Crossing the Line (The Cross Creek Series Book 2)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Likewise. We don’t see a whole lot of famous people out here in Millhaven.”

  “Oh God, I’m definitely not famous.” Scarlett’s self-deprecating laughter chased off what little unease remained from the earlier conversation, and Cate murmured a quick “nice to meet you” before offering up one last smile and departing for the bar.

  “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” Scarlett asked as soon as the brunette was out of earshot, and Eli exchanged a glance with Hunter, who exchanged a glance with everyone else at the table, before he answered.

  “Cate’s husband and nine-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident three years ago.”

  Scarlett’s lashes fanned up in a snap, sympathy filling her dark-green stare. “That’s awful.”

  Owen nodded, taking a longer-than-usual sip from his beer before saying, “Brian and I were pretty good friends in high school. We’ve all known Cate since . . . God, forever. They were that couple everyone wanted to be.”

  “She seems to be doing okay, all things considered,” Emerson offered. “Doc Sanders and I had lunch at Clementine’s last week, and I talked to Cate for a few minutes. Actually, she asked if we needed any help with our filing and clerical work, but we’ve already got Nurse Kelley taking care of that. I’m glad she was able to pick up a few shifts here at The Bar, though. I hope she’s not having too rough a time.”

  Hunter and Daisy both nodded in emphatic agreement while Owen knocked back the rest of his beer in one go, and yeah, time for a new subject, stat.

  “Looks like everyone in town is a little starstruck by our famous photographer,” Eli said, gesturing to the groups of people around the bar, nearly all of whom he’d caught in various stages of staring or whispering tonight.

  Scarlett shifted over her bar stool, the edge of her heel brushing his calf with enough contact that he felt it, yet lightly enough to drive him crazy in the best possible way. “If I’m famous, then so are you.”

  “Ah, Eli’s more like notorious. His reputation precedes him.” Hunter waggled his brows at Eli, who offered his brother a nice, long look at his middle finger.

  “I’m not that bad,” he argued, and jeez, did everyone at the table have to laugh so loud, so quickly?

  “Dude. You conned Dad into letting you get a pet cow for your sixteenth birthday.”

  Scarlett’s eyes sparkled at the same time her chin did that lift thing that meant nothing good for him. “He what?”

  Hunter’s smile went full-on mischievous as he swung the expression in Scarlett’s direction. “He didn’t tell you the story of how he fast-talked his way into getting Clarabelle?”

  “No.” Scarlett lifted the end of the word just enough to twist it into a request, but oh no. No way was he going to get tossed under the Cross family nostalgia bus just for grins.

  “Hunter,” Eli warned, but his brother shook his head.

  “Oh, come on. It’s priceless.”

  “Classic Eli,” Owen agreed from across the table, and for once, it didn’t sound like a barb.

  Emerson chimed in with, “I love this story. I can’t believe you didn’t tell it to Scarlett!”

  Before Eli could protest or promise murder, Hunter jumped in and started doing exactly that. “So you know we have a cattle farm on the back half of the property, right?”

  “Sure,” Scarlett said. Even though their old man had hired a cattle manager decades ago to run that end of their farm, all four Cross men still kept up with the daily operations on both parts of Cross Creek’s business. “Eli took me up there twice this week and filled me in on all the basics of how things operate.”

  The lift of Owen’s brows clearly translated his surprise, causing Eli to remind him, “You told me to show her the whole farm.”

  “Well done, then,” Owen murmured, and even though Eli paused for a second to wonder whether there was something stronger than beer in his brother’s cup, he kept his trap clapped shut so Hunter could get story hour over with.

  “So you know that every spring, we get a pretty big round of cattle.” Hunter placed his half-empty beer on the glass-littered table in front of them, clearly more interested in putting Eli on the hot seat than in drinking. The jackass. “But we’re not a dairy farm. We just raise the cows for a certain amount of time before they’re sold to distributors.”

  Scarlett paled at that, her vegan side likely not a happy camper at the reminder that most of Cross Creek’s cows grew up to be cheeseburgers, and Eli took full control of the chance to interrupt.

  “Do we seriously have to tell—”

  “Yes,” came the chorus of answers from around the table, the loudest of which was Scarlett’s, and jeez, Eli knew when he’d been beat.

  Apparently Hunter did, too, because he opened his yap and kept right on going. “Well, this particular spring, when we got our round of cattle, the guy making the delivery asked Pop if he knew someone willing to take a baby Jersey cow. She couldn’t have been but two months old.”

  “Two and a half,” Eli muttered, and Owen took the opportunity to grab the conversational baton and run like mad.

  “She was a tiny thing. The momma cow had died during the birth, and the calf had to be bottle-fed. She was sweet, to be sure, but we had no reason to take a cow that needed daily hand-feeding. Pop got on the two-way radio and asked me if I knew anyone who’d want her, but of course, I didn’t. He was all set to say no when Eli caught wind of the conversation we’d had.”

  A smile played on Scarlett’s lips, and all of a sudden this story wasn’t so bad. “Then what happened?”

  Hunter grinned. “He came flyin’ on up to the back half of the property on one of our four-wheelers, looked Dad straight in the eye, and said, ‘Hold everything! That’s my cow!’”

  Scarlett’s smile became a full-on laugh that slid right under Eli’s skin. “He did not.”

  “Hand to God,” Hunter promised. “There he was, barely a minute over sixteen years old, about as filthy as a person could be from working in a bunch of muddy fields, putting the full court press on our old man for that cow. He swore up one side and down the other we’d never even know she was there. He’d feed her—”

  “And groom her daily,” Owen added.

  “And pay her vet bills and everything.” Hunter laughed, although the sound wasn’t unkind. “Pop argued for a coupl’a minutes, but Eli’s mind was done made up. Clarabelle was his cow, and she wasn’t leaving Cross Creek property come hell or high tide. I think he even threatened to lie down in front of the trailer.”

  “Hey.” God, Eli wanted to squash the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He really did. But it was an exercise in futility. “If you’re gonna tell the story, at least get your facts straight. I said I’d stand in front of the trailer.”

  Owen grinned, capping off the story with a flourish. “But of course he didn’t have to. He charmed Dad into keeping ol’ Clarabelle, and she’s been living the high life in that horse barn ever since.”

  “Your brothers are right,” Scarlett said, turning toward him on her bar stool. “That’s a fantastic story.”

  “My brothers are something.” Eli paused to sling a stare at both Owen and Hunter that substituted “assholes” for “something,” although the laugh that came after probably made the whole bit a tough sell. “But I’m glad you enjoyed the story.”

  “You know what else I bet Scarlett would enjoy? Dancing.”

  The mischief-making flash in Emerson’s smile registered just a beat too late for Eli to work up any damage control, and seriously, was his entire family trying to kill him?

  “Oh, I uh—”

  “Yes!” Daisy exclaimed, looping her arm through the crook of Owen’s elbow with a meddling smile of her own. “Come on. We’ll all go.”

  Eli was all set to dive into round two of his protest when Scarlett slid her high heels to the floorboards beside him.

  “I have two left feet, too, remember? But it’s a slow song, and there are already a bunch of people on
the dance floor, so we shouldn’t be too bad off. Probably,” she added.

  He studied the open space by the jukebox, where the rest of their group had already coupled off and started to sway to the low, slow twang of the song filtering through the speakers. She was right on both counts, and anyway, as bad as he was bound to be at it, dancing with her sounded kind of nice. “Okay, bumblebee. They’re your toes.”

  Leading Scarlett across the bar, Eli stopped at the outer edge of the makeshift dance floor, turning to frame her waist with his hands. She slipped against him and folded her arms over his shoulders, her palms pressing hotly just below the back of his neck, and forget “kind of nice.” Dancing was fucking spectacular.

  “I’m glad you decided to come out tonight,” Scarlett said, pulling back just far enough to be able to look at him clearly.

  “You should probably reserve your judgment until after you survive the next three minutes on the dance floor,” he teased, and her laughter in response didn’t make concentrating on his feet any easier.

  “I’ll be glad no matter what. I’m not used to this whole group/family thing. But it’s a whole lot easier with you here.”

  Surprise combined with some deeper emotion he couldn’t quite name, both making his heart beat faster behind the navy-blue cotton of his T-shirt. “If you feel out of place, you sure don’t show it.”

  Scarlett made a sound in the back of her throat, half scoff and all sexy. “It’s sweet of you to humor me, but come on. I even got the dress code ass-backward.”

  “Are you kidding? You could be wearing a flour sack and you’d still be far sexier than any other woman here.”

  Eli realized his egregious breach of brain-to-mouth filter about two seconds after Scarlett’s eyes rounded like dinner plates, and shit. Shit, shit, shit!

  “You think I’m the sexiest woman in the bar?” she asked. The rational part of his brain screamed with all the reasons he needed to backpedal, to come up with some glib answer, to not pull her even closer against his body from shoulders to chest to hips.

  But instead, he looked at her and told the truth. “I do.”

  Her smile made the admission worth every goddamn syllable, and that was even before she pressed up to place her answer just inches away from his mouth.

  “Good to know the way I feel about you is mutual. Now what do you say we make a really good excuse and get out of here so I can prove it?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thankfully, Eli was excellent at both making excuses and driving really, really fast. They didn’t talk much on the way back to the Twin Pines, which was okay with Scarlett. She’d already said the thing that had been front and center in her brain—and all her other parts—ever since she’d seen Eli walk into The Bar tonight.

  She wanted him. And she was done waiting.

  The headlights of Eli’s truck threw shadows over the faded pavement of the parking lot as he pulled into his usual spot in front of his apartment. Quiet filtered into the truck, punctuated by the creak and sigh of the now-still engine and the soft rustle of denim and cotton against leather as they both shifted against the front seats of the truck to look at each other.

  “Hey,” Eli whispered, a curl of pure want unraveling in Scarlett’s belly as he dropped his eyes to her mouth for a beat before raising them back up to meet her stare.

  “Hey.”

  “Are you sure—”

  She pressed forward to cover his mouth with hers before he could even finish. A ragged groan collapsed from the back of his throat, daring her to skip every pleasantry in favor of parting his lips with a deep, suggestive sweep of her tongue.

  “Yes,” Scarlett murmured, her lips still touched against his. “I’m very sure. But unless you want to do this here, we really need to get out of your truck.”

  Eli didn’t hesitate. In a rush of movement, he was out of the driver’s side, rounding the front of the truck to pull the passenger door wide on its hinges. Laughter welled up from her chest as he reached up to slide both hands beneath her arms, lifting her from her elevated seat and bringing her feet down to the pavement beside him.

  “Better?” he asked, angling her back against the cool side panel of the door he’d just pushed shut. He pressed against her body, the hard plane of his chest and the brush of his even harder arousal sending all sorts of yes, yes, yes messages between her thighs, and she leaned in to meet the delicious friction of both.

  “Mmm.” Scarlett’s head drifted back as Eli slid a slow, sexy-as-hell kiss over the column of her neck. Her fingers flexed hard on his shoulders, which made his tighten over her waist in return, and oh God, if they didn’t get behind closed doors right now . . .

  “Your place.” She flattened her palms over his chest, buying just the smallest amount of space and sanity. “Go.”

  He paused to flick a lightning-fast glance at his front door. “My place is—”

  “Closer. Eli, please. The town gossip noticed my rental car in the parking lot. There’s no way people didn’t see us leave together, and we’re not going to make it all the way to my place with our clothes on. I don’t want to end up on YouTube, here.”

  “Good point.”

  They took the dozen or so steps needed to reach his threshold in various stages of kissing, touching, and laughing. Things got a little tricky for a minute at the end of the trip—in Eli’s defense, getting a key successfully into a lock while unrepentantly making out against the door in question had to be a challenge. But finally, he twisted the knob, and the front door gave way to the cool, dark interior of his apartment.

  “That’s better,” Scarlett said. She gave her eyes a minute to adjust to the shadows, quickly discovering that Eli’s apartment had the same footprint as hers. Turning toward him, she reached out to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him flush against her as she returned her lips to his. The want pulsing between her legs became an insistent demand, and she started moving backward toward the hallway leading to his bedroom.

  But the rush of cool air on her body stopped her in her tracks.

  “Where’s the fire?” Eli asked from the spot where he still stood, a few steps from his closed and relocked front door.

  Scarlett laughed. “Can you really not figure that out, cowboy?”

  “All I meant was we don’t need to go so fast.”

  “I like fast.” She closed the space between them, skimming her hand up the solid, denim-wrapped length of his thigh as proof.

  A muscle ticked in his jaw, barely visible in the ambient light filtering in through the curtains. “I see that,” he grated. But still, he didn’t move.

  “I want you, Eli.” Her heart pounded faster, her sex throbbing right now, right now, right now with every beat. “I don’t want to wait.”

  To her utter surprise, he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, darlin’,” he said, his sexy drawl sliding over her skin like silk and sin. “Believe me, I want you, too.” His hands coasted over her shoulders. Her rib cage. Her hips. “But I only just got started, and I’m not about to miss a single part of you.”

  Scarlett’s want-soaked sigh spilled past her lips before she felt it fully form in her chest. “There’s only one part I’m really concerned with at the moment.”

  “You really want to go that fast?” Eli dropped one hand lower, the calluses on his fingers rasping over the hypersensitive skin on her bare inner thigh as he pushed beneath her skirt, and oh God, she couldn’t tell whether she was going to die or scream or fly apart first.

  Somehow, she managed to slip a “yes” past her lips, and he pinned her with a glittering stare.

  “If you need to come quick to get it out of your system, I can get you there in the next ninety seconds. But make no mistake. I intend to go slow after that, just to watch you come even harder the second time.”

  Scarlett’s moan in response was all the encouragement Eli needed. The hand on her thigh trailed higher, the glint in his eyes turning darker and more wicked as he lowered his stare to the suggesti
ve contact.

  “Do you have any idea how hot this skirt is?” he asked, his ragged tone turning her nipples to hard, tight peaks against her shimmery gold top.

  “You like it?” While Scarlett didn’t normally give a flying fig what anyone else thought of her, she’d definitely noticed the raised eyebrows from half the patrons at The Bar tonight.

  But Eli seemed to have his brows up for a whole different reason. “‘Like’ is a little weak for how I feel about you in this skirt.”

  “Yeah?” Wetness bloomed between her legs, making her even bolder than normal. “Tell me.”

  “This skirt looks like it was made for you.” Hooking his free arm around her waist, he pulled her close, anchoring her lower back firmly against his forearm and splaying his fingers wide against her opposite hip. “So sexy. It makes me wonder what’s underneath it.”

  Eli’s fingers moved higher still, playing lightly at the juncture between her leg and the border of her panties, and Scarlett was helpless against the thrust of her hips in search of his touch.

  “Go ahead and find out.”

  “You really do live in the moment, don’t you?” he asked, coaxing her feet apart with a gentle yet intentional push of one boot.

  Unable to make her mouth form an actual word—damn, she wanted him so much—Scarlett simply nodded. Eli flexed the fingers at her hip, his other hand a hot, sweet weight between her legs.

  “Well, then. Far be it from me not to keep my word.”

  With nothing more than a turn of his wrist, he shoved the lace of her panties aside and slid a finger all the way into her heat. Her inner muscles clenched out of sheer instinct, and the sudden, erotic pressure sent a shockwave deep into her center.

  “Oh.” Scarlett turned her nails against the tops of Eli’s shoulders. A heavy exhale slipped out of him, coasting a path all the way past her ear and melting into her skin before he began to move the hand between her legs in a slow, deliberate rhythm. The sensation was too much and not enough all at once, rippling through her and pulsing along with her rapidly beating heart.

  “Jesus, Scarlett. You are . . .” He finished the thought with a sound in the back of his throat, part appreciation, part something dirtier that Scarlett liked even more. Eli’s movements grew more purposeful, a second finger joining the first inside her, spiraling her desire into outright need. Her clit throbbed harder with each shift in contact, and her breath tangled in her lungs as he slid his thumb directly where she ached for it.