Willow in Bloom

by Victoria Pade

  “Deal,” he agreed without hesitation, making her feel instantly better about almost everything.

  Willow had left all the windows in her apartment open to catch the cooling night air, so it was pleasant when they went inside. Unfortunately, or she might have had an excuse to take off her overblouse the way she was dying to.

  But as it was, she merely poured two glasses of lemonade and they took them into the living room.

  They sat together on the sofa as if it were a longstanding tradition. Both of them in the center. Not too close, but close enough so that Willow could smell the lingering scent of his aftershave.

  “So you said every time you bring someone around your brothers you hope it will be better. How many every times have there been?” Tyler asked once they were settled and had tasted the lemonade.

  “Three,” Willow answered, without having to calculate.

  “Come on,” he said dubiously. “Only three?”

  “Exactly three.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Pretty easily. Especially when the first guy who kissed me ended up not living it down for a week.”

  “How did they manage that?” Tyler sounded amused and curious, but not disapproving in spite of the evening her brothers had just put him through.

  “They caught us kissing behind the school—”

  “Your first kiss?”

  “My very first kiss.”

  “And you were how old?”

  “Fourteen. And to tell you the truth, I found out later that Herbie only kissed me on a dare even then. I was just too much of a tomboy for any guy to really be interested.”

  “If this Herbie was only kissing you on a dare he deserved whatever your brothers dished out. Which was what?”

  “Jared and Logan saw us and yanked Herbie away by the back of his shirt. Herbie landed on his rear end—embarrassed more than anything—and Jared and Logan just did the standard stay-away-from-our-sister tirade and let him go. But the next day in the locker room they got hold of Herbie and covered him from head to toe in drawings of lips. Drawings they made with permanent red ink markers. It took about a week for it to all wear off, and in the meantime Herbie had to walk around like that, the laughingstock of the school. It was like making him an advertisement for what would happen to any guy who came near me.”

  “Okay,” Tyler said, laughing at the anecdote. “That was number one. What about number two?”

  “Billy Shultz. I was seventeen. And he was new in town.”

  “So he hadn’t been warned off by the Herbie incident.”

  “Right. There was a reverse dance in December of my junior year of high school—that’s where the girls asked the guys. I knew no one else would go with me and I kind of liked Billy, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

  “And get your second kiss?”

  “Oh, no, it never got that far. Billy was holding my hand when we went into the diner for dinner before. Bram and Jared were there and saw us. They joined us—uninvited, and even after my every attempt to discourage them. They made sure Billy knew to keep his hands to himself, and wouldn’t leave us alone until Billy swore he would. Then they moved to the table next to ours.”

  “So good old Billy could still be under their scrutiny.”

  “Exactly. We tried to ignore them, but as we were eating, Billy offered me a bite of his potato salad.”

  “And you took it.”

  “It was just a bite of potato salad. It couldn’t have been more innocent,” Willow assured him.

  “But Billy ended up with his food in his lap.”

  “And I never got to the dance at all.”

  “Or asked out by Billy Shultz again, either, I imagine.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Which brings us to number three.”

  That one was a little more painful, and it must have shown in her expression because before she’d said anything, Tyler put his nearly empty lemonade glass on the coffee table and took her hand, smoothing the back with tiny circles of his thumb.

  “Number three wasn’t just kid stuff, was it?” he asked compassionately.

  “No, it wasn’t. I was really…involved with Shawn.”

  “‘Involved’ meaning in love?”

  Willow nodded her head as she set her glass on the table, too, making sure not to pull her hand from the warmth of his because it felt so good to have it enveloped in that big, strong grasp.

  “I met Shawn at the start of my senior year in college,” she explained. “I was away from home, and even though I was still more tomboy than femme fatale, Shawn seemed to see past that and asked me out anyway.”

  “Good for Shawn.”

  “And good for me. We dated all year and we were getting pretty serious so I thought I should bring him home over spring break to meet everyone. By then I thought we’d all grown up enough that my brothers might just accept him.”

  “No such luck,” Tyler guessed.

  “No such luck,” she confirmed. “That time they called it trial by fire.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Especially not for Shawn. My brothers said they just wanted to make sure he was man enough for me. I told Shawn he didn’t have to prove anything, but he wouldn’t listen. He was sure he could outsmart them—he was more brain than brawn, and I guess in a way he thought he was better than my brothers.”

  “It’d be tough enough just being equal.”

  “Exactly. And Shawn was…well, Shawn was good with books, but my brothers didn’t pass out a manual.”

  “What was the trial by fire?”

  “They took him camping. Without any supplies.”

  “So he had to look for wood to make a fire—”

  “Without matches,” Willow explained.

  “And he had to hunt or fish or forage for food.”

  “With bows and arrows.”

  “And he had to sleep under the stars.”

  “With only a single blanket, not even a sleeping bag. And they deserted him. Well, they didn’t really. They were keeping an eye on him, but kept out of sight, so poor Shawn thought he was on his own.”

  Tyler grimaced. “Scared the guy pretty good, I’ll bet.”

  “Terrified was the word Shawn used when they got him home the next day.”

  “And instead of swearing never to fall for another of your brothers’ pranks, he dumped you?”

  “He actually seemed to sort of blame me. I’d warned him not to go along with anything they wanted him to do, but somehow Shawn felt like I’d set him up. He said he didn’t want anything to do with someone who would bring him into a situation like that.”

  “So much for outsmarting your brothers, too. But apparently good old Shawn wasn’t taking any of the responsibility, huh?”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “But you really liked the guy and you were still sorry to have it end with him,” Tyler concluded. “And there hasn’t been anyone since then?”

  “I came back to Black Arrow after I graduated. Back to where I’m the tomboy little sister of four brothers who are known to be tough on any man who looks at me twice.”

  Tyler looked at her then, top to bottom to top again, with a split second pause when he came across her breasts both times. “Tomboy?” he repeated.

  “Hard to change the image people have of you,” she said, as if that outward image hadn’t only recently been altered to intrigue him.

  “Tomboy isn’t what I see,” he said, his voice suddenly lower, more intimate.

  “What do you see?” she asked, flirting but also dying to know.

  “I see a beautiful woman who mixes strength with softness, self-sufficiency with a tender heart, independence with consideration, brains and ability with sexiness that’s just under the surface waiting to be let out. In short, you can hold your own in a man’s world and among women.”

  Willow liked that description a whole lot better than tomboy.

  She also liked the way Tyler was still loo
king at her, with so much heat in his green eyes she could actually feel herself warming.

  He was still holding her hand, only now he reached his free hand to tilt her chin so he could press his mouth to hers in a kiss that suddenly made the whole miserable night worth it. A kiss that instantly tightened her nipples and made her aware all over again of her new and improved breasts.

  Tyler’s lips parted over hers and his tongue didn’t hesitate to pay a call, urging her to play, to dance, to match him game for game.

  And that’s just what Willow did, losing herself in his kiss, in the wonderful spring-rain scent of him, in the warmth of his body all around her and the tingles of excitement he was setting off in his slow, sexy massage of her hand.

  Those newly engorged breasts had a mind of their own and were craving at least the pressure of his chest against them. So much so that Willow reached her free arm around him, not quite pulling Tyler to her the way she wanted, but at least giving herself the opportunity to get a little nearer to him.

  Tyler took the cue—or maybe it was just what he wanted, too, because he wrapped his arms around her and did what she hadn’t had the courage to do. He closed the space between their bodies by bringing her up against him so that her full breasts nudged his hard pectorals, setting off sparks of delight in Willow.

  Every minute of the night she’d spent with him in Tulsa was vivid in her mind, and as good as it had felt, nothing had felt as good as the meeting of her breasts with his chest did now. It was as if her body had been only half-awake before and now was fully alive and aware of every tiny nuance.

  And yearning for more than tiny nuances.

  Yearning so much that she grew brave enough to pull Tyler’s shirt from his waistband so she could slip her own hands underneath to press her palms against his back.

  An expanse so incredible it helped distract her as she relearned the satin-over-steel textures, as she rode the rise and fall of muscles and tendons, as she indulged in the hot sweetness of his bare skin.

  He abandoned her mouth then, placing teasing kisses on her jawbone, down the side of her neck, even on her shoulder when he’d eased off her blouse.

  The blouse fell naturally, finally freeing her the way she’d wanted to be free all evening, with only the tight tank top separating them.

  Then Tyler reclaimed her mouth with his in an even more sensual, open kiss that she answered only too willingly as his hands traveled from her back to her shoulders and down her arms, pulling her even closer.

  Willow ached for more, for him to touch more than her arms, and her body sent that message all on its own by arching back before she even realized she was going to.

  That was when Tyler moved a hand to the side of her breast, hesitating, as if to give her the chance to stop him before he actually took the entire orb into his palm.

  But stopping him was not on Willow’s mind. In fact, every inch of her was crying out for him not to be so cautious, so considerate, to get on with it before she went out of her mind with craving his touch.

  Then he did get on with it. His hand eased forward, finally engulfing one of those oh-so-sensitive orbs.

  Willow couldn’t help the moan that rumbled from her throat. She couldn’t help the even greater arch of her spine. She couldn’t help digging her fingers slightly into his back as a pleasure sharp enough to make her gasp rippled through her.

  He didn’t waste much more time before he found his way underneath the tank top, and that only increased everything tenfold, making her writhe slightly as that powerful palm closed over her knotted nipple. As he kneaded her breast. As he teased it with fingers that explored her flesh, that traced around that hardened crest, that gently pinched and tugged and teased her until other parts of her body began to come to life, too. Parts much lower and much more secret. Parts that suddenly screamed for the attention of those wonderfully adept hands. Parts that screamed for more than that, for that glorious portion of him that had taken her to heights she’d never even known existed only months before.

  But something about that intense desire for him to fill the aching need between her legs reminded her of the consequences of that other time when she’d lost control so completely with him. It reminded her that she had set a goal for herself, a goal of letting him get to know the real Willow.

  And the real Willow wouldn’t have gone even as far as she already had, let alone any further.

  “We should stop,” she breathed when reason prevailed and she managed to tear herself from his kiss.

  Her request lacked conviction, but it was all Tyler needed to hear to slide his hand out from under her top and do exactly as she’d asked.

  “Was I out of line?” he asked in a voice raspy enough to let her know he’d been wanting more, too.

  “No,” she said through the haze of desire that was still coursing through her and labeling her a traitor to her own body. Then, in a firmer, more convincing tone, she added, “No! It’s just that I don’t want to move too fast.” This time, anyway, even though it was a little late for that policy to be put into effect.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, agreeing without sounding convinced.

  He stood then, taking a breath so deep she saw the rise and fall of his chest as he did. Then he held out his hand and said, “Come on, walk me to the door.”

  Willow complied, grateful that he was taking her abrupt ending so amiably. And grateful, too, that he kept hold of her hand the whole way through the kitchen.

  “I understand your first order from the Feed and Grain will be ready for delivery tomorrow,” she said as they reached the door, just to make conversation and buy herself a few more precious moments with him.

  “Do you do the deliveries in person?” he asked with a mischievous smile and a voice full of insinuation.

  “Not since I was seventeen.”

  “You don’t even go along to supervise now and then?”

  “Well, there are always exceptions,” she lied.

  “You could come out to supervise and I could bring you back into town later, say, for dinner and maybe ice cream afterward.”

  “Oh, well, if there’ll be ice cream…” she joked, as if that were the selling point when, in fact, the only selling point she needed was Tyler himself.

  “So you’ll come?”

  “You’ll have to be the last delivery of the day,” she warned.

  “I’m fine with that,” he assured her, looking deep into her eyes.

  “Then I guess I’ll be there,” Willow said, her voice suddenly soft and breathy.

  Tyler kissed her again then, a tender kiss that was still so sexy it made her sparkle inside. But he left it at that one last kiss, squeezed her hand and then let himself out and closed the screen between them before he said, “Good night.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  He only nodded in response, but she thought he took a last glance at her chest while he was at it.

  It delighted her no end to think of sending him away longing for her, and she couldn’t suppress the smile on her face as she watched him go down the stairs.

  But when she found herself in bed shortly afterward the tables were turned.

  Because as she lay there in the dark, she remembered all too well what it had felt like to have his hands on her bare, ultrasensitive breasts.

  And she discovered that she had a potent longing of her own to wrestle with.

  A longing for Tyler to be lying there with her.

  Kissing her again.

  Touching her again.

  Making love to her again.

  Just the way he had in Tulsa…

  Chapter Eight

  Mondays were always hectic at the store, and to make matters worse, Carl was grumpy. It was Willow’s fault. First thing in the morning she’d asked him if he would do the delivery to Tyler after closing. Carl was not happy to make any delivery himself, and he certainly wasn’t thrilled to do one that late in the day. But Willow couldn’t get away before closing time, and s
he didn’t want to entrust the delivery truck to their high school driver overnight. So that left Carl, who agreed to do it, but not without grumbling.

  Any other time Willow would have lost patience with it. But as it was, she was too glad that Tyler wanted to see her to care, so she just endured the grumbling.

  When Carl began to load the truck at six she went upstairs to change. She was in a hurry, but still managed a quick shower before she put on the outfit she’d decided on earlier, when she’d been struggling to get down a piece of dry toast to help the morning sickness.

  She didn’t want to look as if she’d done anything but come from work, so she opted for her favorite blue jeans and the new white wrap shirt that was held together by one simple tie at the right side of her waist. She thought the blouse softened and feminized the blue jeans, but still didn’t make it seem as if she’d taken any special pains just to make a feed delivery.

  She did put on blush and mascara, though, and she twisted her hair into a roll at her crown, held there with the chopsticks, while spiky ends stuck out every which way.

  When she judged herself presentable, she slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and rushed out of her bedroom.

  But she got only as far as the living room before she stopped short.

  Bram was sitting on her sofa.

  “I didn’t know you were here,” she said, startled.

  Bram had his feet on her coffee table, his arms stretched along the top of the back cushion, and the expression on his face was no happier than Carl’s had been through the last eight hours.

  “Carl said you were up here getting ready to deliver feed with him,” Bram said, as if he were accusing her of a crime.

  Willow had expected at least one of her brothers to show up today to grill her over Tyler and his presence at the barbecue the previous evening. When that hadn’t happened she’d hoped they might have just accepted it and opted to leave her alone about it.

  She should have known better.

  “Carl must be about loaded up by now,” she said, hinting that she didn’t want this to take long.

  But Bram ignored the hint. He just stared at her and said, “So are you dating this Chadwick guy?”