How could she miss that he was still standing there, that he hadn’t actually told her no?
She took a deep breath. If she wanted this, she was going to have to go for it—for real.
“Come home with me,” she said. “Have dinner with me. Shower with me. Fuck me again, because I want you to.” She bit her tongue, trying to read his expression. Was he about to tell her she had this all wrong?
But Tyler was grinning, dimples and all. “Well I’ll be damned. I was starting to think you’d never ask.”
Chapter Fifteen
Abbi had the most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in. Not just because it beat the sagging mattress at his rental, but because of the woman who was in it, the one he kissed as they lay down together and put his arms around in the night when his dreams of fire, of screaming, threatened to swallow him whole.
He spent the night there, and then another. He knew he shouldn’t get used to it. He couldn’t afford to lose track of why he was here. If he forgot, there was always a mountain of paperwork at the nature center to remind him.
But one morning a few days later, lounging in Abbi’s backyard with her feet in his lap, sipping coffee as she pointed out the different kinds of flowers in her garden, it was enough to make him imagine his whole time here was one long summer vacation that never had to end.
Only to Abbi, this wasn’t a break. This was her life, and she lifted her legs and sat up with a sigh, saying, “I should get to work, Ty. We’ve been lying here all morning and I can’t get away with pretending I’m sick.”
“Ah, but you could tell them you’re too busy fucking.”
She screwed up her face. “I’m pretty sure everybody at work already thinks that.”
“Good,” he said. “They know you’re mine.”
He meant it to be flirty, fun, but Abbi’s smile dropped. I didn’t mean it like that, he almost said, then thought of Aidan sitting across the desk from him, steepling his fingers, asking when Tyler had last lied. He couldn’t say the words to Abbi to make her think he was talking about the fake kind of his. He couldn’t make this all sound like so much nothing, a summer fling bound to end.
She got up, kissed him on the forehead, and went to head inside, but he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back on his lap. His calendar was counting down—four short weeks until he was gone. He didn’t want to waste a second of his time.
“No work today,” he said. “Let’s play hooky. I’ll fuck you all afternoon. We can do it in the backyard.” He paused. “Or the front.” He raised an eyebrow to see if that was the bait she needed, and she laughed and smacked his chest.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said, but she was smiling again. And he loved anything that made her smile.
He drew up her T-shirt as he kissed her. “We’ll give the neighbors a show.”
“I’m serious, Tyler,” she said, pulling her shirt back down. “I really have to go. But you can stay here and be a kept man lounging in the garden while I’m away.”
The thought of sitting around all day while Abbi worked made him laugh. “How about I do some things around here to help you out instead? I noticed the gate to the back is off its hinges. I could fix that for you.”
Abbi scrambled off his lap. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I know I don’t need to. I want to.”
“You can’t possibly want to spend your day that way.”
He followed her into the house, where he noticed the sliding screen door was off its tracks. “It’s called being nice,” he said. “Helpful. Have you heard of it? Someday you might consider letting somebody do something for you sometime.”
Abbi turned toward him, arms folded. “And you could try relaxing and not worrying about other people for a change. If you don’t have to go to the nature center, then go for a hike. Find a swimming hole. Read a book. God, if I had a day off, I’d take a nap. And when I do have a day off, I’ll take care of the gate and all the other little things that need work. It’s hard keeping up with a house when you work full time.”
“I know!” he said. “That’s why I’m offering a hand.”
“Fun, Tyler. Try it. I’ll pick you up some whiskey on my way home and we can throw a ton of food on the grill, have a relaxing night. How does that sound?”
Perfect—except for the part where he couldn’t confess that he didn’t actually want any whiskey. That it was starting to make his throat burn.
That every time he drank it he thought of Scott, and every time he thought of Scott he was reminded of what a crap friend he was, having such a good time when he didn’t deserve Abbi’s warmth.
But just when he was in the middle of coming up with some bs about how he didn’t need anything, the phone rang. Abbi held up a finger for him to wait.
“Hello?” she said, mouthing “no yard work” at him. He rolled his eyes. He’d never met someone so stubborn in his life.
Then her mouth closed and she straightened. “Did you dial 911?”
Tyler snapped to attention.
There was silence as the person on the other end talked, and then Abbi, interrupting, asked something confusing about what the person had seen.
“And this was last night?” she confirmed, waving Tyler away as he signaled for her to tell him what was going on.
“But there are pull-offs along the road where a truck could park. It’s not like it’s—yeah. Okay. No, I got it.” She ran a hand through her hair, where the blue was starting to fade to light green. She’d been talking about switching to purple. “I’m coming right in.”
She hung up the phone. Tyler pounced. “What was that about?”
“That was my boss. He said they got a bunch of calls last night and again this morning from a woman who saw someone hanging around Ridge Line Road. That’s the road that runs south along the mountain where we hiked.”
“Did something happen?” Tyler asked. “The woman who called—is she okay?”
“She’s fine, yeah. But she said it was late and there was a truck parked up there and no one in it.”
“So?”
“A white truck.”
Tyler swallowed. There were lots of white trucks in town.
But he knew what Abbi was thinking. It was the same thing that flashed through his mind.
“Did she call the police?” he asked, unease making itself right at home in the pit of his stomach.
“They said there’s nothing illegal about parking there, which is true. Same thing about walking around. That’s why she called the nature center. The police said to make sure we have a record. In case something happens later, I guess.”
“How proactive,” Tyler said dryly.
“We don’t know anything yet.”
“But?” He gave her a don’t tell me you believe that face until she relented.
“But that’s the road you take if you want to get to the firebreak site. Assuming you aren’t crazy enough to take the long way from Silver Meadows like we did.”
“There’s not a trail that goes that way,” Tyler said.
“That’s why the woman called it in. Because why would someone be walking around there late at night?”
They looked at each other in silence. Was Tyler overthinking things, looking for trouble when everything was fine?
Maybe. But he wasn’t going to leave her to find out on her own.
“I’m coming to the office with you.”
It wasn’t a question. Tyler knew she’d say no anyway.
He hoped she knew by now he wouldn’t listen.
Chapter Sixteen
“You think he’s doing something?” Abbi asked when they were both in her car driving over.
“I have no idea what he thinks he could do,” Tyler said. “We can’t even say for sure that it’s him. But I do know one thing. Russ isn’t a man who knows what to do when he hears the word no.”
Abbi sighed. “And I guess I’ve been saying it a lot to him recently.”
But it wasn’t like the
y had any proof. When they got to the nature center, no one had more information about who could have been up there, or why. And Abbi couldn’t bring herself to call Russ and force yet another confrontation.
So every day, they waited.
She knew she should be worried—about Russ. The firebreak. That fine line between being in enough of a relationship to not seem like a hot mess whose disaster of a personal life was spilling over into the workplace…but not in so much of a relationship as to be stumbling in late with just-fucked hair and drooling over her boyfriend-who-wasn’t when she was supposed to be securing this promotion and covering her ass.
But as the week passed and Tyler spent every night in her bed, it was hard not to feel something settling over her. A feeling almost like calm, as though every ounce of doubt and uncertainty vanished when she was in his arms.
She should have known it was too good to last. The nature center got three more messages that week about someone hanging around in the woods past Ridge Line Road. As the police kept saying, there wasn’t anything wrong with doing that. But that didn’t change the fact that more than one person thought it strange enough to bring up.
Abbi was at work when the third caller rang, and it put her even more on edge. The woman wasn’t just worried about someone creeping around. The first thing she said was that she’d seen someone smoking in the woods.
“I know that’s not illegal,” she added before Abbi could interrupt. “The police already told me there’s nothing they can do. But even with that little bit of rain we got the woods have been so dry, and all we’ve been hearing about in town is the wildfire threat. It might not be a cigarette, could be a lighter or something. But, well, I thought someone should know. Seems awfully foolish,” she went on. “If it’s illegal to light a campfire then it should be illegal to light anything out there.”
“It’s illegal if the cigarette isn’t disposed of properly,” Abbi explained. “But unfortunately there’s not much anyone can do about someone walking.”
“The fire department said it could be someone going to check out the firebreak.” The woman said it reassuringly, like that would make it okay. But that was exactly what Abbi was afraid of. That “someone” meant Russ. And “checking out the firebreak” meant… She couldn’t even begin to figure out what.
“Did you see a vehicle, by any chance?” Abbi asked.
“No, I don’t know. My house looks toward the ridge, but I can’t see the road from where I am.”
“That’s okay,” Abbi said. “I was just wondering.”
“Hope we get that firebreak soon,” the woman said. “I live so close to the woods, it makes me nervous thinking about what might happen.”
Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you built your house up there, Abbi wanted to say. But she bit her tongue and thanked the woman for calling. “If you see evidence of a campfire, call the police. They can try to track the person down.”
She hung up the phone with a grumble and went to knock on Tyler’s door down the hall. She didn’t miss how his eyes lit up when he saw her.
But she also didn’t miss how he pushed aside some papers and dimmed the computer screen. She knew he was working on his counter-proposal, something to get the project back on track after her last move.
She wanted to be angry about it, and she knew she probably should be. But right now, she had bigger things to worry about, and he was the one she wanted to talk to. She told him about the latest call.
“A cigarette?” Tyler frowned. “That’s really stupid to do out there.”
“Which puts another check mark firmly in the Russ box.”
“This was last night?”
“Yeah. She said it went on for a while. She could see someone in a clearing for like an hour. I’m not sure how high up that means, though—whether it was at the firebreak site, or near there. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence and this doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Could someone be camping anywhere within sight of Ridge Line Road?” Tyler asked.
“No permits have been given out for backcountry sites in that area—I checked. But even if you were camping illegally, that seems like an odd place to choose.”
Tyler pulled together the papers on his desk and put them in a drawer. Then he turned off his computer and reached for the hiking boots that had found a home in the corner. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.
“I’m thinking of telling everyone I’ll be out for the afternoon.” She paused. It was crazy how they kept getting thrown together. And how much she’d stopped trying to resist it.
She flashed him a grin. “Want to go for a ride?”
…
“What would Russ be doing there, though?” Abbi said, looking out the window and biting her lip. “He doesn’t even have the work permits yet.”
Tyler kept one hand on the wheel and reached over to slide the other into Abbi’s. He’d insisted on driving—his truck was better on the steep turns, and he didn’t like how keyed up she was over this. “It’ll be okay.”
She gave a faint smile. “You’re awfully confident.”
“It’s fixable.”
“Not everything is fixable, Tyler.” But she squeezed his hand, and Tyler couldn’t help thinking she was wrong. Maybe some things were fixable. Because here they were, her hand in his, even though there was no one pushing them to fake it, no reason for them to pretend.
They were finally on the same side, both caring about what was happening up in those woods, both concerned not about whether Gold Mountain needed a firebreak but about how to take care of the people and places that needed them.
But what did Abbi want? And how come it sometimes felt so hard to figure out?
“So why’d you get involved with him in the first place?” he asked, because it was something he’d been wondering ever since that first night at the bar.
But maybe he shouldn’t have asked, because she quickly shot him a look. “Are you judging my poor decision making?”
“No!” he said, startled, and then conceded, “Okay, maybe a little.”
He thought she’d laugh. He’d meant it to be funny. But a shadow crossed her face and he knew he’d gone too far.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just kidding.”
“It’s not a big deal.” But she said it automatically, and he didn’t believe her.
He shook his head. “Don’t make me force it out of you.”
That made Abbi flash him a look, and she said, “Maybe I’m still making poor decisions when it comes to men.”
“Oh yeah?” He raised an eyebrow.
Abbi shifted in the passenger seat. “Yeah.”
“What kinds of poor decisions?”
She slid her hand out from his, which wasn’t what he wanted. But then she put it around his shoulder, teasing the hair on the nape of his neck. It was pretty much impossible to concentrate on driving while she pulled gently on his hair. Her other fingers tiptoed lightly up his forearm, where his hand rested on the steering wheel.
“Oh no,” he said. “You’re not wriggling away from my question that easily.”
“But I’m an excellent wriggler,” she teased.
“Don’t I know it.”
She shook her butt in the seat.
“That,” he said. “Right there.”
The hand that had been on his forearm dropped to his lap.
“I’m driving,” he warned.
“I see that.”
She ran her fingers over the crotch of his jeans.
“I think you’re doing something else, too,” she murmured, sliding closer to him in the car.
“Shit, Abbi.” He was growing hard. Or harder—the single touch of her fingers to his neck had already sent his blood flowing. “You can’t distract me.”
But his dick obviously had other ideas.
“You’re a good driver,” she said, stroking him through his jeans. “A man like you can concentrate. He can multitask. Are you telling me you�
��re not the man I think you are?”
She unzipped his pants and he groaned. This wasn’t highway driving. They were climbing up a narrow mountain road. It was empty, though. No cars around, nothing but trees. Every so often a break in the foliage appeared and he could see across to the mountains, and he might have told Abbi to look at the view except she was entirely focused on something else…and at the moment, he didn’t want her to stop.
Her hand disappeared inside his pants and he felt the warm heat of her palm along his shaft, straining inside his boxers. But it didn’t stay trapped for long. She pulled his dick through the fly and made an appreciative noise as it sprung free. “Damn,” she murmured. “Would you look at that.”
“You’re a fucking tease,” he said.
“Eyes on the road,” she told him.
And then she leaned over, snuggling herself down under his arms, and brought her mouth—her sweet, warm mouth—to his lap.
She kissed the tip first. Just the lightest touch, enough to make his hips jerk up, wanting more. Dammit, she really shouldn’t play with him like this. One foot on the gas as he took the turn. A quick glimpse at his lap when he eased into the straightaway. He kept a hand on the wheel and brought the other down to thread his fingers through her hair, wanting to feel the softness. Wanting to feel how much her mouth was his.
He gripped her hair as her head came down and his cock disappeared into her mouth. Sensation started in his toes, up through his balls, and tightened in the base of his spine. Her mouth worked up and down, her head bobbing in his lap in front of the steering wheel. He took the next turn too fast. He had to slow down. Let this last. He wished there was a place to pull over but it wasn’t like he could stop in the middle of the road.
And she was too good, she was too fucking good, he was going to explode. The murmurs coming from her mouth muffled on his cock said that was exactly what she wanted.
How could she even take him that far? And still do that thing with her tongue? She had one hand firm around the base of his shaft, the other hand cupping his balls. His grip tightened in her hair: a signal. He was going to come.
Abbi responded by taking him even deeper. Someone was panting, saying fuck, fuck, fuck, but it couldn’t be her because her mouth was so full of him, and he realized it was his own voice, his own cry as he spilled himself onto her tongue. He could feel her swallowing quickly, still sucking him, getting it all.
Make Me Want (Men of Gold Mountain) Page 10