by Nicole Helm
It was a little bit disconcerting that the longer this pregnancy went on, the less she could stand to be away from Brandon. She liked his steady, calming presence when she went off in a worry spiral. She loved the way he would casually but not always consciously place his big, strong hand on her stomach.
That was it. He would simply lay it there, even though there was nothing to feel yet. She didn’t know why that got to her, or why everything seemed to get to her lately, but she had decided that in pregnancy, she would indulge herself a little bit.
If that meant spending the night with Brandon more nights than not, if that meant enjoying the way his hand rested on her belly, then so be it.
And if the sex remained amazing and regular, who was she to complain?
“What you grinning at?”
She looked up to find the man in her thoughts standing on the other side of the screen door.
He made such a handsome picture standing there, with the trees and partial view of the mountains forming the backdrop. He looked especially rugged in his hiking gear, his summer beard and hair neatly trimmed and kept short to his sharp, masculine face.
She still wished he’d let her put his face on their brochures, but that was a fight for another day. A day when she didn’t want to be naked with him.
“You know I love having something to plan,” she finally offered after silently grinning at him for a bit.
Brandon opened the door and stepped inside. Lilly’s heart hitched in its beat. She couldn’t help but wonder if it always would. Maybe it wouldn’t, but she would hold on to that for as long as she could.
“Sam agreed to build the altar,” Brandon said, crossing to the refrigerator and pulling out a sports drink.
“Perfect.” She knew Sam wouldn’t be able to say no, or maybe that Brandon wouldn’t give him a chance to.
“Now will you tell me the truth?”
She looked up at him as innocently as she could manage. “What truth?”
“Why you’re really agreeing to this?”
“I don’t know why you don’t believe that I came to my senses.” She flashed him her most sincere smile.
His hazel eyes only narrowed. “Because when it comes to arguing with me, you never come to your senses, love.”
“That simply isn’t true,” she replied primly.
“Okay, one time. One time you admitted I was right.”
Her smile widened, softened with affection. This baby was certainly making her a softy. “It was a really important time.”
He chuckled; she could tell it was against his will. He slid into the chair next to her. “Will still at Mile High?”
“Yes. He said he was going to spend the night there. I feel guilty about always kicking him out of his own house. But he won’t listen to me when I say he doesn’t have to stay away. It’s like talking to a brick wall.”
“You let Will give us space if he wants to.” Brandon’s large hand covered her slim one. Lilly loved the look of that. He was so brawny and strong, such a contrast to her soft, slender fingers. It made her feel protected. Which she supposed was problematic, but she’d worry about her feminist card another day.
“Fess up,” Brandon said sternly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Really. You’re not just agreeing to the wedding before the baby because of Sam, are you?”
“How on earth could Sam have any connection to me agreeing to get married sooner?”
“Because you’re worried about him, and you never let things go. You’re giving him something to do in the wedding, which makes me think this is all some plan that I will never truly understand.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“Please don’t lie to me.” He said it so earnestly that she felt a little guilty.
“I promise, it’s only the tiniest little smidgen of the reason. I mean, if we get married that soon, you never know, it might convince Hayley to get to know you a little sooner.”
Brandon sighed and shook his head. “So this is about Sam and Hayley?”
“Maybe a little, but just a little.”
“Somehow I don’t believe you,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth that made her heart pinch.
“I admit it, I started thinking about agreeing because I had thought about Sam building stuff for us and how that might be good for him, to celebrate something, even if it’s against his will. Then I got to thinking about Hayley, and how it might push her in the right direction. She seems really sweet. I think she’s just scared, so all we have to do is give her a reason not to be scared.”
“You don’t think maneuvering her into coming to our wedding is a little bit frightening?”
“Bran.” She turned her hand in his so that their palms touched, so she could link her fingers with his. “Those are only the things that got me thinking about this. But the reason I’m agreeing—”
“I can only imagine what the real reason is. Will our wedding save Gracely? Maybe cure cancer? I wouldn’t put it—”
“I love you,” she said, looking directly into his hazel eyes, pouring all the scary emotion inside her into the inflection of her words.
His careless, nearly irritated posture changed into something far more alert. Lilly knew she had to keep going if he was ever going to believe the truth.
“I had a million and one timetables in my head about the perfect time to get married. After the baby was born, with enough time to get my figure back, and just hundreds of things. I was obsessed with them, the way I obsess over details. But the more I spend time away from you, the less I want to. The more you take care of me and this baby, the more I want you to. And the more I want all that, the less I care about the perfect wedding, the skinniest me, the prettiest flowers. I want you. So maybe maneuvering Sam and Hayley had something to do with my decision, but it made me breathe, and realize that at the end of the day, all that matters is I want to be married to you. I want it to be soon, not perfect.”
“I don’t know what to say to that, Lil.”
She sniffled, irritated that she’d started crying. It was just that it was all so true. She didn’t want more time thinking and planning, which wasn’t like her at all, but she supposed when love was involved, like her had left the building a long time ago. “Well it’s all true, so you have to say you believe me.”
He wiped a tear from her cheek and leaned in and kissed her mouth. “I believe you,” he whispered against it, pulling her into his arms. “And I promise, it’s going to be as close to damn perfect as I can manage.”
She wrapped her arms around him and leaned in to the strong, frustrating man she’d fallen head over heels for. “As long as you’re there, it’ll be just what I want.”
* * *
Hayley had never done anything like this in her life. She followed the rules. She did what people asked of her. She never blatantly disregarded what someone had told her.
She knew this put her at risk. Showing up at Sam’s cabin when he’d expressly told her she could not observe his excursions for the day had disaster written all over it. But this was her new life. Her new leaf.
She wasn’t going to always follow the rules and she wasn’t always going to listen. Sometimes, when she really, truly believed in something, she was going to push. So, here she was. On the path to Sam’s cabin, at six thirty in the morning, insanely nervous and insanely foolish.
You can do this. You’re strong, and you’re an adult. Sam is not in charge of you, so you can do whatever you want to do.
Of course, she was now walking the path to Sam’s cabin with teeny, tiny little shuffle steps. But shuffle steps could still get her where she needed to be. Probably. Eventually.
She reached the end of the trail, and she could either stand there for the rest of the day, waiting for him to find her, or she could be brave. She could move forward. She could choose to be the architect of her own life.
With that determination in her head, she stepped forward into the clearing. The noise escaped her mouth when she saw Sam
was possibly not human.
He was standing outside. Shirtless. Completely and utterly shirtless. And she was fairly certain that the only thing he was wearing was a pair of boxer shorts. Short, thin, black boxers. Just . . . that.
Sam was standing there in his yard, in the very flattering early morning light, in nothing but his underwear.
“Holy . . .”
Sam looked up, clearly startled, and only then did she realize what he was doing.
He was shaving his head.
Hayley rushed forward without even thinking about it. “What are you doing? Oh my goodness, your hair.”
“What am I doing?” he said incredulously. “This is my own goddamn yard. It is six thirty in the damn morning. You aren’t supposed to be here today. What the living fuck are you doing?”
Hayley halted in her hurried progress toward him. He was all . . . manly. With his muscles and the tense tendons in his neck standing out. Only part of his hair was cut, which should’ve been some sort of turnoff, but she was really just completely mesmerized by this real-life man who looked like he could be a model. A very hairy, burly model, but a model nonetheless. Like one of those outdoor-supply-store magazine models.
Only in his underwear.
Get ahold of yourself.
“I . . . I . . .” She couldn’t make a rational sentence right now. She just couldn’t. He was so beautiful and she wanted to take in every inch of him. “But why are you cutting your hair?” She realized, now that she could see up close, that he wasn’t exactly shaving his head. There were still inches of hair left in the places that he’d gone over, but he was cutting all the long, wavy pieces off. His beard was still as bushy as ever.
“Brandon told me that some of the clients were starting to think I was a serial killer. So I thought I’d clean up. That doesn’t even begin to explain why you are here when I expressly told you not to be.”
“I just thought . . .” She took a breath and tried to steady herself. Luckily, being slightly mesmerized by his hard, muscular thighs took the place of what had once been nerves. “I thought that I should watch. Not this . . . I mean . . . the excursion.” She was fairly certain the blush had spread from her cheeks all the way to every part of her body, but she had to keep talking. Silence was worse than saying embarrassing things.
“I don’t have to do anything. I can sit at the bottom of whatever you climb and observe. I won’t be in the way, you don’t have to teach me anything. I can just watch. It makes more sense than sitting around waiting for you to have one-on-one time with me. Because that doesn’t give me the whole picture.”
“Hayley, the amount of certification you would have to get to even begin to lead a rock climbing—”
“You’re not listening to me. This isn’t about being able to lead a rock-climbing excursion. It’s about leading. It’s about seeing how you interact with other people. It’s about what you do in a big, giant abstract. If I’m really going to learn, then I need to see that.”
He glared at her. She didn’t know if it was an irritated-that-she-was-making-sense kind of glare, or a get-the-hell-off-my-land kind of glare. So she waited until he was ready to explain.
“I’m going to finish cutting my hair. I am going to trim my beard. I am going to eat my damn breakfast. And you are going to stand there and not say a single, solitary word. Do you understand?”
“Does that mean I can observe you?” she asked hopefully.
Sam all but ground his teeth together. “If you can shut up, you can follow me around all damn day. The minute you say a word that is not expressly sanctioned by me, you’re gone. Got it?”
Hayley nodded emphatically. She was not going to say a word. She was just going to observe.
He flipped the electric razor back on, and she realized that he was probably standing in the yard because he wouldn’t have to clean up the mess caused by the amount of hair being cut off. She wasn’t sure, but if she thought about why he was doing it out here, then she wouldn’t have to think about the way his arms moved as he ruthlessly shoved the razor through his hair.
She wouldn’t have to obsess over the fact that Sam covered in hair was certainly attractive, but Sam with a reasonable haircut and nothing hiding those ice-blue eyes or those high, sharp cheekbones was devastating. It was clearly a plot to render her completely speechless.
Without another word, he tugged something off the razor, then clipped some other attachment on. Then, he started using the razor on his beard. He didn’t cut off nearly as much hair from that as he had off his head, as the beard still hid his jawline completely. But his mouth was visible.
She’d never really thought much about a guy’s mouth before. Not even her college boyfriend’s. She’d kissed him, a lot, and she’d never thought long and hard about the shape of his lips. Though she’d never quite been able to get over her mother’s insistence that all sex would lead to disastrous consequences, she had been somewhat intimately involved with a man’s face before. Nothing about Sean had ever made her feel like this.
Like she was just . . . hot all over. Needy for something she couldn’t name. You can name it. It’s called lust. It’s called you want to jump him regardless of disastrous consequences.
Okay, yes, her brain had a point, but the knowledge only made her that much more jittery and hot and . . . and . . . sweaty. She was pretty sure she was getting sweaty.
Sam flipped off the razor and shook out his hair. Like a dog shaking off water, but instead of droplets of moisture, clumps of hair fell from his scalp and shoulders onto the ground below.
Possibly in slow motion.
Hayley tried to swallow, but her throat was all kinds of dry. She was pretty sure she might be panting. Maybe this was an out-of-body experience, because oh my God she had just witnessed a man cut his hair and trim his beard, and transform from kind-of-hot guy to super-crazy-hot guy.
It helped not at all when that cool blue gaze fastened on her, fierce and grumpy. “Did you eat a decent breakfast?” he demanded.
Hayley bit her lip. She’d eaten the last of a box of Cheerios, because the initial paycheck, which she really didn’t deserve, had covered her rent and late fee, but not groceries.
Sam grunted. She was beginning to recognize his grunts had different meanings. Some were I give up grunts. Some were as simple as I don’t want to talk to you grunts. And some were full-blown irritation. That one was the irritation grunt. “Come inside,” he ordered.
Hayley nodded because she wasn’t going to mess up the no-speaking rule. Even if she tried to talk, she wasn’t certain she would be able to manage it.
She scurried after him, up into his little cabin. He stepped into the kitchen, absently flicking at a still-stuck chunk of hair on his shoulder.
“I’m going to—”
Before Hayley could think better of it, she reached out to brush the piece of hair off him. Her fingertips grazed not just the chunk of hair but the smooth, cool texture of the skin on his shoulder.
It jolted through her, a surprise since she hadn’t quite meant to touch him, and when her gaze flicked to his, he was staring right at her. That was another jolt. Hot and almost painful, scary definitely, but somehow . . .
Exhilarating. Somehow, she wanted more. More of that jolt and those eyes and his skin. Even with his incredulous stare, she couldn’t seem to pull her fingers from his shoulder. His skin was remarkably smooth, even though she felt the way his iron-hard muscles tensed underneath. Sean hadn’t had muscles like that. He’d been tall and wiry.
Not big. Not burly. Decidedly not bearded and cut and . . .
Had she taken a breath in the last thirty seconds?
She had the briefest thought she might swoon, like some old-school romance heroine. She was feeling a little dizzy, and she finally understood that whole weak-in-the-knees expression.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Which was good, she realized, as she belatedly remembered the no-speaking rule.
Finally, Sam stepped aw
ay, since apparently her hand wasn’t going to move. It still hovered there, in the air between them, and Sam stared at it, so she did too.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled, only he didn’t sound mad so much as strained. “Ever.”
“What if you’re bleeding on the side of the river or something?” she asked, somehow finding her voice, finding the strength to pull her hand back and curl her fingers into her palm.
Her hand was hot, her face was hot, everything about her was hot and jittery, and somehow she managed to meet the blazing fury of his gaze.
“No talking. No touching. Do not make me say it again.” Then he stormed away, into the little room she thought must be a bathroom. The door slammed shut.
And Hayley . . . Hayley found herself smiling. Because it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she’d had some kind of effect on him.
At least it was something.
Chapter Ten
Sam was suddenly very aware he was in his underwear. Why her touching him relatively innocently would make him aware of that, was sick and he didn’t want to contemplate it. He would rather storm into the bathroom and be a grumpy motherfucker.
He flicked the water on, not bothering to wait for the rudimentary water heater to kick in. He washed the hair off his body in frigid water, completely ignoring the state of his erection. Because he didn’t have one. He was not attracted to Hayley, and he certainly got no sort of . . . anything from her touching him. Because that would not only be wrong, it would be sick and twisted, and wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
He dried himself off and got dressed, every muscle in his body tense. This was the last thing he needed. He was supposed to have a nice, calm morning, and then a full day of excursions. Tough rock climbing and challenging, painful, mind-numbing work. It was supposed to make him feel better.
Now, instead, he had Hayley Winthrop sitting at his kitchen table after touching him. Touching him. With cool, slim hands that he wanted to . . .
No. He didn’t want to do anything with her hands. He wanted nothing. Nothing from nobody. He hadn’t had sex in years and he was fine.