“Come here so I can kiss you.”
Oh, well, that’s fine. I could do that.
I snaked up his body until I was an inch from his mouth. The side of his face was beginning to darken, and I knew he’d have a bruise. My fingers skimmed the other side of his face. He always had a smooth shave. I wondered what he’d look like with a beard like that sheep farmer that came by Tyler’s office yesterday.
“Are you going to kiss me or was that all a ruse to get me to stop?”
“Why would I want you to stop? That felt incredible. All this is amazing.” He slid his finger down the edge of my collar. Circling my breast, he clasped my nipple between his finger and thumb and pinched.
A spark of electric heat ran from my chest to between my legs. He could play with my tits all day if he wanted.
“Then it was a ruse for you to play with my tits?”
“No ruse. I like kissing you. Then I want to make love to you.”
I twisted the corner of my mouth. “Make love? This isn’t the wedding night. I expect to be fucked and fucked good. Maybe I should pull out my action team and you can start to play with me.”
He tugged at my nipples and a bolt of heat shot down to my core. His fingers slipped into my hair, curled, and pulled me forward. My lips landed on his with force. He’s hungry for me and I’d willingly be his main course.
His kisses softened after a moment and became languid, but his fingers didn’t stop. Now he was holding me up with both hands on my breasts, massaging me into oblivion. I tried to lower my hips, reaching for his cock, but he wouldn’t let me move.
“Not yet, Iona,” he said, pulling away and staring up into my eyes.
There was something in his gaze—more intense than desire. My heart was beating much too fast and I had to get it under control. If he found out how I actually felt about him, all this would disappear, and I never wanted to lose him again. If that meant being a fuck-buddy for a while, that’s fine by me. Love wasn’t a real thing anyway, but heartache was—something I knew all too well.
“Then when? Your cock wants it. I want it. I think you’re outnumbered here.”
His hands left my breasts and I hoped they would move south. No such luck.
Tyler’s fingers slipped into my hair and he lifted his head to nuzzle my neck, inhaling. “Why do you do that?”
“Give good blow jobs? Uh, because I love cock, if you haven’t noticed.”
Goose bumps scattered down my back as he rumbled with laughter. “No. While you sucking my cock was a dream come true and better than I could have imagined, I meant the joking. It’s like you don’t take anything seriously.”
“I take things seriously—my career for one. Why do you think I’m here?”
He pulled back from my neck and what I saw didn’t make me happy. The look in his eyes, the one where he stared at me as if I was more than a dream come true, faded away.
“Yeah, I forgot . . . Stupid me.”
He removed me from his body, gently turning me onto the bed. I lay there staring at him in surprise as he rose from the bed. His cock wilted and with it, my hope that we’d be having hot sex right about now.
“Tyler, that’s not the reason I’m in bed with you. I meant, here in town. In this home. You know that.” I shifted, sitting up but staying on the bed in hopes he’d change his mind and tackle me with his gigantic cock.
His hands ran through his hair as he stood with his back to me. Tyler finally turned and walked to the edge of the bed. I scooted forward, his dick right there, though limper than before.
He cupped my cheek, and I leaned in, wanting more than a caress. His thumb slid over my lip and I nipped it with my teeth.
“There are times I think I know you, Iona. And then there are times I realize how ignorant I am to who you really are. Maybe I’m in love with a fantasy and not the woman who walked into my home and claimed it as her own.”
I jerked my head back and stared up at him with shock in my eyes. “Love?”
SEVENTEEN
Tyler
“Oh God. You are completely up her butt,” Olivia said before she gagged.
“This will take less than a minute. You said you wanted to come to the farm,” I said, watching the color disappear from her face.
“This is worse than sheep shearing with Carter. So much worse,” she mumbled as she moved her hand to cover her eyes.
I heard a chuckle from Dirk Connor. This was his cow who he hoped was pregnant. Based on the ultrasound, it seemed Berta had been thoroughly knocked up.
“Congrats, Dirk. Looks like Berta will have a calf in early spring.”
“That’s good news, doc.”
I slowly pulled my arm out of the cow’s rectal canal and lowered her tail.
“I’m going to be sick,” Olivia mumbled before racing out of the barn.
Dirk shook his head. “Do you think she’s got what it takes to do this?”
I rolled off the protective poly shoulder-length gloves. I shook my head as I disposed of the items. “No. I don’t think her specialty will be large animals. But she still will need to learn; and since she’s taking a large animal seminar at the university next week, I thought I’d expose her to a variety. Tomorrow we are heading up to the alpaca farm.”
“Delila’s?”
“Yeah. Just a check-up.”
He nodded and glanced toward the barn door. I studied him as I washed my hands and arm with soap and a bucket of fresh water he supplied. Color was creeping up his neck and I knew the usually quiet farmer was getting ready to talk about something other than animals.
“Um, tell Delila . . . I got her pie. It was appreciated.”
My eyes widened, but I turned in time so he wouldn’t see. The man never complimented anything, and his social skills were best described as cow-like. He knew about cows and not much else. I got the impression there was a little more to that relationship between the two farmers than just pie.
“Will do. I’ll be back next week to follow up. Have a good day.” I grabbed my bag and headed toward the door to find Olivia. She was leaning against the barn, gasping for breath.
She saw me and her head rolled back and forth against the light blue barn. “I tried. Maybe this vet thing isn’t for me. I don’t think my stomach can get past all the poop-related stuff . . . And the smell.”
“You live next to a sheep barn.” I reached a hand out to her but she waved me off.
“If I can’t make it to the truck on my own, then I’m not fit to be your assistant.”
She made it but had to lean on me at one point to dry heave. She sighed once she was inside my silver Ford pickup. We sat for a minute, lost in our thoughts. Hers most likely were about things that wouldn’t make her barf, and I wondered where Iona was right now.
I turned toward Olivia. “You know I almost gave up being a veterinarian.”
“What? You? But you’re the best vet out there. Not that I’ve known many. Actually, I’ve only known one vet . . . you. But still, you’re great.”
“I was in school. Working on my degree to become a vet like you, and we had to get an internship during the summer. I got one in the city of Bangor at a clinic that did free spay and neutering on Mondays. Basically, we worked on strays. Anyway, the very first spay I did, the animal died.”
“Oh no!” she said, putting her hand over her mouth.
“Yeah, it was hard when the very first surgery I did, something that vets’ consider the easiest procedure to do, and I killed the cat. I was going to give up that day. I went home distraught but then I realized that this was the bottom. I was barely scraping by trying to put myself through school, I was alone, and my parents didn’t care if I failed or succeeded. They probably didn’t realize I was even in school.” I shrugged.
Olivia placed her hand on mine and squeezed.
“Since it was the bottom, there was nowhere to go but up. There will always be vets that know things that you don’t or do things better than you do, but then there will
be vets who struggle with what you can easily do. Don’t give up because shoving an arm up a cow’s backside makes you puke. You’re so good at getting scared animals to relax and explaining the hard stuff to the owners. I’m not good at those things, but you are.”
She smiled and nodded. “Thank you. Iona’s lucky to be marrying a guy like you.”
I turned away and started the truck. I hated that she believed the lie of our engagement. Olivia was a good person, and it made me sick to fool her like that.
It had been a week since Iona and I had our sexy nurse fight. It wasn’t really a fight, more like a I-really-don’t-want-to-be-with-a woman-who-was-only-using-me tiff. The four-letter word set it off.
Love.
It was a risk saying it to her, but that’s how I felt. Now that I knew the truth and she had tried to reach out to me back when we were teenagers, all the resentment I had for her melted. Something bloomed in its place—a feeling that laid dormant for a decade.
I wanted to pick up where we left off and she wanted a fuck-buddy.
“Got big plans with your lady this weekend?” Olivia could finally talk without wheezing with nausea.
“Maybe a quiet weekend. How about you?”
I pulled down the dirt path until I hit pavement. I made a mental note to contact the sheriff about my missing furniture. Austen suggested I file a report about it being stolen.
As much I cared for Iona, I wanted to talk to the sheriff about Babette also owning the house. There had to be some law that was broken with that. And since I’d heard nothing about it from Iona’s agent, it was time I took action.
Olivia shifted in her seat and I worried she might throw up again. But she wasn’t leaning toward the window, she was turning toward me. Glaring as if I was an asshole for leaving the farm.
“Are you serious? Quiet weekend?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”
I was driving so I couldn’t turn to face her, but I felt her stare as if it was burning a hole in my cheek.
“You do realize your soon-to-be wife’s birthday is tomorrow.”
I forgot. It’s September. I remembered her birthday always fell two weeks after school started. She thought it was some punishment life doled out at her from birth.
“Oh, yeah, her birthday. Well, I think she wants to keep it low-key.”
I had no idea because I completely forgot about it. And it’s not like she brought it up since we weren’t speaking to each other.
“Carter’s taking me out to dinner tonight to celebrate my first two weeks of classes. Why don’t you take her to dinner at least? I’m sure if I made a call to my sister, she’d get you into any place with a waiting list.”
Olivia came from a wealthy family in Washington, DC. I couldn’t figure out why she wanted to stay in a small cabin with Carter rather than the posh life she had back in the city. Perhaps he put something in that potato hash he always whipped up that made her believe farming sheep was better than living in a mansion.
We pulled into the alley behind the office where I had a parking spot and got out of the truck.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, I just want to go sit at my desk and finish updating client files.”
“The luxury of typing on a keyboard instead of having your hand up a cow’s ass,” Olivia said with a sigh as I held the back door open for her.
I chuckled because she was right. As much as I loved animals and helping care for them, some of the things I had to do weren’t pleasant. If I had known when I was younger that I’d be analyzing animal feces and shoving my hand up their rectums, I might have just stayed a waiter at Fire and Ice like Debbie wanted me to.
I opened the door to my office and stopped in my tracks. Someone was sitting in my chair. She was short, had red hair pulled back into a ponytail, and wore a navy suit.
“Babette. The office is closed. How did you get in here?”
“That’s not important. What is of urgency is this engagement of yours. What do you think you are doing?”
Closing the door, I moved to the edge of my desk. “I’m doing as you requested. Iona and I live together. She’s even wearing my grandmother’s ring. I haven’t told a soul this thing between us is fake.”
The woman stood and even in heels she only came to my mid-chest. Despite her lack of height, I stood a little straighter, intimidated by her presence. There was an air of confidence about her. We may not have gotten along over the past several weeks, but I respected her. I didn’t know why I respected her, but her steely gray eyes made it clear that nothing but admiration would be tolerated.
She walked up to me and pointed at my face. “That is what I am here for. Your multi-colored dream coat of a face.”
I touched my cheek. It was no longer puffy, but the bruising was taking its sweet time to disappear. The dark purple and blue had faded to a sickly green.
“I fell.”
She rolled her eyes before she sauntered back to my chair. “Don’t they all. Listen, the press is having the time of their lives making my client look like an abusive harpy.”
Since I canceled the newspaper subscription two weeks ago when I realized that some of the front-page stories involved me, I had no idea what the paparazzi was saying about us.
I threw my hands up. “What do you want from me? I am in this fake scheme of yours so I can get my house back. I have been doing everything right. Every morning Iona gives me a sweet kiss on the front porch before I go to work. We are the perfect picture of a loving couple.” One that doesn’t speak to each other.
“The paps aren’t dumb. They know you stage that, but the bruises don’t lie.”
“You know what’s dumb? This fake relationship. Maybe this house isn’t worth all the chaos it’s causing. So what if I’m out the fifty grand I put down on the house. It’s not like I haven’t been poor before, I’ll survive.”
I was tired of living a lie. It was hell knowing the woman I went to bed with every night didn’t want to be with me. She’d rather be surrounded by cameras and Botox-filled heads and people who cared more about fame than love.
And all I wanted was her.
“I get it, but even if I.D.—”
“For fuck’s sake, Babette, her name is Iona. She’s not an image on a screen, she’s an actual human being with a name her mother lovingly gave her.”
This superficiality ended at my door. It would not be allowed in my office.
She was silent for a moment, her eyes scanning the room in search of something. Her usual cool bravado took a hit, and it was about damn time.
“You’re right. Iona is not just my client, she’s a friend. I do care about her. Maybe I’m not that good at showing it, but I do. I had hoped her time here would help her see that there are people who care about her. It was a silly idea my masseuse, Magic Mike, gave me.”
She gave me a weak smile and I relaxed, slipping into the chair across from my desk.
“Magic Mike?”
“Everyone has an indulgence. Mine is being massaged by young hot men.” My face grew warm at her admission. “But this new one reminded me that I.D., uh, I mean, Iona was more than a client. He said the way I spoke about her was like a mother gushing about her daughter. He suggested the comeback story and maybe she should go back to her hometown. He suggested a few other ideas like the fake engagement to an old flame. Iona never actually gave me that idea.”
“How did he know about me?”
“I had mentioned your name because I knew about you already. As her manager, I have to know everything, good and bad, about her past.”
I was guessing I was the bad part.
“I thought he was sucking up to me when he offered me this advice. I do have a lot of sway in Hollywood. Now, I’m thinking it’s something else,” she mumbled the last part.
“What, something else?”
“Oh, nothing. I’m dealing with it.” She gave a stiff smile. “The point is that I realized Iona is like family. I want to see her happy, and m
aybe I went too far but I do think you’re a good man. She deserves someone good in her life.”
“I do care about her. The problem is, this is fake.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and wondered why I was telling the person who could destroy me with one word, my true feelings for Iona. “At least, that’s how she sees it. I don’t. Iona’s counting down the days until she can hop on a plane and head back to the West Coast again.”
“And you? You said you wanted all this to end. When she leaves, she takes the paparazzi with her. Your life will go back to normal and you will have the home of your dreams.”
I felt like I was being tested from the way Babette stared at me. As if she knew the answer and I would either pass or fail in her eyes, depending on what I said next.
I didn’t care what she thought. She could take my house and leave me with nothing, and it wouldn’t hurt as bad as Iona waving goodbye.
“I’m dreading the day she leaves, again.”
EIGHTEEN
Iona
Meeting with Terrance Adamian. Location Fire Mountain Side Brewery. Third booth on left. Seven p.m.
I stared at the text Babette sent me an hour ago. Thankfully, Jake drove me and was out sweeping the parking lot. Most of the time he kept a low profile and I’d forget he was there half the time, but when we went out to crowded public places, like a restaurant, he had to make sure the place was safe.
I knew when he came in he’d sit quietly at the bar, watching to make sure I wasn’t harassed by an overly zealous fan or photographer.
As I scanned the brewery which looked more like a restaurant with rustic flare than an actual brewery, I kept my eye out for Terrance. The third booth was empty. Glancing at the time on the phone, I realized I was about five minutes early.
“Reservation?” the cute hostess with the blond ponytail asked as she approached me.
“I don’t know. Do you have anything under Adamian? Or Dell?”
She lifted the leather folder in front of her and scanned the page. “Nothing for those names.”
“Try Gotti.”
Lost and Found (books 1-3): Small-Town Romantic Comedy Page 35
