by Reese Ryan
Her tawny skin was punctuated by a series of freckles splashed across her nose and cheeks.
Something about the discovery of that small detail she’d hidden from the world thrilled him.
His gaze dropped to her lips, and a single, inappropriate thought filled his brain.
Kiss her. Now.
She slipped her icy hand from his, slid the jacket from her shoulders and returned it to him.
“Thank you.” He tossed it into the back seat and shut the door.
When he turned to Savannah she was shivering again.
He rubbed his hands up and down her arms to warm her before his brain could remind him that was an inappropriate gesture, too.
Her searing gaze made the point clear.
“Sorry... I...” Blake stepped away, his face heated. He ran a hand through his wet hair.
“I appreciate the gesture. But what I’d really love is a hot shower and a place to sleep.”
“Of course.” Blake shrugged off his wet rain slicker. He hung it on a hook, then closed the garage door. “Hope you’re not afraid of dogs.”
“Not particularly.”
“Good.” Blake dropped his waterlogged shoes by the door to the house. When he opened it, his two dogs surrounded him, yapping until he petted each of their heads. They quickly turned their attention to Savannah.
“Savannah Carlisle, meet Sam—” He indicated the lean Italian greyhound who, while peering intently at Savannah, hadn’t left his side. “He’s a retired racing greyhound I rescued about five years ago.”
“Hello, Sam.”
“And that nosy fella there is Benny the labradoodle.” Blake indicated the rust-and-beige dog yapping at her feet, demanding her attention.
“Hi, Benny.” Savannah leaned down and let the dog sniff her hand, then petted his head. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Benny seemed satisfied with her greeting. He ran back inside with Sam on his heels.
“Did you rescue Benny, too?”
“No.” Blake swallowed past the knot that formed in his throat when he remembered the day he’d brought Benny home as a pup.
He’d bought Benny as a surprise for his ex. Only she’d had a surprise of her own. She was leaving him for someone else.
“Oh.” Savannah didn’t inquire any further, for which he was grateful.
Blake turned on the lights and gestured inside. “After you.”
Seven
Stop behaving like the poor girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Even if you are.
Savannah’s wide eyes and slack mouth were a dead giveaway as Blake gave her an informal tour of his beautiful home.
She realized the Abbotts were wealthy. Still, she’d expected a log cabin with simple country decor. Maybe even a luxurious bachelor pad filled with gaming tables and the latest sound equipment.
She certainly hadn’t expected this gorgeous, timber-built home overlooking a picturesque lake and offering breathtaking mountain vistas. The wall of windows made the pastoral setting as much a feature of the home as the wide plank floors and shiplap walls.
Rustic charm with a modern twist.
It was the kind of place she could imagine herself living in. The kind of home she would be living in, if not for the greed and betrayal of Joseph Abbott.
Her shoulders tensed and her hands balled into fists at her sides.
“You must be tired.” Blake seemed to sense the shift in her demeanor. “I’ll show you to your room. We can finish the tour another time.”
Blake always seemed attuned to how she was feeling. A trait that would be endearing if they were a couple. Or even friends.
But they weren’t. It was a reality she couldn’t lose sight of, no matter how kind and generous Blake Abbott appeared on the surface.
She was here for one reason. But she’d learned little about Joseph Abbott and nothing of his history with her grandfather. If she opened up a little with Blake, perhaps he’d do the same, and reveal something useful about his family.
Maybe Blake didn’t know exactly what his grandfather had done. But he might still provide some small clue that could direct her to someone who did know and was willing to talk.
But none of that would happen if she couldn’t keep her temper in check. She had to swallow the bitterness and pain that bubbled to the surface whenever she thought of Joseph Abbott’s cruel betrayal.
At least for now.
“I’m tired. And wet. And cold. So I’m sorry if I’m cranky.” Her explanation seemed to put him at ease.
“Of course.” He led the way through the house and up an open staircase to the second floor. Sam and Benny were on his heels.
“I hate to ask this, but do you think I could borrow a T-shirt and some shorts?”
“Don’t think I have anything that’ll fit you.” Blake stopped in front of a closed door. His gaze raked over her body-conscious, black rayon dress. Soaked through, the material shrank, making it fit like a second skin. Blake made a valiant effort to hold back a smirk.
He failed miserably.
“I’ll see what I can find.”
He opened the door to a spacious guest room with a terrace. The crisp, white bedding made the queen-size bed look inviting, and the room’s neutral colors were warm and soothing. The angle of the windows provided a better view of a docked boat and an amphibious plane.
Maybe being a guest chez Blake won’t be so bad after all.
“Thanks, Blake. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can, I promise.”
Her words drew his attention to her hair, which was soaking wet. A few loose strands clung to her face.
He reached out, as if to tuck a strand behind her ear. Then he shoved his hand into his pocket.
“It’s no trouble. I’m just glad I came back to check on you... I mean, the plant.” His voice was rough as he nodded toward a sliding barn door. “The bathroom is there. It’s stocked with everything you need, including an unopened toothbrush.”
“Thank you, again.” Savannah set her purse and bag on the floor beside the bed.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Blake dragged his stare from hers. “I’ll find something you can sleep in and leave it on the bed. Then I’ll rustle up something for us to eat.”
With the violent storm crackling around them, she hadn’t thought about food. But now that he mentioned it, she was starving. She hadn’t eaten since lunch.
“All right, cowboy.” She couldn’t help teasing him. She hadn’t ever heard the word rustle used outside of a cowboy movie.
Blake grinned, then slapped his thigh. “C’mon, boys. Let’s give Savannah some space.”
The dogs rushed out into the hall and Blake left, too, closing the door behind him.
Savannah exhaled, thankful for a moment of solitude. Yet, thinking of him, she couldn’t help smiling.
She shook her head, as if the move would jostle loose the rogue thoughts of Blake Abbott that had lodged themselves there.
Don’t you dare think about it. Blake Abbott is definitely off-limits.
* * *
“Hey.” Blake was sure Savannah could hear the thump of his heart, even from where she stood across the room.
She padded toward him wearing his oversize University of Tennessee T-shirt as gracefully as if it was a Versace ball gown. Her black hair was chestnut brown on the ends. Ombre, his sister had called it when she’d gotten a similar dye job the year before.
Savannah’s hair hung down to her shoulders in loose ringlets that made him want to run the silky strands between his fingers. To wrap them around his fist as he tugged her mouth to his.
Absent cosmetics, Savannah’s freshly-scrubbed, freckled skin took center stage. She was the kind of beautiful that couldn’t be achieved with a rack of designer dresses or an expensive makeup palette.
<
br /> Her natural glow was refreshing.
Seeing Savannah barefaced and fresh out of the shower felt intimate. She’d let down her guard and bared a little of her soul to him.
Blake’s heart raced and his skin tingled with a growing desire for this woman. His hands clenched at his sides, aching to touch her.
He fought back the need to taste the skin just below her ear. To nip at her full lower lip. To nibble on the spot where her neck and shoulder met.
Blake snapped his mouth shut when he realized he must look like a guppy in search of water.
“Hey.” Savannah’s eyes twinkled as she tried to hold back a grin. “Where are Sam and Benny?”
“I put them downstairs in the den. Didn’t want to torture them with the food or annoy you with Benny’s begging. One look at that sad face and I’m a goner.” He nodded toward the orange-and-white University of Tennessee shirt she was wearing. “I see the shirt fit. Kind of.”
Savannah held her arms out wide and turned in a circle, modeling his alma mater gear. “It’s a little big, but I think I made it work.”
That’s for damn sure.
The hem of the shirt skimmed the tops of her thighs and hugged her curvy breasts and hips like a warm caress.
Blake was incredibly jealous of that T-shirt. He’d give just about anything to be the one caressing those undulating curves. For his body to be the only thing covering hers.
The too-long sleeves hung past her fingertips. Savannah shoved them up her forearms. She lifted one foot, then the other, as she pulled the socks higher up her calves. Each time, she unwittingly offered a generous peek of her inner thigh.
Blake swallowed hard. The words he formed in his head wouldn’t leave his mouth.
“Smells good. What’s for dinner?” She didn’t remark on his odd behavior, for which he was grateful.
“I had some leftover ham and rice.” He turned back to the stove and stirred the food that was beginning to stick to the pan. “So I fried an egg and sautéed a few vegetables to make some ham-fried rice.”
“You made ham-fried rice?”
There was the look he’d often seen on her face. Like a war was being waged inside her head and she wasn’t sure which side to root for.
“Yep.” Blake plated servings for each of them and set them on the dining room table, where he’d already set out a beer for himself and a glass of wine for her. He pulled out her chair.
She thanked him and took her seat. “I didn’t realize you cooked. Did your mom teach you?”
Blake chuckled. “There were too many of us to be underfoot in the kitchen.”
“Not even your sister?”
Blake remembered the day his mother decided to teach Zora to cook.
“My sister was a feminist at the age of ten. When she discovered Mom hadn’t taught any of us to cook, she staged a protest, complete with hand-painted signs. Something about equal treatment for sisters and brothers, if I remember correctly.”
“Your mother didn’t get upset?”
“She wanted to be, but she and my dad were too busy trying not to laugh. Besides, she was proud my sister stuck up for herself.”
“A lesson your sister obviously took to heart.” Savannah smiled. “So if your mother didn’t teach you to cook, who did?”
“I became a cookbook addict a few years back.” A dark cloud gathered over Blake’s head, transporting him back to a place he didn’t want to go.
“Why the sudden interest?” She studied him. The question felt like more than just small talk.
Blake shrugged and shoveled a forkful of fried rice into his mouth. “Got tired of fast food.”
“I would think there’s always a place for you all at Duke and Iris’s dinner table.” Savannah took a bite, then sighed with appreciation.
What he wouldn’t give to hear her utter that sound in a very different setting: her body beneath his as he gripped her generous curves and joined their bodies.
“There is an open invitation to dinner at my parents’ home,” he confirmed. “But at the time I was seeing someone who didn’t get along with my mother and sister.” He grunted as he chewed another bite of food. “One of the many red flags I barreled past.”
“You’re all so close. I’m surprised this woman made the cut if she didn’t get along with Zora or Iris.”
This was not the dinner conversation Blake hoped to have. He’d planned to use the opportunity to learn more about Savannah. Instead, she was giving him the third degree.
“We met in college. By the time she met any of my family...I was already in too deep. A mistake I’ve been careful not to repeat,” he added under his breath, though she clearly heard him.
“Is that why things didn’t work out? Because your family didn’t like her?”
He responded with a hollow, humorless laugh. “She left me. For someone else.”
The wound in his chest reopened. Not because he missed his ex or wanted her back. Because he hadn’t forgiven himself for choosing her over his family.
Though, at the time, he hadn’t seen it that way.
After college, he’d moved back home and worked at the distillery, and he and Gavrilla had a long-distance relationship. But when he’d been promoted to VP of operations, he’d asked her to move to Magnolia Lake with him.
The beginning of the end.
Up till then, his ex, his mother and sister had politely endured one another during Gavrilla’s visits to town. Once she lived there full-time, the thin veneer of niceties had quickly chipped away.
Blake had risked his relationship with his family because he loved her. She’d repaid his loyalty with callous betrayal.
She’d taught him a hard lesson he’d learned well. It was the reason he was so reluctant to give his heart to anyone again.
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d known it would stir up bad memories.” Savannah frowned.
“You couldn’t have known. It’s not something I talk about.” Blake gulped his icy beer, unsure why he’d told Savannah.
“Then I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to talk about it.”
“That surprises me.” He narrowed his gaze.
“Why?”
“You go out of your way not to form attachments at work.”
Savannah’s cheeks and forehead turned crimson. She lowered her gaze and slowly chewed her food. “I don’t mean to be—”
“Standoffish?” He did his best to hold back a grin. “Their words, not mine.”
“Whose words?”
“You don’t actually think I’m going to throw a member of my team under the bus like that, do you?” Blake chuckled. “But that fence you work so hard to put around yourself... It’s working.”
“I don’t come to work for social hour. I’m there to do the job you hired me to do.” Savannah’s tone was defensive. She took a sip of her wine and set it on the table with a thud.
“That’s too bad.” Blake studied her. Tension rolled off her lean shoulders. “At King’s Finest, we treat our employees like family. After all, we spend most of our waking hours at the distillery. Seems less like work when you enjoy what you do and like the people you do it with.”
“Am I not doing my job well?” Savannah pursed her adorable lips.
“You’re doing a magnificent job.” He hadn’t intended to upset her. “I doubt anyone could do it better.”
She tipped up her chin slightly, as if vindicated by his statement. “Has anyone accused me of being rude or unprofessional?”
“No, nor did I mean to imply that.” He leaned forward. “All I’m saying is...you’re new to town. So you probably don’t have many friends here. But maybe if you’d—”
“I didn’t come to Magnolia Lake to make friends, Blake. And I already have a family.”
Savannah had given him a clear si
gnal that she didn’t want to discuss the topic any further, but she hadn’t shut the conversation down completely. There was something deep inside him that needed to know more about her.
“So tell me about your family.”
Eight
They’d talked so much about his family. Savannah shouldn’t be surprised he’d want to know about hers.
Not in a getting-to-know-you, we’re-on-a-date kind of way. In the way that was customary in Magnolia Lake. One part Southern hospitality. One part nosy-as-hell.
Had she not been determined to keep her personal life under wraps, she might’ve appreciated their interest.
She didn’t want to discuss her family with Blake or any Abbott. But she hadn’t gotten anywhere in her investigation. If she didn’t want to spend the rest of her natural life in this one-horse town, she needed to change her approach.
If the quickest route to getting answers was charming the handsome Blake Abbott, she’d have to swallow her pride, put on her biggest smile and do it. At the very least, that meant opening up about her life.
“I have a sister that’s a few years younger than me.”
“That your only sibling?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she like?”
“Laney’s brilliant. She’s been accepted as a PhD candidate at two different Ivy League schools. All of that despite being the mother of a rambunctious two-year-old.” A smile tightened Savannah’s cheeks whenever she talked about Laney or Harper. “Someday my sister is going to change the world. I just know it.”
“Sounds like Parker.” Blake grinned. “While the rest of us were outside running amok, he had his nose in a book. For him, being forced to go outside was his punishment.”
“Seems like his book obsession paid off.”
“A fact he doesn’t let any of us forget. Especially my mother.” Blake chuckled. “You and your sister...”
“Delaney.” No point in lying about her sister’s name. He could find that out easily enough.
“Are you close?”
“Very. Though with our age difference and the fact that we lost our parents when we were young, I sometimes act more like her mother than her sister. Something she doesn’t appreciate much these days.”