“You ruined my sandwich,” Eli said, putting his chair back up and dumping the water and his soggy sandwich out of the cooler.
“I’ll make you another one. You’re beginning to look half peanut these days.”
Eli’s stomach roared in anticipation of Ruby’s cooking. Since being fired from the Crooked Creek, that was truly the one thing he missed without reservation.
“What are you doing out here, boy?”
“Making sure …” He swallowed. “Making sure she doesn’t run away and ruin everything.”
Ruby tossed the spray nozzle away and crossed her arms. “She already ruined everything.” Eli blinked up at her. “Remember? She left you?”
“Ruby—”
“That’s a shitty mom thing to do. I ain’t a mom, but I know that. You don’t leave your kids.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just saying, she can’t ruin anything worse than what she already ruined.”
“She could ruin this … this spa thing you’re doing.”
“Like you care?”
He was about to say Of course I do, but Ruby lifted one of her thin eyebrows and he kept his mouth shut.
“Eli, she ain’t ruining this.”
“Not yet.”
“Look, Eli.” She pointed to the house, and then shook her finger when he refused to look, holding what little ground he had left like a child. “Look. Those walls are going back up. And it’s beautiful and solid. It’s real, honey. She’s doing a great job, taking real good care of us.”
Reluctantly, Eli squinted over at the house, the cotton-candy-colored insulation going up. The next step after that was drywall.
If she’d been planning on leaving this place in ruins, that window of opportunity was over now. Gavin was showing that kid how to tape the vapor barrier, keeping it tight.
“So, honey, if you’re gonna come around here, you need to come up with a better reason.”
His face throbbed where Gavin’s fist had connected and he touched his tongue to his lip, tasting blood.
“Now, why don’t you come on inside and I’ll make you up a proper breakfast.”
Eli followed, soggy and sore. And tired.
Really, really tired of being angry.
chapter
19
“You decided on those tiles yet?” Gavin stepped into what would be the change rooms and instantly the room got smaller. More intimate. How that was possible with exposed pipes and the presence of five other men, Celeste wasn’t sure, but that was Gavin’s magic.
He turned every room into a potential bedroom.
“We’re going to go—” She looked up and gaped at him. Gavin was soaking wet, a runny trickle of blood easing down past his eye from a cut on his eyebrow. “What the hell happened to you?”
He touched the eye, winced, and then used the bottom of his shirt to swipe the worst of the blood away. The skin above his belt was white, like marble. Muscled like the statue David. Perfection. And she went dizzy with her desire to see more of him.
He swore a blue streak. “Where the hell is the first-aid kit?”
“Come on,” she said, not believing that she was actually doing this. The bathroom she shared with Victoria and Jacob was full of Spider-Man Band-Aids and Neosporin.
A bubble surrounded them, the awareness that she was leading him someplace private. That he was following, so closely she could feel the heat of him, or perhaps she was imagining that. Either way, her body loved it.
She was going to touch him—she would have to in order to dress the cut. And she couldn’t wait. She was going to take her time, milk every minute.
The lights blinked on in the bathroom and she pointed to the closed toilet without looking at him, preferring to keep her intentions in her own head for as long as she could.
Once she had everything in her hands—a cotton ball with alcohol, the little tube of Neosporin, and a Sponge-Bob SquarePants Band-Aid, she turned.
But he wasn’t on the toilet. He wasn’t sitting there like an obedient patient. He was standing right in front of her, a wall of masculinity, an ungovernable force.
He kicked the door shut. Her body went wet.
“Tell me right now if you don’t want this,” he said. The blood, the blue of his eyes, the restrained temper in his jaw—it was too much. She would regret this, the memory would embarrass her for eons, but there was no refusing.
She threw the things in her hands into the sink and met him head-on. Her arms curled around his neck, chains to keep him close. His lips touched hers and the world exploded into nothing.
All that remained was heat and a kiss more intimate than anything she’d experienced in ten years.
He stepped her backwards until the top of her hips hit the marble edge of the sink and in one delicious movement, he slid his tongue into her mouth and lifted her until she sat on the sink, her legs spread to accept the width of his hips between them.
But he didn’t grind into her. He didn’t shove his erection at her. He cradled her cheeks in his hands. Swept her hair from her face, then kissed her neck, her eyelids. Her mouth again.
It was tender. Reverent.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and after another slow, sweet kiss, he stepped away, helping her down from her perch. The perch she had no desire to leave.
“For what?” She knew she was staring at him, wide-eyed, like a starstruck virgin.
“I’ve been thinking about kissing you for a long time now, and I didn’t want it to be like this. Stolen, in a bathroom, of all places.” He wiped his hands through his hair and winced when the cut over his eye split and started to bleed again. “Damn it.”
“Sit down,” she said and gathered the things from the sink with shaking hands. Grateful as she was to have something to do, her body was still processing that kiss and she felt her cheeks burn. Between her legs she was wet. Her nipples ached.
“Close your eyes,” she said, unable to stare into those eyes and keep herself in order.
“Are you mad?” he whispered, his head tipped back. She smiled down at him, only because he couldn’t see her. “Have I blown it?”
“Blown what?”
“A month of lunches, Celeste. I was working toward a dinner date.” He opened one eye and when she didn’t drop her smile fast enough, he grinned.
“I don’t …” date, she was going to say. But that wasn’t the truth. She dated plenty. “I don’t date younger men.”
“Younger? Come on. By what, five years?”
“I’m sixty-three.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “How old are you?”
He picked his jaw up off the floor. “It doesn’t matter.”
She laughed because it hurt, like waxing all the hair off her body, a wild stinging pain. She put the Band-Aid on over the cream and leaned down to kiss it, taking as much heat from his body as she could. “Of course it does.”
Victoria loved walking in the front door of the ranch these days—it was like walking into a beehive. Men carrying heavy equipment. Women on phones, bossing the men around. She stepped over ladders and skids of materials and headed into the kitchen, eager to see the new appliances that had been delivered just as she was taking Jacob to school.
Ruby stood in the center of her kingdom, a queen in tye-dyed yoga pants. A pair of legs in denim and cowboy boots stuck out from behind the new six-burner professional-grade stove.
“Look, Victoria,” Ruby said, “it’s the mother ship.”
She ran her hands across the sterling-silver dials. “So shiny!”
The terra-cotta tiles had been laid and sealed a few days before and the fridge and freezer had already been hooked up. The deep stainless-steel sink and new dishwasher still sat in boxes just inside the sliding glass doors. The counter had been replaced with stainless-steel worktables.
“I didn’t think Gavin was going to have any guys to spare for this today,” she said.
“I got my own guy,” Ruby said, her eyes twinkling over her reading gla
sses.
“I heard that.” To Victoria’s surprise, those legs belonged to Eli. He shimmied out from behind the stove. “There you go, Ruby.”
She felt foolish, gaping at him, but it was sort of like finding a rainbow at night. He was literally the last person she expected to see here. Helping, of all things.
She hadn’t seen him since the swans. She’d canceled the last visit because she was rubbed raw by him. Rubbed raw by his crossroads, and she just needed a break from it.
“Ruby bribed me with food.” He reached over to tap her jaw shut. He was sunny as a beach vacation, and she wanted to tip back her head and absorb this surprising change in him.
“What happened to your face?” Now that he was right in front of her, Victoria could see he had a big swollen lip and a cut through the corner.
“Allergic reaction,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ruby snorted. “To Gavin’s fist.”
“You fought with Gavin?” She tried not to make it sound as if it turned her on, because it was totally inappropriate that it did.
“Who fought with Gavin?” Amy walked in, and immediately Eli closed up like a fist. That beach vacation was suddenly rained out. “You? Eli? Are you—”
Eli glared at her, storm clouds rolling in across his face. This was going to be a doozy.
“Are you all right?” Amy asked her son.
“Fine. It was nothing.”
She pointed to the appliances.
“Did you put in the stove?”
Eli nodded, unrolling his sleeves, refusing to look at her with all the force and intention of a tornado.
“The fridge?”
“You just plug it in.”
Victoria and Ruby stood there, watching the two of them act like they were playing tennis with grenades. Eli grabbed his jacket from the counter and swung it over his shoulder, before stepping toward the sliding glass doors.
Amy slammed her clipboard down on the stove.
Here it comes, Victoria thought, wanting to dive behind the counter.
“This isn’t going to work,” Amy said, and Eli turned around. “I can’t have my guys working like this. Two of them are talking about leaving. You’re fighting with my foreman. And I thought—”
“You’d show up after twenty-seven years and we’d magically make up?” he asked, and Victoria winced.
“No. I don’t expect us to make up. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I thought it would be worth it, just to have you here.”
“How is that working out for you?”
“It’s not. None of this is working.”
“Wait a second,” Victoria said, not liking the way this was going. “The renovation is working pretty great.”
“I’ll go,” Amy said, not even looking at Ruby or Victoria. She only had eyes for her son, putting all of their fates in his angry hands.
Victoria fumed. This was exactly what she’d feared would happen with Eli sitting outside the ranch like a damn pest—he was chasing Amy away.
“Leave the ranch?” he asked, his eyes opening wide as if this were the last thing he’d expected.
“If that’s what you want,” Amy agreed with a solemn nod.
“I’ll sue you, Amy,” Victoria breathed. “I mean, I’ll have to. You can’t … you can’t just leave.”
“I should never have come,” Amy said, looking every minute of her age and then some. “This was a mistake. I’ll give you back the rest of the deposit, I’ll recommend another contractor, maybe Gavin will stay—”
“It’s fine,” Eli said.
Victoria took in a shaking breath, because he wasn’t looking at his mother, he was staring right at her with the kind of focus and intention reserved for dark deeds against walls and in trucks. “I’m tired of sitting out there every damn day. Stay. Finish the job. For Victoria.”
Amy nodded. Eli turned to Victoria, his intent incendiary. “I’ll see you tonight,” Eli said. Not a question.
Her body understood what was happening before her brain clued in. It wasn’t until he was out the door that she realized she’d be going to his ranch tonight.
Without her son.
The air she pulled into her lungs was hot and damp, and it tasted of sweat and sex. She pushed the pillow that kept flopping over her head off the side of the bed and braced her hands against the wall. Her hips pushed back, meeting Eli’s slow, steady thrust, and when he pulled back, she moaned, nearly crying, trying to follow his body with hers.
“Slow,” he breathed in her ear. His heavy chest, muscled and slick with sweat, settled against her back and the sensation of being covered, of being dominated by this big man, turned the dial up on her excitement.
“Please,” she gasped. “Come on. Please.” She tossed her head, her hair falling over her face, and he put his lips to her shoulder, that place where neck met body, where a cluster of nerves lived and breathed, waiting for his attention.
She groaned, curled up against him, the thick, heavy length of him inside of her pinning her to the bed.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and that was it. She couldn’t take it anymore. She might not be as strong as him, but the frustration of the last few weeks had given her power.
Rocking her hips forward she squeezed her legs together, clamping him inside of her, and he groaned. She did it again. And again. Gathering speed and rhythm until the friction made her see stars.
His hand landed on her hip, his thumb against the flesh of her bottom. Gaining leverage where she could, she could feel him reacting to her, feel him giving up his control. Losing it altogether, holding himself in place so she could work him. Work both of them.
“So good,” he breathed against her ear and she felt him rest his forehead on the center of her back, craning his neck so he could watch, and that made her crazy.
The orgasm started slow, curling through her body, gathering sensation from every limb, every nerve ending, until she was suffused with light, with lust and excitement and passion, and then when she couldn’t take it anymore, when it started to hurt, Eli groaned, “Come with me.”
And she splintered apart, raining down on this bed and this lonely ranch and the night outside as glitter, until Eli rolled her over, pulling her into his arms, and put her back together. Arm here, leg here. Pounding heart at the center of it all.
“You’re right,” he breathed against her forehead. “Forgiveness feels great.”
She laughed, soundless, because her voice was still missing, but her body shook against his and she could feel his smile against her cheek.
As the sweat cooled on her body and goose bumps cropped up across her skin, Eli reached down to get blankets, but she stopped him.
“I have to go,” she said. “Jacob—”
“Are you sure?”
She laughed, despite the fact that it hurt a little to play this game with him. Being casual was new to her, and she didn’t yet have the appropriate calluses. “Don’t pretend you’re not relieved,” she said, reaching down beside the bed for her underwear.
He sat up in the bed, his muscles silvered in the moonlight that came in through the window. He was all shadows and light, his muscles so beautiful, his face so sweet. “I’m glad you came over,” he whispered.
“Me too,” she whispered back, smiling at him through her hair as she pulled up her jeans. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked down at him. Studied him. The weeds of her doubts finding room to grow, despite everything they’d done in the last hour.
“I really … I can’t believe you’ve really forgiven me.”
“I’ve done some seriously shitty things in my life, Tori,” he said, scratching at his chest. “And some of the shittiest were to you. You didn’t owe me anything. The fact that we’d had sex just complicated things. You did the right thing for you.”
“What … what about now?” she asked, pointing to the bed. “Does this complicate things?”
“Probably,” he said. “But I’m ready to risk some complic
ations.”
chapter
20
Eli was very susceptible to bribery. He wasn’t proud of it. The morning after Victoria had come over, Ruby called and asked him to hook up her sink and dishwasher.
All the soreness in his body, the pinpricks of pain along his neck and back where Victoria had sunk her nails, blazed at the thought of seeing her so soon.
But his mind thought all that excitement was a bad idea. “Don’t you have a bunch of people there whose job it is to get that shit to work for you?”
“They’re all busy. Gavin’s telling me the dishwasher isn’t a priority until next week.”
“Well, then I figure—”
“Food for a week,” she said, “so you don’t have to keep eating those sad little sandwiches.”
His stomach roared with its vote and he just couldn’t say no. Sometimes he thought if he saw another jar of peanut butter he just might cry. “Tamales?”
“Of course.”
“Damn it. Give me a few hours. And make sure Amy and that Gavin guy aren’t around.”
Which is how he happened to be on his back, trying to hook the dishwasher up to the water line behind a stack of boxes and stainless-steel appliances, when Victoria, Celeste, and Ruby came in and started arguing.
And it sounded like an old argument.
“How many times do I have to say no to this?” Victoria cried. He felt like he needed to come out of hiding, in case this was an argument Victoria didn’t want him hearing.
“You don’t,” Celeste said. “You don’t have to say no at all.”
“We don’t have the money,” Victoria said, “to renovate that barn. We just paid for all that damn advertising! The New York Times Travel Section isn’t exactly cheap, Celeste.”
“You’re being shortsighted again.”
“Fine, you want to ask Luc for more cash?”
“I will.”
“A couple months ago asking Luc was a last resort.”
“I’m not saying I’ll like doing it, but it’s the right thing to do, Victoria.”
Victoria muttered something he couldn’t hear.
Can't Hurry Love Page 22