Hometown Hero

by Dani Collins

  Wriggling her hips into that evidence of his desire for her, she said, “That is the nicest compliment any man has ever paid me.”

  He set a low hand on her butt and snugged her tight to the ridge of hardening flesh. “Allow me to compliment the hell out of you, then.”

  They went back to bed.

  *

  “Skye, this is a really beautiful house,” Chase said, stating the obvious, but he was mellowed out to the point of barely being able to talk at all. He was barefoot, wearing only his pants, and the floor had warmed with subfloor radiant heat as the sun set. He stood at the windows watching the sky purple and caught the reflection of his lover moving around her state-of-the-art kitchen with confidence.

  “I know. I love it, I really do,” she said, scraping a knife blade down a cutting board so the contents fell with a sizzle into a hot pan. The scent of frying garlic and onions and herbs burst into the air, making his stomach clench with appetite. “Sometimes it’s a pain being so far out of town, but I was used to that at the ranch.”

  “Roads bad in winter?”

  “Meh,” she dismissed with a shrug. “It’s Montana.”

  “Yeah.” At first he’d liked being in the bustle of cities and having the convenience of just about anything within a few blocks of his apartment, but being back here for this long, he’d begun to appreciate the calm of rural living. You realized pretty quickly the difference between what you really needed and what you merely wanted. Getting a cheerful wave of after-you at a stop sign was a damned sight nicer than getting the finger in grid-locked traffic.

  Spotting her tablet still on the table outside, he went to fetch it and brought her wine glass in as well. “You got a bug in this,” he said, pouring it out and washing the glass. “You want a fresh one?” he asked as he dried it, eyeing up the delightful view of her bare shoulder blades in a white tank and the snug fit of yoga pants on her sweetly rounded butt.

  “You don’t mind?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “You planning to get loaded?”

  “No. Although I will admit to a certain amount of self-medicating while Terry and I were breaking up. I made myself go a month without drinking at one point, when I realized I was coming home to a glass every night. That didn’t seem healthy so I quit and realized it was more of a habit I’d fallen into. I was just as happy if I made myself a tea.”

  “I know lots of people who drink within their limit,” he said, pouring from the bottle in the fridge and setting it where she could reach it. “I’m not a crusader.”

  She lifted the glass, then paused. “Still going to kiss me if I taste like wine?”

  “Hell, yeah, I am.” He was going to kiss her whenever he wanted. They’d spent hours upstairs doing exactly that, among other things. Skye Wolcott was not only sweet and vulnerable, she was sensual and greedy and a bit of a screamer. He liked getting her off and he couldn’t wait to do it again.

  She blushed as if she could read his thoughts and took a quick sip before setting her wine aside. “You’re going to make me burn your dinner.”

  He sidled up behind her as she turned to stir the boiling pasta, fitting her to his front as he explored the firmness of her waist and flat stomach. She smelled sweet and musky, a potent mix of both of them that went into his head like a drug. “If you hadn’t kept me in bed instead of letting me drive to the falls, cooking wouldn’t be an issue.”

  Sending a look up at him, she said, “You are so good for my ego.”

  A funny suspicion hit him. Did she think he was merely pandering to her? He let his hands fall away, disturbed.

  “Thanks for bringing this in,” she said, reaching out to her tablet and flicking the cover open. “I forgot I left it out there. Hmmph,” she said as she touched the button to light the screen. “Terry, Terry and Stan. Look.”

  Terry: Call me.

  Terry: I’m serious. I want to know who it is.

  Stan: What?

  “Holly is such a tattletale,” she muttered.

  “What’s with you and her?” he asked. “It almost sounded like—” No, that couldn’t be right.

  “What?” she prompted.

  “Like a competitive rivalry,” he admitted with a shrug. He breathed that dynamic and was sure he’d heard the shove in her voice and the line drawn in the sand. “You said you were close to your brother. Does that bother her?”

  “That’s part of it, but we both used to barrel race,” Skye surprised him by saying.

  He shouldn’t be surprised, of course. She had the body of an athlete. Her movements were economical and sure as she moved to drain the pasta and stir vegetables into the onion and garlic sauce. Of course she would have been a helluva horsewoman, growing up on a ranch.

  “I didn’t know that about you. I never went out to the rodeo or watched any of the competitions. Too many other things going on and…” He shrugged. “Horses aren’t my thing. Closest I got was loading alfalfa pellets onto a truck.”

  “Blasphemy!” she declared.

  “Should I show myself to the door right now?”

  “I’ll let it go for the moment, but only because you show so much potential as a mount.”

  He chuckled, liking the way she could be naughty and funny at the same time. “Why thank you. I look forward to further opportunities to be jumped.”

  They shared a laughing, sexy look. Then something popped in the pan and she shook herself back to reality and said, “I really am going to burn dinner.”

  A few minutes later, she dished up a simple but delicious plateful of carbs that made him nod with approval. They sat at the island, his leg crooked open so he could graze the side of her hip with his knee. He hadn’t felt this magnetized to a female since… Hell, he honestly didn’t know if he’d ever felt it this strong.

  “So you used to win at the barrel races?” he asked, still curious about her rivalry with her sister-in-law.

  “I did, which was especially hard on Holly because she really needed the prize money. Her father’s place has never done anything like ours, and we’ve had our struggles. It was actually a big deal for her to marry Stan and be a rancher’s wife after she went through all those years of scraping by. I get that and I’ve always tried to be understanding and not take her jealousy to heart, but I had a horse to feed, too. I wasn’t cheating. The fact is, I was better than she was.”

  A woman after his own heart. No false modesty or overconfidence. She worked hard, recognized what she deserved and made it happen.

  “She still hates you for it,” he guessed, more than aware how awkward it was to be the object of envy and animosity for honest accomplishments.

  “Terry calls her my nemesis. Oh my gawd did she love it when he came out. The baby thing, I swear she had Chrissy to spite me, knowing how bad I wanted kids. Which I shouldn’t say because that sounds like she doesn’t love her kids and she does. She and Stan are actually a really good match and she and Mom get on well. They’re very similar, both super practical and have their own territory staked out at the house so they don’t step on each other. Me, I’m an interloper if I’m there. I load the dishwasher wrong and spend too much time in the barn or with the kids when I could be helping out in the house. And then I have this.” She waved to the exposed beams of her ceiling.

  “How dare you marry into a family of building professionals,” he said.

  “Exactly. And Terry loved to spoil the girls rotten with gadgets and swing sets and whatever else they wanted. That’s why he put in the pool. She blames me, of course. He was too generous and made Stan look bad, but if we brought out modest birthday or Christmas gifts, well, we could afford better so…” Skye sent a frustrated growl to the ceiling. “She’s such a piece of work.”

  “Screw her,” he dismissed.

  “I wish, but she’s family. And this?” She motioned between the two of them. “I couldn’t have an affair with just anybody. It had to be with someone famous. That’s how she’ll see it. Like I somehow did this to show her.”<
br />
  “Is she going to have it all over town?” he asked. More importantly, “Do you care?”

  She paused in twirling noodles onto her fork. “I’m getting tired of having my laundry aired. After the other day—” She flashed him a look. “I’m not ashamed, Chase. I have no regrets, I swear, but I can see how this is going to be the juiciest steak for people to chew on, how that lonely Mrs. Baynard fell for the smooth-talking playa. That part bugs me.”

  The damp of suspicion frosted into certainty inside him. “Is that what you think I did, Skye?”

  “No.” Her brow crinkled into a small scowl, but she kept her gaze lowered.

  “’Cause I don’t do pity fucks.”

  She lifted her face and dropped her jaw. “That’s a yucky thing to say.”

  “It’s a lousy thing to accuse me of.”

  “I didn’t!” she said, but her scowl stayed in place and her gaze dropped again.

  “Not out loud,” he groused, biting across his fork. “But you’re thinking it.”

  “I’m not.” Her breath went in and out on a huff. “But I do know how to use the internet, you know. I’ve seen the women you’re usually with. They’re not pathetic school secretaries from small town Montana.”

  “Oh, snap out of it,” he growled. “We knocked each other’s socks off and it had nothing to do with who we are outside the bedroom. If you want to hang onto feeling like a victim, that’s your business, but I went upstairs with you because I like you, not because I couldn’t leave town without getting laid.”

  “You don’t have to be like that about it,” she said hotly, cutting him a dismayed look. “I know I’ve been staging the longest running pity-party in history. I just find it hard to believe that someone like you, who seems to have so much of the world in the palm of his hand, could want me. I’m nothing special.”

  “And that’s exactly what makes you special,” he said with his palm up to indicate her amazingness. “Who I am gets in the way of my relationships all the time. People want to be with the guy who’s famous and has money and gets them in front of a camera. You don’t want anything to do with that idiot. You’re willing to have a conversation with the real me and listen to me bitch about my problems. Am I excited by the idea of someone catching us holding hands and posting it so we can go through another round of public scrutiny? Hell no. But do I want to walk down Main Street holding your hand because I like touching you? You bet I do.”

  “Really?” She gave him her high school look. “You want to keep seeing each other? I mean, after tonight? Like, while you’re here?”

  Longer, maybe, he thought and a strange unsteadiness rippled inside his chest. All those old warnings flashed about not getting hooked into staying in this town.

  Nevertheless, he heard himself say, “Yeah.” And he felt himself regressing to about thirteen years old, asking his first girl to go steady. “Do you?”

  She smiled, tucking her chin to hide it, but her cheeks colored up with a pink so warm he felt it trickle heat through him. “Okay.” She wrinkled her nose, glancing back up at him. “But, like, publicly?”

  “You lead on that one,” he said, giving in to temptation and reaching up to skim her headband off her hair so the tresses fell forward in a swing of shiny dark brown.

  “Why’d you do that?” She tried to catch his hand before he spun the headband like a Frisbee toward the sofa.

  “Because.” He cupped the back of her head, drawing her into a buttery kiss. “I’ve kept my hands off you about as long as I can manage.”

  Bracing a hand on his thigh, she smiled a womanly smile. “I like your hands on me, you know. A lot. What time did you say you have to be home?”

  “We’ve got hours.”

  “Suh-weet,” she teased against his growing smile.

  Chapter Seven

  ‡

  Sitting on the edge of her bed at one thirty, he insisted she not get up to see him to the door, but he wanted her number. “I’m texting you now so you have mine. Let me know when you’re awake. I have to take Flynn to practice, but maybe I really can buy you dinner tomorrow?”

  “I usually go out to the ranch on Sundays. Wanna come?”

  “What time? I’ll have to see what Flynn’s doing—”

  “I was being facetious. It’ll be awful.”

  “Really?”

  She liked that protective edge in his tone, like he was drawing a sword.

  “Just big brother acting like a dad. I can handle him.” She set her head on his thigh and lightly bit one of his fingers.

  He evaded her and sifted his fingers through her hair, something he’d done a million times tonight. Oh, she was hopelessly infatuated with him and his sexy, tender, proprietary nature.

  “I’ll figure something out and come if you want me to. I don’t like leaving you without knowing when I’ll see you again, Skye.” The room was dark, but she felt the pierce of his glittering gaze.

  “I’ll be at work Monday,” she reminded. “You have practice in the afternoon on the field.”

  “That’s too far away,” he grumbled.

  She grinned. “Sneak out of the house tomorrow night.”

  “A fine example to set,” he said, a smirk in his voice. “But I’m tempted.”

  “On a school night, no less,” she scolded.

  “See? It’s a good thing I didn’t make a play for you back in high school. I never would have had the strength to leave town.”

  She suspected that was supposed to be a compliment, but it was a chilling reminder that he had a career to get back to and she a life here she loved. They were both still and silent a moment, as if he was thinking the same thing.

  “Find out when Flynn works next,” she suggested, sitting up next to him. “Bring some steaks over and you can barbeque. It’ll be like buying me dinner only better.”

  “Tuesday, I think,” he said, leaning to give her a lingering kiss, one still tainted with that moment they’d recognized how impermanent this was.

  She refused to dwell on it. For this moment, they were perfect. “Thank you for tonight, Chase.”

  “It’ll be more than tonight,” he growled against her lips.

  *

  Sunday turned into a bit of a wash. They texted flirty banter until she had to run out to the ranch and knew she’d lose service. He wasn’t happy about that, but the football team was having a meeting about an upcoming game and Chase had to attend so his phone would be off too.

  The team was on such a winning streak at the moment, talk of their chances this year had actually wound up being the salvation for an otherwise uncomfortable family dinner. Even her mother, who wasn’t a particularly fervent sports fan, was keeping tabs on the team via the local paper. For some reason she seemed to think Skye had insider knowledge because she worked at the school, but Skye gave all the credit to Mitch Holden.

  And clenched her teeth over Holly’s blithe, “I hear that new coach is a hunk. Doesn’t he also teach computers or something?”

  “Government,” Skye provided. “Livingston wanted him, but we got him.” Winning. Then she again raised the topic of having the girls for the weekend.

  Tell me what he said, was the message from Chase that greeted her when she came back into service at seven o’clock that night.

  I’ll be home in twenty. Will call you. Can you talk? she replied, then pulled back onto the road.

  He was waiting in her driveway when she came down it.

  “How did this happen?” she asked, heart taking flight as he lifted her off her feet in a bear hug.

  “Flynn’s at the movies. I only have an hour.”

  They didn’t even close the garage door in their hurry to her bedroom, but afterward, as they lay curled in a tangle of limbs, he asked, “Well? Was Stan a jerk about it?”

  “I said you bought me dinner and that Holly misunderstood.”

  He lifted his head to angle a dismayed look at her.

  “I’m sorry I lied, but I don’t know how to exp
lain this. I don’t even know how it happened.”

  “Yeah,” he groaned in bewilderment, dropping his head back onto the pillow. “Flynn was all, Wanna tell me where you went tonight? when I picked him up last night.”

  At the mention of the boy’s name, Skye lifted her head off his shoulder and glanced at the clock. Chase looked too and sighed, pulling away with reluctance. As he dressed, he gave her a disgruntled look.

  “And still no dinner,” she teased.

  “That’s your fault. You jumped me in the garage.”

  “You’re a pushover, Chase Goodwin. Learn to put up a fight.” She rose to dress, kissing him at the door a few minutes later.

  “This is already old,” he said, looking at the keys in his hand. “We have to figure out something better.”

  She didn’t know what that would be without tipping off the whole town they were sleeping together. Well, sharing a bed. Not sleeping, which seemed to be what Chase was taking issue with.

  Skye had to wonder if it was worth the effort to hide their affair when something in her demeanour the next day seemed to radiate signals that she’d had a man in her bed on the weekend. More than one person commented, “You’re in a really good mood,” and “You look really nice today.” Two teachers even went so far as to ask in an undertone, “Are you seeing someone?”

  “It’s a nice day,” she prevaricated. “Everyone’s whistling.”

  True, but no one else had dressed with Chase Goodwin in mind, anticipating that he’d be here sometime around three. Wearing a floral-print dress with a fluttery skirt, she kept her eye out for his arrival. When the team started practice, she picked up the envelope she’d set aside this morning, shrugged on her light sweater and set off through the gymnasium to the back field.

  *

  Chase was on the surly side today, having received a call this morning that complicated what was already a balancing act here in Marietta. Getting back to his team and playing ball was his goal, for sure, and they only wanted him to come out for an assessment and a check up next week, but the season was over for them and he’d barely settled in here.