The Summer Deal

by Jill Shalvis

  He stroked a hand down her hair. “I need it to be unanimous.”

  She lifted her head.

  “I pressured you to come back,” he said. “I won’t pressure you for more.”

  He could see the emotions going through her, some of the same ones that were going through him. Affection, and a hunger, which was gratifying. But she was worrying her bottom lip, and not only did he not want her to feel any anxiety over this, over them, he wanted to be the one nibbling on that sexy lip of hers.

  “Eli?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You said you wouldn’t pressure me, but what if I pressure you?”

  And then her mouth was on his. Pulling her in was instinctive. So was kissing her back, and he soaked up the hungry sound that escaped her, before forcing himself not to take it to the next level.

  “I’m going to walk away now,” he said softly against her lips when they were both breathless. “Before we rush this.”

  She made the sound again, and he nearly lost his resolve. But his past was littered with pieces of his heart shattered and broken, and not even Brynn could put them back together again. Getting laid was all well and good when he wasn’t emotionally invested.

  But that wasn’t the case with Brynn. He’d been emotionally invested in her from day one. Hell, if he was being honest, he’d been emotionally invested since summer camp. For the first time in a very long time, he’d found someone who called to him on a far deeper level than just physical, and he had no idea what to do with that.

  Liar. You know exactly what you want to do. You want to be buried deep inside her . . . But that couldn’t happen, because he’d brought her home for Kinsey.

  Not for himself . . .

  Brynn stepped closer. “Maybe I’m more ready than I thought.”

  He shook his head. “Always go with your first instinct.”

  Taking a step back from him, she stared up into his face as his smile slowly faded. “Sorry.” She headed for the kitchen door.

  “Brynn.”

  “No, I get it.”

  “I’m not sure you do.” He caught her hand and turned her to face him before hauling her in close. Lowering his head, he kissed her until neither of them could breathe. “I had a crush on you when we were kids,” he murmured. “And that crush is still in play.”

  She just stared up at him, clearly shocked.

  “That’s so surprising?” he asked.

  “Yes, actually. You never let on. After the kiss, we kind of ignored each other.”

  “You mean you ignored me.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I put you in the I Don’t Know What to Do with You file.”

  He cocked his head. “Do you lump all the people in your life into categories?”

  “Yep. My moms are in the Love Me to Death file. My ex is in the Men Are Assholes file. Kinsey’s in the Bully Mean Girl file, although I might have to move her to just the Pain in My Ass file.”

  “And where am I now, in the Men Are Assholes file?”

  She held his gaze. “No. I don’t think of you as being anything like Ashton.”

  “So what file do you have me in?”

  “The I Don’t Know Where to File You file.”

  He gave a wry smile and had to nod in agreement. “Fair enough.”

  Chapter 15

  From fifteen-year-old Brynn’s summer camp journal:

  Dear Moms,

  Guess what?????? Kinsey isn’t here this year. No one knows why. I’d ask Eli, but he isn’t here either.

  Guess what else? A boy asked me to hold his hand on the walk to the campfire. He said it was because he knew I couldn’t see at night, but he didn’t let go, not even once we got there. No, I’m not going to tell you his name. I’m not stupid. I love you both, but you’ll pester me about him forever if you know his name.

  Love,

  Brynn

  p.s. But he’s cute!

  BRYNN JERKED AWAKE at her alarm blaring and then groaned as she reached for her glasses on the nightstand.

  They weren’t there.

  She’d left them on the bathroom counter last night when she’d brushed her teeth. Damn. She rolled out of bed and made the sound her grandma used to make when trying to move too fast. She wasn’t even thirty, and staying up until midnight made her feel ancient. When had that happened?

  Hands out because her eyesight was always worst first thing in the morning, she tentatively made her way across the room, tripping over her own shoes and then something that let out an “oomph.”

  “Mini!” she gasped. “Are you okay?” She bent to pet the dog, who rolled onto her back for more love.

  Brynn gave the obligatory belly rub and got a sweet morning kiss. “I don’t suppose you’d go get my glasses?”

  Mini licked her face again.

  “Close enough.” Brynn straightened and headed toward the bathroom. Feeling for the handle, she opened the door, belatedly realizing that in her morning fog, she hadn’t caught onto the fact that the shower was running and the mirror was steamed.

  “Hey!” Kinsey stuck her head out from behind the shower curtain. “What the—”

  “Sorry!” Brynn whirled to leave, only to freeze in place when she saw a brown hairy . . . thing on the floor that—dear God—looked like a huge, massive spider. “Oh, shit!” she said. Actually, she might’ve screamed it. Acting on impulse fueled by sheer panic, she opened the vanity cabinet under the sink, grabbed the small bucket sitting directly beneath the pipes, and—while yelling “omigod, omigod, omigod” like a mantra—dropped the bucket over the biggest spider she’d ever seen.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kinsey yelled.

  “Saving you from a mutant spider attack!” Brynn, heart still throwing itself against her ribs with every beat, slapped her hands down on the counter, looking for her glasses. Finally finding them, she shoved them onto her face just as Max and Eli rushed through the doorway. Max was in boxers and carrying a baseball bat, Eli in jeans that he was buttoning up as he entered. Levi’s, sitting dangerously low on his hips. He didn’t have a weapon, at least not in his hands, and although his expression was calm, his body language suggested he was ready and able to fight whatever monster had dared come after her and Kinsey.

  Unable to form words, she pointed to the bucket.

  Eli stepped into the bathroom and tilted the bucket to look beneath.

  “Careful!” she said quickly. “It’s a mutant spider.”

  To her horror, Eli lifted the bucket and revealed . . . her own hairbrush.

  Max burst out laughing.

  Eli looked like he wanted to do the same, but managed to control himself. “Attack of the killer hairbrush,” he said.

  “Wow,” Kinsey said. “You really can’t see shit, can you?” Shaking her head, she vanished behind the curtain again. “If you could all get out of here, that’d be great. And, Brynn, you might want to start wearing your glasses around your neck on a granny string.”

  “Hey,” Brynn said to the shower curtain. “Those things aren’t just for grannies!”

  Kinsey shrieked.

  “Oh my God, a real spider this time?” Brynn asked, stepping closer to the shower to help.

  “No, I just ran out of hot water. Get the hell out!”

  Max went back to bed.

  Brynn and Eli retreated into the hallway.

  “Thanks for the early morning adventure,” he said with a smile in his voice.

  She sighed. “Maybe I need to try contacts again.”

  His smile was warm. Affectionate. Not at all mocking, and she felt an answering smile curve her lips. “You remember that whole thing about not knowing where to file you?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been working on that.”

  His smile went from affectionate to hot. “Good to know. And since we’re sharing, you should know that I like your pj’s.”

  She looked down at herself. She was wearing men’s plaid knit boxers and a faded old tee. Very sch
lubby. Very not sexy.

  “It actually isn’t the pj’s,” he said. “It’s you.”

  She had no idea what to say to that. He had a way of warming her up from the inside out.

  “I also like your sundresses,” he said. “And that pair of jeans you’ve got with the hole in the right thigh. Oh, and those army-green cargo capris with all the pockets, the ones you wear with your soft white T-shirt.”

  He’d just described all of her clothing, but she went still, because she knew where this was going.

  “I’m just wondering if you’re still leery of moving more stuff in, and how I can help you get . . . un-leery.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Or . . . you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Or that.” She looked away from those all-seeing eyes of his, the ones that made her talk too much. “The thing is, I didn’t leave Ashton. He left me. And since he turned out to be a bad guy, that’s embarrassing. I was stupid.”

  “No, that’s not how it works. You’re not to blame for what he did. And I’d really like to know what that was.”

  “He stole stuff from me.” She closed her eyes. “I mean, if this had happened to someone I know, I’d wonder how they missed the signs.” She grimaced and shook her head. “I was weak. Dumb. I practically asked for it.”

  “No one asks for that. What happened wasn’t your fault. Will you look at me?”

  “No. Because if you’ve got any pity in your eyes, I’m going to want to scream.”

  “I’m feeling a lot of things, but pity isn’t one of them.”

  She opened her eyes a teeny little bit and pushed her glasses farther up her nose to see better. He was still just standing there in his jeans, looking his usual calm. But there was a tightness in his mouth and in the faint lines around his eyes that gave him away. He was angry, but not at her.

  “Did you get the police involved?” he asked.

  “I did. I wasn’t the first, and until he’s caught, I won’t be the last. And I do have a few boxes of things.”

  “In your trunk,” he said.

  She nearly told him the whole truth, but didn’t. Couldn’t. “Look, I’ve not been good at navigating the path of my life. There’s been some detours, some really bad decisions. I tend to disappoint the people I care about. I rush in too fast.”

  “And now you’re taking your time. I get that.”

  “Because you’ve been through a rough time too.”

  He looked at her for a long moment and nodded. “Yeah. And I’m not convinced anyone’s great at navigating life. Making wrong turns, taking detours, figuring it all out by trial and error . . . that’s kind of the whole point.”

  “Maybe, but I’ve trusted when I shouldn’t.”

  “So now you’re going to trust no one?”

  “Something like that,” she said as lightly as she could.

  His eyes remained serious. He didn’t want her to joke this away. “I’ve been there, Brynn. I was with someone I thought was all the way in, but as it turned out, she was only in until something better came along. And when that was a job on the East Coast, she was gone in a blink.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was a pit stop.”

  “I’m not sure I’m as brave as you about putting myself back out there,” she admitted.

  “I’m not. Or at least I wasn’t.”

  She stared up at him as his meaning sank in. Until her. He wasn’t putting himself out there . . . until she’d come along.

  “Maybe you just need someone to watch your back,” he said quietly.

  “I’m watching my own back now.”

  He shrugged. “Never hurts to have backup.”

  Was he offering? And why did the thought of that reach deep down and stir up all the good feels? It’d been a long time since she’d had someone at her back. Someone willing to protect her and keep her safe. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She had her moms, and she loved them with all her heart. But she’d been really good at hiding when she’d needed help.

  And she suspected Eli was cut from the same cloth. “You’ve got a lot on your plate,” she said. “People you take care of.”

  “Those people might argue that they don’t need any such thing.”

  “I agree. You’re really good at being sneaky about it.”

  He smiled. “You think so?”

  “I know so. You trying to add me to your plate, Eli?”

  He stepped closer, gently pushing her up against the wall, tilting her face up to his. “Do I want to add you to my life? Yes. But I’m not feeling altruistic about you, Brynn. I’m not feeling the need to take care of you either. You’re doing a damn good job of that on your own. Do you want to guess what I am feeling?”

  He was hard against her, so it didn’t take a genius. Her hands went to his chest and headed north—even if they wanted to go south—and wound their way into his hair. “Are we going to sleep together?” she whispered.

  He lowered his head and kissed her. Lightly at first, a query almost, which she answered with her tongue, making him groan as he wrapped his arms around her and took the kiss to a very serious place, putting her in an equally very serious state.

  “Yes,” he finally said against her lips, voice gravelly. “But I’m not sure there will be any sleeping involved, and it won’t be tonight.”

  Disappointment chased arousal through her veins. “No?”

  “I want you, Brynn. I can’t even begin to hide that, but I’m not going to be another mistake or disappointment. I want to be one of the very best things in your life.”

  Given how she felt when he kissed her, she could guarantee he would be. Standing there, sandwiched between the lean hard muscles of his body and the cool wood of the door, she felt some of her bones go squishy. She could feel the heat pulse from him, enclosing her in a cocoon of warmth and desire. “Maybe,” she said, “we should just jump in with both feet.”

  “Yeah?”

  Before she could say hell yeah, Kinsey yelled from behind the bathroom door. “Oh, for God’s sake! Either go fuck each other blind or shut up and go to work!”

  Ignoring her, Eli kissed Brynn again, then reluctantly pulled back. “We’ll finish this later.”

  She hoped that was a promise.

  Chapter 16

  From fifteen-year-old Kinsey’s summer camp journal:

  Dear Journal,

  Okay, so I never did throw you in the lake. But if you tell anyone, I’ll dump you into the hazardous waste bucket in my hospital room.

  Yeah, I’m back in the hospital. Had a kidney transplant. From what I overhead, I guess it didn’t come a day too soon. There was a community fund-raiser, which brought a lot of people to the clinic to get tested to see if they were a match for me. Eli got himself tested again. He hates that he isn’t a match, but he doesn’t understand how much it means to me that he tried. Or that he won’t go to camp without me.

  A kid at my school was a match. I can’t believe someone I barely know is willing to do this for me. It’s kind of a miracle, the first really great thing to ever happen to me.

  Maybe I’ll stop being sick all the time now . . .

  Also, I don’t hate you anymore.

  Kinsey

  ELI GOT HOME from work and was jumped by an exuberant Mini, who was thrilled to see him. Because no one else was home, he exchanged his clothes for board shorts and went for a long swim. When he was too exhausted to go another stroke, he floated on his back in the tide, staring up at the sky.

  Thanks to spider-gate and the ensuing hot make-out sesh in the hall with Brynn that morning, the day had started out with a lot promise. But it’d gone to hell pretty quickly. A coalition of environmental groups, including the one he worked for, had sued the state for granting permits to seismic-mapping companies. The permits allowed the companies to harass and harm marine animals while blasting deafening sounds underwater in the Pacific Ocean in search of oil and gas deposits.

  The court battl
e was tying up most of his days lately, making him crazy. And today he had missed a call from the funeral home. He’d been calling them every few days for months to no avail, and then the one time they try to get in touch with him, he’d missed the call. They hadn’t left a message and had closed by the time he called back.

  He’d tried everything he could think of to track down his mom over the past few weeks. He’d left messages, DMed her, snail mailed her, made Max try as well, and . . . nothing. Not even his dad had been able to help.

  His mom was really going to just let his grandma’s ashes remain at the funeral home indefinitely. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around that fact. So he swam. And swam.

  When his legs began to tremble with fatigue, he headed in, surprised to find Brynn sitting on the beach at the water’s edge, Mini at her side, clearly waiting for him.

  When she saw him coming out of the water, she stood, shook out the towel she’d been sitting on, and handed it to him.

  “Thanks.” He swiped it over his face and bent low to love up on Mini, who’d melted into a puddle at his touch, wriggling on her back in the sand like she was the happiest dog on the planet.

  “Rough day?” Brynn asked quietly.

  From his crouched position at her feet, he looked up and took in the very welcome sight of her in a candy-apple-red sundress and no shoes. “It’s getting better now.”

  She gave him a look.

  “Seriously,” he said. “You’re the best thing I’ve seen all day.”

  She smiled, but it was pensive, and then suddenly she thrust a piece of paper into his hands.

  “What’s this?” He skimmed the document and stilled.

  “Remember when I told you that I’d worked some odd jobs during college?” she asked quietly. “Well, one of them was at a funeral home.”

  Without taking his eyes off the document, the one that said his mother had granted permission for him to handle his grandma’s remains provided she was clear of financial obligation, he let out a shaky exhale.

  “It was a temp thing,” Brynn said. “But I’ve still got a friend who works there. I called in a favor. She called the funeral home where your grandma’s remains are and got the contact information your mom had left them. Then I, um . . . made contact.”