by Kate Meader
“I was sort of abrupt with you. And tonight. You see, I’d just found out something and …” She stopped, licked her lips, and looked up.
Big mistake.
He was so tall, so disruptively handsome. That beard did things to her, and she didn’t even like him. Except she did. She liked the guy in the text messages, the man who shared things with her with no agenda.
But she could be all wrong. Everyone had an agenda.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, because she was about to upend his life. He’d had a lot of that so far, and here she was making it worse.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said, and now she knew he was closer because those blue eyes glowed and she could feel a shift in the air’s energy around them.
“For what?”
“This.” And then he bent his head and touched his lips to hers.
Gunnar must be losing his mind. This woman infuriated him, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. About her lush curves and bright eyes, that mobile mouth and stubborn chin. A part of the attraction was how much he obviously pissed her off—which was somewhat his fault and somewhat hers. After years of numbness, the novelty of feeling something, anything, was so electrifying that all considerations about the fact he was kissing the wrong person were easily set aside.
The wrong person? Why had he thought that?
Possibly because she wasn’t kissing him back.
Fuck.
She wasn’t kissing him back.
He stopped. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No?” A question rather than outright agreement.
“This isn’t what you want. I—” He scraped a hand through his hair.
She peered up at him, her eyes big and round as silver moons. No censure, only … confusion.
“You surprised me. Big time.” Her lips curved into that slayer smile and his heart kicked hard against his rib cage. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I don’t.” It was out so fast that it could only be true. “But then like doesn’t have much to do with this, does it?”
“This?”
He waved between them, indicating the this he meant.
“You’re … attracted to me?” Her eyes grew impossibly rounder.
“That is usually why someone kisses someone.”
“But you don’t like me?”
“I don’t know you. To be honest, we seem to rub each other the wrong way.”
“We know why that is. You accused me of being a neglectful guardian and frankly, your apology was not good enough.”
Here we go again. “I apologized, but some people prefer to hold grudges because they enjoy being mad at anyone other than themselves.”
“That’s what you think this is? I’m misplacing my anger and directing it at some poor guy who doesn’t deserve it?”
“Why else would you hold on to it?”
“Clearly because I’m annoyed at wanting you!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “That’s not what I meant to say.”
A pleasant shiver of surprise rolled through him. He had been right. There was something worth pursuing here. “What did you mean to say?”
“That I don’t buy your psychobabble. I can be mad at you for several reasons. I am woman. I contain multitudes.”
He rubbed his mouth, hiding his smile. Sadie Yates was going to be a lot of fun. Only that’s what he’d thought about Angel, who had ignored the couple of texts he’d sent her.
Sadie reared up on tip-toes, all fire and indignation, and pushed at his chest. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“Why not? You’re being funny right now.”
“I’m not. I don’t even like you and …” Her brow furrowed. “I want to.”
“You want to? Why?” A weird statement and a weirder question, but he needed to know.
“It’s like when everyone reads the latest New York Times bestseller and loves it, but you’re all ‘who cares? Why are people loving this junk?’”
Comparisons with junk. Definitely on brand. “So you’re wondering why your opinion of me is so out of step with the masses. Maybe because you like to go against the grain to be contrary.”
“Maybe because I have taste. As far as I can see, you’re a judgmental dick who happens to be tall and bearded. That’s all you have going for you. Unreasonable height and killer facial hair!”
“Poor me.” He felt another smile coming on. “Sadie?”
“What?”
He stepped in closer. “You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to think what everyone else does. Half the time, I can’t tell if people are being nice to me because they like me or because I’m a famous hockey player or because I have a sad backstory that invites pity.”
She chewed her lip. “I didn’t know your story before we met. Not even after because I didn’t know who you were so I couldn’t look you up. I found out today. My dislike of you comes honestly.”
Either she was the most forthright woman he’d ever met or … that. She was honest. Her candid nature was as much of a turn on as those curves and eyes and hooky smile.
“So we’ve established you don’t like me. I’d like a chance to change that.”
“And you don’t like me, though I’m not sure how that could be. I’m very likable.”
He was starting to agree. She’d gone sky-high in his estimation in the last five minutes. “My problem with you stems from the fact you’re holding a grudge. That’s it. I could like you if you dropped it.”
She threw up her hands. “Why are we having this conversation? Do we need to establish we like each other enough so we can feel better about wanting to kiss each other? Are we so afraid of sheer animal lust that we have to pair it with, ugh, respect?”
He laughed, enjoying himself immensely. It was supposed to be just a kiss. How had it turned into a thesis on likability and lust?
“Don’t need to like you to want you, which I’m pretty sure I said about five minutes ago. But I do need you to be interested rather than … bored.”
Surprise brightened those pretty gray eyes. “Who said I was bored?”
“You didn’t kiss me back.”
“Because I was shocked.”
“Because you’re not interested.”
“God, you are such a dumbass.” And on the expiration of “ass” she curled a hand around his neck and pulled his lips to hers.
Electric. That’s how it felt. Tingling and chemical and hot. All those dumb, dormant cells in his body came alive, re-sparking into existence. She tasted like cinnamon and heat, a brand new, intimate flavor.
His hands couldn’t help themselves. One cupped her hip, the other her magnificent ass, and both pulled her tight to his straining erection, the one he’d been fighting to contain all evening. She went with the move, adapting to the flow of their bodies fitting together as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
He pulled back an inch, merely to get his bearings. A voice in his head sounded a warning: stop now. Stop before you cross a line there’s no coming back from.
Her silver eyes gleamed, her mouth glistened with the wetness of his kiss. No woman had ever looked more wanton or sexy.
The voice screamed. No woman? Did you really just think that?
She pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s okay, Gunnar.” Soft, knowing, a wealth of compassion. He wanted to weep, but mostly he wanted to kiss her again.
A yell cracked through the night, the sound of a child in pain. Janie?
Sadie jerked back and looked over her shoulder. “Was that Lauren?” She raced up the steps of the brownstone and pushed open the door, calling out for her sister. Gunnar was fast on her heels.
“Lauren?” Sadie rushed through a hallway and entered a room near the end. “What happened? Are you—what the hell?”
When Gunnar arrived, he noticed three things: Lauren hunkered down, soothing the big dog with the shitting problem; a broken window; and a Christmas tree that had seen better days.
Lauren turned, h
er cheeks red. “Someone threw this through the window.” She picked up a flat, smooth rock, about the twice the size of a puck.
“Wait here,” Gunnar said. He headed to the back of the house, through the kitchen, and out the door. The room with the broken window faced the backyard, which was large and shrouded in darkness except for the faint glow from the house. No security lighting and no evidence of anyone sticking around to view their handiwork. He remained still for a second, listening to the night. Nothing spoke back.
He took a circuit of the garden. On the east side, a few feet from the house, a flowerbed surrounded by a rock border looked like a tooth had been pulled. He picked up one of the border rocks, the same as what he’d found inside. So a crime of opportunity rather than premeditation.
He headed back inside, where Sadie met him in the kitchen. “You should call the police.”
“Maybe it was a kid, some vandal.” She frowned, something else tripping through her mind.
“You still need the police report to make an insurance claim for that window.”
“I don’t even know where the insurance information is. All my father’s papers are such a mess. I’ll have to call the lawyer.”
Gunnar touched her arm gently. “Police first. I’ll call a glazier.”
“No, could you wait on that? I don’t have any—” She cut off. “Whoever it is won’t be coming back, will they?”
Probably not. “Window still needs to be fixed.”
She nodded and headed back in to her sister.
Thirty minutes later, the police had arrived to take the details. Like Sadie, they pegged it as random vandalism, or would have if Sadie hadn’t mentioned the letters.
“What letters?” one of the officers said.
She opened her purse and took out a few envelopes, all with cursive addresses in varying degrees of neatness. “They’re postmarked a few weeks ago, from before my father’s sentencing.”
Gunnar took one from her hands before she passed it off to the cop. Unpleasant, but generic. Still, threats in writing seemed to carry more heft. He gave it to the questioning officer, who, from his expression, resented his interruption.
“You should have reported these before,” Gunnar said to Sadie.
“I haven’t had time to worry about it. Besides, we’ll be in LA soon.”
Not satisfied with that response, he turned to the police. “You think this is related to the property damage?”
“Probably a coincidence.” Cops didn’t like being told how to do their job. Exhibit A, the California Highway Patrol and their endless questions about the accident, looking to assign blame to the man before them instead of the one who drove away. Law enforcement preferred their conclusions wrapped up in a bow. Less paperwork.
They never found the driver who, in his hurry to overtake him, had driven Gunnar’s car off the road and into a ravine. How would they? Gunnar’s brain had pushed certain details to some deep, unknowable recess. As easy as it was to blame this phantom, Gunnar knew who was truly at fault here. He’d overcorrected, lost control, doomed them all. The only reason he was here was because fourteen hours later someone—not CHP—had spotted tree damage on the curve where the car had left the road and went to investigate.
“Let us know if anything else happens,” one of the cops said, to which Gunnar snorted his disgust.
Lauren seemed to be taking it in her stride. There’d been some resistance to leaving the room—apparently she slept there with the dead Christmas tree—but when Sadie explained that the glass could hurt Cooper, she relented. Now she was somewhere else in the house.
The cops left and if Sadie had her way, Gunnar wouldn’t be far behind.
“Thanks for sticking around,” she said, her hand on the open front door.
“I’ll wait for the glazier.”
“You don’t have to. You’ve already been a great help.”
“Sadie, I’m not leaving until that window is boarded up. They said they’d be here any minute.”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth when a van pulled up with Glass Doctor on the side.
“I can wait until—”
She placed a hand on his arm, and there it was again, his body glittering with newfound life. “Gunnar, it’s fine. You’ve been really helpful but I’ve got it from here.”
He wanted to kiss her again, but the message was clear. Not now. Let’s forget about what just happened.
The Gunnar of before would have agreed. New Gunnar—alive Gunnar—was not ready to call this quits. But he recognized she needed time after a stressful night, so he merely nodded and headed down the steps.
20
“How can you be sure?”
This was the third time Peyton had asked the question. Unlike Sadie, she hadn’t had time to weigh and absorb each evidential fact that pointed to one thing: LonelyHeart and Gunnar Bond were one and the same person.
“I’m sure. The more I read about the hockey player, the more I’m sure that this is my text buddy.”
This morning, she’d hunted down every scrap of information she could find about his tragic loss. Now she understood why he’d sometimes said “them” in his texts. He hadn’t lost only his wife, he’d also lost his children. He’d lain in that car, pinned and unable to move or help them while their lives slipped away. Not that he’d ever given an interview or recounted the events in such heart-wrenching detail, but the report of the accident had made it clear. The autopsy had pieced the accident together, established timing, who went first, who lasted the longest, and the tabloids had woven a story of horror.
He was trapped for hours and his family didn’t die immediately.
“So it’s him.”
“And I knew this but still kissed him.”
Peyton wagged her finger. “Yeah, so why is that? Why did you let it go so far?”
“Because he makes me mad! He’s not like how he is on the texts. There, he’s this lonely, sensitive, aching soul who needs my soothing words. Who listens to my problems—such as they are.” Not that they could compare to what he had endured.
He had texted this morning, to his wife’s old number, asking if she was okay and she didn’t have the guts to respond. All she could hear was Gunnar’s voice. All she could see was Gunnar’s beard and eyebrows and that blazing blue gaze.
He didn’t even kiss like the guy from her texts would have kissed. This version of Gunnar Bond kissed with a lusty desperation that surely he shouldn’t be wasting on the likes of Sadie Yates. To compound her confusion, he’d been the man on the spot last night, taking charge. “But the real guy—that guy infuriates me. He came right out and said he’s attracted to me, but doesn’t like me. Who says that?”
“You don’t like him and it sounds like you’re attracted to him.”
“But I wouldn’t say it.” Except she did. She’d told him he was a jerk but she still wanted him, which made her no better than him.
“What are you thinking?” Peyton squinted at her.
“That maybe they are two different people. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong.” She wanted to have it all wrong. She hated to think she’d been wasting her efforts on someone like Gunnar Bond, which made her a terrible person. Grieving assholes needed a shoulder to cry on, too. She just wasn’t convinced it should be her shoulder.
“You have to find out. You can’t go on like this especially if kissing and more is on the horizon.”
“No. I’m putting a stop to that. I can’t be with someone I don’t like, it’s … seedy. And I’ll be back in LA soon anyway.”
Peyton rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. That makes it perfect. You have a hot, sexy athlete who wants to have his wicked way with you.”
The thought of Gunnar’s mouth on hers—and other places—heated her from the inside out. What else might have happened if they hadn’t been cut short last night? Her ass had fit perfectly in his hand, or at least, that was how it had felt. With her bountiful body type, she never felt comfortable with most men, but with
Gunnar, she’d slotted into the concave spaces of his frame with ease.
As for his taste, it was sweeter than anything she’d ever experienced. Intoxicating. She’d have happily let him ravage her—ravage? Really? Uh, yes, and let the fates fall where they may.
In the wake of the window damage, there’d been no time to analyze next steps. All she knew is that they couldn’t return to what they had before and she wasn’t sure they could make any moves forward. Stuck in lusty, lying limbo.
She had to get to the bottom of it. “I’ll set up another meet with LonelyHeart.”
“Or ask his name. If it was really him coming to meet you he would have told it to you eventually. He’s a famous hockey player. He has to know he couldn’t hide it once you met up.” Peyton waved madly. “Or call him. Surely you’d know his voice?”
Like her own. “I’m going to call him.”
“Really?” Peyton shrieked.
“That’s what you said I should do.”
“Yes, but—I didn’t think—really?”
Sadie bit her lip. “I need to know.”
Peyton nodded gravely. “When? Now?”
“If it is him, he’s at hockey camp, so there’s a good chance it might go to voice mail. Which would be even better. I could hear his voice and he would know the person he’s been texting had called but not that it’s me. Sadie.”
“And if he answers?”
“I’ll worry about that if it happens. Whatever feels right.” She had to fess up eventually. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” But she sounded like she was sending Sadie off to war.
Sadie scrolled through her messages. She could text but she needed clarity, and the cold shock of hearing Gunnar’s voice would provide all the clarity she needed. In that moment, she’d know if she was glad it was him or profoundly disappointed.
She dialed. It rang once, twice, three times. Yes, bring on the voice mail. She would know and he wouldn’t know and then she could decide what to do.
“Hello?”
Not a voice mail but a live, speaking, gravel-voiced Gunnar Bond. Shock constricted her vocal cords. She held the phone away from her ear, her finger hovering over the end call button.