Defending Hearts

by Shannon Stacey

  “She made us a picnic lunch? To eat in the field?”

  “Yup.” He held up the basket.

  “So now I have to hide in the hayloft to eat my lunch.”

  Shrugging, Alex started toward the wooden ladder. “We can do that, too.”

  Part of her could hardly believe his audacity. He’d fibbed to Gram and not only gotten a blanket, but a picnic lunch, too. But another part of her—namely parts of her directly involved in orgasms—didn’t care how he’d pulled it off.

  By the time she got up the ladder, Alex had set the picnic basket off to one side and was spreading the quilt over some hay bales. Then he sat down on it and bounced a little, as if testing a mattress. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s perfect.” She straddled his lap, bunching the front of his T-shirt in one hand. With the other hand, she tugged his hair, pulling his head back so she could press her mouth to his.

  His hands gripped her hips, pushing her down against his denim-clad erection. When she dipped her tongue between his lips, he responded with a hunger that matched her own. His fingertips pressed into her flesh, and his hips lifted from the hay bale. Gretchen ground against him, the delicious friction making her throb.

  Alex caught her lower lip between his teeth, biting down until she moaned. His hands rocked her hips gently, sliding her back and forth along the length of him. She’d never hated clothing as much as she did in that moment.

  “We have too many clothes on,” Gretchen whispered against his mouth.

  “We can fix that.”

  A few minutes later, she was spread naked on the blanket-covered hay bales, under Alex. He was just as naked, except for the condom, and Gretchen shivered in anticipation.

  She ran her fingertips across the smooth, hard planes of Alex’s chest before bringing her legs up so she could use her heels to pull him closer. She wanted him inside her now.

  He never broke eye contact with her as he lowered his hips and pressed the head of his erection against her. The muscles in his jaw worked as he slowly slid into her, tormenting them both. When she tried to lift her hips, he pulled back the same amount.

  “Are you in a hurry?” he teased, but the husky rasp of his voice told her he was on the ragged edge of self-control. But still he didn’t bury himself in her. Instead, he taunted her, pulling back a little more each time until her hands curled into fists and she wanted to scream.

  He brushed his thumb over her nipple, causing a delicious ripple through her body. “I’ve had a few fantasies about you and this hayloft, but this is better.”

  “I like that real me is better than imaginary me.”

  He moved his hips in excruciatingly slow circles, deliberately trying to drive her crazy. “Real you is amazing. And my fantasies tend to be a little rushed in the shower, due to the hot water situation.”

  An image of him in the shower, taking himself in hand while the water beat on his broad shoulders, had her raking her fingernails over his back.

  Alex drove into her then, burying himself so deep within her, she almost came immediately. A small cry escaped her lips before she could bite it back, and she felt a shudder run down his spine. The muscles of his back worked as he moved in and out of her, slowly and with long, deep strokes.

  Gretchen could never touch him enough to get her fill. She ran her hands over his back, his shoulders, over the flexing muscles of his upper arms. When she slid her hand down the side of his jaw, Alex turned his head and caught her finger in his mouth. He sucked hard, and she whimpered, raising her hips because she wanted more.

  He reached down and took her left leg, pulling it over her right until she was turned away from him. With her foot on the floor and her other knee on the hay bales, he thrust deeper and harder, and Gretchen’s muscles tensed. She panted, hovering on the brink.

  “Come for me, Gretchen,” he urged, his voice harsh with restraint.

  She couldn’t hold it back. Her muscles spasmed, clenching and releasing as he drove into her relentlessly, not letting up until she gasped his name, her fingernails digging into the blanket-covered hay.

  When he came, he gripped her hips hard, pounding into her before leaning over to rest his forehead on her back. After a few moments so they could catch their breath, he pulled free of her and then tugged her sideways until they were both lying on the hay.

  She turned so she could face him, and he kissed her. “I’m officially adding a farm girl and hayloft fetish to my list of possible weird proclivities.”

  Farm girl. Gretchen closed her eyes, inhaling deeply as he ran his thumb along the line of her jaw. “You make me want to be more.”

  “What?”

  Dammit, she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Forget it.”

  “Not a chance.” The tip of his thumb skimmed over her lower lip and she shivered. “Look at me, Gretchen.”

  She did, looking into his dark eyes. “I just meant that you’re probably used to . . . a more upscale woman. Fancy hotels, maybe. Nice sheets. All I have to offer is a hayloft.”

  “Honey, there is nowhere else I’d rather be right now than in this hayloft with you.”

  Right now. She caught the words, but couldn’t tell if they meant anything or if she was reading too much into it. But she did know she didn’t want this fun interlude to turn into something serious. “You know what’s really nice about this hayloft?”

  “Besides you being naked in it? What could be nicer?”

  “There’s a picnic basket with food in it.”

  He laughed and reached for his pants. “You do help a man work up an appetite.”

  She skimmed her hand over his back. “Mmm. But I’m also pretty good at helping you work off the calories, too.”

  “Very true.” He tossed the pants back on the floor and crawled back over her. “I think she put cookies in there. Maybe another pre-lunch workout would make me feel less guilty about eating them.”

  —

  Alex met Coach McDonnell for breakfast at O’Rourke’s because it was one of the few times the man would sit still. Once the boys showed up for tryouts, the coach didn’t rest until the football season ended.

  But once a week, if he could, Coach would go to the restaurant for breakfast because his wife had taken strict control of his diet when his cholesterol levels concerned his doctor. Coach was a man who felt any life that didn’t include the occasional hash omelet or a side of bacon with breakfast wasn’t worth living, and Mrs. McDonnell seemed willing to pretend she didn’t know.

  “How’s it going, son?” Coach asked once they’d been given big mugs of coffee and ordered their meals. “I haven’t seen as much of you around the field.”

  “I can only use so many pictures of the kids running around in practice jerseys. I’ve spent some time trying to write but, to be honest, it’s not easy.”

  “You wrote some damn fine essays in high school, but pictures were always your thing.”

  “It’s more than that.” Alex hadn’t really articulated what he was feeling about the project, even in his own mind. But this was Coach, and if ever there was a man Alex could talk to, it was him. “I guess I’m having some reservations about the project and I’ve been trying to ignore them. Needless to say, that’s a one-way ticket to writer’s block.”

  “What kind of reservations?”

  Alex raised his hands in a gesture of frustration. “I don’t know. Like with Hunter Cass. He talked to me a while back. You know, his part in the story was probably the most compelling to me. But when he was telling me how things are better, it just felt so personal. I can’t imagine putting a book out there that talks about some of the hardest times his family’s been through.”

  “Isn’t that your job? To make stories feel personal to the person reading them? To make people who look at your pictures feel the emotion behind them?”

  “Yeah.�
� He had a point. “But it feels like everybody’s looking forward now, and maybe looking back doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  Coach leaned back in the booth and gave him one of those direct looks Alex remembered from his youth. “Why’d you come back here, son?”

  “I felt like the story was unfinished.”

  “Whose story?”

  Alex opened his mouth to answer, hesitated, and then closed it again. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve been traveling for a lot of years, taking your photographs, and you kind of became a man with no home. Home is what keeps you grounded.” Coach shrugged, rubbing the spot on his Eagles polo shirt between the top and second button like it was some kind of nervous habit. “Maybe you weren’t done being a part of something again.”

  “I guess you could be right.” He took a sip of coffee, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with that realization. “The fundamental problem that leaves me with is the fact that my career kind of depends on me moving around the world at will. I can’t just park myself in an office and wait for compelling human interest stories to happen outside my window.”

  “No, but you can keep it in your mind that you need to recharge and reground yourself once in a while before you reach the burnout phase. What are you going to do with the story you’ve built so far?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to write a book. My subconscious seems to agree that’s not the right way to go. I’ve run a few ideas by my agent and he thinks he can sell it as a web feature. Basically, a magazine would run an abridged story and extract in the paper edition, with the web address for the full feature. On the website would be a longer, more in-depth look at Stewart Mills. It would not only have photographs through the article, but it could have an accompanying photo gallery. I’ve done it once before and it’s very effective.”

  “That sounds like a good compromise.”

  “It’s long enough so I can tell the story I wanted to tell, but short enough so people don’t expect the nitty-gritty personal details, you know? Really focus on where everybody’s going and less on where they’ve been.”

  Coach looked up as the server brought their breakfasts, giving her a warm smile. “That looks amazing. Thank the cook for me.”

  “Sure thing, Coach.” She turned to Alex. “You need anything else?”

  “No, I’m all set. And it looks delicious.” He eyed the plate when she’d walked away, taking in the mound of scrambled eggs and strips of bacon, to say nothing of the butter-soaked homemade toast. “They don’t skimp on portions around here.”

  “No, they don’t.” Coach chuckled as he put cream and sugar in the coffee she’d refilled for them. “Mine are those fake eggs, though. Waitress accidentally let it slip a few weeks ago, and Cass confessed that she and Helen were in cahoots. I let her think they’re getting away with it, though, because this sure isn’t fake hash. I know how to pick my battles.”

  Alex laughed and dug into his eggs. “If I stay in this town much longer, I’m going to have to buy bigger pants.”

  “So how are things between you and Gretchen?”

  Alex wasn’t sure if that segue from staying in town much longer to his relationship with Gretchen was coincidental or deliberate on Coach’s part. “We’re, uh . . . enjoying each other’s company.”

  “She’s a pretty girl. And the Walkers have always been good people.”

  Alex nodded and shoved food in his mouth so he’d have an excuse not to reply. Though Coach was the go-to guy for advice and leaning on, he found himself strangely reluctant to talk about Gretchen with him.

  “You know, after her grandfather passed away, nobody thought those two women had a chance of keeping that farm. They sure proved everybody wrong.”

  “It’s not easy,” Alex said. “They both work hard, but most of it falls on Gretchen.”

  “She’s probably one of the most grounded women I’ve ever met, and she definitely has a strong sense of home and family.” Coach pointed a forkful of hash at him. “Interesting mix, you being a guy with no home at all.”

  “First off, I do have a home. I have a very nice apartment in Rhode Island. And Gretchen and I aren’t . . . mixing. Not the way you think.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as the kind to do anything lightly.”

  “She’s also not the kind who does emotional entanglements.”

  Coach shook his head, rubbing at that spot between his buttons again. “You can bullshit yourself if you want, but don’t try to bullshit me.”

  “I’m not trying to . . .” Alex sighed. “She doesn’t give me anything. Sometimes I can see right through her and other times, she’s like a brick wall.”

  “The people with the thickest walls are usually the ones protecting the softest hearts.” Alex snorted and gave him a really? look. “Okay, that was a corny one, even for me. You want football advice, I’m your guy. If you’re trying to be a good man and live a good life, I’ve got that covered. But women? I need to read better greeting cards, I guess.”

  Alex laughed, but it was short-lived. “You feeling okay, Coach?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You keep rubbing your chest. Just with your fingers, like on your breastbone, but you’ve done it a few times.”

  Coach shrugged. “I’ve been having some heartburn lately. Helen’s been after me to give up coffee, but she’s already got me eating egg-white omelets. A man can only sacrifice so much.”

  “Maybe Mrs. McDonnell should be after you to make sure it’s not something more serious.”

  “Dammit, Jim, you’re a photographer, not a doctor.”

  Alex laughed at the Star Trek reference, but it didn’t change the fact that he was concerned. A doctor could do some tests. Maybe prescribe something stronger than antacid tablets to rule out heartburn.

  “Stop looking at me like that, son.” Coach gave him a stern look. “You all didn’t work so hard to save the football team so I could kick the bucket before our first game. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Alex didn’t even want to go there. He’d gone so long without Coach, and now that he was back in his life, if something happened to him . . . His mind shied away, not even willing to consider the possibility. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “I want to say one more thing about Gretchen, and then I’ll stay out of it,” Coach said. “You came back here because your story wasn’t finished. You need to keep in mind life isn’t always a choose-your-own-adventure kind of story. If you pick an adventure and don’t like how it ends, you might not get to go back and choose again. Gretchen’s a strong woman, and she can also be pretty unforgiving if she feels somebody’s done her wrong. She’s got a lot of her grandfather in her so, if you choose wrong, you might have to live with that.”

  Alex nodded to show he understood, but he didn’t really have anything to say. His thoughts had become like a tangled ball of Ida’s yarn, with two ends. One end was Gretchen and the other was his career.

  And as he mentally pulled at one or the other, that messy knot in the middle just grew tighter and tighter.

  —

  Of all the chores Gretchen had ever had to do being raised on a farm, laundry was her least favorite. It was even worse than taking care of chickens, but if she didn’t do it, she eventually ran out of clean clothes. As much as she might want to, she couldn’t live in her cow pajamas.

  Unfortunately, laundry was also Gram’s least favorite thing to do, so they’d agreed a long time ago to each do their own and that way they both suffered. It was only fair.

  Muttering under her breath about all of the outdoor things she’d rather be doing, Gretchen pulled a shirt out of the dryer and gave it a hard snap to shake the wrinkles out. Because she’d been outside, she’d missed the buzzer and this load had sat in a lump in the bottom of the dryer too long. Then she folded it and set it on her shirt pile on top of the dryer.
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  The next item she pulled out wasn’t hers. For a second, she thought it was Gram’s, but then she realized the lightweight zip hoodie belonged to Alex. Now that the mornings and late evenings were cooler, he sometimes threw it on and Gretchen remembered grabbing it off the back of the chair when she was putting this load in the washing machine. As she continued folding, she also found one of his socks, which she’d rescued from Cocoa’s bed, and she put that with his sweatshirt.

  As she folded a pair of her jeans, Gretchen thought about the signs of Alex scattered throughout the house. There weren’t too many, because he was a neat guy who didn’t have a lot of belongings with him, but there was the sweatshirt and the sock. His hiking boots, which he wore around the farm or in rainy weather, sitting by the back door. A spare phone charger in the basket on the kitchen counter, where Gretchen kept hers.

  At first it had been so strange having him around. The first time she’d walked out into the upstairs hallway and smelled the lingering tang of shaving cream, it had stopped her in her tracks. But now he not only seemed at home there, Gretchen had gotten used to having him around, too.

  She was going to have to watch that, she thought. While she’d given up on keeping a physical distance from him, it was even more important now that she keep her emotional distance. The more she got used to having him around the house and seeing him as practically a member of the family, the bigger the void was going to feel when he moved on.

  The screen door slammed, followed by the thump of shoes hitting the floor. Speak of the devil, she thought. Gram usually wore slip-on shoes when she went out to the garden, and they were made of a light canvas that was almost silent. Alex was home earlier than usual.

  He found her a couple of minutes later, and walked up behind her. “There you are.”

  “No matter how many notes I leave in my quickly emptying sock drawer, the laundry fairy refuses to stop at this house.”

  He chuckled, and then his breath blew hot across her neck a second before his lips touched the tender skin just below her ear. “I’ve heard she only works for cash.”