Just This Once

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  Emily was grinning down at her, nodding a little too enthusiastically. “We get shit done, Moll.”

  Yeah, they did. These two took to projects like nobody’s business. But even without Sean having just stepped into the picture, Molly wasn’t sure she would want to be one. “I know you do. You guys are impressive…like whoa, but I kind of have a rule about finding my own dates.”

  She should totally have that rule.

  Emily leaned in, probably closer than absolutely necessary, the lantern giving her a sort of ghost-story look. “You know what you need, Moll?”

  This could be fun. “What’s that?”

  Those big, soft brown eyes that Jase had waxed poetic about for the first six months they were married bore into her. “You need to get the hell out of Sean’s tent.”

  “Amen, sister,” Sarah agreed with a hiccup.

  Okay, and now Emily was really close. “Especially after that close-encounter business with his boner and then that knitting channel stuff. I know you guys are besties, but you gotta draw the line.”

  This was the part where she was supposed to take her drunk girlfriends’ hands, look them in the eye, and share what was happening between her and Sean. But that would mean admitting to them that she believed she and Sean had a shot. It meant risking that she would look like the worst kind of fool when Sean realized there was a reason Molly had never been on his radar before.

  Besides, they’d been together for, like, five seconds.

  If things worked out, there would be time to tell their friends later. And if they didn’t, that would be okay too. But for tonight, she had another way to handle this. “You’re right. I should get out of his tent.”

  Both women were nodding.

  “Tonight. I’m going to get out tonight.”

  Emily was still in full bobblehead mode, but Sarah’s eyes had taken on a wary look.

  “But there’s a reason I never bunk with Brody. He snores like crazy.”

  Lies. At least as far as she knew. Brody just didn’t like a roommate unless he was doing her.

  “So maybe I could bunk with one of you guys. You know, if you think I should really get out of Sean’s tent. Like, tonight.”

  And suddenly, both women were shaking their heads. “No, no. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

  Ha!

  “Seriously, there’s no rush.”

  “Your sleeping bag is already in there.”

  “Yeah.”

  Molly heaved a deep sigh of relief—mostly for their benefit. “You’re right. It’s no big deal for this trip. Okay, thanks, girls. I feel way better.”

  Emily agreed she did too, but Sarah was looking at Molly with a critical eye, as if something didn’t smell right.

  Time for a quick exit.

  “Okay, hey, has Max been holding your tent flap open this whole time?”

  Whatever Sarah’s BS meter was picking up, she forgot about in a blink. Next thing, she was running for her tent, squawking about keeping the bugs out.

  One down.

  “Em? You gonna make me wait all night?” Jase called from the next site down.

  Em offered a quick shrug, her grin going wide before she skipped off as well.

  Crisis averted.

  Molly stood where she was for a minute, the lantern dangling from her fingers not bright enough to make out their tent beyond.

  What was she doing?

  A part of her wanted to run, not walk, that last distance to get back to Sean. Make the most of every minute they had together.

  But the other part of her couldn’t stop asking why she wasn’t being smarter. Why she would set herself up for the kind of heartbreak and rejection she’d spent most of her life actively working to avoid. Why she would risk her relationship with Sean, when deep down, she knew a romantic relationship couldn’t last.

  Knowing she wouldn’t find any answers standing alone in the dark, she did the only thing she could and put one foot in front of the other until she made it back to where Sean was waiting for her outside the tent, arms crossed.

  “Looked like you might be ready to turn tail and run there for a minute.”

  Of course, he’d been watching her, making sure she got back okay.

  He was still Sean. Overprotective and caring and all-too-easy-to-fall-for Sean.

  The man she could talk to, Sean.

  “After everything, I feel like I suddenly don’t know how to be with you,” she admitted nervously. “What to do.”

  He nodded, reaching past her to open the flap of the tent. When they were zipped inside, he cocked his head at her and grinned. “You’ll figure it out, Moll. But if it makes you feel any better, I know exactly what I want to do.”

  His confidence tugged at her smile and her heart. “Yeah?”

  Crawling toward her until she was leaning back on her arms, he lowered his voice. “Oh yeah. I’ve been waiting for this kiss all damn day.”

  Her heart fluttered, and then in the next beat, he caught her by her hips and, in a move so swift and smooth, he had to have been thinking about it all day, Sean had her pj bottoms and panties cast aside and her knees flipped over his shoulders. “Sean!”

  “Shh, baby. You just kick back and think about what you want. Take your time. I’m going to be at this a while.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Chapter 16

  So very not the way he’d seen this morning going.

  Sean ran his hands over the worn boards of the picnic table, focusing hard on keeping them from balling into fists and harder still on keeping his fucking mouth shut.

  “But seriously, Sean, you have to know somebody. Just think about it,” Sarah charged, giving Sean the serious face she used with him across the conference table at work. The one that said she meant business.

  The one he didn’t like very much right now, at least not in the context of her applying it to finding his girlfriend a date. Even if said girlfriend would probably flip out that he was trying to label her already, but whether she was ready to admit it or not, that’s what she was. And thinking of her wearing his label was about the only thing keeping a smile on his face as Sarah kicked off her latest crusade.

  “Maybe you ought to slow down here, Sarah. I know you mean well, but have you even talked to Molly about this yet?”

  Molly was still asleep, and after the way he’d kept her up, the poor girl needed her rest. Especially since he had every intention of doing the same tonight. Hell, every night for as long as she’d let him. But that said, it wouldn’t have been the worst thing to have her out there fending the girls off on her own.

  Emily sat down on the opposite bench, swinging her long legs beneath the table and then scooting over to make room for Jase, who was carrying her coffee, since she had a spiral notebook and pen in hand.

  “We talked to her last night,” Emily interjected, flipping the notebook open and scribbling across the top. “She was into it.”

  She most definitely was not into it.

  What she had been into? His mouth between her legs until she’d come not once but twice. That she’d been into.

  This business with Sarah and Emily—Jesus, the two of them together?—working to find her a date? Not a fucking chance. She’d probably been trying to put them off, figuring they’d forget about it by the next day. But obviously, not so much.

  The rapid-fire clacking of Emily’s pen against the top of the page labeled WHAT DOES MOLLY WANT set his stomach on edge. Emily looked intense, focused.

  “Jase, you and Sean have known her the longest. You’ve seen what kind of guys she goes for. Tell me about the last three.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Let’s make it five.”

  The girls looked to Jase, and Jase looked to Sean, a sorry sort of helplessness in his eyes. “Five?”

  Dollars to dough
nuts, the guy had nothing. “Well, there was that guy…that time. You know, the hair guy,” Jase said, waving his hands around his head as if he was giving them anything to go on.

  And sure, Sean knew exactly who he was talking about. Hair guy also went by Eric, a clerk at a local skate shop. She’d gone out with him a couple of times but hadn’t been that into him.

  Emily was staring at Jase, an expectant look in her eyes. When he didn’t go on, she blew out a frustrated breath and waved her hand. “And? What did she like about him? Why did she go out with him? What set him apart from the guys she didn’t go out with?”

  Jase blinked and again looked to Sean.

  He felt bad enough that he was lying to his friends about what was going on with Molly, but he couldn’t just leave Jase hanging in the wind, especially when the man’s wife was looking at him like that.

  After a sigh, Sean bit the bullet. “She went out with him because she said he was pretty mellow. She liked his smile and that he made her laugh. And she liked the hair. Something about wanting to put her fingers in it.”

  Max walked over and sat, handing Sarah a mug of coffee.

  “So this is Operation Land Molly a Man in action? Do I want to be here?” he asked, having the sense to look at Jase and Sean, rather than his wife and Emily.

  Jase shook his head. “Definitely not, man. Run.”

  Sarah took a sip of her coffee and smiled, snuggling in to her husband’s side. “We’re talking about Hair Guy, trying to identify what attracted Molly to him. And why it didn’t work out.”

  “Fuck if I know what she saw in him,” Max grumbled, his brows pulling together. “But it didn’t work out because of his work ethic. Something about him calling in sick all the time and trying to get her to play hooky. She didn’t respect him.”

  Emily’s pen was moving in a blur across her page. “Perfect. So strong work ethic, good sense of humor, mellow, and hair appeal. I may need to go directly to the source to understand that last one better.”

  “And before Hair Guy?” Sarah asked. Knowing better than to bother with Jase again, she cocked her head and waited for Sean’s answer.

  “Bar Guy.” Also known as Richy Oldsmith. “He was actually an inventor, pouring drinks to earn enough bank to launch his product.” He could remember being a little jealous over the way Molly kept talking about him, telling Sean how she thought they’d get along because they were so much alike.

  “His kick to the curb was courtesy of being impractical,” Max added, with a grin.

  * * *

  “What’s up?” Molly asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she half stumbled over to the picnic table where most of the group was congregating. Brody was probably chatting up the group of girls camped down by the bathrooms. Everybody was laughing, smiling—everyone except for Sean, that was. He had a pee-in-his-cornflakes kind of dour going on, and after the night they’d had, whatever was bothering him had to be pretty big to wipe the smile from his face.

  Sean sat back, shifting over on the bench to make room for her. “The girls decided to get a jump on finding a new guy for you. So we’ve been going over your previous boyfriends, making lists of what you liked and didn’t like. They want to make sure this next one’s a winner.”

  And like that, she was awake. No wonder Sean looked miserable.

  “Um… You guys don’t have to do this. It’s nice that you want to, but I think it’s better if I find my own dates.”

  “We tried that,” Sarah said with a laugh. “So now you get to just kick back and let Emily and me do our work.”

  Sean was still watching her, his eyes dark, frustrated.

  There was no question what he wanted. Her to come forward with the truth, but she just wasn’t ready.

  And he must’ve seen it in her eyes, because his cut away, and the muscle in his jaw started to tick.

  She didn’t want him to be mad at her. She didn’t want to hurt him or cause him any suffering. But they hadn’t even had a full day alone to see how they actually felt about trying out this couple thing. It was too soon, and he had to understand that.

  Maybe he did. Because after a long breath, he smoothed his hand back through his hair, returning the rumpled mess she’d spent hours perfecting the night before into a semi-neat state. And then he was looking back at her, the smile she hated from all those society shots front and center on his face. It wasn’t real, but he was willing to play along.

  She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  “Okay, this will be way better now that you’re here,” Emily said, her eyes glittering with excitement. “We’ve already been through Hair Guy, Bar Guy, Inventor Guy, and Sean was just about to tell us about Homeless Guy.”

  Molly let out a snort, turning to Sean, who didn’t seem the slightest bit apologetic. “Homeless Guy? This again?”

  Sean sat back, cocking that strong jaw to the side. “Did he or did he not try to take you to his friend’s couch on not one, not two, but three separate occasions?”

  “And in case there was any question, that right there is why she dumped him,” Max said with a shrug.

  “Yeah, yeah, thanks for the hot tip, Max.” Emily looked to Molly. “But let’s get back to the original attraction. What made you say yes?”

  Welcome to the hot seat. Molly could feel the heat creeping up her chest and neck. She knew the answer, and prior to this weekend, nothing on earth would have made her own up to it. She would have been too worried about someone connecting the right dots.

  But now…

  “His eyes,” she admitted, remembering the way they’d held hers that first time, the familiarity of them. “He had these gorgeous brown eyes that reminded me of a crush I never quite got over.”

  She couldn’t meet Sean’s eyes now. Not with that smug smile planted on his lips. The one that more than anything, she wanted to kiss right off.

  Finally, Sean turned back to the girls. “All right, enough about Molly. How about me? You want to hear about my ideal woman?”

  Molly coughed on her sip of coffee, choking for a second before she regained her composure.

  Laughing, Sarah started gathering the empty mugs from around the table while Emily shook her head and closed her notebook. “Pretty sure we’re all familiar with that, mister.”

  Oh no.

  “If we’re talking marriage material,” Sarah chimed in, walking over to the wash bin to start the mugs. “I’ve got this in three… Ivy League, last name found on the Fortune 500 list, summa cum laude graduate from the Stepford School of Social Graces.”

  Jase grinned, climbing out from his side of the picnic table. “She’s got your number, Wyse.”

  Max stood as well, leaning over to clap him on one shoulder. “And if we’re not talking marriage, then the exact opposite of that.”

  Molly tried to push the air through her throat, but it was too tight. They’d said exactly what she would have just two days ago. And even if she wanted to believe that somehow things had changed that much, she didn’t know if she could.

  “Whoa, Em. Hold up, will you?” Sean called after her, jogging a few steps to catch up. “Just remembered something important I don’t want to forget. Mind if I bum a sheet of that paper and your pen a minute?”

  Needing a moment to get her emotions back in check, Molly went up to the bathrooms to brush her hair and teeth. When she came back to get changed and start packing up, that’s when she saw it. The neatly folded sheet of ripped-out spiral paper on her pillow.

  What Sean wants in a woman…

  She unfolded the page and let out a soft laugh, chased by too much emotion. There were two words on the page, surrounded by a heart.

  Molly Brandt.

  * * *

  The morning went by too fast. They hiked the four-mile trail, stopping along the way to picnic with the sandwiches she and
Max had made that morning. Jase and Emily had been the trailblazers, while she and Sarah compared notes on Max’s quirks, with the rest of the guys bringing up the rear.

  Every now and then, she and Sean found a moment to hang back, slipping off for a second alone, during which Sean would do his damnedest to convince her to tell their friends what was going on.

  Molly’s back pressed into the bark of the tree as her fingers slid through the silk of Sean’s sun-kissed hair. His mouth moved over her neck as he pulled her in to him.

  “Sean, we’re going to get caught,” she chided when he pulled her knee up his side and then splayed his hand wide over the back of her thigh, squeezing the muscle as he groaned into her neck.

  “Ooh, naughty stuff, Moll. Thrill of discovery.”

  “No!” she gasped, refusing to acknowledge said thrill snaking through her at the idea that they might have minutes or maybe only seconds.

  What they were doing was asking for trouble, but she couldn’t resist the stolen moment.

  His laugh rumbled against her sensitive skin, and her arms tightened around his neck.

  “Sean, they’re going to notice we’re gone. Again.”

  Sliding his hands up and down her hips, he stepped back and grinned at her. “Probably.”

  “What?” she squeaked, batting his hand away when he hooked his finger in the hem of her tank and started pulling it up.

  He gave her a stern look and caught her by the wrists, holding them in one hand above her head. Again, he reached for the hem of her shirt. “Struggle all you like, Moll, but I want my mouth on these perfect tits. Just for a second. Then I promise to be good.”

  She stilled, gaping at him. Because no way had he just—

  Her tank was up, and with a flick of his finger, the right cup of her bra was down, the tight peak of her breast exposed to the afternoon air. Molly’s eyes darted around, making sure they were alone as that unwelcome spear of exhilaration shot through her center.

  “Sean.” She sighed again as he just stood there, his eyes hungry and fixed on her exposed breast. Her ears straining for any sound to warn her of her friends’ approach, she urged him on. “Please.”