Asher: Okay, right.
Charis: But as soon as you do something you're scared of, you've, like, instantly transformed it. Because the result defines the act.
Asher: Eh…how's that work?
Charis: Well, see, there are two possible outcomes. One, your "act of courage" results in your getting your ass kicked, in which case you weren't courageous, just a foolhardy idiot. Only your mother'll call it courage. But to nobody was it a virtue, which courage totally is.
Asher. Go on.
Charis: Are you sleepy? Or just bored?
Asher: I pulled an all nighter, remember? Go on, Sloane. I'm listening.
Charis: Okay, so then let's say the best possible outcome happens. You faced the dragon, put out the fire, whatever. And the scary stuff just…flits away. Floats out of existence. It's like the fear never existed. Everything's confetti and applause now. But you can't have courage without fear by definition. Ergo, it doesn't exist after the fact.
Asher: Why does this not seem profound to me?
Charis: I'm working up to something here, maybe. So there you are, you've won, but only in that teeny, tiny moment were you both afraid and brave, i.e., courageous. And yet…getting to that tiny moment…people live their whole lives and never get there. There's tons and tons of fear and cowardice. But courage? Such moments are so infinitesimal as to be negligible. Even if you take all the courage from all the battles in all of history and add it all up, it would probably fit into a shot glass.
Asher: Gotcha. What are you afraid of, Sloane?
Charis: Oh, I guess, getting the five pound bag. What if I don't like the lime flavor? That's forty-five bucks I'm out. What was that?
Asher: I said I think you should do it. I'll eat them if you don't.
Charis: Really? But you don't even like pistachios.
Asher: If it helps you to take the plunge…
Charis: I know I'm being ridiculous here. I mean it's just yucky pistachios I'm afraid of, not the world coming to an end.
Asher: It's okay, Char. Seriously, I get it. I've got your back. I will live on this shit for a week if necessary. For you.
Charis: Maybe courage does exist.
Asher: You're actually buying them? You'd test our friendship like that? Aw, dammit.
Charis: Ew. They have chili and garlic in them. Never mind.
Asher: Thank fuck.
Asher
I WANTED TO GET MY GIRL the moment I saw her lurking over there with Joel. If I wasn't mistaken, she was having just as lousy a time as I was. Maybe while I'd been relegated to Asher's Room of Doom, she'd been learning her lesson. Crime doesn't pay.
She did look chastised. And it served her right.
Because denying what we were was a fucking crime.
I tilted my head to indicate the babes getting all up in my face, then sent her an eye message. This is all your fault, sweetness.
She bit her lip. She got the message, all right, unless you have some other explanation for her spilling her plate all over her legs.
It was painful to watch her try to brush the food off her dress with one of those useless lacy doily-napkins. I started to push through the babes and head over, but then my man Joel went to fetch her a towel, and a red-nailed hand suddenly curled around my forearm.
"Well, hello there, I don't believe we've been introduced. I'm Elianna Shuman."
I glanced down at the sultry brunette. "Ash," I said curtly. "You'll want to get those scratches cleaned up." Then I walked away.
I was being rude, to her and to the other women, whom I'd barely acknowledged. Definitely not like me. Yet it wasn't them I was pissed at. It was Sloane.
I'd just seen Hunt sidle up to her and make his move. That was bad enough, but then Sloane dared—she actually dared— to kiss him on the cheek. Hell, no.
Fuck if I wasn't going to tie that girl up tonight. If there ever was a night to get kinky, this was it. Would she go for it? Maybe I could convince her with my mouth buried between her legs…
"You okay, man?"
It was my cousin Nate, slapping me on the back. I remembered my shirt and shrugged it back on without bothering to button it.
"Sure, why wouldn't I be?"
"Karl's gotten himself engaged to your ex."
"Mm, old news," I said. "I was there when it happened."
"No shit. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Damn, she looks fine, doesn't she?"
"Aura?"
"Who? No, she just left with your brother. You didn't realize?"
I'd sort of noticed but not really noticed, noticed. No big surprise. The way she'd been acting up, Karl would have taken her away to cool off. I had the feeling he'd be doing a lot of that in the foreseeable future.
"No, I meant Charis over there."
My gut clenched. "Sloane looks beautiful."
"No kidding. I didn't know she had tits."
Would it be revealing too much if I slugged him?
But he went on, "Tell me…because I have to wonder…dude, did you ever think maybe one day, you and her might…you know…"
"Yeah," I growled. "I've thought about it."
"Yeah?"
Slowly I turned to look at Nate. My cousin is this big, burly, affable giant. He was scratching behind his ear and giving me this innocent, dopey grin.
"What's going on?" I said. "What are you up to?"
"Who, moi? Listen, I'm just saying, a guy has to wonder. Men and women being friends, how do they not, you know…"
"Not fuck?"
"Yeah."
They don't.
I almost said it.
But this was Sloane's show. It wasn't my place to fix her fuckup.
"I have no idea. And why do I have the feeling I'm part of a great big conspiracy right now?" I mused.
"I'm hurt, Ash. Would I be involved in something like that?"
I snickered. "Who is it? Mel? Ry? Mom?"
He sighed. "Just Winnow and Mel, far as I know. They have a long-term plan. Look, it's for your own good. Somebody has to do something. You've been panting after that girl for how long now? You might consider boning her just to get her out of your system."
"Don't talk about Sloane like that," I snapped. "If Winnow's so hot for me to get with Sloane, why the Room 'o Babes?"
"That's just camouflage, to get your goat and…hot damn."
I followed the direction of his gaze…and stilled.
Sloane was walking straight up to us, her eyes fixed on me.
I need to point something out here. Sloane is the queen of casual. She meanders. She pauses. She gets distracted. Or the opposite—she races. Jumps. Lunges.
My girl is graceful, don't get me wrong, but she doesn't do this slow siren walk. She doesn't sway with her eyes on you, shimmery fabric slipping over her thighs while she weaves through a crowd. She doesn't…
Holy shit. Now she was close enough for me to see the expression on her face.
Intent, and a little wild.
Sexy wild.
Two things happened at once: I caught my breath and my cock blew up. Result, severe dizziness.
I sucked in a life-saving breath.
Now she was close enough that I could see how pale she actually was under those red spots in her cheeks. That cute chin was up. She licked her lips.
Then she scoped me out.
Once again.
She scoped. Me out.
Her gaze traveled from the top of my head to my eyes to my chest to my crotch and then down my legs to my feet and all the way up again.
In the background I heard "Hoyah" from Nate and enough of a stir from the people around me to know I wasn't the only one noticing this display.
In fact, I'd bet the farm on the stage being all ours.
"Hi," she said when she reached us. Not that she spared even a glance at Nate.
She only had eyes for me. Her chest was rising in little jerks. Her hands were fisted.
I recognized the signs of panic.
"Hi, girl," I
said huskily. I did my best not to stare blatantly at her tits. I felt like half the air in the room had been sucked into my lungs to supply oxygen to my dick.
"Um…" Her gaze flickered to the floor and then up again. She was noticeably not looking anywhere but at me and the floor. Back and forth. Floor, me. Who would win?
Then she pressed her lips together, shut her eyes and scrunched up her nose like I'd once seen her do when she was about to stick her hand into a bowl of "newt eyeballs", a.k.a. boiled eggs, on Halloween.
And her hand came up and she put it right. On. My. Fucking. Chest.
She cleared her throat, then said in a loud, carrying voice, "Um…hi, baby. How…was the game? In there. I mean…you didn't lose. It appears. So that's good, because it's good to, uh, to win. Um. I love you."
Then she stood up on tiptoe, put her hands on my cheeks, and pulled me down to her.
Yes, my jaw did fall to my feet.
Yes, I stood there like a complete bonehead as she kissed my mouth.
Claimed me.
In front of the whole damned world.
My sweet girl.
Her moves, her words…they did what you'd expect.
They shattered me.
I heard my family, my relatives, my friends, laughing, shouting, hooting. So too must she have. She ignored them, just kept kissing me with lips that trembled while I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. Because…
Fuck, you know. A shitload of sappy reasons. Love, gratitude…pride may have been one.
Let's just say I was no longer even a little pissed.
Finally I got the presence of mind to bend and heft her into my arms so her legs flew around my hips. I started to kiss her back when it occurred to me I was late to the party. I broke away just long enough to pant, "Me, too, beautiful. You know I'll always love you."
And the catcalls and whistles became deafening.
I gave them all the finger and turned my back, not stopping what I was doing. I mean, for fuck's sake. This crew is so fucking rude. You'd think they'd show some discretion when a guy is in the moment with his woman.
EPILOGUE
Charis
I WANT TO SAY WE LIVED HAPPILY ever after, but I don't literally know that. I mean, it's only been, what, five years since we had our duh, we're meant for each other lightbulb moment. Who can see into the future? Disaster could always strike. You never know.
I can say that earthquakes are not a risk where we are, although ashfall is. But that's pretty much everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, so…. if a big asteroid ever does land, Asher thinks we're fucked, but I'm optimistic. Ry just accepted an oncological research position in Atlanta, so worse comes to worst, we take to our bikes and move everyone over there. Or something.
Will our hybrid bikes actually work though? Maybe we'd better switch up to something more all-terrain, assuming we're dealing with a wide crater in the Rio Cuarto size range, which, granted, was an outlier. And that reminds me, we'll all need industrial dust masks…
Anyway I'd love to tell you we have four kids at this point and live in a mansion, but actually we only have the one little guy—well, one and a third if you want to be technical about it.
I happen to know this one is gonna be a girl, but we have a bet going. So I'm just gonna lie back and wait until the amnio settles it. But let's just say Asher's ass is toast.
In this area he's pretty thick. He hasn't linked it up that I called it on 1)our first, 2)both of Doug's, 3)Mel's 4th, 5)Megan's first…anyway I could go on, but you get the idea.
Let's just say I'm at a hundred percent at this point.
As for the mansion, nope, we're still in our house. If we do leave it, we'll probably sell it to Asher's parents, because Erica spends so much time over here anyway putting her touches on things.
She's (gulp) teaching me to make fudge. It's her third attempt at teaching me something kitchen-related, and I am seriously determined to do this. At Christmas last year Asher kept rubbing it in how none of his pecan pie was left but nobody touched my green beans. I will fucking show him I can be a goddess in the kitchen if I want to.
What I most like about this place is whenever my parents come to visit, we can always say, oops, we simply don't have the room for overnight guests unless you want to sleep in the living room. No to the day bed? Aw, too bad.
It's weird to think I'm starting to be friends with them. Even weirder to think that telling them, "no, sorry, you can't 'house sit' the place on Koh Samui, ever ever," ended up with my laying down the law about everything and their backing down. It's like now I'm a mom, they've stopped pretending to be anything other than immature idiots. As long as they don't try to parent me or grandparent the little guy (I will not go over the whole incident at Long Beach; suffice it to say they are never babysitting), I'm okay with them in small doses.
I wish I could tell you I'm still planning to go for tenure in the next few years, but honestly, I'm loving this online educator path way more than my postdoc work. Yesterday I took on a student in Pakistan who Totally. Got. Foucault. So we'll see. Partly it depends on what funding and certifications Warre Wethers can get from the feds and private sources, and what happens with that international consortium on education, but things are looking good.
Oh, and you will never believe who we ran into last year. Aura Renaldi! Well, that's not her last name anymore; I can't remember it right now; I was too busy staring at her when she told us. I just remember her hubby's a psychiatrist, which seems so perfect, you know? She's gained a bit of weight and she's become…wait for it…mellow.
Asher seemed really, really happy to see her. I had a freakout moment about that, I'm embarrassed to say, and we had a tiny—itty bitty—fight afterwards.
But I'm glad it happened, because a little part of me always wondered when things didn't work out as expected between Aura and Karl whether Asher ever had any regrets…but yeah, the answer to that would be no. Asher freaking adores me, which he totally should, since I adore him.
Adore. Worship. Revere. Yup. He is so. Fucking. Amazing. And I'm not just saying that because of the pregnancy hormones, which are, admittedly, pretty extreme. Or what he did with his mouth last night. (All in the interests of "getting them ready to give milk." He is so transparent. But OMG, it was goooooood.)
He really is the best. Despite my trying to explain again that the baby absolutely cannot hear yet, he insisted on giving our little guy that lecture on probability theory while holding his cheek against my uterus. Just. In. Case. Because for some reason, he thinks it's essential that kid #2 understands her odds of being a girl. Which I know are a hundred to one because I have The Gift, as I stated. As far as I'm concerned, this cat is totally out of the box. Erica could start buying pink. But whatever.
Asher
DID I JUST HEAR CHAR HAND you her there's-a-remote-possibility-we-might-not-live-happily-ever-after crap?
Yeah, you can go ahead and give that all the respect it deserves—none. I'm a hundred percent certain things will keep getting better, no matter what shit life throws at us. So far, though, all I'm seeing here is diamonds.
Even I, minor love deity that I am, didn't expect my life to rock this much after getting married, and it's not exactly on a downward trend.
I mean last Saturday after the dude fell asleep, she rubbed cinnamon butter all over her lips—hey, it's not my job to understand where preggo babes come up with this stuff—and put her mouth on my—fuck, was that the kid?
Fuck, I gotta go. Sounds like Char forgot to move the potty from the bedroom again and—ah, fuck. All over the fucking rug. Yeah, you know someone's getting tied up for this shit…
To My Husband
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Other Books by Deana Farrady
Writing as Karen Harley
Leakage: A Friends-to-Lovers Romance
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Writing as Deana Farrady
His Vengeance
(Trigger Alert: An erotic dark romance with multiple triggers. It's not a romantic comedy. It is dark. Did I mention dark? Dark.)
Heat Exchange
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His Stepbrother's Promise
(A quick, steamy short. Get this one free by signing up for my newsletter.)
Acknowledgments
Tons of people helped get this critter on its feet. Alicia Thompson, Ronessha, your honest feedback was huge. Thank you a million times Val Chambers, for critique, support, and advice on every damn thing. H & A, for all the cover feedback and professional guidance—you averted a disaster. E., for a bit of emergency critique mid-project right when I needed it. Sara Fawkes, without your honesty and perceptiveness when I was stuck in a loop, this might still be 90% finished. Al Boyle, Susanne Frost, Kira Matthison, for blurb help & encouragement. And the forum folks whose support keeps indie publishing from being a lonely biz.
And most of all, my husband and son who put up with my crappy work hours and who are just awesome.
Deleted Scenes
There's always stuff that never makes it to the final draft of a book, either because it's not up to snuff or because there's no place for it. Most of it gets tossed, but sometimes it's fun to check out what went on "behind the scenes."
—Deana
Deleted Scene A
Charis's Post to Topical Discussion Forum:
Half and Half—is it half milk, half cream by weight or by volume? HELP!
Hi, everyone. This is my first time posting. I'm hoping you can help clear up a mystery. I've been wondering how the "equal parts" of Half & Half are measured—by weight or volume. Nobody seems to know, so after much frustration I tried to derive it using hated arithmetic. Here is what I did.
Unfriended: A Geek and Stud Romance (Love in New Highland Book 1) Page 29