“I don’t know what they think. I don’t care what they think. I don’t know why you do,” Gray replied evenly. “But you do, so here we are.”
Abby knew exactly why she cared what people thought, and it was mostly because she didn’t like the things she was sure they were thinking. About her. But she didn’t want to say what those things were out loud. Not to Gray. Not when she’d much prefer to pretend he wasn’t thinking all those same things himself. She’d come close enough to putting it all out there on Thanksgiving.
And besides, the man was looking right at her. He knew who she was and what she looked like. If there was anyone to blame for the tide of gossip she was sure might sweep them both away any moment, Abby knew it was her. She was the one shameless enough to marry a man who could do so much better because he’d asked her a few days after burying his father. She would have to live with the small town judgment on that.
When she didn’t say anything, Gray’s mouth crooked. “I think we’re done here.”
“Done?”
“My daughter, who it turns out is a whole lot more devious than I ever gave her credit for, tells me that she and your grandmother and those friends of yours arranged everything.”
“The party, you mean.”
“The party, yes. But they also got us a room. Here.”
“A room?” Abby was suddenly so aware of her own heartbeat it was shocking that she could hear anything else. “But … we agreed we would go straight back to the ranch because you’ll have things to do in the morning.”
“There will always be things to do.” Gray’s hand seemed tighter around hers when she knew—when she could see—that what he actually did was loosen his grip and look down at the ring he’d put on her finger. “But there’s a reason I have a foreman. He can handle things one morning.”
“Oh. Well.” She was flustered and her heart, and she’d never wanted to take that long, long ride out into the Everett fields so much before in her life, to win more time. When it had been all these years and surely that was more than enough time for anyone. “I’ve always wanted to spend the night at this hotel. Haven’t you?”
“You’re not getting my point,” Gray drawled, laughter dancing in those dark eyes of his and making her pulse speed up, which really shouldn’t have been possible. “We’re standing here in this party when we could be upstairs. Right now. In a room with a bed, which I guarantee you is nicer than a freezing cold yard on Thanksgiving afternoon with nothing around but dirt.”
Sex.
He was talking about sex.
With her.
With. Her. At last.
Abby was afraid that maybe she’d died. Died and came back, only to die again, because she couldn’t quite take it all in.
But maybe that was the point. She could stand here and continue to think about sex, and specifically sex with Gray Everett, the way she had for years. The way some part of her clearly wanted to continue doing forever.
Or she could claim her rights as a married woman, and do it.
That trembling thing inside her was still there and going strong. But she didn’t mind. Holding onto Gray’s hand, looking up into that direct, dark gaze, was a lot like finding Hope and Rae at the bottom of the farmhouse stairs this morning.
Pure joy. Sheer relief.
And the promise of something better.
She ignored her wild pulse and the voice in her head that urged her to break away and do another round of polite conversations she’d already forgotten. “You’re talking about consummation.”
His smile was still so unexpected. Especially when it flashed over his face the way it did then, as pure and fierce as the Colorado sun. “I believe I am.”
“In some places a marriage isn’t really legal until it takes place.”
Gray’s smile widened. “So I’ve heard.”
“I don’t know if Colorado is one of those places,” Abby said primly. She drew herself up straight, holding that gaze of his as if her life depended on it. “But I suppose we’d better go ahead and make sure that we’re as legal as possible.”
12
Gray couldn’t bring himself to drop Abby’s hand.
They said their goodbyes and left Martha and the rest of the town to their celebrating. Gray was well aware that the real reason he was prepared to leave the ranch in hands other than his own for the first time in about a decade—not to mention, his daughter with her uncles—had a lot more to do with the bed he knew waited for them upstairs than any particular recognition of his newly married state.
He was a man, after all.
Though it occurred to him when he and Abby stepped into the gold-plated old elevator in the lobby and left the crowd behind them that he’d had some doubts on that score over the years. He hadn’t meant to become a monk, but he had. He hadn’t meant to bury himself on his land before it was his time, but he’d done that too.
He’d married Abby because he wanted a wife. A good wife, a mother for his daughter, and a decent marriage that they could roll on into the future. A marriage for the right reasons that would let future Everetts become stewards of the land, not prisoners of it.
But tonight wasn’t about that, he admitted to himself as the elevator slowly rose.
Tonight was about Abby.
It was about the way she looked at him with all that wonder and heat in her gleaming eyes that made him so hard he felt like a fifteen-year-old all over again.
The elevator chugged its way from one floor to the next as if it was taking the time to tour through its own long history as it went. Gray felt the weight of what they’d done in the courthouse, and what they were about to do, thank God, sitting on them both a little too heavily. Abby stopped looking at him once the elevator cleared the second floor. She was staring down at the floor as if she’d never seen her feet before and was unduly fascinated by them.
“I had the hands pick up your boxes,” he told her.
She jolted as if she hadn’t been expecting the sound of his voice. He could admit that had come out on the abrupt side, but it was better than the thick silence that pressed at him.
When she looked at him again, her cheeks were rosy. “Thank you.”
“I want to make moving in as seamless as possible.”
She nodded, though he noticed she wasn’t quite meeting his gaze. She was looking slightly to one side. “I appreciate that.”
If he’d been calmer, he might not have been able to feel his pulse in his sex the way he did then. Insistent. Demanding.
He was half afraid she could hear it too.
The other half wanted her to.
“Your mother didn’t cause any trouble today,” he heard himself say, because apparently this woman was the only thing on earth that could turn him chatty. “I was waiting for her to—”
“Can we not talk about my mother?” Abby asked softly. “Please?”
Gray studied her for a moment. There was color on her cheeks, yes. But there was also something hectic in her gaze that seemed wired directly into him. As if she could feel that pulse in him. As if they were both locked into that same insistent, demanding rhythm.
He nodded.
They traveled the next two floors in silence.
When they arrived on the top floor of the hotel, the elevator doors slid open and Abby stepped out. She hesitated in the hall until Gray caught up to her, his hand dropping to the small of her back naturally. As if they’d walked like this a thousand times before.
He kept having the nagging sensation they had. Or they should have.
It made even more sense that he’d married her, he told himself, shaking off the odd sensation. He liked that they fit, that was all. He didn’t have to stoop, and it surprised him how good that felt.
Especially when he knew what they were heading off to do in all the Grand Hotel’s hushed luxury.
This was why he would never have done well picking up women in bars. There was something about walking down a quiet hallway with a woman when both o
f them knew exactly what they were going off to do. He expected the anticipation and greed of it would shift as time went on. It would hopefully become a part of the fabric of the life they built together. But tonight, here, he and Abby didn’t know each other that well.
And still, they were on their way to a hotel suite for sex.
Gray really didn’t understand how or why people did this casually.
Their suite was at the end of the hall. Gray unlocked the door with hands that looked steady yet felt shaky, but when Abby went to step in ahead of him, he stopped her.
She frowned up at him. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just did it.
Gray bent, then swept her into his arms, lifting her high against his chest.
All the air went out of her in a whoosh. With a little laugh on the end. A whole lot like no one had ever picked her up before.
“You’ll give yourself a hernia,” she said, but she was breathless.
“I doubt that very much,” Gray murmured, because he wasn’t breathless.
Just needy. Hungry.
And more of each with every second.
He carried her over the threshold of the hotel room, but he didn’t put her down on the other side. He kept hold of her, taking in the suite’s old world furnishings without stopping to admire them.
He didn’t stop until he found the bedroom and could set her down near the foot of the big king bed.
She was trembling, and his heart tipped over inside him.
“You okay?” He didn’t sound like himself. He sounded gruff and soft and something else entirely.
Abby’s eyes looked too big, suddenly. She swallowed, visibly, then pressed her lips together as if she was trying to figure out what to say.
And for a moment Gray let himself enjoy her.
He hadn’t known what to expect when he was waiting for her this morning. But the moment he’d seen her get out of her friend’s truck, he’d felt a rush of something too powerful to be simple relief that she’d actually showed up to their unorthodox wedding.
It wasn’t that he was relieved, though maybe he was. It was more that she was so … right, there with the Colorado sunshine painting her bright and gleaming. Or maybe that was just Abby.
Her dress was a deceptively pretty thing that suited her perfectly. It was an ivory column with no adornment, which was perfect because she didn’t need any. The dress didn’t call attention to itself. It brought attention to her instead.
Those bright eyes of hers, shining like gold. That mouth he wanted to taste a lot more deeply tonight. And the hair she’d done up in pretty curls, hanging down to her shoulders and reminding him that she was more than a convenience. She was a woman.
Gray was a lucky man.
He lifted his hand to marinate in his luck, but she stiffened.
“I have something to tell you,” she blurted out.
“That sounds alarming.”
Though he wasn’t alarmed. Not really. This was Abby.
“It’s not alarming.” She considered, while her eyes darted around like she was panicked. Or trying not be panicked. “It’s mostly embarrassing.”
“Are you drawing out the suspense on purpose?”
She let out a sigh. He watched her chest rise as she took what was clearly meant to be a deep, steadying breath.
“I’ve never done this before.”
She tensed as if anticipating some kind of response.
“Well, Abby, I did actually know that.”
“You did?” She looked horrified. “Does it … You mean, by looking?”
He frowned at her. “Not that it would have been a deal breaker if you’d been married before, but I know you haven’t been.”
“Oh.” The deep red color on her face deepened. “Married. I am … I’m not talking about marriage, Gray.”
“Then I’m still in the dark.”
He knew, somehow, that she wasn’t about to confess to an opioid addiction. Or a selection of secret boyfriends she refused to give up. Or a bunch of kids she hadn’t mentioned before. It probably wasn’t gambling debts or ruinous credit card balances, because he didn’t see Abby holding on to those kinds of secrets when she lived at home with her grandmother and spent her days so visible in that coffee shop. Someone would have whispered something. That was how it went. He would have had an inkling.
Even if she were harboring all of those secrets at once, he doubted she would be confessing like this, standing there in front of what he had every intention of making their marital bed.
Not that it mattered. Gray would deal with it, whatever it was.
“This,” she said, with more urgency and a fresh wash of red all over her face and down her chest. She nodded toward the bed in question, then looked back at him. Nervously. “I’ve never done this before.”
Gray stared at her. Then blinked.
“I’m sure you think there’s something wrong with me now,” Abby said hurriedly, and now she was gripping her fingers too tightly in front of her. “There’s not. I mean, I wouldn’t know, necessarily. But I never felt there was something wrong with me. I didn’t … It never seemed…”
She was sounding more frantic with every word, and Gray reached over and tugged one of her hands away from the knot she was making of the pair of them and held it.
“I don’t think anything’s wrong with you.”
But he was afraid there was something wrong with him. He was very possibly having a heart attack. That was what it felt like, primitive and dark and insane. It was like something in him roared from the inside out. He’d never felt anything like it before.
Possessive.
Bordering on savage.
Because he could hardly believe his ears, and he really, really wanted to. She was all his.
No one had ever touched her, or would ever touch her, but him.
It was a gift he hadn’t seen coming, and wasn’t sure he knew what to do with. Well, except all the obvious things repeatedly—if on a less intense rotation than he’d initially imagined.
“Well, maybe I think there’s something wrong with me. I didn’t want to, you know, jump in and try to fake my way through. And maybe it’s an obvious thing anyway, and you’d see it, and then you’d know—”
“Abby.” He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand and waited until she breathed steadier, her gaze glued to his. “I have this.”
He could feel fine tremors winding through her, one after the next. He pulled her closer and moved with her, backing her toward the bed until she could sit. Until she had to sit.
He stood there a moment, not quite between her legs, looking down at her as if he’d never seen her before.
Maybe he hadn’t.
She had to tilt up her head farther than usual, and Gray fit his hands to her cheeks, reveling in the softness. The heat.
“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” Abby whispered, and he felt that pressure against his ribs again. Harder.
“How could you disappoint me?”
She gave a jerky sort of shrug, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. He could see all that emotion and apprehension in her face. Her gaze. The way she was trying to keep her lips from trembling.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m a traditional kind of guy. I don’t think it’s weird you waited for marriage. I like it.” He brushed his thumb over one cheekbone, then the other, and told her something no one else knew. “So did I.”
Abby looked at him in disbelief. “You mean … You can’t mean…?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Both times.”
Her lips parted as if she couldn’t take that in.
Gray didn’t know how the practical exercise he’d been expecting had tipped over into something that felt a whole lot more sacred. But he didn’t question it.
He leaned down until he could get his mouth close to hers.
“You really don’t mind that I’m the oldest living vi
rgin west of the Mississippi?” she whispered, there against his lips, as if she were asking him if he believed in Santa Claus.
He wanted to laugh, but there were too many intense things in him then, fighting for supremacy. All the ways he wanted to taste her. All the ways he wanted to touch her. Learn her. Know her.
All the ways he wanted to celebrate this woman and all the gifts she was giving him, but this one particularly.
This one he couldn’t believe he got to unwrap, right here and right now.
“I don’t mind it at all,” he told her, so gruff he didn’t sound like himself and far past caring.
Then he proved it with a kiss.
13
Abby hardly knew what to do with herself.
Rae and Hope’s sex talk had kicked her anxiety about her virginity into high gear. Every step she’d taken down this hallway toward the hotel’s honeymoon suite had felt as if she was walking straight into her own humiliation.
She kept playing it over and over in her head. What might happen. How terribly wrong it could go. What he might do or say or how he might look at her. It was all a kind of blurry mosaic in her head, cobbled together from books and movies and television shows, and all the things she’d overheard over time. All the ways pretending she’d had sex before could humiliate her and ruin her marriage before it started.
Not to mention, it was a lie. A lie of omission, but still a lie.
A practical, dependable, appliance sort of woman would never dream of doing nothing but hoping it all worked out the way it was supposed to. Kissing had been one thing. She’d figured that out all right on the fly, but it wasn’t the same. Even she knew that.
Abby could handle anything, including every horror story she’d heard about deflowering as if virgins were recalcitrant garden projects, except Gray’s disappointment.
Gray being disappointed in her might kill her.
Then he’d picked her up, which had sent her head spinning. Because it was so unexpected. Because it was romantic. No one had ever picked her up, not since she’d been a baby. She was too tall. Too solid. Too … something. She’d spent all of high school watching the petite girls get picked up and carted around by their boyfriends, twirled in the hallways, even bench pressed in one memorable history class. She’d always wondered what that would be like. Would she squeal and carry on? Would she pretend to beat her fists and kick? Or would she go supple and boneless and smug-eyed?
A True Cowboy Christmas Page 16