Understand why a kid who’d lost both parents in a tragic accident fixated on a fictional character who was also an orphan—but an orphan who was brave and loyal and became a powerful wizard? Gracie closed her eyes for a moment, her throat suddenly thickening. “Yes.”
Owen stepped into her space, cupping a palm under her elbow and rubbing his thumb over her skin. She shivered and pulled away just as William and Charlie raced into the kitchen.
“Charlie, your job’s setting the table,” Gracie said. “William, plates, and glasses for juice. I’ll get the deli meat and salad for the sandwiches.”
“Not tomatoes,” William said. “I hate tomatoes, unless it’s tomato sauce.”
“You and me both, kid.” Owen tousled the boy’s hair as William trudged past him to the cabinet. “Do you like tomatoes, Gracie?”
The question was an olive branch, but Gracie couldn’t quite grab it wholeheartedly. His concern for William was genuine, and the internal debate Owen would’ve gone through before granting Morgan permission to attend school was commendable. He took his responsibility seriously—perhaps a little too seriously. A little too rigidly, a little too judgmentally. And she’d found herself in the crosshairs for trying to bring some enjoyment into Charlie’s and William’s learning.
“I love them.” She walked to the bay windows above the sink, where a bowl of tomatoes ripened in the sun. “One more thing we disagree on.”
His deliciously sinful mouth thinned, and with a curt nod, he cut the bread into perfectly even slices. As if he’d measured them. Typical.
She sliced the tomato and transferred it to a plate. Charlie, unlike her brother, would happily eat a tomato as if it were an apple. Then Gracie set out lettuce, cucumber, cheese, ham, and cold roast beef on a platter. It all looked delicious, but her appetite wavered with the thought of sitting next to Owen through the next thirty minutes.
“You enjoy lunch with your uncle.” She placed a quick kiss on Charlie’s curls, wincing at the salty smell of playdough. “I’m not hungry, so I’ll grab a shower and eat later.”
Owen’s stare called her bluff, but for sanity’s sake, she ignored the hollow grumble of her stomach and fled to the safety of the guest room.
***
His house was blissfully silent. Charlie, William, and even Morgan were asleep—Owen checked before he’d retired to bed. But he couldn’t sleep, aware that only a few meters from his bedroom, through wood and glass and across a narrow strip of driveway, Gracie was alone in her bed.
He gave in at ten minutes to midnight, cracking open the drapes to peer at the guestroom like a goddamn pervert. The lights were out.
Grabbing his phone, Owen abandoned his bedroom and padded into his office. Might as well work. He slid into his desk chair and opened his laptop. His finger hovered above the mouse, and instead of opening his e-mails, he clicked on a folder containing photos his mum had sent him a few months ago. He double-clicked, and images appeared on his screen.
A photo of the five of them in front of Rambling Gypsies with the sprawl of the Southern Alps in the distance. A photo of Owen and Daniel at a beach, holding up a kahwhai and a fat snapper, their arms looped around each other’s shoulders. Owen was smiling up at his brother, Daniel more interested in the fish. A photo of the three of them—Ali, Daniel, and Owen—Ali in her wedding dress, Daniel uncomfortable in a suit and tie, and Owen glancing slightly to the left, as if he had somewhere else to be. And he had—work. Because as much as he thought Shaun was a good bloke, Ali had only known the man for five months. For God’s sake, you couldn’t fall in love that quickly and expect it to last.
Owen huffed out a choked laugh. Yeah. Alison and Shaun proved his conservative cynicism wrong. He clicked on the next photo. Speaking of conservative…
Gracie’s comments from earlier that day continued to needle at him. A wide-eyed boy of about nine with sandy-brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles stared up at him from his laptop screen. The boy’s nose was peeling because he spent most of his days outside during summer. Scabbed-over scratches covered his arms and chest since two days before, he and his big brother and sister had gone on yet another adventure. They’d ended up fighting their way through blackberry brambles to avoid a squadron of enemy soldiers, who’d tried to corner the brave trio in a farmer’s field. In his hands, the nine-year-old boy cradled a frog he’d captured. He’d named him Freddie in the hopes of keeping him as a pet—but Freddie was released into the wild shortly after the boy’s mother discovered him hopping around the bus.
That boy—that little-bit-wild, guileless, imaginative boy—had once been Owen. Until the outside world continually told him he was different, not as good, less than, on a one-way fast track to failure as an adult. Unlike Ali, whose self-esteem thrived on being unique and different, and unlike Daniel, who’d never given a shit about what anyone thought of him, Owen hit his teens wanting nothing more than to be normal. To blend in. But in order to do that, he’d had to take that freckle-faced, scratched up, and sunburned kid and bury him deep inside.
A knock on his open office door counter shocked his heart into skipping a beat. He slapped down the laptop as if he’d been caught watching porn. His accelerated heart rate did nothing to settle when he whipped his head around and caught sight of Gracie leaning on the doorframe. She wore only an untied robe over a thin cotton nightdress.
“I saw the lights on,” she said, “and I thought I should come talk to you before the chaos of morning routine starts all over again.”
“Right. Good idea.” Because talking after midnight with nothing between her naked body and his naked body except two layers of fabric was a good idea. Not in his reality. Not when he was already growing hard from her just standing there.
“Um, can I come in? Or am I interrupting something?” Her pretty blue eyes flicked past his shoulder to the humming laptop.
“You’re not interrupting.” He tilted his chin. “Shut the door after you, so we don’t wake the kids.” With all the talking. Just talking.
She came into his office and eased the door shut, leaning on it since there really wasn’t anywhere else in the room to sit…other than his lap. A little visual that didn’t help in the slightest to keep his dick from attempting to exit his pajama bottoms.
Owen kept his swivel chair angled away from Gracie, praying the chair arms would block the tent in his pants.
“I wanted to talk to you about what happened at lunch today.” Gracie slipped her hands behind her back, resting her peachy ass against them.
God. He’d maybe five minutes max of control left before he pinned her against the door and kissed them both senseless.
“I was a jackass, that’s what happened,” he said.
She shook her head, and her long hair—loose instead of tied up in her normal ponytail—spilled over her shoulders. The honeyed strands trailing over the tops of her breasts acted like a homing beacon.
“No. I was out of line.” Her mouth twisted for a moment then smoothed. “As my employer, it’s totally within your rights to ensure I follow your guidelines for the kids. So I’m sorry for ignoring them. It won’t happen again.”
Owen didn’t know what to say, so he just stared in silence. Capitulation, he hadn’t expected—and truthfully—hadn’t wanted. Tonight, when he’d arrived home he’d found Gracie and Morgan at the dining table with Gracie helping his niece with her homework.
He’d returned from getting changed to find Morgan alone. Gracie wasn’t feeling well and had gone to bed, so could he help with the math homework? Only after his niece had gone to bed did Owen spot a stack of papers on the kitchen counter.
William’s neatly filled in worksheets.
Charlie’s wobbly script, practicing her ABCs.
And beneath that…three lined pieces of paper with William’s handwritten story about a new Harry Potter character. A detailed graph of Hogwarts, drawn to scale with measurements and a key included. A printed-out series of graphic screenshots William had made abo
ut the history of fantastic creatures mentioned in the Harry Potter series. Notes about the messy experiment he’d conducted today—his hypotheses and conclusions. English, math, history, and science…everything he’d basically accused Gracie of skipping by not doing his damn worksheets.
Gracie glanced down to his chest and then farther…before jerking up her chin. Spots of rosy pink appeared high on her cheekbones. “I just forgot for a little while that Charlie, William, and Morgan weren’t mine. That you weren’t mine. Just because we kissed a couple of times doesn’t mean I have any sort of influence in your life or in the way you choose to interact with your nieces and nephew…”
Her gaze zipped away from him to the bookshelf of medical hardcovers, her small white teeth nipping into the soft flesh of her lower lip.
Owen was across the room before his brain had even gotten the message to move. Gracie let out a tiny gasp, her hands appearing from behind her to clutch his biceps as he pressed his body into hers—hard into soft and warm, and smelling-like-strawberry heaven.
“I don’t know if what’s between us can be contained in labels like ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’ because this”—he cupped her jaw, caressing the silky skin of her cheek—“doesn’t feel like high school, when those labels were so important.”
“I never had a boyfriend in high school,” she murmured. “I wasn’t allowed to even date because boys would distract me from achieving good grades or lead me astray.” Her long lashes fluttered down to shutter her emotions.
“I’m not a boy.” Owen slid his fingers into Gracie’s hair, and she gave a delicious shiver at the touch. “And I’ll definitely lead you astray.”
Her nails dug into his upper arms, and he dipped his head, brushing his mouth over her slightly puffy lower lip. God, he wanted to lead her astray so badly. She gave another breathy little gasp and arched her hips, coming into contact with his erection. Instead of pulling away, she rubbed against him, uttering a whimper that obliterated the last shred of his control.
Owen kissed her, melded their mouths together in damp, needy hotness. Her tongue slicked alongside his, teasing, promising more of the inexplicable desire that sparked between them. He skimmed a hand over her ribs, fingertips tracing the fullness of her breast crushed against his chest, and she pulled back to give him access to the perfect budded tip.
Owen caught Gracie’s nipple between his fingers, gently rolling it until she let out another panting groan. He had to touch her skin on skin—had to. Not to be melodramatic but he’d bloody die if he couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t breathe if denied the opportunity to discover if she was as hot for him as he was for her.
Without breaking the kiss, which was currently destroying a mass of brain cells every second, Owen patted the door until his fingers encountered the handle. While he still had the restraint to think, he locked it then hoisted Gracie into his arms. She clung to him, nightdress hiked up high on her thighs as he strode over to his desk. Bumping the rolling chair away with his knee, he shoved aside his laptop and phone with one hand. He set her down, and their gazes met—hers smoky with desire and, God, up for anything if he wasn’t mistaken.
Was he mistaken?
Doubt bit hard for a moment, then she wriggled to the edge of the desk. Close enough to grab the drawstrings on his pajama pants, Gracie tugged him between her spread thighs. A glance down at her smooth legs, the nightdress draped high over them, blew every doubt out of his mind.
She wasn’t wearing any panties.
And holy shit, she was glistening wet and so fucking beautiful he nearly went into cardiac arrest then and there. Touch or taste? An instant of hesitation—because he was a starving man being offered the choice of chocolate cake or a decadent gateaux—then he dropped to his knees, his hands gripping her calves in a mute plea.
Her assent was to angle her hips, exposing more pale pink flesh. Owen’s mouth curved into an ear-to-ear smile, loving that her body asked for what it wanted even if Gracie was a little shy.
Touch or taste?
Eh, why not enjoy both? He skimmed both hands up her legs, lightly tracing her sex with an index finger, keeping his gaze locked on hers the whole time. She trembled under his touch, her thighs jerking inward in reflex, but the breadth of Owen’s shoulders kept her spread before him.
He leaned in and flicked his tongue through her sweetness. She jolted again and arched her hips, pushing his mouth fully against her—something they both wanted. He slid a finger inside her, and Gracie’s spine bowed, her internal muscles gripping tight as he stroked in and out.
Exploring, tasting, savoring, Owen learned every inch of her. Found out what made her pant, what made her white-knuckle the desk edge, what caused her to ride his mouth as her pleasure came in intense, rippling waves.
Trailing kisses over her thighs, Owen stood, bracing an arm around her waist. He bent to take her mouth again, even as her ragged breathing puffed against his lips and made him smile. Making a woman gasp for control, her mouth the color of ripe strawberries because she’d bitten her lip in an attempt not to scream, was reward enough.
“Owen, please,” she whispered, and her fingers raked down his chest, dipping into his pajamas.
Lust whipped through him in a brutal lash as she encountered the head of his cock, angled high against his stomach. He leaned in to her touch, and her fingers wrapped around him and stroked in one fluid motion. His body aching, blood buzzing relentlessly in his veins, Owen tightened his hold on Gracie’s waist. She stiffened in his arms, releasing the part of him he wanted more than anything to have her hold on to. Peeling her mouth from his, she gave him a tiny shove.
“Owen? Your phone’s buzzing.”
He forced his eyes, which he was pretty sure were rolled back into his sockets, toward the desk. Sure enough, his phone was vibrating and doing everything but shouting out, “Hey, asshole, guess who’s not getting any tonight?”
He recognized the hospital’s number. “I have to take this. It’s the ED.”
Gracie nodded and with a brief touch to his cheek, slid off his desk. Owen tapped the screen. He pressed the phone to one ear as his other picked up the soft sound of his office door opening and closing.
“Wakey-wakey, Owen,” said his nightshift triage nurse, Naomi.
“I’m awake.”
Goddammit to hell. Owen dropped his chin to his chest. There were some days he wished he’d opted to head down a different career path—like a general practitioner, or maybe a world champion surfer. They didn’t have to roll out of bed at 3:00 a.m. to deal with life-or-death decision making.
Naomi rattled off the latest emergency to drag him away from his life, from finally getting Gracie Cooper right where he wanted her.
“I’ll be there in fifteen, max.” Owen disconnected and headed for the bathroom for a three-minute cold shower. Maybe it would help with the still wanting Gracie thing and get his head back in the game.
Maybe.
Chapter 13
Gracie hadn’t heard Owen return from the hospital during the night. She’d tossed and turned in her bed for hours after she’d crept back into her room. Showering hadn’t washed the scent of him from her pores. Changing into a fresh nightshirt hadn’t eased the ache of her body demanding his touch. And an Earth shifting on its axis orgasm hadn’t dampened her need for him, not one bit.
Finally, Gracie had fallen asleep to the sough of distant waves and the cry of the neighborhood morepork. She’d woken just after dawn to what promised to be another gorgeous beginning-of-autumn, Far North day. Since she was up earlier than her normal school-day start, she took some time selecting her clothes and added a little more makeup than she usually bothered with. No harm in looking as if she owned it, rather than a woman who’d only had a few hours’ sleep because she’d been pining for her man.
Her man. Jeez.
Gracie grabbed the house keys and stepped out onto the deck, the chilly morning air raising goose bumps under her light sweater. Beside the guesthouse, the ope
n garage door revealed Owen’s parked car. He’d come home in the wee hours and had refrained from closing the rattling automatic doors so Gracie wouldn’t be disturbed.
Awww. Thoughtful and orally talented.
A tingly, hot squeeze gripped her womb and released. Muscle memory from the big O-for-Orgasm Doctor Sexy had delivered the night before.
Holy moly. She had to stop that right now.
Gracie crossed to the house and let herself in. The kitchen was empty—too early even for Charlie to be up. She switched on the kettle and went to the fridge for milk. Gracie’s hand froze on the handle. Pinned by a magnet in a prominent position was a freshly printed piece of paper with an updated list of house rules. She knew they were new because of the in your face large text saying “New House Rules.”
Nobody got one up on Gracie Cooper first thing in the morning.
She finished making her hot drink then carried the mug and the new list of rules to a spot at the island counter.
New House Rules.
1. Inside voices when Uncle Owen has worked a late shift.
2. Run if you want to but not with sharp objects.
3. Don’t break anything, except maybe that ugly china figurine your gran gave me a couple of years ago for Christmas. The one sitting precariously on the edge of the hall side table…
4. Do your chores without complaining (see your name on the chore sheet below). Sorry, this one’s staying, kids.
5. If you drink the last drop of milk or eat the last muesli bar or chocolate biscuit, for the love of Pete—throw the carton/box/packet in the trash, so Uncle Owen doesn’t get his hopes up when scrounging for a late-night snack.
6. Keep your rooms tidy-ISH.
7. Wi-Fi password this week is: UncleOwenRocks.
Teach Your Heart: A New Zealand Opposites Attract Romance (Far North Series Book 3) Page 15