by Amy Andrews
Wade’s mouth watered at the thought of having a place where he could get a decent coffee around here. It was almost enough to make a man forget his objections to this ridiculous idea.
“We don’t want to put Annie out of business,” somebody else called, from off to the side this time.
Annie, as inscrutable as ever, piped up in her crackly pack-a-day voice. “Nobody comes to my place for the coffee, doll.”
People laughed, but it was true. Annie’s coffee was basic at best, the kind that cowboys used to drink on the range about a hundred years ago. Before Starbucks and Keurig. People went to Annie’s for her homespun food. Grits, beans, peach cobbler.
Going to Annie’s for coffee was like going to McDonald’s for salad.
“We can use our barn for some kind of cookout one of the nights.”
Wade wasn’t sure who said that, but there followed a bunch of other called-out offers, too. “The details are yet to be worked out,” Ronnie said. “But we’ll be forming a committee if the vote goes our way tonight, so y’all are most welcome to be part of that.”
Of course they’d form a fucking committee. Credence had more committees than there were hogs on the farm. And his mother was on every last one of them.
There were a few more questions, but mostly about logistics, not about a town basically advocating some modern-day mass mail-order bride scheme. Was it really appropriate in a new century to be luring women for their marriage and child-rearing qualities?
He glanced at CC for a barometer reading. She didn’t seem to be taking particular offense.
For fuck’s sake. Was the whole town dropped on their heads overnight? Wade stood. “Permission to speak.”
People turned to look at him in surprise, a ripple of interest murmuring through the audience. Don acknowledged Wade with a nod of his head. “Granted, Wade. And can I just say what a pleasure it is to have Credence’s own hometown quarterback hero in town for the summer.”
Wade smiled awkwardly at Don. No one fawned over him in Credence—it was what he liked about it. If someone thought he was being a dumbass or a dick, they told him. There was no pussyfooting around the celebrity in his hometown.
“Thank you, Don, but I gotta say this idea, with all due respect, is horseshit.”
Half the audience laughed, half gasped, and CC almost choked on her own tongue. His mother frowned as she openly chastised him. “Wade!”
“Sorry, Mom, and my apologies to the council for the cussing, but I really don’t think we need busloads of women overrunning the town. Not to mention the media attention this might get. Trust me, that can be really intrusive.”
He glanced around the room at the familiar faces. Faces he’d known most of his life. They’d had media interest in the town over the years because of Wade, but nothing too invasive. They had no clue how persistent television and tabloid reporters could be. Of what they might be getting themselves in for.
“The charm of Credence,” he continued, “is its small town feel, that sense of community. The way we stick together and have one another’s backs. We all know one another and we’ve always been a little wary of outsiders. Having a…free-for-all might seem like a solution to a problem, but you gotta ask yourself, why would a woman pick up her life and move to a small, isolated part of Colorado where she doesn’t know anybody? I think we run the risk of attracting women who are coming for all the wrong reasons, maybe. Coming here to escape their lives, not make a whole new one.”
Another murmur ran around the room as Wade finished, and Annie stood and turned to face him. “All due respect, Wade, but that’s horseshit.”
A lot more people laughed at Annie’s horseshit quip than they had at his. His mother didn’t dare chastise the older woman.
“You don’t get to swagger into town twice a year, no matter how cute your tight end is, and pretend like you give a rat’s ass when we all know it’s just self-interest speaking.”
“You go, girl,” Drew encouraged under his breath.
“We love it when you’re home, and we know you like it here because no one’s trying to stick a camera in your face or ask for your autograph—but our town is dying, Wade, and we’re trying to revive it, and your need for privacy don’t mean squat next to that. So hush up and listen.”
People started applauding, but Annie wasn’t done yet. “And who says Credence can’t be a haven, a place to escape, to rebuild your life? This town took me in when I ran from a man who used to beat me up for entertainment. I had three little kids clinging to my skirts. Your grandfather gave me the money to start the diner. Who says we can’t be that for other women?”
Wade blinked. He hadn’t known any of those details. And despite the public smackdown, his admiration for Annie grew.
She sat to raucous applause, and there wasn’t much for Wade to do but sit as well. Annie had just told him he was being a dumbass and a dick, and the town had agreed.
“Way to go, bro.” Wyatt clasped his shoulder from behind.
“I like Annie,” CC said, barely suppressed glee in her voice.
Wade ignored them both, patting his pocket for his box of Nerds, and realized he didn’t have any. He cussed in his head—a word significantly worse than horseshit—but it was short-lived as a box appeared in front of him.
He took them, so used to CC’s weird Wonka-related ESP by now it didn’t even occur to him to question it. He opened the box, poured a small, colorful pile into the palm of his hand, then threw them all into his mouth in one hit. Without looking at her, he nudged the box toward CC. She stuck out her hand, and he poured her a pile, too. But she’d eat them slowly, a couple at a time.
It was the most infuriating way to eat Nerds he’d ever had the misfortune to witness. But CC had never gotten the Nerds-eating memo.
“If there are no further questions, perhaps we can vote on the motion to put an online advertising campaign in place to attract single women to Credence?” Don said.
Wade sighed as a murmur of agreement spread through the gathering, resigning himself to this madcap scheme. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure out the way sentiment was running tonight. But it didn’t stop the feeling of doom. This was going to be nothing but trouble, he just knew it.
He consoled himself with another handful of Nerds from the box and the comforting thought that maybe it wouldn’t go viral. Maybe they’d get interest from only a handful of women. That wouldn’t be so calamitous.
“All those in favor?”
Everyone in the room except Wade put up their hands. Even CC. He frowned at her. “You don’t get a vote.”
“Sure she does,” Arlo said.
“Sure I do,” CC agreed, not putting her hand down.
Wade cocked an eyebrow, ignoring CC. “She’s not a resident of Credence.”
“Neither are you.”
“I was born here.”
“She’s living here temporarily. She gets a vote.”
“Who says?”
“I do.”
CC nodded. “He does.”
“And who put you in charge of town residency?”
Arlo grinned and tapped his police chief badge. “The county did.”
Wade half laughed, half snorted. “For the love of—”
“All those against.”
Wade’s hand shot up straight as an arrow. Everyone turned in their seat, staring at his hand. Annie narrowed her eyes at him, a look that would have caused him to crap his pants as a teenager, but now only gave him a slightly uncomfortable feeling in his bowels.
Annie didn’t need that look anymore. Not with him. She could just threaten to withhold pie, and he’d do anything the old biddy wanted.
But if they had to go through this farce, he wanted Chuck to note in the minutes that he’d objected. Then, when everything went pear-shaped and Credence was overrun by desperado bachelo
rettes with criminal records and the town became the laughing stock of the United States, he could say I told you so.
“The overwhelming majority has spoken,” Don said. “The motion is passed.” He banged his gavel.
Yep. Nothing but trouble.
Chapter Seven
CC whimpered at the pleasurable sensation building deep inside the muscles behind her belly button. God, it had been so long since she’d had an orgasm that involved a man she’d forgotten how much more intense they were.
“Wade.”
The name on her lips sounded wrong, and she shook her head from side to side, confused as to why she was saying her boss’s name. She tried to open her eyes, to figure it out, but her lids were too leaden, refusing to open, too damn caught up in the pleasure swirling through her abdomen and her inner thighs.
“Shhh, baby, I know,” he whispered back, his breath hot against her puckered nipple.
Still Wade. CC fought against the voice as silken tentacles wrapped around her middle and squeezed, tension building alongside the pleasure. But his fingers—those big, long fingers that could pluck a ball from the air with pinpoint precision—pushed deep inside her and found her G-spot with equal pinpoint precision.
A cry rising in her throat cut off just before her vocal chords, becoming a low sonorous moan as his mouth closed over her nipple. Her hand pushed into his hair, cradling his head.
It was unbelievably good, her climax edging closer with each suck of his mouth, each hard rub as a finger stimulated her G-spot. But also bad—so, so bad. Why was Wade doing this to her? Why was she naked?
Why was he naked?
His big, hard body lying alongside hers? Why did the thick intrusion of his fingers and the hot, wet pull at her nipple feel so good? He was her boss, it was wrong. She squirmed, her brain fighting slumber and an ever-devolving haze of lust, her head rolling from side to side. “Wade.”
“What do you need, Cecilia?” Her name whispered from his lips on a soft sigh like it was some kind of benediction as his mouth hovered over hers, their lips almost touching.
“You can tell me,” he said.
To stop. She needed him to stop because he was calling her Cecilia and it was confusing and waaaay too good.
Which was doubly confusing.
“Fuck me,” she whispered. Wait. What? She didn’t mean to say that—did she?
But Wade was going there anyway. With those clever, ball-plucking, G-spot-rubbing fingers, pulling them out and shoving them in as his thumb found her clit and his lips lowered to hers, kissing her like he’d never been her boss. He tasted like Nerds and sugar rushed to her head and her heart raced and she came, gasping and mewling against his mouth with breathtaking speed. Shuddering and crying out and sobbing as the orgasm touched down like a tornado.
CC rocked her head faster and faster from side to side as it ravaged her, murmuring, “No, no, no,” even as her body and her breath and her pulse pounded yes, yes, yes and her back and hips bowed off the bed, bucking against Wade, reaching for every second of pleasure until the tornado spun away again and she collapsed against the mattress.
CC’s eyes flew open.
She lay in the dark, her heart pounding, her breath sawing in and out, an overriding sense of confusion swamping her body.
Where was she? What had happened?
She was in her bed. And it was night. And she was sleeping. And…
One last tiny little shudder rippled through the internal muscles buried deep between her legs. Oh God… She knew that sensation.
She’d just had an orgasm.
Then it all came rushing back to her. In full Technicolor detail.
No. Sweet mother of pearl. No.
Wade. Kissing her. Touching her. Calling her baby.
Calling her Cecilia. He never called her Cecilia. Or baby, for that matter.
But it’d just been a dream. A stupid dream. A woman couldn’t actually orgasm from something she was dreaming, could she? Except she had, most definitely, just come. Which meant she must have…been touching herself…masturbating…in her sleep? But both her hands were firmly entwined in the sheet to either side of her.
CC shook her head. This could not be happening.
Good God, not only had she just had a sex dream about Wade but, to add insult to injury, he’d made her come without actually laying a finger on her.
Without even being in the same freaking room.
Was there anything the damn man couldn’t do?
…
CC was grateful that Wade was gone when she got up the next morning. The thought of facing him after… Well, she didn’t know how she was ever going to look him in the eye again, let alone work for him for the next three months.
God. She’d had a sex dream about her boss.
She didn’t know how to unpack that. She didn’t even have a friend she could call. Her friends had given up on her years ago after one too many canceled plans and forgotten birthdays because Wade had sucked up her entire existence. CC had always figured she’d have time to make and cultivate friendships once she was in SoCal, but that wasn’t helping her now.
She certainly couldn’t talk to her mother about it. Being abandoned by a husband had given her some strident views about the perils of sex, including absolute faith in the old adage about masturbation leading to blindness. And her brothers would rather be blinded than listen to CC talk about the perils of sex dreams starring her boss.
All five of them preferred to think of her as some kind of infantile version of herself, a girl who didn’t drink, cuss, or indulge in any kind of sexual activity whatsoever.
They were such morons. Lucky she loved them.
The only other people CC was in a relationship with were the people she regularly played online Scrabble with. But they weren’t friends. Just random strangers…anonymous people somewhere out there in cyberspace.
Hell, they could be bots for all she knew.
Not anyone she could message and say wanna talk about my sex dream?
So she was left to her own devices, which was never good. The dream kept playing on repeat in her head, and the echoes of that orgasm still hovered in muscles that didn’t usually get that kind of workout. Considering how few truly good orgasms she’d had in recent years, the muscle memory was bound to linger for days, if not weeks.
Just lying there, dormant.
Ready to leap to life again when she least expected it. Launching stealth attacks on her in the car, or feeding Wilburta in the Carter family kitchen, or in deep REM.
Her phone rang, and she snatched it up gratefully. It rang all day, usually. Being Wade’s PA was a busy job. Between his NFL mentoring responsibilities, his endorsement schedules, and the speaking circuit, he was in huge demand. And juggling all that was her job. As was maintaining his brand, which meant she managed everything from his website to his social media profiles.
And it hadn’t really slowed down since clearing his schedule for three months. The calls just kept coming.
This call, however, was from Ronnie.
A spurt of guilt hit CC’s system as the name flashed up on the screen. What on earth would Wade’s mother think if she knew CC had been having sex dreams about her son?
Wait. God…what if she already knew? Somehow? In that weird way that mothers just knew shit.
CC’s mother always said she knew when her kids were up to no good. Did Ronnie have some kind of radar about women who were having risqué dreams about her son? He’d been the target of women looking for a meal ticket in the past, maybe she’d developed some kind of sixth sense about it over the years?
Or maybe she’d just detect it in CC’s voice as soon as she answered the phone. Heart pounding, CC sent the call to voicemail, then stalked to the fridge and grabbed an icy cold can of Red Bull. She popped the top and knocked back half of it in one swall
ow.
It was going to be a six-can kinda day. She could just tell.
Her phone beeped to let her know a message had been left, and she took another big mouthful before heading back to the bench and playing the message.
“Cecilia? Honey. No pressure at all, but I was wondering if you’d like to join the committee for organizing that thing we discussed at the town meetin’ last night.”
There was a muffled noise and a clunk as if Ronnie had dropped the phone, and CC stifled a smile as a very unladylike expletive slipped from Ronnie’s genteel Southern mouth.
“Sorry, honey, the damn dog tripped me up, and I dropped the phone. What was I sayin’ again?”
CC loved how Ronnie hadn’t lost any of her Southern drawl, even in a flap. If anything, it became more pronounced.
“Oh yes. I know you’ll be at a bit of a loose end with Wade out here most mornings, and we thought you might appreciate something to do.”
A snort-laugh escaped CC’s mouth. There was always plenty to do in managing Wade’s life. In fact, it was easier to get stuff done when he wasn’t around.
“Anyways…give me a call and let me know.”
The message ended, and CC replayed it, smiling again at the cuss word. It wasn’t an offer she’d been expecting, but it was a damn fine one and hell if she wasn’t interested. Particularly with Wade so opposed to the scheme.
CC was up for anything that would drive an axe through the images in her head, and a pissed-off Wade was far preferable to naked Wade.
…
“CC?”
“In the parlor.”
Now there were three words CC never thought she’d ever say in her lifetime. Like chamber pot and water closet. But Wade’s house had an honest-to-God parlor, and it was where they’d set up his office.
Normally, he had his space and she had hers, but this room was big enough for two of them, had a big old window overlooking the street, and the best internet connectivity.
They appeared to only have twentieth-century internet speed to go with the nineteenth-century architecture.
