by Gemma Snow
This isn’t about that, Hollie.
It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. But her fears about coming home hadn’t been entirely due to the conversation she was going to have tonight, the one where she’d be forced to explain so many things she didn’t fully understand herself. No, so much of that fear, so much of what had kept her away for nearly a decade was thanks to this need, this terrifying want that struck her sideways every time she so much as glanced Cade’s way.
And Sawyer’s.
Fuck.
“Sawyer.” She turned from Cade’s face and that was nearly her undoing. For as relaxed as Cade looked out of his regulation sheriff’s jacket, his hair as mussed as it could be at the near military length, Sawyer had gone full bad boy. He was leaning back in his chair, feet crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head and an expression on his face that Hollie would dream about in the darkest hours of the night. The ink adorning his wrists and forearms moved with his gentle rocking and she had to swallow hard to keep from making some very rash decisions. “Sawyer, we need you on tree duty. We’re concerned about power outages and damages from both whatever the storm brings down and whatever the water runoff adds to. We may actually see some of that tonight.”
She turned toward the window and peeked outside, partially because it was her job to get a read on the weather and update her records with every change, and partially because the expression in Sawyer’s eyes had been temptation incarnate, dangerous and sinful and just as hot at Cade’s demanding gaze. No, she’d never been the type do anything by half, but this was ridiculous.
“Sure you can handle that, Matthews?” Cade asked, his deep voice pulling at something inside her. “Should we get some tinsel for all your tree trimming?”
Camilla looked bored and Sawyer only raised an eyebrow, like a centurion rounding his opponent, preparing for a showdown.
“While I’m at the store, I can pick up some flotation devices for you, just in case the water goes past your ankles,” he replied.
“Guys,” Hollie cut in. She liked a good bit of ribbing now and again and she knew all too well that both men were capable of being carefree and fun, but these barbs weren’t. They were laden with something she didn’t like and it was coming time to figure out what the fuck was going on between them.
“What do you want us to do about the East Reservoir?” Camilla asked, because thank God for women who had good heads on their shoulders. “Should we be worried about contamination?”
Hollie glanced back up at the map. The reservoir was about twenty miles away and could either be hit hard or entirely unscathed in the melee.
“I could go down and take a look, boss,” Savannah said, grabbing the map in front of her. “Rain’s not due to start for at least an hour or so.”
Hollie chewed her lip. She should let Savannah go, even though it was past dark and she wasn’t loving the idea of sending her closest friend out into the storm, whenever it was set to start.
“I’ll go with her,” Camilla volunteered. “My house is out that way, so we have a place to bunk if the storm comes early.” Hollie definitely didn’t miss the flush that spread across Savannah’s face, and that was all it took to convince her. Just because Hollie wasn’t keen on the conversation that was about to take place didn’t mean she couldn’t give Savannah a choice. And she really did need more info on the angle and proximity of the reservoir entrance to where their runoff was expected.
“Fine,” Hollie said. She picked a handful of forms out of one folder and placed them down on the table before Savannah. “These are the numbers we really need,” she said, indicating with her pen and circling a few of the relevant sections. Savannah nodded and slid the pages into her plastic clipboard.
“Grab your parka—chances are good you’re going to get wet.”
Savannah, who had been taking a sip from her bottle of water, coughed hard and Hollie had to fight to hold back a laugh. She hadn’t meant to embarrass her friend, really, but some things were too good to pass up.
“In all seriousness,” she said, her voice taking on the tone of a woman with first-hand experience of emergency situations that hadn’t been managed properly, “if the storm gets too bad tonight, I don’t want you out there. Get to the sheriff deputy’s house and hole up. And call me. It’s not worth getting injured over.”
Savannah nodded, and with one more handshake from Flores, the red-faced farm girl and the sheriff deputy beat a hasty retreat.
Leaving Hollie alone in the room with Sawyer Matthews and Cade Easton, the two men she had dreamed about, had thought about in her weak moments, had nearly come back to visit so very many times. She owed them so much more than an explanation, but how could she even offer that when she didn’t exactly have one herself?
“Okay, so if we follow protocol X6, that should be on pages ten through twelve…”
“Cut the shit, Hol,” Sawyer said. His words were rough but his tone was surprisingly soft. Even a tough guy like Sawyer wasn’t immune to good old-fashioned hurt feelings. “You’ve been avoiding me and I’m going to out on a limb and guess that you’ve been avoiding Easton too. We’ve read the protocols and we know what we’re up against.” He sat forward and put his elbows on the table in a display of masculine power that should not have caught her attention. “What we don’t know is what the fuck made you run away with your tail between your legs and never look back.”
Hollie closed her eyes, but she could hear Cade stand from his chair to lean against the table. When she opened them again, his arms were folded and he cut a large, impressive figure, all shoulders and muscles and a hell of a dangerous expression in his eyes.
“I may not agree with Matthews on much,” he said. “But I do agree with him on this. What happened, Hollie? Why’d you leave all this behind?” She heard his unspoken words—why did you leave us behind?
Because I was scared. Because I didn’t understand how I could feel so strongly for two people at once. Because I couldn’t stay if I hurt either of you, so I hurt you both instead and myself in the process.
“Why don’t we start with something simpler?” she asked. Was it her imagination, or was the storm outside starting to pick up? Surely that was the sound of rain beginning to patter against the roof of the dining hall and not her own heart threatening to escape.
Mount Manadonak. Mount Whitney. Mount Temple.
Child’s play, compared with the uphill journey she had ahead of her right now.
“Why are you guys acting like you haven’t known each other for nearly thirty years? I know you weren’t exactly close before…before. But you seem to really hate each other.”
The expression exchanged between Sawyer and Cade couldn’t exactly be described as hate. It was more the unhappy mutual allyship of two people who knew something she didn’t know, and Hollie didn’t like the sensation one bit. Hence she jumped nearly a foot in the air when the crack of thunder above their heads shook the glass around them.
For want of something to do, Hollie added a handful of logs to the dwindling fire, even though it was more than plenty warm in the dining hall and seemed to be getting hotter by the second.
“You really don’t get it, do you, Hol?” Sawyer asked. The nickname, not for the first time, made her heart feel small. She and Savannah were close, closer with every trip they took together, and she worked with many capable people, stayed in decent touch with friends from her travels around the world, folks like Dec and Micah she had known in the midst of emergency and chaos. But with Grandma long gone and Wes in small villages with far bigger fish to fry, she had few people to call her by familiar, intimate nicknames and it…
Does not make me sad, thank you very much.
“What’s there to get?” she asked, acknowledging that she could stall no longer. She moved back toward the table and placed her hands flat, arms out, as if the simple defensive pose was enough to keep a decade of demons away.
“We didn’t know why you left,” Cade put in. “Hell, we still have no
idea. Hard not to blame the people still around.” His tone was so matter of fact that it took a moment for Hollie to even register what he had meant. Her jaw dropped.
“You’ve been fighting with each other for ten years because of me?” She sagged against the table and rubbed her hands over her face. “Fuck… Fuck. I never meant for any of this to happen.” When she opened her eyes, she made eye contact first with Cade, then with Sawyer. “I know you guys have never been close, but I’m not worth fighting over. Not like this.”
Cade stepped forward and she couldn’t have ignored the power of his presence if her life had depended on it. He might have looked the prim and proper lawman on the outside, but there was a heady darkness in his eyes that called to something baser within her. She wanted to feel it, wanted to open the mystery of who he was and what made him tick, and she wanted to do it right now.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Hol,” he murmured, and God, he was so close now she could feel his breath against her neck, the scent of fresh mountain air on his skin, mired in coffee and Cade. “You’ve always been worth fighting for.”
Chapter Seven
She felt Sawyer behind her before they even touched, her body just as attuned to his presence as it was to Cade’s, though for entirely different reasons. They were like fire and water, each capable of their own brand of destruction, beauty and chaos, together, a force of wills that turned out differently every time.
“Can’t let you have all the fun, Easton,” Sawyer said, though the words were without a doubt directed at her. “Why don’t we give Hollie the choice to do with us as she pleases?” He damn near purred the word pleases and Hollie’s ability to form a coherent sentence was disappearing by the second. They were both so big and masculine and capable and she ached for touches she knew wouldn’t come. There was no doubt in her mind this was a punishment for leaving, and one she deserved, no matter how much it made her want the impossible.
“That’s…not fair.” Not the right choice of words, but the proximity of so much masculinity was undoubtedly shorting out her normally capable brain. “I care for you both, I always have.” Understatement of the century, but how on earth could she articulate what she really meant when Cade’s thigh was pressing against her own and Sawyer’s strong fingers were brushing her knuckles with such smoothness and promise that she could probably find her release from that alone?
“But you didn’t trust us,” Cade murmured. “Either of us, Hollie. You never asked. You just left. And it’s time for an explanation.”
The storm outside was raging in earnest now, lightning cracking against a black sky, rolls of thick, weighty thunder overhead, the pounding of her heart in her chest and the heat between her legs, all in tandem with the chaos of nature.
“I wanted you both that night,” she said. Half-truth, but at least she had managed it. “That night down by the lake, after graduation. I wanted you both. And it scared me.”
Scared her enough to send the woman who had skydived on her eighteenth birthday and subsequently traveled the world to mountain climb, scuba dive and perform search and rescue missions, to leave in the dead of night without a word. Because she was far from telling them everything, and ‘everything’ was an insurmountable climb.
“Obviously,” Sawyer said. He was close enough to her now that his beard brushed against her neck, and the sensation made her shiver.
“Obviously?” she managed. Was that her voice? It was difficult to tell, high as it was.
“Obviously,” Cade repeated. “But you didn’t give us the chance to find that out, did you, Hol? You went home. We thought we’d never see you again. And, naturally, we blamed each other.” He shot a dark look at Sawyer over the top of her head and Hollie took the opportunity to grasp for an equilibrium that would not come. “Still do, in fact.”
One major complication to deal with at a time.
“Wouldn’t you have been scared in the same situation?” she asked. “What would you have done if you were me? Stuck around to get rejected and have your heart broken or leave for a new life?”
Sawyer placed his hand under her chin and turned her head to face him. His dark green eyes were positively ablaze and Hollie’s breath caught.
“You could have trusted us,” he whispered. “We may not have been best friends, Hol, but we were both your best friend and you could have trusted us.”
To her surprise, he glanced over to Cade as if seeking his agreement. Even more amazingly, Cade gave a short nod, as if their years of bickering could be placed aside for this conversation, a conversation where she spoke aloud and they communicated in micro-expressions only men understood.
Before she could think further on it, a flash of lightning cut hard across the sky and all the lights in the dining hall went out, sending the room into semi-darkness. Hollie closed her eyes against the intimacy of the firelight and the soft shadows and the nearness of these two men with as many secrets as her own. Removing one sense only improved her other ones and she was keenly aware of the way Sawyer smelled, like fresh lumber and warm flannel and whiskey, aware of the heat of Cade’s muscled thigh against her own, aware of the intensity of their anticipation as if it were in neon fucking lights against the night sky.
“I did trust you,” she managed, so quietly she was surprised she could be heard over the storm. “It was myself I didn’t trust. Because when I think—”
Cade cut her off. “Do you trust us now, Hol?” he asked, not giving her the chance to walk back off the precipice. He slid his hand up her leg and that simple touch pulled Hollie’s brain far away from the conversation at hand, in a direction that should have terrified her. But, naturally, it didn’t.
“Of course,” she managed, her tone base and demanding with those simple words.
“Then don’t think,” he said quietly, and she realized that in the dark he had moved close, closer still, and he brought his lips down on her own with an intensity as strong as the storm raging outside. Hollie couldn’t help herself—she kissed him back just as intensely, all the while dragging her nails up Sawyer’s forearm, corded with muscle and power that made her ache.
I wanted you both.
Obviously.
Of course, they had to both know how this was going to end, since apparently, the entire world had known back then, and Hollie wasn’t strong enough to fight it—not now, not with the way Sawyer’s mouth felt against her throat. He trailed hot, delicious kisses along the nape of her neck that practically burned her skin. At the same time, Cade’s tongue pressed against her lips and she yielded so easily to his exploration and promise. After a moment, she pulled back slightly from Cade’s kiss, her lips swollen and her breath coming in short, desperate pants. She found Sawyer’s face and dragged him in for a kiss, and Cade took over pressing his mouth to her neck.
“What are we doing?” she asked, leaning back from Sawyer, finally finding some sense of herself in the overwhelming onslaught of pleasure and need.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Cade murmured, his mouth still hot against her skin. “But apparently some of us have to work harder if we’re going to get the message across.”
“I can give you some tips, if you’d like,” Sawyer replied without missing a beat. Hollie felt as though she were wading through molasses.
“I know what we’re doing,” she said, lacking every ounce of authoritative control she had learned at Debra Lewitt’s side over the last five years. “What I mean is, what the hell are we doing?”
“Showing you what you missed out on, Hollyhock,” Sawyer growled, his need doing something to her own she didn’t understand. “Giving you a taste of what you could have had.”
Deep down, in the part of her heart she had long locked up, Hollie knew as an irrefutable truth that a taste of these two men wasn’t going to be enough, not for a single night and not for the years of lonely ones that hovered ahead. But she had been fighting her instincts on this, fighting the carnal need that had driven her to utter distraction
, for far, far too long, and there was no resistance left, not against their heat or their promise or the way they made her feel.
“This is crazy.” Her mind was muddled and her breath was getting caught in her chest. “You guys don’t even like each other.”
“True,” Sawyer mused. “But we both like you. And unless you’re planning to kick one of us out, I think we’re both willing to take what you’re willing to give.”
“Agreed.” Cade’s voice was already rough and the sound of it had Hollie clamping her thighs together instinctually.
We both like you.
She wasn’t willing to kick either of them out. If this was going to happen, and she had all the proof in the world that it was going to happen, it had to be with both of them. It was the only way.
“We need rules.” Her words came out on a choked breath, and she could barely hear them over the drumming of her heart in her ears.
“Don’t run off again,” Cade whispered in her ear. His breath was hot against her skin and the sensation made her writhe, made her body want more, something she couldn’t have.
“No chance,” she replied, allowing her head to fall back so that two masculine, powerful forces could descend on her needy body at once.
This is madness.
Without a doubt, it was. But her breasts were tingling with need and her nipples had pebbled to hard, almost painful points behind her tank top. The heat between her legs was spreading, up her spine, her neck, making her face flush and her eyes close.
“Promise that you’ll talk to us,” Sawyer muttered against her skin. God, but the feeling of his beard, rough and thick, made her ache for the sensation between her legs. “After. Promise we’ll talk.” If she had half a mind present that wasn’t focusing on the way they two men played her body like a fiddle, she would find it interesting that Sawyer Matthews, inked-up daredevil with a chip on his shoulder, was the one who wanted to talk. But she didn’t have the presence of mind for anything so deep and she simply nodded.