Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set

by Grover Swank, Denise

  And the entire time I did my calisthenics, I thought about the girl in my bed. I ran over my memories of the night, searing into my mind what it felt like to touch her so I’d never forget it. And beneath all of that, I worked through the heavier feeling in my chest, the one that was as foreign as it was somehow familiar.

  It was deeper than sex.

  Now that I’d had her, I knew I couldn’t live in a world where I didn’t.

  I wanted to let her in, let her see all of me, and I wanted to see all of her, in return.

  While I’d spent the morning working out and planning every word I wanted to say to her, and knowing exactly where I wanted to take her to say it all, she’d been here, in my bed, sleeping. Knocked out. Completely exhausted.

  After everything that had happened yesterday, I knew she needed rest, and I didn’t want to take that from her.

  But it was Sunday in Stratford, and there wasn’t an excuse outside of being dead that could get Ruby Grace Barnett out of going to church.

  I was still a little sweaty from my workout as I swept a strand of her hair from her face, running my fingertip down the line of her jaw. She stirred a little, stretching her arms up above her head and pointing her toes before her eyes fluttered open.

  The moment they locked with mine, she smiled.

  And my heart nearly burst at the sight of that sleepy smile.

  “Well, good morning,” she said, voice raspy. “You’re sweaty.”

  I chuckled. “And you’re sleepy.”

  She groaned, rubbing her eyes. “I really am. I feel like I could sleep for years.”

  “Here,” I said, offering her the cup of hot tea I’d made her. “Earl Grey. Just a little bit of caffeine, but it should help.”

  She took it in thanks, scooting up until she was seated against the headboard, and after her first sip, she hummed.

  “That’s good,” she said, wrapping her hands around the warm mug.

  My sheets pooled at her waist, but her breasts were bare, exposed, just sitting there right in front of me in all their perky glory. Ruby Grace followed my gaze and gave me a knowing smirk.

  “Whatcha thinking about, Noah Becker?”

  “Just you, Ruby Grace,” I mused, meeting her gaze again. “Always you.”

  Her eyes softened, one hand leaving the mug and reaching out for mine. She folded her palm over my knuckles, lacing her fingers with mine, a thumb brushing my wrist.

  “Tell me last night was real,” she whispered.

  I swallowed, squeezing her hand in mine. “It was real,” I promised her. “It was perfect.”

  She nodded, closing her eyes on a smile before she took another sip of her tea. For a while, we just sat there, eyes wandering over the other, gentle smiles on our lips. There was so much I wanted to tell her in that moment, so much I wanted to make known, but I knew it wasn’t the right time. Or the right place. There were things I needed to do before I made my big gesture, before I showed her the way it could be, if she were to choose me.

  If she were to give me the honor of being the next man she called her own.

  “I want to take you somewhere,” I said after a while, smoothing my thumb over her palm. “Will you go somewhere with me?”

  “Where?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to tell you. Not yet. But… will you go with me?”

  She leaned up, placing her mug on the bedside table before she took my face in her hands. “Anywhere.”

  I smiled.

  “But, not today,” she said next. “Today, I need to deal with… all of this.” She gestured to the space around us, as if her former fiancé and her family and the rest of the town were right there in my bedroom with us. Then, she turned my hand over, checking the time on my heart monitor watch with another groan. “Starting with church. In like an hour.”

  I chuckled. “I understand.”

  Reaching for her hand again, I squeezed it in mine, frowning as I watched her. She was so young — too young to be faced with the hardship she was about to endure. It wasn’t going to be easy to break off an engagement, especially not in this town.

  And especially not with her family.

  “Why don’t you take a few days?” I offered. “I’ll be right here, but you do what you have to do. Okay?”

  Her lips formed a brief smile before it fell again. “Okay. Yeah. I think that’s best.”

  “Do you want me to come with you? To be with you for any of it?”

  She sighed at that. “No,” she said, rubbing her free hand down her face. “As much as I know it’d be easier that way, this is something I need to handle on my own.”

  “I get that,” I said, lacing our fingertips together. “How about you save Friday for me, then?”

  “Friday,” she mused.

  I nodded. “Gives me some time to get everything together.”

  At that, she cocked a beautiful eyebrow. “What are you planning, Noah Becker?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Ruby Grace Barnett,” I retorted, kissing her nose, her cheeks, and then capturing her lips. She inhaled at the connection, breathing into me, a sigh leaving her lips when I finally pulled back.

  Her mouth curved into a playful smile. “Last night, you said I have strawberry smoothie lips.”

  “You do,” I said, running my thumb over said lips. The bottom one stuck to my skin, pulling down to expose her teeth before it popped back up.

  That sight shot electricity straight down to my cock.

  I groaned, shaking my head and readjusting myself in my shorts as I slid my hand back into her hair. “I thought that the first time I saw you back in town. And every day since, I wondered if they tasted like a strawberry smoothie, too.”

  “And do they?”

  I shook my head, leaning in to kiss her and elicit another breathy sigh.

  I decided it was my new favorite sound.

  “Better,” I murmured against her lips. “They taste even better.”

  Chapter 15

  Ruby Grace

  Church felt like the Gravitron from the Tennessee State Fair that morning.

  One minute, I was smiling like a loon, stomach flipping as I replayed every moment with Noah the night before.

  The next, that stomach flip would turn into more of a roll, and I’d lurch forward, feeling like I was going to vomit any minute.

  In the course of twenty-four hours, everything had changed.

  I glanced down at the ring on my finger — the one I’d put back on before leaving Noah’s — and bile rose in my throat again. I couldn’t wait to take it off. I couldn’t wait to shake off the weight of the wedding to a man who didn’t love me, who didn’t care about anything other than what I would look like on his arm, what my family could do for his campaign.

  I felt like the biggest fool, but soon, it would be him who felt that way.

  Still, I knew my stomach wouldn’t stop turning — not until it was all said and done, and maybe even then, too. I didn’t know where to start, who to tell first, and I didn’t have any way of knowing what to expect once our house of cards crumbled.

  Our friends would be shocked.

  The town would gossip.

  Mama’s heart would be broken, no doubt.

  And Daddy? I had no idea how he would take the news. Part of me wondered if he’d disown me, if I’d even be able to call myself a Barnett by the end of the week.

  Part of me didn’t care, as long as I was free of the man who had lied to me for the past year.

  And maybe that was what upset me most — that under all the anxiety over what was to come, I was still heartbroken over what had happened. The man I had promised my forever to wasn’t the man I thought I knew at all, and as much as I wished I didn’t hurt over that fact, as much as I wished Noah being with me the night before fixed everything, it didn’t.

  I had still been betrayed.

  My heart fluttered at the thought of Noah, a small smile curving on my lips. I reached up, smoothing m
y fingertips over the bottom one, remembering how it felt when his tongue swept across the sensitive skin.

  The way he touched me, the way he made love to me…

  It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  How could I feel more passion and care in one night with that man than I felt in an entire year with the one I promised to marry?

  As if he could sense I was thinking of him, Noah stretched his arms up over his head, resting them on the back of the pew before he did a casual scan of the congregation like he wasn’t just trying to look back at me.

  But he did.

  When our eyes locked, every shred of doubt, every fear faded.

  He smiled.

  I smiled.

  And then I counted down the minutes until I could be in his arms again.

  * * *

  “Mama, can we talk?”

  She was in the kitchen, baking her famous lemon squares for her meeting with the women’s circle at church the next day. Her auburn hair was up in a messy bun — which Mama never did, unless she was stressed, cleaning, or baking.

  Sometimes, it was a combination of the three.

  “Sure, sweetie. Just let me get these in the oven and we can pull up the seating chart again.”

  I shifted. “It’s actually not about the seating chart.”

  “Oh,” she said, opening the oven and sliding the baking sheet of squares inside before she popped it closed again. “Is it the registry? I know we’re a little behind, but we can get it all done before next Sunday. Most people wait until the last minute to buy gifts for the shower, anyway.”

  “Mama,” I said, taking a seat at the kitchen island. “It’s important.”

  I set the ring Anthony had given me on the counter with a gentle clink, metal hitting granite, and it was as if that sound alone stopped Mama in her tracks.

  She stopped right in front of the sink, one hand under the faucet and the other ready to turn it on, but she never did. Instead, she just stood like that, glancing at the ring, at me, back at the ring, at me again.

  Her face paled, and she turned back to the sink, kicking on the faucet with her wrist before running her hands under the water. “We still need to decide what readings you want to do during the ceremony. I was thinking we should do something fresh. Corinthians is so overdone.”

  My heart squeezed.

  “Mama.”

  “And you know, maybe we should do the twine like you wanted. Instead of the coral ribbon.” She dried her hands haphazardly on one of the towels hanging from the oven, immediately launching into clean up. “You were right, that would look so much classier.”

  “Mama.”

  “And we need to go in for your final fitting on Friday. Don’t forget that.”

  “Mama!”

  She winced, shutting her eyes and hanging her head between her shoulders with the sponge in her hand. She shook her head, eyes still closed, and I knew in her mind she was praying to God that I hadn’t actually taken my ring off.

  “Please,” I begged her, my own throat tightening. “Can you please sit down?”

  She sniffed, dropping the sponge on the counter and sitting at the stool across from me. She wouldn’t look at me. She kept her eyes on her hands, which were folded now, her right fingers playing with the ring that adorned her left.

  I inhaled a deep breath once she was seated, once the ball was in my court. Dad and Anthony had gone out for the evening, back to the casino, and after talking to Annie first, she’d helped me decide that Mom was the first person I should tell in the family. From there, I could make a plan to talk to Anthony, to Dad, and figure out how to break the news to our close friends and family — and to the town.

  If there was one thing Mama excelled at, it was damage control.

  “I need your help,” I finally said.

  She lifted her head a little, her worried eyes finding mine.

  “I overheard Anthony on the phone yesterday,” I explained, and tears flooded my eyes, the shivers too much as I tried to steady my shaking hands by stuffing them between my thighs and the barstool. “He said some really awful things.”

  “Men say awful things all the time,” she replied quickly. “They’re stupid. And half the time, drunk.”

  “He was sober.”

  “Whatever he said, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

  “I’m calling off the wedding.”

  Her eyes closed, and she shook her head, inhaling a deep breath before she opened her eyes again. This time, she held her shoulders back, her chin high, eyes locking with mine. “No, you most certainly are not, young lady.”

  “I am. And I need your help, because we both know this is going to take a lot of damage control.”

  “You’re not calling off the wedding!” she hissed, whispering as if someone might overhear. “You can’t,” she said, voice calmer.

  “He said he fully intends on cheating on me,” I said, as gently as I could with those being the words coming from my mouth. “He said I’m perfect to fit the role he needs his dutiful wife to play. He said I was bred for this.”

  “And you were.”

  My mouth fell open. “I’m not a horse, Mother.”

  “No, but you are the daughter of the Mayor of Stratford, and you are a Barnett. Do you understand the implications of what you’re saying? If you called off this wedding, the entire town would have something to say about it. You’d make our family a laughingstock. You’d bring us shame.”

  “And if I don’t call off this wedding, I will be miserable for the rest of my life.”

  Mom threw her hands up, rolling her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. So what, he wants to have some girls on the side. You think he’s the only husband to ever have that thought? Your father has had many a secretary in his day, and you know what? It never mattered to me. Because it was me who had the house, and the kids, and the life I always wanted. Those girls, those hussies?” She shook her head. “They were just sex, sweetheart. It means nothing.”

  My mouth fell open wider. “Dad cheated on you?”

  She waved me off. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not a big deal. And neither is any of that stuff Anthony said. He cares about you, Ruby Grace. He wants to provide for you, give you a home and a place to raise your children. He’ll make sure you never want for anything.”

  “He doesn’t love me, Mama,” I whispered.

  “What does love have to do with marriage?”

  My heart broke again, this time by the realization that the love I thought my parents had was a sham. My father had cheated. My mother had stayed anyway. They weren’t in love, they were in a business agreement.

  But I would not do the same.

  “Everything,” I said. “It has everything to do with marriage. I refuse to marry a man who doesn’t love me, who sees me as a prize or another tick on his list of things to get done in order to make it to a run for president someday. I’m a human being. I’m a woman. I deserve a man who will love and honor and cherish me, just as I do him.”

  “Anthony will do all those things.”

  “While he cheats on me? While he tells his father that I have no ambitions and I’m pretty, so that’s a bonus?” I scoffed. “Mother, do you hear yourself?”

  “You are not calling off this wedding,” she said, ignoring me and shaking her head. She stood again, crossing to the sponge and picking up where she left off cleaning.

  “I am.”

  “You are not.”

  “Mama, I—”

  “You can’t!” she screamed, turning in place. The sponge fell to the floor and her hands flew to her face, sobs racking through her in the next instant.

  It was just like I’d thought

  I broke her heart.

  “Oh, Mama,” I said, rounding the island and sweeping her into my arms. I held her tight, holding back my own tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No, no,” she said, sniffing and swiping at the tears on her face as she pulled back from my embrace. “You don’t un
derstand. You can’t call off the wedding.” Her eyes found mine. “We made a deal, Ruby Grace. With Anthony and his father.”

  My blood ran cold. “A deal?”

  Anthony’s words swam in my head.

  They need us to play our part, just like we need Ruby Grace to play hers.

  Mom winced, her face screwing up before a few more tears were let loose. She swiped them away. “Honey, your father was in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” I asked. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Well,” she said on a sigh. “You know him and his card games. At the casino, he’s fine. Once he runs out of the money he came to play with, that’s it. And I keep a tight leash on what he’s allowed to piss away.” She let out a breath, brows quivering again. “But, I didn’t know. I didn’t know he’d been playing at the underground casino, the one the Scooters run out of their basement. I knew he went sometimes, just to show face, network, but I never thought…”

  “Mom,” I interrupted. “What kind of trouble?”

  She sniffed, running the back of her hand under her nose. “He was taking loans from them at the casino for cards, sure he would win and pay them back. But he kept coming up in the red. Over and over again.” She shook her head. “He didn’t even tell me until the Scooters threatened to expose everything if we didn’t pay up.”

  I covered my mouth.

  No.

  “We were going to lose everything, Ruby Grace,” Mom said, reaching forward to grab my free hand in hers. “The house. The cars. Everything. He was in an amount of debt we couldn’t even dream of repaying.”

  “But, he’s the mayor,” I said, lip trembling. “He’s always made good money. We’re fine.”

  Mom shook her head. “He never made money like this.”

  I dropped my hand from my mouth, shaking my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “We were in deep, trying to figure out what our options were, when Anthony came to your father to ask for your hand,” she explained. “And… well… we saw an out. We saw a way to make our problem disappear, and Anthony saw a way to get what he needed, too.”

  My blood ran cold.

  It couldn’t be.