Build it Strong (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 2)

by Rachael Herron

  Tuesday wanted to get closer. She wanted to turn him around, to inspect him, inch by inch. Her heart beat in her throat. “It’s okay. Jake and Aidan talked about it. Jake doesn’t mind.” It didn’t feel good, exactly, that Jake was so willing to give her up, but it was perfect that Aidan wanted to be the one she dated instead.

  “Are you sure about that?” Felicia picked up her pad of paper and made a hand motion at the nearest camera.

  Aidan’s shirt was at his feet, and his jeans were going next. “What she’s saying is that Liam’s the brain and Jake’s the looks. I’m just the meathead who hits things with hammers.”

  “I’m sure.” With every step he took to being clothes-less, Tuesday was getting more sure. She wanted to date him on camera, whatever that entailed.

  And what about off-camera? Silver bits of lightning swam in her stomach, like tiny fish that wanted to get back to the water.

  She peeled down her jeans, speeding up to match Aidan’s pace. He already stood in dark blue boxers decorated with…was that the Captain America logo? “Come on, gorgeous,” he said, sitting on the rock, putting his legs in the water.

  The boxers surprised her more than his endearment. Combined, they nearly stopped her heart completely. He waded farther in, walking backward, watching her.

  Tuesday shucked her shoes and finished taking off her jeans. She was down to her panties, but decided against taking off her T-shirt. Her butt in underwear was one thing. Her scar on display for the world to see was another.

  Panties are just like bikini bottoms. Panties are just like bikini bottoms. She could feel everyone staring.

  She could feel Aidan staring. Oh, God.

  So she closed her eyes and sat on the rock. She swung in her legs and concentrated on the feeling of the hot water lapping up her thighs. The bottom, soft with silty sand, dropped away quickly, and she bent her knees, going up to her neck.

  It was fresh-bathtub hot. When she extended her toes forward, toward the center where Aidan already floated, she could feel the extra degrees of heat in front of her.

  Tension she hadn’t known she was holding loosened, leaving her shoulders. Her neck popped as she stretched it to one side, then the other. She dog-paddled lazily and turned around to find—of course—that every pair of eyeballs and camera lenses were aimed at her.

  Every pair of eyes but Aidan’s. His back was now to her as he waded farther in, ten feet in front of her. Her foot grazed a submerged rock, and she stood on it, out of the water to her waist. “Aidan.” She didn’t have a follow-up sentence planned. She just wanted to say his name.

  He turned to face her.

  His eyes were naked with hunger.

  Tuesday gasped and slipped on the rock, plunging back into the hot water.

  Was that look for her?

  She ducked under, the heat prickling her scalp. She held her nose and stayed under the water for a long five-count, then she spluttered back up. She’d forgotten about her glasses, as usual, and she took them off and shook them hard before replacing them.

  He was probably literally hungry.

  That was it.

  He liked her. Yes. That had been established. That’s all it was.

  She turned to face him again, and it took everything she had to smile. Casual. She could be relaxed, right? She was in a hot tub in California! Wasn’t this what people did?

  The craving had left his face. He just looked like Aidan again. She felt equal parts relief and disappointment.

  He smiled at her and moved her direction. When he was three feet away from her, he called over her head, “Hey, Felicia!”

  “Yeah?” Felicia was saying something to Anna and Gene, her voice intense.

  “You okay with the brother swap?”

  “Sure. What do I care? I have the brother I want.”

  “Good.” Aidan’s voice was strong as a tree trunk, rough as its bark. “At least you’ll get our second kiss on camera.”

  Tuesday’s heart hammered in her ears, and she wasn’t sure if it was the heat that was making her entire body one long flush or him.

  No, she knew.

  It was definitely him.

  Felicia stammered, “Second, what? Gene.” She snapped her fingers. “Anna. Zoom in.”

  So Tuesday knew she was being filmed. Her mother and father would for sure see these images. Her old coworkers would watch as she kissed this man while wearing her wet black T-shirt, her butt hanging right out of the black panties that were smaller than a bathing suit, no question.

  She didn’t care.

  Instead, she grinned.

  Aidan swept his arms lazily through the water, closing the gap between them. “I figure we’ll give them this one.”

  “Sure.” Her voice was breathy.

  “Because they won’t get to film all of them.”

  Her knees literally buckled. She bobbed down into the water, up to her neck again. Aidan caught her like he had the last time (he seemed to be getting good at it), his arm around her back, his other hand hot against her cheek.

  He kissed her.

  A normal kiss. Closed lips. It should have made her feel good. Sexy, even.

  Instead, it was so much more. It lit her entire body on fire, and it made her want so much impossibly more, so much more than she could possibly get from anyone, ever, least of all this man whose body seemed meant to hold her. The water shifted, rocking them both, and her right leg wound itself naturally around his left one. His lips danced over hers, kissing, nibbling, tasting. She breathed him in, and felt him grow hard against her.

  Two scraps of fabric.

  That was all that was between them.

  She pulled a few inches away. Her voice was little more than a whisper, but she couldn’t seem to find the air she needed for more volume. “How many people watch this show?”

  He shook his head. “Dunno.”

  From behind them, Felicia yelled, “Two point three million watched the last episode.”

  “How...” Tuesday looked up. The fuzzy mic bounced above their heads. “I forgot about that.”

  Aidan drew her closer. “So I guess shouldn’t tell you what I want to do with you.”

  There was even less air now. She prayed she wasn’t gulping like a fish. “Can you hold that thought?”

  “Oh, I’ll hold it, all right.” He skimmed the flat of his hand against her breast. She bit the inside of her lip. Even in the heated water, her nipple tightened.

  Felicia called out again. “When’s your first date?”

  “Tonight!” yelled Aidan with a laugh.

  Tonight? That was too soon. She wasn’t…ready. She needed more time. This man scared her somehow.

  No, he didn’t scare her.

  He was the opposite of scary. He was intense, but not frightening.

  He was making her scared of herself. “Not tonight.”

  Aidan lowered his gaze to hers. Both of his hands were at her waist, and he moved his hips so his rigidity wasn’t pressing into her. “Tomorrow?”

  “Okay. Sure.” The smile kept creeping onto her face. She was equal parts freaked out and turned on, and she had no idea what to do about it.

  “She said yes to tomorrow!” Aidan called over her shoulder at Felicia.

  Felicia shot a thumbs up. “What are you going to do?”

  Aidan yelled cheerfully, “Hang gliding!”

  “Oh, shit.” Tuesday clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Don’t worry!” Felicia yelled. “We’ll beep that out!”

  Chapter 20

  T

  he next day, even though she was standing on solid earth (for now), Tuesday was still kicking herself for not saying no.

  She should have said no.

  Not to the date—she very much wanted to spend time with Aidan. Too much so, perhaps.

  But the very second Aidan brought up hanging from a glider (two words that shouldn’t really go together), she should have shot the idea right out of the sky.

  No. No way.


  Instead, she’d probably end up being the one who needed to be shot out of the sky when she went too high into it. Or scraped from the pavement when she hit it. Or rescued from the ocean when she plunged into it.

  What if something she did brought both of them down? What if he got hurt because of her?

  Lord have mercy. She wasn’t ready for this.

  “Look.” Aidan pointed over the edge of the cliff. “Perfect conditions.”

  Tuesday wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “To die? Is that what you mean? Because perfect conditions to me are when I’m sitting in front of a fireplace, reading a book.”

  They had one camera pointed at them—Gene was lazily filming and sipping his coffee at the same time—but the others were building establishing shots, Felicia had said. They had plenty to film, that was for sure. According to Google, Pine Tar Bluff was one of the state’s most popular hang gliding launch points. There were at least twenty people in the air already, all of them hanging from what appeared to be short sleeping bags. Sometimes the fliers drifted overhead and called down to the people they knew on the ground.

  Aidan seemed to know everyone. How he was getting anything done with the amount of waving he was doing to everyone and their dogs? Seriously, there were so many dogs. As well as being a hang gliding park, it was also an off-leash dog park, and Tuesday had never seen so many dogs running happily in one place.

  It was dog paradise.

  It was probably hang-gliding paradise.

  And four people had died here in the last fifteen years.

  Tuesday really shouldn’t have googled.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Me? Oh. Panicking.”

  He laughed as if she were kidding, and kept working on the metal hooks that were part of the long metal bars he’d assembled in front of him. Then he glanced up at her. “Oh, you’re serious. You’ll be fine.”

  Tuesday was grateful that she hadn’t eaten. There’s no way she’d be able to keep anything down as soon as they rose into the air.

  “I don’t think I know enough.”

  “You know everything you need to.” Aidan had spent an hour telling her exactly how the hang gliders worked. It had seemed an equal combination of aeronautics education and pep talk. “You’re going to be just fine. You’ll be with me.”

  Did that make it better? Or did that actually make it more terrifying?

  Tuesday wasn’t sure.

  On the one hand, she was grateful she didn’t have to make any kind of solo flight. She had no interest in that whatsoever. If she flew solo, she’d be responsible for all the people on the ground she could hurt if she crashed.

  On the other hand, that meant she’d be strapped to the man currently kneeling on the ground in front of her. Tandem gliding meant he’d hold her in front of him in her own little half-sleeping bag. Their bodies would be pressed together in the air.

  “What if I pass out?”

  “Up there?”

  “No.” Tuesday sat down on the wind-blown brown grass next to him. “Right now.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Big of you.”

  “Better for you to get that over with beforehand. That’s all I mean.”

  Tuesday decided to try a different angle. “Did you know one in a thousand people die hang gliding?”

  “Nice try.”

  “It’s true!”

  “I know, but that stat is for regular flyers. Did you read that, too?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Not for students or for people who fly tandem. When you add all those hundred of thousands of people in, the stat goes way down.”

  Tuesday rubbed her palms together. “I think that makes it worse. Don’t you think? That the rate is higher for regular fliers?”

  He smiled at her, and for the first time all morning, Tuesday felt warm. “You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. And we’re about ready.”

  Anna was running the show this morning instead of Felicia. “Cam two and three, round up,” she said into a headset. Was Felicia home? With Liam? Was she having more morning sickness?

  Should she really do this?

  Should she run?

  Tuesday curled her toes in her shoes, the way her therapist had told her would help.

  So she’d had a traumatic accident. So the doctor said she had a touch of PTSD. “I can do this.”

  “You can totally do this.” Aidan lifted the suddenly put-together glider and shook it by the metal triangle, as if to test it for something. “You ready?”

  “No.”

  He grinned at her, and the smile made her believe that maybe she wouldn’t die today.

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “Good girl.”

  Girl. Sheesh. She scowled. “What’s Jake doing right now, you think?”

  “He got the all-clear from the doc. He should be at your house right now, working with the guys on taking down those bathroom walls and cutting in geothermal pipe from the street.”

  “Sounds wonderful. What a guy.”

  “You want to switch back to him?” Aidan’s smile was something else. It said We’re smiling together, you and me. Did anyone not fall for it?

  “Probably. If I don’t die, I expect that’s what I’ll do.”

  Cheerfully, Aidan said, “Figured you would. Good thing I’ll get in a flight first. Now come on, you. Stand with me and we’ll get your harness on.”

  Gene ducked under the wing to get one more close up of her face. On the other side, Anna adjusted the GoPro cameras attached to both of their helmets.

  Ten minutes later, they ran off the edge of the cliff.

  Okay, it was really more like a hill. But it was a steep hill. She kept her eyes up, as instructed, though it felt completely counterintuitive. She’d never run down a hill without watching her feet. Behind her, Aidan ran, too. Both of his hands were outside hers on the control bar. Above her head, Tuesday could hear the nylon creaking against the rigging.

  “Legs up!”

  The wind strengthened, and her harness tightened automatically as they were tugged upward.

  “I can’t.” He wouldn’t be able to hear her, not with all the noise around them, the roar of the wind, and the flapping of the nylon.

  But somehow he did. “I’m right here.”

  So she lifted her feet as he lifted his, and just like that, they were free.

  They were in the air and suddenly, it was so much quieter. They were with the wind, instead of battling it to stay on the ground.

  Tuesday’s stomach fell away and stayed away, which was fine—she didn’t need it. She was too busy trying to handle the drunken happiness that filled her as surely as if her blood had been replaced by wine. Really, it was like standing still as the world dropped below them. Instead of flying up, she felt as if the ground was falling away—instead of them veering to the right, the earth sailed to the left.

  “Trust me.” His voice was a rumble in her ear, muffled through the helmet but perfectly clear.

  Something about the way he said it made her spine relax, her neck lengthen. She’d been holding a ball of tension tightly between her shoulder blades, as if by sheer force of will she could keep the glider aloft.

  Tuesday tried relaxing her muscles, ready to clench again if she had to.

  But she didn’t have to.

  She was in the circle of Aidan’s arms, her hands on the control bar with his. His body pressed against hers, a happy, heavy weight. She wasn’t tethered to the earth anymore but she was tethered to him, and that was better than anything she’d expected.

  Her eyesight grew sharp as a falcon’s, even through the safety goggles fitted over her glasses. They soared over the ocean, and instead of being certain of the drowning that was in her very near future, Tuesday was able to focus on the small white sailboat below. A man was on deck, a fishing pole in his hands. He wore sunglasses. Tuesday could almost read the writing on his shirt. “Hello!” she called downward.

/>   The man waved, and Tuesday whooped.

  She could fly.

  Why was she so surprised? After all, when she was young, flight had been her dearest dream, her favorite imaginary superpower.

  She felt, rather than heard, Aidan laughing behind her. They should fish, from up here. They could drop a net, and Aidan could steer as she trawled, and then they’d fly over Darling Bay, her arms full of fresh-caught fish still flapping. She could imagine the looks on people’s faces, as they gazed up to see the hang-gliding fishers.

  The laughter didn’t stop. It bubbled up, filling her lungs with joy. Every time Aidan caught a thermal updraft, she giggled. As they soared, banking over the sand, she laughed more. She was carbonated, her blood full of something fizzy that she couldn’t control.

  Aidan said, “Take the control bar.”

  “Me? No.”

  He moved his hands over so hers could take his place. “Use your body. Just shift your weight.”

  “I can’t.” She’d crash this thing. She couldn’t even drive a car anymore—too many other people on the road. She couldn’t fly. She couldn’t hold a man up in the sky.

  “You don’t have to do anything but hold the bar. Shift your weight when I tell you.”

  “Aidan—”

  He took his hands off the bar.

  Just like that, Tuesday was driving.

  They didn’t hurtle toward the ground. They stayed up. They went higher, in fact.

  Something loosened in Tuesday’s chest.

  How far could they go? Did they actually have to land? Was there a way to get food and water delivered up here? Could they stay forever in the sky like this? Tuesday’s face and hands were cold but she didn’t mind.

  No, Tuesday was flying.

  “Good,” he said. “Good job.”

  Aidan was the reason she could fly. She shimmied against him in joy, and she felt him respond.

  For one split second, she wondered if anyone had ever had sex while hang gliding. It seemed impossible, and they were in different harnesses, but then again, people who wanted to have sex in strange places usually managed to get it done. Just imagining it made Tuesday overheat like she’d forgotten to fill her own personal radiator. She wondered if Aidan could feel it—the flush that took over her body.