by Maisey Yates
And the worst part was, she had no one to blame but herself. She’d established these behaviors; she’d continued in these behaviors.
Connor hadn’t asked her to take over his grocery shopping, to bring him dinner. She hadn’t been married to Marshall; she could have walked out the door at any moment, or rather shown him the door at any moment. She could have told her mother that guilt trips weren’t going to work.
But she hadn’t. Because she had not wanted to risk it.
And where had that gotten her?
Here. Here in this exact moment. This exact, unhappy moment, staring down a future where sex with Connor was done, and never happening again.
“Well, forget that.” She pushed back away from the window and took a couple of steps toward the center of the room, breathing hard.
She wanted more. She wasn’t done.
She walked over to the door and opened it, making her way down the hall, down the stairs and into the living room. Connor’s boots were by the door, which meant he was home. Or out running barefoot in the field. But she would put her money on him being home.
At that exact moment, he came walking in from the kitchen. “Hey,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets, his expression both adorable and sheepish.
The muscles on his forearms flexed, her eyes drawn, yet again, to his tattoo. Seeing it now felt kind of poignant. Also, still sexy. That was the power of her attraction to Connor.
“Hi, how was work?”
“Good. The barn is looking good,” he finished lamely. “How was your day?”
“Oh, you know. I sort of spent the day lying around in my room. Dealing with things of the emotional variety.”
He winced and pulled one of his hands out of his pockets, rubbing the back of his neck. “Right. You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just...processing.”
“I did a little bit of that today myself. But you know, it works best for me when I’m outdoors.”
“Your method is probably healthier. Mine involves pastries and a lot of warm drinks.”
“I’m not sure I do anything more emotionally healthy than you do. Maybe if I drink more hot chocolate I would be in a better space?”
“All things are possible with cocoa. Provided you have marshmallows.”
“Obviously.”
Liss took a deep breath, gearing up to say what she was thinking, then decided against it. Probably this wasn’t the best moment to tell him that she would really like to keep going with the physical side of their relationship. Not when he was dirty from working on the ranch all day, exhausted. Not when there was still this much awkwardness between them.
Yeah, but that isn’t going to just go away. And he’s an idiot to think it will.
Thinking of Connor as an idiot cheered her slightly. Anyway, it was true.
“Do you have any serious Sunday plans?” she asked.
“Not really. Eli and Kate will probably come for dinner, and I’ll do the regular ranch stuff in the morning.”
“But your afternoon is free?”
“I feel like you’re leading me somewhere, Liss.”
“I am. I was wondering if you wanted to go on a hike down to the swimming hole.”
“It’s too cold to swim. I’m not in the mood to freeze my ba—” Much to Liss’s surprise, color darkened Connor’s cheeks, and he cleared his throat and redirected. “I’m not in the mood to swim in an ice bath.”
His sudden discomfort with saying the word balls in front of her was exhibit A for the case she was mounting. Things were not back to normal. Not having sex would not put them back to normal.
“I don’t want to swim. I want to hike. I want to eat and look at scenery.” She rocked back on her heels, her hands clasped behind her back, a bit of guilt tightening her chest. She was scheming. And she was being dishonest.
But it was for the greater good. Or something.
“Well, that sounds fine. Do you want me to see if anyone else wants to come?”
“No!” Her answer came out a little bit too quick and a little bit too emphatic. “I mean, I think it would be nice for us to do something.”
His eyes narrowed. “Okay.”
“What? Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re afraid I’m going to jump on you and violate your person.” She wasn’t going to jump on him; she was going to talk to him and use rational points to lay out why they should in fact continue on with the physical relationship. Completely different.
Now, if that failed, she might jump on him.
He cleared his throat. “I did not look at you like that.”
“You did!” She held her hands up and curled her fingers in, making little claws. “I’m not that scary.”
He reached out and grabbed one of her fingers, squeezing it tight and shaking it gently. “Scary.”
The contact sent a rush of heat through her body, and she jerked her hand away, taking a step back, hoping he couldn’t tell that she was blushing. Good grief. You would think she was a teenage girl dealing with her first crush, and not a woman in her thirties who had seen love’s first bloom wither and die a couple of times at this point.
“I promise not to scare you.” Except, she was sort of lying. Because she might very well scare him.
“But do you promise to bring hot chocolate and marshmallows? Because now that you’ve mentioned it, I want some.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Okay, then. Sounds like a good plan.” They both stood there, lingering awkwardly, silence filling the space between them and forcing the awkwardness to expand. “I need a shower.”
“Right.” She fought against the mental images of Connor, naked and wet, for a full thirty seconds before she just went ahead and let her imagination have a field day. “Enjoy that.”
“I will.”
He walked past her and back up the stairs. And she let out a breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding.
Her plan might be a little bit evil, but it had to be better than this. Because if everything went according to her plan, she could have Connor again, and it might even fix some of what seemed to be broken between them now.
Anything was better than this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CONNOR HAD SOME reservations about disappearing into the woods with Liss. Especially considering that his resolutions were on a shaky foundation at present.
When he’d tried to go to sleep at night his dreams had been plagued, not by images of his brother standing on his porch, but by images of Liss, lying next to him in bed, her body bare, pale, highlighted by the moonlight filtering in through the window.
And when he woke up, he was alone.
Still, he couldn’t cancel on her. Because that would require honesty. And he didn’t want to give honesty on that score. Not even a little bit.
Well, it didn’t require honesty. But he would feel kind of like a dick if he didn’t give it to her. Especially since she had gone out of her way to be honest with him. Yesterday she hadn’t put on a brave face and pretended everything had gone back to normal. She had admitted that it was a rough day, and it was more than he would have been inclined to do.
He ran his hand over his hair and put a baseball cap on, walking out of his bedroom and shutting the door hard behind him before heading down the stairs.
His heart hit the back of his breastbone hard when he saw Liss, standing in the entryway holding a picnic basket, wearing a fluttery, floral dress that went down just past her knees and a pair of brown, lace-up boots. Her rich, coppery hair was pulled back, a few strands escaping the confines, framing her face.
As far as he could tell, she wasn’t wearing makeup, but there was something sexier about that just now.
Maybe because it left her skin bare, exposed to him.
Get a grip, Garrett. You go three years without sex and suddenly everything gets you hard because a chick actually touched you?
It was a hell of a lot more than that, but minimizing it seemed like it might help. It didn’t, but he had thought for a brief shining moment that it might.
“You’re ready,” he said, because if all you could think about was your friend’s bare skin, you were better off saying something inane.
“Yes, I am. Positively laden with foodstuffs.”
“Good,” he said, continuing down the line of inane comments, “because I’m hungry.”
A spark of tension crackled between them, the dual meaning in his words impossible to miss. Dammit. Would conversation ever not be loaded between them? Or would he be doomed to think of the sexual every time he said something innocuous?
Liss didn’t seem to notice. And if she did, she didn’t care.
“Good,” she said, a smile curving her lips.
She turned and opened the front door, walking out onto the porch. And his eyes were glued to the way her skirt hem swished with each step, revealing a little bonus leg each time.
Liss had always been in possession of a great set of legs. But now those legs had been wrapped around his waist. As a result his admiration had a slightly different context.
He wrenched his damn dirty eyes away while she took the stairs. And he knew her skirt rode up even more as she did. It was costing him to play the part of gentleman right now. Costing him dearly.
Connor decided to focus on the scenery rather than Liss’s legs. It was certainly safer. If not more satisfying.
They walked through the line of trees that separated his portion of the property from Eli’s, and they made their way along the dirt driveway that ran past where the barn was being constructed, and past one of the vast, fenced-off fields that contained the livestock.
It was a gray afternoon, mist hanging in the air, thick with salt from the sea, casting a dull shade over the green around them. The clouds hanging over the pine trees made them look as though they’d been wrapped in cotton. Like department store Christmas decorations stuck down into the landscape.
The old barn, the one that had been in use back when Connor was a kid, came into view, and Liss took a right past the dilapidated structure. The path that ran through the field here was still well-worn and familiar. They had taken it down to the river all the time when they were kids. Hot summer days always made more bearable by a quick dip in the water. Days made more bearable by escaping the house, his father’s drunken slurs and the empty liquor bottles that littered the floor for most of the day. Until Eli was able to get Kate to bed, so he had a chance to clean up.
A whole host of memories hit him as they wandered down this path. They had spent a lot of time down here during their high school years. When a lot of their peers had opted for bonfires and beach parties, their small, close-knit group had chosen instead to do their underage drinking on Garrett land.
Not Eli, obviously, ever the upstanding citizen. Though he had always come, looking over his shoulder nervously as Jack passed beer around. And Liss had been there, of course. Jessie, too.
It hit him then that he hadn’t been back here since before Jessie died. He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized it last night. It was one of the many places, including the stretch of road she’d died on, that he’d eliminated from his geographical vocabulary.
This wasn’t one of the particularly weighty ones, just a place with happy memories he’d preferred never to confront.
His stomach tightened as they entered into the grove of trees that grew along the riverbank, stepping around creeping blackberry vines as they made their way closer to the water. He half expected to see a ghost down at the river’s edge, but when they came to the sandy bank there were no apparitions.
It was just him and Liss.
And it was just now, not the past.
The water moved slow here, the surface of it nearly still, smooth like a green glass bottle. The rope swing they’d used back in the day was still there, tied to a tree limb that stretched out over the river.
They’d spent a lot of lazy days here. Days when he’d allowed himself to relax and be a kid, a luxury for him and Eli, since they’d been working men raising a child for most of their teenage years. Picking up the slack their father couldn’t, because he was lost in his pain.
It made him ache to be here. Not the bad kind. In a wistful, bittersweet way. He avoided certain places and memories of the past for this very reason.
But right now...right now he felt pretty happy to be here.
“It’s been too long since we’ve been down here,” Liss said.
Yeah, it had been. And now that he was here, he knew avoiding it hadn’t been necessary. Or at least it wasn’t anymore.
“I’m starving,” he said.
“Was that a hint?” she asked, a smile tugging at her lips.
It was a hint that he was tired of thinking about the past. And ready to eat some of the feelings that were rioting around inside him. They weren’t all bad feelings, but there was a lot of them. A damn lot.
Liss set the basket down on a moss-covered rock, bending at the waist, yet again giving him an unintentional and illicit showing of her legs. This time he didn’t look away. He was having a weak moment. Year. Lifetime.
She opened the basket and took a patterned blanket off the top, unfolding it and spreading it out on the sand. Then she took out a few colored bowls with lids that she must have brought from her house when she moved in, because he certainly didn’t have anything like that intact. A few scattered lids that went with nothing. Which had not concerned him for a while, since he didn’t really keep actual food in the house, either.
She set the bowls down on the blanket and gestured at the spread. “Have a seat.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, settling down on the blanket, dampness from the sand seeping through and into his jeans. He didn’t really mind that, either, because it was so nice to have someone do something like this for him because they wanted to, and not because he was sad or hungover. At least, he was going to pretend that was why.
This wasn’t casserole. This was a picnic. And this was different.
Liss sat down beside him, pulling one of the largest bowls onto her lap and taking the lid off. There was a small knife inside, berries and peaches.
“Did you bring me out here to kill me?”
She grinned at him, holding the paring knife up. “I would need something a lot bigger to take you down, Garrett. Though it would be effective on parts of you.”
“Too far,” he said.
“Is it?” she asked, her smile widening. “I don’t feel like I’ve gone too far yet.”
“Yeah, because none of your body parts have been threatened. You better be slicing peaches.”
She arched a brow. “That could be taken two ways.”
“Stop,” he said, feeling uncomfortable, like he had yesterday when he’d just about said balls in front of her.
Which was dumb, because he had said a whole lot crasser things to her over the years. But now that they had actually been naked together, every comment seemed a lot more pointed. And seemed to hit him in the gut, low and hard, making heat spread through his veins.
“Okay,” she said, looking all innocence and light as she wrapped her hand around a peach and pulled it out of the bowl, sliding the edge of the blade through the skin, a bead of juice breaking through and running down her arm. She switched hands and lifted her arm to her mouth, running her tongue along the wet line left behind by the juice.
He felt the impact of the movement as though she had run her tongue along his skin. It was such a sensual thing to see. And he could hardly be bothered beating himself up for feeling tha
t way. Because he was only human. Only a man. With a newly reinvigorated sex drive.
And she had run her tongue over his skin. Intimately. The only woman to ever do that...
And he really needed to redirect his thinking now.
She went back to the task of dividing the peach into equal sections, throwing the pit into the water and disturbing the surface, creating ripples that expanded slowly and blurred the reflection of the trees. She took another peach out of the bowl, and she lingered over slicing that one, too. It took him a moment to realize that they were just sitting there in silence, and that he was watching her every movement with the kind of attention he gave to very few things. His cows, football and Liss slicing peaches.
She mixed the cut peaches in with the blackberries then scooped a bit onto his plate, doing the same for her. Then she opened the other bowls, revealing some pasta salad, and in the other one a couple of sandwiches with what looked like turkey on them.
“You do a little too well taking care of me,” he said, taking a bite of the sandwich.
Liss’s cheeks turned pink, and for some reason it made his own face feel hot. “Is that even possible?” She looked down and picked up her own sandwich. “I mean, what are friends for?”
“A friendship that’s a two-way street?”
“Our friendship is a two-way street.”
“It’s okay, Liss. I realize that none of my relationships have been for the past few years.” He let out a long, slow breath. “A few months ago, when Sadie left, Eli told me off. For being a drunk. For leaving all the responsibility to him. He wasn’t wrong. I needed to hear it. And I obviously didn’t correct everything right when he called me out, but I have been working on it.”
“I know.” She picked up a slice of peach and took a bite. “You haven’t been hungover once since I’ve moved in.”
“Baby steps and all that shit,” he said.
