by Tessa Bailey
Moments like these, telling people their animal would recover, made the struggle through school worth every penny. Made it worth never feeling fully rested. She took pride in her work and the business her father had built. When her parents had moved to Bloomfield in the eighties and opened the practice, it had taken hard work to get it off the ground. They were not only the new folks in town, they were an interracial couple—her mother white, her father African-American—in a place where that hadn’t been considered typical, meaning they’d faced a lot of curiosity and adversity early on.
While her father had worked triple time to prove his skill as a veterinarian, Bree’s mother turned restless. Her father had confided in Bree later on that her mother found contentment hard to achieve. Always had. He didn’t even fault her for it, which confused Bree to this day. A loving family, a town that had embraced them, a thriving business. What more had she needed?
Calls like this one were a reminder to Bree that she had everything she needed right here in Bloomfield. She had the community’s trust, friends, family. Contentment. Her father did the inpatient work at the office so he wouldn’t have to travel, which meant Bree rarely had the privilege of working with canines, most of her calls concerning horses and cattle. It was rare that she witnessed the love between family members and their pets up close. Which had to account for the little spark of yearning in her breast, right?
A family of her own was something Bree had stopped dreaming about without even realizing, it seemed. How long had it been since she’d pictured her own children racing around the yard after their puppy? School, work, and running the house had put those dreams on hold, but they were trickling back in now as she watched the father reach over and squeeze the little girl’s shoulder.
Heat pressed against the back of Bree’s eyelids.
Shit almighty. What was up with her today?
“Almost done here,” Bree said. “Bowser is going to need lots of rest. I’m going to leave a prescription for painkillers to crush up in his food. And before I leave, we’ll have to put a cone on him so he doesn’t ruin his stitches.” She smiled at the little girl. “I’m recommending lots of doggie treats for the next week. Doctor’s orders.”
“I can give him those,” whispered the six-year-old.
“Good. I’m counting on you.”
Bree cut the final thread and tied it tight before disinfecting the wound once more and wrapping the damaged leg with a bandage.
The cell phone went off in her pocket a sixth time.
Worried Kira needed her for something, Bree peeled off her gloves and excused herself under the guise of retrieving the cone from her truck. As soon as she closed the front door behind her, Bree plucked the phone out of her pocket, refusing to acknowledge the lick of excitement that slid up her spine at the possibility it could be Kyler. When she saw the name Heidi blinking on the screen instead, she flicked away the disappointment and braced herself.
“Hello?”
“Woman, this conversation needs to start with something better than a damn hell-o. It deserves a cymbal crash or a British accent. I don’t know. But hello ain’t cutting it.”
Heidi lived for drama. In high school, she’d been the lead in every school play from Wizard of Oz to Cats. When the stage wasn’t an option, she created her own titillating scenarios, playing matchmaker to her friends just so she could sit back and watch the fireworks. Underneath the lip stains and bleached white hair, though, Heidi had an overly-sensitive heart of gold. Which was why Bree considered the town’s gym receptionist her best friend, even though they were polar opposites.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why is this conversation going to be so earth-shattering?”
“Oh no. You make me call you thirty-nine times, you’re going to wait for the Tootsie Roll center, baby. Keep licking.”
Bree snort-laughed. “You called me six times.”
“Splitting hairs.” Heidi hummed and Bree waited, knowing her friend wouldn’t be able to hold out on sharing whatever gossip she was peddling for long. “Heard you danced all your business up on Kyler Tate last night.”
Bree’s jaw dropped down to her knees. “That better not be why you’re calling me, Heidi. It was innocent fun. At a church dance.”
“You fix those animals up better than you lie. That’s what I know.”
“Ooh. I’m fixing to hang up.”
“You will not.” A phone rang in the background and Heidi gave a long-suffering sigh. “Hold on, I’ve got another call.”
“Don’t—”
The line went silent and Bree stomped the remaining distance to her truck, going through the list of suspects of who might have ratted her out. Kira, most likely. Her little sister and Heidi were Facebook friends and Bree was pretty sure they messaged on the regular. After Kyler had walked Bree and a bouquet-toting Kira to the parking lot last night, pressing a polite, if lingering, kiss on Bree’s cheek, her sister hadn’t let up a single second. Were they back in love? Was Kyler a good kisser?
Hell yes, he was. Not that she’d be sharing that information with Kira or anyone else, for that matter. The man had a method of kissing that Bree always suspected had been specifically designed to turn her wild. At the start, Kyler played aggressor. But as soon as she got good and worked up, he let her take the lead, encouraging her with his hands, his tongue, his husky groans. Basically, he turned himself into her own personal playground.
Heidi’s voice popped the daydream bubble over her head. “I’m back.”
“Guhh.” Bree shook herself free of kissing memories. “I-I don’t have long. I’m putting a cone on a golden retriever, then I have another appointment.”
“Fine, I’ll stop torturing you. But I want the details of this alleged dirty dance with Kyler. Grown-up ones.”
“Ha! I knew it was Kira who ratted.”
Her best friend clucked her tongue. “Speaking of Mr. Tate…”
Bree paused in the act of removing the plastic cone from a supply bag on the passenger seat. Her lack of movement only made her pounding heart more noticeable. Since yesterday, when Kyler announced pretty as you please that he intended to take her for dinner, she’d been living on the edge of—what? Anticipation? Fear? Bree only knew her focus had been hijacked along with her common sense. Because some crazy part of her wanted to say yes.
Not that she would. Oh no. That dance with Kyler last night had proven one very troubling fact. She wasn’t quite over him yet. Not her heart and not her body. Dinner would only make it worse. Make her…less than content.
“What about Kyler?” Bree asked, striving for casual.
“He’s here in the gym,” Heidi answered. “Working out like it’s no big thing.”
“It’s not a big thing,” Bree said automatically, already conjuring up an image of him in sweaty shorts. “Right?”
“Tell that to the string of admirers glued to the windows. A bunch of suction-cupped Baby on Board signs. You know the ones?” Heidi’s chair creaked in the background. “That’s what they look like, drooling over your man like that. Can you believe the nerve?”
“He’s…he’s not my man.”
“So you don’t mind if Karen Hawthorne asks him out?”
“What?” Bree’s stomach plummeted. “When did Karen Hawthorne come into the picture?”
“Since now.” Satisfaction weighed down Heidi’s tone over successfully getting Bree’s attention. “I can see that hen in the fox house from here. She’s parked at the curb, fixing her mascara in the rearview. That’s as good as confirmation in my book.”
A pressure formed on top of Bree’s lungs, pushing down. “So…she should go ahead and ask him.” She tried to swallow, but her throat was as dry as the desert. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, I suppose not.” Bree could hear Heidi’s manicured fingernails tapping the reception desk. Clack. Clack. Clack. “Hell. You can’t really blame the woman, can you? Kyler Tate, soon to be professional NFL receiver, rolls up into the local gym looking like s
omething out of Sports Illustrated. He runs so fast and so long, he soaks his T-shirt right through with sweat. It’s so wet, he has to take it off and—”
Bree dropped the cone, straightening in the truck’s front seat. “Kyler…it’s…he took his shirt off?”
“That’s exactly what I said.” Smug. Heidi was so smug. “Now, you know I have a man and I do not have a wandering eye, but Bree, when an unattached man walks into your town looking so mighty, so heavy with muscle, like he could grind a woman’s vagina to fine powder, ladies start fixing their mascara. It’s just the nature of the beast.” She blew out at a breath. “Good thing he ain’t your man, huh?”
“Stall her. I’ll be there in ten.”
“Consider it done.”
Chapter Six
Nothing is ever going to be the same, is it?
Kyler hurried through his final repetition of bicep curls and replaced the weight on the rack. The tiny but functional gym was lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and every few seconds, a camera phone flash would go off, reflecting back at him. He pretended not to see them, but each one smarted. Home represented a place he could relax. Let his guard down. A place where no one would demand perfection from him. Maybe it couldn’t be that way anymore.
He loved the people of Bloomfield. The saying “It takes a village to raise a child” applied directly to his home town. Growing up, he’d been lectured by the local florist about the importance of proper apologies. Been told to tuck in his shirt by every senior in town at least twice. And he’d gone along with the owners of Nelson’s Diner to feed the less fortunate every year during the holidays. His greatest life lessons were wrapped up in this place.
But with camera flashes going off and people waiting outside for signatures, he suddenly felt like a stranger to everyone. Even…himself.
Lord, who was Kyler Tate anymore? Who would he be in Los Angeles? Would he be able to hold on to himself, his core, if coming home only fed him more of the same lack of reality?
Who was he kidding? The cameras might have bothered him once upon a time, but he’d grown accustomed to them. This was about Bree. Who would Bree become if he took her out of this place? Dance floors and halftime surprises were one thing, but if he loved Bree, would he be so intent on taking her to Los Angeles, knowing it could make her unhappy?
“Ky.”
He lifted his head and saw Bree in the mirror behind him. On cue, his gut cinched inward, heat rippling outward from his belly. No other woman had ever elicited the smallest percentage of his body’s reaction to Bree. Not ever. No one ever would, either, because his heart was connected to every part of him. His heart knew what it wanted and it wouldn’t waver.
So he would give Bree a happy life. One way or another. How he would do so remained to be seen. He’d come to Bloomfield to convince her that the attention and notoriety wouldn’t be so bad. That as long as they were together, the cameras would be irrelevant. At this very moment, he should be making light of their presence, hoping she would follow suit. Instead, he stood there and stared back at her, trying to telegraph every damning thought in his head.
I’m miserable. I hate the cameras because you hate them.
Here was the truth. Hiding from someone you love wasn’t an option because all you really wanted was them to come find you.
Bree’s eyes were soft, her head tilted. Kyler remembered that look from many an occasion. Sympathy shot through with steel. An expression singular to Bree and one an athlete like himself needed to be on the receiving end of frequently. It said “I understand, this sucks, but don’t even think about wimping out on me.”
He wasn’t quite ready to put his game face back on, so he looked away. “You here for a workout?”
“It would seem so,” Bree murmured, flashes going off behind her. “Hard to concentrate with all that ruckus going on outside, I bet.”
“It’s fine.” Kyler turned, watching her chew that sweet lower lip. “I can go if you want some privacy.”
“Since when do you care about that?”
She meant it as a joke, but the gravity of it wrapped around him like a giant squid. His mouth tried to issue a rejoinder, same as always, but it got stuck. Since when, indeed? Countless times since middle school, he’d dragged her into center stage, against her will. Now he was back trying to do it again.
“I…” Regret shone in Bree’s eyes as she shifted. Kyler immediately surged forward to reassure her, but she danced out of his reach. “I have a better idea than you leaving. You see, Heidi knows how to sit and look pretty—”
“I heard that!”
Bree winced at her friend’s distant shout but didn’t halt her progress toward the windows. “She means well, that sweet baby angel Heidi, but if she’d only known about these…” Bree tugged on a cord and a blackout shade dropped down, covering one of the windows. “You might have been more comfortable.”
One by one, his insanely beautiful ex-girlfriend lowered shades in front of each window, ducking her head to avoid the disappointed frowns from onlookers. Soon enough, the two of them were cocooned inside the tiny room, with only a bench press between them. The low beat of rap music matched the pulse drumming in his wrists, his neck. “Thank you.”
“Welcome.” For the first time since arriving, her gaze skittered down to his bare chest and Kyler watched closely, noticing her fingers curled into her palms. Her lips rolled inward. One of her shoulders twitched, like she wanted to shrug off whatever she was feeling, but her body wouldn’t quite allow it. Her tells all played out in a matter of two seconds and Kyler wished he could rewatch it over and over for the rest of his life. Hiding their attraction to one another had always been impossible. “I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” she said finally, her voice throatier than before.
Suspicion had Kyler narrowing his eyes. “If you came down here for a workout, you’re sure as hell not dressed for it.”
“I work out in leggings all the time.”
“You’re wearing your doctor coat.”
“I…” She cleared her throat. “Have a tank top underneath.”
Kyler crossed his arms and waited, laughing under his breath as vexation flashed in her eyes. Bree’s hesitation was brief, before she unbuttoned the white coat and shrugged it off her shoulders. What she revealed had Kyler’s cock waking up with a vengeance, straining against the front of his shorts. “That’s not a tank top.”
“Sports bra, tank top. Same difference.” Her hands fluttered in front of the expanse of bare stomach between the white bra and the waistband of her leggings, as if wanting to cover herself. “I was running late this morning.”
Drawn to his counterpart by a force stronger than himself, Kyler skirted past the bench press and stopped in front of Bree. Taking a long inhale of her crisp morning dew scent and inwardly groaning at the effect it had, he slipped a finger beneath the strap of her bra, dragging the digit over the curve of her shoulder and down the slope of Bree’s back. And he circled her, watching the rise of goosebumps appear on her neck. Her back and arms. When she shivered, her head dropping forward, there was nothing Kyler could do to resist the temptation of her nape. His mouth hovered over it, breathing, but she turned and evaded before he could taste her.
Foggy brown eyes raked him. “Kyler—”
“What really brought you down here?” His tone was so low, the music nearly swallowed up his question. “I know when you’re telling lies, Bree Caroline.”
Her chin firmed but her eyes danced away. Goddamn. He loved her like this. Guilty and indignant. It signaled that he’d won a battle, she wasn’t happy about it and would compete twice as hard next time. That fire in her stoked his own like nothing else could. Not even football.
“Karen Hawthorne was out fixing her mascara in the rearview.” Bree crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “Aren’t you the one who said we should be friends? Yes, yes, you did. And I was just looking out for my friend.” She sniffed. “She’s a viper, that one. Tried to steal Heidi’s man rig
ht out from under her nose.”
Kyler had nineteen female cousins and they’d haunted his house while growing up, so he considered himself pretty adept at deciphering girl code. Clearly he’d overestimated himself. “What does mascara have to do with anything?”
She shook her head at Kyler like he was a simpleton. “It means she was fixing to ask you out.”
“And you didn’t like that idea.” Satisfaction simmered in his gut. “Gotta say, I’m beginning to warm to this conversation.”
“Well, cool off. I was just being friendly.”
“I could eat you up in one bite in that outfit, supergirl.”
Kyler dropped his gaze just in time to watch her stomach hollow, leaving a tiny gap between her smooth belly and the waistband of her leggings. His attention dragged higher and was rewarded with the hardening of her nipples, the anxious wetting of her lips. The girl needed a good, hard ride as bad as he did. Unfortunately, she would die before admitting it, which meant a lot of finesse was required.
“Y’all, I’m going to—” Heidi popped her head around the corner, turning into the cat who caught the canary when she glimpsed Bree’s attire. “I’m going to run out for an iced coffee, so I should be gone about twenty minutes. I’ll be locking the door behind me, should that information be of any interest to you.”
“It’s not,” Bree called.
“Thank you, Heidi,” Kyler said at the same time.
Neither one of them moved as the lock clicked in the distance.
Chapter Seven
Shit. Almighty.
In high school, Kyler had been in great shape. Six pack, big shoulders, biceps for days, ample height without the awkwardness. The whole nine.
College had turned him from a prince into a god.
Bree went to church on Sundays, so she knew the comparison was blasphemous, but she’d ask for forgiveness later. Like when her brain cells were finished playing ping pong with her common sense. Which would not be happening with six foot four inches of brawn staring her in the face. Kyler had so many ledges, cuts, and bulges of muscle, Bree had the urge to strap on a harness and scale him like a rock climbing wall.