“You don’t need to apologize. There’s also no need—” He paused and gave his head a shake. “You know, you’re so beautiful I can’t think straight.”
His words shocked the hell out of me, even more so coming at me sideways like that. “No shit?” I couldn’t believe he thought I was beautiful.
When I reflexively slapped my hand over my mouth, Lucas graced me with another one of his smiles. This time, my belly did several flips as if in celebration.
“No shit,” he said dryly.
In the category of shocking the hell out of me and turning my world upside down, he then reached out to catch one of my hands in his. Before I registered what was happening, he reeled me close to him. I thought he was potent before, but the moment I was standing immediately in front of him, I was almost on fire.
“I’ve been thinking again …” He paused as if to gather his thoughts.
Because I was me, and my mouth just wouldn’t quit when I was anxious, I jumped in. “About what? Because I’ve been thinking too. I think it would be a great idea for you to tell me what you meant when you said if I needed any help to let you know. Because I need some help. In fact, I think you’re just the man to help me.”
His gaze was on me, practically searing. I wasn’t sure how to read what I saw there. It might be desire, but I wasn’t so sure I could trust my body. It had gone haywire with butterflies spinning in mad circles in my belly, my pulse skittering out of control, and my sex clenching. God, I just wanted to touch him all over. He was downright yummy.
His mouth barely hitched at one corner. “Maybe you … I’m not saying you should wait for me. I’m just saying …” His words ran out.
For once in my life, I didn’t step in to fill the silence. I felt as if I were leaning over the edge of a cliff waiting for him to finish whatever he was going to say.
“I guess what I meant to say is you deserve the real deal.”
My nose itched like it did whenever I got nervous. I lifted a hand, rubbing my nose vigorously with my knuckles. Lucas stayed quiet, but I could sense he was waiting for me.
“I think that’s a great idea. When?”
“Damn, darlin’, you just get right to the point, don’t you?”
“Yes. I don’t see any sense in beating around the bush.”
“I guess I’ll never have to worry about you not making it clear what you mean,” he said, almost as if to himself. “Rylie’s spending next weekend with her grandparents. I’ll be here for the weekend because Jackson will be gone.”
Just to be sure, I asked, “So next weekend, then?”
“Maybe. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
Then he went and shocked the hell out of me all over again.
“Starting right now,” he said so softly I leaned forward to hear him.
Conveniently, he was leaning down, his hand sliding into my hair just before he brought his mouth to mine. Like I said, I’d been kissed before. But sweet Jesus, I had never been kissed like this.
His lips brushed over mine softly. I sighed at the feel of his fingers lacing into my hair, sending tingles racing down my spine. I thought he said my name, but I couldn’t hear over the rush of blood in my ears. When his tongue swiped across the seam of my lips, I pretty much threw myself at him, climbing him like a tree as I wound my arms around his neck.
He made a sound, almost pained, and palmed my bottom with his other hand. I definitely noticed the hard ridge of his arousal against my belly, and it only sent me spinning higher inside. On a gasp, his tongue swept into my mouth, gliding sensually against mine.
I lost track of everything—everything but the feel of Lucas, his strong hold, and his mouth working over mine. Just as I was on the verge of melting, he eased me down, murmuring my name softly as he drew away.
I heard the soft sound of protest coming from my throat and had to bite my tongue to keep from pleading with him not to stop. His eyes met mine in the almost darkness.
“Trust me, I don’t want to stop, darlin’. But I have a sleeping girl in the truck, and I need to get her home.”
I had been so thrown into the moment I had entirely forgotten about Rylie sound asleep in the back seat of his truck. Whatever he saw on my face must’ve translated to mortification because he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine in a quick kiss.
“I’ll see you before next weekend. You can count on that.”
Chapter Eight
Lucas
“Well, what do you think?” Dani asked.
I leaned across the table, eyeballing the schedule she was working on. Dani was a total fan of color-coding everything. My color was green. According to Dani, this was because it matched my eyes.
It did, technically speaking. Yet I found it amusing that was how she color-coded. I remained puzzled as to how she managed the colors. Dawson had been given purple, which I guess was a variant of his gray eyes.
Dani cleared her throat, flipping a pencil back and forth between her fingers.
“That’ll work,” I finally replied.
“So you’ll take care of three of the hikes that weekend. That’s going to be okay?”
“Sure is. Rylie’s grandparents have her for four days, so I’ll stay out here to save myself the bother of running home every night,” I explained.
Dani pushed one of her brown curls behind her ear and smiled. “Perfect. How is Miss Rylie?”
“She’s good. But she’s always good,” I replied with a smile. If there was one thing in the world guaranteed to make me smile, it was my daughter.
“And how are you?” Dani asked next.
“Right as rain.”
Dani began flipping that pencil back and forth again, cocking her head to the side and casting me a considering gaze. “Are you really, Lucas? As far as I can tell, all you do is work. Well, that and be an amazing father to Rylie.”
I’d known Dani for years and considered her a friend. Her only negative qualities were her nosiness and her shameless tendency to be pushy.
“I think that’s more than enough,” I said with a roll of my eyes as I pushed away from the table in her office and stood.
At that moment, there was a soft knock on the open door. Glancing over my shoulder, I found Valentina standing there. Her glorious dark red hair was pulled up in a ponytail, but that did barely anything to tame it. Her curls went every which way. One had fallen loose to dangle down the side of her cheek. I wanted to reach out and catch it and pull her to me.
The mere sight of her was a shock to my system—a hard, electric jolt—and a tightening followed.
“Oh, am I interrupting?” Valentina asked quickly. “I knocked before I realized you were in here.”
“I didn’t close the door, and it’s impossible for me to care about interruptions,” Dani said with a laugh as she waved Valentina into her office.
Valentina’s eyes flicked to me. I didn’t miss the subtle flush that crested her cheeks. As I looked at her—because I couldn’t not look at her—I became acutely aware of the dusting of freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks and wondered if she had freckles everywhere.
I’d just about convinced myself I lost my fucking mind the other night when I kissed her. Even crazier when I proposed whatever the hell it was I proposed for this weekend. But I couldn’t forget it, not the feel of her inviting lips under mine nor the press of her breasts against my chest. It didn’t matter if I was crazy. I wanted Valentina, and I would have her.
There was only one problem. She didn’t fit into the tidy place I had carved out in my life for women. Ever since Melissa died and I found out who she really was, well, you could say I was bitter. Just a tad.
The concept of trust was hard to come by. So I kept things entirely superficial. I had once been the guy my friends teased for settling down young and being excited to start a family. Oh, I was no saint before that. I sowed my wild oats in high school and college. But when Melissa came along, I fell hard for her.
We hadn’t plann
ed to have Rylie as soon as we did, but once Melissa was pregnant, I was all in. After she died and I came to terms with the illusions I’d had about her and our marriage, I hadn’t been interested in much more than no-strings sex.
Knowing how small Stolen Hearts Valley was, I avoided getting tangled up with anyone here. That was definitely complicated, and I had no interest in complications.
Usually when Rylie spent a weekend with Melissa’s parents, I headed to Asheville. There were always errands to do, and there were always women to find. Women who didn’t know my story and wanted nothing more than a few hours of a good time.
Not only was Valentina local, but we also worked at the same place, and she was a virgin. Every time I circled back to that, I had two diversionary trains of thought. On the one hand, it was fucking stupid for me to think I was the guy to take care of that. Yet on the other, I couldn’t fathom some other guy taking my place. As if it were my place to claim.
I didn’t realize I was staring at Valentina until Dani cleared her throat. I checked myself, managing not to jerk my head, and casually looked away, keeping my expression bland.
“What’s up, Valentina?” Dani asked. “Lucas was just leaving.” Her eyes caught mine, and there was a slight gleam in them. Knowing Dani, I knew she’d noticed I might be noticing Valentina. I could easily shake that off. Valentina was just plain gorgeous, like stop-on-the-street-and-stare gorgeous.
And I was a man, after all.
I glanced from Dani to Valentina and nodded. “I was. You two have a good day,” I said as I turned, unable to resist a last lingering glance at Valentina as I passed by.
Valentina gave off this odd combination of an old soul carrying a sense of innocence and purity. Of course, the knowledge that she was a virgin certainly contributed to that. Yet even before I’d known that about her, I’d noticed she was rather an open book about everything. I wasn’t just saying that because she babbled on about why she got herself that hot pink toy. Valentina was just plain nice.
And sexy as sin.
I was about halfway down the hallway adjacent to the lodge kitchen when I heard footsteps behind me, and Dani saying something into her cell phone. She was in a rush to get somewhere, that much was for sure. Not seeing Valentina behind her, I spun back and returned to Dani’s office.
Valentina was standing up from a chair when I stepped in the doorway. She turned, saying, “Oh, I thought you had to …” Her eyes collided with mine, her words trailing off.
Her cheeks flushed pretty and pink, and holy hell, I wanted to kiss her so damn bad it almost hurt.
“Dani ran off, I see.”
Valentina nodded. “Yeah, some problem with one of the reservations.”
I stepped into the office, resisting the urge to close the door behind me. If I did that, I wasn’t so sure I could keep myself from spreading Valentina out on Dani’s desk.
“Did you need something?” she asked, her tongue darting out and sliding across her bottom lip.
Her foot started tapping on the floor. She wore a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt. Nothing about her outfit was sexy, but when it came to Valentina, she was plain sexy.
“I just need one thing,” I heard myself saying.
In two strides, I was standing right in front of her, savoring her scent. That subtle citrusy scent I’d forever associate with her.
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice coming out low and husky.
“I thought maybe you’d let me steal a kiss.”
Her mouth dropped open in a pretty little O, and her eyes widened. After a moment of dead silence, during which I couldn’t get my eyes off her and my breath became short, she nodded.
“I don’t think it’s stealing.” She gasped as I slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her flush against me. I didn’t even care that my arousal was obvious, hard and insistent, pressing in the cradle of her hips as I pulled her close.
“Okay then, it’s a gift,” I murmured, bending low and brushing my lips across the wild flutter of her pulse along the side of her neck. Dusting kisses along her jawline, I made my way to her mouth. Her lips were soft and pliant under mine.
I tried to keep myself in check, tried to hold back, but the moment she sighed, I was lost. Her tongue slipped out to slick against mine. Kissing her was like getting spun into a fire, but it felt so fucking good. She tasted like honey, and her mouth was warm and yielding as I claimed it.
I lost all sense of everything but Valentina. My world narrowed to the feel of her plush body pressed against mine as she arched into me. The soft sounds coming from the back of her throat drove me fucking crazy. On the heels of a gasp with a muffled cry into my mouth, another sound barely punctured the haze of lust filling my mind.
I couldn’t resist gliding my tongue against Valentina’s just one more time before I forced myself to pull away. Her eyes fluttered open, wide and dark with a desire I knew was reflected in mine. Her lips were puffy and pink, and it was all I could do not to start kissing her all over again.
The sound I now knew to be footsteps drew closer. “Until next time,” I said, unable to resist smiling when she curled her hand around the hem of my T-shirt as if to tug me back against her.
She opened her mouth to say something and snapped it shut quickly when Jackson’s voice reached us. “Hey Lucas,” he called. “Dani said I could find you back here.”
“Right here,” I replied, taking a quick stride back to place an appropriate distance between Valentina and me.
Jackson leaned into the doorway. “There you are. Hey, Valentina,” he said easily, tossing a quick smile her way.
“Hey, Jackson. Shay asked me to meet with Dani to go over the accounts from last month,” Valentina explained.
“Of course. I gotta steal Lucas from you.”
“Whatcha need?”
“Oh, we got a big load of hay. Wade and Dawson are both out this afternoon, so I figured maybe I could sweet-talk you into helping me out.”
“Is this your version of sweet talk?” I quipped.
Jackson rolled his eyes. “I guess it is.”
“Sure thing. Give me a few, and I’ll meet you out there.”
Jackson nodded. “Thanks, man.” At that, he spun on his heel and headed back down the hallway.
I liked working for Jackson. For starters, he was a friend. While he was technically everyone’s boss here, seeing as he owned the lodge, that wasn’t how he approached running the place. He approached it as a team endeavor and worked harder than the rest of us.
He’d only just slowed down a bit in the past few months because he fell head over heels in love with Shay. I’d known the first day she was here that he would fall in love with her if he hadn’t already. It was good to see him relax enough to forget about work sometimes.
I glanced back at Valentina, unable to resist catching her hand in mine and meeting her halfway as I tugged her toward me.
“What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely, her cheeks turning that pretty shade of pink again.
“We have a small problem,” I heard myself saying. It felt as if I were always hearing myself say things when it came to Valentina now. My words skipped ahead of my thoughts and danced out of my mouth before I had a chance to check myself. The cylinders in my brain didn’t seem to fire on time when it came to her.
“I want to kiss you every time I see you,” I murmured right before brushing my lips across hers again. Because I couldn’t resist one last touch.
She made another one of those soft sounds in her throat and sighed. I let myself have just a taste, a quick swipe of my tongue against hers before I stepped away, quite reluctantly.
“Is that a problem?” she teased, throwing me off balance.
Even though it had only been the past week or so that I’d let myself think about Valentina this way—as a virgin sexpot—I knew she had a sense of humor. She’d regaled the staff a few times at dinner with funny stories about the contrast of her life with her parents. Prayers morning
and evening, and people cutting pills in the church bathroom and selling them to the congregation if they could get away with it.
“Well, I won’t say it’s a bad idea. Just that I’m guessing you don’t want me kissing you in front of everyone.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t have many secrets.”
I held her gaze for a long moment, the pull to reach for her again magnetic. I resisted the urge and smiled, reaching out to tug on that loose curl resting against her cheek. Her hair was silky in my fingers, the curl bouncing when I let it go.
“Until next time then,” I said as I forced my feet to turn and leave. This time, I made it all the way down the hallway. I had Jackson waiting on me.
I stepped out into the bright sunshine, running into a wall of heat. It was August in North Carolina, which meant it was hot as fucking hell. The air was soft, the humidity caressing my skin. Sweat formed almost instantly as I strode down the path that led from this part of the farm to the other.
A cluster of trees and a small rise were between the barns and the old farmhouse. Jackson had built a new barn in this area, which served as the vet clinic upstairs with the horses in the lower floor. Built into a hill, the upper floor had parking for the clinic.
Another new barn sat on the far side of the pasture and housed the rescue program and a hodgepodge of animals. The family’s original farmhouse sat across from the vet clinic beside the pasture.
As I walked quickly, Valentina consumed my mind every step of the way. Beyond the heat, I could’ve used a cold shower just to calm my body down. As it was, I had to force her out of my mind to get my arousal under control. The last thing Jackson needed was to see me worked up.
Chapter Nine
Valentina
“So what’s up with you and Lucas?” Dani asked a few days later.
A second ago, we had been discussing some new accounts for supplies. She shifted gears so fast I practically got whiplash.
Although it probably would’ve happened anyway, I blamed my blush on her catching me off guard. I looked up, trying to ignore the fiery heat on my cheeks, but Dani’s expression was bland. I might not have known her for long, but I knew better. She was fishing.
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