Batter of Wits: An Enemies to Lovers Small Town Romance (Donner Bakery Book 5)

by Smartypants Romance

  Except it did.

  She was real enough, and so was I.

  The things waiting for us outside the sanctuary of my private home with no neighbors and big ol' locks on the door were also real enough, and now more than ever, I knew how far I’d go to protect this thing with her.

  With the steady thrum of her heart against my ribcage, I knew that this was the best part of my life, no matter how complicated it might be. Grace was freedom and choice. A risk that I had no problem taking, because it was a risk I wanted to take. No one was forcing me into it or telling me that this is how it should be done.

  "Morning," she murmured, kissing my chest as she stretched like a cat.

  The way her body arched lifted her breasts up like an offering, and I ducked my head to kiss each one. "Morning."

  "It's early, isn't it?"

  My mouth found hers. "Mmhmm."

  "You're insatiable," she said with a grin.

  "Me?" I kissed along her jaw. "I distinctly remember someone in this bed telling me around three o’clock in the morning that they'd die if I didn't touch them again. It was so very dramatic."

  Grace laughed, flopping onto her back and tugging the sheet up her body. When I frowned, she laughed even harder. "We need food. Or coffee, at the very least."

  I plucked a piece of her tangled hair off her shoulder and lifted it to my nose. Grapefruit and mint. "And maybe a brush."

  She shoved at my shoulder. "I'd like to see how tidy your hair would be after four rounds of sex in one night."

  "I don't know, I feel like someone yanked about half of it out of my head last night during round two."

  Grace stretched her arms up and groaned. "Someone did. It was a good round."

  I kissed her again. "I'll go start some coffee."

  She whistled at the sight of my bare ass, so I picked a pillow up off the floor and chucked it at her head. Out of the top drawer of my dresser, I snagged a pair of gym shorts and tugged them up over my hips.

  The smile stayed on my face while I measured the grounds and added water. I scratched my chest and yawned, taking a moment to appreciate the dusky blue darkness over the tops of the trees, the slow lightening of the sky that accompanied sunrise.

  Grace's bare feet shuffled over the kitchen floor, and I turned to drink her in. She'd tugged on one of my T-shirts from law school, and seeing Vanderbilt stretched across her chest like that, it did the same strange thing to my chest that always happened when I looked at her.

  "It is completely unfair," she said, twisting her hair into a sloppy bun.

  "What?"

  She sighed, eyes tracing my chest and stomach and arms. "Look at you. You should be illegal, Mr. Haywood."

  I felt my cheeks burn at her heated perusal, which made her grin. She stepped up to my chest and wrapped her arms around me. The coffee maker dripped steadily while we stood like that, my hands sliding up and down her back.

  "I wish you didn't have to go to work," she said, voice muffled by my skin. "I wish we could hole up here for days and just eat in bed and watch movies and watch the sunset in your backyard and drink coffee right here."

  "I wish that too," I told her, setting my chin on the top of her head. "If there was any way I could disappear for a day or two, trust me, I would. But it's too precarious at the office."

  Grace lifted her chin to look up at me. "What happened?"

  My hand followed the curve of her shoulder and moved down her back again. There was no way for me to tell her without unloading a metric ton of guilt onto her plate for the current state of Haywood and Haywood. And in reality, it wasn't her fault, just like it wasn't mine, but I felt guilty all the same. "Some client stuff that's got my dad pretty on edge."

  The look in her eyes was so observant, so astute, that I held my breath and waited for her to push me on my answer.

  "I'm sorry," was all she said.

  Hiding away in my house with her sounded extravagant. And perfect. And impossible.

  "Something changes in your eyes when you think about work," she told me. Grace reached up and cupped the side of my face. "You look exhausted, just from the mention of it."

  I hummed, turning so I could drop a kiss into her palm. "I don't doubt it. I still can't get over that you're the first one to see it, Pretty Girl."

  "People see what they want to, for the most part. And if they're never corrected on those assumptions, there's not much point in looking deeper."

  "You did though." I pressed her fingertips to my mouth and thought about that day at the fairgrounds. "You saw through me like I was cellophane."

  Her smile was a little sad.

  "What's that face?" I asked, tucking my thumb under her chin.

  "Just thinking about how you have to go off to a job you hate, because you feel like you have to, and nobody but me sees what it's doing to you."

  This woman was going to be the death of me, with her big eyes and smart mouth and observant mind, and I had no desire to avert the impending fallout. All I could do was delay it so that the impact would be minimized.

  "You know what makes me sad?"

  "What?" Her hands settled on my chest.

  "Thinking about half the men in Green Valley wanting to line up for a kiss from these lips."

  Grace laughed. If she noticed my subject shift, she didn't call me on it, allowing me to duck down for more of the kisses I didn't want to share.

  Chapter 22

  Grace

  After that night at Tucker’s, that sexy, sweet night, it took a week of sneaking around before I had my first ‘this is bullshit’ moment. Up until the ‘this is bullshit’ moment, it was easy to get lost in kisses and cuddling and talking for hours. It was easy to straddle him in his big bed and snap pictures of his wide, handsome smile. To eat takeout on his couch or mine, snuggled under a blanket, watching movies.

  The moment happened on day eight (day one being the excellent first sex experience), when I found myself cornered in the Fiction E-H aisle of the Green Valley Public Library.

  Hushed whispers and the sound of gently tapping keys were all I could hear as I ran my fingers along the spines of the books. I wasn’t even sure what I was in the mood for, but Aunt Fran was busy, Grady was fishing, and my camera needed some new material.

  Tucker: What are you up to?

  Tucker: In between meetings and thinking about you.

  I smiled, tapping out my response.

  Me: Around the corner from you at the library. Maybe I’ll find a Kama Sutra tucked into a secret shelf and we can throw our backs out trying new things.

  I laughed under my breath when the dots appeared on the screen, then disappeared, then popped back up again. Rendering him speechless was fun.

  A librarian pushed a cart past me, her polite smile masking the blatant curiosity in her eyes.

  “Can I help you find something?”

  I shook my head. “No, just looking, thank you.” When I noticed her eyes drop to the camera slung around my neck, I lifted it up. “Do you mind if I take some pictures in here?”

  One eyebrow lifted slowly.

  “I’m making a … it’s for a project,” I explained. “Nothing will get printed or used without permission, I promise.”

  She shelved another book carefully, no rush to her movements. “I heard about your pictures.”

  Of course, she did. I’d never met this woman, and somehow she knew. I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t.

  “If you’d prefer that I go somewhere else, I can.”

  Her fingers drummed on the handle of the cart. “Why the library?”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed, and even though there was a weight to it, she didn’t argue, simply shook her head and went back to work.

  “All right. I guess that’s fine.”

  Her answer given, the woman worked methodically, finger running along the white label on each book, then sliding it perfectly into place. She made sure the spines were aligned perfectly, a light smile l
ifting her face when they were.

  My camera was up in front of my eyes before I even realized I’d lifted it.

  The click of the shutter was impossibly loud in the aisle, and she froze.

  “You’re taking pictures of me?” The book in her hand was now clutched to her chest.

  I gave her an encouraging smile. “I like how focused you are. How carefully you do your job.”

  She swallowed. “Can I see it?”

  Pulling the strap from around my neck, I turned the digital display so I could show her. “Once I edit it, it’ll look more polished. The light is pretty bright in here.”

  The woman stared at the picture like it was something much more important than a single snap, one file of thousands that I could store on my memory card.

  “You ever put that thing down?” a voice asked from behind me.

  Maxine.

  I smiled when I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Sometimes. Do you think your family is ready to play nice for me?”

  The librarian looked between us like we were tossing a grenade back and forth.

  “Eh, I make no guarantees with that bunch.” She nodded at the books in front of me. “I need to get right there if you don’t mind.”

  I moved aside so she could push her walker closer.

  “I found it, Ruby,” she said, far louder than I’d ever heard someone speak in a library.

  The woman shelving books grimaced.

  One of the other women from the planning committee joined us. Popular aisle, this was. She snatched the book from Maxine’s hand.

  “Ladies,” she said with a smile. “This one is mine.” The cover caught the light, a half-naked man clutching a scantily clad woman to his brawny chest.

  Maxine rolled her eyes. “Who do you think is fighting you over it, Ruby?”

  “You’d want it too if you read the last one. There was a scene in a ship that had me in hot flashes for a solid week. The things he did with his pe—”

  “Okay,” Maxine interrupted with a raised hand. “We get the idea.”

  Ruby looked down at her book, and I snapped another picture, the rapturous expression on her gently wrinkled face had me grinning.

  “Lord, don’t let me keel over dead in this library aisle, talking about that book,” Maxine grumbled. Then her eyes pinned me in place like a dead bug on a corkboard. “What have you been doing to keep yourself busy? Because I know you’re not always hunting around for new pictures.”

  Every single possible answer that sprang up on my tongue was completely inappropriate, so I bit down on my smile. “Just getting settled in. Discovering all my new favorite parts of Green Valley.”

  I had lots of favorite parts. Just none that I could talk about with this group.

  Tucker’s hands.

  His abs.

  His tongue.

  Other parts as well, that would give me the same facial expression as Ms. Ruby looking at her dirty novel.

  Maxine studied my face, like she damn well knew what I was hiding. “What might those be?”

  Ruby and the librarian waited for me to answer, when I saw Maxine’s eyes flick past my shoulder.

  “Umm,” I started. “You know, hikes and … restaurants and stuff.”

  “Well now, if I’d known half the committee was going to be here, I’d have called a regular meeting.”

  “A happy coincidence, Miss Barton,” Tucker’s voice said from behind me.

  How I was capable of keeping my face neutral at the sound of it was a testament to my secret acting abilities. Just being near him, my entire body reacted. For some reason, I thought about the first day we met, and how I’d thought of magnets turned the wrong way. How they repelled each other no matter how you moved them.

  I was well and truly flipped now, because knowing he was there, every cell in me was being pulled in his direction. I wanted to feel the heat of him at my back, wrap his arms around my waist and tangle his fingers in mine.

  But I couldn’t.

  It turned my stomach uncomfortably, these three women watching us, and knowing that I couldn’t touch him the way I wanted to, because there was some invisible barrier that we weren’t allowed to cross.

  “Can I help you find something, Tucker?” the librarian asked, her voice stumbling slightly over his name. She had a hard time moving her eyes in his direction too, another flush of pink covering her neck.

  Couldn’t really blame her.

  The way he looked in his black slacks and dark gray shirt was practically criminal.

  I casually turned so my back was to the shelves and slid my eyes toward his. What was he doing there?

  “I’m all right, Sabrina. Just walking by and saw Grace’s car,” he said. My head about snapped up at his admission, but he kept talking before I could react. “We were supposed to meet about the festival later, and thought I’d see if she had some free time now.”

  “How’s your dad doing?” Maxine asked.

  Tucker coughed loudly, and I gave him a sharp look. “Fine,” he cleared his throat. “He’s just fine, Miss Barton.”

  “I heard—” Ruby started, and Tucker coughed again.

  He pounded a fist on his chest. “I’m so sorry, ladies,” he croaked. “Must have a frog in my throat.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked, physically stopping myself from sliding a hand up his back.

  “Fine.” His face was turning red. Maxine and Ruby were staring at him like he’d grown a second head, and Sabrina practically fled the aisle at the commotion.

  “Good Lord, boy, you sound like a pack-a-day smoker,” Maxine said.

  “Must be fighting a cold,” he said.

  My ass he was.

  He turned his dark eyes to me, face a perfectly pleasant mask. “Did you have some time now? No big deal if you don’t.”

  In the last week, this man had rapidly become the most important part of my life, and I was forced to stand in this much too small library aisle and pretend like I didn’t know what his skin tasted like.

  Everyone who really knew me knew how hard it was for me to keep my feelings off my face, and I could only pray that this was the one time in my entire life I’d be able to prove them wrong.

  Because my feelings right now were a jumbled mess.

  I was annoyed, but I understood.

  I wanted to claim him, like a savage cavewoman.

  I wanted him to claim me, much in the same way, complete with slinging me over his shoulder and dragging me back to his cave.

  “I can meet now.” I hooked my camera back over my neck and smiled at the women, both staring curiously at us. “Ladies.”

  Tucker smiled at them, and gestured for me to walk in front of him. We made it through the lobby and out the library doors before I turned toward him.

  “What was that?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and gave me a lopsided smile. “A really bad idea. I got your text and …” His shoulders lifted and fell on a shrug. “The idea of trying to sneak a kiss in the library sounded fun at the time.”

  I gave him a dry look. “Mister ‘we need to hide from the world?’ I’m shocked.”

  “I know.” He glanced back at the building. “I hate it too, trust me.”

  It didn’t seem possible that he could hate it as much as I did. He fit here, fit everywhere he showed his face in this town. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a known entity, not an outlier, if we’d have these same problems.

  “What was with the coughing fit?” I asked.

  His cheeks flushed red, and his eyes slid past my shoulder to the building we’d just exited.

  “I panicked a little bit,” he admitted with a wry smile.

  I rolled my eyes, but gave him one of my own. “No shit.”

  Tucker exhaled a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as he did.

  “How long do we have to pretend? Because I’d like to kiss you in the library. Or the park.” I glanced up at him. “Or right now.”

  He clenched his jaw, big chest
heaving on a sigh.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know it’s not fair to ask something that you don’t have a good answer to.”

  “You have every right to ask,” Tucker told me. “I want to kiss you right now too. I just … I don’t want people to look at us like we did something wrong.”

  I didn’t want that either.

  Nothing about what I felt for him was wrong, and there was a whole lot of comfort in knowing that he was feeling exactly what I was.

  Maybe not exactly, given no L words had been tossed between us. But I felt it. I felt it when he looked at me, when he touched and kissed me. And that soothed any fears or frustrations I might have had.

  “Fine.” I crossed my arms and smiled up at him. “But you owe me a back massage for whatever just happened back there.”

  He grinned. “Deal.”

  Chapter 23

  Grace

  “You dirty little sneak," my brother said as I filled my plate in Dad's small kitchen.

  I rolled my eyes.

  "Don't roll your eyes at me, it's incredibly rude."

  Picking up the tongs, I dumped some asparagus onto Grady's plate. "You couldn't even see my face."

  He pointed his fork at the microwave mounted above the stove. "Reflection in the door."

  I grimaced, grabbing another roll from the basket. Grady nudged my shoulder as I spun around and set the edge of my butt on the counter. Dad was watching TV, so there was no chance he'd be able to hear us.

  "Keeping my relationship off the table for public consumption is not the same as being a dirty sneak."

  "Really?" Grady snapped a stalk of asparagus in his mouth. "So, when I saw him entering the garage apartment around midnight the other night, that was … what?"

  "He works late sometimes."

  "And the fact that you never go anywhere in town together …"