by M K Dwyer
“Wow.” They both turned their heads to look at Brennan. “Sorry. Don’t mind me.” She giggled nervously, then whispered, “That was intense.” She blushed like she hadn’t meant to say that aloud. “I’m going to shut up now.”
Blake smiled at her as they walked hand in hand to the end of the bar to pick up their food.
Brennan placed Theresa’s coffee and his warm muffin in front of them. “You two are so cute together. I hope I find that one day.”
Theresa opened her mouth to respond but Blake kissed the back of her hand and just thanked Brennan.
Then he picked up their food and told Theresa to pick out a place to sit.
When they were done, they said good-bye to Brennan and walked back towards the grocery store. He knew they would be back to that coffee shop before they left Montana. The muffin had been delicious, and Theresa practically inhaled her coffee.
They gathered what they needed, or rather, what Theresa needed at the grocery store and just like Brennan at the coffee shop, the cashier already knew their names. It really was a small, close-knit town.
When they got back to the trailer, they put away the groceries, or more like, crammed away the groceries and went back to the main house for the afternoon. Theresa wanted to do some reading and Blake needed to talk to the ranch manager because he called while they were in town.
Chapter Twelve
Theresa
On Friday, Theresa woke up in Blake’s arms which was beginning to be her favorite place in the world. They had an easy morning, and they were preparing lunch when Bryan and Rebecca came home.
“Something smells good!” Bryan opened the front door and ushered Rebecca in while he carried Bryce in his car seat.
Theresa abandoned the pot of chili she was stirring to meet them in the foyer and see the baby.
He was a tiny thing, bundled in and dwarfed by the infant seat. She’d almost forgot how small babies were in the beginning, so helpless and completely dependent on those around them. She almost teared up thinking about it. She’d been a mush-ball ever since Joe was born like a switch flipped while she was pregnant leaving her a blubbering mess most of the time. Usually she hid it better.
“He’s beautiful!” She hugged Rebecca’s neck and congratulated them both on the birth of their son.
“He’s a boy. He’s not beautiful. He’s handsome.”
She swatted Blake’s arm. “Boys can be beautiful too.”
“Suuuurrre.” Blake laughed then turned to Bryan and Rebecca. “You look overloaded. Can I help with bags? The chili Theresa and I made for lunch should be ready soon.”
Bryan handed him a couple of bags and everyone, but Theresa, went up to the nursery. Theresa went back to the kitchen to check on the chili. She hadn’t made it in forever. Chili was a cold-weather dish and there wasn’t much cold weather living in Arizona, but even as early as mid-September, Montana was already cooling down in preparation for Autumn.
A few minutes later the guys walked into the kitchen laughing about something.
Bryan rubbed his hands together and grinned wildly at her. “I can’t wait to taste that chili. I could smell it all the way up to our bedroom! After three days of hospital cafeteria food, I’m starving!”
“I was just about to dip up a few bowls. Should I make one for Rebecca too?”
“Yes, please. She’s feeding the baby, so I’ll take a bowl up to her.”
“Oh, okay. Breastfeeding?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Breastfeeding always made me hungry and so unbelievably thirsty. I’ll fix her a big glass of ice water for you to take up to her too.”
“Thanks, Theresa. I appreciate that. Now that you mention it, she was constantly asking for water in the hospital. It seemed like she was constantly feeding him too.”
She smiled at him. “Sounds about right. She has to establish her supply and they’ll both get better and more efficient at it. Then there will still be times when he has a growth spurt, so he’ll want to feed all day long to increase her supply. Those days are the roughest.”
“I have so much to learn.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Having a baby comes with a huge learning curve, but you have each other. Listen to your instincts, be a supportive partner, and when all else fails, you can’t go wrong just being at her every beck and call.” Theresa laughed. “Now take this chili and water up to her and let me know if she needs anything else.”
He laughed lightly like he didn’t know if she was kidding or not. She wasn’t, but he would find that out soon enough.
Bryan left to tend to his wife and child and Theresa turned around to see Blake just staring at her.
“What?”
He walked towards her and put his arms around her.
“Nothing. I just… I guess I just realized this wealth of knowledge you have as someone who has done this before. It’s like you and I were meant to be here at the exact moment when Bryan and Rebecca got home from the hospital.” He brushed a stray strand of hair out of her eye and tucked it behind her ear. “Do you ever think of life in those terms?”
“Like fate or coincidence?”
“Like fate, I think. I don’t really believe in coincidences. Not sure I believe in fate either, really. I just think everything happens for a reason.”
She smiled at him and then laid her head on his chest. “Yeah. Me too.” Really, she’d been thinking about the same thing since the night they were together. They hadn’t done much more than kiss and cuddle since, but with each passing moment their bond grew stronger.
She never imagined she’d ever see the good in meeting Mark, but maybe she had to go through Mark to meet Blake. She would not have met him otherwise, and then where would she be? Dating a different loser? Trying so hard not to repeat her mistakes with her first husband, Will, that she went in the other direction and just made brand new ones? And if she didn’t know Mark and Blake were brothers, she wouldn’t be able to guess it. They were complete opposites.
Blake thought of others while Mark thought only of himself. Blake had compassion and honor while Mark stepped on others to get what he wanted. Blake gave while Mark took. How two brothers who had the same parents and were raised in the same house could turn out so differently baffled her.
But she still had no idea how serious he was about her. She could stay in fling-territory, but her heart was inching dangerously close to relationship-land. It was hard not thinking about the future when you had a sweet, gorgeous hunk of a man in your arms, but everything had to remain on hold until they had a game plan for returning home. Including the fact that their homes weren’t even in the same state.
Her stomach chose then to interrupt her thoughts and ruin the moment with a loud rumble.
Blake laughed. “Let’s eat, beautiful. Bryan can dip his own bowl when he comes back down.”
They finished their lunch before Bryan returned, so she put the leftovers away in the fridge for him to raid later. Then her and Blake went upstairs to pack their things to sleep in the trailer that night. She didn’t mind helping the new parents out during the day, but she needed her rest at night. She’d done the sleepless nights with her own baby and didn’t feel bad at all escaping to the trailer where she couldn’t hear little Bryce’s cries.
That night, she stepped out of the tiny trailer bathroom and ran right into a wall of tattooed muscles. She looked up and the heat in his eyes made her shorts damp reaffirming her choice not to put any underwear on.
He gripped her ass cheeks and lifted her effortlessly. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him as he walked backwards into the bedroom. Before he got there, he slipped the tips of his fingers up her shorts and groaned when he felt her wet and ready for him and uninhibited by extra layers.
How he maneuvered them backwards into the small space without running into anything or removing his fingers from stroking her slit had to have been the work of magic, but she could marvel about that later.
/> He sat down but stood her up in front of him, so he could push her shorts down and her cami top over her head. Then he stared at her in the dim light focusing on each part of her independently from head to toe. Feeling exposed she moved her arms to cover herself up, but he shook his head and held her arms at her side. It was uncomfortable at first, but the more he studied her, the more aroused she became. By the time he looked into her eyes again, she knew the arousal in his eyes mirrored her own.
He laid back on the bed. “Take my pants off.”
She grabbed the waist of his sweatpants and he lifted his ass as she pulled down. She licked her lips involuntarily when his dick sprang free, but he caught the movement. “Do you want to suck it?”
Did she? She did. More than she’d ever wanted to before. Which was none. She’d never wanted to suck cock in her life until that moment.
She just nodded at him as she pulled his sweats free of his feet and then went to reach for him. But he grabbed her hands and held them trapped on his thighs. “No. Just your mouth. I won’t survive anything else.”
She took him in her mouth and he cursed. She smiled and took him further down her throat, and he groaned. She loved how powerful she felt as she pumped up and down his dick using only her mouth to pull the curses and moans from him.
“Enough.” He pressed her back a little, so her mouth couldn’t reach him. “I want to blow in your pussy.”
She wanted that too. A lot.
He picked her up, sat her on his lap and pulled her down to kiss her.
“Are you on the pill?”
She nodded before she realized what he was really asking. Then, he positioned himself to enter her and she panicked.
“Wait. I’m not… I don’t… I can’t…” She couldn’t express that she had no idea if it was safe for her to have unprotected sex. How was she supposed to say something like that? She had no idea if Mark slept around on her and he’d refused to get tested or wear a condom. And they’d left town before she could see her doctor.
She dropped her head to his chest, so he wouldn’t see the sobs that were threatening to overtake her. She hated how weak she felt, or the power Mark still held over her. Most of the time she was fine, but at night it felt like she would never get the memory of him out of her head.
Blake turned them over on the bed, so they were both laying on their sides facing each other. He pushed the hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear, and she knew the moment he noticed the unshed tears in her eyes. He furrowed his brow and got a worried look in his eyes.
“I wish I were psychic right now, beautiful, but I think you’re going to have to help me out here.”
“I, uh… I want to get tested first. Before we…” There was more she needed to say, of course, but that was part of the truth anyway.
He looked at her for a moment. She knew that he knew there was more to the story, but then he smiled and kissed her lips. “All right, beautiful. No problem. We can figure out how to get that done for both of us in the morning. Okay? I’m sorry. I know I’m clean, but I should have considered that you’d want proof I was clean.”
“Okay. Thank you. I’d like to prove to both of us that I’m clean too.” She’d only been worrying about herself for some reason, but he was right. She needed the same from him, and the fact that he considered that even when she hadn’t spoke volumes to her.
He pulled their bodies closer and sipped languidly at her lips. The slow torture of his soft kisses sent all other thoughts from her head and she started moving her hips and rubbing her thighs together just to get some friction.
He reached into the cabinet over the bed and produced a condom. “Can I take care of that for you, beautiful?”
She just smiled and nodded. She was grateful he could roll with her mood swings and knew just how to adjust to bring her back from the dark places her mind tried to retreat to.
He rolled the condom on, hiked her leg over his waist opening her up to him, grabbed her ass, and entered her in one smooth thrust. Her hand tightened on his shoulder and her heel dug into his back with each thrust. She’d never had sex in that position before, but she had been missing out. Clearly. Their hips rotated and thrust together in such a way that stimulated all her favorite spots. Before she knew it, she was already at the edge of the cliff about to jump off, and as if he knew that, Blake’s thumb moved to her clit and she shot off like a bottle rocket. In the middle of her orgasm, he rolled to his back taking her with him, and with a few powerful thrusts, joined her among the stars.
They both collapsed in a heap of panting breaths and weak limbs until he slid out from underneath her to go dispose of the condom. When he came back, he pulled her to him, kissed the top of her head and spooned her until they fell asleep. She really loved that he was such a cuddle bear.
Chapter Thirteen
Theresa
“How do you like your eggs?” If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that it was a regular Sunday morning.
Except there wasn’t anything regular about it. Her son was thousands of miles away with her ex-husband and she hadn’t seen him in weeks. She was making eggs for a man she’d known for barely a couple of months but was sleeping with. She was living in a travel trailer on a gorgeous Montana ranch hiding from her ex-boyfriend and the men who were after him. Her ex-boyfriend was the brother of the man she was making eggs for and sleeping with. And that man had served in the Marines with the man who owned the ranch where they were staying as well as her ex-husband. If she stopped and thought about it, nothing was ordinary anymore and nothing would ever be ordinary again.
“Beautiful.”
“Theresa.”
“THERESA!”
“What?” She turned and looked at Blake sitting on the couch with his coffee. “Why are you yelling?”
He stood up, set his coffee on the dinette table, took the eggs out of her hand, and pulled her into a bear hug. “Because I answered your question, but you were so lost in your head that you didn’t hear me. It looked like your thoughts were spiraling out of control. Where did you go, beautiful?”
How did he always know when she was falling down the rabbit hole and not just distracted? “No. I’m fine. Just thinking. Wondering. When am I going to see Joe again? When can I go home? When will things go back to normal? Not that our time together hasn’t been enjoyable, but it’s not the real world. We have to finish this and go back to our lives eventually. We’ve been here for two weeks and we’re no closer to seeing the end.”
He looked hurt for a second before he schooled his features and she almost thought she dreamt it. “We’ll get there beautiful. Finding out Mark was an informant was a blow, but Terry is making progress and we just need one break that brings this to an end for good.”
“I know all that. I just miss Joe. I want to talk to him and know he’s all right.”
“He’s fine.”
“What? You have someone following him around too?”
“No.” She gave him an expectant look. She knew he knew more. “Will’s roommates are all Marines. One of them is even a private investigator himself. Well, a cyber investigator. He prefers investigating through his computer rather than boots on the ground. And their house is like Fort Knox.”
“Which one?”
“Which Fort Knox? There’s only one.”
“No. Goof. Which roommate?”
He winked at her. He knew she wasn’t asking which Fort Knox. “I think his name is Adam.”
“Sexy-nerd Adam? The runway model accountant?”
“Hey now.” He paused and looked in her eyes as if trying to determine how serious she was. “Yes. The accountant.”
She winked at him. That made them even. And she knew Joe was safe with his dad. That’s why she sent him there in the first place. She still wished she could call him, but she had to refrain from doing anything that would put him in more danger.
He smacked her on the ass, laughed and placed the carton of eggs back in her hand. “I wan
t my eggs scrambled. Hop to it.” He left her standing at the stove while he walked back to where he left his precious coffee on the dinette table.
“Oh, I’ll give you scrambled, only it will be your testicles while you sleep tonight.” He turned around with a shocked expression on his face, and she noticed the phone pressed to his ear.
They were both silent, but even from across the trailer, she could hear whoever he was on the phone with laughing their ass off. She hadn’t realized he’d picked up the phone, but she wasn’t sorry in the slightest. She gave him a giant grin and went back to preparing their breakfast.
“He what?!”
Blake’s outburst startled her so much that she nearly dropped the frying pan. At least she’d put the eggs down on the counter already or they would’ve met the floor.
She turned back to face Blake. He looked shocked beyond belief as he leaned heavily on the dinette table. Afraid he would collapse and miss the bench, she went to his side. She had no illusions that she could catch him, but she could at least guide him to land on the cushion.
“Are you sure?”
She wished she could hear the other side of the conversation.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
What? Who’s missing? Joe or Mark? Or someone else? Her heartrate kicked up a notch.
“Do the cops suspect him?”
Suspect who of what? She was losing patience to know what was going on. She caught Blake’s eye and gave him a pleading expression.
“Okay, Terry, thanks for the heads-up. Call me back when you know more, day or night.”
He hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment before he looked back up at Theresa. She was worried something terrible happened and didn’t bother hiding her emotions from her face. She didn’t have to hide what she was feeling from Blake.
Standing up, he took her hand and led her towards the couch.
“Come here, beautiful. I need to tell you something and you should be sitting down for it.”
She took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself for anything he might say.
“Mark… Last night… Last night, Mark… killed someone.”
