Andie clipped her bra on, reaching for her jeans.
“Unless her car is out of gas and there was some reason why you couldn’t give her a lift home, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear it.”
“Andie and I are seeing each other.”
Andie held her breath, waiting for her brother’s response.
“Definitely not what I want to hear,” Beau said.
“She’s twenty-six years old.”
“Don’t tell me how old my own sister is.”
“She’s not a little kid. She’s an adult.”
“So, what? She’s fair game? Easy pickings?”
“No. And thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy.”
Andie finished tying her boots, then combed her fingers through her hair. Taking a deep breath, she went to face the music.
Both men turned to face her as she entered the living room, her boots having ensured they heard her coming. She saw at a glance that Beau was seriously pissed, his shoulders bunched, his expression hard. Heath stood a few feet away, his own expression and posture wary.
“Heath’s right. I’m not a little kid,” she said. “You don’t need to get involved in my private life.”
“You should have thought about that before you started up with my oldest friend,” Beau said, his voice gravelly with anger.
“I don’t need your permission to be with someone, Beau,” she said.
“You really want to be a notch on his bedpost? Is that what you’re all about these days, Andie?” Beau asked.
Heath started forward, chin tilted aggressively. “You might want to be careful, talking about something you know nothing about.”
Any second now this scene was going to deteriorate. Andie stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. The sound echoed off all the hard surfaces, shrill and ear-piercing, drawing every eye to her. She aimed a finger at her brother.
“Outside, you and me. Now.”
“Andie-” Heath said.
“He’s my brother. I can handle this.”
She didn’t bother to check if Beau was following her, marching for the front door. She barreled out onto the graveled driveway, crossing her arms over her chest and turning to face her brother as he exited the house.
“What are you playing at, Andie?” he said, getting straight into it as he stalked toward her. “You want to end up on the scrap heap of women Heath McGregor has fucked and forgotten?”
Andie glared at him and said the only thing she could think of that might shut him up: the truth.
“I love him.”
Stunned, Beau rocked back on his heels.
She lifted her chin. “I’ve loved him since I was thirteen years old, and there’s an outside chance he might just love me, too, so don’t you screw this up for me, Beau.”
She expected Beau to fire back at her with some counterargument or other, but instead he closed his eyes as though she’d just delivered him a fatal blow.
“Andie. God.” His eyes were dark with sympathy when he opened them.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not an object of pity. It’s not pitiful to love someone.”
“You’ve known Heath half your life. You’ve seen what he’s like with women. How many of his girlfriends do you think have been convinced that there was an ‘outside chance’ Heath was going to love them back?”
“I have no idea. It doesn’t matter. This is me. This is different.”
“Andie.” He sounded pained.
“You don’t know him like I do,” she insisted.
“No, I know him like I do. I’ve been in bars with him. I’ve heard him talk about women.”
“So? I bet you talked right back at him about your women. Does that make you a bad bet?”
“Hell, yeah it does. I wouldn’t want my sister with someone like me, not in a million years. And that’s exactly who Heath is.”
“Beau, you cannot protect me from this. I love that you want to, but you can’t.”
“He’s going to hurt you, Andie.”
“Maybe, but that’s my risk to take, not yours.”
Beau looked down the driveway, his expression hard, the tendons in his neck tight.
“Is it so impossible to believe that he might love me?” she asked quietly.
Beau’s head snapped around, his gaze narrowing. “This isn’t about you, Andie, okay? You are gorgeous, you are smart. I’m so goddamned proud of you I’d shout it from the top of Copper Mountain if I thought it would make a difference to anything. One day you’re going to meet a guy who sees all of that. But I don’t think that man is Heath McGregor.” There was a dead, flat certainty to her brother’s tone that struck a chill in her heart. “I’m sorry, Panda, but it’s the truth.”
She turned away from him, looking out over Riverbend Park, rubbing her arms against the early morning cold. Trying to think. Trying to see clearly.
Had she been fooling herself, living in a fantasyland where she got to have the handsome prince of her dreams, when in fact she’d simply had his body on loan for a few short weeks? Had she been reading meaning into Heath’s affectionate touches, freighting them with more emotion than they really held? Or was the feeling she got when she was with Heath as good and true and real as she hoped it was?
She thought back to the moment they’d just shared, the warmth of his body around hers as they watched the sun rise. That had been about more than sex. She was almost certain of it. Almost, but not quite.
Heath had always been affectionate toward her, after all. If she’d asked him before that first kiss, she was sure he’d have said that he loved her before all this started—as a friend. Maybe what she was sensing was a mixture of old affection and new lust. Maybe her brother was right, and she was just weeks away from becoming one of Heath’s exes.
The thought made her chest ache and her eyes burn.
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Andie,” Beau said.
She smiled grimly. “Your timing is a little off on that one, I’m afraid.”
She glanced toward the house. She could see Heath standing in the living room, watching them, his expression unreadable from this distance. Suddenly the thought of going back inside and talking to him with her brother’s doubts ringing in her head was just too much. She needed to think. She needed some space and distance to get her head on straight.
She turned to her brother and held out a hand. “Can I have the keys to your truck?”
“I’ll drive you home—”
“No. I want to be alone. My car keys are on the kitchen counter. We can swap back later.”
Beau studied her a moment before pulling his keys from his pocket and dropping them into her open hand.
“Tell Heath I’ll call him later, okay?”
She didn’t wait for him to respond, and she didn’t look toward the house as she crossed to her brother’s SUV. Her stomach in knots, she started the car and threw it into gear. The tires grabbed with a spurt of gravel, and she pressed her fisted hand into her sternum, refusing to cry as she headed down the drive.
She’d told Lily and herself that even if nothing came of her one night with Heath, she would never regret it. She wasn’t sure she could stand by that declaration now. If Beau was right and her heart wrong, her whole world was about to collapse in on itself. She’d have to find a new job. She’d have to boycott all of Heath’s favorite places in town. She could never go fishing or camping or hunting with Beau and Heath again.
Not to mention the small fact that her heart would be smashed to smithereens, too.
She was trembling as she pulled onto the highway heading toward town. Afraid of the depth of her own feelings, terrified of the disappointment and hurt she could already feel lapping at her ankles.
He might be wrong. Heath might love you. There’s no reason why you can’t be The One.
She wanted to believe the voice in her head, she really did, but she’d endured so many years of standing on the sidelines, watching Heath with women who were more conf
ident, more sexy, more alluring than her. The truth was, Heath had only noticed her when she’d practically shoved herself down his throat, and he hadn’t said a single word in all their time together about his feelings or the future.
All of which made it really, really hard to hold onto the precious, fragile dream of his love.
A single tear slid down her face and Andie brushed it away with the back of her hand. Now was not the time to cry. Now was the time to be smart, to protect herself, and to think.
Heath was already heading for the front door when Beau let himself in.
“What did you say to her?” Heath demanded. “What did you say to make her drive off?”
“The truth. That you aren’t a person she should count on.”
Heath swore, barely resisting the urge to charge at his friend.
“You really think I’d hurt Andie? You think I’d do anything to make her unhappy?”
“If you felt that way you should have kept your pants zipped.”
Heath made a rude noise, disappointed and disgusted in equal measure. “You know what? I’m not explaining myself to you. Andie’s the only one I owe anything to.”
Beau walked past him, heading for the kitchen.
“You want to tell me where the hell you think you’re going?” Heath asked. He and Beau had been through a lot over the years, but Beau was really pushing it right now.
“Andie said her keys were on the kitchen counter.”
Heath arrived in the kitchen in time to see Beau scoop up the keys to Andie’s pickup. Andie’s wallet was there, too, and her phone. Beau went to pick them up, but Heath spoke first.
“I’ll get those to Andie.”
Beau ignored him, setting the phone on top of the wallet and picking both up. That was it for Heath, the one step too far that tore his restraint to shreds. Moving fast, he got in Beau’s face, stopping just short of slamming into him.
“Whether you like it or not, Andie is a part of my life, and she’s going to stay that way. So you’d better deal with whatever’s stuck in your throat pretty damned fast because I’m not going anywhere.”
Something flickered behind Beau’s eyes, and for a second he hesitated. Heath took advantage of the moment, taking Andie’s things back. His heart was pounding, adrenalin pumping, and he moved back a few paces.
“She’s not your property, Beau.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She’s also a person.”
They eyed each other for a long beat. There was more Heath could say—like how freaking disappointing it was that his best friend thought he was such a sack of shit that he wouldn’t let him date his sister—but he knew there was a lot at play here. Ever since Ben’s death, Beau had made the role of older brother a sacred calling. This was about more than Heath and Andie.
“Shut the door on your way out,” Heath said, turning away.
He was halfway to the bedroom when he heard the door slam shut. He tossed Andie’s things onto the bed, frowning at the tangled sheets.
Why had she driven off like that? What on earth had Beau said to make her want to bail without even looking Heath in the eye?
It was tempting to think that Beau had aired some dirty laundry from Heath’s past, but Andie knew him. He’d never hidden his private life from her, she knew his history, and she’d entered into a relationship with him with open eyes and arms. She’d come willingly, eagerly into his bed, in fact.
“Screw it.”
He shed his tracksuit pants in one smooth move, striding to the bathroom. Five minutes later he was showered and brushing his teeth, and five minutes after that he was in the car, heading into Marietta. He wasn’t going to sit around second guessing what was going on. He was going to talk to Andie, ask her outright, and they would work out whatever was wrong, remove whatever block Beau had put between them.
Because he’d meant what he said—he wasn’t going anywhere. Andie had slotted into his life as though she was made for it over the past weeks, filling the space by his side, occupying vacancies in his life that he hadn’t even known were empty. He loved being with her. He loved the sound of her laughter. He loved the way she moaned when he slid inside her. He loved her down-to-earth practicality, and the way she never backed down from a fight.
No way was he letting her go. No way was he losing the best thing that had ever happened to him. Not when they were just at the very beginning of what might be possible between them.
He came to a stop at a traffic light, drumming his fingers on the wheel impatiently, aware of a hollow, jittery sensation in his gut.
He was nervous. The truth was, he had no idea what Andie wanted. It was all very well for him to be so gung-ho, for him to want what he wanted, but he had no idea if she’d just been in this thing for fun and it had become something else, or if it was still simply about great sex for her, or—
Someone leaned on their horn behind him and he realized the light was green. He raised a hand in apology, stepping on the gas. He was about to turn off Main Street when his phone started ringing. He hit the button on the steering wheel to take the call.
“McGregor Construction,” he said automatically.
“Boss, it’s me,” Big Mack said. “We’ve got a problem at the site. How far away are you?”
Heath frowned. “What sort of a problem?”
“Four of the houses have been ransacked. They’ve smashed windows, stolen tap fittings, stripped out pipe and wiring…”
Heath swore. They were insured for this sort of thing, but it was beside the point. They’d need to reglaze windows, redo plumbing and wiring. They could be looking at a major setback, which meant they’d go over time on the builds and trigger the penalty payments built into the homeowners’ contracts…
Checking the rear view mirror, he did a sweeping u-turn. “I’m five minutes away, tops. Have you called the cops?”
“They were going to be my second call.”
“Get onto it, and I’ll see you shortly.”
Heath ended the call, swearing again and punching the steering wheel. Talk about a crappy morning. He’d have to deal with this mess before he could even contemplate sorting things out with Andie, something that simply didn’t sit right with him. He hadn’t been able to see her face clearly when she was talking to Beau, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she’d been upset when she’d left his place.
Damn Beau to hell.
Chapter Thirteen
Heath left some rubber on the road when he screeched to a halt in front of the job trailer. Big Mack and Angelo were waiting for him, their faces grim.
“Cops said they’d be here in half an hour,” Big Mack reported.
Heath jerked his head toward the houses. “Show me the damage.”
He did a quick tour of the four houses that had been targeted, noting the walls that had been punched through to access plumbing, the missing vanities and fittings in the bathrooms. Fortunately the kitchens had not yet been installed, but light fittings, switches, cabling had all been stolen. Shaking his head, Heath headed back to the trailer, Big Mack and Angelo hard on his heels.
It was obvious that the thieves had tried to smash their way into the job trailer, too, but the heavy-duty pad bolt and lock had defeated them, and the window was too elevated to offer them easy access. No doubt the houses had been easier and more lucrative targets.
“I want you guys to go through each house and make a detailed list of everything that’s missing. Check inside walls, the roof spaces, the basements. Take photographs, make sure you’ve got it all down. The insurance company will want to do their own audit, but we need to start documenting and ordering replacement supplies.”
He turned on his computer, his mind racing.
“We’re going to have to split the crew in half, get some of the guys working on repairs, keep the other half moving forward on the untouched properties. I’ll see if I can get a few extra guys in.”
“Little Mack’s in-between jobs right now, right?”
Angelo asked, glancing at Big Mack for confirmation.
Big Mack’s younger brother was also a builder, and he’d helped Heath out in the past on odd jobs here and there.
“Yeah, he’s around,” Big Mack confirmed.
“Great. Call him, ask if he can start immediately,” Heath said.
His computer came to life and he clicked through to his insurance folder as the guys armed themselves with notepads and pens and turned to go.
“Work fast, guys,” he called after them, and Angelo and Big Mack raised acknowledging hands before disappearing out the door.
Heath punched in the claim number for the insurance company and ground his teeth together when he got a recorded message with instructions to select options that would guide him through the insurance company’s call center. Two minutes later he was on hold, waiting for “the next available customer service officer”.
Frustration building, he started scanning through the emails that had come in overnight, automatically deleting the marketing spiels. He paused when he came to one from Marietta Chamber of Commerce, clicking through. It was an apology from Jane Weiss for having forgotten to send him a scanned copy of his and Andie’s entry in the wedding giveaway. Curious, hold music still playing in his ear, Heath clicked on the PDF attachment.
Andie’s handwriting filled the screen, small and neat, and even though he knew the police were due to arrive any minute and that he had a dozen things that needed doing now, he started reading.
Describe how you and your fiancé first met:
Heath McGregor and I have known each other since we were kids. For a long time there he was just my oldest brother’s cool friend. And then, one day, overnight it seemed, he became something more. I don’t know what it was, and I never did anything about it, because he was my brother’s best friend and because I didn’t think he’d be interested in someone like me. That all changed last year, though, when we went camping together. My brother was supposed to go, but he pulled out at the last minute and it was just Heath and me. We found a site by the river and spent the day fishing and talking. That night, we sat around the fire and shared a bottle of wine and talked some more. It started raining sometime in the night, which was when Heath’s tent started leaking. He came looking for shelter in my two-man tent, and… well, let’s just say it turned out that we’d both been sitting on some strong feelings for each other…
Make-Believe Wedding (Montana Born Brides Book 9) Page 12
