“You think I turn this charm on just anyone, princess? I save the kitchen creepin’ only for you and your sweet, swayin’ hips.”
When they’d first started working together more than a year ago on The Willow Tree—Finn and Drew Thomas’s baby and Havenbrook’s first bar—saying things like that to her had actually left her speechless for all of fifteen seconds. Had made her turn the brightest shade of red, and he hadn’t been able to avoid wondering how far that blush went. The thought still haunted him.
She might have still turned pink, but those days of her staying silent, for even fifteen seconds, were long gone.
“You may think the sun comes up just to hear you crow, but I’m not one of your little pet chickens.” She turned up her nose, dismissing him as best she could, and brushed a hand down her front…right over the splatter of paint she’d gotten on her pretty white blouse. Gasping, she dropped the paintbrush in the tray and wobbled again as she pulled the shirt away from her chest, nearly toppling off the ladder as she did so.
“Dammit, Rory!” He surged forward again, gripping the sides of the wooden death trap and securing her on it with nothing more than his body. How did she manage to do this to him? Make him want to pull out his hair, while at the same time cut off his own arms if it would keep her safe.
He tightened his grip on the sides of the ladder, if for no other reason than so he wouldn’t be tempted to run his hands over her body just to make sure she was okay. Her scent enveloped him—something light and floral—and as soon as he took his first deep inhale of her, goose bumps erupted all over her exposed skin.
Her breaths puffed against his lips, and his parted in response. Even halfway up the ladder and wearing heels, she was only just his height. The rise and fall of her chest pulled his gaze down to her breasts. Small, round, perfect little mouthfuls. Not that he knew that for certain, but he could imagine. And, shit, had he imagined. For years, he’d been imagining.
“I’m—” Rory’s voice came out breathless and scratchy, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m a perfectly capable adult, thank you very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to…” She gestured down the front of her shirt to the paint splatter.
“At least you’re festive.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Red pants. White shirt. Blue paint.” He shrugged. “Seems like a winning combo on the Fourth.”
She huffed, stomping her foot as best she could on the ladder. “Of course you’d make light of this. This is your fault. If you hadn’t surprised me in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. I can’t go out lookin’ like this. I’m gonna have to run on home and change. Heavens, I’m gonna be late…” She placed a hand on his chest and shoved him away so she could climb down the ladder.
He ignored the feeling of her hand on his body, ignored the hitch in her breath as she touched him, and glanced at his watch. They only had fifteen minutes before the start of the annual baseball game her family played in each year. There was no way in hell he could let Rory go home. If she did, she’d miss the opening pitch. And if she missed that, she’d miss the show Finn had been planning for months. If she missed the show… Well, her sister Will would be upset, which would upset Finn, who would, in turn, make Nash’s life a living hell for causing his girl grief.
It was a clusterfuck, and Nash didn’t want any part of it, but he’d lost that possibility the moment he’d answered Drew’s call. And considering Drew and Finn’s bar was the main reason Nash was well on his way to buying out King Construction, he owed them both a hell of a lot. The least he could do was make sure Rory got where she needed to be when she needed to be there.
“Sorry, princess, there’s not enough time to fuss with all that.”
Rory breathed out a disbelieving laugh as she blinked up at him. “Excuse me? I must’ve heard you wrong, because I know there’s no way you’d be tryin’ to tell me what I can and cannot do, considering I’m a grown woman whose decisions are of absolutely no concern to you.”
Aw, hell, he’d gone and awoken Pissed-Off Rory. He’d become well acquainted with this version of her in the past few months—ever since she’d been helping out here and there with the residents’ designing needs. Construction and interior design went hand in hand, which meant they’d been working side by side for days…weeks on end.
As such, Nash knew he had to play this smart. If he pressed Rory to go to the baseball diamond, she’d only push back harder. But if he guided her in that direction… Well, she just might go willingly.
He held up his hands. “Fine, fine. You do whatever you’d like.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna run—”
“I just thought, what with your daddy countin’ on you for their team since y’all lost last year and all, that you’d wanna get down there just as soon as possible and not cause any more grief. You know, for the family. But that’s my mistake.” He shrugged as if whatever she chose was no big deal to him.
She opened her mouth, then promptly snapped it shut as she glanced down at her paint-covered blouse. “You can’t be suggestin’ I show up lookin’ like this! On time or not, this—” she gestured down the front of her “—would be a disgrace. You may not care about things like that, but I—”
“Course I’m not suggestin’ that.” He reached back and grabbed the neck of his shirt, pulling it off in one fell swoop before holding it out to Rory. “You can borrow mine. It’s even white.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless you’d rather be the one out there without a shirt on?”
Under normal circumstances, a jab like that would’ve had Rory spouting off and giving Nash a fifteen-minute lecture on appropriate talk in the workplace. Now, though, she stood in front of him, her lips parted, her eyes raking over his bare chest. And, fuck, he loved every imagined caress of her gaze on him. So much so, he had to force himself not to move a muscle. Not a single damn inch. Because if he did, he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t back her into the wall and kiss the living daylights out of her.
There were a whole lot of inches moving behind his zipper, though, and every one of them wanted Rory.
They’d been doing this dance for too fucking long. Since The Willow Tree when Finn, Drew, and Nola—the third partner in the bar—had hired him as a contractor. They’d budgeted for that, no problem. What they hadn’t budgeted for was a designer, and they had been in desperate need of one. So Rory, being Rory, had elbowed her way in to help. She’d done so without charging a cent, though, so he had to admire her for that.
Trouble was, the two of them were combustible when they were in the same room. It hadn’t always been like that. Though that was probably more because she hadn’t known he’d existed, rather than their personalities changing all that much. Being the age of Rory’s youngest sister, Natalie, automatically took him off Rory’s radar. But she’d always been on his.
And then there’d been the night last year when he’d found her, drunk as a skunk, at The Willow Tree. She’d gone to surprise her then-husband for their anniversary and instead found him balls deep in his assistant. She and Nash had shared more than just a bottle of Grey Goose that evening. She’d opened up to him, let down her walls more than he’d ever seen. And in doing so, they’d more than just gotten along—they’d connected. And he’d soaked up every ounce of it.
And then the next day, it was like it’d all been a dream.
He snapped back to the present as Rory licked her bottom lip—no doubt an unconscious gesture—and stared at his chest while he grew hard as stone behind his zipper. “Tick-tock, princess,” he said, his voice gruff with restraint. “What’ll it be?”
With a huff and a gorgeous flush to her cheeks, she turned sharp eyes on him, snatched his shirt from his hand, and spun on her heels to stomp off down the hall.
“Hurry up, now,” he called. “You don’t wanna be late.”
Her growl was drowned out by his answering laugh. He knew baiting her was a bad idea. Nothing co
uld ever come of this back-and-forth between them. Because she was a scorned, still-mourning divorcée, and he was the pain-in-the-ass, immature prick who made her daily life a living hell.
So instead, he’d get them both worked up, and then he’d walk away. He’d have to, just like every other day. Because it’d be a cold day in hell before there was a future for him—Mr. High School Dropout—and the reigning princess of Havenbrook.
Rory never went out in public looking less than perfect. Hell, even during labor with both her girls, she could’ve posed for a photo shoot. Just last year, she’d been sick as a dog with a temperature of 102, hacking up a lung and feeling like death warmed over. Instead of shuffling into the pharmacy with bed head while wearing her pajamas, she’d gotten dressed, done her hair, and put on makeup just so she could get some meds. Never mind the fact that she should’ve been able to count on her no-good, lying, cheating, scumbag of a husband to do it for her.
But if her decade of marriage was good for anything, it had been to teach her she couldn’t count on anyone but herself. Except…well, she couldn’t exactly say that anymore, now could she? Not after today. Not after Nash King had literally given her the shirt off his back when she’d been in a pinch.
She glanced down at the too-big piece of cotton hanging off her body. It smelled like pine and sawdust and rain and…man. Sweet Lord, it smelled like a man. One who worked with his hands and his body instead of sitting behind a desk all day, shuffling papers and answering phone calls and banging his assistant.
As she breathed in Nash’s intoxicating scent, she tried not to remember him standing in front of her bare-chested. All those muscles dipping and curving and rippling, the light sprinkling of hair on his chest, the tattoos that ran down both defined arms. She’d never before been remotely interested in tattoos, and now she found herself daydreaming about what it’d be like to trace them. With her tongue.
Of course, she knew he was handsome. Anyone with two working eyeballs could see that. What, with his floppy not-quite-blond-but-not-quite-brown hair and that scruff and that incessant smirk he always shot her and that chuckle that went straight to her nipples. And, yeah, okay, so she was attracted to him. So what? It wasn’t any different from being attracted to the models on Instagram her sisters insisted on showing her. They were all unattainable, so what did it matter?
“Get your head in the game, y’all!” Her daddy barked the order to the rest of the team.
Bland murmurs of acknowledgment went on around Rory as she shifted on the opposite side of the outfield, tugging up the neck of her—Nash’s—shirt again. It must’ve looked ridiculous, continually hanging off one of her shoulders and showcasing the strap of her ivory bra. Downright indecent, and she should’ve been ashamed of herself, going out in public looking like that. But she hadn’t had a choice, now had she? Nash had been right—if she’d have been late to the game, it would’ve reflected poorly not only on her, but on her family, and she’d already done enough of that today by skipping out on all the festivities up to this point.
That’d been the only reason she’d reluctantly taken his proffered shirt and slipped it over her head like it had been a lifeline. She’d knotted it at the base of her spine so it didn’t look like she was wearing a garbage sack, but she wasn’t sure she’d been all that successful.
She hated that she didn’t look her best when so many eyes were on her. If she couldn’t hide away in her house, she’d at least wanted to come looking impeccable, with an unflappable, practiced smile on her face, and show everyone she was fine. She was fine. Rory Haven was unbreakable, and her no-good ex certainly hadn’t managed to finally make her crack.
“Quit tuggin’ at your shirt, Rory, and focus!” Mac yelled. “Finn’s up, and you know he’s sendin’ the ball straight to you.”
Of course he was. Because Rory played baseball about as well as she gutted a fish, and he knew it. Everyone knew it, and yet her daddy—Havenbrook’s mayor, instigator of this damned baseball game, and all-around pain in her ass, though she’d never dream of saying that aloud—forced them to do this year in and year out. Last year’s game had been the first in her memory where they’d lost. Not because they’d suddenly had a bad year, but because a new team hadn’t been afraid of Richard Haven’s wrath and had actually played with the intention of winning and not throwing the game. The very team they were up against now.
Heaven help them all if they lost again this year.
Her daddy stood at first base, his belly pouring over the front of his khaki shorts, his face red in reaction to the heat. “C’mon now, eyes on the prize. Eyes on the prize, y’all!”
Only the ingrained manners she’d been brought up with stopped her from rolling her eyes in her father’s direction. Instead, she called back to Mac, “If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you come on over here, then?”
Mac shot her a look that said she was clueless. “Obviously… I’m gonna haul ass as soon as his bat hits the ball.”
“Y’all quit fightin’ out there!” Will called over her shoulder from second base. “He’ll prey on your weaknesses.”
Rory didn’t doubt that. If anyone would tell the truth about Finn, it’d be Will. Since he and her sister had gotten back together last year, he’d filled the void in Rory’s life of annoying younger brother. Always picking. Always prodding. Always irritating the hell out of her. But damn if she didn’t have a fondness for him. There was no denying exactly how good he was for Will, and Rory’d never begrudge her sister happiness. She and her sisters might’ve had a tumultuous relationship for most of their lives, but Rory was trying damn hard to rectify that now because she was getting really tired of fighting her life battles all on her own.
Rory was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize Finn had hit the ball until Mac barreled toward her full force, yelling for her to get out of the way. She didn’t move fast enough, though, which meant Mac couldn’t get to the ball. Rory squeaked and covered her face with a mitt-encased hand while Mac cussed a blue streak at her. The ball dropped several yards behind Rory, and Mac hustled to it, picking it up and turning toward the infield to throw it to second base. Except she froze. Just stood there—her arm pulled back, ball at the ready to launch, her mouth agape.
“Mac! What in heaven’s name is wrong with—” Rory turned to glance over her shoulder toward the infield and stopped short when she saw exactly what held Mac’s attention.
Will stood on second base, her baseball mitt forgotten at her feet, her hands clasped over her mouth. And Finn was down on one knee in front of her, holding a small black box out between them.
“Holy shit,” Mac said, coming up to stand next to Rory.
Holy shit was right. A proposal wasn’t all that unexpected. Finn and Willow had lost so much time—years—that it made sense they wouldn’t want to lose any more, despite that they’d only officially been a couple again for about a year. But in all that time, Finn hadn’t made it any secret that he wanted Will, would do anything at all for her, and he’d done everything in his power to show her exactly that. He’d named his business after her, for heaven’s sake.
Will nodded to Finn, her smile bright, and then Finn slipped the ring on her finger and stood. He wrapped his arms around her waist and tugged her right off the ground, kissing her as if the entire town weren’t watching them.
Everyone in the bleachers went wild. The crowd cheered and clapped, hoots and hollers going up all around Rory, but all she could do was stare.
She’d expected this to happen at some point. There was no question they were in love, and despite Rory’s initial reluctance toward Finn, she knew he was the perfect man for her younger sister. But what Rory hadn’t expected was the ache in her chest, the heavy weight that sat on her shoulders as she watched them. The overwhelming longing for something she’d thought she’d once had… Thought she’d always have.
But now wasn’t the time for her emotions. It was her sister’s day, and Rory wouldn’t dampen that even tho
ugh it hurt like hell. Especially knowing her own attempt at happily ever after had not only failed, but hadn’t truly been real in the first place.
She and her ex-husband, Sean, had gotten married right after college graduation because that had been the next logical step after dating all four years. They’d had babies almost immediately, and then Rory’s life had revolved around her husband and her daughters and being the eldest child of the town’s namesake family.
And somewhere along the line, she’d forgotten how to just be Rory. How to actually be happy.
But she needed to shove those thoughts away. It wasn’t the time or place for that kind of nonsense. Rory needed to suck it up and deal while her sister had one of the best days of her life. She needed to put on a brave face, smile for the audience, and pretend like everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
It’d been hours since the ball game. Since Finn’s proposal to Will. Since Havenbrook had been thrown into an absolute tizzy, the gossip mill finally churning over something other than Rory and her divorce and all the women her husband had slept with while they’d been married. Over something other than her sad, pathetic fall from grace straight into a tiny, three-bedroom shack she could only afford thanks to the pity job of working for her daddy at town hall.
Of course, she could afford something more if only she’d accept the money her parents continually offered, almost forcefully. Because heaven forbid one of the Havens be anything less than an ideal specimen. She could also have afforded something nicer if she’d taken Sean to the cleaners like her sisters had begged her to. As tempting as it’d been, her pride wouldn’t allow her to. That pride she wore like armor was a real bitch, but it was something she wasn’t going to bend on. After being tied to a man who threw her away as easily as last week’s garbage, she was bound and determined to stand on her own two feet this time around. She was never again putting her future in the hands of anyone but herself.
Hometown Troublemaker Page 2