Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
HUDSON
Making that bet with Kenna was the best thing I had done since I’d been home. Actually, scratch that. Kissing her had been the best thing I’d done since I’d been home, but making sure we got to do a hell of a lot more of it while I was there was close behind.
Now I just had to figure out how to get her in the same room as me again.
So far, my efforts had been futile, but I didn’t let that get me down. I might’ve been gone for years, but there was no way Kenna had changed the root of her being so drastically during that time. And Kenna, above all else, was a woman of her word. If she agreed on a bet, she intended to uphold her end. She wouldn’t even enter it in the first place if she wasn’t all in.
I’d called her yesterday and gotten her voice mail, before sending her a text to check in. Her response hadn’t come until nearly midnight, saying she was sorry for missing me, but she’d had a hell of a day. And then she’d gone radio silent—probably passed out from exhaustion if I read the tone of her texts correctly.
I wanted to know what had her so damn exhausted, and I couldn’t wait any longer to find out.
Memory took me from the cabin—where Caleb and I had been staying while we worked on some of the necessary repairs—to the Haven estate. Thanks to my momma, I knew Kenna had moved out several years ago and was now living in a small guesthouse Richard had had built after Will came home from college.
Following my momma’s directions, I turned down the long, winding driveway to the main house, then bypassed it, continuing on toward the back of the property. The path was lined with trees, their burnished leaves falling from the branches and spinning through the air to land on my windshield.
I loved Havenbrook in the fall, with all the bright colors and the smell of rain and the crispness to the air.
A short drive later, a clearing opened, and there sat a small bungalow-style house with a front porch, complete with a couple rocking chairs. It wasn’t at all what I’d imagined—for one thing, it was a lot more private than I’d been anticipating. Knowing the kind of father Richard was, I wouldn’t have put it past the man to build the guesthouse ten feet from his own just so he could keep a close eye on his daughters.
For another thing, it was…beautiful. Extravagant, even. Small and quaint, yes, but it was fancier than Kenna preferred. Or at least, what she used to prefer.
When we’d been younger, she’d talked about how much she’d love to live in a cabin, secluded in the woods, year-round and not just during the summers. She loved being surrounded by nature, loved the simplicity of living in the wilderness. This little slice of Haven heaven was a far cry from that.
A golf cart was parked next to an old Jeep, and I smiled, remembering the tale I’d heard on my first day back. How Gary Anders had put the cart on the line during a bet with Kenna, and she’d won. I had no doubt she hadn’t batted an eye at taking the damn thing either. In her mind, if someone bet on something, they sure as hell meant it, just like she did.
I climbed out of my truck and shut the door, not attempting stealth at this point because my beast of a vehicle ran louder than a pack of screaming kids at an amusement park.
As I strode up the path to the front door, the curtains in the window were swept back, but I barely got a glimpse of Kenna before the drapes swished closed again. Taking the two steps up onto the porch, I raised my fist to knock at the same time the door flew open and out stepped Kenna.
I rocked back on my heels, letting my hand drop at the same time as I drank in the sight of her. She wore hiking boots, jeans, a dark, oversized hoodie, and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. She was flushed and fucking beautiful, her long hair down for the first time since I’d been home. I ached to wind my fingers into that mass, tug her head back, and kiss the hell out of her.
“Mornin’, Kenna,” I said, my voice a little gruff.
I settled my hand on her hip and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her temple. Not missing her sharp intake of breath as I did so.
“Hey,” she breathed, meeting my eyes when I pulled back. “What’re you doin’ here?”
“Came to get my Kenna fix since I missed out yesterday.”
Her mouth quirked up on the side before she blew out a long breath, her shoulder slumping. “Sorry ’bout that. Yesterday was a shitshow.”
I cracked a grin and leaned back against the railing. “Everything all right?”
Biting into her bottom lip, she furrowed her brow. I was still getting used to her new-to-me expressions. Uncertainty and unease were something I hadn’t seen from her much, if at all, when we’d been younger. But I’d seen more than I would’ve liked since I’d been back.
“I’m—” she started, then shook her head and glanced down at her feet. “I’m actually not sure.”
Something in her tone had me taking the single stride to her, and I grabbed her hand, squeezing once. “You wanna talk about it?”
Christ, I hoped she’d talk about it. Used to be, we could talk about anything and everything. Nothing was off-limits between us—with the exception of our feelings for each other. But I’d fucked that up when I’d kept the biggest secret of all from her—the fact that I wasn’t going back to college with her as planned and was enlisting instead.
I had a lot of ground to make up for that stupid mistake. And if I had to bare my soul to her every day for the rest of my life without any reciprocation from her to do so, so be it.
She shook her head, glancing down at where her hand rested in mine. “I…can’t. Not now. My day’s crazy packed.”
Trying not to let my disappointment show, I nodded. “Okay. How about lunch?”
Regret passed over her face. “Can’t do that either. I’ll be workin’ at town hall.”
I furrowed my brow as I racked my brain, trying to remember my momma mentioning anything about Kenna working with her daddy. “Since when do you work at town hall?”
“Since yesterday, apparently,” she said dryly.
My eyebrows flew up toward my baseball cap. “Oh yeah? What happened yesterday? Other than a hell of a rainstorm.”
“Too damn much. And the storm is why I’m out here, actually.” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and checked the time. “I need to get my ass in gear if I have any hope of bein’ done before I need to be at town hall to figure out what the hell I got myself into.”
The mention of her ass had my eyes sliding down, shamelessly drinking in the sight of her luscious curves. My hands itched with a desperate need to cup them and squeeze. Tug her right up against me and feel all her soft places along every inch of my hardness.
I cleared my throat and met her eyes again, not bothering to hide the lust I was certain showed all over my face. “So what is it your ass needs to do?”
Her lifted brow and the slight curve at the corner of her mouth said she’d caught my ogling. And that, just maybe, she didn’t mind it. “I need to check and make sure the creek didn’t get too high.”
“Are you Havenbrook’s creek keeper now?”
She blew out a laugh and shook her head. “I’m Ella’s keeper. She’s always runnin’ out there to play, like you and I used to. It’s grown in a lot more since then, though. I wanna make sure she’s as safe as she can be.”
And that was just another item on the long list of ways Kenna gave back, niece or not. In the short time I’d been in Havenbrook, I’d seen her giving selflessly multiple times. Did she even realize how generous she was without asking for anything in return?
I hooked a finger through her belt loop and tugged her close, until our lower bodies were pressed together. And, shit, I hadn’t thought that through because my cock woke up at the contact like a gunshot had sounded.
Leaning down, I brought my mouth close to her ear, breathing in the scent of her I’d missed so damn much. “What do I have to do to get an invitation to go on this adventure with you?”
She froze, every part of her going still with the exception of the shiver that ran through her body. Was she even aware she was tilting her head toward me, as if aching for my touch as much as I craved hers?
“I don’t know…” she said, her voice quiet and breathless. And damn, I liked that a hell of a lot. My cock loved it. “You think you can hack it in those woods?” She pulled back enough to meet my eyes. “It’s kind of a mess out there. A lot of shit to wade through.”
There was something in the seriousness of her tone that made me think she might be talking about a lot more than just the wooded area of the Haven estate.
Unable to help myself, I reached up, swept her hair behind her shoulder, and cupped her neck, my thumb pressing lightly against her pulse point. I leaned down and brushed my lips against hers, even the slight contact sending a jolt of electricity humming through my veins. “I think I can keep up.”
She stared at me for a beat, her gaze flicking down to my mouth before meeting my eyes again. She licked her lips and then pressed them together, nodding once. “Well, come on, then.”