Even though she’d murmured it, he’d heard, and realization hit him when he heard the hint of jealousy in her tone.
“Every man falls for beauty at some point and time in his life,” he explained. “You’re lucky that you’ve got substance to go along with yours. It’s like having two beautiful red roses in your yard. The first few times you walk past them, they’re stunning, but after a while, they just look ordinary. That is; until you learn that one of the roses has magical healing powers in its petals. That there’s more to it than meets the eye. That extra layer is what makes it more special than all the others. That’s you.”
Austin hoped that the words spewing forth from his lips made as much sense coming out of his mouth as they did in his heart.
Sommer’s slight grin was confirmation that they did. “You’re slipping into poetry now?”
He exaggeratedly threw up his hands. “I just can’t stop myself.”
She laughed and, at that moment, her laughter was the most comforting sound in the world.
“You’re not out of the woods yet though,” he added. “Now, be honest. Were you jealous just a minute ago?”
Sommer felt her face flush. “What? No, I wasn’t—”
“I said be honest, Sommer.”
Her eyes fell to the sand. “A little.”
It was the first time Austin noticed that his pulse was racing. “Tell me why.”
She inhaled a large gulp of salty air and expelled it loudly from her lungs. “I might have been lying about my hatred towards you back then. I might have hated you to hide how I truly felt.”
“Which was?”
She took another deep breath. “I liked you.”
Austin took a step forward. “Now, who’s lying?”
“Oh, I did,” she came back. “I mean, writing Sommer Hayes-Riley all over my diary liked you.”
“I wouldn’t let you hyphenate,” he teased.
She laughed again and he pulled her closer to him.
“I wanted to ask you to prom,” he admitted.
“I died a little inside when you walked in with Tammie Carter,” she confessed.
They paused.
“I used to dream that we’d get married and have an amber-eyed little girl,” he continued.
“In Spanish class, when we were learning about weddings in Spain, I daydreamed about us having one.”
Austin tugged her again until her body was inches from his, and then one of his hands went to the side of her face. As he thought about her comparing herself to Jessica, it made him wonder if she knew just how beautiful she was.
“When your Mom threw the Christmas party at the café our senior year, I tried all night to get you underneath the mistletoe. I really didn’t know what I would have done if I’d actually gotten you under there, though. All I knew was that I just really, really wanted to kiss you.”
Sommer boldly stepped towards him. “Really?”
“Really,” he answered, his voice thick.
“Do you still feel that way?” She prayed that the hopefulness in her voice didn’t sound too much like desperation.
To answer her question, Austin bent towards her and Sommer held her breath until she felt the soft graze of his lips against hers. His tongue played gently against her mouth, coaxing it to open, and when her lips parted for him, he dipped his tongue inside and ladled the sweet nectar from her mouth.
Finally, he was kissing Sommer Hayes.
His other hand went to the side of her face, and he deepened the kiss. Her sweet scent mixed intoxicatingly with the salty, ocean air. As it filled his nostrils, it only increased his thirst. He tasted and drank from the caverns of her mouth until he was sure that she had nothing left to give, but even then he couldn’t stop. Whatever he’d been previously trying to deny now surged forth from his body and all of his composure dissipated when he heard the breathy moan slip from the back of her throat. In one motion, he picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Austin, I—”
“Yeah, me too,” he answered, placing quick kisses against her lips, neck, and jaw.
“Where?”
“Anywhere, baby.”
“But your place, my place, we can’t—”
“I can get us a suite. Anything you want. Just tell me what you want.”
Sommer felt as though she was going to explode. “Okay. Okay…”
Austin paused when he picked up on the uncertainty in her voice. When he looked at her, it was clearly written all over her face.
“Sommer, are you sure?”
She glanced away for a brief second before looking back at him, which told him that anything she said afterwards was going to be a lie.
“I’m sure.”
He placed her back on her feet and cradled her face in his palm. “Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she came back. “I want to do this.”
He pressed a soft kiss against her lips and resisted the urge to succumb to the overpowering hunger that was building up inside of him again. When he searched her eyes, he found that the uncertainty had been replaced by fear, and then he recalled what she’d said before about being used up and then tossed aside like trash.
She’d been talking about herself.
The thought of any man doing that to her filled him with anger.
“Sommer, I want to spend as much time as possible with you while I’m back home. All of your free time. So, go out with me tomorrow.”
She closed her eyes against the feeling of his finger stroking her cheek. “I can’t. I’m going to church with Mom.”
“After that.”
“What do you want to do?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She opened her eyes. “I take it that we’re not making love tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he reassured her, secretly vowing to get to the bottom of what had caused that fear and if possible, who.
“Another night then?”
He leaned in and pressed another kiss against her lips. “Another night.”
She smiled, and he returned the gesture.
They stood together for a few more moments before returning for their shoes and food, and making their way back to the car. As he drove her home, Austin kept his fingers entwined with Sommer’s and kissed her fingers intermittently, still in disbelief that all this time, he and Sommer had shared the same feelings.
He took a quick glance over at her and wondered what life would have been like if he’d known that before. Maybe Sommer would have come with him to Tallahassee and then move with him to Texas after he was drafted. If Sommer had been in his life back then, there certainly would have never been a Jessica Costa.
All along, he’d been searching for a replacement for Sommer, but now that he had her, he was going to make sure that nothing would ever put distance between them again.
Chapter Three
What she’d initially thought was going to be a long and difficult summer had blossomed into a time of her life that Sommer would never forget. Austin hadn’t been kidding when he said that he wanted to spend all of his free time with her, sometimes randomly showing up at the end of one of her longer shifts at the bakery. Whenever she was visibly exhausted they would sit, have coffee and a pastry, and simply talk.
To everyone around town, her change in demeanor had been the result of a friend coming back into her life. No one knew about their intimate moments; the passionate kisses behind the heavily tinted windows of his car, the lingering gazes they shared whenever they were in the same room, or the nights they escaped to Flatwoods Park where he kissed her on the swings so hungrily that he’d managed to slip her shirt over her head before thinking better of having their first encounter on the grass. But the time was coming. With each encounter, their desire for one another only mounted higher, and Sommer no longer had the resolve with which she’d started.
The sound of her Uncle Reese reciting his vows jolted her back to the present, and she steadied the
bouquet of assorted lilies she held between her hands. She couldn’t believe that her uncle had made the decision to marry again at the age of fifty. Marcie was thirteen years his junior and had spent the last eleven years working alongside Sommer, her mother, and her uncle at the bakery.
No one knew at what point either Reese or Marcie had made a move, but all of a sudden, they were flirtatiously whispering to each other in the backroom. Then, Reese was teaching Marcie how to make a rose using a piping bag with an extra, delicate touch. It wasn’t until Marcie had walked into work one day with an extra bump to her already round stomach that they realized that the secret was out, and finally publicly revealed that they’d been seeing each other. Their son, Josiah, was born five months later. He was Marcie’s first and Reese’s third child.
The couple was now beaming at one another, Reese swiping at the corners of his eyes while tears rolled down Marcie’s cherub-like cheeks. As their vows continued, Sommer searched the room until she’d locked eyes with Austin, and he became the only image at the end of her line of sight. Perfectly outfitted in a crisp black suit and matching silk tie, she felt grossly mismatched in the pewter, lace turtleneck bridesmaid dress that Marcie had handpicked. Marcie, already self-conscious about her weight, had wanted to make sure that she stood out as much as possible on her special day. The bridesmaids had unanimously agreed to bite their tongues and wear the putrid greenish-gray gowns, and they’d all pitched in to make sure Marcie felt as beautiful as she needed to feel. In a strapless white dress that cinched her waist and emphasized her bust, the bride looked thoroughly pleased.
The organ began to play, and Reese and Marcie shared a kiss before walking back down the aisle as husband and wife. Sommer followed with the rest of the wedding party, hooking arms with one of the groomsmen. As they passed the row where Austin was seated, he pretended to be heartbroken that she was on the arm of another man, causing her to playfully cozy up to the groomsman even more. He then signaled for her to meet him outside, and her body tingled in anticipation of the feeling of his fingers against her skin.
As the reception proceeded ahead in full speed, everyone mingled underneath the decorated white tent that had been set up on the church’s expansive acreage, while Marcie and her father twirled all over the dance floor to an upbeat 1940s swing melody. She’d wanted her father-daughter dance to be nontraditional. With the split that her father had just attempted, despite being a man well into his seventies, she was getting just that.
“You’ve been hiding from me,” Austin’s voice cut through the noise. He stood a few inches behind her which allowed the distance to appear friendly to those who weren’t close enough to hear the mischievous things he was saying. He was still close enough, however, for Sommer to feel the heat pouring from his skin, and it took mountains of self-control not to turn around and tug him out of the tailored suit-jacket that he wore.
“I’ve been looking for you, I swear,” she whispered back. “I just got caught up in the festivities.”
He chuckled. “Lucky you that I’m not so beautiful that you could barely focus on anything but me all evening. Even in that god-awful dress, you still manage to outshine everyone here.”
Mrs. Waters walked by with a glass of champagne in her hand. Austin and Sommer smiled innocently until she was out of earshot.
“I want to peel that dress off of you,” he continued. “I’ve wanted you ever since that night on the beach.”
Her nostrils filled with the scent of his cologne mixed with his natural spice. “Is that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well, what do you say we get out of here?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I want you to soak with anticipation.”
As the father-daughter dance ended, the DJ switched to a slow, 90s love ballad, and couples flooded the dance floor. Reese navigated through the crowd to reunite with his bride and the lights underneath the tent were dimmed. Austin touched Sommer on the small of her back.
“Dance with me?”
She looked up at him. “You’re serious?”
“This can make up for the prom that we wanted to attend together, but didn’t have a chance to,” he said, glancing out at the burgeoning crowd.
“I hardly think that I would have worn this get-up to prom.”
Austin gently pulled her by the hand as he walked backwards toward the dance floor. “What do you mean? I could definitely see you in that at prom. With some neon pink heels. You’d be the envy of all of the women in the room.”
Sommer looked around the room at how the women seemed to follow Austin’s every move. For no other reason, they probably envied her because of the attention that he was giving her that they wished they had.
Squaring away a spot in the middle of the wooden dance floor, he drew her into his chest, placed one hand at her waist, and secured the other with her smaller hand, lacing their fingers together. As they swayed, he kept his gaze so affixed with hers that Sommer felt as though he was trying to look directly through her.
“Relax, Sommer.”
“Promise you won’t step on my toes?” she asked.
“I promise. And if I do, I’ll kiss them and make it better later.”
Eventually, Sommer allowed herself to relax and become absorbed by the music floating around them. When Austin pulled her closer into his chest and wrapped both arms around her waist, she responded by wrapping her arms around him and laying her head against his firmness. Eyes would definitely be on them now, which was something Sommer had initially been preoccupied with. But as she felt the strength pulsating in the arms he’d secured around her, she no longer gave a damn. Even if people talked, it wouldn’t matter. She was swirling, swooning, stumbling, and falling. He’d already been firmly lodged inside her heart before he even returned to Yearwood. The weeks they’d spent together had only allowed the dormant feelings she had for him to flow freely from their chasm.
“Sommer? Are you ready?”
She didn’t even realize that her eyes had closed as she opened them to look up at him. She nodded, and he took her by the hand and led her from the tent. Several pairs of eyes followed them as they left together, but Sommer still didn’t care. She’d already done enough simply for the benefit of everyone around town. Now, she would shirk their judgmental stares and bask in her own enjoyment.
When they reached the car, he positioned her against the passenger door and possessively captured her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, sucking, nibbling, and tasting every essence of him. When he pulled away, she immediately missed the embrace and found some satisfaction in pressing her lips along the base of his neck.
“I don’t know how you do it, Sommer. It’s like your lips call out to me.”
She grinned. “Something else is calling out to you too if you want to answer.”
She wrapped a leg around his waist and felt his need grow against her. Austin pressed himself harder into her body, wanting to tear her clothes off and fill her right there within view of anyone from the wedding party that came walking over the hill.
“We have to go,” he told her, pressing a firm kiss against her lips before pulling her off the door, tugging it open, and quickly helping her inside. As he hopped in on the other side, Sommer reached over and ran her hands down the front of his slacks.
“You’re going to mess around and get yourself in trouble,” he warned, his lids lowering as she wrapped her fingers around him.
“I’m counting on it,” she answered and replaced her touch with a kiss before leaning back into the seat. Austin smiled, shook his head, and sped out of the parking lot.
He drove for a few miles before he left the road and pulled onto a paved redbrick driveway flanked by colorful rosebushes, pruned shrubs, and neatly shorn hedges. Above them, tall birch trees grew towards each other on either side of the brick to create a natural arched entrance. At the end of the driveway stood an old, white Victorian mansion. From the sign posted in the yard, Sommer real
ized that it was a converted bed and breakfast; its historic elegance preserved as a wraparound porch, dressed in spindles and posts, housed a wicker settee and matching rocking chairs at the front. An elderly woman came rushing over to them before they had a chance to exit the car, and stopped when she was a few feet in front of the hood.
“Mr. Riley?”
Austin stepped forward and gently shook her hand, afraid that applying any more pressure might break her. The woman looked to be in her eighties and wore a knitted cap on her head with a few wisps of white hair poking out underneath. A pair of large framed glasses obscured half of her small face and sapphire eyes, which contrasted sharply against her brown skin and peered from behind the black rims.
“Yes, but please call me Austin and this is my girlfriend, Sommer. I called earlier about spending the weekend. I talked to your granddaughter, and she said that even though it was short notice, she could help us out.”
Sommer’s stomach quivered at the word “girlfriend.” In the past six weeks, they’d never mentioned having any titles or had any talk about a relationship, but she never pressed the issue since she knew their romance would be short-lived with him living in a different state. Once he was gone, it would end, and she’d spent more than one night preparing herself for when that would happen. She figured that he’d probably only used the girlfriend title since many of the elderly owners of the bed-and-breakfasts in the area often did their best to deter one-night standers. It was even more common to find those who preferred that only married couples slept between their sheets.
“Yes. My granddaughter, Faye,” the woman responded. “I’m Rose Westwood. My husband and I have owned this place for years. Decided to turn it into a bed and breakfast when the kids moved out. Was the best decision we ever made.”
She turned around and waved for them to follow her, and then stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch. “No bags?”
Austin snapped his fingers. “Yes. One minute while I—”
“No need,” Rose reassured. “We have a service for that. Someone will bring them up. The two of you look tired. Let me show you where you will be staying.”
The Game of Love: (BWWM Romance) Page 4