.”
“Well, I’m not in a hurry. I’ve got too many things I want to do before I settle down.” Tempe tucked the notebook beneath her arm and waved to their parents, who were walking hand in hand on their way to join them.
“I’m with Tempe and Ty.” Sam tossed the football in the air and caught it. “So many women, so little time.”
“You guys have it all wrong.” Cole smiled at Leesa. “One perfect woman, never enough time.”
Sam and Ty scoffed. Tempe and Shannon awwed, and Nate and Jewel nodded in agreement, while all Leesa could do was wonder how she’d gone from a woman scorned to a woman loved. But when Cole dropped to his knee and took her hand in his, that thought disappeared completely.
Surrender My Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens): Cole Braden Page 22
