Discovering Harmony (Wishing Well, Texas #3)

by Melanie Shawn

  “Tell him, Harmony. Tell him Romeo is my dog.” He sounded like a grade schooler telling his friend to tell the teacher it was his ball.

  Harmony looked back and forth between us. “What…? Yeah it’s—”

  “Call the dog.” I cut Harmony off when I saw Romeo’s body language.

  “What?” Tim asked, like an idiot.

  “If it’s your dog, he’ll come to you.” Stepping to the side, so Tim had a clear eye line to Romeo I repeated, “Call the dog.”

  Tim looked down at Romeo and his energy changed. He licked his lips nervously as he bent down. “Come here, boy. Come here, Romeo. Come.”

  Romeo stayed in place beside Harmony. In fact, he leaned into her.

  “He just doesn’t remember me, that’s all,” Tim weakly explained. His tone turned harsh as he snapped, “Come. Now!”

  “Don’t yell at him!” Harmony stepped in front of Romeo.

  “Come here!” Tim moved down a step. “Now!”

  Romeo growled and advanced in a protective move, blocking Harmony from the douche.

  Good boy.

  I shifted so Harmony and Romeo were behind me and stared the weasel down. “You need to leave. Now. Don’t ever come back here. If I hear that you’ve stepped foot on this property or harassed Miss Briggs in any way, I will file charges against you myself for animal endangerment and I will advise Miss Briggs to file a restraining order.”

  His beady eyes twitched with anger, but apparently he wasn’t a total idiot because he stomped down the steps, cursing the entire way to his car, and left.

  We stood and watched him drive away and as his taillights turned the corner I said, “You dated him?”

  “Yep.” She stared up at me coldly. “I have horrible taste in men. Obviously.”

  “Harmony—”

  She walked past me up the porch. “Thanks for helping me with Tim. I could’ve handled it, but thanks. Goodbye, Hudson.”

  “Harmony, please. Just give me five minutes. I know I fucked up. A lot. But, please just let me explain.”

  She let out an unintelligible grunting sound that told me she seriously doubted my ability to do that.

  “Let me try to explain.”

  “Fine. Five minutes.” She held up her hand, demonstrating the number five. “Your time starts now.”

  At her agreement, I took a full breath for the first time since I’d seen her walking away from me in the parking lot.

  She unlocked the door and I followed her inside. “Where were you? I’ve been lookin—”

  Faster than a tornado, she spun around and pointed her finger in my face. “No! You don’t get to ask the questions here.”

  I lifted my arms in surrender. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  With a huff, she turned back around and took a seat at the far side of the couch. Crossing her arms, she stared straight ahead at the wall. Romeo curled up by her feet.

  I’d never seen her look this closed off. I stood in place, not knowing if I should sit or stand, or even what to say.

  “Four minutes, Superman.” She kept her eyes forward as she put up four fingers.

  Shit.

  Chapter 26

  Hudson

  “Tellin’ a man to get lost and makin’ him do it are two entirely different propositions.”

  ~ Loretta Reed

  “I love you,” I blurted out.

  Her lip trembled, but she still didn’t look at me.

  “I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t remember what it’s like not to love you. I tried to deny it. To avoid it. To avoid you, but then… I couldn’t. I know that I haven’t bee—”

  “Why did you say I wasn’t a forever girl?” her voice trembled slightly, but she kept her chin high and her eyes locked on the wall.

  “Because you don’t want forever. You don’t want the white picket fence, two-point-five kids, suburban life. You want to have a Sex and the City life, or better than Sex and the City life—”

  “Who told you that?” She finally looked at me.

  “You did. The night I picked you up at the bar. But, I knew before then. Not the Sex and the City part, but that you wanted to move to New York or, I think it was L.A. for a while. That you want to live abroad and travel. That you never wanted to get married or have bab—”

  “You don’t know what I want,” she snapped.

  “Yes. I do. Believe me, I do. I’ve paid attention, remember?”

  She shook her head slowly. “People change.”

  “Harmony, the reason why I haven’t told you how I feel about you or acted on what I felt, was because I am not going to be the guy who takes your dreams away from you. I won’t be the guy that you settle for.”

  “That’s what you think of me. That I would settle?” She stood up and faced me, fire blazing from her eyes.

  I smiled, I couldn’t help it. I’d missed that fire. “No. Not intentionally. But, I think what we have is something so strong, so real that it could trap you into a life that might make you happy for a while, but eventually you’d get restless. You’d resent me for trapping you.”

  “Do you honestly think I don’t know what I want? What would make me happy? You claim to be ‘paying attention.’ Is that what you think of me?”

  I felt like I was walking through a conversational minefield. One wrong move and I would detonate a bomb.

  “Harmony, I’m just trying to explain why I’ve been such an asshole. I’m so sorry for saying the things I did, treating you the way I have. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I was just trying to do the right thing. For you. I love you. All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all.”

  The truth. Finally. It felt good to say the words out loud. Like a fifty pound weight had been taken off my shoulders.

  The moonlight streaming through the window highlighted her wide, emerald eyes as she stepped forward. She looked so open, so exposed, I wanted to reach out and pull her into my arms, but I resisted the temptation. I knew that if I did, it would just confuse the situation even more.

  “What if you are what makes me happy?” A single tear fell down her cheek and before I could stop myself, I reached up and wiped it from her cheek. “People change their minds. They do it all the time. Things change. What they want in life changes. Even you changed.”

  “Me?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I’d had a plan for my future since I was ten and, aside from playing in the NFL, I’d stuck to it.

  “Yeah, you were going to ask Ali to marry you. You even went ring shopping.”

  “Who told you that?” I hadn’t even told my parents or brothers any of that.

  “Cara was at the jewelry store in Dallas and overheard you talking to the sales associate. When he asked who the lucky lady was, you told him Alison.”

  Damn small towns. They even follow you to big cities.

  Picking up on my irritation, Harmony explained, “The magazine she works for is around the corner, she was there working on a story about family-owned businesses.”

  My mind was spinning. How did I miss Cara being in the store? I was a cop. It was my job to be observant.

  “Why did you change your mind?” She asked like the question like an attorney interrogating a witness. I knew that she thought she was going to use my answer to prove her point, what she didn’t know was she was the reason I changed my mind.

  “I realized if it was the right girl, I would’ve asked my mom for my Grandma Burke’s ring. That if I was shopping in a jewelry store for a ring, it wasn’t the right girl.”

  Her face softened. “That’s so romantic.”

  You have no idea.

  “But that’s not the point.” She shook her head as if to get back on track. “The point is, you changed your mind. You thought you wanted one thing, and then you realized you didn’t. I know what I want, Hud. I want you. I love you.”

  Hearing her say those three words, I love you, almost took me to my knees.

  “It wouldn’t work,” I said on autopilot. I wasn’t s
ure if I was saying it because I’d been telling myself that for so long or if I really believed it.

  “I think I already proved that theory wrong.” A grin pulled at her lips as she referred to us in the barn, when she’d said those very words against my mouth.

  My jeans grew uncomfortably tight at the memory.

  “See.” She looked down. “He remembers.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Harmony had a way of making me smile at the most inappropriate times. She could turn anything into a joke or a sexual innuendo. It was part of her charm and one of the thousands, no, millions, of things I loved about her.

  The way she was looking at me now, like I was a cold beer on a hot day, was definitely on the list, too.

  “I better go.” If I didn’t, things would get out of control. Like they always did around Harmony.

  She grabbed my wrist, just like I had the night of her birthday. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

  “Harmony.” I honestly didn’t know why I said her name in a warning tone, it’s not like she ever heeded it. In fact, it had the opposite effect, like she interpreted it as a challenge.

  “On my birthday you asked me for one night. Just one night.” She took a deep breath. “That’s what I’m asking for now. That’s all I want. One night, Hud.”

  I knew I shouldn’t. I’d done what I’d come here for. Harmony knew how I felt. Why I’d said and acted the way I had. Now, I should go.

  “Please,” she whispered before lifting up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to mine. “One night.”

  Even though I knew it would be harder to leave in the morning, I just couldn’t bring myself to walk out that door.

  “One night.” I repeated as I wrapped my arms around her and started to lift her up.

  “No.” She swatted my arms away. “This is my one night. My rules.”

  Damn. Was she trying to kill me?

  After giving Romeo a treat, her fingers threaded through mine and she led the way to her bedroom. When she closed the door she instructed, “Take off your clothes.”

  I knew that she wasn’t trying to be cute, but that was exactly what she was.

  When I didn’t move she put her hands on her hips. “Take off your clothes, Superman. I want you naked. In that bed.”

  A large smile spread on my face as I removed my shirt, pants, boxers, shoes and socks.

  “Bed. Now.”

  This was a first. I’d never let someone else take the lead in the bedroom. Not that I wouldn’t have, it was just that none of them did. The girls I’d been with had always seemed more than happy for me to run the show. But this was Harmony. She had as many control issues as I did. I climbed onto the bed, and lay in the center.

  Harmony slowly began undressing. She pulled her dress up and over her head, revealing white lace panties and bra. If I were running things, I’d tell her to leave them on so I could tease her through the material. But since I wasn’t in charge, I just laid back and enjoyed the show. It turned out to be less of a striptease than I’d expected. Instead of removing any more of her clothing, she turned on her LED candles, started soft music playing, and turned the nanny cam teddy bear to face the bed.

  My erection, which was already standing at attention, grew even larger at the thought of watching this back. But that thought disappeared from my mind when Harmony joined me on the bed, settling between my legs.

  Her dark hair fell over her shoulders, framing her face like a work of art. The crisp white lace was striking against her olive skin. My hands itched to touch her full breasts, barely visible beneath the see-through material. I needed to touch her.

  “You are so beautiful.” When I started to move she shook her head back and forth.

  “Hands behind your head.”

  “Harmony.” I wanted to give her what she wanted, what she needed, it was just—I didn’t know if I could be totally passive.

  “Hands. Behind. Your. Head.”

  I still didn’t move. But she did.

  “Here, I’ll help you.” She adjusted a pillow so that it was under my head and pulled one of my arms up and then the other. Unable to resist her direction, I threaded my fingers together and rested my head on them.

  With a satisfied smile, she reclined back on her heels and wrapped both of her hands around my shaft and squeezed. It swelled beneath her touch and she licked her lips.

  I watched, mesmerized, as she slowly, methodically ran her hands along my length. She stroked me, causing my heart to beat erratically and a carnal ache to throb low in my groin. A drop of pre-come appeared on the head of my shaft and she leaned forward, licking it dry with her velvet tongue. I moaned at the erotic sight and the dizzying sensation.

  When she heard my reaction, she lifted her eyes to mine as she closed her lips around me and pulled me into her hot, wet mouth. The suctioning swirl of her tongue had my knees locking as I tried to hold my release at bay. The muscles in my thighs twitched as she sucked me deeper and deeper and her fingers slid up and down. She let out soft sighs and moans of pleasure as she worked me over with her hands and mouth.

  I hadn’t had a ton of blowjobs in my life, mainly because girls were usually intimidated by my size. The ones I’d had were forgettable. But this wasn’t like anything that I’d ever felt before, and it wasn’t because my hands were behind my head. It was because Harmony was making love to me, not trying to get me off, and that made it so much hotter.

  “Harmony. I need to touch you.” I could hear the desperation in my words.

  Lifting her head, she smiled as she caught her breath. “Not yet.”

  I growled in frustration.

  “I want to do this first.”

  Reaching behind her back, she unhooked her bra and let it fall from her arms. Then she sat up on her knees and pulled her panties down and shimmied out of them. Her body was a masterpiece. The swell of her full breasts, the dip of her waist, the flair of her hips were all seductively sweet curves that ignited a raging inferno of desire in me.

  My throat went dry as she lifted one leg and then the other, straddling me. Her hands rested on my chest and I could feel the wet heat of her sex rubbing against my steel hard length. I sucked in a sharp intake of breath as she began rolling her hips, sliding her core, coated with arousal, along my erection. Her breathing grew shallow as her hips moved faster. I was already on the edge and her slick folds running up and down my shaft as she pleasured herself was about to put me right over it.

  “This feels so good.” Her nails dug into my chest and the sting shot straight to my dick, shooting my arousal close to the point of no return.

  It took all my strength not to grab her hips and help her to completion.

  Just when I thought I would snap, she reached one hand over my head and gripped her headboard. In her new position, her breast was hovering right above my mouth.

  “Don’t move,” she instructed as she leaned down further and her nipple grazed my mouth.

  Yeah, she was trying to kill me.

  Hot lust whipped through me as she traced my lips with her hardened nub while still grinding against my straining flesh. Pleasure and need built unbearably. I felt like a volcano about to burst.

  A feverish rush flooded me as she panted, “Touch me.”

  That was what I’d been waiting for. My hands flew to her hips and my mouth covered her nipple, sucking it hard as I lifted my hips and pressed against her.

  Her fingers dug painfully into my chest as she began shaking in convulsive release. I held on as wave after wave hit her, using the friction of our bodies to prolong her pleasure. Finally she collapsed on my chest and I held her close to me, ignoring the massive boner that was throbbing with pain. I just wanted to hold her, to keep her as close to me as I could.

  If that wasn’t love, I didn’t know what was.

  Chapter 27

  Harmony

  “If you’re not proving someone right, you’re proving someone wrong.”

  ~ Loretta Reed

  My body was st
ill buzzing even after my incredible orgasm, and I was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that I was laying on top of a very naked, very erect man—one who I happened to love.

  I was ready to go for round two—well round two for me, round one for him—but there was something keeping me in place. Hud’s fingers were running through my hair as his other hand caressed my back. It made me feel safe, cherished, loved. I’d had enough sex with people I didn’t care about and who didn’t care about me to know that this was what was missing. The snuggling. The laughing. The intimacy. The more.

  “This was what I was waiting for. The more.” I called back to our conversation on my birthday.

  “By ‘more,’ you mean you being in charge,” he teased.

  Lifting my head, I rested my chin on his chest and smiled up at him. “I thought you were going to break a few times.”

  “So did I,” he admitted as he brushed a strand of hair that had fallen in my face and tucked it behind my ear.

  It felt so right, being here with him, like this.

  My smile grew even wider as I asked. “Is it really that hard for you to let someone else take control?”

  “Yes.” He pushed his hips up, pressing his impressive, rock-hard erection against my body. “See exhibit: A.”

  I laughed at his callback to that same night. I loved that we had inside jokes. I loved how perfectly we fit together. Not just in bed, but out of it, too. Like at the ranch, we worked together like a well-oiled machine. One that I planned on starting again on Monday. Last week, it had felt so wrong for him to be up there without me. We were a team. And I planned on getting the band back together whether he wanted to play again or not.

  Hud’s hands ran down my back, lower this time, cupping my backside, and round two was looking better and better.

  I started to push up, but Hud held me in place. “You don’t have to…we don’t have to do anything. All I need is to hold you.”

  “Really?” With a little more force, I pushed past his hold.

  “Really.” He looked so serious, so intense as his hands fell to my thighs. “This is enough. Just being this close to you. It’s not about sex.”