by Lilia Moon
Weighted Wires
The Handcrafted Trilogy, Book 2
Lilia Moon
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Lilia Moon
Borrowing my words to make money is a hard limit. Using them to fuel your own fantasies is totally encouraged!
xoxo Lilia
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Now enjoy what happens when a woman who wields a mean blow torch meets the new guy who just flew into town…
xo Lilia
Chapter One
India
This is a bad idea. The worst kind of bad idea, because it isn’t one I thought up.
I glare at Liane as she hands me a homemade scone slathered in pumpkin-spice butter that smells like all the things I love about fall. “All the baked goods in the world aren’t going to make this guy forgive you, you know that, right?”
She rolls her eyes and grins. “Matteo says Rafe is flexible and can crash anywhere. And your cottage is adorable.”
I scowl. “My garden shed, you mean.” It is adorable, and when itinerant, artsy travelers stay there, they like its furnished-at-the-thrift-store ambiance and the sense that it could be reclaimed by the garden at any moment. It was never intended to host some guy in a suit for a week while the real B&B owner heads off on a last-minute trip because one of Matteo’s sisters decided to have her baby five weeks early. “You could let him sleep here and have Bee stop by and feed him.”
“We discussed this.” Liane calmly butters a scone for herself. “He wants to get a feel for the town and scout out some possible places to rent. Your cottage is a good place for him while he does that.”
The bullshit plopped on top of this story gets deeper by the minute. “That will take five minutes and then he’ll go check out Nelson. Or head back to Vancouver.” I have no idea why Matteo thinks he can run a fancy corporate business from sleepy Crawford Bay, population five hundred and some. People move here to escape those kinds of jobs, not to find them.
Liane just gives me one of those looks that says I can squirm all I want, but she sees me, and she’s not letting me off her hook. “He’s a good friend of Matteo’s. I want him to feel welcome.”
Which is why I’m willing to stay on her freaking hook. I don’t give a damn about what Matteo needs, or some guy I’ve never met, but I would walk to the moon and back over hot coals for precisely two people in my life, and Liane is one of them.
I don’t have to do it gracefully, however. “Fine. I’ll let him stay in my cottage and I’ll peer out the window every so often to make sure he hasn’t died of loneliness.” Or at least I’ll do it for the two days it takes him to decide this is a really dumb idea and run for the hills. I lived in Vancouver for ten years. People who thrive there shrivel up and die here—or they get incredibly lost looking for some quaint little lakeside town and don’t realize they drove through it while they were blinking.
Liane takes another bite of her scone, but I don’t miss the small, private smile—or the worried eyes. Which I suspect have nothing to do with making sure a guest is well taken care of while she skips town. My radar isn’t as good as Daley’s, but I try anyhow. “Everything okay with you and Matteo?”
The soft smile tells me the answer before her words do. “Yes.”
“Need me to stick a hoop through his nose for you?”
She coughs until her eyes water, because she hadn’t quite swallowed her scone yet. She shakes her head at me as she picks up her mug of tea. “Brat.”
I was one, once—in a world she barely knows exists. Matteo might be taking her on a walk through the light edges of kink, but he’s more artist than Dom. Me, I was all the way in, and at least half the reason I’m cranky about some stranger from Vancouver staying in my garden shed is that he reminds me of the life I had there once.
One Liane knows only whispers of, and I plan to keep it that way. I came here because the submissive part of who I was needed to shrivel up and die. It’s been seven years. I like who I am now, I like the people who fill my life, and I like being safe.
Vancouver was all of those things too—until it wasn’t.
I keep my shiver internal. It’s not a story that belongs at the same table with homemade scones and pumpkin-spice butter. I’m not a victim and I wasn’t then either. I was a woman who ran out of oxygen forty feet underwater, and the blame for that belongs at the feet of a whole bunch of people, including me, but mostly it belongs at the feet of a lifestyle that looks like it has all the warning lights it needs.
For me, they didn’t flash in time.
“Hey.” Liane’s hand slides over mine. “You okay?”
Damn. I never get this lost in old history. “Yeah, sorry. My brain wandered.” It’s enough truth that I don’t feel like scum, but she’s probably figuring I got lost in my newest design.
Or not. She’s giving me a look that says she sees my bullshit, but she won’t call me on it. Yet.
Shit. “Don’t push, okay? Some old stuff is swirling today. Fall does that sometimes.” The season of watching everything in my garden slowly die. Unfortunately, it’s really beautiful as it does, so I can’t stop looking. Maybe I’ll plant some bulbs later. I get through winter better knowing spring is already underway.
Liane just squeezes my hand.
I take another bite of scone. She’s never tried to chase away my heavy moments. She just lets me have them—and keeps me in a really big supply of seasonally appropriate baked goods, which are the best antidote to depression that has ever existed. Especially when they’re made by a friend who loves me down to my heavily ringed toes.
I exhale the crap and give her a smile that isn’t an evasive maneuver. “Thanks.”
She pours me more tea. “That’s my line. I’m really excited to go meet Theo.”
I’ve seen pictures. He’s absolutely the cutest baby ever, all hair and big eyes and a nose that looks like it got punched three times on the way out. Which might have happened. That whole birthing gig does not look comfortable for anyone involved. “If you catch baby lust, don’t come back until you’re not contagious anymore.”
She nearly snorts tea out her nose. “I’m forty-four and I can barely manage a cat. No babies.”
I wanted one, once, back before I discovered I’m way better at leading people astray than keeping them safe. But I’ve had my heavy moment for the day, and I know better than to let myself slide into two of them. I pick up my tea and take a big, noisy slurp. “So. When’s my new garden gnome getting here?”
Chapter Two
Rafe
This isn’t the first time I’ve flown into the middle of nowhere, but it might be one of the strangest. I look over at the guy beside me, walking down the road with my second bag slung over his shoulder and a dopey grin on his face. It’s a new look for him, and a good one, but it doesn’t explain everything, and when you’re a guy who fixes recalcitrant problems for a living, information gaps are a thing you view with suspicion.
I glance to my left again, at the gorgeous lake the road runs alongside of, and start tracking down the missing pieces. “It’s beautiful. I get why you like it here.”
Matteo snorts beside me. “No you don’t. You fly over shit like this. You don’t move here.”
He’s thinking I might. Or at least set up a satellite apartment here. Which has some attractions. The view from my Cessna 182 on the way here was spectacular, and it’s not every small airport where you can tuck your baby away for a few days and hop straight onto a powerboat. Getting here was amazing. It’s the rest of what’s going on that’s still murkier than I’d like, and it’s not like Matteo to be mysterious. “You’re moving your base of operations here, but I still don’t understand why that requires me to come hang out.” We’ve been working together from different cities for years.
He looks over at me. “It’s not a requirement. Just a suggestion. Check out the new office digs, handle the two client meetings I need you to take, and ask me again in a week.”
I could have handled the clients from my condo in West Van. There’s something going on here he’s not being up front about, and that’s just not how either of us handle kink or business or a friendship that started in a university seminar so boring neither of us remember what it was about anymore. “Look, I came and I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions until I got here, but this cloak-and-dagger shit isn’t like you.”
He offers me a wry grin. “Noted.”
Damn rope artists and their cat-and-mouse patience. He knows I’m a curious asshole and he’s always been able to use it to outmaneuver me. “You arranged for your sister to pop early just so I don’t have your ass to kick when I figure this out, right?”
He snorts. “You’ve met my sister—what do you think?”
Point made, although if the women in my family are any indication, even the toughest of them have absolutely no control over when their babies show up. I’m just glad this one came healthy and yelling for his mama.
I decide to let Matteo off the hot seat. He’s only gone for a week, and I have an entire collection of t-shirts that say I can roll with anything the world throws at me. A couple of them are in the bag on his back. “Anything I need to know about the two client meetings?” Probably not—I’ve worked with both teams before, and they know I’m the mean one.
Matteo shakes his head, but his attention has wandered off down the gravel twin tracks that probably count as a driveway in this part of the world. I spy the small B&B sign and know I’m right. This is Liane’s place, a pretty, weathered two-story cottage facing the lake. I’ve seen her website’s photo gallery of the inside. Open, homey, and the kind of place I rarely stay.
I look over at the guy who brought me here and the invisible rope that’s clearly tugging him straight toward the front door.
“We’re around back.” A voice greets us as we walk onto the small porch, followed by a woman who rounds the corner of the house looking like a cross between a lumberjack and a silent-movie actress. She walks straight over to me, even though she’s clearly attached to the other end of Matteo’s invisible rope. “Hi. I’m Liane Granger, and I’m really sorry we’re changing plans on you on such short notice.”
Matteo’s bizarre life choices are making more sense every second. “Rafe Clark. It was no problem. I love to take my plane up, and here was as good a destination as any.”
She smiles at me. “I want to hear about your flight, but come around back. A friend of mine is here and I’ve got some brunch fixings laid out if you’re hungry.”
I grin at her, because she’s got wonderful, solid energy, and because I’m always hungry. “I’m a better cook than Matteo, but I’ve heard you put my skills to shame.”
She laughs and leads us around the side of the house. “He’s not as bad as he used to be. He made the bacon.”
I shoot a grin in the direction of her still-standing house. “And nothing burned down?”
He elbows me, because this is a skit almost as old as our friendship. “Any more wisecracks and I’m letting India eat all the bacon.”
“You’re assuming I left you guys any,” says a dry voice from someone I can’t see yet.
I round the corner as she says something else. I don’t hear it though. I’m too busy picking up the brain cells that just splattered on the deck. India isn’t classically beautiful. Heck, to most people she’s probably not beautiful at all. But I’ve never been a guy who looks at surfaces. I read energy—I always have—and hers is stunning. A statue with a core so alive I don’t know how she can contain it in who she is, and all of it shining in the most fucking gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen.
The ones looking at me like I’m a zombie reaching for her brains.
Chapter Three
India
Holy fucking hell.
I felt him before I saw him. The smart parts of me wanted to run, but they’re not in charge of my feet, so instead I’m standing here like I got struck by lightning and wheezing like an old guy with an oxygen tank, trying to breathe myself back toward sanity.
Judging from the way he’s looking at me, I’m not the only one who just got hit. Which we need to fix, pronto, because he’s ridiculously hot and easy in his own skin and those are two things that would usually have me taking a second look, but whatever else this man is, he’s also a Dom. A sexy stranger standing on Liane’s deck oozing a vibe I haven’t gone anywhere near in years.
I wheeze some more. A fucking Dom is supposed to live in my garden for the next week. That can’t happen. It just absolutely can’t, and there are so many reasons I can’t even find a way to get the list started.
Except naming any of them out loud will involve ripping the face off of my life here. Which they might all deal with just fine, but I won’t.
That’s the first reason I’m standing here stupid and mute, but there’s a second one, and as my wheezing gets some of my inner hurricane under control, I can see that he’s twigging to it just as fast as I am. We have an audience, and they matter. They’re both reading the vibe of whatever just walked in with this guy, and while Matteo doesn’t seem overly surprised, Liane is confused and worried. The kind of worried that says maybe she should go dust the upstairs bedroom or whatever it is she does to get it ready for guests.
I can’t let that happen. She’s already nervous enough about being tossed headfirst into Matteo’s family. She doesn’t need to spend any time worrying about the stray guy in her spare bedroom. I can give her that much. The submissive part of my life was a long time ago. I need to suck it up and deal, even if this man is way more than I bargained for.
I look him straight in the eyes and will him to follow the script. “So you’re my new garden gnome?”
His looks over at Matteo, eyes full of surprised hilarity. “Seriously, you told her that?”
Matteo just shakes his head, totally mystified.
Liane has no more idea what’s going on than I do, so I glare at the new guy. He needs to start making sense. Now.
He gives me a look, a full-on Dom one that promises I’m going to be sorry for glaring at him. Then he eases. “Back when I was a kid, my mom made a joke at a family potluck that she found me in a clearing in the forest. One of my cousins was reading some fantasy book at the time and spent the rest of the evening calling me Gnome, and it stuck. It’s been my nickname since I was about six.”
I want to feel nothing but disdain and distrust, but it’s really clear he loves the hell out of his family, even the annoying bookworm cousin. Which means I won’t snark at him, even though I probably should. “My guest cottage is in my garden. I was just making a bad joke.”
He grins, and it stirs up my need to flee. “I’m Rafe Clark.”
“I’m India.” Of no cute nicknames and a swift death to anyone who tries to give me one.
He sets a duffel bag down on top of the one Matteo already dropped. “In that case, hopefully I can catch a ride to your garden after I stuff myself silly.”
Right. He flew in. Which means he needs a caretaker and a taxi driver. I don’t glare at Liane, but it’s a close thing. Maybe I can talk Xander into loaning him a scooter. This guy looks like he can handle anything with wheels.
He doesn’t, however, look like somebody who intends to liv
e in Crawford Bay. Whoever wrote that part of the memo clearly wasn’t looking at Mr. Urban-and-Dangerous. Dusted-caramel skin and kinky black hair, a pair of jeans and a simple black shirt that are probably both worth more than my garden shed, and a barely-bottled vibe that says the streets where he lives pay attention when he roars.
The kind of guy that older, wiser India stays incredibly far away from.
He’s watching me in that way people do when my brain’s gone off on a tangent and taken my social skills along for the ride. I backtrack until I remember what he asked me. “Sure, I can give you a ride. We can stop and talk to a guy who has wheels you can probably borrow. Two of them, anyhow.”
Rafe looks amused as he slides into a chair at the table. “A bicycle works.”
I don’t want to know he’s a funny gnome. Or an adaptable one. I plunk back down in my seat. “He restores old scooters. If he likes you, you’ll get a good one. If he doesn’t, you’ll get a pile of crap.”
“Good to know.” He grins and hands me a bowl of mixed berries, which I clearly don’t need since my waffle is already festooned with them, but he obviously comes from one of those families with tight-knit gatherings and good table manners. There’s no reason to scratch at him just because I’m cranky.
Cranky and interested, and I hate that he can make me feel either.
I take a big spoonful of berries I don’t need. Maybe enough of them will give me a bellyache to focus on instead.
Chapter Four
Rafe
I’m no stranger to weird energy at a table piled high with food. Even families like mine have issues, and they tend to intensify as soon as everyone has a fork in their hand.