by Jill Shalvis
“Grif loaded a Find My Friends app and a map, too, and I marked out all my favorite places.”
Her heart clenched. God, she loved this kid. “We’re not walking,” she promised, and called Ryan’s cell phone.
“Five days,” he said.
Like she didn’t know she had five days left to accept her full-ride scholarship to UCSD. “Not why I’m calling,” she said.
Luckily, he agreed to step up to the plate, leaving his district meeting early to meet Kate and her class in the school parking lot. The other parent drivers were loading up their cars when he arrived. He ended up with five kids in his truck—including Dustin, who immediately began playing with all the rear control panel buttons of his new car.
“Stop that,” Ryan told him, and shut the back passenger door. Standing by his driver’s door, he eyed Kate. “You owe me,” he said.
“What do I owe you?”
The kids were inside his car with the windows up, but ever vigilant, Ryan pulled out his phone and sent her a text.
“Seriously?” she asked, lifting her head and meeting his gaze after reading the obscene suggestion. “Is that all men think about?”
“Yes. And food.”
“Good. Because that’s what you’re getting. Food.”
Ryan sighed. “Fine. Pizza. Loaded. And beer.”
“Done.”
“That was too easy,” Ryan said. “I should have demanded both.”
Clearly things hadn’t worked out with the bridesmaid from Holly’s wedding. Probably it was his charm. The drive to the animal center was uneventful. The center was large, and right out front were Brady and Dell, working with a couple of horses in the pens.
As Kate ushered her class past them and inside, Jade stood up from the front desk and waved. She ran the ship here at Belle View with the same drill sergeant ability with which Holly ran her dad’s ranch. Each kid was given a lanyard with a nametag to wear around his or her neck. Jade walked them through an examination room and taught them about some of the equipment.
Then they went out back. In the big barn, they got to meet a bovine and her new calf, who were at the center for some special care after tangling with a coyote. And then Lulu the sheep, who’d just given birth to two lambs out of season.
Back outside, they found Adam in the huge open yard teaching a survival class with Griffin. They’d rigged some sort of climbing wall and were working the ropes. Adam stood at the bottom, belaying Griffin, who was thirty feet above them in the air, clinging to the inverted wall by nothing but his fingertips.
“Wow,” her class breathed in unison.
Yeah. Wow . . . Kate watched him swing and then reach for the next tiny little handhold, holding her breath until he pulled himself up with ease. She wondered if he knew she was there, and then he met her gaze, his own sparking a fire inside her.
Yeah. He knew she was there.
“I could do that,” Ryan said in her ear.
Kate turned and met his gaze. “Yeah?”
“Totally.”
“Except for your fear of heights,” Kate said.
“Yeah. Except for that.”
Dr. Wyatt brought out a big crate of kittens, eight weeks old and ready for adoption. The kids sat around the box and took turns petting and holding them. Dr. Wyatt told them that they could have first dibs, if any of their parents were in agreement.
Dustin had pushed his way to the front and was cuddling one, a black little girl with bright blue eyes who looked up at him like he was her mama. “I want this one,” he said.
“Let your parents know,” Dr. Wyatt said. “If they approve, she’s yours.”
Dustin ducked his face down, but not before Kate saw his expression. He knew his dad would never approve a kitten.
Tommy looked at Dustin for a long moment and then at Kate. “Dad would let me get one, right?”
“Shut up, Captain America,” Dustin said, and swiped his arm across his eyes.
Tommy reached out and stroked the black kitten. “If I adopted her, you could come see her every day. If you wanted.”
Kate’s heart swelled in her chest, both with love and pride. Dustin buried his face in the kitten’s fur and didn’t say anything for a long moment before giving a barely there nod.
Kate let out her breath and swallowed the lump in her throat. She thought of her dad and hoped like hell he could handle one more living creature in his house . . .
After that, Brady’s wife, Lilah, took the kids across the way to Sunshine Kennels to visit the animals there. Kate and the other parent drivers ended up in the employee kitchen with some of the staff. Dell came in and pinned Jade to the fridge for a kiss.
“Hey,” Adam said. “I’m the newlywed.”
Dell pulled back from a now dazed-looking Jade and grinned down into her face. “Just saying hi.”
Jade rolled her eyes, but still gave him a dopey smile.
Everyone but Ryan and Kate drifted out of the kitchen. Ryan handed her a bottle of water. “Figured you were thirsty. What with all that panting you’re doing over Reid.”
She snatched the bottle. “I’m not panting.”
“Drooling, then.”
She ignored this. Because okay, she might have drooled a little bit over Griffin on the ropes. She was definitely lusting. Every time she thought about Griffin and what he’d done to her last night—what he always did to her—her legs got all watery and she went damp in areas she had no business going damp in during daylight hours. “It’s not a thing.” She lifted a shoulder. “Or it’s not a real thing.”
Ryan looked at her for a long moment. There was a lot in his gaze. Affection. A touching amount of concern. And then, wariness just as Kate felt a change in her force field.
She didn’t have to turn around to know who’d come up behind her and now stood at her back. It was utterly unnecessary because her happy nipples told her exactly who it was.
“Griffin,” Ryan said.
“Ryan,” Griffin said.
Kate sipped her water like her life depended on it.
“Kate,” Griffin finally said.
Slurp . . . She couldn’t speak, not when she’d just realized that she was standing between the only two men she’d ever slept with. Ryan had been a good lover, fun and easy to be with.
But Griffin . . . Griffin was magic.
And she was sandwiched between them. A virtual hot guy sandwich. Her hands trembled a little bit, but before she could put down her bottle of water, it was taken out of her fingers by a big, callused hand and set on the counter for her.
She met Griffin’s gaze and straightened, lust immediately taking a backseat to concern.
He had a headache.
She saw it in the tight lines of his mouth, in the shadows of his eyes, and in every movement that he didn’t make.
“Well,” Ryan said. “This is a whole heck of a lot of fun, standing here awkwardly staring at each other and all, but I really should . . . something.” And then he left.
“You have another migraine,” Kate said, pushing Grif to a chair.
“Little bit.”
She moved to the freezer and found a bag of peas. She dimmed the lights. Griffin had sprawled himself out in the chair, long legs in front of him, head back, eyes closed. Stepping between his legs, she gently pressed the cold bag to his temple.
His hands went to her hips, and he leaned forward and pressed his face to her stomach.
She closed her eyes and ran her hands over his shoulders. She heard the smile in his voice when he said, “Your tummy’s rumbling.”
“It’s working at producing a new layer of mucus,” she said. “It has to do that every two weeks to avoid digesting itself.” She paused. “Everyone’s stomach has to. Not just mine.” Shut up, Kate . . .
He laughed softly as his hands slid beneath her sweater now. His rough palms brought goose bumps to her body as he headed north, stopping just short of her breasts.
“Really?” she asked, her calm voice belying her
suddenly racing heart. “You can think about sex right now?”
A low laugh gusted out of him, his breath warming her skin through her sweater as his thumbs brushed over the heavy undersides of her breasts through her bra. “I can always think about sex.”
“That’s . . . inconvenient,” she managed. It certainly was for her.
He let out another low laugh. “You mean because I’m torn between throwing up and taking you right here?”
He was talking the big talk, but there was no way he was up to anything but a very long nap. “Do you have meds?” she asked.
“Not with me. The headaches are fading. Mostly.”
His thumbs were rubbing back and forth over her upper ribs, not quite touching her breasts. Her nipples were reacting like they were going to get luckier than was possible standing here in the animal center. “What’s your pain level from one to ten?”
“Eleven,” he said calmly. “But that’s only because there’s a hot poker behind my eyeball and I can’t see out of it.”
She wanted to get him back to the ranch, but she was afraid that he wouldn’t get any TLC there from his father. She would have liked to take him home, because she happened to have plenty of TLC for him, but she also had twenty kids to think about. “You need to lie down.”
“Yeah. And you probably need to get back to the kids.”
She hesitated, and he met her gaze. “I’ll be fine.” But he didn’t remove his hands.
“Griffin—”
“You always say my full name,” he said softly, pressing his face between her breasts just as he shifted his hand northward and let his thumbs scrape over her aching nipples. “Like you’re going to put me in the corner.”
She had to lock her knees. It took her two tries to speak. “That’s not where I’m thinking of putting you right now.”
He smiled, but it faded fast. So did the color from his face.
“Oh, Griffin,” she whispered.
“You’re the only one who ever calls me that. The only one . . .” Turning his head, he kissed her breast, and then the nipple poking at the material of her sweater. When he nipped it lightly with his teeth, she gasped. He kissed it again, and then with a sigh he removed his hands from under her clothes and gave her a little push. “Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll be so fine, I’m coming over tonight to show you how fine.”
“Another date?”
His pain-filled gaze met hers. “Yeah. Another date.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t know if she could. Or should.
Another date . . . It was either going to kill her or . . .
She decided she didn’t need to worry about the or. He was sick with a migraine. He could be a big talker all he wanted, but he wasn’t immortal.
When she got outside, Ryan and Jade had the kids in the yard. Kate went straight to Adam. “Griffin’s—”
“Sick. I know.” His dark eyes met hers. “I’ve got him, Kate.”
Good. That was good. Because now she could walk away. Walking away from Griffin Reid was the smart thing to do.
And Kate always did the smart thing.
* * *
Griffin woke up at midnight in his own bed. This time there was no musical laughter from outside his window. It was pitch-black out there, and the only sound was an incredibly obnoxious chorus of crickets and a lone wolf howling his frustration at the moon.
Grif rolled over to go back to sleep and caught sight of a covered plate on his nightstand with a note attached to it. And Adam in a chair by his bed, feet up on the mattress, head back, fast asleep.
Though Grif didn’t move, Adam woke suddenly and fully from one breath to the other, calmly opening his eyes and landing them right on Grif. “You back?” he asked.
“Yeah.” His headache was gone. This one had been less intense and hadn’t lasted as long as usual. Grateful for small favors, he sat up. “How did you get stuck with babysitting duty again?”
“Maybe I just like to watch you sleep.” Adam pointed to the covered plate. “Your other guardian angel left that for you. The pretty one.”
“Kate?”
“You have a third guardian angel? No!” He sighed when Grif didn’t smile. “Yeah, Kate. She stayed until she fell out of the chair when she dozed off and I made her go home.”
Grif peeked under the foil. A homemade turkey club sandwich.
Adam clapped him on the shoulder and headed to the door. “Glad the headaches are getting better. Cuz you’re really putting a crimp in my sex life.”
Since Adam’s sex life was with Grif’s sister, this made him wince. He inhaled the sandwich, then rolled out of bed and strode to the window.
He’d slept a solid ten hours.
Also better than usual . . . He figured that could be attributed to just about anything; the passing of time, being here in Sunshine without the stress of daily military life, having friends and family, and . . . and hell, maybe it was also the yoga. In spite of himself, he smiled. It wasn’t yoga.
But he was pretty sure it was Kate.
Twenty
Kate was lying in her bed when she heard it. Something small hitting her window with a little ping.
And then again.
Sliding out of bed, she ducked low and grabbed her handy-dandy baseball bat from beneath her bed. The last time something had woken her up in the middle of the night, it had turned out to be a black bear digging through the trash Dumpster at the end of the row of townhouses.
He’d been deceptively cute and incredibly messy, spreading out the trash across the four small front yards of their building and leaving a bunch of piles of steamy bear poo while he was at it.
The bat had been useless against the bear, and she wasn’t sure what use it would be now either, other than to boost her courage.
She peeked out the window. Not a bear, but something just as dangerous.
Griffin.
He stood in the small yard, hands on hips, staring up at her. Shocked, she shoved up her window. “What are you doing?”
“Chemistry problems.”
She stared at him, straightening up in worry. “Are you sleepwalking? Did you take pain meds? Are you hallucinating? Ohmigod, did you drive yourself here in your condition?”
He flashed a smile that stopped her heart. It was rare to see him smile like that, which was probably a good thing since she could feel her brain cells sizzling and popping one by one at the sight, and she wasn’t sure how many she had to spare.
“I like your pj’s,” he said, and she looked down at the little cami and boxer shorts she wore. Not much coverage, but then again, he’d seen it all before. In fact, he’d kissed it, nibbled and licked it, teased it . . . every single inch.
“You going to come down?” he asked, the small smile still playing over his lips, though his eyes were serious, so very serious. He’d asked calmly, even easily, as if he was asking if the sky was midnight black or if it was a Tuesday.
But there was nothing calm inside of her. The man stirred her up, turned her upside down, and in general wreaked havoc on all her senses.
And he knew it.
Just as she knew that if she took this leap, there was no more telling herself this was just fun or chemistry. If she did this, the game changed.
* * *
Grif watched Kate war with herself. As far as he was concerned, she could take her sweet-ass time about it since he happened to be enjoying her snug white camisole with the tiny delicate straps very