by Jen Doyle
Mrs. Grimes held up her hand before Dorie finished her sentence. Then she held up her phone and, without a word, showed Dorie the text from Nate.
Don’t even try it, D. I will carry you out if I have to.
“Okay,” she laughed. She said her goodbyes and headed outside.
He was leaning against the car, waiting for her, when she came out the door. “You’re terrible,” she said.
That amazing grin flashed over his face as he came toward her. “Just covering all the bases.” He took her bag and then bent down to kiss her. “I love the way you taste.” Pulling her closer, he said, “So if I handcuff you to the armrests, does that still count as holding up the plane?”
Her head jerked back as her cheeks flushed. “What?”
Guiding her to the car, he laughed. “Just say the word.”
The frightening thing was that she was tempted, even as they got to the plane and the pilots, two almost-as-pretty-as-Nate flyboys, greeted them.
“You weren’t serious about the naked thing,” she whispered to Nate as they sat down across from each other. Was he?
Fastening his seat belt, the corner of Nate’s mouth twitched up.
Well, alrighty then.
She waited until they were in the air to ask him—again—where they were going. All he’d told her was that it would be totally casual.
“This is okay?” she asked now, gesturing down at her jeans and sweater.
He frowned a little at the V-neck, although that wasn’t generally his reaction when there was cleavage involved, but just shrugged and looked down at his phone. “It’s fine.”
“Fine?” She kicked him. “That’s the best you can do?”
Putting the phone on the table next to him—because Gulfstream jets had actual side tables rather than tables of the tray kind—he finally looked up at her. The look in his eyes made her throat go dry as he answered, “I’m trying really hard not to be thinking about what you look like in that sweater so, yes, unless you’re reconsidering the sex-on-the-plane thing, then that’s the best I can do.”
“Oh,” she said. Okay, more like gasped. “Is it...is it, uh, warm in here?”
He smiled. Not nicely. “Very.”
“Um...” She fanned her face with her hand. “I’m not really holding up the plane, am I?”
The smile grew wider. “Not at all.”
Her eyes drifted to his mouth. His amazingly kissable mouth. Email could wait. “And those guys are probably pretty busy...” Her gaze slipped down to his chest.
He waited a beat before he rasped, “They are.”
She was out of her seat and in his lap two seconds later. They were well on their way to being naked when he pulled away from her, a string of curses on his breath. “Dorie. Damn it. I didn’t think...”
She kissed him at the base of his throat. It was a thing for him. “Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want this.”
His hands went to her wrists. “I do want this. Hell, I can’t tell you how much I want this.”
She pulled back. “But?”
He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. After a few steadying breaths, he opened his eyes again and looked straight into hers. “But in about an hour and a half, we’ll be in Boston and although I’m not afraid of your brothers, it’s probably not the best idea for me to meet them quite that soon after being inside of you.”
The flush at his words came as fast as the tears to her eyes. “What?” she whispered.
Letting go of her wrists, his hands fell to her hips. “I know how much you miss your family. And I know you don’t like to fly, but here you are. So I thought that maybe...” His voice trailed away. Leaning forward, his lips brushed her cheek. “But I also know that we’re not exactly at the meet-the-brothers stage.”
Which she’d had no intention of being at, as he well knew.
“So,” he was saying, “we have reservations in Quebec and Miami, too. I even have tickets to the Super Bowl if that’s where you want to go. We have another forty minutes before you had to choose.”
Her hands flew up to her mouth in a steeple. She was, literally, speechless. Her lungs had nearly deflated and her heart was Energizer Bunnying its way out of her chest. “Why?” she finally managed to ask.
His eyes met hers head-on and she could see his intentions plain and clear. Not that he’d ever tried to hide them. No, unlike her, he’d taken his heart and handed her his sleeve. “You know why.”
And, God help her, she wanted desperately to believe that this could work. That he could go off and live his baseball life during the day, and then come home to her castle at night. But that truly was a fairy tale. And no matter how pure his intentions were, the reality was still that she’d be the one off to the side while he was living out his dream. His work would always be more important—he’d given Robbie back his life, for heaven’s sake—and she’d always be the one trailing behind him, scrambling to get her work done on the plane.
Waiting until she could speak without breaking down, she said with as much conviction as she could, “We are a short-term thing.”
He turned to look out the window and swallowed hard. It took him a minute, but when his eyes came back to hers, they were clear and unwavering. “We’re whatever we want us to be.”
Of course she wanted this to be. But arguing with him was a lost cause. She bit her lip as her eyes filled. “You’re not playing fair.”
“I’m not playing,” he snapped, his hand clenching the armrest. Then he leaned forward, his arm wrapping around her waist as he looked up at her. “But if I were, then I would definitely be operating under the Everything’s Fair principle.”
As in love and war, she was assuming. Of course he would manage to get that in there. With a great deal of effort, she looked out the window. “I don’t want to fight about this.”
He gave a little laugh—not a happy one—as he let go of her and sat back. “Neither do I. It would be nice if we could actually have a conversation about it, however.”
Ugh! The man was infuriating! “I don’t want to talk about it, either!”
“No,” he snapped angrily. “Because to you it’s only about sex!”
Before she could respond to that, he let his head thunk back against his seat. Scrubbed his hand over his face as he muttered, “Christ. I can’t believe I just said that.”
When she shifted forward—reached out for him, honestly not knowing what she could do to get him to just stop insisting that this could be something, her heart actually hurt because of how much she wanted it to be true—he just looked her in the eye for a moment. She could see the second he relented.
“So,” he finally said, his fingers inching up her thigh, demonstrating exactly why she had, as of yet, been entirely unable to tell him no, “if this happened to be one of those times you decided to try to distract me with that mouth of yours, I probably wouldn’t complain.”
Oh, thank goodness. She gave a grateful grin. And then that mouth of hers got down to business.
* * *
Boston was a gamble. Dangling a trip home to her family in front of her could go either way. But the stakes were high and his time was short. And when you were in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and the bases loaded, hell, yes, you did what you had to do. Especially when she was smart enough to see right through it. Straight-out manipulation wasn’t his thing. But the closer they got to Boston, the happier she became, and he was glad he could at least give her that. Even if this did go bad.
“Do they know we’re coming?” she asked as they started their descent.
Nate shook his head. “Not from me.”
“Awesome!” When they landed, she borrowed one of the pilot’s phones and proceeded to place an incredibly complicated food order, ending the call before she gave her name.
It didn’t seem to bother Dorie, though. When he sat back in the seat and turned to look at her, she was just staring at him. “What?” he asked. Was it too much to hope that she’d finally come to her freaking senses and was about to tell him that, yes, she loved him, too?
Yes, apparently. She shook her head as she put her hand to the back of his neck and drew him down into a kiss.
And he didn’t want it to end; he never wanted it to end.
When she pulled away, he reached for her, cupping her face with his hands. Don’t leave. He heard the words in his head; wasn’t sure he’d managed to keep them there until he saw the question in her eyes.
Now it was his turn to shake his head. Though he didn’t think of himself as a man who begged, if he’d truly believed it would make her stay, he’d do it in a second. He wasn’t kidding himself. Dorie wasn’t wrong. The odds of this working were low to begin with. Subterranean. If she wasn’t one hundred percent there with him, then, well, just call him Frosty and send him to hell. But his entire life had been a one-in-a-million shot. And no matter how much she was trying to talk herself out of it, there was a future for them. He believed that with everything he had.
He pulled back. Only then did he realize that the crowd of people wasn’t the press, it was her family. “That order you called in...?”
Confusion flashed through her eyes as she lagged a little bit behind him in switching gears. Then she glanced outside the car and smiled. “It’s been my order for years.” That glint came into her eye and she shrugged. “This is so much better than calling them and saying I was coming.”
Though the car pulled up to the curb, no one came close—although they were doing a horrible job at pretending they weren’t trying to figure out who was behind the tinted windows. Knowing that he probably wouldn’t have another chance to hold her the way he wanted to for a while, Nate pulled her up to his lap, smiled as she, clearly thinking the same thing, leaned in for the kiss and let her hands wander.
They were interrupted by a sharp rapping at the window. He looked, and the hand was attached to a very big, very surly-looking, impatient guy. “Lucinda Dorinda! If you don’t open up this door we’re coming in to get you—and if his hands are anywhere near your ass it’s not gonna be pretty!”
“Sean?” Nate asked, tempted to yell back that it wasn’t his hands that were the issue but deciding that probably wouldn’t get them off to the greatest of starts. Especially since he had, in fact, come inside her and although they’d cleaned up on the plane, he had no doubt every single one of her brothers would be able to tell.
With a grin, she shook her head. “That one’s Seamus.”
Refusing to remove his hands from her hips right away, Nate said, “Probably shouldn’t make them wait any longer.”
Cocking her head, she looked at him, curiosity still lingering in her eyes. But then she gave him a quick final kiss, shifted across him to the other side of the car and pushed open the door and let out a whoop of joy.
Getting out and closing the car door behind him, Nate watched as the mob absorbed her, more people pouring out of the restaurant as it became clear that, yes, it really was Dorie coming home. Other than a few curious glances, not a single one of them could have cared who he was. And that was perfectly fine with him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
One softball team, two former professors and four neighbors later, Dorie sat at the bar of her father’s restaurant, looking at her drink. She had to admit that a part of her wondered if the turnout had something to do with Nate even though no one seemed to be paying him much attention.
Her brothers, of course, were the exception. They’d run him through several rounds of darts and were now well into an intense game of pool. She was thinking about whether she should go rescue him when someone’s arms went around her. There was a flash of red hair and then a squealed, “Lucinnnnnnnnnnndaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Soph?” She whipped around on the barstool. “Oh, my God! Sophie! You’re supposed to be in New Haven.”
“And you’re supposed to be in Iowa!” Pulling out of the hug, she punched Dorie in the arm. “Are you kidding me? My best friend in the world swoops down out of the blue with the love of her life and she doesn’t think I’d drop pretty much everything to come see her?” She dropped her bag to the floor, took off her coat and plunked down on a barstool. “Holy shit, Donelli. What the hell?”
“He is not the love of my life,” Dorie hissed. And when Sophie raised an eyebrow in protest, Dorie added, “Don’t you dare say anything like that when I actually introduce you.”
“Like what?” Sophie asked innocently as she signaled for her own drink. “You mean you haven’t told him that you made me and Kelsey O’Reilly add him to our prayer list every night when we were thirteen? No worries. My lips are sealed. I promise.”
“Good,” Dorie muttered as Claudia came and sat down on the other side of her.
Sophie laughed and turned so that she was leaning back against the bar. “Oh, my. That is a mighty fine specimen right there.”
As Claudia murmured her agreement, Dorie decided to turn, as well. After all, the man had brought her halfway across the country; she supposed she didn’t have to be shy about her appreciation.
The thermal shirt he was wearing stretched tightly across his shoulders as he bent over the pool table and made what must have been a beautiful shot given the look on his and Seamus’s faces while Sean and Tommy winced. “How is he more beautiful in real life than he is in all those pictures?”
With a snort, Sophie said, “That Hawkins guy is all right, I suppose, but I was actually talking about Tommy. Oh, God, do I need to get laid.”
The shiver that ran through Dorie’s body wasn’t a good one. “How many times do I need to tell you that you are not allowed to bring up my brother and sex in the same sentence?”
Again Sophie grinned.
Dorie elbowed her. “Claudia—will you please tell Sophie that this isn’t okay? I mean, Tommy’s basically your brother, too.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an argument Dorie was going to win. Not when Claudia shook her head. “Sorry, Luce. We’ll be living in your parents’ house until our new kitchen is done. I’m as desperate as Sophie is.”
This was the problem with your only female friends being people you were either related to or who were in love with one of your brothers. Both, in the case of Claudia. Dorie shuddered again. “You guys are doing this on purpose.”
After taking a long drag of her beer, Sophie answered, “Hell, yes, we are. Why are you here with us when you could have your arms wrapped around that man?”
Yes, well, that was an excellent question. One Dorie had begun to ask herself as the crowd thinned. The answer obviously had something to do with the love-of-her-life thing. That she had once upon a time planned out his proposal—on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway, of course, where he would by that point be a perennial Red Sox all-star player—was not going to convince him that they would soon be parting ways. If it came out, that was, which would be beyond horrifying.
“Actually,” Sophie said almost to herself, “why am I standing here?” And Sophie being Sophie, she finished off her beer, placed the bottle on the bar and walked across the restaurant to do just that. Just after Tommy sank a decent shot of his own, Sophie reached around him from behind—her hands settling just this side of decent over the button on his jeans—and murmured something into his ear that made him smile.
“Baby,” Dorie could see Tommy say in return, leaning back into her with an intimacy and ease Dorie had always envied. He turned just enough to throw his arm around her shoulders and pull her into a kiss. Then,
after a questioning glance over at Dorie, he shifted a little in order to introduce her to Nate.
Oh, God. If that wasn’t enough to get Dorie across the room, nothing else was.
She got there just in time to hear Sophie say, “...BFFs for years.”
“Years, huh?” Resting his pool stick on the floor, Nate smiled. “Even during her Full House days?”
Sophie knew full well what Dorie’s TV-watching history was and that John Stamos had never been a part of it. Unfortunately, considering the twinkle in his eyes, it was clear to anyone watching that Nate knew that, as well. Not missing a thing, Sophie laughed. “No. But I sure got my fill of high school basketball.”
Nate, who like any other warm-blooded male in a ten-mile radius had turned to Sophie when she laughed, now turned back to Dorie. The corner of his mouth twitched up. Reaching for the chalk, he ran it slowly over the tip of his cue stick. “Really.”
Dorie looked down at the floor. Thank God Claudia chose that moment to come join them with her children in tow.
“Time to go?” Sean asked, taking their youngest out of Claudia’s arms. The three-year-old looked up drowsily, then resettled his head on Sean’s shoulder. Claire and Liam, looking all of their respective thirteen and ten years, followed closely behind. Although they’d played cards for a little while with Dorie earlier in the evening, they’d spent the past few hours in the office with their iPads.
At Claudia’s nod, Sean turned to Dorie. “So what’s your plan—are you staying at the house?”
No, they were not staying at the house. That was the thing you did with your boyfriend—not your three-week, sex-only fling. But rather than say that—well, not the sex-only part, obviously—she turned to Nate. “So my brothers haven’t scared you off yet?”
