She thought of the other night. Of his hot mouth on her breast and how good it had felt to order off his menu. He’d promised she could have sex any way she wanted it. He’d promised that when he got back, he was going to take his time.
She wanted that. No, he hadn’t come right out and said they were in an exclusive relationship or even dating, but by kissing her in her shop, he’d made everyone in town think it was true. He’d created the kind of gossip she’d tried to avoid for years. She might as well enjoy what people had her doing anyway.
Natalie grabbed a bottle of merlot out of the refrigerator and walked next door before she could talk herself out of it. She put her head down against the wind that had kicked up. Cold air lifted her hair and seeped through her sweater dress. If the whole town thought they were a couple, that meant the whole town assumed they were having sex. If the whole town thought they were having sex, why not order off the big fella’s menu?
And yes, she knew she was justifying what she planned to do. She didn’t care. She’d had a horrible day, and spending the night with Blake sounded a whole lot better than spending it alone. She was falling in love with Blake. Head over feet, and she wanted to make love with him. She wanted him to make her forget her crappy day.
The choice was easy.
The heels of her pumps tapped up the stone steps and across Blake’s porch to the door. She took a deep breath and held the bottle of wine against her chest. For a few brief seconds, she thought of opening the wine and taking a few slugs to calm her shaking hands and jumpy nerves. She didn’t have a corkscrew so she knocked on the door instead. Sparky barked from within, and through the wavy glass, she watched Blake’s big, watery outline move toward her. Her heart pounded and her mouth got dry as she frantically reconsidered her decision to walk over here. Maybe he was tired. What if he didn’t want to see her? He hadn’t mentioned wanting to see her on the paper towel note.
The door swung open and her tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth. He wore a black long-sleeved T-shirt, tight across the muscles of his developed chest. He’d cut his hair a bit shorter, more spiky on top. She liked his hair long enough for her fingers to comb through, but it didn’t matter. The man had a large menu. He looked good enough to eat, and she’d skipped breakfast, eaten a burnt roll and some green beans for dinner, and she was starving.
His gray eyes looked at her. Watching her as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of her standing on his porch with a bottle of merlot clutched to her chest.
“Hello,” he finally said.
Lord, she loved his voice. It just kind of slid to the pit of her stomach. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat and the expanding glow in her chest. Then she said fast before she lost her nerve, “And you’re right. We’re both adults and Charlotte’s at the Coopers’ until tomorrow. We have all night. I want to do what you promised.”
One brow rose up his forehead. “What exactly did I promise?”
“Really?” There was something a little different about him tonight. Something subtle that she couldn’t quite grasp. Maybe his new haircut made his forehead look a bit broader. Or maybe it was his eyes. There wasn’t the usual flash of interest in his storm-colored gaze when he looked at her. “Are you going to make me say it?”
He grinned and folded his arms across his big chest. “Oh yeah.”
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and clutched her wine tighter. “Knock boots. Bump bellies. Hot monkey love.” She could feel her cheeks burn and not from the cold. “But I still prefer make love.”
“Hot monkey love.” He tipped his head back and laughed. “No shit?”
He was acting weird. Like maybe he got hit real hard on the head during the super-secret military thing he did for a living.
“Maybe I should leave,” she said, and took a step back. Just as Blake shook his head like he wanted her to stay, a woman with dark hair looked around his shoulder.
“What are you laughing at?” the woman asked. Big blue eyes stared back at Natalie, and a long curtain of her black hair fell across Blake’s arm.
“Oh,” Natalie managed, and took a step back. The glow in her chest popped and she felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. Like she was going to be sick. Blake had company. Female company with blue eyes.
“You must be a friend of Blake’s.” She was young and beautiful and smiled like she was happy to see a woman on Blake’s doorstep.
“I’m a . . . his neighbor.” Maybe the woman was a relative.
Blake looked across his shoulder. “Hey, baby, could you get him.”
Baby? A man didn’t call a relative “baby.”
“Come in.” The woman motioned with her hand. “It’s cold outside.”
“No. Thank you.” Blake didn’t call Natalie “baby.” He called her Sweet Cheeks. Maybe he called all the women in his life by different names to keep them straight. “I’m obviously interrupting.”
“We finished an hour ago. Now we’re just watching the game.” The woman looked behind her. “Here he comes.”
Finished? Natalie about choked on the ball of pain and anger and embarrassment in her throat. She opened her mouth to tell him he was the raging asshole she’d thought the first time she’d met him, but just as the first word sputtered out, an identical copy of Blake muscled his way past Blake.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” the second Blake said. This Blake’s T-shirt was navy.
Natalie looked from one to the other. Her brain seemed to shut down and refuse to process what stood before her. “What?” was the only thought that leaked through her mental block and escaped her lips. Her ears rang and she blinked against the sudden blur at the edges of her vision. A dizzying wave tingled down her neck and chest, and the bottle fell from her hands. It smashed between her feet as the identical Blakes rushed forward.
“Natalie.” Blake carried her limp body over his shoulder. Not exactly the most romantic way to carry a woman, but the quickest and most effective. With one arm around her long legs and his other hand on her behind, he moved through his house.
“Did she hit her head?” his brother, Beau, asked as he tossed several cushions off the brand-new couch.
“I reached her first.” He sat down and carefully laid her out on the dark brown leather. Her blond hair covered part of her face and he pushed it from her cheek. “Natalie. Can you hear me?” She didn’t respond and he lightly shook her shoulder. She’d looked so pale standing on his porch. He’d watched the blood drain from her face and he’d rushed forward as her eyes rolled back. “Natalie.” He shook her lightly again. “Wake up.” It didn’t look like she was wearing anything constricting, but he ran his hands over her body and dress before he placed two fingers against the carotid pulse in her neck. “Can you hear me?”
“She’s got glass in her shoes,” Beau said as he shoved a cushion under her feet.
Blake glanced down her body and legs to her feet. Her dress looked like a long, skin-colored sweater. It hugged her body and had ridden up to mid-thigh. Red wine splattered her shins and up her legs through her thin hose. “She needs those shoes off, and those hose probably have glass in them, too.”
Beau lifted a brow as he grabbed the remote and turned off the football game they’d been watching. “You want me to take off her panty hose?”
“No.” He’d seen a hundred guys faint in his life, but watching it happen to Natalie had been scary as hell.
“I didn’t think so.” Beau’s fiancée, Stella, stood slightly behind him. Looking worried and upset. He still couldn’t believe his twin was getting married.
“Could you bring me a cold cloth?” he asked her, more to give her something to do than anything else. “Natalie, wake up.”
“Has she ever done this before?” Beau took off Natalie’s shoes and set them on the floor.
“Not
in front of me.” She looked gorgeous, in a fainted Cinderella sort of way. Or was it Sleeping Beauty? He wasn’t sure. As a kid he’d never really been into those Disney chick cartoons. “Wake up, Natalie.”
“She should be coming around any second.”
“Has it been about a minute?” He shook her again and looked into her face. She hadn’t been out long enough to worry about yet. So why did his heart pump a little harder in his chest?
“A minute, three seconds.”
“Natalie!” It seemed longer. He shook her harder and raised his voice. The next step to revive a fainter was pain. He didn’t want to do that and stared into her face, willing her eyes to pop open. “Wake up.”
“Stop that,” she whispered.
“Can you hear me?”
Her eyes sprang open.
“There you are.” He let out a breath, more relieved than he let on. “It’s good to see you.”
Confusion pulled her brows together. “Where am I?”
“At my house,” he said as Stella handed him a damp washcloth. But before he could put it on her forehead, Sparky barked and squeezed between them. The puppy licked her face and nuzzled her with his head. Blake knew how the dog felt. He was so relieved he wanted to nuzzle her, too.
“Sparky?” She lifted a hand to weakly push the dog away.
“How do you feel?” He pushed the dog behind him and lightly put the cloth on her head.
“I don’t know. What happened?”
“You fainted.” He looked in her eyes, a little glassy but clear. “Is Charlotte at home?” he asked. He didn’t believe she was the kind of mother who’d leave her child at home while she drank wine with the neighbor, but he needed to know she wasn’t sitting over there waiting for her mom and Sparky.
“She’s at the Coopers’.” She raised a hand and placed it on the washcloth on her forehead. “I fainted?”
“Yeah. Have you ever fainted before?”
“No. Wait. Once when I was pregnant.” She frowned. “How did I get in here?”
“I carried you.” Her pale cheeks made her blue eyes bluer and her pink lips pinker. “We need to take your hose off.”
She pushed the washcloth a little higher up her forehead. “Can we wait a few more minutes to get naked?”
Behind him his brother burst into laughter.
“Stop, Beau,” Stella shushed him.
Natalie turned her head and her gaze followed the sound of his brother and his brother’s fiancée. Her eyes got wide and she tried to sit up.
“Not yet.” He put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from rising. “Stay down for a bit more.”
The washcloth slid off her head and fell on the couch. “There are two of you?”
“I told you I have an identical twin brother.” He picked up the wet cloth and tossed it on an end table.
She shook her head and her gaze returned to him. “You told me you have a brother. I would have remembered if you’d mentioned a twin. Especially a twin who looks just like you.” Her face flushed, turning her cheeks and throat from white to red. “I have to go.” She pushed his hand away and struggled to sit. “I want to go home.”
He helped her sit but blocked her from standing. The last thing he wanted was for her to drop again. “I’ll walk you home in a few minutes.” He glanced over at his brother. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.” He cleared his throat and tried to hide his shit-eating grin. “She thought I was you, and she may have said some things that, upon reflection, were private between the two of you.”
It must have been something sexual. Something so embarrassing she fainted. “What things?”
“Never mind!”
He turned back to Natalie. She looked good flushed. Much better than pale. He pushed her hair behind one ear and touched her heated cheek. “You’ll tell me later,” he said, low enough so that his brother couldn’t hear.
“No.” She shook her head, and her chin brushed his palm. “I’m never saying it again.”
He’d get her to say it when they were alone. Maybe while he was pulling that dress over her head. “How do you feel?” He slid his hand to her shoulder.
“I have a little headache, but I’m okay. I can’t believe I fainted.”
“I brought you juice and an energy bar.” Stella stepped forward and handed over a cold bottle and a PowerBar.
“Thanks.” Natalie ripped off the wrapper. “I’m starving. Carla burned Thanksgiving.”
Blake unscrewed the bottle cap. “Thanks, Stella.” He handed the juice to Natalie and introduced the two women. Then he stood and turned to his brother. Their whole lives, people had mistaken them. Most of the time they laughed about it. This was not one of those times. “Natalie, you’ve met my brother, Beau. He can be a real dick.”
“Karma’s a bitch,” Beau said through a big grin. He stepped forward and reached for Natalie’s hand.
Normally Blake would agree. When he’d first met Stella, he’d let her think he was Beau, but he hadn’t made her faint.
“Hello.” Natalie shook Beau’s hand and swung her feet to the floor. “I’m sorry I fainted on you.” She looked down at her legs. “And obviously made a mess.”
“Sorry I made you faint. That’s never happened before.”
“I think it was seeing both you and your brother at the same time. My brain just couldn’t accept two Blakes without a little forewarning.” She took a bite as her gaze moved from one brother to the other. Trying to pick out the differences.
Stella laughed and folded her arms over her ULV sweatshirt. “The first time I met Blake, I thought he was Beau’s clone.”
Blake didn’t really know Stella. He’d met her only a few times. What he did know he liked, and he hoped to get to know her better in the future. Like tomorrow. He had different plans for tonight.
“I thought you were spending Thanksgiving in San Diego.”
Blake glanced at Beau, then sat on the couch next to Natalie. “That was the plan until Beau punched my dad in the head. Needless to say, that put a damper on the holiday.” And with the holiday ruined, the three of them had hopped an early morning flight to Idaho.
Beau crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I’m not going to apologize for that. He came on to Stella.”
Stella blushed and threaded her arm through Beau’s. “I could have handled it myself. I’ve handled a lot of drunk men in my lifetime.”
“You don’t have to now. That’s my job.”
Blake didn’t know how he would have handled the old man if it had been Natalie. He would have been pissed, but he wouldn’t have hit him. That’s where he was different from his brother. He understood alcoholism and Beau did not. “He always comes on to women.”
“Then someone should have knocked him out years ago.”
Beau was also less forgiving than Blake. “Finish your orange juice.” He turned to Natalie. “Then we need to get you cleaned up. You smell like a winery and probably have glass in your stockings.”
“How often do you drink with my brother?” Beau had discovered his bottle of Johnnie Walker and assumed Blake had relapsed.
“She doesn’t drink with me, Beau.” He stood and waited for Natalie to lower the juice before he reached for her hand. “Don’t grill her. She’s been through enough today.”
Beau turned to him and he didn’t need to say a thing. His expression told Blake that he was going to let it go—for now—but they would talk about it later.
Natalie set the half-empty bottle of juice on the end table and stood. “It was nice to meet you, Stella and Beau.”
“You have glass and wine in your shoes.” Blake looked down into her face and her pink mouth he’d kissed before he’d left town. He missed her mouth and the rest of her, too. He wasn’t surprised that he’d missed her. Whenever h
e traveled to third-world countries, he missed people more than things he’d left behind. What did surprise him was how much he’d missed her. How much he’d thought about her. “You have to strip out of those hose before we go anywhere.”
“Right here?”
“We’ll leave,” Beau volunteered, and put his hand on the small of Stella’s back. “We were going to check out the lake at half-time anyway.”
Blake waited until he heard the back door shut before he said, “Pull your dress up.”
Natalie’s gaze darted to the left where his brother and Stella had disappeared before she lowered her hands to the outsides of her hips. Her fingers gathered the sweater material, raising it up her thighs, inch by agonizing inch. She looked up into his face and tried to smile, and he went from semi-erect to full-blown. “Sorry about the broken glass on your porch.” Her fingers stopped. Obviously she couldn’t talk and pull her dress up at the same time. “I’ll clean it up.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that.” He reached beneath the bottom of her dress and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of her panty hose. God, he hated panty hose. They always got in his way and slowed him down. He yanked them down and took her pink panties with them. He went from full-blown to painfully hard.
“Blake!” She grabbed her underwear and pulled it up.
“Don’t waste your time pulling those up,” he said as he got down on one knee. “I’m just going to take them right back off.” He helped her out of the hose, then balled them up and tossed them on top of her shoes. He ran his hands over her smooth shins and calves looking for small cuts. “Do you feel any slivers of glass?” When she didn’t answer, he looked up at her. He looked up past her bare thighs and the pink triangle of her panties. Up her bunched dress about her waist to her face. Her lips were parted and her blue eyes were warm and wanting. Wanting what he wanted, too. He sat back on his heels and slid his hands to the backs of her thighs. “Did you behave while I was gone?” he asked.
She nodded. “I waited for you to get back to act up.”
What I Love About You (Truly, Idaho) Page 17