“Easy there,” he advised. “You never were great at holding tequila.”
“My homegirl’s getting married, and I’d like to forget some stuff, at least until tomorrow.”
“All right then,” William acquiesced. “Round three, coming up.”
No sooner had he moved down the row of taps than a large hand clapped over her shoulder. “It’s your turn.”
Mavis squinted at Kyle. “Huh?”
“I’ve humiliated myself,” he indicated. “You’ll kill up there and humiliate me further. Win-win on your part.”
“I like where I’m at,” she claimed, and started to turn back to the bar.
“Don’t make me start,” Kyle advised. When she only doubled back to frown at him, he began to chant, “Mavis. Mavis. Mavis—”
She straightened when Harmony and several other tavern regulars struck up the tune. “Stop it.”
Kyle raised his voice, pumping his fist. “Mavis! Mavis! Mavis!”
The chant went up through the bar like wildfire. She scowled when she heard William taking up the call to arms, too.
Kyle grinned. “Come on! Give the people what they want!”
“Later,” she said, low, as she rose from the stool, “I’m going to throw a quail plate at your head.”
Kyle answered by tossing her unceremoniously over his shoulder.
Mavis thought about clawing him as he hustled her through bystanders to the stage. They parted for him. When he set her on her feet, he pecked a kiss to the center of her forehead and backed off quickly before she could bludgeon him. “Mavis Bracken, ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mic before darting off.
Mavis pushed the hair from her face. As the music queued, she stepped to the microphone. She cleared her throat and raised her hand to the crowd. “Hi.” Lyrics flashed on the screen overhead. It was a Beatles song. She glanced at Kyle, tall and distinguishable despite his retreat to Harmony’s side.
Beatles songs had always been their weekend specialties at the farm.
He hooked an arm over his fiancée’s shoulders and raised his pint in encouragement.
Holding a grudge against him would be ten times easier if she didn’t like seeing him so damn happy. Returning her attention to the lyrics, she let the first piano notes drop. “‘Hey Jude,’” she sang. “‘Don’t make it bad.’” The crowd whistled along to the popular tune and she managed a smile as she went on with the song.
It was a popular choice. Soon, she wasn’t singing alone. Soon, it was simple to intone the familiar words. More comfortable, she closed her eyes, going full McCartney. The sore knot inside her unraveled. She tried sieving it out, one chord at a time. Raising herself onto her toes, she belted through the bridge and the tavern patrons joined her in an enthusiastic round of “nah, nah, nah, nahs.”
On the third round, she opened her eyes. Her “nah, nahs” died.
Gavin.
He was three rows back, packed shoulder to shoulder with William’s customers. The mic in her fist dropped to her hip, the knot in her strung tight again. It was tempered, though, by a sun-bright flash of hope.
Gavin, she thought. His name soon became as much of a mantra as the “nah nahs.” Gavin’s back.
The song wound down to a finish. The crowd applauded. Those seated came to their feet for a standing O. Their buoyancy had smoothed over her glitch.
He was smiling. Gavin was smiling at her, in the quiet way that sparked heat inside her.
One of the waiters appeared at her side. Mavis jerked in reaction. She let him take the mic and dipped into a small curtsy as he led another round of applause for her. Exiting stage left, Mavis scanned the milling faces. If she’d thought hers had been hot under William’s gaze…
Now it was awareness that brought the flush to her neck and cheeks. He was here, he was near, and she needed to get to him. “Scuse me,” she muttered as she elbowed through the thick clutch.
Warm fingers wrapped around her elbow. They tugged her around. Looking up, she found him. Or, he found her. Oh God. Gavin!
He was clean-shaven. Someone had given his fade haircut a trim. He looked great. He looked fantastic. Her heart knocked against her throat. The tavern seemed to rock like a canoe. She could smell him.
Words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t bring them up so she concentrated instead on leveling her breathing as she looked at him and he looked back. The low lights brought the warmth of metallic umber to his eyes. They flickered. Longing, an unbridled sweep, lashed her as his eyes caressed her.
Someone bumped into her from behind and she stepped into him, his circle of heat. When he laid his hand on her shoulder, the other on the small of her back, she shuddered…she didn’t think about moving. In fact, she closed her eyes again. After a few seconds, under the cover of the crowd, she turned her nose into his chest.
Hard. Real. Gavin. She wasn’t sure how the emotions came at her. They were there, hair-triggered. They built and she had no recourse but to press her face to his shirt and hang.
His palm swept up her spine. Stiff, she tried not to buckle when it draped warmly over the nape of her neck.
He spoke against her temple. “You with me?”
“Mmm.” She gave a half nod. “I’m just—” she groaned at the obvious “—emotional.”
His hold tightened. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Frexy.”
“You’re here,” she said on a tumult of air.
“I am now.”
“Why…?” She began to shake her head. She didn’t understand…
It took him a minute to answer. “I…wanted to come home. So I did.”
“Just like that?”
“It was simpler this time.” His voice was a rumble and it fired in her veins as his lips grazed her ear. “You made it simpler.”
She was going to kiss him—the chick who didn’t do PDA—right here, in front of everyone. She was going to kiss him so everyone knew he was hers. Keeping her nose pressed to the wolf beneath his collar, she breathed. In and out. It wasn’t enough—not enough.
Harmony poked her head in. “Hi! Remember me?”
Mavis’s head sailed back.
“Hi,” Gavin responded. “And sure do.”
“You’re back!” Harmony chirped.
“Just,” he acknowledged.
Harmony glanced to Mavis, then back to him. Her eyes were bright. “Where’d you go?”
Mavis saw reluctance pass over him. Kyle cut off any excuse by becoming the fourth point of their square. “He’s back. There’s a surprise.”
Mavis circled Gavin’s wrist, passing her thumb gently over the pulse point and daring Kyle to say anything else.
“You forget something?” Kyle asked.
“No.” Gaze falling over Mavis again like gentle rain, Gavin’s expression went from tense to intense in the flash. “I didn’t forget. As for where I’ve been…”
“Don’t leave us hanging,” Kyle said.
“I was in Monroeville,” Gavin revealed. “Visiting an old friend.”
Harmony’s eyes widened on her brother. “Tommy? You went to see Tommy?”
Gavin nodded affirmation.
Mavis’s lips parted. Thomas Zaccoe was Benji’s father. He lived in Monroeville in the same house he’d raised his son in—not but a walk from his grave site. When Gavin had trouble meeting anyone’s eye, she caressed the inside of his arm.
“How was he?” Kyle asked. He didn’t sound stern anymore.
Gavin nodded again. “Good. He’s, uh…seeing someone. Some widow he met at the supermarket.”
“That’s sweet,” Harmony said with a smile. “I’ve been meaning to take Bea up to see him before the end of summer.”
“He’s got pictures of her everywhere,” Gavin mentioned. “He needed a few things done around the house, so I wound up staying a few days.”<
br />
“Did you see it?” Harmony asked quietly.
Gavin rubbed his lips together. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I saw it.”
They were speaking of the memorial the city had built in honor of its hometown hero. The statue stood at the entrance to the cemetery.
“It’s beautiful,” Harmony said. Her eyes grew damp. “Isn’t it?”
“He wasn’t one for show,” Gavin said quietly. “But I think he might have liked it.”
“Are you okay?” Mavis asked before she could think better of it in front of the others.
He grabbed on to her visually, like he was a squall and he wanted to hug her like a lighthouse. “Better,” he acknowledged.
“Kyle!” William called from the bar. When he had Kyle’s attention, he cupped his hands over his mouth to be heard over the music and crowd noise. “They want you to draw tonight’s raffle!”
“Oooh.” Harmony jumped to, drawing half a ticket out of her back pocket. “My number’s seven-seven—”
“That’s cheating,” Kyle muttered as the two of them squeezed through the crowd to get to the raffle jar.
Mavis was alone with Gavin again. Thank God.
Gavin humphed as someone pushed into him from behind. She saw the dark look he tossed over his shoulder and grabbed his collar, turning him back to her. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He nodded decisively and smiled. “Hell yes.”
She beamed when he fell into step with her. She pushed her way to the door. She moved quickly. The raffle would only last so long. Before anyone else could get in their way, she pulled him out into the tepid night.
No sooner had the doors whooshed closed behind them than she spun. Her arms twined around his neck.
He didn’t fall back. Instead, he banded his arms low, boosting her up.
“Yes.” She shivered, tipping her head to the side so that he could kiss her deep. Inside. Her brows arced together as he flicked his tongue over hers, dragged it out. “Mmm, yes.”
“Mavis.” It escaped on a whisper, her name and everything behind it. His arms hardened. He said it again, bringing her hope to the joy of eclipse.
Her feet weren’t anywhere near the ground. Her heart hammered against his breastbone. She felt the great muscle underneath his sternum responding at a gallop. With an unsteady breath, she pulled away slightly. “I—I missed you.”
It took him a second to focus. The edge of need was thick, wrapped up tight in metal and ivy. When he realized what she’d said, his soul peered through the brush and ironwork and made her knees go stupidly weak. “I missed you, too.” A bar twined between his eyes. “I missed you like crazy.” Tipping his forehead to hers, he added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t call. I made you think—”
“No.” Mavis shook her head. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.” She planted her mouth on his, inhaling in a quick rush. “Damn it,” she cried. “You’ve made me sentimental.”
“You make me a lot of things. Like happy. I realized that on the road. I thought I was ready before. You were right—I wasn’t.”
“And now?” she said, buzzing from head to toe.
He nodded. “Now.”
Never had a declaration sounded so finite. Or sexy. “Come home with me,” she insisted. “I want you. With me. On the river. In my bed.”
Those eyes darkened, glittering with promise. “Did I mention ‘hell yeah’ back there?”
“A girl doesn’t get tired of hearing it,” she suggested.
“Then ‘hell yes’ again.” And he kissed her once more, in a bruising way that demanded. She felt immersed, just as she wanted.
* * *
THE RIVER. IT smelled like soot. Like home. Mavis had driven so fast, a tinge of burned rubber hit his nostrils, too, as he opened the passenger door to get out of her car. “I don’t question why Errol drives you and Miss Zelda around anymore.”
He saw her outline under the far-off streetlight, ghostly in black. The flowing bodice of the blouse he knew to be silk now that he’d had his hands on her draped low beneath her collarbone. The skin-hugging pants were leather—knowing her, some vegan alternative. Along with the high-scaling boots, she looked classy and edgy.
Every inch of him was taut. She wanted him in her round house, in her sheets. He didn’t have a clue what Mavis’s bedroom looked like, but he could see lowering her into the pillows. Losing the both of them there completely.
He could’ve shucked those leather pants right here under the carport but the air was misty. Yet another summer storm was on the horizon. “I need to get you inside,” he said.
She began to take steps backward to the stairs. She blended into the shadows.
By the first step, he was beside her. Lifting her by the waist, he carried her up, up.
Her legs locked around his waist. He groaned. Grabbing her underneath, he followed the path of supple material and the round curve of her bottom, digging in. Her breath grew hot against his neck. Her lips kissed their way up to the cup of his ear. There, things got interesting.
He nearly stumbled on the last step. His hand got between her and the wall he nearly crashed into at the landing. He held her there as her attention centered on the spot she’d found that was turning his knees supple. “Whatcha doin’ there?”
“Nerves.” She sucked, bringing him to the bank of intense arousal. “They live in the cartilage.” She laved. “Lots and lots of them. Waiting to be played with.”
When the edge of her teeth joined the onslaught, he felt himself shiver. Once. Twice. The third time, he ground against her center and groaned.
She pulled back, licking her lips as she tipped her head against the siding of the house. “Erogenous zones. Men have them, same as women.”
His breath was coming through his teeth, he realized. Hefting her beneath the thighs again, he transferred her to the door.
She endured being pressed against glass, his leg wedged between hers to keep her off the porch. As he unlocked the door with a grip that wasn’t at all steady, she drew barely there lines across his chest until his skin grew sensitive beneath the cotton of his T-shirt and he wanted nothing more than to shed it or rend it in half to give her free autonomy. He felt clumsy as he boosted her high against his chest once more and stepped blindly into her dominion. “Where’re the lights?”
“No lights,” she whispered.
“None?” he asked.
“Do you trust me?”
“Frexy,” he whispered against her lips. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to come home to. What do you think?”
She sighed, scraping her nails over his scalp in slow motion. Her soft, shallow kiss caught him off guard. She was normally bolder. She slid her legs from around him and planted herself on the floor, using the neck of his shirt to bring his mouth down flush with hers.
He clasped her by the shoulders. He kissed her as she’d kissed him. Intimately. No rush. It took him back to her parents’ house and the “accidental” lip-lock that had started everything.
She broke away. “Gavin?”
“Hmm?” he asked. He nosed against the hair that tickled the angle of her jaw. Mangoes. For days, he’d had a fierce hankering for mangoes.
“Give me your wallet.”
The command struck him off guard. “Say what?”
She reached around to the pockets of his jeans. Cupping each, she dipped her fingertips into the one with the telltale bulge and dragged his billfold out herself. “What’s the magic number?” she murmured as she peeled it open between them.
He tried to see her in the dark. He tried to carve her out of the outline in front of him. It didn’t work as well as he would’ve liked. “Why lights off?” he wondered. Why not lights on, all the way on so if he studied her closely, every inch, he could pinpoint all the secrets she hid under leather, silk and mystery.
“We’re even,” she said in explanation. “I can’t see you any better than you can see me.”
“Mavis,” he said, not for the first time.
“Two.” There was a smile in her voice, woven smugly alongside approval. “You still carry two condoms in your wallet.”
He planned to use them. Unable to hold off any longer, he asked, “Which way?”
“To the bedroom?” she asked coyly. He felt her tug along the front of his belt.
“Which way?” he said again.
“Up the stairs, to the left if you follow the—”
She’d told him once she hated brute male strength. He wondered then why she gasped in delight as he tossed her over his shoulder and made quick strides. Groping, he found the railing to the stairs and followed its smooth curve up and left.
He wanted to tell her everything he wanted to do to her. Everything, in stark detail. He wanted to tell her what it all would mean. It got caught in his throat, though.
The room was nearly pitch-black, but he sensed the panoramic view that opened up on the landing. He saw four posts. A bed. River lights shone beyond, gauzy. The bed was curtained and the curtains were transparent. Near his shoulder, the light from the street peered through more glass. The bedroom was the only room at the top of the stairs. Gavin set Mavis slowly on her feet. “No curtains on the windows?”
“They’re tinted.” Her voice was barely there. For the first time, he heard nerves from her. Then he felt her fingers rucking up the bottom half of his shirt. “So the neighbors can’t see.”
He didn’t give a rat’s ass if the army was posted outside buying tickets to the show. She pushed the shirt up, gathering as she went. Bending slightly at the waist, he let her tug it over his head.
It took her a moment to unlatch and unloop his belt in the dark. “It’s almost senseless. How much I want you.”
He felt his jeans unsnap. Heard the zipper rasp. He closed his eyes and harkened back to the conversation they’d had weeks ago. “What scares you most?”
Mavis stilled. In the light from the street, he could barely make out the shape of her face. “Emptiness,” she said. “I used to think feeling nothing was better and that keeping my head was more important than embarrassing myself with emotion. Since you…” She peeled the waistband of his jeans down over his buttocks by scooping both hands under, molding the shape of him from his spine to the bottom curve of his glutes. “…the thought of being hollow… It’s not what I need, any more than the cocoon my grandmother thought would be best for me.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 22