by Jessie Evans
If Phoebe wanted to keep this casual, he could do that. He had lots of experience with keeping things casual. It was the way he preferred to manage his love life, in fact, and if Phoebe were anyone other than Phoebe he would be relieved that she didn’t want to talk about what had happened in the bedroom or stress about defining their relationship.
But she wasn’t any other girl. She was Phoebe, and she’d made him feel things he hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling: a raw, hungry tenderness that had made making love to her one of his best memories of the past two years.
Hell, maybe of the past twenty-eight.
He couldn’t remember anything that had made him as purely happy as holding Phoebe in his arms, or anything that hurt as much as watching her walk away and act like what they’d shared wasn’t the least bit special.
Chapter 11
Phoebe
Amazingly, Daisy kept her promise not to say a word about Phoebe’s decision to have a red-hot fling with the wrong brother.
Coffin painting went off without anything more awkward than a strained moment when Daisy wanted angry eyes on the front of the coffin and Phoebe preferred big googly ones, and Phoebe returned home at five after seven to find her house silent.
Upstairs, the bed had been made with fresh sheets and all signs of the erotic afternoon she’d shared with Colt had been smoothed away. Back downstairs, she found the old sheets clean, folded, and sitting on the dryer, meaning Colt had stuck around long enough to wait for the drier to finish before leaving her house.
She wandered around the ground floor, wondering how he’d spent the time.
Had he sat at the kitchen table and had a glass of tea? Had he turned on Sports Center in the living room and zoned out while he completed his thoughtful gesture?
Phoebe settled into the overstuffed velvet couch with a sigh and closed her eyes, imagining that she was sitting exactly where Colt had sat and wishing he were there beside her. But before the wish could become a longing, she grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels, finding a teen slasher movie she’d watched several times before and settling in for a re-watch.
Nothing like horror movie gore to keep your mind off affairs of the heart.
Her heart had no part in this affair. She and Colt were going to have hot sex for as long as it pleased them both and then he was going to leave and there would be no hard feelings.
She refused to think about the way Colt had burst through defenses she hadn’t even realized she had, making her feel exposed and safe all at the same time. She refused to think about how beautiful and sexy she’d felt in his arms, or the way he’d looked at her like she was the only woman in the world.
She wasn’t the only woman in the world.
She was one of many who had rolled around in bed with Colton Brody. She had known that going in and was prepared to take the necessary steps to keep her perspective.
That meant no calling Colt to say good night, no texting to see if he was going to join her, Daisy, and Tucker for turkey bowling tomorrow, and no replaying every moment of their sexy afternoon over and over again until she was so turned on she had to run over to his house for a quickie.
She managed to keep all of her promises to herself until around midnight when she fell asleep and her traitorous subconscious took over. Her subconscious, clearly having no reservations surrounding fantasizing about Colt, stayed tuned to the Colton Brody Naked and Sexy channel all night long. She was tormented by one breathlessly naughty dream after another and woke at half past six with her every nerve ending sizzling and an almost painful ache between her legs.
“Have mercy.” Phoebe rolled onto her side and curled into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut.
For a moment, she considered taking care of the situation on her own, but if she touched herself while thinking of Colt, that would only give him more power over her and he clearly already had more than enough. The best way to handle this situation was to get busy doing something as unsexy as possible and keep her mind off the youngest Brody brother.
She spent the morning in the Curiosity Shoppe, dusting and boxing up all of the remaining stock before whipping out her power drill and unscrewing all of the shelves from the walls. After a quick lunch break, she lay down plastic to protect the gorgeous restored wooden floors and taped up the moldings in preparation for painting the shop after Christmas.
By the time she was finished, she was tired and sore all over but pleased with how much she’d accomplished. She was in a great place to take off the next couple of days for the festival and the holiday. And if she continued to make such solid progress, the Curiosity Shoppe would be ready for a grand reopening right after New Year’s.
Then she would really be a part of the town again. She would be able to plug into Lover’s Leap as a business owner, make new friends while renewing old relationships, and ensure tourists were happy they had chosen her town for an escape from the bustle of their everyday lives. And since the house and shop were paid for and Phoebe had returned to Lover’s Leap with a good chunk of her accounting-firm-slavery-acquired savings intact, she didn’t have to worry about turning a profit for several months.
She should have been at ease and at peace with the world.
Instead, as she lay in the claw foot tub in the upstairs bath, taking a soak before getting ready for turkey bowling, she couldn’t shake the anxious, unsettled feeling that buzzed beneath her skin.
She told herself it had nothing to do with the fact that Colt hadn’t contacted her today. She’d barely noticed that her cell had remained silent. She wasn’t upset or worried or, heaven forbid, angry.
This was exactly what she’d expected. She was prepared for indifference and the kind of low-key “I’ll see you when I see you and maybe bang you if it’s convenient” treatment a girl got from a bad boy like Colt.
What she wasn’t prepared for was to step out onto her front porch as the sun was sinking behind the mountains, initiating the extended dusk typical in the Rockies this time of year, to see Colton Brody rocking in one of her rocking chairs, a bunch of flowers clutched in one gloved hand.
“Hey,” she said, so flustered she had to reach back twice to catch the doorknob and pull it closed. “Why didn’t you knock? You must have been freezing out here.”
“It’s not so bad,” he said with a grin. “And the cold kept the flowers fresh.” He held them out. “For you, beautiful.”
Phoebe bit back a smile. “You didn’t have to get me flowers.”
“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to.” He came to his feet, drawing her attention to the way his dark jeans hugged his hips beneath his black wool coat.
Phoebe continued to nibble at her lip, trying not to think about her legs wrapped around those hips or her fingers clawing into the muscled ass beneath the thick denim.
“Well, th-thank you,” she stammered. “I’ll just pop back in and put them in water before we go.” She took the flowers but hesitated before turning back toward the door. “You’re coming with me to meet Daisy and Tucker, right? That’s why you’re here?”
“I’m here because I wanted to see you again,” he said, easing closer. “The day was way too quiet and uneventful without you in it.”
Her lips curved on one side. “No near death experiences then, I take it.”
“Not a single one,” he said, reaching up to adjust the collar of her fur-lined coat, smoothing it down over her shoulder, sending a surge of warmth through her from head to toe. “It was very boring.”
“Well, I’ll see if I can arrange to knock you unconscious with a frozen turkey or something and liven things up.” She retreated a step, not sure what she would do if she stood too close to him for too long. “Be right back.”
She sucked in a breath and let it out slow, trying to find her center. The attraction was even worse today than it had been yesterday. Now that she knew what delightful things awaited her when she was naked with Colt, a primitive part of her demanded that she drag him inside an
d jump back into bed with him as swiftly as possible.
But the primitive side didn’t understand that things between her and Colt were more complicated than that and that these flowers might complicate them even more.
As Phoebe hurried inside and put the beautiful bouquet of irises and white lilies into a vase, she tried not to read too much into the gift. But when she returned to the front porch and Colt offered her his arm to escort her down the street to the town square—something he’d never done before—she couldn’t help but begin to speculate.
What did all of this mean?
Had Colt changed his mind about a no-strings-attached situation? Was he becoming emotionally involved, despite the fact that both of them had expressed a desire for things to remain purely physical?
And if so, what did she think about that?
No matter how right it had felt to be with Colt yesterday, she wasn’t sure she was ready to open her heart to a man right now, especially not a man who was leaving town and who she wanted to keep caring about for the foreseeable future. She was back in town to stay and that meant she was back in the Brody family’s business. If she and Colt had a hot fling and parted as friends as planned, she would still be able to keep up with his news, celebrate his successes, and be a part of his life when he came home to visit.
But if they got close enough for there to be hurt feelings and resentment, it could ruin everything. Not only her homecoming but her easy relationship with her best friend. Phoebe didn’t have anyone else in town—heck, in the world—that she was as close to as Daisy. Ever since Kelly had died, Daisy had become even more of a sister-friend to her than she’d been before.
If Phoebe lost that priceless connection, she would be adrift again, alone in a way that would be even worse than the isolation she’d sometimes felt in Chicago.
Should have thought about that before you banged the wrong brother.
Phoebe wrinkled her nose, the thought of being romantically involved with Tucker making her blush all over again. He was ten years older and had always seemed like an adult to her—or close enough to an adult that the thought of kissing him had never entered her mind, no matter how handsome he was.
And he was handsome. She knew a lot of people around town thought he was the best-looking Brody brother, but those people were clearly smoking crack and needed to get their eyes checked.
Colt’s crooked nose—the result of a sledding accident when he was little that he’d never had fixed—and bolder, broader facial features made him ruggedly handsome in a way that put his older brothers to shame. Not to mention the fact that the body beneath his clothes was a thing of unparalleled beauty, a work of art built for pleasuring a woman within an inch of her life.
For bringing her over the edge again and again until she was floating on a cloud of fluffy pink orgasm-y clouds and uncertain that she would ever come down.
She shivered and Colt’s arm flexed beneath her fingers.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, leaning down to whisper his next words near her ear. “A dollar if they’re dirty.”
She fought a smile. “How did you know?”
“You shivered like that when I was running my fingers up and down your back yesterday,” he said with a soft sigh. “I’ve been thinking about other ways to make you shiver all day.”
Phoebe swallowed hard, fighting the wave of arousal his words inspired. She may have jumped into this thing with Colt without thinking everything through, but she was thinking now and it wasn’t too late to put a stop to this before things got out of hand.
She drew to a stop and turned to face him, grateful they hadn’t reached the crowded side of Evergreen Lane just yet.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Too early for dirty talk?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s just…” Her fingers twiddled nervously at her sides. “I want to make sure we’re still on the same page, that’s all. This is still casual, no stress, no harm no foul right?”
“Of course,” he said without a moment’s hesitation, sending a confusing mix of relief and sadness skittering across her chilled skin. “But just because we’re fuck buddies, it doesn’t mean I can’t get you flowers. I like getting gifts for my friends.” He shrugged. “But if you’d rather I just slap your ass on my way out and thank you for a good time, that’s fine too. I’m easy.”
“No, I like the flowers, they’re beautiful,” Phoebe said, still torn as to how to feel about Colt’s response, but grateful that he seemed as laid back as ever. “It’s just no one has ever given me flowers before. It threw me for a second.”
“No one has ever given you flowers?” he asked, brows lifting.
She shook her head, and that stormy look crept into Colt’s eyes again. “Then you’ve definitely been dating the wrong kind of guys. Maybe you should let Daisy set you up with someone after I’m gone. But just not my brother, okay, that would be too weird.”
“Oh my God, of course not,” she said, rearing back in disgust at the thought. “What do you take me for, Colt? Seriously, you think I would hook up with you and then move on to your brother?”
“No,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her close. “But I’m glad to hear you say it. I don’t want to have to beat the shit out of Tucker. He’s my brother and I like him and I figure he’s been through enough.”
Phoebe leaned into him, even though she knew she shouldn’t. If they were going to part ways without drama, it wouldn’t do to be seen canoodling in public. But she couldn’t resist the draw of his warmth, his smell, and the electricity that hummed between them every time they touched.
“I heard he lost his fiancée,” she said. “That had to have been so hard.”
“Two weeks before the wedding. It just about killed him.” Colt shook his head, his arm tightening around her as his gaze shifted to her shoulder. “You probably would have been good for him, you know. He needs someone with a big heart. Otherwise, I don’t see him ever moving on. He’ll be in love with a ghost for the rest of his life.”
“I wouldn’t have been good for him,” she said, brushing her fingers through the hair falling into his face. “There’s only one Brody brother I’ve ever wanted to get naked with.”
Colt looked up with a smile so big she couldn’t help but smile back. “Oh yeah? Just one, huh? And I assume you’re happy with how the naked part worked out, considering I kept it classy and cleaned your sheets for you.”
“You could have left them dirty and I still would have been a very happy girl,” she said, breath catching as she felt him begin to thicken against her thigh. “But we should probably stop talking about it or we’ll be late and Daisy will never forgive me for choosing sex over friendship two days in a row.”
“All right,” he said, his lips still so close all she could think about was kissing them. “But after you’re done being friendly, you’re mine. I have things I need to do to you before the sun rises tomorrow morning. I’ve got a week off from work and I mean to make the most of every day.”
Phoebe nodded dumbly, the husky note in his voice enough to steal her capacity for speech for the next block and a half. But thankfully, by the time they reached the square, where the makeshift lanes for turkey bowling had been set up in front of the courthouse and in the parking spots surrounding the lawn on either side, she had managed to fight her way free of her lustful haze.
She and Colton stopped by the main booth and Colton paid admission for two before leading the way around to the bins full of frozen turkeys.
“You didn’t have to pay for me,” Phoebe said. “This isn’t a date date.”
“Oh hush,” Colt said, capturing her around the neck and knuckling his fingers into the top of her head the way he used to do when she was little, making her laugh even as she batted at his hand. “You think too much. Stop thinking and pick out a bowling bird. You’ll want a ten or twelve pounder, right?”
“I want an eighteen pounder,” Phoebe said, squirming free and smoothing her
hair back into place. “I’m pretty buff in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” Colt shot her a heated look over a bin of frozen turkeys. “But I’m looking forward to noticing again later.”
Drawn by the wicked gleam in his blue eyes, Phoebe was leaning in to steal one more kiss before they went looking for Daisy and Tucker when her best friend called her name.
Tucking her chin, she aborted the kiss and reached for a turkey.
Daisy knowing she and Colt were messing around was one thing; kissing Colt in front of her was another.
“There you are.” Daisy appeared at her side, out of breath and clutching a slightly battered turkey in her mittened hands. “Tucker is holding a lane for us. We got here early to warm up. Get a big one, they skid faster on the ice.” She giggled as she tossed her turkey in the air. “Hey, Colt. Glad you came.”
“Hey Daisy,” he said, shifting the turkeys around until he found an enormous one at the bottom. “Are you finished being mad at me?”
“Yes, I’m finished being mad at you.” She sniffed. “For now. Matty brought a growler of pale ale by our lane about twenty minutes ago and you know I’m not an angry drunk.”
“You got drunk in twenty minutes?” Phoebe shot Colt a worried look as he handed her a turkey just slightly smaller than his monster bird.
“Oh, I’m not drunk yet,” Daisy said cheerfully, slinging an arm around Phoebe’s shoulders. “But I’m off to a good start. Come on.”
Phoebe let Daisy drag her across the crunchy, snow covered grass, soaking in the festive atmosphere. There were more people here than there had been when she was a little girl—there were one hundred lanes set up around the square instead of ten or twenty, and tourists outnumbered the locals at least two to one—but so much was still the same.
Christmas carols blasted from the speakers, and food vendors, their booths decorated with brightly colored lights, filled the air with delicious smells. Adults who’d overdone it at the brew festival were already laughing too loudly, and from the courthouse steps came the giggles and screams of children waiting to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas.