Last First Kiss (Brightwater #1)

by Lia Riley

  Atticus ducked his chin and shook his head. Seeing Sawyer around town was one thing, but for him to turn up here at Five Diamonds must be confusing.

  Sawyer pulled up short, looking a little stiff, uncomfortable, wildflowers gripped in his hand. “That was supposed to be a joke.”

  Annie ruffled her son’s hair. “He’s just trying to figure out people dynamics, aren’t you, honey?”

  No response. Sawyer didn’t offer the flowers and Atticus poked the dirt with his sneaker. The three of them stood for an uncomfortable moment before she gestured to the front door. “Want to come in?”

  “Yeah, sure.” They walked inside as Claire skipped down the stairs.

  “Aw, those for me?” she said, eyeing the bouquet with a cheeky smile.

  “Oh, sorry, no. Uh, they’re for Annie.” He held them out, and as she took them, the realization that the stems were slightly damp quickened her heart. Was Sawyer as nervous as she was?

  The trouble was deciding whether the fact was relieving or terrifying.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked shyly, trying to ignore the dagger eyes Claire sent him, an obvious warning not to mess up.

  “Sounds great,” he said quickly.

  And it was. She made a strong brew, and the four of them sat around the kitchen table. While Sawyer didn’t excel at small talk with people he didn’t know, Claire chatted incessantly, doing impressions of the regulars who frequented her food truck and the big fish Atticus caught camping last night at Juniper Lake.

  “Fish?” Sawyer gave Atticus a grin. “What kind?”

  “Rainbow trout,” Atticus replied offhandedly, even as his scrawny chest puffed with pride. “About this big.” He spread his arms wide.

  “Impressive.” Sawyer stared solemnly.

  “Maybe even bigger.”

  “Well,” Sawyer said as he lifted his mug. “Here’s a toast to you, champ. You’ve already figured out that the most important part of fishing is the story afterward.”

  Annie found herself giggling as their eyes locked. Good Lord, the look he gave her, it caused a stirring that shouldn’t happen before noon on a Sunday.

  After the cups were emptied and loaded into the sink, Claire slid back her chair. “Come on, kiddo,” she said to Atticus. “Let’s see if I can whoop your cute butt in checkers.”

  “I always win,” Atticus retorted.

  “Confidence breeds complacency,” Claire said with a wave of the hand.

  “What does that mean, Auntie?” Atticus asked, puzzled.

  “Come along, squirt, and I’ll teach you.” Claire took his hand and led him from the room without a backward glance.

  “Walk with me?” Sawyer said after a moment. “The morning was beautiful and the afternoon is shaping up to be even better.”

  “Okay.” Annie fluffed her hand through her hair and rose to her feet. Her laptop sat on the kitchen bench and she frowned slightly.

  “Is something bothering you?”

  How was he so tuned to her feelings, as if he dialed into her emotional frequency?

  “No big deal.” Hopefully her shrug passed as nonchalant. “I got a strange email this morning.”

  His eyes narrowed. “From who?”

  “On my blog there’s a troll who’s been leaving mean comments for a while. That’s one of the downsides of social media. There’s nobody standing there to have a conversation with. Instead, they can say something nasty and run away. The strange thing is, this particular person has upped the ante and taken to sending emails.”

  “What do they write?” He looked troubled.

  That no matter what I’m doing, I’m doing it wrong.

  Annie shook her head. “Today is too beautiful to worry about any of that. Mind if we go to a destination I have in mind?”

  He opened the back door and held it. “Lead the way.”

  They walked through the back fields in silence. When he reached for her hand, the fit felt natural, as if they’d been doing this for years. Their quiet was comfortable. In many ways it was enough, to be here, together in the moment.

  She cleared her throat. “Thank you, for being so great with Atticus. He really likes you.”

  “He’s a good kid.” A little shy, but he’d been too at that age.

  “I can’t really do the ‘boy stuff’ with him, you know? He needs male role models.”

  “You’re doing a fantastic job.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, but I try my best. Still, to grow to be a good man, doesn’t he need to be around good men?” She gave him an uncertain look. “Sorry, I’m not trying to freak you out—make you a baby daddy or anything.”

  He stopped. This was important. “Annie, you and Atticus are a package deal. I get that. It doesn’t freak me out.” Maybe it had a little at first, but not now. In fact, the idea only got better the more he thought about it.

  She blinked, almost as if she might cry. He waited, and instead she shook her head, walking again, arms folded against her. “So, this morning I walked the perimeter of the farm and found the apiaries. Maybe I should order some equipment and try to harvest the honey.”

  He didn’t want to change the subject, but she wasn’t ready. He swallowed, and his throat felt full of ground glass, the next words coming out in a gruff choke. “Let’s head out and see how things stand.”

  This summer wouldn’t last forever. How was he supposed to balance her need to go slow against a ticking clock?

  They reached the hives five minutes later, the buzzing audible before the boxes came into view. Annie wanted to say something to clear the air. After she’d changed the subject from her and Atticus, he’d retreated and she wasn’t sure how to bring him back, or if she should.

  What am I doing?

  He released her hand to circle the apiaries with a concentrated look. “I want to try something,” he said. “You hungry?”

  “A little,” Annie replied distractedly, and then snapped, “No! Stop!” when Sawyer threw open the box and reached inside as bees rose around him in a buzzing swarm.

  Instead of hollering from a hundred stings, he stood magically unharmed. “Bees never bother me.” He withdrew a thick comb, sticky golden liquid running between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s been a while, but the honey is still sweet.”

  She bit down the inside of her lip. How in the world did he manage that? “What are you? A bee whisperer?”

  He chuckled, coming close and extending his hand. The world distilled to his honey-coated thumb.

  “Go on.” His voice was just above a murmur. “Give it a try.”

  Hold the phone—was he talking about the honey, or something more?

  “It’ll be good, promise.”

  She didn’t doubt it, the question was would it be too good? That was the trouble with delicious things—you developed cravings. This man could become her own personal addiction.

  He stepped forward, clearly meaning business. No way could she refuse without making a scene. She took a hesitant bite, careful for it not to be too much, she didn’t want to look like a pig, but the minute the comb crumbled between her teeth her eyes closed involuntarily, the moan was out before she had a chance to rein it in.

  “Oh,” she whispered, “that’s really—”

  “Amazing.”

  She opened her eyes and there he was, only the span of a breath separating them.

  “Yes.”

  “Told you.” He dropped the rest of the comb into the tall grass, his mouth slanting over hers. She parted her lips and his tongue slid forward, teasing out the lingering sweetness. She kissed back until she forgot the day of the week or how to breathe. When her body finally fought for an instinctive inhalation she drew it straight from his mouth.

  Buzzing grew in her ears. Was it the bees or her own zinging nervous system?

 
She grabbed his shirt in two fistfuls, feeling the hard muscle beneath, and when she rose on tiptoe, another kind of hardness jabbed into her belly.

  He crushed her to him and swore. “Shit, sorry.”

  “Why?” she whispered. God, his mouth was like a country she never grew tired of exploring.

  “The honey, I got your back sticky.”

  “It will wash.” She bit him then, right on the fleshiest part of his lower lip, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to take him by surprise. “You’ll be sorrier if you stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “You’re trouble.”

  “So what are you going to do, arrest me?” She slid her fingers slow over his ribs to the hard expanse of his abdomen as he shuddered with a muffled groan.

  “Ticklish much?” She teased her fingers over his skin and he flinched, burying his face in the top of her neck with a strangled choke.

  “Keep that up and I will lock you up and throw away the key.”

  “Really?”

  “Except there will be a problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m locking myself in there with you.” He scooped her up and she fastened her hips to his waist as he sat her on a stump, the height of it putting her face-to-face with him. “God, Annie. Every day I look out across this valley and think I’ve seen all the beauty this world has to offer. Then you come back and I realize I haven’t seen anything.”

  “Oh, come on.” She slapped his chest.

  He bracketed her face with his hands. “You are my best friend, but it’s more than that. Having you back here makes me realize why it’s never worked out with anyone else.” He nuzzled the base of her neck, dragged his face lower to caress his cheek over the swell of her breast as she arched her back. “Let go.”

  “Haven’t I?” She removed one of his hands, raising it to her lips and licking the sticky sweetness clean. This was falling from thirty thousand feet without a parachute.

  “Damn.” He pushed a hand up the inside of her softly curving thigh, under her dress, parting her legs. “Your pretty dresses do a number on me.”

  She gasped as he slipped a thumb into her underwear, and then any other sound was impossible.

  “Look at me,” he ordered softly.

  She forced her gaze to his face as he pulled and plunged his fingers in a sweet, slow, torturous rhythm. She swallowed hard, throat sore with all the things she wasn’t saying because she didn’t know which words were right when Sawyer stroked her to a place beyond logic.

  She started to come apart and a tear escaped, trickling down her cheek. Another joined, and the whole time he kept his gaze fixed on her. She came slow and hard, taking in everything: the bold slash of his brow, the divot above his lip she longed to visit with the tip of her tongue, the chickenpox scar on his chin. He leaned close, fingers hooked inside her, and kissed the corner of her eye.

  “These sad or happy?” he murmured, removing his hand, her body shuddering as he left, missing the fullness he gave her.

  “Both.” Because this right here was everything she hoped for, she knew it now. That thing she’d been missing for years was a Sawyer-shaped hole. She couldn’t regret where she’d been, or what had happened, because her choices gave her Atticus. But now, between her and Sawyer burned a fire she could either add tinder to or blow out. God knew she’d been so cold, but what if her life blazed into something unrecognizable?

  She pushed back a lock of hair from his forehead. “What are you thinking?” How could he do that? Keep his features so distant? His thoughts were secreted away while she was an open book. It wasn’t fair.

  She reached as he stepped back, catching him by the belt loops. “Not so fast.”

  “Annie,” he said, his eyes darkening. “Wait.”

  “Why?” she replied, suddenly angry. “Why can you push me off the edge but I can’t do the same?” She ground down the zipper and he responded with a short, sharp rasp as she gripped the thick root. Her fingers didn’t tremble even if her voice did. “It’s always been you, Sawyer. Always.”

  “Same.” His breath grew ragged as she worked him up and down. Good. Let her touch take him to the same places that tortured her with sweet promise.

  His hands formed fists and he raised them to the side of his head, the furrow between his brows becoming a chasm. She kept the pace until he seized her shoulders, burying his face in the top of her head, coming while grinding out her name in a hoarse whisper.

  She rested her forehead on his shoulder, her own gasp as shuddering and shaky as his. She was a big girl; shouldn’t she know by now what she wanted?

  Yeah, she really should. She really, really should. But she didn’t.

  Staying here after selling Five Diamonds wouldn’t work. At the moment it sounded good, easy even, but that was an illusion, created from the lust juju Sawyer weaved with bee magic and heart-stopping kisses. He was handy, but she wasn’t something to be fixed. Only she could do that for herself. And there was no denying that if she wanted to advance her career in the long-term, a city would be better, offer so much more opportunity. She didn’t want to rely on a man to provide for her again.

  But this wasn’t a random hypothetical man. This was Sawyer.

  There were no clear-cut answers. As she hurled to invisible crossroads, everything curled into a question. Which way will I turn?

  Chapter Seventeen

  SAWYER LEFT AFTER they returned from the old apiary. He’d kissed her deep and sure before nipping her earlobe in a way that made her shiver.

  “What did you do that for?” She leaned into his chest and inhaled sage soap and cinnamon chewing gum.

  He smoothed her hair off her face. “To make it as hard for you to say goodbye as it is for me.”

  “I’m not making this situation easy.” Understatement of the year.

  “The best things never are,” he murmured into the top of her hair.

  So many things were up in the air, and it was tempting to say screw it and let him kiss her again, because goodbyes were practically impossible when the taste of honey lingered on his tongue.

  “I don’t know a lot.” He gave her a slow smile. “But I do know I want you and Atticus to come over to my place for dinner.”

  She took a slow, deliberate breath. “Are you asking me on a date, Sawyer Kane?”

  “Indeed I am, Miss Carson.” He’d leaned and pressed his mouth against her ear, his hot breath sending a jolt of heat up her thighs. “And you know something else, I’m never going to look at honey the same way again.” He patted her bottom before turning away. She felt a stare and glanced over one shoulder. Claire stood on the porch, giving a thumbs-up.

  Annie waved as Sawyer backed out, ignored her sister and headed to the old barn for a moment of breathing space. What happened at the apiary was private, amazing, and nothing she wanted to gossip about. The door was open. Atticus must have been playing in Dad’s studio again. She stepped inside and pressed her back against the old wood, sweat pooling in her bra. Hard to know if it was from the unusual humidity or her own spiking body temperature.

  Outside, clouds gathered on the range, thunderheads building, while inside—what a mess. No two ways about it, her father’s studio was a serious disaster, straight from an episode of Hoarders. How would she know what to throw out among all this junk? Dad hadn’t left any specific instructions. She had no idea what was important and what wasn’t.

  She rubbed her temples. Wasn’t that the trick to everything? Trying to decide what to keep in life and what to throw away?

  A furtive noise drew her attention to the back of the barn. Please don’t let it be a rat. Instead, a small golden head poked around the corner, giving a tentative whine.

  Annie sank to her knees and held out a hand to the shy dog. “Hello, where did you come from?” She must have snuck in through the open door.

 
The dog scampered forward a few steps, paused and whined again. She was clearly a mutt, possibly a combination of a retriever and dachshund.

  “It’s okay, girl,” she coaxed. “It’s okay.”

  The dog took another tentative step, tail wagging, then dropped her snout and sniffed the floorboards.

  Annie crawled forward to give the sweet little mutt a gentle pat when the wood floor gave a creak. A flash of blue caught her eye through the boards and she pulled a loose plank, gasping to see a metal Pac-Man lunchbox hidden beneath. Stuck to the lid was a strip of masking tape on which was printed, “Do Not Open Until the Year 3000.”

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “The time capsule.”

  When she was a kid, she had gone through a phase where she was obsessed with building a time machine. Dad hadn’t discouraged her, even allowed precious studio space for the project, but product development had never gotten farther than a plastic lawn chair twined with copper wire, connected to a broken car battery. Instead, she downgraded the plan, creating a top-secret time capsule instead.

  She opened the latches and peered inside, lifting the carefully folded piece of tissue paper. Inside was a tiny white egg, cracked at the top. The hummingbird egg she’d discovered in an abandoned nest while climbing trees in the orchard. Then there was a beanie baby, a Mariah Carey Butterfly CD, her junior ranger badge, a photo of her standing beneath Rainbow Falls, and a torn-out magazine picture of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Oh, and look, a dog-eared copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins. She’d spent hours pretending to be Karana, roaming her island, hunting for edible roots, fashioning spears and building pretend canoes down by the river.

  At the bottom was an envelope. She opened it with shaking hands, recognizing her own childish handwriting.

  Hello People From the Future!

  My name is Annabelle Margaret Carson, but everyone calls me Annie, unless I’m in trouble. I live on Five Diamonds Farm in Brightwater, California, and it’s the best place in the world. Over a hundred years ago, my great-great-great-grandparents were real pioneers and traveled here in a covered wagon. A wheel from the wagon is in the attic, and one time Dad took me and my sister, Claire, up to see it. Claire is my best friend even though she’s bossy and always thinks she’s right (even when she’s not). Our favorite things to do are going for hikes, sewing, and listening to music. She’s afraid of heights, so my other favorite thing to do is just mine, cliff jumping. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I know that I hope to always live here with my sister. I don’t know what I want to be. I like writing, though, and reading. I don’t know what life is like a thousand years from now. Do robots do all your chores? I’d like that. The only chore I enjoy is feeding the chickens. People probably live on Mars now, huh? I guess that’s where pioneers in the future would go. But I hope my future great-great-million-times-great-grandkids live right here.