by Maria Luis
Then she was gone, her bare butt flashing him again as she slipped into her room and closed the door.
Only when he heard the lock turn over did he smooth out the note. The Rosedale logo was imprinted across the top. The sheet itself had clearly been ripped straight from a hotel notepad, and Reese focused his tired eyes on Daisy’s handwriting.
It was crisp and bubbly, and in every way possible screamed Daisy Mae.
He skimmed down, eyes stopping on the first line.
Dear Insufferable You.
His blood went cold, and all traces of laughter fled his body. Was she playing a joke on him? Had the first letter actually been directed to him, like he’d originally thought?
Reese’s back made contact with the wall, just on the other side of his door. In the dim hallway light, he brought the note up to his face so he could make out the words. Although with an opener like that, he was tempted to rip the sheet to shreds.
“Just read it,” he ordered himself. Everything in his body seesawed—his heart, his lungs that just wouldn’t draw enough air, his stomach, which felt like he’d spent the last twenty-four hours on the boat he kept docked near his house.
He forced himself to stare at the words. To read them.
Dear Insufferable You,
As is becoming common with my letters of late, I’ve given up any hope of making this funny—I hope you’ll forgive me.
Confession: it may not be funny, but I can promise some heartfelt truths. I hope you’ll accept the trade, though I think I get the better end of the bargain.
There’s no way I could have ever anticipated you. After my less-than-stellar past, I was determined to keep on the straight and narrow. No deviations, not even for my boss, who just so happened to have an impenetrable shell.
I spent years trying to break through your veneer. I wanted your smiles. I craved the sound of your laugh. More than anything, I refused to be the person who let you down.
In my past, I’ve always been the failure. The girl who never gets to home base—in more concise words, I never finish what I begin. Ever.
Meeting you was both the best and worst thing to ever happen to me.
The worst, because there had to be a reason for why I dropped everything to stay at the office if you asked me. Especially if you were there, too. The worst, because I’m fully aware that those hours spent with you ruined me for anyone else . . . both for employment and also for a relationship.
The best, because there is nothing that trumps meeting your gaze after we’ve checked off yet another project, another house, together. Success tastes so much better with you at my side. The best, because with you, I learned what it meant to crave someone else’s happiness more than my own.
I’m tired of fearing that I’ll lose it all if I take a risk.
It’s time that I live my life on the edge . . . but I have just one stipulation.
You’ve got to catch me if I fall.
And then do me a favor—don’t let me go.
Reese wasn’t aware of banging his fist on Daisy’s door. He was barely aware of the letter clutched in one hand as he waited for her to answer.
One . . .
Two . . .
Three . . .
The door creaked open with a whine of dry hinges, revealing Daisy to him for the second time in the span of an hour. With her back to the room, the shadows completely concealed her expression.
He took a risk.
Lived life on the edge.
Bending at the knees, Reese wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her up into his embrace, bridal-style. The sole of his foot connected with the door, and it thudded shut a half-second later.
He’d waited years for this moment.
Secretly, he feared that if he blinked, it would all be gone the moment his lids popped back open.
The backs of her thighs hit the bed first, followed by her perfect butt, the smooth expanse of her back, all still hidden within the fuzzy bathrobe. Her hands latched onto his biceps, and she craned her neck, face tipped back to meet his gaze.
“Are you going to kiss me?” she breathed out, and it took every ounce of control that Reese possessed not to pounce on her.
He’d do more than kiss her, if she let him. He’d spend the rest of his life showing her that this between them was not a mistake. It never would be one.
Slipping his hands up her calves, he stopped just above her knees. The bathrobe had loosened at her neck, the flush on her chest now highlighting the crests of her cheeks. Man, she was beautiful to him. He flexed his fingers as disbelief filtered through him.
If they did this, there was no going back.
“Why,” he rasped, “why change your mind now?”
Daisy visibly swallowed, then averted her gaze. Reese wasn’t having any of that—breaking contact with her right knee, he gently cupped her face, silently encouraging her to be brave. Don’t look away.
Her uneven breath wisped across his thumb. When she looked at him, there was no mistaking the turbulent emotion in her dark eyes. “You took a leap of faith,” she whispered, surprising him when she wrapped a hand around his wrist and twisted her head to press a kiss to his palm. Reese shuddered. “You took a risk, not knowing how I felt in response, and I let fear rule me. Fear has always ruled me. I’m tired of it.” Another kiss, this time as her lids briefly fell shut. “I was content to spend the rest of my life just being grateful to work with you every day, to know that I hadn’t lost you completely. And then I wondered why, you know?” Almost fiercely, she dropped her other hand from where it clutched at her bathrobe to set it on his naked thigh. “Why am I always so okay with hiding? I hide behind a computer screen with Love Letters Unrestricted. Once upon a time, I hid behind the role as manager as I watched everyone else get up on that stage, even as I itched to do the same.”
Drawing in a deep breath, she added, “I don’t want to hide anymore, Reese. I don’t want to pretend that I’m okay with life passing me by while I’m not even on the sidelines but camped out under the bleachers.”
If someone had told him last week that he’d be straddling Daisy Mae while she opened her heart to him, Reese would have laughed in their face. But now that she was here, splayed out beneath him like a feast, her worries and hopes battling it out in the furrow of her brow and the tick in her jaw, he never wanted to let her go again.
His hand went to her neck, thumb brushing the underside of her chin as he dipped low to whisper by her ear, “Tell me what you want, Mae. Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”
Beneath his palm, he felt her swallow.
Around his hips, he felt her leg loop around him.
In his ear, he heard her speak: “I want you, Reese. I’ve always wanted you.”
There were no more words needed after that.
He shifted his head, angled hers, and then closed his mouth over hers. His chest inflated with a sharp breath and only one thought, finally.
Daisy’s hands rose to cup his face, as though she were worried he’d leave her there on the bed.
Not in this lifetime. Not in the next, either.
He sipped from her lips, a soft kiss that he’d remember for the rest of his life. “God, Mae,” he muttered, dragging his lips to kiss her cheek, her brow bone, that sensitive spot behind her earlobe. “I’ve wanted this. Dreamed of you.”
Her hand landed on his bare shoulder blade. “What are you going to do about it?”
Reese’s gaze flicked up to hers. Her mouth twitched with the beginnings of what he knew would be a saucy grin. Lucky for him, he had the upper hand—literally.
With a hand to her neckline, he teased pulling the fabric aside.
“This,” he said, and as she gasped beneath him, he made do on his promise.
Chapter Twelve
“Whose bright idea was it to knock down that wall?”
Reese cut a glance to his cousin-in-law, Lizzie, who stared, bewildered, at the mess that the storm had wreaked over Fortune’s Bay just last nig
ht. To her left, Gage stood with a ball cap pulled down low over his forehead, and Reese had no doubt that his cousin would throw him under the—
“It was Reese’s idea.”
Daisy.
Feeling his chest warm at her entrance into the Victorian’s dining room, he turned to her with a grin. “To be fair, I didn’t predict all that rain.”
Dressed in a simple pair of jeans and a flannel button-down, Daisy teased, “So there is something that you don’t excel at—determining the weather.” She eyed the sea beyond the room. “And choosing the best day to start your next demolition project.”
Everyone laughed, even Gage, who’d one-hundred percent egged Reese on the day before just to “take a swing and see what happens.”
Honestly, Reese couldn’t find it in himself to feel embarrassed. Yesterday’s demolition project had ended with Daisy in his bed. No way would I trade last night for anything, he thought, as she took him in a hot onceover.
“You’re wearing a flannel shirt,” she said, her fingers tugging on her own shirt. “Good timing.”
The shirt had been the first one he’d found upon walking into his house this morning, showering, and eating a bowl of cereal, standing up by the kitchen sink. He hadn’t been home more than an hour before he was backing the truck out from the driveway and heading straight toward the docks to catch a ride to Shelter Island.
Once he’d been two-feet on the boat, he’d sent Daisy a short text: Meet me at the house.
Her reply had come in seconds: You got it, boss.
Then another one on the heels of the first: I can’t wait to see you.
He’d laughed at that.
And he’d still been laughing by the time he had pulled up at the Victorian and found Gage and Lizzie already standing in the dining room, staring out at the open waters, the both of them grinning from ear to ear.
Although they hadn’t shared the reason behind their smiles, Reese wasn’t an idiot. From the way his cousin kept staring at his wife’s belly in awe, he figured there might be a new Harvey baby entering the world in a few months.
Reese had hope that he’d look as sucker-punched as his cousin one day—hopefully, with Daisy at his side.
With a hand to her currently flat stomach, Lizzie jerked a thumb over her shoulder to point out the window. “I was just telling Gage that it would be so awesome if you built some sort of glass atrium off of this room. Glass floors, glass walls, a glass ceiling. Imagine the view that would come with something like that.”
Gage kissed his wife’s head. “My wife thinks like a photographer first.”
“Gage! Don’t say that—” She made a move to swat him in the arm, but her hand froze in motion. “Wait? What did you say?”
Reese’s cousin threw back his head, laughing. “Sweetheart, you have got to get your head out of the gutter.”
Lizzie’s face turned crimson. “It totally wasn’t in the gutter.”
“I can see where you’re going with that,” Daisy said in that cheerful, familiar way of hers. “I mean, with the sunset filtering in, it’d be a really romantic setting . . . if you were into that sort of thing.”
“Which she is.” This time, Gage had to release Lizzie to avoid the sledgehammer of her fist. His laughter rang through the room, mingling with the chirping birds just outside the house, and Reese moved toward Daisy.
“What about you?” he murmured in her ear, “you into that sort of thing?”
“Anddddd, that’s our cue to go!” Lizzie saluted them both, then snagged her husband by the arm. “We’ll wait for y’all outside. Give you guys a few minutes to chat before we beg one of you for a ride to the airport.”
Darting out into the front foyer, they slammed the dining room door shut, and Reese instinctively cringed, breath held as he waited for the house to crumble down around them.
That’d be just his luck.
With Gage and Lizzie out of sight, Daisy stared up at him. Or, more accurately, she stared at his mouth. “Would it be too presumptuous if I asked for a kiss or should I wait until after office hours?”
Reese had no plans to wait.
He hooked his hands behind her head, slipping them down until he could cradle the weight in his palms. She wasn’t tiny, but still shorter than him, and she stood on her toes as he dipped to meet her more than halfway. Perfect, he thought as their mouths collided.
Her hands went to his sides, leaning into him as she stretched as tall as she could possibly go while wearing tennis shoes. It’d be all too easy to haul her up into his arms and press her against the wall, her legs looped around his waist, but he’d had her come out here to Shelter Island and to the Victorian with more than just a kiss in mind.
Tearing his mouth away from hers, her whimper in his ear was by far the most erotic sound he’d ever heard. “Later,” he grunted, “I’ve got to give you something first.”
She rocked back onto her heels, hands still on his sides. “Please tell me you aren’t firing me.”
“Hell no.” The words slipped out harsher than he’d intended, but he loosened up when he saw relief dart across her beautiful face. “I mean, no way am I letting you go. Actually, I had a different plan in mind.”
Her brows lifted. “Oh?”
Much as he hated to step away, Reese backed out of her embrace to snag the manila folder he’d left propped up on an old chair that the prior owners had forgotten. “I was thinking, if you wanted, that I’d like to bring this house back to life.”
She gifted him with a husky laugh that heated him like a steaming mug of coffee. “Wasn’t that the plan? To turn this place into a residence?”
It was time to take a risk. Live life on the edge all over again.
“I want this to be my house.”
There was a moment of complete silence, and then Daisy was glancing up at the ceiling, checking out the walls (and the missing one), studying the remaining furniture that looked like it might crumble if someone even laid a finger on it.
“You’re a glutton for punishment, Reese Harvey,” she said, though he could hear the teasing lilt in her tone. “And it’s just like you to want to tackle a project that could be the end of you.” She glanced at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes bright. “Like you did with me for the last three years.”
Reese closed the distance between them. “Loving you wasn’t the end of me, Mae.” To meet his gaze, she had to tip her head back, back, back, and he took advantage by swooping down low and stealing a kiss. “I would have waited another three years to experience what we did last night.” He nipped at her bottom lip, then soothed the sting with his tongue. “And I’ll wait forever if that’s how long it takes for you to realize you love me too.”
Her fingers curled into the belt loops of his jeans. “You don’t have to wait forever.”
He ignored the leap of his heart in his chest. “No?”
“Just another few days maybe.” She laughed, and Reese did too because they both knew she was full of BS. “Okay, maybe just twenty-four hours.”
Reese’s fingers went to the top button of her flannel. “Don’t make me hurry up the process with some fine persuading skills.”
Below the belt, he felt her fingers twine with the belt loops even harder. In a breathy voice, she murmured, “Well, if that’s your bargaining chip . . . forty-eight hours it is.”
The second button of her shirt popped free.
“You sure you want to play this game?”
The smile she gave him was one of pure joy. “Seventy-two hours.”
“Hey!”
Reese and Daisy jumped apart at the shout. With a quick glance at each other, they moved as close to the edge of the room as they could without taking a risk that really would put their lives on the edge.
With an arm crossed in front of Daisy like a bar, Reese stuck his head out to see Gage and Lizzie about twenty feet below staring up at them.
“Did you tell her yet?” Lizzie called up.
“Tell me what?” Daisy
said, her fingers finding purchase on the back of his jeans as though she had the strength to reel him back to safety, if it came down to that.
Reese grimaced. “We were busy!” he called down, only to see his cousin and Lizzie exchange knowing glances. “That’s not what I meant, y’all! We were just—”
“Debating on when I would tell him that I love him.”
His head snapped to the right, eyes narrowing on Daisy. “I was kidding,” he muttered, “you can take as long as you need. I’d never push you into it.”
Daisy tugged on his jeans, then fisted the fabric of his flannel, pulling him down for another kiss. “Dear Insufferable You,” she said, “although it’s probably in my best interest to let the boss know that you’ve been crossing some boundaries lately”—he snorted; she grinned—“I think I’d rather just tell you this: I love you, Reese Harvey.”
His heart rate went into triple time. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He flicked his gaze over to stare out into Fortune’s Bay, a town he’d never visited but had stumbled across on the internet while searching for places to visit in Florida. He’d read about how the seaside town had a long streak of bringing lovers together by fate.
Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was nothing but a random series of events that had brought Daisy into his life.
“I love you, too,” he murmured, cupping her face for another kiss.
Below them, he could hear Gage and Lizzie demanding updates on whether Daisy had fessed up. But that knowledge was just for them, just for now.
Until tomorrow, when he’d put every worker he had into building them a glass-surrounded atrium.
Epilogue
Two months later …
Dear Insufferable You,
We have a problem. You stole the last slice of provolone cheese out of the fridge this morning. Barriers, Reese, what did we talk about barriers? The cheese is off-limits!
Love,
Daisy