Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors)

Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever Afters Collection (Eight Fun, Romantic Novels by Eight Bestselling Authors) Page 28

by Violet Duke

  Her eyes slammed shut, the same way his did whenever he’d remember those types of memories. “And one day, I was proven right. I was sleeping when Willow had a massive seizure. I didn’t even wake up. Luckily, my dad had just come home from work and he was able to call the ambulance in time.”

  “It was after that incident that Willow mentioned the care home.” Gripping his hand in hers, she said softly, “I know it seems like our ‘abandoning them’ would be the worst thing they could feel. But when I looked at it from her perspective, from what she probably used to see every day in our exhausted faces, what she saw in my sobbing apologies when she woke up in the ICU…”

  Tessa squeezed his hand gently. “So I guess I’m saying that at the end of the day, your way with the home, or my way without it, there was no winning or losing either way. Don’t beat yourself up over it too much.”

  She chuckled lightly. “Says the pot to the kettle.”

  And just like that, the ice he’d built around his heart all day simply cracked right down the middle. He stared at her for a long moment and then asked, “Do you want to do something today?”

  “BUT…ABBY SAID that this was the day you two actively did nothing. Isn’t it like a tradition for you two?”

  “Until now, it has been. But really, it was her tradition that I adopted and applied to my own day of pain.” His eyes ran over her face slowly. “I don’t know…when I’m around you though, you’re filled with such life. It’s kind of inspiring. Plus, you make me laugh. You make me want to do something today. Is that okay?”

  Smiling over that character profile, she wagered, “If I let you pick our activity, can I pick the meal?”

  He chuckled. “Sure.”

  “Okay then, c’mon.” She checked her watch. “There’s this great food truck over in Tempe that serves the best Southern food I’ve ever tasted. The guy puts the exact location where he’s parked up on his twitter account every morning. It’s kind of a thing. And I swear, no matter where he’s parked, there’s always a huge line.” She hopped up off the couch. “If we book it over, we’ll catch him before he’s done for the day.”

  They were out the door seconds later, but were brought to a halt when her skirt got caught on the edge of the porch rail and tore at the back seam.

  “I think Abby left a sewing kit in the house if you want to try and sew it up. Or you can stay here and I’ll go get the food and come back.”

  “No, that’s okay.” She flipped her skirt around and studied the tear. Then she picked up the hem of her skirt, hooked her key in the tear, and let it rip.

  Meanwhile, Brian was standing there just watching in fascination as she extended the tear all the way to the bottom of the skirt.

  “You don’t do anything normal, do you?”

  “I make every effort not to.” She flipped her skirt back around. “There, now it’s a skirt with a long slit. It’s cute. C’mon, let’s go. Seriously, you have to taste this guy’s shrimp and grits—”

  He caught her by the elbow and spun her back into his arms. “You are so wonderfully weird,” he murmured before leaning down to capture her mouth in a single unassuming, perfectly chaste kiss. That still managed to make her dizzy.

  This time, it was Tessa who stopped them from heading out. “What’s a few more minutes going to hurt?” she asked as she wrapped her arms around his neck and went in for multiple very assuming, perfectly unchaste kisses. To try and get him dizzy.

  It was a great ‘few minutes.’

  But after it came and went, Brian being Brian groaned and pulled back. “Okay, no more of that for a while. I want you to get the meal choice you want. And if we continue more of that, we’ll both starve to death.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin—likely at the loopy expression she was undoubtedly wearing—and tugged her toward the car. She barely remembered buckling the seatbelt.

  “So, serious question,” he tossed out when they were out on the road. “After we eat, can I pick what we were just doing as one of our activities for the night?” His brows rose suggestively.

  “I don’t see why not,” she shrugged and replied without thinking, “Because if you hadn’t so rudely interrupted us back there, I was all set to just throw on some fruit-flavored chapstick and call it a meal.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m really glad you came over today, sweetie.”

  HOURS LATER, TESSA was walking hand in hand with Brian back to the car, merrily giving him consolation bites of her giant ice cream cone—her prize for beating him at bowling after their just-made-it-in-time food truck dinner, which he’d loved as much as she’d hoped he would. The goofy smile on her face had less to do with the ice cream, and more to do with his perfectly scandalous, outrageous accusation that she’d cheated all throughout the bowling game.

  No one had ever accused her of using, letting alone having ‘feminine wiles’ before.

  She liked it.

  When they finally got to the car, Brian, ever the gentleman, opened Tessa’s passenger door and helped her in. It wasn’t until after she was buckled in and floating on a post-perfect date bubble, however, that he leaned in and said, “Okay, so tell me about your rules for flings.”

  Startled, she blinked at him and felt her pulse triple at the transformation.

  His usual guy-next-door eye twinkle? Gone. Now, it was wholly eclipsed by the slow-burning dare-you-to-guess-what-I’m-thinking smolder she’d been fantasizing about since she’d seen it last. Eight days ago, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  “The other week, you said you weren’t looking for anything serious,” he continued as she sat there, searching for her long lost ability to speak. “Connor used to have a one-month parameter on his flings; I figured you must have some specifics as well. And I’m curious to know what they are.”

  Crap. She was simply not this good at improvising on the fly. Especially not when she had absolutely no frame of reference, and exactly one sexual experience in her past.

  She should just tell him the truth.

  “Okay,” he admitted, “I’m not just curious, I’m interested. Like you said, we have a connection, and since I’ve recently been thinking of trying my brother’s dating methods—seemed to work great for him—I thought I’d put it out there and ask you flat-out if you’re interested.”

  Was she interested? Um. That was a no-brainer. “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Great. Do you want to get together next Friday? The girls will be at Becky’s for a sleepover until Sunday. I can meet you at your place and you can tell me all your fling parameters then.”

  Next weekend. Fabulous.

  That gave her one whole week to study up on flings.

  *

  TAKING A SEAT on the couch in Tessa’s apartment, Brian eyed a stack of chick flick DVDs on the side table that he was actually surprised to see in Tessa’s collection, along with a notebook filled with notes, and a neatly written, short, but…interesting list.

  RULES FOR FLING

  1) No sleeping over (the guest flingee must depart before the resident flinger wakes up)

  2) No making plans further than one week in advance

  3) No two consecutive date nights in a row

  4) No telling Skylar or Connor or Abby

  5) No sex in each other’s beds (the ground, sofa, countertops, hotel beds are fine)

  Criminy, she just kept getting cuter every day.

  “So is there somewhere for me to sign on this contract?” he called out.

  “What?” She returned from the kitchen with two beers and gasped in horror. “Ohmigod, put that down. That was…just a draft.”
<
br />   “Uh huh.” Oh boy, this was just too much fun. “What’s the deal with number one? That’s a little harsh. What happens if the guy doesn’t wake up as early as you? I know I myself like to sleep in late.”

  “Well…then I’d kick you so you’d wake up, and then I’d go back to sleep.” A victorious little ‘so there’ glimmer lit her eyes.

  So freakin’ adorable.

  “Geez, I bet that was fun for all your past flings,” he editorialized casually, grinning when she balked. That was the exact reaction he’d been looking for. “But one night stands sleep over all the time, don’t they?”

  “And that’s my point,” she recovered quickly. “One night stands are awkward the next day. Plus, they’re singular events—you never expect to see them again. Which is why a fling has to be handled differently.”

  Not bad. Considering she’d just pulled that one out of her ass on the fly. Clearly, he’d underestimated her.

  Remembering Connor’s addendum on his one-monthers, he then threw more chips in the pile and raised with, “So what’s your policy on notes? You know, for the guest flingee who sneaks out before the resident flinger wakes up? Connor used to have a strict no notes, calls, texts, emails, or tokens of affection rule.”

  “What?” Her riled scowl was on behalf of all womankind. “How that man never got drilled in the nuts by a stiletto is beyond me. Of course leave a note. I mean, it doesn’t have to be a sonnet or anything. Just short and casual…rhyming optional.”

  Brian hid his grin. For the umpteenth time since they’d met, he thought about just how fantastically different Tessa was from Beth and Abby.

  When he’d first met Beth back in high school, he’d been a nervous wreck—his heart had started racing the second she’d said hello, and absolute gibberish had spewed out of his mouth in response. Abby, on the other hand, had been an easy fit from the start; from that first day of college, he’d felt like he’d known her forever and had been completely relaxed around her.

  Meeting Tessa, however, had been like getting whacked upside the head with a club. He’d felt blindsided by her, unsettled around her almost at first sight, definitely at first speak. She made him feel off-balance. And borderline ornery. She got under his skin with frightening ease, and managed to find bizarre, hidden access points to his heart just as effortlessly. Around Tessa, he more often than not found himself doing things he normally wouldn’t do.

  Like agreeing to have a fling with a ‘fling expert’ who’d clearly never been flung before.

  Reaching over for a pen on the coffee table, he initialed next to the title of her list.

  “Okay, I’m in.”

  While Tessa was busy gaping at his initials, Brian took the opportunity to unravel more of the enigma that was Tessa Daniels. Basically, he started snooping. He dropped a kiss on her parted lips and headed over to the bookshelf near the kitchen to look at the small handful of memorabilia and even smaller handful of photos. There was one photo with her sister and her dad, one of just her dad when he was older, one of Willow sitting at a piano, and another with Tessa and her sister in a hospital bed, each with matching pink streaks in their hair.

  Another mystery solved.

  He gently picked up the old three-ring binder propped next to the piano picture of Willow. “Are these her compositions?” There were a few dozen at least, all in plastic protectors.

  As if his words had finally shaken her out of her stupor, Tessa came to join him by the bookshelf. “Yes. In chronological order, each one like a special musical page of her life, from what I could remember. I used to love listening to her play.”

  “Did you ever play?”

  “No. I, um, didn’t get a chance to do any extracurriculars.”

  Right, because their lives had always revolved around Willow.

  Christ, her childhood had been a sad one.

  When he heard his fierce little survivor clearing her throat to get his attention, he turned to see her gripping her list of rules in her hands, her face utterly serious, “Brian, about these—”

  Just then, that familiar musical ringtone—seriously, where did he know that song from—rang out from her bag.

  “Dammit. Hang on.” She rushed off to go answer her phone.

  Hearing her enter her bedroom to take the call, Brian took a long, sweeping look around Tessa’s apartment once again. Everything about it was stark, bare. Not at all the type of vibrant home he’d expect from her. Likewise for her bookshelf. He couldn’t help but compare it to the bookshelf of memories at his own house that was bursting at the seams, and groaning over the weight of all the photo frames they kept cramming onto it.

  “It’s not as filled as yours,” she commented softly from behind him, as if reading his mind. “I haven’t added anything to it in years. There haven’t really been any new memories to collect. Or anyone to share them with.” She took a deep breath, and once again, that determined, hope-filled, me-against-the-world smile was back on her face.

  The woman was just too good at dealing with life’s unjust realities on her own.

  He wished she’d let him help her.

  “Brian, I hate to cut our night short but that was work on the phone just now. Looks like I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter. One of our freelancers bailed at the last minute and they don’t have any articles in the bank to cover this specific topic for the summer edition.” With a frustrated huff, she scooped up her hair and tied it up into a tight bun. “Since the cover is already locked, that means I need to write the article. Easier said than done, of course, since I have absolutely no experience with the topic. But I’ll figure something out.”

  “What’s the topic?” he asked, frowning, wanting to help somehow.

  A slow, brightening sparkle entered her eyes as she turned to gaze at him in a whole new light. “Camping.”

  He beamed. “Well then today’s your lucky day. Because standing right before you is a bonafide camping connoisseur who has absolutely no marketable writing skills to speak of, and will very likely get completely distracted by the gorgeous editor in charge.”

  She chuckled. “You’re hired.”

  NINE LONG, CRAZY-STRESSFUL hours later, Tessa was emailing the article in for submission, and Brian was half-dozing on the double-wide recliner. Damn, the thing was comfortable—he’d have to look into getting one for his house, he thought to himself muzzily.

  Better yet, he could just move hers into his place, owner and all.

  Huh.

  There were those crazy, random thoughts again.

  Tonight, he was blaming it on exhaustion.

  “Okay, the issue’s locked.” When Tessa returned and shuffled by to plop down on the sofa opposite the recliner, he scooped her up by the waist, pulled her across his lap and tucked her right next to him.

  Perfect fit.

  She cuddled against his chest. “Thank you so much, Brian. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do that article without you.”

  “My pleasure. But you really didn’t have to give me a byline.”

  “Of course I did. You came up with most of it.” She cat-yawned. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you a sandwich or something?”

  “If I say yes will you actually be able to get up and do it?” he teased, eyes slipping closed with a groan as he pressed the side button to slide the recliner back fully.

  “Good point,” she murmured, snuggling into him sleepily.

  Yawning, he held her close and started drifting off.

  “Brian?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Are you going to keep poking me with that thing all night?”

  “As long as you�
�€™re lying on top of me? Yes.”

  She burrowed deeper and twined her legs with his. “Okay.”

  And that was the last thing he remembered before sleep overtook him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE WAS SO WARM.

  With a murmur of pleasure, Tessa slowly rubbed her face against the source of the heat, feeling her skin come alive on contact.

  “A man can only take so much torture, Tessa.” The low, rough voice pierced through the sleepy fog she was still floating in, but not enough to make the delicious feelings go away. She shifted her hips and felt something hard brush against her inner thigh.

  “Brian,” she sighed.

  The arms that had been cradling her as if she were a newborn kitten suddenly turned to steel.

  “Tessa, wake up,” he commanded, straight out of her most wicked fantasies.

  Her alpha man was back.

  Though she’d dreamt of him for weeks now, for some reason, tonight felt different. More real. Sexier. Less out of reach.

  She smiled against his hot skin and felt a groan rumbling up the column of his throat. Nuzzling against his jaw, she felt reckless enough tonight to test her dream’s boundaries, to push past her own for once. Sliding her body fully atop his, she reveled at the feel of all those hot, hardened muscles.

  Especially that one.

  “Godammit, woman.” Strong, thick fingers speared through her hair and cradled her skull as the hottest lips she’d ever felt started searing every nerve ending she hadn’t even known she had all along her neck. “If you don’t wake up and stop smiling like the cat that caught the canary, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”

  The feel of his late-night beard grazing her collarbone jolted her awake finally. Dream and reality on tilt, she forced her eyes open.

  And found herself drowning in the most intense sea-blue eyes she’d ever seen.

 

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