by Ally Blake
“This?” she asked, holding onto his backside for purchase. And because it was just right there. Asking for it.
His hand reached up and smacked her on the backside in recompense.
She glanced at the house as Rafe carried her up the driveway. “Won’t Janie be wondering where we are?”
“Don’t care.”
“I am the host—”
“Do you want to go back in there?”
“God, no.”
Rafe slid her down his front till her toes landed on his boots. She luxuriated in the feel of him, hard and spare and big.
He took her gently by the chin. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you sitting in Bear’s café, with a ferocity that has eaten me from the inside out. I tried to ignore it, then to fight it. I’m done. I don’t want to wait any more.”
“Then don’t.”
Hand in hand they walked down the footpath, towards Rafe’s place. Past the Airstream. Towards the shed. Was this going to be a back seat of a Chevy deal? Or maybe the Ferrari? Did she care?
No strings. Not a one. Just two people with a twisted past littered with battered hopes and two-way heartache agreeing to a no-strings fling in order to make a baby.
As the adrenaline of the past hour began to fade, she waited for sense to kick in. For the bites and stings that had left scars on her heart to pull her up. But this was Rafe’s hand she was holding.
She curled her fingers more tightly around his.
They slowed as they reached the big new shed.
“Old barn fell down about a month after you left,” Rafe said. “As if it was holding on just for you. Took me a good three years before I was ready to lug the rotting lumber away.”
Sable leant her head against his meaty shoulder. So he hadn’t torn it down. Hadn’t exorcised any memories of her. He’d held on. Perhaps he was still holding on. Perhaps she was too.
Only now she knew she’d never let go. Not if he couldn’t go through with it. Not if this experiment failed. He’d always be a part of her. Her Rafe.
Needing to show him how much she was feeling, she drew him in, and kissed him with everything she had.
He slid a hand under her knees. Picked her up and carried her over the threshold. In the back of her mind she saw sensor lights, zillion-dollar cars and stairs, but nothing mattered bar the heat and shivery skin and heavy breaths.
He pushed open the door and carried her into the new loft space.
“Our window,” she whispered, spying the large round window filling much of the far wall.
Rafe glanced over his shoulder. “Our window smashed into a thousand pieces when the building went down.”
“And yet that one looks very much the same.”
Sable’s gaze swept back to Rafe, who didn’t deny it. He could have put anything on the space the old barn had been, but had chosen to rebuild. Modernising, yet keeping the parts that had been special to him. To them.
He’d loved her once. More than she’d ever thought it was possible to be loved. And she’d left him. Sacrificed what they’d had to give her mother the sense of place Mercy had always craved.
Now it was her turn.
As that last grip on her past self fell away, Sable felt free. Free to want and ask and be and feel.
And if she hadn’t already known she was falling for Rafe Thorne, the bad boy next door, all over again—if she’d ever really fallen out—she knew then.
Rafe tossed her onto a big soft bed.
She reached for him as he climbed over her, teeth nipping at her hip, then tugging at the edge of her top, sending her senses scattering.
When she got the chance, she tore his jumper over his head. Went for the fly of his jeans. He stopped her with a smile, with a waggle of his eyebrows, then a kiss that made her boneless.
Only then did he undress her. Slowly. Deliberately. Reverently. Following every slide of fabric with a trail of kisses. His gaze hungry. His touch tender. Till she could no longer think.
Just enough to do the same to him. Fingers trailing over the strong muscles of his shoulders. A scar on his left pec, another, longer, on his side. Marks of a life lived hard. Tough. A survivor.
When she shivered, he drew the blankets over them both, and slid down her body, kissing her neck, her breasts, each rib as he made his way down.
Sable reached back, one hand gripping a heavy iron railing on the bedhead, the other clutching a hunk of blanket as his tongue dipped into her belly button. Licked the edge of her hipbone. Lower.
The scruff of his unshaven face. The give and take of his clever mouth. It was the Rafe she remembered. Times a billion.
She’d been seventeen when she’d left, their love life new, sweet, fumbling, only just figuring one another out.
This was grown up. Edged with knowledge, determined forgiveness, and a steady heady beat of hope.
Sable’s eyes slammed shut, every sense sighing, screaming, holding on for dear life as Rafe took her to the edge and right on over.
Damp and hot and reeling—in primal shock—she forced her eyes open when she felt Rafe come out from under the blankets.
“Hi,” he said, a smile lighting his face, lighting his eyes.
“Hello to you too,” she managed.
Then she lifted her head and kissed him, wrapping her legs around him, holding him close. Near. Dear.
This was the time to reach for protection. But neither did.
“We’re really doing this?” Sable managed.
“Doc gave me a clean bill of health. Call her, if you’re concerned.”
“Now?”
Rafe lifted his head a fraction to look deep into her eyes. “If that’s what you need. Of course.”
“I trust you,” she said. And meant it. “You’d never hurt me, Rafe. But that’s not what I meant. I mean you and me and a baby?”
Rafe moved his hand to sweep a lock of hair from her cheek. “In the past week I’ve spent more time than a man should picturing how to adapt this space with a kitchen upstairs, bathroom, a nursery.”
“You have?” she asked, all the while thinking that didn’t sound like “no strings”. It sounded like all the strings. But with Rafe pressing occasional kisses along her neck she couldn’t remember why that was a problem.
“Bringing up Janie, I know how unspeakably hard parenting can be. And how breathtaking. First words. First steps. First time she said thank you without being asked.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “We’re doing this, Sutton.”
“You’re gonna be a father,” she said, her voice breaking at the vision she’d had of him in her mother’s backyard. The vision she’d thought she’d never live to see.
“I’m going to be a dad.”
Her heart swelled so fast she laughed, though it felt more like a sob. The kind that started right deep down inside.
Then Rafe’s expression darkened, his eyes smoking over as he leaned down and kissed her.
It was the sweetest kiss of her entire life.
And was soon subsumed by the heat that engulfed her as they came together.
As if they’d never been apart.
She only realised later, as she drifted off to sleep, that while she’d told Rafe she trusted him, trusted he’d never hurt her, he hadn’t said the same to her.
CHAPTER NINE
RAFE STOOD IN the small utilitarian kitchen on the ground level of The Barn.
A few cars still remained downstairs, but the workshop had been moved out, readying to turn it into whatever he decided to turn it into.
He scratched his bare chest with one hand, as he waited for the coffee machine to heat up. And he looked up, towards the loft.
Until a few weeks ago, he’d never even slept there, as Janie liked having him nearby when he was home. Now he wondered if he’d put it in out of some kind
of wish fulfilment. If you build it, she will come. So to speak.
For there Sable slept now, face down, her hair splayed out over her pillow, and half onto his.
The fact that she took up three quarters of the bed and a long while to fully wake in the morning was new to him. They’d been close for years, and officially together for months before she’d skipped out, but it had been all about stealing time. They’d never spent the night together. Never woken to find the other still there.
And now they had... He’d miss it when she was gone. He’d miss her.
For that part of the plan hadn’t changed as far as he knew.
Once he’d kissed her, swung her into his arms and all but carried her over the threshold of the barn, they’d made few concrete agreements as to what happened after she fell pregnant. As if neither had wanted to jinx it. Or question the halcyon spell that had descended over them.
The coffee machine beeped. He slid two espresso glasses under the spouts, pressed a few buttons and the scent of freshly brewed coffee filled the air.
How normal this had become. The porthole window cracked open of a night, waking to birdsong. Him making two coffees and taking first shower. Her padding downstairs, late, to pack him a lunch to take to work. For he’d not strayed far since things had shifted between them, working at the original workshop most days. Managing remotely. Watching, with immense gratification, Janie take up the slack.
Rafe winced.
Truth was, he didn’t want her to leave. Not that he could tell her. She was her mother’s daughter after all. Skittish, unsettled. But the way things were going it felt...possible. As if they finally had their timing right.
He’d work up to it when the time was right. Tell her that he wanted strings. And always had.
Because he was that fully committed to this project: Project Baby.
As for that small voice in the back of his head that perked up every time they were apart, wondering if when he looked back she’d once again be gone? He did his best to ignore it.
Rafe rolled his shoulders.
She wasn’t going anywhere. She was in this, as much as he was. He could feel it. In her newfound calmness and in her easy smiles. As he listened in on the video chats she had with her agent, Nancy, who seemed like a cracker of a woman. Watched her talk through the test shots she’d taken on her phone, saving the film images taken on her old camera for when the new series she was working on was complete. In the way she looked at him when she thought he didn’t notice. In the way she looked at him when he did.
Rafe heard a creak and cocked his ear.
They were heading to Melbourne today—a final day trip before the Pumpkin Festival was due to take up a whole lot of time. He’d check in with the Melbourne operation, while she visited a photography specialist she’d made friends with, and they’d stop at their favourite Italian Place in Lygon Street for lunch before heading back.
He’d built the Melbourne spot, three times the size of the Radiance shop, from absolutely nothing. In a city in which no one judged him beyond the value in his work.
Sable had been the first person who’d ever looked at him as if he was worthy of a chance. Without her he might never have given voice to his ambitions. Or believed they might actually be achievable.
Not that long ago she’d said, “You know how it feels to be loved by me.”
It had been a throwaway line, but it had hit him like a Mack truck. Whipping away any last defences he’d held against her. For he’d known how it felt to be loved by her. It was a feeling he’d chased the rest of his life. The feeling of being seen, understood, heard, trusted.
Then she’d left.
“Come on, man. Enough already,” he said, gripping the counter. Closing his eyes and willing his lizard brain to shut the hell up.
For all that he was over the moon that she was back, the second-guessing was wearing at his edges. The looking over his shoulder.
From what he remembered of the time before his mother had left, his father had been exactly the same. Skittish, jumpy, waiting for it all to go wrong.
And it had.
How much was chicken, how much egg, he had no idea. He only knew it wasn’t healthy.
And he’d worked damned hard to make sure he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. Any of them.
Including falling for a woman with itchy feet.
Rafe scrubbed a hand over his face, as if that might shake this internal conversation loose.
What happened, happened in the past. And he’d forgiven her. Otherwise how could he have asked her to stay? How could he possibly have considered starting a family with her if he wasn’t sure that she was stronger now? That she had changed?
He grabbed the coffees from the machine, dashed a little milk into his, and padded out of the kitchenette, making a beeline for the stairs to the loft.
The sooner he found her where he’d left her, in his bed, their bed, every worry would melt away.
Taking the last stairs two at a time, he hit the loft floor and stopped.
The bed was empty.
The sheets were in disarray. The scent of her was sweet, warm—ripe in the air.
She had to be near. He’d only been gone a few minutes. But the gnawing in his belly—and the knowledge that if she’d left once without warning, without reason, she could do it again—bit so hard he winced.
Then the plumbing hushed as the bathroom sink water ran downstairs.
The air left his lungs in a rush.
One thing he’d learned about making broken cars look brand-new: a lifetime of damage left marks that would always be a part of the car. Niggles. Bruises that would linger deep in the belly of the beast.
And while he would have willed it to be different if it were possible, people were very much the same. Meaning this feeling, this knot in his belly where Sable was concerned, might never ease.
He spun and padded back down the stairs.
* * *
Sable knew the feeling all too well. The ache in her back. The slight fuzziness of her brain.
Her trip to the bathroom confirmed.
Her period had started.
She wasn’t pregnant.
She’d read up, a lot, on this part of the journey, and she knew how rare it was to fall pregnant on the first go. Or the second, or the third. But the ache—the loss of something that had only existed in her head—was acute. Like nothing she’d ever felt.
Groaning, Sable fell into a crouch and wrapped her arms around her belly.
The vision she’d had of that flaxen-haired child had felt so real. So raw. So right. She’d felt as if it were a fait accompli. As if it were meant to be.
And she and Rafe had certainly tried hard enough. Often enough. Their no strings baby-making fling having blossomed into what had fast felt like something a whole lot more.
Rafe.
She closed her eyes tight and sank to the bathroom floor.
How was she going to tell him? Now that he’d committed to Project Baby, as he called it, he’d been reading books on fatherhood. Talking to Mercy about their experiences raising girls. She’d seen him stop a mother with a pram on the street the other day to ask what kind of nappy bag she was using.
The man was an utter doll. No wonder these weeks with him had been some of the best of her life. A glimpse into what things might have been like if they were doing this for real. If they were actually together. Building a life. Starting their family.
It had been a kind of lovely she’d never dared hope might be possible. The way he fell asleep with a book on his chest. The way he bartered for control over the remote. The way he played with her hair as they fell asleep.
Sure he grumbled that she took up too much of the bed. And he was a total morning person whereas she was a night owl. And she smiled at the way he wanted her to check in at least once a
day when she went on her walks, just to make sure she hadn’t been kidnapped by forest pirates, or tripped over a knotty tree root and bumped her head.
Or run away again.
She closed her eyes tight.
And there it was, that single dark thread running through everything they did. The fact that he didn’t quite trust her. It showed in the way he breathed out when she came downstairs. The way his eyes lit up when they found one another after work. As if he could only relax when he knew she was still there.
She’d thought she was the one putting herself out there in asking this of him.
But he was too. In agreeing to her request, he’d risked derision from his friends and family, he’d risked the chance of being the focus of town gossip, and he’d risked letting her into his life again. While he might not know it yet, he’d risked the agony of starting to want this too. And watching it fail.
The thought of putting him through that made her feel physically ill.
Maybe this was a sign, the fact that she wasn’t pregnant. A sign to slow things down. Maybe even put it on hold for a bit. Despite the difficulties she faced in falling pregnant at all, that felt secondary to everything else right now.
“Sable?” Rafe’s voice, warm and deep and wonderful, came to her from the other side of the door.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight. Keep it together. “I’ll just be another minute.”
“All good. Though we have not a thing to eat. Bear’s for breakfast before we head off?”
She had to tell him. The thought of having this conversation in public was mortifying. But the thought of telling him here, in this place that had begun to feel like home, felt worse.
“Can we grab something to go? Picnic breakfast in Wonderland Park?”
“Not exactly picnic weather.”
He was right. The wind had picked up overnight, bringing with it a wintry blast all the way from Antarctica. Like an omen. “Let’s live on the wild side.”
He laughed, the sound smoothing its way down her spine, like a caress. She closed her eyes, but not quickly enough to stave off the tear that slipped through.
