“That’s sweet.” Austin grinned.
“Well, it’s not going to be sweet when you’re gone and I’m dealing with the aftermath,” she snapped.
Sara knew logically she was taking out her frustration undeservedly on Austin. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d been nothing but amazing, supportive, and honest. He’d said he wanted to spend more time with them, and she’d agreed. He’d given her plenty of heads up about his desire to kiss her, and she’d been more than willing to pucker up. When things had heated up, he’d stopped and asked her if taking things further was what she really wanted, and she’d practically begged.
This was her fault. She had just been so blindsided by the whole situation, she had broken her cardinal rule. She hadn’t thought about the repercussions. Now she was going to have to deal with the fallout of her misstep.
“And where am I going exactly?” Austin asked calmly.
It was in that moment Sara realized he had the patience of a saint. Great. Like he needed one more attribute to add to his list of Superman qualities.
“You know what I mean.” She knew she didn’t need to spell it out for him. He’d gone into this with his eyes just as open as she had.
A smile tilted his full lips. The lips that had given her more pleasure than should be legal. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel those masterful lips dripping kisses down her neck.
No.
She could not get sidetracked by his lips, or his tongue, or his arms, or his…
“Look.” He rested his arms on the table and sighed. “I know your life is complicated and you’re leaving in a few days. And that makes what’s happening between us complicated. But I’ve never felt this way before, Sara. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to spend every second I can with you. I want to spend time with the kids too, when they come back. And I don’t want to disappear from their lives when you leave. I know this might sound crazy, but maybe we can try—”
“Don’t.” Sara shook her head.
This conversation sounded eerily familiar to one she’d had with Jack. Not that the one she’d had with her ex had included that he’d never felt this way before or that he wanted to spend every day together. But the complicated and maybe we can try parts were definitely ringing bells.
“You don’t even want to try?” Austin got straight to the point.
“I want…” She was hoping the rest of this sentence would just auto-fill, but when it didn’t, she had to really think about what she wanted, or more importantly didn’t want.
She didn’t want to spend the rest of her time here in Whisper Lake alone. She didn’t want to let the fear of what would happen when this momentary fairytale was over stop her from experiencing it while she could. She didn’t want to look back at the time she spent here and regret what could’ve been.
The kids and what she would do about their attachment to Austin was one thing. When they got back, it would probably be best if Austin wasn’t around as much. But while they were in Chicago, Sara knew what she wanted.
Her entire life had been spent taking care of other people. Always doing the right thing. The responsible thing. She wanted a few days for her, where she could just relax and enjoy herself.
“I want to enjoy my time here, with you. I want to let you drive.”
The bad-boy smile that was quickly ranking in Sara’s top ten favorite things spread across Austin’s face. His eyes darkened to a deep emerald shade and the energy between them crackled with electricity. She would’ve thought that after being together, it would’ve diluted the potency of pent-up sexual desire. If anything, it had multiplied it.
“Well, hello there, Mr. Stone, Ms. Kellan.”
The voice startled Sara out of her lust haze, and she looked up to see that Mrs. Dobrinski was approaching their table. She hadn’t met the woman formally, but her reputation certainly preceded her. Sara braced herself for a Spanish Inquisition or some kind of FBI level interrogation, but instead she was looking back and forth between Sara and Austin like she was seeing a ghost. Or two ghosts. “I’m sorry…I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”
Austin and Sara exchanged glances to see if the other one knew what was going on. They didn’t.
Being the assertive gentleman of Sara’s dreams, Austin stood and offered the woman his chair. “Is everything okay, Mrs. D? Would you like to sit?”
“No, I’m fine.” She shooed Austin with her hand. Then her eyes laser focused on Sara. “You’re Betty Casson’s granddaughter.”
Chills ran up Sara’s arm. Casson was her grandma’s maiden name. “Yes, I am.”
“I just can’t get over how much you look like her. The spitting image.”
“Did you know her?” Sara heard her voice go high as excitement raced through her at the possibility that she had. She started rummaging through her purse to find the picture.
“Oh, yes. I spent every day with her and Clifford the summer she was here with her folks.”
“My grandpa?” Austin asked.
Sara was still putting the pieces together as she pulled the photo from her purse.
“He knew her?”
“Oh, boy, I should say so. Maybe I should sit.” Austin pulled his chair out and held Mrs. D’s arm as she lowered into it. Then he grabbed another chair from an adjacent table and joined them as Sara was handing Mrs. D the photograph of her grandma.
“This picture is why I came here. My grandma said the summer she spent in Whisper Lake was magical.”
“Well, yeah. I bet she did. She and Clifford were inseparable, much to your great-grandfather’s dismay. He didn’t like the idea of his daughter running around with a local boy. But your grandma.” Mrs. D shook her head as a whisper of a smile crossed her face. “She was a firecracker. She was ready to throw away her inheritance, her family name, everything just to be with Clifford.”
“So they were in love?” Sara felt tears prick in her eyes.
“Oh, yes. And it was the real thing, if I ever saw it.”
“So what happened?” Sara prompted.
“Well, as summers have a habit of doing, it came to an end. And a week before Betty was set to leave with her parents, on his eighteenth birthday, Clifford enlisted in the Army. He was shipped out the next day, but before he left he came to see me. He told me that Betty deserved better than what he had to offer. He gave me this picture to give to her, told me to tell her it was how he’d always remember her. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I broke the news to her that he was gone.”
“Did they ever see each other again?” Austin asked, looking as stunned by the story as Sara felt.
“Not that I know of. It wasn’t like it is nowadays, with Facebook and Google and all the other ways you can find someone. Back then, it was difficult to stay in touch. I never heard from Betty again after that summer. Clifford came back after serving for six years. He bought the B&B with his GI bill.”
The B&B he’d renamed after her grandma’s favorite fairytale. The Princess and the Pea.
“He and Alma had your dad a few years later.” Mrs. D motioned to Austin, before looking between the two of them again. “Boy, I bet they’d be beside themselves to see the two of you here. Together.”
Sara knew that her Grandma Betty hadn’t married until she was in her late twenties and had given birth to her mom around thirty. She always told Sara she was considered an old maid in her time. Now she was wondering if she hadn’t waited to get married because her heart had belonged to someone else. To Clifford.
“Well, I’d better let you two get back to your breakfast.” Mrs. D looked overwhelmed with emotion as she stood and handed the photo to Sara. “Thanks for the walk down memory lane.”
“Mrs. Dobrinski.” Sara stopped her. So many questions were racing through her mind, but one more than the others stood out. “Do you happen to remember what he wrote on this?”
She turned the picture over.
She bent down and squinted. “No, dear. I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“Okay, thanks.” Sara tried to push down the disappointment that filled her chest. Mrs. D had told her so much more than she could’ve ever hoped for. Still… “It’s just driving me crazy that it’s signed YT and to MT.”
“Oh, now that I can tell you.” She grinned with a knowing glint in her eyes. “Those were their code names, since your great-grandparents didn’t approve of them running around together.”
“Do you know what they stood for?”
“Well, sure. MT stood for My Temptation and YT stood for Your Temptation.”
MT. My temptation.
Glancing up at Austin as he said goodbye to Mrs. D, Sara thought, yep, I can definitely relate to that.
CHAPTER 19
Sara turned to Austin, who stood at the bottom of the steps of the community center. The sun was setting behind him and he looked like an ad in a men’s cologne campaign. He looked rugged, and sexy. The kind of guy that every woman wanted and every man wanted to be. “Thanks for walking me.”
The grin that spread on his lips was so sexy Sara nearly swooned. If she had, she knew that he’d be there to catch her, just like he had the night before when her knees went out.
“You sure you want to go in there? We could be at the lake right now. We could check that beginning of summer tradition off your to-do list.” The bad-boy glint in his eyes and the promise of seeing Austin naked, and wet, was almost enough to tempt her into agreeing.
But after the revelations that she’d found out today, she didn’t want to flake on Mrs. D who’d run into her at the festival after breakfast and pretty much demanded her presence this evening.
The steel handrail was cold on her palm as she wrapped her fingers around it and leaned toward Austin, her face was mere inches away from him as she softly spoke. “I was told, by a very reliable source that if I received an invitation to the Needlepoint Mafia I had to come and kiss the ring.”
“I’ve got a ring for you to kiss,” he flirted.
The rough, gravelly quality of his voice skittered down her spine stopping right between her legs.
Her inner walls clenched.
Her mouth watered.
Her palms dampened.
Her heart raced.
One night together. That was all it had taken for her body to be conditioned to this Pavlovian response. Everything in her was screaming to blow off the knitting club and follow him…anywhere.
But she knew that was not the right move. She was in control. Not her hormones.
Pushing down the desperation threatening to overtake her, she decided to level the playing field a little. She didn’t want to be alone in what she was feeling.
Leaning even closer to him, their breaths mingled as she spoke, letting her lips brush his as she whispered, “I’ll kiss your ring later.”
With that suggestive declaration, she spun and rushed into the building. But she didn’t miss the flash of desire that sparked in his eyes. She couldn’t help the smile that spread on her face.
She’d never had a playful relationship like this one. In high school she barely dated. Guys that age weren’t really too pumped about spending Friday and Saturday nights at home with her little brother and sister. In college it was the same thing. Then she was busy starting her business, and the next thing she knew she was married with a baby on the way.
Her connection with Austin was fun, it was intense, it was…easy. Even in the beginning, especially in the beginning of her relationship with Jack everything felt like work. And it was. The two of them as a couple was like trying to force a square peg in a round hole.
But Austin was so different. She’d only known him a couple of days, but he felt like her oldest friend and confidant. The connection that they shared was so real. So deep.
She had no idea what the future held for them, but somehow she couldn’t picture her life without him in it.
“Sara?!” Jess called out as she walked into the room that the club was being held in.
Her friend’s exclamation garnered several shhhhs from the women seated around her.
Is this like a library situation? Sara wondered to herself as she weaved her way through the chairs over to her friend who was wearing a shirt that had a crochet needle and a ball of yarn with words in a rainbow shape above it that read: I’m an amazing hooker. Be jealous.
Jess’s perfectly lined eyes were wide as she patted a seat beside her and whisper-mouthed, “What are you doing here?”
Sara lowered to the seat and pulled out the mittens that she’d been working on for Charlotte. She’d always prided herself on her ability to read a room, and it was clear that the knitters here took their craft very seriously.
“Mrs. D invited me.” Sara spoke in her most inside of inside voices as she continued the cable stitch pattern.
“Why?” Jess whispered, then shook her head. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here, don’t get me wrong, but…why?”
Sara didn’t take offense to her question. “I ran into her today at breakfast and she recognized me. She knew my grandma.”
She briefly, and quietly filled Jess in on everything that happened over breakfast and then also that she’d run into Mrs. D again at the festival, where she told her the time and place of the meeting that night and said that she expected to see her there. It wasn’t so much of an invitation as an expectation.
“Wait, so Austin’s grandpa and your grandma were together?”
“Yeah.” Sara still wasn’t sure that she’d wrapped her head around it. “Well, for a summer they were.”
Jess picked her needles back up and shrugged slightly. “A summer is plenty of time to fall in love.”
Sara might’ve argued with her last week, but after meeting Austin, she had to agree. It didn’t seem that time played much of a factor in love.
“Hey, sorry I’m late. Some of the kids’ parents were late picking them up.” Brynn mumbled as she dug into her bag and took a seat beside Jess. When she looked up and saw Sara, her face lit up. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
Her exclamation garnered another round of shhhs.
Sara and Jess filled Brynn in on the breakfast and the connection between her Grandma Betty and Austin’s Grandpa Cliff. And Sara revealed to her friends how the Princess and the Pea was her Grandma Betty’s favorite book and that Cliff had come home from the war, bought the B&B that her grandma had stayed in and changed the name to the Princess and the Pea.
Brynn’s eyes were watering by the time they finished. “How romantic. It’s like the Notebook.” The trio were silent for a moment before Brynn added, “Well, the beginning at least.”
Sara smiled and was about to ask them if they’d known Austin’s grandpa. She wanted to know what he was like. Who was the man that had been her grandma’s first, and maybe only true love? After breakfast, she’d started to ask Austin several times, but never did. She wasn’t sure what his relationship with him had been. Or how he felt about his grandpa’s relationship with Sara’s grandma. Mrs. D had said that he hadn’t met Austin’s grandma until years later, but still, Sara didn’t know if it was appropriate.
As much as she felt like she knew him, she had to admit that he didn’t talk about himself much. Or at all. She’d shared more with him than she’d ever shared with anyone in her life, but he really hadn’t. He hadn’t mentioned anything about his ex, or his parents, and he’d only spoken of his grandparents when discussing the B&B.
Maybe the connection she was feeling was one-sided. It was obvious that he was attracted to her, and he enjoyed spending time with her. But if he wasn’t being open with her, then was what she felt as real as she thought it was?
“Hey, look who I found.”
Sara heard Ali’s voice, which was several octaves higher than usual, and looked up to see her standing with Chrissy.
In the few days that Sara had been in town, she’d seen quite a bit of Chrissy. Trevor and Chrissy’s two youngest, Kimber and Cassidy had been inseparable at the summer program. They were the thre
e amigos. Because of that they’d met up at the festival and also sat together at the softball game. Every time she’d seen her, the woman looked like she was doing a photo shoot. Her clothes, hair, makeup, demeanor, were perfect. Flawless. She was June Cleaver and Martha Stewart on steroids.
But tonight, her eyes were rimmed with red. Her shirt was wrinkled and she had on two different sneakers. One that was white with blue stitching and the other had red stitching. It could’ve been on purpose, but Sara doubted it.
“Are you okay?” Sara asked, immediately concerned.
Chrissy’s expression was tight as she took a seat next to Sara and Ali sat on the other side of Brynn.
“I’m getting a divorce,” Chrissy said as if the words sounded foreign to her own ears.
Sara knew the feeling.
“Mrs. D was walking by my house when I was served with the papers. She saw me crying and told me that she’d expect to see me at the meeting tonight.” Chrissy explained to the women, speaking at a hushed level.
“I’m so sorry, Chrissy,” Brynn reached over and squeezed her hand.
Sara hadn’t met Chrissy’s husband, but she’d heard that Jim Caldwell traveled a lot for work. A lot. Ali said that months would pass and no one would see him.
“Didn’t you say you were getting a divorce?” Chrissy turned to Sara.
Actually, Trevor had said, but Sara nodded anyway.
“How long were you married? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Eight years. But Jack was in the military and only home for about a year of that.”
Chrissy nodded. “I was married sixteen and I think Jim’s been home about the same amount.”
A woman who was in a group adjacent to them cleared her throat as she shot a disapproving glare their way.
“Get the stick out of your ass, Muriel. Our friend is having a situation.” Jess shot back at full volume.
Whisper of Temptation (Whisper Lake Book 4) Page 16