by Maisey Yates
He nodded, his blue eyes appraising her. He set the hammer down gently on the window box and began to walk toward her. He cupped her chin, holding her gaze.
“I don’t like to be told what to do,” he said. “Any more than I like to be told what I want.”
His touch made her tremble. The way he looked at her... It wasn’t fair.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “My life isn’t going to bars and having fun. It’s not...no-strings sex and getting to be naked in any room of the house. I have to be responsible and go to school functions, and any relationship I decide to have in the future will have to be contained to beds and bedrooms and possibly soundproof spaces so that I don’t scar my children for life.”
“You think I need it to be that? Sex in weird rooms and nights out at bars? Because I don’t. I don’t need that.” He slid his hand up to cup her cheek and she turned her head away, taking a step back.
“I wish I could have it,” she said. “I wanted to run away from home, too. That’s what I was trying to do coming back to Gold Valley. But it didn’t work. I thought maybe I could leave that life behind. Could leave trouble behind. But I can’t. I can’t.”
“Maybe you can have a life that’s not all or nothing. Did you ever think of that?”
“Only people who don’t have kids think that.” She shook her head. “She ran away. She was walking on the highway. Anything could have happened to her. She’s a fourteen-year-old girl. What if... What if some creep had been driving by and...”
“I would have hunted him down and killed him with my bare hands,” Calder said, his tone suddenly intense, fierce. “You wouldn’t have been alone. You’re borrowing trouble, babe. You shouldn’t do that either. Because everything was fine. But if ever there was a time when everything wasn’t fine, Lauren, I would be there for that, too. I swear it. I wouldn’t let you go through that alone.”
“Calder...”
“What do you need?” he asked. “Right now, what do you need?”
He was the only one who ever asked that. And she wanted to tell him.
She knew what she wanted. She wanted to be with this man, skin to skin. Feel his body against hers, in hers, again. She just wanted.
Wanted to feel like a woman, and not a rung-out husk like she felt now.
She wanted all these things she couldn’t have.
Desperately. Intensely.
Outside this house, outside this moment, she wouldn’t be able to. But maybe just for now. Just for tonight.
“I want you,” she whispered.
It didn’t matter if it made sense. It didn’t matter if it should work. Or shouldn’t work. She just wanted this.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
He held her against his body, kissing her hard, kissing her like he was desperate, a man starving for air.
His tongue was slick against hers, and his lips were so firm, fierce and decisive.
He was her whole world right in that moment.
The only thing that mattered.
The way those firm, masculine hands gripped her, the way they moved over her body.
She needed this man. Needed.
She couldn’t remember ever needing a man before, and that terrified her.
Sex had always been nice, but it hadn’t been this. This had sharp edges. It wasn’t just comfort. It was a challenge. It demanded as much as it gave, but she found she wanted it all the same. Maybe even more because of that.
She found that she kissed him back like he might be her oxygen, too.
In this moment, he damn well felt like it.
He lifted her up, cradled her in his arms and carried her out to the living room, where the blanket was laid out on the carpeted floor. He set her down, stretching out beside her, his blue eyes intense as he looked her over.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Calder...”
“Listen to me,” he said. “You are the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen. I’ve always thought so.”
“You’re a beautiful man,” she responded. “I know that maybe men don’t want to be called beautiful, but you are.”
“Baby, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you keep looking at me like that.”
He stripped her shirt from her body, her pants, her underwear and bra and everything else. Then he began to work on his own clothes, slowly revealing that delicious body to her gaze.
All those muscles.
Every inch of him. She was desperate to touch, taste, to explore every dip, every ridge, every beautiful place on that masculine body that she hadn’t been able to before.
She knew exactly where she wanted to start.
She rose up on her knee, pressing her palm against his abs and kissing him right in the center of his chest. He groaned, and she continued her exploration, moving down his body, taking her time over those gorgeous abs. She darted her tongue out, tasting, taking a slow, leisurely tour of every inch of him.
His head fell back, breath harsh as his hands moved to grab hold of her hair, tugging, but she kept on tasting, her tongue swirling over him like he was a particularly sweet lollipop.
“Shit,” he said, his hips bucking upward as he thrust deep inside her mouth.
Arousal kicked her, and she couldn’t remember ever being so turned on by this act before. Usually it was a gift. And if anyone deserved a gift, it was Calder. But she found that it was more than just that. It turned her the hell on.
His surrender. His enjoyment.
His flavor.
Everything.
She tormented him and teased him until he was shaking, until he forced her away from him, words on his lips that she couldn’t quite understand.
“My turn,” he said, growling at her as he pushed her back onto the blanket and lowered his head, taking one nipple into his mouth and stroking the other one, then trailing down her stomach, tracing a circle around her belly button before going lower.
Lower.
His broad shoulders forced her legs apart, and he looked at her. The open, carnal appreciation on his face sent a wave of desire through her. He wrapped his arms around her hips, pulling her toward his mouth, lowering his head and taking a deep, long taste that nearly had her coming with the first from.
She gasped, crying out. He didn’t stop. He kept going. Fingers joining in with his lips and tongue. He thrust deep inside her, her orgasm swift and shocking, crashing over her like a sneaker wave. But he didn’t stop there. He didn’t stop until she came again. Until she was shaking and sobbing, until she had lost sense of everything. Everything except who he was. Who she was. Who they were together. In this world that contained nothing but the two of them.
Where nothing but her next climax mattered at all.
He collected a condom, then moved so that he was positioned over her, thrusting inside her in one easy stroke. She gasped at the invasion. So welcome, so intense. She felt like they were one body. Like she would never again be quite certain of where he began and she ended again.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
And she had a hard time imagining what life would be without this. How had one man come to mean so much to her so quickly? It had nothing to do with a fixed floor, and nothing to do with anything half so simple as an orgasm. It had everything to do with this feeling of completion that she felt very deep inside her.
And each stroke, each thrust of his body brought that truth back home harder. Deeper.
She needed him. She needed this. Everything he had to offer. Everywhere. Every part of her. She loved him.
It was as true as it was impossible. As unwanted as it was all-consuming.
Her face was wet with tears.
She couldn’t love another person. She didn’t have the room. She didn’t have the strength inside her to love one more person, and yet here wa
s Calder Reid. Inside her body. Inside her heart.
As he came, the sound feral and low, reverberating inside her, she found her own release, wiping away everything but that moment. While they lay there together, tangled on the floor, their naked bodies resting against each other, it seemed like maybe it was possible.
She held her breath. In that space, in that moment, it seemed like this was real. Like it was her life.
She was going to hang on to that moment for as long as she could because she knew that when her breathing became normal again, and when her heart rate settled, she would remember all the reasons that it wasn’t.
She rested her hand over his heart and felt the steady beat against her palm.
And pretended it was the only thing in the whole world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, when Lauren woke up, she wished that Calder was there. And that was a dangerous thing.
She had left him late last night, after they’d started painting Grace’s room. He had been shirtless. She had ended up putting a stripe across his broad, bare chest and then laughing as he pushed her into the shower and made her help him clean up.
It was not a task that she minded. But she’d found herself distracted with other places on his body. And then she’d been distracted because he was blessedly, wonderfully inside her again.
Those moments with him felt simple. Good. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt that...
Carefree.
Happy.
Whole.
But it was all gone this morning. Vanished completely.
Because she was back to wanting something that she didn’t have. Wishing that she had something she couldn’t.
She pushed last night’s revelations to the side. All of those inconvenient feelings. She didn’t need to deal with that. She didn’t want to.
That morning, her parents and the girls decided that they wanted to go see the progress on the house. Lauren could think of no good reason why they shouldn’t.
Dammit.
So, the group of them caravanned over to the house after breakfast. And when Lauren pulled in the driveway and saw that Calder’s truck was there, her heart sank to her toes.
“Who’s here?” her mother asked.
Oh dammit all.
“You remember Calder Reid?” Lauren was opting for being direct, because the fact of the matter was her mother would never make assumptions about her relationship with someone she used to babysit.
She hurried them all out of the car, her nerves trembling as she did.
“Oh, of course I do,” her mother said. “Such a nice boy.”
Lauren could think of several things he had done to her last night that did not go under the header of “nice boy.”
“He’s been helping you out?” her father asked. Sadly, Mark Bishop was no fool, and Lauren suspected that her father had more of an idea about the potential ulterior motives of a man assisting a woman with this kind of thing.
“Yes.” She attempted to affect an expression that would hit right at the crossroads of casual and innocent. It was not easy. “We ran into each other at the coffeehouse a week ago. He offered to help me with some of the projects I had to do on the house.”
He studied her closely, and Lauren kept her face purposefully blank. “Awfully nice of him.”
Yes,” Lauren agreed. “It is.”
Ava and Grace, for their part, seemed oblivious to the situation entirely. They were walking around, taking stock of the house, which they hadn’t seen since the first time they had all come to Gold Valley as a family and looked at it a couple of months ago, right before they’d made their offer.
“It looks completely different inside now,” Lauren said, trying to sound bright.
“Well, I would hope so,” Ava said, clearly not as contrite as she had felt yesterday.
“Let’s see it,” her mother said.
Lauren walked up to the front porch and pushed the door open, praying that Calder wasn’t in there naked or something.
She should have texted him the minute she pulled in. She hadn’t been thinking. She had been too busy being thrown off by the fact that he was here.
“Here it is,” she said loudly, hoping that he would hear and understand quickly that she wasn’t alone.
“Very nice,” her mother said. Lauren said a private prayer of thanks for her mother voicing her admiration loudly.
Calder appeared from the back bedroom, paint streaking his forearms. He was wiping his hands on a rag, and he was—thank God—fully dressed.
“Howdy,” he said, smiling at her family, looking for all the world as if this was completely normal.
“Howdy,” her father returned, extending his hand. “I was sorry to hear about your dad, son.”
“Thanks,” Calder said. “We were all sorry.”
“I hear you’ve been helping out around the place.”
“Just a bit,” Calder said. “Nothing too tricky. Finishing up painting right now. And then, I think everything should be good to go.” He looked around. “This place should pass inspection with flying colors.”
“That’s great,” her father said. “I was pretty worried when she bought this place, and did that deal...”
“It’s worth the risk,” Lauren said. “And anyway, like Calder said, everything has turned out great.”
“Looks like it has,” her father said.
Calder looked so perfectly at ease it was only making her jumpy. That lazy confidence of his was...well, it was sexy. There was no denying it. But it also gave the impression he was somehow operating off his own plan at all times. And she had no plan. Not when it came to him.
She did not trust his plan.
“Hey,” Calder said. “We are all having a barbecue at my place tonight. I was wondering if you wanted to come out.”
“Oh,” Lauren said quickly. “I’m not sure if...”
“I live on a ranch,” Calder said, directing that at Grace. “We have horses. I bet my stepsister would love to take you out for a ride.” He looked back up at her. “If that’s okay with your mom.”
Grace looked completely unapologetically rapt. Ava had that sense of teenage reserve about her, but Lauren could see excitement sparkling behind her eyes.
“Horses?” Grace asked.
“Like I said, if it’s okay with your mom.” He looked up at her, his blue eyes twinkling just a bit damn much.
She didn’t know what she’d expected him to do when he met both the girls but it wasn’t this. He was...at ease. And he was clearly more than willing to get right in there and connect with them. Which she hadn’t expected at all.
“Well,” Lauren’s mom said. “We have our cribbage game tonight, or we would love to come. But, Lauren, you should go.”
Lauren blinked. “Should I?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “You’ve been working so hard on this. I think the girls would really enjoy time at the ranch.”
Lauren fought to keep from rolling her eyes. Because obviously her mother had thought sincerely that she needed to consult with her on whether or not she should go to a barbecue at Calder’s place.
A barbecue that Lauren wasn’t entirely convinced was even real.
Well, you’ll be having one now. But she didn’t quite know what he was doing.
She also had no reason to reject that kind of hospitality.
“I’d love to come,” she said. “We would. Thank you.”
After that, she showed them around the place, and when the girls and her parents were wandering around the backyard, Lauren took the chance to question Calder.
“A barbecue?”
“It’s my niece’s birthday,” he said. “Anyway, I want you to come out and see the place.”
“I have seen the place. When I used to babysit you.”
His lips curved upward. He was clearly amused but totally unabashed. “Yeah, well, I would like you to see it now.”
“You know I can’t...”
“You can come to a barbecue at my house. The fact of the matter is we’re going to be neighbors. There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of hospitality.”
“Sure,” she said “except, I’m not entirely convinced that’s what you’re doing here.”
“I care about you,” he said. “I would like you to come out and meet my family. I... It means something to me to meet your daughters.”
“I don’t think I can have it mean anything to me,” she said, her heart twisting a little bit.
“Just come to the barbecue. Please.”
The way he was looking at her... Hopeful. Like her answer would change something for him. It was different from having someone demand something. It was mattering to someone. Not just to her kids. Not because the person depended on her for basic survival. But...it was about her. And it felt too large for her to carry, but too important for her to turn away from.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go to the barbecue.”
“Good,” he said.
Lauren had a feeling she’d somehow agreed to a whole lot more than just a barbecue. And she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
She only knew there was no going back now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“YOU INVITED A stranger to my baby’s birthday party?” His sister-in-law was looking at him like he was insane.
“She’s not a stranger,” he said. “She used to babysit me.”
Tanner was standing in the living room doorway, and his head whipped around sharp, his gaze connecting with Calder’s. “So, that’s how you know her? That’s what you’re going with?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Really?” Calder was about ready to punch his brother in the face. “So, that’s why you’re inviting her to the barbecue? A little bit of nostalgia about when she used to babysit you?”
“She’s new back in town. I figured a little bit of a social gathering might be welcome. And I thought it would be nice if Chloe could show them the horses.”
