by Ward, Alice
She popped up onto her knees beside me to take a look for herself. “Jeez, yeah. I better head out. You know how scared I am of driving in storms.”
“Because lightning is going to hit your car and fry you, and the only way they’ll be able to identify your charred body is through dental records. I know.”
“Hey, it happens!” Elena got to her feet, pulling her hair back into a ponytail and tipping a lamp over accidentally with her foot. I set it upright before standing too. “The lightning hitting the car part, anyway.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled as we gave each other a one-armed hug. “Get home safe.”
She departed with a casual wave over her shoulder, and I started gathering the Himalayan salt lamps we’d opened to organize them on the display by the entrance. Just as I’d placed the last one where and how I wanted it, the door opened again. I turned around, expecting to see Elena with an explanation that it was too scary to drive home and she wanted to spend the night. Instead, I saw Cash.
“Hello, stranger.” I attempted to sound unfazed by his appearance while my belly started a series of flips that would have made an Olympic gymnast proud.
We hadn’t seen each other for five days, not since we’d kissed. Under normal circumstances, I would have been offended and probably felt blown off if I’d kissed someone and he hadn’t made an effort to see me again, but this was different. We weren’t just dating — hell, I had no idea what we were doing. Flirting? Longing? Being idiots?
Whatever it was, there was still the issue of my property between us, and the break had given me the time I needed to sort through my feelings about him, the kiss, and Pennington’s both individually and as a unit. If anything, I was grateful he hadn’t shown up in my shop the very next day. I knew myself well, and I would have been an emotional soundwave. I wouldn’t have been in the peaceful place I was now.
“How are you, darlin’?” He smiled, and my insides melted into butter.
I noticed he had his trusty folder in his hand, and it made me want to laugh. Everything had changed between us, and yet it was all still the same. “I’m fine. How about you? Are you surviving this northern weather now that we’re no longer impersonating Oklahoma with heat and sunshine?”
“I’m managing.”
Good lord, we were talking about the weather. If I hadn’t been present when we’d lip-locked outside Auras, I wouldn’t have believed we’d been anything close to intimate after hearing our pathetic attempt at small talk. I didn’t know where to steer the conversation, though, or if I should even steer it at all. Was I supposed to mention what had happened? Was he?
“There’s something I want to show you.” I was so grateful he took control of the situation that I was tempted to kiss him again without preamble, but I kept myself in check. “Do you have a minute?”
“Are you kidding? I have lots of minutes. No customers will venture out shopping when it looks like we’re about to have a live reenactment of The Wizard of Oz.” I motioned absently to him. “Come on, let’s go over here.”
We meandered to the counter, and he dropped the folder onto it. He flipped it open, and I noticed at once that the pages inside were different than those he’d had every other time. There were pictures of buildings I recognized from around Fawn, and pictures of empty land, and pictures of houses both inside and outside. What I assumed were descriptions were typed up beneath the photographs, along with prices printed in bold font.
I tilted my head to one side. “What’s this?”
“This…” He tapped the top page with his fingertip. “…is my new offer.”
“You’re offering me Fawn?”
His telltale smirk lit on his suave mouth, and his eyes flickered above the dimple that damn winked at me. “In a manner of speaking. I’m offering you anywhere you want in Fawn, all renovation or construction costs included, along with any home you want that’s currently on the market. This is all on top of my last requested purchase price, of course.”
I blinked at the file, then looked up and blinked at him. Though he was speaking English perfectly intelligibly, I couldn’t process what I’d just heard.
“You’re…what?”
“We’ll give you the money we already promised you, along with all costs related to securing you a new location for Auras as well as a private residence, in exchange for your property.”
“Are you serious?”
He lifted a casual shoulder. “Aren’t I always?”
It was an unbelievable offer, one most people would have taken in a heartbeat, but I wasn’t sure. A new place fully customized to the vision I had for Auras sounded utterly beautiful, and a home with its own street address wasn’t unappealing, yet the idea of giving up the space I’d loved so dearly for so long made my chest physically ache.
It reminded me of the way I felt when I found out my childhood pet, a dachshund named Pumpkin, had to be put down because x-rays revealed he had tumors in his stomach. Loss. Heartache.
“Cash, this is very nice.” I wanted to tread lightly. He was watching me with so much hope on his face that I was afraid this rejection would hurt him personally in a way the others hadn’t. “It really is. But—”
“I know what you’re going to say, and I’m going to tell you not to answer yet.” He closed the folder, but he didn’t pick it up like I expected him to do. “I’ll leave this here for you to look over. I want you to give it some serious thought. This isn’t just for my benefit, darlin’. I’m trying really hard to make sure you’re happy with the outcome too.”
I closed my mouth, biting down on my lower lip, and nodded my concession. A pleasant silence passed between us when, without warning, a massive crash of thunder boomed around us. I jumped, and Cash looked over my shoulder at the window. A split second later, the steady sound of raindrops pitter-pattering the ground outside increased to the wicked crackling of a torrential downpour.
“Well, I might as well close up shop for the day.” I strode to the door to flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED and peered out the paned glass. “This doesn’t look like it’ll be letting up any time soon.”
As if on cue, a blinding flash of lightning flashed across the hooded sky, and I instinctively squinted against the flare to shield my vision. Every light in the store flickered, and then we were doused in darkness.
“Shit.”
Cash’s voice rose from the shadows behind me. I parroted his curse as I attempted to meander my way back through the shop without knocking over everything in my path, but my inventory was large and the floorspace small, so I knocked over quite a few unseen things before reaching the counter where Cash still stood.
“I’ve got a lot of candles we can light.” I started palming the counter, hunting for my phone to use as a makeshift flashlight. “The only problem is being able to find them.”
My fingers brushed something warm, and I realized it was his hand. Hastily, I pulled back, but electricity unrelated to the lightning shot up my arm. We were standing closer than I’d realized.
I breathed in to compose myself, but the inhale brought with it the heady scent of his cologne, and I was thrown back in time to the moment outside Auras when his body was against mine. Here we were again, close and alone. Heat rocketed through me from my scalp to my groin. I could hear his breathing, calm and steady, and I could feel the energy pulsing from him.
“Cash?” I whispered.
“Yes?”
I never answered him. We crashed together like waves in the sea, our mouths wet and seeking, our hands desperately clinging. There was no tentativeness this time, no gentle curiosity. Our clothes came off in layers and were thrown to the floor, and the sounds of the storm beating down outside were quelled by our primal grunts and groans as we laid claim to each other’s bodies. His lips were on my neck, my fingers were buried in his hair. His taut forearms cradled my back, and I was bent to the floor with an Adonis on top of me.
“Please.” My moan was a whimper of want, thick and clumsy.
He trailed his tongue along my collarbone, ventured farther south to my breast, and suckled my pert, anticipating nipple. Raw laser beams tore through me, shocking my system and sending my back into an exquisite arch of pleasure. He circled, flicked, teased with his tongue, and his hand sought the one place I needed him most.
Pressure, firm and insistent.
Slick sweat and slippery need.
Circles. Scribbles. Pulses.
I was spiraling, my head filling with white fuzziness as my body lost touch with my mind. Every twitch, every moan, every plea was at his hand, and I’d never felt so out of control of myself.
“Cash.” My voice was hardly recognizable in my fervor. “Take me.”
Everything stopped. His tongue disappeared, and his hand vanished, and I was left a gasping mess on the floor as he scrambled for his pants. I dimly registered the sound of something ripping, and then he returned. Through the lightning-streaked darkness, I saw glimpses of him in all his naked glory with an erection to make any woman salivate. He rolled a condom down his substantial length, took himself in one hand, and pushed my thighs apart with the other.
That’s when he found me.
The sensation of his entrance was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Paralyzing. Splitting. Divine. Ethereal. I was torn apart and reconstructed in his thrust, and it removed me from my body completely.
I was floating above us, my spirit looking on as my physical self came alive with moaning and writhing and clawing. Cash slid back and drove deep again. Stars blinked behind my eyes, and I felt the familiar swelling in the lowest part of my belly.
“Not yet.” He knew somehow that I was teetering on the edge of oblivion, but hearing his low, growling command was all it took to push me over and send me plummeting into an abyss of euphoria.
My thighs seized up around him, my hips rose like a prayer, and my cries of pleasure erupted to infuse into every spiritual artifact in the store. I raked his back with my nails, desperate for something to hold and keep me grounded, but it was too late. I was careening through the universe, and he was coming with me.
He didn’t pull away as we returned to sanity. We just laid there on the floor of my shop, naked and soaked and silent, lit in the midst of a storm by radiant afterglow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Cash
There were only a handful of times I could recall when I had a life-altering experience.
The first was when I was five years old and let go of my mother’s hand in a parking lot. I ran ahead, ignoring her calls, and a car full of rowdy teens nearly plowed into me. In that moment, as a rusty bumper careened toward me, I felt the kind of fear for my life nobody ever forgets. My mom spent the car ride home switching between scolding me and fussing over me, but the only thing I could focus on was the suffocating sensation of my heart in my throat.
The second was when my cousin was killed in an after-school street brawl because the kid he was fighting pulled out a pocketknife. It was my first look into grief, loss, and mortality, and the sight of his lifeless body lying in a casket was permanently etched in my mind.
Most recently was my father’s death. I still hadn’t processed it entirely, nor had I sorted through the contradictory feelings I had about him and his passing, but I knew it had changed me. It changed everything.
And then there was sex with Gretchen on her shop floor in the middle of a thunderstorm.
At thirty-five, I’d had my fair share of sex with different partners. Mostly, it was good. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes not so much. But what happened with Gretchen was an entity all its own. Pure, primal passion. A need for her rather than a need to get off.
I’d left her shop after the thunderstorm let up feeling more changed than I had the day I lost my virginity, but I hadn’t yet figured out why. There was the witch theory, but I refused to let myself buy into that.
So, to clear my head, I did the other thing I came to Michigan to do. I went fishing.
A quick Google search pointed me to a number of fly-fishing outfitters who would serve as my guide in the unfamiliar territory. A man named Wendall told me over the phone where to meet him and told me to stay away from the herd of alpacas that bordered the river. He also told me to wear safety gear because it was hunting season and he didn’t want me to be mistaken for a pheasant.
I wasn’t sure how anyone could mistake my hulking form for a pheasant, but fishing to me was like yoga to Gretchen, so I agreed.
Now, in my blinding orange vest and grass-patterned camouflage pants, I was standing next to the Honda in the small, gravel parking area waiting for Wendall to show up.
Twenty minutes had already passed since the time we’d agreed to meet, and I was getting frustrated. As a distraction, I pulled out my phone from inside my vest and texted Drew.
I made the offer. New shop, new house, full purchase price. We’ll see what happens.
Once I hit send, I started to shove the phone back into my vest pocket. It was only twenty past six in the morning on a Saturday, which meant Drew wasn’t due to be awake yet for another three or four hours. Maybe later, if he’d gotten lucky.
To my surprise, no sooner had I pocketed the phone when it buzzed against my chest. I extracted it a second time and pulled up the text.
She didn’t say yes right away? Sounds like she plays hard 2 get. Tough break, man.
I rolled my eyes. Typical Drew. Glancing around the parking lot for any sign of my guide, I blindly punched my response into the text box.
Idiot.
I didn’t bother waiting for a reply. The minutes were ticking by, and no new vehicles were even making their way down the adjacent road, let alone turning into the parking area. It was starting to look like I wouldn’t be fishing today, or I would have to venture out on my own without a guide. The morning, with its mild temperature and cloudless pink sky, was ideal for wetting a line. I needed the therapy.
Human voices rose from the silence, and I twisted around to see the source. Two men were climbing out of a gray pickup that had been there since I’d arrived. I hadn’t noticed anyone inside the vehicle, but it was covered in dew, so I’d assumed the owner had already been at the field for some time. Both men were dressed for hunting in colors similar to mine, and they were laughing.
The one from the driver’s side rounded the rear of the truck to fish something from the open bed. His companion joined him at his side. Instead of the familiar snapping sounds of a gun case opening, there was the clinking of rods and reels as they pulled out fishing gear. The driver, a burly fellow with hair the color of vodka sauce, said something I couldn’t quite make out to his friend before turning to shift his tackle box into a comfortable position, and I caught his eye.
Hoping one of the two was Wendall, I lifted a hand as a friendly greeting. The redhead nudged his buddy, who turned to look at me too, and they began making their way over to me.
“Hey,” the driver called out when they were within discernible earshot. “You waiting for somebody?”
“Yeah. Are you Wendall?”
They looked at each other and chuckled, coming to a halt a few feet from me. “No. Thank god for that.” Carrottop situated his rod against his shoulder and extended a hand to me. “Name’s Greg Laughlin, Fawn PD.”
The name rang so many bells in my head that I was almost deaf for a second. Laughlin. Gretchen’s last name. She’d mentioned her brother when she told me about Elena, the housekeeper at Bullfrog Bay. I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure she’d told me his name was Greg. The man standing in front of me definitely bore a resemblance to the woman who’d taken over the functional part of my brain, with his red-blonde hair and woodsy green eyes, but I had my doubts. What were the odds?
Then again, we were in a town the size of a pinhead. Maybe the odds were better than I thought.
I took his hand and politely shook it. His comrade shot out a hand of his own before I had the chance to introduce myself.
“Ned Billings.”
�
��He’s a volunteer with the fire department.” Greg elbowed Ned. “Not quite brave enough to join the brothers in blue.”
Ned snorted. “Yeah. The criminal activity in Fawn is a real nightmare.”
I shook Ned’s proffered hand as well. “Good to meet you both. I’m Cash Pennington.”
They looked at each other again and recognition bloomed on both of their faces. Ned looked nothing more than idly interested, but Greg’s expression changed considerably. His eyes became needlelike, and his brows lifted almost threateningly.
“Pennington? As in, the store?”
I nodded and immediately regretted mentioning my surname. This was probably the moment I’d get to hear the overprotective brother speech about how breaking his sister’s heart would result in some broken bones. That, or he was going to try and fight me for sleeping with Gretchen. I didn’t know what kind of guy Greg was, but there was no way he got his thick arms from writing speeding tickets.
“So, you’re the guy who’s been harassing my sister to sell her store.”
There it was, the confirmation that this man was indeed Gretchen’s brother. I hadn’t mentioned to her that I was going fishing this morning, but I found myself wondering if she’d known thanks to her witchy ways and sent her beefy sibling after me. There was something utterly Shakespearean about the concept.
“Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot of each other.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.” Greg narrowed his eyes. “All those letters you sent, you still didn’t get the message, so here you are to muscle her into making a decision she shouldn’t have to make.”
I leaned against the trunk of the Honda, stuffing my hands into my pockets. “It’s business, man. I’m doing my best to make sure she’s happy with the deal.”
He took a step toward me. “Oh, yeah?” The hand not holding the rod was balled into a fist, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.
I was taken back to a time in my youth when Drew and I revered ourselves as tough, rugged guys despite our bountiful trust funds. On more than one occasion, we’d gotten into fights because of sideways looks, misplaced words, or just a lack of entertainment. We’d won some, and we’d lost some, but every time was an adrenaline rush my buttoned-up life craved. Seeing Greg coming toward me with aggression in his eyes gave me that same thrill, and my chin tilted up of its own accord.
