“Hi Heath, it’s Jane Weiss, from the Chamber of Commerce.”
He sat a little straighter in his chair. “Morning, Ms. Weiss. What can I do for you?”
He really hoped there wasn’t more wedding giveaway rigamarole to deal with.
“Please, it’s Jane, and I just wanted to check to ensure you and Andie can make the Summer Solstice picnic on June 21. We’re trying to get as many of our finalist couples there as possible for the announcement of the winning couple.”
“The 21st. That sounds okay,” Heath said, making a note on the pad on his desk.
“There’s a formal invitation coming in the mail, but I wanted to make sure you and Andie saved the date.”
“Consider it saved.”
“I ran into Marly the other day and she said your profile piece went well.”
He could hear typing in the background and guessed that Ms. Weiss was multi-tasking.
“That’d be more down to Marly than me and Andie,” he said, remembering the awkwardness of the interview and photo session.
“Oh, I don’t know. Marly said she got a lot of good stuff from your entry form, too. Bit of a masterpiece you and Andie created there. Which reminds me, I keep meaning to mention to you that if you want to add a video or some other supporting material to your entry, you have up until the week before the picnic to deliver it. We decided it was only fair, since you two were encouraged to enter at the ball and didn’t have a chance to get fancy.”
Heath frowned. This was the third time that Andie’s drunken entry had been praised to him. Andie had claimed she’d written a bunch of baloney, but obviously it was pretty convincing baloney or they wouldn’t be finalists.
“I don’t suppose you could send me a copy? We didn’t get to keep one since we entered on the night of the ball,” Heath fudged.
“Of course I can email a copy through. Just give me a chance to dig it out of my in-box.”
“Great. I’d appreciate that.”
“One last thing before I let you go. I’m going to be stepping back from things for the next little while, but if you have any queries, my sidekick, Charlotte, can answer them.”
“Thanks, I’ll make a note of that.”
He wondered idly what would make a driven go-getter like Jane Weiss step back from a job she clearly loved. Being held at gun point? Then he spotted Andie heading for her pickup and shot to his feet. The metal steps trembled beneath his feet as he exited the trailer. Andie was standing in the tray of her pickup when he reached her, rummaging for something in the lock-box.
“Andie.”
She glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised in question. When she saw it was him, she smiled.
“Hey.”
“You in the middle of anything urgent?” he asked.
“Just the usual. Why?”
“I promised a shop owner over at the new strip mall that I’d give her a quote for a store fit-out. Want to come along for the ride?”
Andie checked her watch. “Sure, why not? It’s almost lunch time. You can buy me a burger on the way back.”
“Might even throw in a milk shake if you behave yourself.”
“Behave myself. What does that entail, exactly?”
There was a cheeky spark in her eyes, and one hand was resting on her hip. Andie had never been shy with him, but he loved this sassy side of her.
“Exactly what you think it does.”
She laughed and moved to the tail of the pickup, preparing to leap to the ground. He beat her to it, reaching for her hips and lifting her weight. Her hands found his shoulders, and he lowered her to the ground as slowly as he could manage, enjoying the slide of her body against his.
“You realize that all the guys can probably see us, right?” she said as her feet touched the ground.
“Yep.” He lowered his face to hers, kissing her. Sure enough, she tasted like strawberries. “Man. What do they put in this stuff?” He kissed her again.
“Strawberries. And other things I don’t want to think about.” She glanced over his shoulder, clearly self-conscious, but she didn’t try to leave the circle of his arms.
“You think they’re giving us marks out of ten?” he asked.
She grinned, her whole face lighting up as she considered the idea. “Wouldn’t that be special? We turn around and they’re all holding up score cards.”
He couldn’t resist kissing her again. When she was smiling like that, she was utterly gorgeous and sexy as hell.
“Is this shop owner expecting you at any particular time?” Andie asked when he finally broke their kiss.
“Shit.” He grabbed her wrist to check the time on her watch. “We need to motor.”
Together they walked to his car. She was smiling as she pulled on her seatbelt and he started the engine. He reached for her hand, weaving his fingers with hers as he steered one-handed out of the cul-de-sac.
Her fingers flexed within his, and he shot her a glance. She was watching him, a wary, almost frightened look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Worried I’m going to drive into a pole?”
She shook her head, her smile quickly returning. “No. I’ve seen you steer this thing with your knees. But maybe you should keep your eyes on the road, just in case.”
He did as instructed, but the small moment stayed with him as he navigated his way through the pristine streets of the new subdivision. As well as he knew Andie—and he figured he knew her better than most people, excepting maybe Beau—sometimes he had no idea what was going on inside her head. When they were in bed together, she was pure instinct, never holding anything back. But there were moments like just now when he caught a look in her eyes and for the life of him couldn’t read what she was thinking or feeling.
The really scary thing was that he wanted to know. With past girlfriends, there had been looks and glances and verbal hints that he’d been more than happy to have fly over his head. But he wanted to know what was on Andie’s mind. If she was upset about something, or worried, he wanted to know about it so he could try to fix it. He wanted her to be happy. In fact, her happiness had become a priority for him in a very short space of time.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, wary of the way his feelings kept getting away from him. Not so long ago, Andie had been one of the crew, an old friend, Beau’s sister. Now she was sitting beside him, her fingers entwined with his, and his head was full of ways to make her smile and keep her close.
It was a powerful, unnerving, tectonic shift, and a part of him wanted to put the brakes on, slow down and reassess. The rest of him was running downhill so fast that he knew there could only be one outcome when he reached the bottom.
And yet he wasn’t about to let go of her hand, and he wasn’t about to back away from any of this. For as long as she wanted to be, Andie was his. That was the one thing he was sure of.
Andie turned her face into the sun streaming through the car window, closing her eyes. Heath’s hand was warm around hers, the muscle of his thigh hard beneath her hand.
He’d asked her to ride along with him on a quote, just because. No sex, no hint of a bedroom, just the two of them holding hands, heading out for a quick business meeting and a burger. Like a couple. A real couple.
She opened her eyes, focusing on the world flying past, forcing herself to stay with the here and now. If she double-guessed everything and read meaning into every gesture, every invitation, every word, she would drive herself mad. It was enough that they were together, that they’d had an amazing weekend, more or less, together. More than enough.
“So, tell me about the quote,” Andie said, determined to short-circuit her own obsessing.
“Not much to tell. She’s new in town. Wants to open up a cafe. The real estate agent recommended us, apparently.”
Andie nodded. The new subdivision was going to be home to hundreds of new families. A local place could do really well away from the competition closer to the heart of town.
&nbs
p; “I can give you some pointers on the electrical,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “Save you from underquoting.”
“Why else do you think I brought you along?”
They turned into the new strip mall, and Heath pulled up in front of one of the last remaining empty shop fronts. A slim, dark-haired woman was waiting out the front, a pair of large sunglasses shading her face.
“Lucy De Marco?” Heath said as he climbed out of the SUV.
“That’s right. Which means you’re Heath McGregor.”
She pulled off her sunglasses and Andie felt a stab of something sharp in her belly as she watched the two of them shake hands. Lucy DeMarco was beautiful, not to mention pretty damned sexy, her curvy figure showcased by a pair of fitted jeans and a snug short-sleeved sweater.
Exactly the kind of overtly feminine, petite, dark-haired woman Heath had always gravitated toward.
Andie got out of the car and joined Heath on the sidewalk, somehow managing a smile when Lucy turned to her.
“This is Andie,” Heath said.
“Hi Andie, great to meet you,” Lucy said warmly.
The other woman’s hand was small and soft, not like Andie’s larger, work-toughened hands.
“So. You want to walk us through the site, tell us what you’re looking for?” Heath said, turning toward the empty shop front.
“It’s going to be a cafe, so breakfasts and lunches, no dinners. I want it to be homey and welcoming, a second home for people. I know that might be hard to achieve since this is such a new development.” Lucy glanced around at the newly-minted concrete and spindly trees that had been planted in the parking lot.
“Sometimes that can work to your advantage,” Heath said. “People walk in the door, and straight away they relax because you’ve got it right.”
Lucy’s smile was brilliant. “Just what I wanted to hear. Come on inside.”
Andie lingered outside, allowing the two of them to go ahead, aware of the acid feeling gnawing at her belly. She’d never considered herself a jealous person before, but there was no other word for the very primal emotion churning in her gut right now.
Smoothing a hand over the top of her head, she reluctantly stepped inside. Lucy and Heath were talking at the other end of the rectangular space, Lucy’s hands describing arcs in the air as she talked about a cafe she wanted to borrow ideas from back in San Francisco.
Andie couldn’t help noticing how cute and small Lucy looked next to Heath. How feminine. She also couldn’t help noticing that Lucy was packing a lot more up top than Andie.
Yep, definitely right up Heath’s alley.
Bracing herself, she switched her gaze to Heath. He was making notes, his gaze on the pad in front of him, and when he returned his focus to Lucy, his expression was intelligent and focused, with no hint of masculine appreciation or awareness. Pretending to be checking out the space, she moved closer, continuing to watch him out of the corners of her eyes, hating herself for being so pathetic.
Heath’s demeanor remained strictly professional, however, even when Lucy laughed up at him, her pretty face alight with amusement. Andie worried at a piece of cut off cable she’d stowed in her pocket, trying to work out if she was simply seeing what she wanted to see or if he genuinely hadn’t noticed that his new client was a hot tamale.
“Andie, come look at these,” Heath said, waving her closer.
“I was just showing Heath my inspiration pictures for Broken Eggs and Spilled Milk,” Lucy explained as Andie joined them.
“Is that what you’re calling the cafe?” Andie asked.
“That’s right.”
Andie watched as Lucy scrolled through a number of cafe images on her phone, wondering if Heath had noticed how good Lucy smelled, and how shiny her dark caramel hair was.
She almost jumped out of her skin when a warm hand landed on her hip, jerking her gaze from the phone to Heath’s face. He gave her an innocent, wide-eyed look before sliding his hand down onto her ass and giving it a light squeeze. Both actions were hidden from Lucy because of the way they were all standing, but Andie felt her face grow warm nonetheless.
She couldn’t keep the smile from her face when she returned her attention to Lucy’s phone, however, and over the next few minutes the gnawing feeling in her belly slowly dissipated as she absorbed a simple truth: Heath was with her. He was attracted to her, even though she wasn’t small and dark and curvy. He wanted her body, he went out of his way to spend time with her. He wasn’t faking it or making do until the next voluptuous brunette came along. Andie wasn’t an accident or a convenience.
She was his choice.
“Come out the back and tell me what you think of the kitchen space,” Lucy said.
Feeling a million times lighter, Andie fell into step behind the other woman. This time she didn’t start when Heath’s hand landed on her shoulder as he walked behind her. Instead, she turned her head and pressed a quick kiss to his knuckles. Because she could, and it felt right.
Chapter Twelve
Two weeks later, Andie eased herself away from Heath’s warm, hard body and slipped out of his bed. It was still dark outside, and her internal clock told her it was early. A blanket lay across the foot of the bed and she wrapped it around her naked body before walking quietly into the hallway.
The timber floor was cool beneath her feet as she made her way to the living room. The room was in darkness, but the floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a world on the verge of a new day, the horizon flushed pink with the approaching dawn. Andie sat on the floor, knees pulled tight to her chest, blanket wrapped snuggly around her huddled body. Slowly, surely, the sky caught fire as the sun rose and she rested her chin on her knees, her mind drifting back over the past few weeks.
Days with Heath at work, nights in his bed. Cooking meals with him, hiking with him on the weekends. Laughing with him. Arguing with him. Sharing silences with him.
The best weeks of her life, hands down. Nothing else even came close. He made her so happy, sometimes she actually felt dizzy with it. A few times she’d started awake in the night, sure that it had all been a beautiful dream, that her real life was waiting for her to return to it. And Heath was always there, sleeping quietly beside her, ready to reach out with an instinctively comforting hand, drawing her close to the heat of his body.
He was so wonderful. A far better man than she’d ever realized. Sweet and tender, endlessly generous both in and out of the bedroom, he made her laugh hundreds of times a day and never failed to send her heart-rate rocketing when he entered a room.
She’d thought she loved him before, but the emotion she’d lived with for years on end was nothing compared to the way she felt about him now. Her heart—her chest—felt full with emotion, overflowing with all the things she wanted to say to him. Every day he’d do something that almost tipped her over and she had to bite her tongue to forcibly remind herself that it was far, far too early to be declaring herself to him.
When he held her close in the shower, gently washing her back.
When he offered her the last scoop of ice cream, or the final piece of chocolate.
When he met her eyes in a room full of people and smiled just for her.
There were so many moments, and each time she had to hold herself in check and remind herself that it was early days yet. One day, she would allow herself to say what her heart wanted to say, but not yet.
The sound of bare feet on floorboards made her turn her head. Heath entered the darkened room wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung tracksuit pants, his hair sticking up on one side adorably.
“Hey. You okay?” he asked, his voice morning-husky. “I woke and you were gone.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d make these ridiculously expensive windows earn their keep.”
She gestured to the orange and pink sky, and Heath spared it a glance before joining her on the floor. She started to offer him a share of the blanket, but he spread his legs and slid in behind her, wrapping his arms arou
nd her and resting his chin on her shoulder.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked after a moment.
Her heart swelled at the concern and affection she could hear in his voice.
“All good here. What about you?”
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder by way of answer, tightening his arms around her. She closed her eyes, fighting off yet another tell-him-how-you-feel urge, swallowing the words that her heart was begging to say.
Soon, she promised herself. Soon.
They were both silent for a while after that, watching the sky turn hazy blue and the sun resolve into a ball of yellow. Andie was so lost in the sweet, simple contentment of the moment that she didn’t register the car pulling up in front of the house until too late.
“Shit,” Heath said quietly, and she knew who it was.
Beau.
Of course it was Beau. Only her brother would think it was perfectly acceptable to call on his oldest friend at the crack of dawn. Literally.
A knock sounded at the front door as Heath was disengaging himself from their embrace. She tucked the blanket beneath her armpits and let him pull her to her feet.
“You might want to go get dressed,” he said.
Andie glanced down at herself. Beau had gotten wiggy when she said the word virgin and penis in the same conversation less than a month ago. She didn’t want to imagine his reaction to finding her like this in his friend’s home.
“You shouldn’t have to face him on your own,” she said, stubbornly holding her ground.
“Then dress quickly and come riding to my rescue,” Heath said, grabbing her shoulders and steering her toward the hallway.
Feeling like a coward, Andie made her way to his bedroom. Thanks to the lack of furniture and soft furnishings, her brother’s voice carried only too clearly when Heath let him in.
“What’s my sister’s car doing here?”
Andie winced at the angry, suspicious edge to Beau’s tone, dropping the blanket the moment she was inside Heath’s bedroom and reaching for her clothes with urgent hands.
“Before you load your shotgun, let me explain,” Heath said.
Make-Believe Wedding (Montana Born Brides Book 9) Page 11
