Green Mountain Collection 2

by Marie Force

  “I, um . . . I should go.”

  “I was going to make some coffee. Can I entice you to stay for that long?”

  If she drank coffee at this hour, she’d be up all night, but she’d be up all night anyway, analyzing every second of this bizarre evening. “Sure. I guess.”

  Gavin got busy making the coffee. The only sign of his slight intoxication was the mess he made pouring the water into the back of the coffeemaker. Aim, shoot, miss. Those three little words were like a metaphor for this entire situation, and the thought nearly made her laugh out loud. Except . . . There was nothing at all funny about unrequited love. It sucked every bit as badly as the songs, books and movies claimed it did.

  “Have a seat.” He pointed to the stools at the counter. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the hallway that presumably led to his bedroom and the bathroom.

  The urge to follow him, to force a confrontation, to jump his bones—something, anything—was so strong that instead of giving in she got busy in the kitchen, poking through cabinets in search of mugs, taking a carton of half-and-half from the fridge and giving it a sniff to make sure it was still good, and locating spoons. Gavin took his coffee with just a touch of cream and a teaspoon of sugar. How she knew that she didn’t even know. She’d been paying close attention to her late brother-in-law’s sexy younger brother for as long as she’d known him, which was starting to measure in decades, rather than mere years.

  Pathetic.

  In all that time, she’d dated other guys. Even had the misfortune of sleeping with some of them. But she had never once felt anything even close to what happened every time Gavin Guthrie walked into a room. Take now, for instance. He’d changed into a T-shirt and old sweats, washed his face and, judging by the minty fresh scent that came with him, apparently brushed his teeth, too. Drops of water clung to the ends of his longish dark hair, and the scruff that covered his well-defined jaw made her want to rub against him in the most shameless way possible.

  Then the coffeemaker beeped, and her brain took over once again, shoving her rapidly beating heart aside to remind her that she was having a cup of coffee that would keep her up all night and then getting the hell out of there.

  Gavin had no idea what he’d been thinking when he all but begged Ella to come inside with him. Hell, he barely recalled putting her name in his phone in case of an emergency at a time when his entire life seemed to be one endless emergency after another.

  He still had no business dragging Ella into his crap, but at the same time he couldn’t bear to let her drive away not knowing when or if he might see her again. She was like a breath of the freshest, coolest mountain air, infusing him with a warm ray of sunshine in the bleak landscape inside his mind.

  Things were bad and getting worse. Pushing her away, repeatedly, hadn’t made anything better. In fact, during a wide-awake moment the night before, Gavin had undergone an epiphany, during which he realized that pushing Ella away was part of what had made everything worse. Thus his invitation for coffee, which had been reluctantly accepted. Not that he could blame her. Ella was a lot of things, but a fool had never been one of them. And she’d be a total, unmitigated fool to shackle herself to him.

  He poured the coffee into the mugs she’d placed on the counter, stirring cream and half a packet of sweetener into hers. How did he know how she took her coffee? He didn’t recall not knowing that. He barely recalled a time before he knew Ella and the entire Abbott family. He and his brother Caleb had been friends with Ella’s brothers Hunter and Will since they’d moved to Butler when the Guthries were in fifth and sixth grades. Caleb had started dating Hannah when they were all in high school, and the two families had been close ever since, never more so than in the difficult years that followed Caleb’s death.

  Gavin pushed his thoughts away from that sorrowful topic. He was getting sick and tired of the relentless grief that refused to give him an ounce of slack lately, especially since Caleb’s dog died and Hannah got remarried. Life went on, even when you thought it couldn’t possibly. Maybe it was time to allow his life to move forward, too.

  He couldn’t seem to picture that life without Ella as part of it in some way, but he had amends to make where she was concerned, and there was no time quite like the present.

  Gavin put the mug on the counter in front of her and brought his with him to sit on the stool next to hers. “Listen, El . . . I wanted to tell you—”

  She held up her hand to stop him. “Please, don’t. I just can’t rehash it all again.”

  “How do you know what I was going to say?”

  “Because,” she said with resignation that tugged at his heart, “you’ve said it all before, and there’s only so much rejection a girl can take before she begins to get a complex.”

  “Eleanor, look at me.” His use of her full name clearly startled her as she looked up at him with those wide, liquid brown eyes that could hide nothing, her lips parting with surprise. Yeah, he’d thought about that kiss on the beach in Burlington a few thousand times since, and hearing she’d been out with another guy made him feel panicky in addition to all the other unpleasant emotions he’d been contending with lately. “I never meant to reject you. It had nothing at all to do with you. I need you to know that.”

  “So you say.”

  “I mean it. Every time we’ve . . . talked . . . in the last few months, I’ve walked away from you because I had to, not because I wanted to.” She was very focused now on her mug of coffee rather than him, not that he could blame her.

  “What happened tonight?”

  “Tonight,” he said with a sigh, “I discovered my reputation is beginning to precede me. I had a couple of beers with some guys from work, and decided to hit Red’s on the way home for a nightcap. I was minding my own business at the bar when Red came in, saw me there and turned it into a federal case because of what happened down the road. I tried to tell him I don’t want any trouble, but he wasn’t hearing it. Somehow that big dude got ahold of my phone, and . . . And, well, you know the rest.”

  “What was your plan for getting home?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Ella, despite how it might seem lately. I was going to call a cab.”

  She jumped up, those same soft eyes now flashing with anger. “If the bouncer hadn’t stopped you, you would’ve driven home. For God’s sake, Gavin, don’t make everything worse by lying to my face.”

  “I never would’ve driven home. I would’ve walked before I drove—I’ve done it before.” When she eyed him skeptically, he ran his hands through his hair. “I know how it looked, but that guy was pissing me off getting up in my grill the way he was.”

  “Someone needs to get up in your grill to make this crazy shit stop!”

  In all the years he’d known her, he’d never once heard sweet, lovely Ella Abbott yell at anyone—or swear—and since she was one of ten siblings, that was saying something. Her raised voice did the same thing to him a slap to the face would have. It woke him up once and for all. He closed the small distance between them, hooked an arm around her waist and tugged her in close to him.

  If she’d been surprised before, she was flat-out stunned now.

  “The only person I want up in my grill, Ella, is you.” And then he kissed her the way he’d been dying to since that day at the beach, since the day he’d gotten his first taste of her and developed a hunger for her that had kept him awake on many a night after he pushed her out of his life.

  Just as she could only take so much rejection, he could only take so much temptation. Eventually, someone was going to snap.

  Her hands, which had been lying flat against his chest, were now pushing hard—hard enough for the signal to reach his kiss-addled brain. She tore her lips free, and that was when he realized only one of them had been enjoying that kiss. “Stop it.” She rubbed her forearm over her lips, seeming to wipe him off, which actually hurt him more than it should have. As if he had any right. “What’re you doing?”

  “I tho
ught that was rather obvious.” Since her mouth was apparently unavailable, he directed his attention to the long, elegant neck that had occupied far too many of his Ella-related fantasies.

  But she was having none of that either. “Knock it off, Gavin. Whatever game you’re playing, I’m not interested.” The tears that gathered in her eyes said otherwise, but she turned away from him and headed for the door.

  He chased after her, placing his hand flat against the door to keep her from opening it. “Stay, Ella. Please, don’t go.” Lowering his voice again, he said, “Please.”

  Her shoulders slumped and her forehead landed against the door.

  Gavin put his arms around her from behind. “Come here.”

  She turned into his embrace, and he gathered her in close, the top of her head fitting perfectly beneath his chin. And just that simply, everything felt better than it had in years.

  “If you’re screwing with me, Guthrie, I’ll kill you with my own hands, and I’m more than capable of that after growing up with seven brothers.”

  The low rumble of laughter caught him off guard. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had cause to laugh. “Duly noted.” Tightening his hold on her, which seemed to be in direct relation to the fragile hold he had on his sanity, Gavin ran his lips over her smooth dark hair, which always had a shine to it. That was something he found endlessly fascinating. “I’m not screwing with you, Ella.”

  “Then what is this?” she asked tentatively. He could hardly blame her for that. He’d given her more than enough reason to be tentative where he was concerned.

  “This is me admitting that I need you, that I’m tired of fighting whatever this is that’s been happening between us for years now, that—”

  She drew back to look up at him. “Gavin?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Gavin did exactly as he was told, capturing her mouth in a deep passionate kiss that had her clinging to him, trying to get closer, until he abruptly pulled away. “What about the guy you’re seeing?”

  Ella had to think about that for a second, and then she began to laugh. “The guys I’m seeing are named Ben and Jerry.”

  “There’re two of them?”

  “How much did you drink tonight? Hello? Ben and Jerry? Ringing any bells?”

  “Ice cream,” he said on a deep sigh of relief.

  “Thank God. I thought you’d finally managed to pickle your brain with all the beer you’ve been drinking.”

  “You said you were on a date . . .”

  “With my sofa and a pint of Cherry Garcia. It’s become somewhat of a Saturday night routine lately.”

  “I thought you were seeing someone else.”

  “Is that why everything suddenly changed for you?” she asked, trying to break free of his hold.

  “No. God, no. I was jealous as hell, but this is about you and me and no one else.”

  “You were jealous? Really?”

  “Insanely.”

  They stared at each other for a long, charged moment.

  “Just because I’ve pushed you away doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to pull you closer, El.”

  “If you’re messing with me, I swear . . .”

  “I’m not messing with you. I’m exhausted, Ella.” He took her by the hand and led her to the sofa, where he sat next to her, turning to face her. “I’m . . . I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Do what?” she asked hesitantly. Part of her didn’t want to know what it was he couldn’t do anymore. It couldn’t be her. He hadn’t exactly . . . done . . . her. Stop it, Ella. Let the man talk.

  Raising his free hand to his head, he ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly while he seemed to be looking for the words he needed. “This,” he finally said after a long period of silence. “Half a life spent living mostly in the past, only sort of in the present, devoid of hope and drowning in grief. I can’t bear it another minute. None of it is going to bring Caleb back.”

  Blinking back tears, Ella reached for him.

  He leaned toward her, dropped his head and, for the first time, allowed her to shoulder some of his burden.

  Ella ran her fingers through his hair, hoping to offer whatever comfort she could. Selfishly, she’d wanted to run her fingers through that hair for years and wasn’t about to miss the opportunity. If only she could think of something she could say that would help him. But the only words that came to mind were self-serving. And then it occurred to her . . . Maybe by serving herself, she could serve him, too. “You’re not alone, Gavin. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  “I worry about taking you down with me.”

  “I’m a lot stronger than you think.”

  “I know that. I’ve always known that.”

  “So what now?”

  “I guess we take it a day at a time and see what happens.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.” As the words left her mouth, Ella wanted to take them back. Here he was offering what she’d always wanted, and she was about to tell him it wasn’t enough? Was she insane?

  “What do you mean?”

  She took a deep breath, determined to fight for what she really wanted from him. “I can’t go day by day and see what happens. I can’t take that kind of risk. Not with you.”

  “I don’t have much more than that to offer.”

  “Yes, you do, Gavin! You have so much more inside you, and it’s trying to get out. You just said half a life isn’t working anymore. So either you go all in or you don’t. But I’m not willing to settle for half of you—one foot in, one foot out. That doesn’t work for me.”

  With his elbows on his knees, he stared off at a point over her shoulder, seeming to think about what she’d said.

  “The last time,” she said tentatively, “after you were in the fight and I came here to check on you . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “It was weeks before I could take a deep breath that didn’t hurt.”

  “Ella . . .”

  “I didn’t tell you that to make you feel bad. I told you so you’d understand why I can’t do this halfway. I just can’t take that chance.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll let you down in some way.”

  “You’re a man,” she said teasingly. “Of course you will.”

  He offered a small smile. “You know what I mean.”

  “Maybe this isn’t the right time.” A ripple of pain attacked her entire body as she said those words, but she couldn’t afford to be stupid or too hopeful where he was concerned. Despite the steps forward they’d taken earlier, he was still waffling.

  “May I say something that might be extremely unfair in light of the mixed signals I’ve sent you for far too long?” he asked.

  “Um, okay. I guess.” While part of her wanted to put her hands over her ears so she couldn’t hear something that couldn’t be unheard, she was far too curious to do that.

  “I told you that since Homer died and Hannah got remarried, I’ve been spiraling back in time to when Caleb first died. I’ve felt almost as bad as I did then, except for the rare occasions when you’re close by. That’s the only time the spinning stops.”

  Ella had no idea how to reply to that. It was, perhaps, the most important thing he’d ever said to her. She swallowed hard as she acknowledged what it had taken him to admit such a thing to her.

  “I need you, Ella. I’m no longer capable of pushing you away, not when I feel so much better when you’re here. I feel like a selfish bastard for dragging you into my nightmare, but I can’t fight it anymore.”

  Maybe she was insane or at least downright crazy, but there was no way she could walk away from him after hearing him say those words in that pleading tone.

  “If you’re asking me to commit to a genuine relationship,” he continued, “I’ll do it if it means I get to have you in my life. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”

  Even though alarm bells were ringing loudly in he
r mind, Ella pretended not to hear them. How could she possibly pay any attention to them when the man of her dreams had just said what she’d waited years to hear? He felt better when she was around. He needed her. He’d take her any way he could get her. She could work with that, couldn’t she? She could damned well try.

  “I-I should probably go,” she said, though that was the last thing she wanted to do. “It’s getting late.”

  “Stay.”

  Never had one word packed a bigger wallop. Ella was on the verge of hyperventilation. Spend a whole night with Gavin Guthrie? She needed oxygen. She needed a reality check. She needed a toothbrush.

  “Ella? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, of course I am. I was just thinking about what I need to do tomorrow. I have . . . Dinner. With my family.” For God’s sake, Ella, he’s not asking you to move in. What the hell does dinner have to do with anything? You’ve waited forever for an opportunity to be close to him, and you’re bungling it! “That’s later in the day.”

  “So nothing in the morning?”

  He didn’t need to know that Sunday morning was her usual errand time. Gavin Guthrie was asking her to sleep over. Groceries could wait. “No, nothing in the morning.”

  “Great, then you can stay?”

  “I . . . um . . . Sure. Okay.” The last word came out as a squeak that she covered by coughing. She was acting like a virgin on the threshold of the big event, when she was a long way from that. But having the man she’d adored from afar for her entire adult life ask her to spend the night with him wasn’t something that happened every day.

  Suddenly, she was far more nervous than she’d been the night she’d lost her virginity. This felt like a much bigger deal in every possible way.

  “You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “What? No, I’m not freaking out.”

  He smiled, as if he didn’t believe her, and got up from the sofa to offer his hand. “Come on. Let’s find you something to sleep in.”