by Avery Flynn
“I sizzle like bacon and am made with an egg,” PawPaw had said. “I have a backbone but not a single good leg. When I peel like an onion, I still manage to remain whole. And even though I can be long like a flagpole, I can fit in a hole. What am I?
A snake.
He opened his mouth, about to let the answer out so they could tell PawPaw and get these damn handcuffs off, but nothing came out.
“Think of something?” Hadley asked.
“Nope.” He shook his head, not sure why he didn’t just come out with the answer but not willing to examine it. Not yet anyway.
Then they walked inside to utter pandemonium.
…
It took a while, but all the we’re-gonna-kick-your-butt family game night smack talk finally simmered down enough that everyone was settled around their particular board game in the family room under the watchful painted eye of Miguel Martinez, the original Martinez to own the Hidden Creek Ranch.
The oil painting hanging over the fireplace of Gabe’s grandfather standing under the sign for the ranch had been a gift from Hadley, Adalyn, Weston, and Knox last Christmas. She’d found an artist in Harbor City to paint it from a photograph whose edges had started to curl that Gabe’s parents had kept on the fridge until they’d retired and moved down to Arizona. Next to the painting were graduation pics of each of the kids, a photo from Gabe and her mom’s wedding day, and a picture from the last family reunion that had been shot as a panorama to fit everyone in. A lot of the people in that photo were here, laughing, strategizing, and stuffing their faces with popcorn balls. In the middle of the room, Gabe and her mom were facing off against Knox and Weston in a cutthroat game of speed Monopoly.
They were all laughing and teasing one another, meanwhile PawPaw must be thinking that Hadley had banged her head on the overhead bins on the flight out here. He’d dropped the words “hiss” and “slither” and “rattle” on the Scrabble board, giving her a nudge with his elbow each time, as if she hadn’t realized the answer was a snake. Yeah, riddles weren’t really her thing, but he’d used this one before.
Meanwhile, all this mandatory fun family time was starting to overwhelm her, making her belly tight and her neck sore. She rolled her shoulders for the twentieth time since she sat down, trying to relieve some of the tension being surrounded by family always seemed to produce, but the uncomfortable, you-don’t-belong unease didn’t loosen its grip.
Across the table, Aunt Louise tried to come up with a word using whatever tile Matt had given her. Judging by the nasty look she’d sent Matt’s way, it was probably a Q or a Z.
Will leaned closer, dipping his head so his lips almost brushed the shell of her ear as he whispered, “You feeling okay?”
“Just peachy.” And now she’d add inappropriately turned on to all the other tension stringing her tight.
Grumbly? Her? Always around Will. He just brought it out in her. Hell, usually he did it on purpose. That she could handle, but this nicer side to Will? This version of him who’d check to make sure she wasn’t having a panic attack in her parents’ family room? Yeah, she had no idea how to deal with him, and that made her surly. And hot. And turned on. And—dammit, pull yourself together, Hads.
Determined to do just that, she kept her posture straight, her gaze focused on the game in front of them, and ignored completely the urge to tuck herself up against Will.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because you kinda look like me in the car,” he said, scooting closer to her so there wasn’t a single millimeter of light between them, as if he just understood that she needed that contact right now.
“Wow.” She dug deep, trying to find her usual annoyance at being near him to keep from relaxing against his solid frame. “You really know how to flatter a woman.”
He let out a low, rumbly chuckle. “I like to think that it’s what else I can do with a woman that is more important.”
Her breath caught as all the memories from last night rushed forward. The feel of him so gentle as he picked the flowers from her hair and undressed her. The hard length of him as he filled her, taking her right to the edge without even trying. The thrillingly harsh sound of his demand that she say his name. All of it slammed against her in a wave of want and need, nearly drowning her in desire, sending her jolting straight up out of her chair in panic.
She shot her cuffed wrist into the air, taking Will’s with her. “Snake!”
Aunt Louise screamed and jumped up onto her chair while Matt, Raider, and everyone else in the room reacted by either screaming, climbing onto the furniture, or searching for a slithering intruder. Well, everyone but her, PawPaw, and Will.
Way to make it worse, Hads.
Using her fingers, she let out a loud whistle to get her family’s attention. “That’s the answer to the riddle.”
“About damn time,” PawPaw said as he unlocked the handcuffs while the rest of the family settled back into their chairs. “I was starting to wonder about you.”
Aunt Louise shot Hadley a you-damn-fool look and laid down her tiles for the word “lovers.” It wasn’t until Will handed her a Q for the start of her turn and even that slight brush of his fingers against hers set off a sizzle of anticipation that realization hit. The only people who hadn’t thought she was shouting a warning about a real snake were her, PawPaw…and Will. He must have known the answer all along, but he hadn’t said a word. What did that mean? She had no clue, but it sure didn’t do a damn thing to settle the butterflies running kamikaze flight patterns in her stomach.
She let out a shaky breath and tried to forget they’d be alone again tonight. In the cabin. She had to stay strong. He was Web’s asshole brother. The evil twin. He thought she was a gold digger. Whatever this was between them, it wasn’t a good thing, and the last thing she needed was to fall for her best friend’s jerk of a brother.
And that’s exactly why it wasn’t going to happen.
…
The first thing Will heard when he opened the cabin’s front door after walking from the house after their game night win was a low almost-growl that some caveman part of him instantly recognized as a warning. He jolted to a stop in the cabin’s doorway and threw out his arm to keep Hadley from walking in.
She let out an oof. “What in the world?”
“There’s something in here.”
Blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dark inside, he searched out the source of the noise while moving to the left so his body blocked Hadley from whatever was inside. It would have to go through him to get to her, and that wasn’t going to happen.
At least it wouldn’t if she would stay still and completely behind him, something it seemed she was unable to do. Instead, she reached around him, moved her hand across the wall inside the door until she touched the light switch, and then flipped it on. Everything that had been pitch-black a second ago was bathed in light. If it was a bear, a lion, or the abominable snowman, it was pretty fucking good at hiding, because Will didn’t see anything as he scanned the room, primed and ready to launch himself at whatever came at them.
Hadley, her hands on his waist, peeked around him and ewwed. “Oh, that’s just nasty.”
That’s when he saw it or, more correctly, when he saw Lightning. The swift fox sitting on the one chair in the living room, munching away on what he’d carried in after the night’s hunt.
“Lightning, this isn’t your dining room.” Hadley strutted into the room, assertive but not aggressive. “How did you get in here with that?”
The swift fox wasn’t telling. Instead, he picked up the small rabbit / large rodent / whatever had not run away fast enough, leaped down from the chair, and darted out the front door. What he left behind on what was supposed to be Will’s bed that night looked like the outtake from a vampire movie.
“Oh my God, that’s so gross,” Hadley said, gagging a little as she got closer.
“You still want to move to the country?”
Yeah, living in his penthouse in Harbor City sounded pretty good—especially after he got a look at the carnage left behind on the chair. “We can’t leave this in here.”
Hadley agreed and held open the door while he carried the chair out the front door of their cabin and over to the stand-alone water faucet near one of the cabins that hadn’t been renovated yet. He turned on the water full blast, and she aimed the hose at the chair and let loose, spraying it down and washing away what was left of Lightning’s dinner.
He was a few steps away from the water faucet when she pivoted toward him. The water was still hitting the now clean chair, but—judging by the ornery grin on her face visible under the bright light of the full moon—it may not be for long. He measured the distance in a heartbeat. There was no way he could cut the water before she got him. What had he been thinking by letting her control the hose? He hadn’t, that much was obvious.
“Hadley,” he said in warning.
She gave him a cocky wink and then folded the hose, effectively cutting off the water. “Gotcha.”
He hustled over to the faucet and turned the water off before she changed her mind. His grandmother may not have been the touchy-feely kind, but she hadn’t raised any fools, either.
After getting the hose wound up, they started back to their cabin. He shortened his stride so they could walk next to each other, no doubt a holdover from spending the evening handcuffed together, not for any other reason.
Keep telling yourself that, Holt.
Yeah, he didn’t even believe his own bullshit on that one, which was a problem—a big one. Hadley was a problem. She wasn’t someone Web could depend on. When it came to that, he and his brother knew the only people they could depend on was each other. They’d learned that lesson time and time again—all before they’d turned eight and had been shipped off to boarding school for the first time.
Exhaling a deep breath to clear out the memories of that place, he glanced up at the night’s sky and nearly tripped over his own feet in surprise.
The sky was huge, and the moon hung big and round in the middle, surrounded by a million bright, twinkling stars. IMAX had nothing on the real thing of being out here.
“Wow,” he said, slowing to a stop and just staring upward, slack-jawed. “Look at that.”
“It’s the sky,” she said, her boredom sounding a little too practiced to be genuine.
“No.” He closed the short distance between them. Ending up so he was standing slightly behind her—close but not touching, no matter how much he wanted to, despite knowing better. “Stop and really look at it.”
She did, tilting her chin upward. He should have looked back up at the stars, but he didn’t. Instead, he watched as her usual smile softened into one that he’d never seen before, not even when she looked at Web. It wasn’t that it was more genuine or easy so much as it was rare and a little bit sad.
A sudden, sharp jab of regret hit him square in the chest as he watched her, because the truth was he was at least partially responsible for that sadness because of all the shit he’d been giving her since day one. Yeah, he didn’t want to trust her. Yeah, he’d been burned to a crisp by letting himself believe before. Yeah, he never made the wrong call, but that itchy something called doubt that he wasn’t used to was scratching at the back of his brain.
“It’s like a whole other world out here.”
He let out a deep breath. Maybe that was it. It was the ranch and the stars that had gotten to him, not the woman beside him who he couldn’t stop thinking about. “I can’t disagree.”
“A first for us,” she said with a laugh. “Come on.”
They walked back to the cabin under those endless stars, anticipation wrapped around them like a blanket. Once there, Hadley hurried up the steps to the front porch and started looking around the window, testing it to see if it was open. The light spilling out from it was enough that it outlined her, giving him a perfect view of her every curve. She was hot enough to make a drowning man thirsty, and he wasn’t even close to going under the water.
“Checking to see if Lightning is lurking?” he asked, trying—and failing—not to notice the way her ass looked in her jeans.
She shook her head. “Trying to figure out how he got in.”
“The door was closed.” He’d opened it himself, and the latch had definitely been engaged.
“And the front window is shut tight.” She twisted up her mouth and drummed her fingertips on the window frame. “I mean, they can get through even if it’s only open a little, but that’s not the case here.”
Realization smacked him across both cheeks, and he let out a groan. “Lightning could get in through a window?”
She turned, her eyes narrowing. “What did you do, Will?”
He gave her his most charming smile, the one that usually left women a little dazed. Hadley just lifted an eyebrow in a silent demand for the truth.
He braced himself. “I might have left the window in the bedroom open when I changed in there yesterday.”
She let out a groan and hurried inside. Because there wasn’t another choice, he followed behind and caught up to her just inside the bedroom. What had been slightly organized chaos was now a raging disaster. Boxes were overturned. Tools were scattered all over the floor. Claw marks were scratched into the wood. A can of paint balanced precariously on the edge of a workbench.
“Okay, I’m realizing now that I should have shut the window,” he said, each word coming out as rusty as a person would expect, considering he rarely, if ever, admitted to fucking up or apologizing. “I’m sorry.”
She looked so shocked at his admission of being wrong that for a second she just stared at him wide-eyed before coming back to herself. “Out here, if you leave the windows open, something will come wandering in.”
He nodded. “Duly noted.”
Some kind of weird truce being silently agreed to, they went back into the living room—all the more spacious now that the chair, also known as the extra bed, was gone. Shit. What in the hell were they going to do now? Sleeping in the bed with her was not an option. Last night had nearly killed him. A man wasn’t supposed to have a hard-on for as long as he had, trying to fall asleep next to her. At one point she’d rolled over and snuggled up next to him, twisting one leg around his. He’d almost come in his underwear. Going through that again would be agony.
“I’ll take the floor,” he said, glancing down at the hardwood that looked like it might put him in traction.
She shook her head. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Are you sure?” Did that sound hopeful? It shouldn’t. It couldn’t. Aw fuck, he was so screwed.
“If you don’t get any sleep and we end up losing Monopoly tomorrow night, PawPaw will kill me, so this is a better alternative.” She took off one of the couch cushions and set it down on the floor where the chair had been as she began to make up their bed. Their bed. “I’ll try my best not to disturb you with my snoring.”
Yeah. Snoring. That was pretty much the least of his worries when it came to sharing a bed with Hadley.
…
Hadley stared up at the ceiling, more awake than she’d been before she’d crawled under the blanket and then tossed it off before she melted. Lying down next to Will was like cuddling with a space heater set on inferno, even though he was wearing only a pair of low-hanging basketball shorts. She would have thought that it would help when he flung off the covers almost as soon as he’d gotten into bed, making a little blanket mountain between them.
It hadn’t.
And the fact that there was just enough light from the full moon coming in through the window to give her a good view of almost every part of him she hadn’t gotten to look her fill of last night—which was pretty much all of him—wasn’t helping. Thank God her sense of self-preservatio
n saved her from staring.
Instead, she pulled the blanket back over her and just baked under it with one foot uncovered and the rest of her roasting as she noticed everything about Will, from the steady cadence of his deep breaths to the way he was only inches from her, temptingly close. Not that she was thinking about it. “Obsessing” would be more correct, which was why she hadn’t been able to close her eyes for longer than a few seconds.
If being ultra-aware of him while staring at the ceiling was bad, having her dirty mind fill in the blanks when she closed her eyes was even worse.
“Do you think that crack on the ceiling means it’s going to fall in on us?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in the dark.
Her pulse picked up as her body, already way too attuned to him, buzzed with anticipation, and she took in a shaky breath. Okay, nothing to do now that she’d been busted but play it out. “Probably not but, if it did, we’d have a great view of the stars.”
“They really are something.” He rolled over—the move making the middle of the bed dip toward him—and propped his head up on his hand. “Don’t you miss seeing them in Harbor City?”
Even if she wasn’t doing everything she could at the moment to fight gravity and roll into him, she wouldn’t have been sure how to answer that. When it came to home and family, things were always mixed-up and messy.
“Looking up at all those stars used to make me so frustrated,” she said, turning to face him, mirroring his pose. “It was like I could see there was so much more than just this ranch, but it was so far away that I couldn’t ever be a part of it.”
That always-on-the-outside feeling lingered even all these years later, like a cold that she just couldn’t quit. That’s why she fought so hard to make her place in Harbor City, to prove she belonged there.
For the most part, it worked, but there were always exceptions, people who pointed out every single thing about her that still screamed country despite her attempts to hide them—one of whom was lying next to her in the dark.