by Marie Force
You’re my dream girl, Charley.
Would she ever forget those softly spoken words? Not in this lifetime or the next. Those words had changed something in her, softening her, opening her to the possibilities. As if he hadn’t turned her entire world on its axis with five words, Tyler hummed along to the radio as he drove, oblivious to the fact that he’d sent her reeling.
True to his word, he carried her up the stairs to the offices above the Green Mountain Country Store. It was just her luck that her family—or most of it anyway—was gathered in the reception area when Tyler carried her in.
Conversation stopped and all eyes landed on them. Awesome.
She tapped his arm. “You can put me down now.”
He did as she asked, lowering her slowly to her feet and holding on to her until he was certain she was steady.
“Charley!” Their receptionist, Mary, came around the desk to hug her. “It’s so good to see you. How’re you feeling?”
“Better every day.” Charley wanted to kiss Mary for breaking the awkward silence. “What goes on here?”
“We were just talking about you, Charl,” Hunter said.
“How come?”
“We’re having issues with the inventory system,” Will said. “If you have a few minutes . . .”
“Sure, I’ll take a look.” She glanced at Tyler. “You want to hang out or do you have stuff to do?”
“I need to hit the post office and bank. I’ll come back in a while.”
“Okay.”
He leaned in close to her, and for a horrifying second she thought he was going to kiss her in front of everyone. “Don’t overdo it,” he said before he turned and started down the stairs, leaving her reeling once again.
How did he do that?
“You okay, Charley?” her dad asked, watching her with that astute gaze that didn’t miss much.
“Sure.” Taking it slowly, she made her way to her office and flipped on the lights.
“Are you off the crutches?” Wade asked.
“Sort of. I have them in the car, but I’m starting to put a little weight on my knee. Got a doctor’s appointment at two, and we’ll see what he says. So what’s the deal with the system?”
Everyone spoke at once, leading Charley to put her hand up to stop them. “One at a time.”
“We added some new stuff,” Will said.
“Wait, you added inventory to my system without talking to me about it first?”
“I wasn’t aware that I had to ask permission,” Will said dryly.
“Of course you do. You messed with it, and now it doesn’t work, thus the need for permission. Come show me what you did.”
Half an hour later, Charley banned Will from ever touching the system again.
“What was I supposed to do, with you out and stuff that needed to be added?”
“You could’ve called me. Nothing wrong with my ears or my mouth.”
“Clearly.”
“Out. Let me fix this mess you’ve made.”
“She’s fine,” he said to Ella as she passed Will in the doorway.
“What did you say to poor Will?” Ella asked. “He looks devastated.”
“Poor Will nearly crashed the whole system,” Charley said, clicking away as she spoke. “And why’s he adding stuff in the middle of the Christmas season anyway?”
“You know how it is with the Vermont Made line. Crafters show up with stuff to sell, and he has to roll with it.”
“Maybe he could roll with it without screwing up my system.”
Smiling at her cranky reply, Ella took a seat in Charley’s visitor chair. “So how’s it going up on the mountain?”
“Fine,” Charley said without looking away from the screen.
“You two are awfully cute together. The way he carries you around.”
The comment forced Charley to look directly at her sister. “He doesn’t carry me around. He hauled me up that huge flight of non-handicap-compliant stairs that lead to our office. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
Charley hesitated, but only for a second. She needed to talk to someone about him, and Ella would always be her first choice. “Close the door.”
“Ohhh, this is gonna be good,” Ella said gleefully as she closed the door. “What’s up?”
“He’s very . . .”
“Devoted?”
“Yes. And . . . well, we kind of, well . . . had sex. Great sex. Amazing, unbelievably incredible sex.”
Ella stared at her, agog. “How’d you manage that with your busted knee?”
“We were very . . . creative.”
Fanning her face, Ella continued to stare. “So what now?”
“I don’t know! I agreed to be with him until the end of the year and then . . . I don’t know.”
“You put a deadline on it?”
“Yes! I wanted a way out.”
“Why, Charley? Why do you want out of it when you’re having amazing sex and that sexy, adorable, hot guy is clearly stupid over you?”
“Because.” Why did Ella’s question make her feel like she was stupid for following her own instincts? “I don’t do forever. I’m not like the rest of you. It’s not what I want.”
“And you told him that?”
“He knows how I feel.”
Ella nodded, knowingly.
“What? What’s that look about?”
“He agreed to your deadline because he’s hoping to change your mind. You get that, don’t you?”
“I’ve already told him I’m not going to change my mind.” You’re my dream girl, Charley.
She wished she could scrub that sentence from her brain, but the words had been tattooed on her memory in permanent ink. Less than an hour after he said the words, she already knew she’d never forget them or the sound of his voice as he said them. “Everything is all jumbled up inside me. I’m turned upside down.”
“You’re falling in love, Charley,” Ella said in a sweet, gentle tone that irked Charley. “That’s what it feels like.”
She rejected that notion with every fiber of her being—except for the one little corner of her heart that had liked hearing she was his dream girl. “I’m not falling in love. I don’t do love.”
Ella eyed her skeptically. “Maybe you do now. Have you considered that?”
“No, I haven’t.” Yes, you have. Don’t turn into a liar now on top of everything else. She ran her hands through her hair roughly, tugging the strands together into a messy ponytail that she secured with a hair tie, putting at least one thing under her control. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to love him. I don’t want him to love me. I just want to go back to the way my life was before I fell down that stupid mountain. I never should’ve gone home with him. That was a huge mistake.”
“How can you say that after you just told me you’re having amazing sex with him?”
“Had. Once. Or I guess it was twice. Whatever. That doesn’t make for a relationship.”
“Okay. So it’s not a relationship. What is it then?”
“You want like a label?”
“A label would be good.”
“We’re friends. With benefits.”
Ella clucked with disapproval and shook her head. “What’re you so afraid of, Charley?”
Other than everything? “I’m not afraid.”
“Something is holding you back from fully experiencing this situation with Tyler. Note I didn’t call it a relationship.”
“Thank you.”
“So what is it? What’s holding you back?”
“Nothing more than a lack of desire to commit to one man for the rest of my life. Just because that works for you doesn’t mean it’s right for me.”
“Do you even know what that commitment entails?”
Resigned to hearing the dirty details of Ella’s relationship with Gavin, Charley crossed her arms and set her face into her most mulish expression. “Why do I have a feeling I’m about to hear what it entails?”
“It’s the most exquisite thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” Ella said, her expression an unsettling combination of wonder and awe and greedy desire that completely transformed her gorgeous face. “It’s like the entire universe has fallen away, leaving only the two of us in this blissful state of unity. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it. To know that he’s thinking of me every minute of his day, and I’m thinking of him just as much. And at the end of the day, we get to go home to each other. That I get to sleep in his arms every night for the rest of my life . . . I honestly can’t think of anything better than that. Can you?”
Unreasonably moved by Ella’s impassioned words, Charley responded with humor to hide her emotional reaction. “Better than sleeping in Gavin’s arms?”
Ella’s withering look made Charley smile. “You know what I mean. Don’t deny yourself that experience, Charley, because you’re afraid to commit. The worst that could happen is it doesn’t work out.”
That’s not the worst that could happen, Charley thought. It can be so, so much worse than that. “I hear what you’re saying, and I appreciate why you’re saying it. But just because that makes you happy doesn’t mean I need the same thing.”
“Fair enough. But it would be awful to look back someday and realize that by trying so hard to protect yourself you haven’t really lived.”
A stab of fear registered in her chest, forcing her to rub at the spot to ease the discomfort. The grim scenario Ella outlined would indeed be awful.
“I get it.”
“But I need to shut up now?”
“Your words, not mine.”
Ella laughed. “Even though you’re still a pain in the ass, I’m so glad you didn’t die that day on the mountain. I would’ve missed you terribly.”
“Good to know someone would’ve.”
“I’m not the only one. I wish you could’ve seen him that day, Charl. He was like a pent-up panther on the prowl waiting to hear you were going to be okay.”
Ella didn’t need to use names for Charley to know who she referred to.
“I hadn’t seen him like that before,” Ella continued. “He’s always so polished and put together and calm. He was a mess, and he was anything but calm. I thought he was going to rip the nurse’s head off when she kept telling him he needed to relax and wait for the doctor.”
Charley’s skin prickled with that now-familiar feeling of hyperawareness at hearing how Tyler had reacted to her accident.
“Landon and Lucas tried talking to him, but he shook them off. He shook us all off until he finally got to see you, and then—and only then—did he relax ever so slightly. But he was still on edge. A guy like that, who cares about you the way he does . . . That doesn’t come along every day, Charley.”
She was too undone by the picture Ella painted to formulate a reply.
“Now, if you don’t feel the same way he does, that’s another story altogether. You’re absolutely right not to string him along. But I think you do care. I think you care more than you want to, maybe more than you have before, and that scares the hell out of you. I know that feeling. I’ve been where you are, and I know how frightening it can be to want something so badly. That kind of want makes us vulnerable to getting hurt.”
Charley was having trouble getting air to her lungs as Ella zeroed in on the heart of the matter.
“But if you don’t take a risk, Charley, you may miss out on the most wonderful thing to ever happen to you.”
Charley had to force words past the tightness in her throat. “What would you do if you found out that Gavin wasn’t what you thought? That he’d deceived you in some way, made you think things that weren’t true.”
Ella stared at her, seeming dumbfounded. “I’d be demolished and shocked and . . . I don’t know. I can’t bear to think about such a thing. Are you afraid of that with Tyler?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Sometimes things don’t work out. That’s all.”
“That’s very true, but sometimes they work out perfectly.”
“More often than not, though, they don’t.”
“There aren’t any guarantees. But you have to have faith that the person you’ve chosen to be with will do the right thing.”
Faith. Michael had shaken hers to the core, and she hadn’t gotten over what he’d done. She could see that now in the context of her “situation” with Tyler.
Just as she had the thought, she heard his distinctive deep voice in the outer office, and her heart lurched at knowing he was close by. She rubbed her chest, as if that could stop the emotional reaction from occurring almost against her will.
“Thanks for this, El. It helped.”
“You know where I am if you need me.”
Charley nodded, her heart beating fast as her urge to flee did battle with the powerful desire to see him again.
Ella scooted out of the office, leaving the door open. Because Charley didn’t know what else to do with her sweaty hands, she returned to her work while trying not to listen to his conversation with one of her brothers.
Outside her office, Tyler found Charley typing away on the computer, her brows knit with concentration. Here was yet another facet of his dream girl, and he drank in the sight of her hard at work. Her fingers flew over the keyboard in a pattern that made sense only to her, and her lips moved as she typed.
Adorable. Sexy. Smart.
He knocked on the door frame.
“Oh hey,” she said, her face softening at the sight of him—or was that wishful thinking on his part? “How long have you been there?”
“A minute. Maybe two.”
“Stalker perv.”
“You’re sexy when you type. But then again, you’re sexy when you breathe.”
“Not here,” she said through gritted teeth. “If one of my siblings hears you saying stuff like that, I’ll be subjected to a lifetime of harassment.”
“I’ll try to behave.”
“Do that.”
“You ready for lunch?”
“Almost. I had to clean up a mess Will made in my inventory system.”
“Do you have a laptop you could bring with you to work from home?”
“I don’t have one, but maybe I could borrow Hunter’s.”
“You’re welcome to one of mine if you can log in to the system remotely.”
“I can. That would help, actually. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind, Charley.”
He’d give her the moon on a silver platter if only she’d let him.
“Let’s go, then,” she said, shutting down her computer.
Tyler took her coat off the hook behind the door and held it for her. Then he put her hat on her head and tied the scarf around her neck.
“Nothing wrong with my hands, you know,” she said with a spark of humor in her gorgeous eyes.
“I like taking care of you.”
She had nothing to say to that and shifted her gaze away from his to head out the door. He matched his stride to hers as they moved slowly through the office, which was now largely deserted.
“Heading out, Charley?” Mary asked when they reached the reception desk.
“For now, but I’ll be working from home if anyone needs me.”
Tyler withdrew a business card from his wallet and handed it to Mary. “The phone number is on there. Feel free to share it with the others if they need to reach Charley.”
Mary smiled up at him. “I’ll do that. Thank you. Hope you continue to feel better, Charley.”
“Me, too. I’m ready to get back to normal.”
Her words struck a note of fear in him. The last thing he wanted was to return to the normal he’d known before she’d come to stay with him. Hell, he wanted her to stay forever, but in light of their temporary arrangement, he had to keep such thoughts to himself.
“Ready for a lift?” he asked at the top of the stairs.
She nodded, but he coul
d sense her reluctance. His fiercely independent Charley hated being reliant on anyone for anything.
In what had become a familiar routine, Tyler picked her up, taking pains to protect her knee. “Hold on tight.” As he started down the stairs, he caught her rolling her eyes at his shamelessness. But her arms tightened around his neck just the same, and he had to remind himself that this wasn’t the time or the place to take a taste of her long, elegant neck.
“Should we go across the street while we’re at it?”
“As long as you put me down before we go inside the diner, that’s fine.”
“Will do.”
He carried her around to the front of the store and came to a halt at the sight of Fred the moose meandering down the middle of Elm Street as if he had all the time in the world. People and cars had come to a stop to let him pass, which led to half the town taking notice of Tyler carrying Charley.
That would set tongues to wagging if they weren’t already. He had no doubt that it was all over Butler that she was staying with him. For his part, he couldn’t care less if the town was abuzz over them, but she wouldn’t like it.
Fred strolled past them, letting out a loud moo as he went.
Though Fred wouldn’t hurt a flea, Tyler experienced a rush of protective adrenaline go through him as the large moose went by. He would, he realized, wrestle a moose if it meant keeping Charley safe from harm.
“Thank God Fred has reemerged,” Charley said. “I’ll have to make sure to let Hannah know he’s been sighted. She was threatening to go looking for him because no one has seen him in a while.”
“I’m trying to picture Hannah in the woods hunting for Fred.”
“Now picture Nolan flipping his lid and them having a big fight over it.”
“I can only imagine,” Tyler said, chuckling.
When Fred had gone by, Tyler crossed the street to the diner and put Charley down outside, per her wishes. Following her up the small set of stairs, he hung back, prepared to catch her if need be. But she managed fine on her own, and he tried not to see that as a metaphor.
Everything with her felt so perilous. It had from that first day on the mountain when she’d disappeared from the trail. He’d been off balance ever since, trying to make sense of what she made him feel while navigating the obstacle course that surrounded her well-guarded heart.