by Jordan, Skye
He pushed her T-shirt up and covered her breast with his mouth. He slid his tongue over the silky fabric of her bra and felt her nipple rise for him.
“Dylan.” She was breathless now, and the sound of his name in that voice was truly a dream come true.
He scraped his teeth across the fabric, and Emma arched, pushing her hips against his.
“Dylan.” She leaned away and kept his face between her hands. “Stop.”
The order was soft and raspy, but it slammed him like a hammer. Need pooled in his groin. His head was light. He hadn’t been this turned on since the last time they’d made love, the morning before he’d left on that assignment from hell.
But she was pushing back. Putting space between them. Then climbing off his lap and wandering the yard, eyes closed, one hand pressed against her lips.
Dylan rubbed his face and reined in all the need swimming through his veins. He swung a leg over the bench, put his back to the table and pressed his elbows to his knees, hands to his face.
Regroup. Chill. Patience.
“Sex isn’t the answer,” she said. “We’ve always been good at that. But I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you not to run when things get tough. And without that, we can’t try again.” She looked at him with all the same longing he felt in his heart. But instead of coming back to him, she shook her head. “Your offer is generous and thoughtful, but I just can’t spend this much time with you. It’s too hard.”
Then she turned and walked down the driveway toward her car.
10
Dylan pulled into Gypsy’s bar. The place didn’t open for another hour, so he parked beside the only other car in the lot, Gypsy’s Jeep.
The raw pain he’d seen on Emma’s face had leveled him as effectively as a grenade. He’d stayed at the house and worked another few hours, hoping she’d change her mind and come back. But she hadn’t. And the extra work he’d done was probably the reason shooting pains had crawled into his arms and legs. He was going to have to find a local acupuncturist.
He dropped his head and rested it against the steering wheel. His self-loathing had bubbled over and leaked into his bloodstream.
He usually stayed away from alcohol and drugs. He knew his genes, his job, and his chronic pain put him at a higher risk for addiction. But today, he needed a pain reliever in the worst way.
Inside the bar, Dylan found Gypsy stocking supplies, Cooper tucked into one of those front slings.
“Oh, thank God.” She came out from behind the bar. “This kid is going to kill my back. Can you take him for a while? He starts screaming every time I put him down.”
“I don’t know.” He slid onto a stool. “I seem to fuck up everything I touch lately.”
“That’s not true.” Gypsy unwrapped Cooper and offered him to Dylan. “You’ve been with Miranda and Jack every day, and Cooper adores you.”
“Is that right, Coop?”
Dylan took Cooper and laid the boy against his chest. He swore his blood pressure lowered ten points. He’d always thought he and Emma would have a couple of kids by now. And he saw a boy of his own in Cooper, maybe with Emma’s eyes. Maybe with a few of her freckles. Maybe with that sweet little nose and heart-melting smile.
Yeah. That heart-melting smile. Dylan hadn’t seen that in so long he almost couldn’t remember what it looked like.
“It seems weird to say this in a bar with a baby on my shoulder, but I need a drink.”
“We don’t think it’s weird at all, do we, Cooper?” She returned to her work. “What can I get you?”
“Cyanide?”
“On backorder. But I’ve got the next best thing—Everclear.”
“No way.”
“Way. What’s a kickass bar without Everclear? One twenty, one fifty-one or one ninety proof?”
“Since it’s not five o’clock, let’s go with one fifty-one.”
“How sensible of you. Want it straight, or can I make you one of my signature slammers?”
He cradled Cooper in the crook of his elbow and resting his own head in the other hand. “Get as creative as you like. Just don’t make me puke.”
Gypsy filled a highball glass with ice, dropped in a heavy shot of Everclear, added a spritz of lemon juice, and filled the glass with some kind of soda. “What’s got you so miserable?”
He couldn’t address that until he had alcohol in his system. He picked up the drink, surprised to taste root beer, but somehow, it all worked. The concoction had the burn of Everclear, the sweetness of soda, the tang of sassafras from the root beer, and lemon. “Damn, that’s nice.”
“Now,” Gypsy said. “What’s going on?”
He took a deep drink and let the alcohol burn down his throat. “I always knew pushing her away would hurt her, but I truly believed the long-term gain would be worth the short-term pain. Emma explained just how deeply her hurt goes and just how profoundly I fucked things up between us in excruciating detail. Evidently, to the point of no return.”
“Give yourself a break. You were twenty years old. You may have been way ahead of the curve, more self-sufficient and independent at twenty than most thirty-year-olds, but that doesn’t mean you had the same experience. Emma was your first relationship. There was no way you could have known how this would turn out years down the line.”
He rested his forehead in his palm. “That’s not easing any of her pain, and it sure as hell isn’t helping her trust me now.”
“Trust is earned.” Gypsy crossed her arms and leaned against the counter behind her. “Kind of like money. You can lose it all with one bad decision, but you can also earn it back.”
That’s what he’d been trying to do with the house, build trust. “Too bad she just told me she doesn’t want to renovate. Doesn’t want to spend that much time with me.”
Gypsy grinned. A smile Dylan knew well. One she’d gotten as a kid right before she hatched some forbidden plan, like swimming in the lake after dark while their fathers were sleeping in their tents during their yearly camping trip.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing that you own half the house. Because that, technically, gives you half the decision-making power.”
Dylan finished his drink. His pain had faded, and his mind was loose. “True.”
“She’s admitted your idea was good, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She wants to pay off the loans, right?”
“She does.”
“Sounds to me like she’s getting in her own way.”
“Agreed.”
“If I were you,” she said, “I’d spend every day of however long it took to renovate that place to remind her of exactly how much she loves you.”
Dylan thought about it. Nodded. Blew out a breath. “Sounds like one of those situations where it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
“Agreed.”
The front door opened, and Dylan glanced over his shoulder. The Everclear was already tripping through his bloodstream, and the person entering was backlit into a male silhouette.
“Sorry,” Gypsy said, reaching into a box sitting on the bar to pull out bottles of liquor. “We don’t open for another hour.”
The man sauntered in anyway. “Not very neighborly.” His voice held a soft Southern drawl. “Marty never kept me from sidling up to this bar for something as meaningless as operating hours.”
Gypsy’s shoulders fell, and her eyes rolled to the ceiling as she groaned.
The stranger stopped several feet from the bar, hands in the pockets of his Carhart work jacket, and studied Dylan before lifting his chin. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Dylan returned. The man was older than Dylan by maybe five or eight years. It was hard to tell.
Gypsy turned her back and replaced liquor on the mirrored shelves. “I’m not Marty.”
The man’s gaze traveled over Gypsy’s backside. “Clearly.” When she turned to glare at the guy, heat filled his eyes. “Marty never filled out a shirt the way you do, sugar.” He tilted his head to
ward Dylan. “You let this guy in. Maybe I need to come back with my knee-melting niece.”
“He’s my brother, and I don’t care who you come in with, what I say goes. Just for the record, you should know that the last time anyone sidled up to my bar, I ended up with that little bundle of joy.”
Her remark had been meant to scare the guy off, but he must have had a pair of steel balls, because he leaned in and said, “And, damn, you wear motherhood well.”
“The road hasn’t been quite as good to you,” she shot back, making the guy laugh. “Go on, get. I have a lot of work to get finished, and I’m sure as hell not waiting on you in the midst of it.”
The man pulled one hand from his jacket and offered it to Dylan. “You’re the brother, huh?”
“Dylan.” He secured Cooper in one arm and shook the man’s hand.
“Wyatt.” He returned his openly interested gaze to Gypsy. “Has she always been this mouthy?”
Dylan laughed, earning him a glare from Gypsy. But this girl had stopped scaring him right around age ten, when he towered over her by at least a foot. “Our mom always said this one came out complaining about everything.”
“That I believe.” He reached out to poke Cooper’s round belly. “Coop, dude, you gotta lay off the beer.”
Cooper’s eyes veered toward Wyatt’s, locked on, and his big smile was joined with leg kicks and a happy gurgle. Wyatt grinned and slid onto a stool beside Dylan, all his attention on the baby. “Whatcha been up to, little man? Wearing out your mom, I bet.” More belly pokes resulted in more laughter, the kind that came from deep in the gut. The sound was like a sedative, shaving down the last few edges of Dylan’s stress. “Yeah, you look like a handful to me.”
“Hey,” Gypsy said, waving a bar towel at Wyatt. “I don’t want your entitled fingers on my kid.”
Ignoring Gypsy’s taunt, Wyatt put out both hands. “Wanna come to me, buddy? We can have a long talk about your mother.” Cooper lifted wobbly arms toward Wyatt, and the man grinned. “That a boy.”
“No, hey, stop touching him,” Gyspy said, clearly more annoyed than serious. “I don’t know where your hands have been.”
Wyatt settled Cooper into his arms like a pro. “Is that your way of asking if I’m seeing anybody?”
“You’re always seeing somebody. Usually a few somebodies.”
“Just passing time until you’re ready to admit you like me.”
Dylan took a longer look at Wyatt, because something about his voice kept nagging him. He had dark, thick, wavy hair and bright blue eyes. One of those faces with good looks and character. But the week-old beard was throwing Dylan off. “Why do you look familiar, man? Have we met?”
“Nope. Must just have one of those faces,” he said without taking his eyes off Cooper.
“He’s Wyatt Jackson, guitarist and lead singer for Fifth of Jack.”
“Gypsy.” Wyatt gave her a don’t-tell-people-that look.
“What? You use it every time you come in. Certainly brings all the babes to your table, at least two of which walk out the door on your arm.”
“Careful, sugar,” Wyatt said, still smiling at Cooper and swaying back and forth. “You’re starting to sound jealous.”
“That’s it,” Dylan said. “Dude, I love your music.”
“Thanks.”
Wyatt wandered behind the bar.
“You’re not allowed back here,” Gypsy said, one hand on her hip. “You may get everything you want on the road, but you aren’t getting it here.”
Wyatt ignored her. Instead of giving up the boy to Gypsy, he made one of those basketball moves, turning his back to her, then inching backward, gently pushing her away while keeping the baby out of reach.
There was something going on between these two. Like neither wanted to be attracted to the other, but both were, and they had an unspoken agreement to fight it with everything they had. But the Everclear had reached Dylan’s brain, so that observation might be bullshit.
“Jackson, give me my boy and get out from behind my bar.”
“Put your feet up, sugar. I’ve got this handled.” Wyatt looked at Dylan. “What brings you to town?”
Gypsy let out an exasperated breath, hands on hips, a do-something glare on Dylan. But it was pretty clear to Dylan that Wyatt had all this handled just fine.
“Visiting family,” he told Wyatt. “Taking a break from the insanity.”
“I hear you.” Wyatt put a glass under the tap of a local IPA and pulled the handle while grinning at Cooper. “It’s a crazy place out there.”
“Why aren’t you out on tour?” Dylan asked, watching Wyatt put another glass under the tap and pull.
“Who’s that for?” Gypsy wanted to know.
He ignored her and placed the filled glass in front of Dylan. “Our lead guitarist, who started the band with me, fractured his hand wrestling an alligator to impress some chick.”
“Are you serious?” Gypsy asked. “Is he okay?” She played a hard-ass, but she had the biggest heart out of all the Wright siblings.
“It’ll take six weeks before we can go back on tour, but he’s not complaining since the lady was impressed enough to marry him.”
Gypsy rolled her eyes. “Match made in heaven.”
Wyatt set the second full glass on the bar, turned, and took Gypsy’s hand, leading her around the front. She, of course, fought like an angry cat, trying to jerk out of his grasp, but Wyatt didn’t have any trouble holding on to her.
“What the hell are you doing?” she wanted to know.
“You said you weren’t going to serve me.” He nudged her onto the stool beside Dylan. “So, I’m serving you for a change.”
He made his way back behind the bar, and when Gypsy stood up to follow, Dylan hooked a finger through a beltloop on her jeans and dragged her ass back to the stool. “They have it covered. Sit your ass down.”
With Cooper in one arm, Wyatt was grinning as he pulled a third beer for himself. “We’re all going to get along just fine.”
11
Emma should go home and fall face-first into her pillow. It might only be seven p.m., but she’d had a long day and a shitty shift. And if she tried to sleep right now, her mind would only spin out of control.
She started toward the cafeteria for a bottle of water and her favorite seat by the window that faced the foothills, hoping to decompress and decide how she wanted to spend her evening.
“Where are you headed?”
Maizey’s voice turned Emma on her heel. “Cafeteria. I’m in desperate need of hydration and puppy and kitten videos. Lots of puppies. Lots of kittens.”
“Rough shift?”
“Extremely.”
“I’ll walk with you. I need some caffeine before I head into the Batcave.”
“You’re on call tonight?” Emma asked.
“Yep. So, what’s the latest?”
Her mind veered toward Dylan and the house. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d refused his help almost a week ago. “I decided not to renovate. I’m going back to my original plan to clean it up and sell it for whatever I can get. I’ll probably head over to work on it tonight before I go home.”
“Oh my God, no.” She looked at Emma with wide eyes. “What happened with Dylan?”
“It’s just…” She glanced behind them to make sure there was no one within earshot. “It’s too hard to be around him. He’s got this crazy idea that we’re going to get back together.”
“Why is that so crazy? You two have been in love since you were kids, and don’t even try to tell me you ever stopped loving him, because I know that’s bullshit.”
“I’ve also learned—the very hard way—that love alone doesn’t hold a relationship together.” She blew out a breath. “But we’re like magnets. As soon as he touches me, I can’t pull away. I don’t even know how it happens, and it just brings up all the old memories. I can’t help but think about all I missed and how much he hurt me. It’s a downward spiral.”
&n
bsp; They turned a corner, and the cafeteria doors lay a hundred yards away. Traffic in the hall picked up, and Maizey tugged on Emma’s sleeve until they were standing off to the side.
“Just have sex with him and get it over with.” She lowered her voice. “It will defuse the tension, and you can get back to work. Might even end all your problems. They’re never as good as you remember, trust me. Don’t you dare throw away the chance at getting your school loans paid off because of something that happened eight years ago. You’re stronger than that. Think about your future.”
Maizey hugged Emma, then grabbed her coffee and returned to the radiologist’s darkened reading room.
Emma was too distracted by Maizey’s suggestion for puppies and kittens now, but still far too wound up to consider sleeping. If she based Dylan’s sexual abilities off of the few interludes they’d already had, she doubted he’d disappoint her. But Maizey was right about the tension between them. It needed defusing. Maybe her mom had been right too. Emma could admit to hiding her feelings beneath the chaos of school and residency. Maybe she just had to suck it up and get the grieving over with.
One thing was for sure, purging the house would be both cathartic and productive.
When she pulled into the drive, the first thing she noticed was that the dumpster was gone. “Noooo!” She slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “Shit.”
She’d forgotten that the dumpster company was going to come pick it up this week. She’d just have to fill garbage bags and leave them in the yard until she could get another dumpster.
Emma looked at the detached garage, realizing, not for the first time, that it looked way too much like a skewed house of cards. “Sorry I won’t be able to renovate you, buddy.”
She made her way to the back door, looking for the house key. Even as she slipped the key into the lock, Emma knew something was different. She opened the door and flicked the kitchen switch. Light flooded the space, and Emma froze.
The kitchen was empty. Completely empty. All the trash was gone. And not only in the kitchen. Emma wandered through the living and dining room, the two baths and four bedrooms. Every ounce of junk was gone except for a few neat boxes lined up against the far wall in the master bedroom. Trash, furniture, everything. Even the disgusting carpet had been pulled up, exposing beautiful hardwood floors.