Chapter 15 Rebuilding #2
“Carpool, obviously. Anything I can do to help save the environment,” she said, and winked at him.
Her mouth twitched with humor and desire when he grabbed her hand, feeling like it was the right thing to do in the moment.
He was more than half hard now that her thumb rubbed up and down his hand like he’d done to hers the first night they’d spent together.
It was hard to believe it was only a week ago that he’d been reintroduced to Sophie.
This imprinting of her body, her laugh, her touch on his psyche was all-consuming.
Brad opened the door to his truck for her and helped hoist her in, though her taut thighs and toned shoulders argued she was strong enough to easily have jumped up herself.
It made him want her even more. If she didn’t seem so bent on explaining herself, he would happily and hungrily take her in the bed of the truck, frigid winter air be damned.
This woman threatened to sink him with the weight of his feelings.
Even in the times of doubt they’d shared, he felt more alive with her than all the years he lived with Julia. That had to count for something.
In no time they were back at the farm in front of the garage.
Brad ran to let Sophie out of the truck, only to find that she’d beaten him to the punch and was already walking towards him.
He shifted to the side so she couldn’t easily notice the bulge in his pants that grew with each touch or interaction with her, no matter how minor.
“Am I about to be let into the lair of the elusive crime novelist, Bradley Connors?” she teased. She playfully nudged his shoulder, and he smiled in kind.
“Not so much elusive, as no one seems to understand where Montana is unless you mention Yellowstone.”
“Isn’t that in Wyoming?”
“Try telling tourists they got it wrong,” he quipped.
Sophie laughed, and he remembered his solemn promise to himself to do anything he could to make her that happy, always.
Now, though, that promise held a different, more significant meaning.
She was everything he’d looked for, had written into his femme fatales and female protagonists, and she was here, in the flesh and better than anything his shoddy imagination could conjure up.
So he’d been a hypocrite with Steve and Jackie.
There were worse things to be.
Penske came running at them, his tongue lolling alongside his mouth. Sophie gushed over him, rubbing his ears and belly while he lapped at her heels, something he normally didn’t do unless the person was an engine.
“Traitor,” Brad muttered good-naturedly, secretly relishing the fact that the woman he was in love with got the vote of approval from his folks’ dog.
“He’s so sweet,” Sophie said, in a voice most women reserved for babies. “Is he a herder?”
“A mutt, actually. We got him from a farm down the road a few miles. Their dog, Penny, got herself in a bit of a delicate situation from a vagabond dog, and we offered to take the pup off their hands.”
“Aww, that’s nice of you. Poor girl.”
“Nah, she’s a bit of a floozy. She’s had two other litters from random dogs that passed through.”
“A scandal,” Sophie teased, nuzzling her nose against Penske’s.
“You have no idea. Wanna head up?” he asked her. She nodded, but he could tell she was reluctant to leave Penske behind.
“Go on, now,” Brad said, nudging Penske along. The dog looked at him like Brad had sold him off but moseyed back along the side of the garage. Brad would drop by his favorite lounging spot under the cottonwood out front later with an elk antler to make amends.
He led Sophie up the stairs, opened the door for her, and followed her in, watching as she took in the living room with an appreciative eye.
He’d never been one for decorating, but he did have a sense of what he liked and what he didn’t, and his home, even a temporary one, reflected that.
He was proud that after eight years with Julia, he could mine the depths of who he was, who he’d been, who he wanted to be, and apply that to his writing and decorating.
“I love the red accents,” she said, “how you’ve found the complementary colors to place nearby.
It’s perfect, really.” Brad blushed at the compliment.
She moved slowly through each room, touching small knickknacks that held importance to him, but that otherwise looked like generic flair—a rabbit carved from red jade his sister brought back from her honeymoon in Thailand to remind him of the “pet bunny” they’d caught when they were kids; a red and turquoise set of arrowheads from a trip to Arizona with Chris when they were in college; a cherry-colored model car with white racing stripes he’d built with his dad in the second grade.
Each one she handled with the love and attention he would have given them, and he cherished her in that moment for her unspoken understanding.
When she got to the Vikings mug on the counter, she smiled, her eyebrows raised in an unspoken question.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m a huge fan of the underdog.”
“That’s one thing, but Minnesota’s taken that to a professional level.” He tried to force his lips and eyes into a scowl, but it was impossible around her.
“True. Too true. Come sit,” he said, patting the spot next to him on the couch. She closed the gap between them, making it so her thigh snuggled up against his. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat trying to hide his now-obvious erection.
“So, there’s no short way to tell this story,” Sophie said.
“I have as much time as you need, Soph. I’m here to listen.” All he wanted to do was reach over and kiss the spots on her alabaster cheeks that flushed. He knew where that would lead, though, and sat on his hands.
That didn’t stop her from placing a palm naturally on his thigh and rubbing it tenderly as she spoke. Good God, he wanted this woman.
“Okay, so I want to start off by telling you I heard everything you said to me last night, each word. I’m sorry I went with the easy out, but you have to understand how it looked at Julia’s wedding, to all of us. Especially with what your mom added.”
“I do, Sophie. You have no idea how much I mentally kicked my own ass for that. I’m still sore. As for my mom, I’ll handle that, I promise you.”
“I don’t want that, but I need you to know I won’t doubt you again.
I know who you are and what you stand for, and there won’t ever be a situation where I won’t give you the benefit of the doubt in the future, okay?
And, I don’t know, maybe we can at least discuss talking to your mom together.
I want her to know that if you’ll have me, I’m not going anywhere.
” Her hand tensed on his thigh and guilt washed over him for judging her harshly last night and that morning.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I heard you, and I desperately wanted to continue that kiss we started, as you can tell by my, um, unorthodox greeting earlier, but Drew has a way of being convincing, and he normally never calls it an emergency unless it is. So, I talked to him, expecting some lawyer problem he needed help with, like a briefing or call in to a judge I have a connection with, but it was so much more than that, Brad.”
Brad sat next to her as she told him the whole story of meeting Analise from start to finish.
Each detail Sophie provided made him want to simultaneously embrace her as tightly as he could without smothering her, and pound the life out of the guy who’d hurt Analise.
He didn’t know how anyone could be capable of such atrocities against women, especially the women they claimed to love.
Even though villains like that were heavily featured in his novels, Brad knew no situation would ever arise where he would raise his hand to a woman.
He had a hard enough time writing those scenarios.
Sophie paused after explaining what she was going to do next to help Analise, and Brad took the opportunity to lean in and kiss her.
Her mouth responded by softening to him, opening to let him in.
Her tongue explored his mouth, trailed his lips and sent shivers down his spine.
He pulled back again but kept his forehead against hers.
“I’d kill anyone who hurt you like that, Sophie,” he told her. She nodded, moving both their heads in unison. “How will you be able to help Analise long term, though? I thought you didn’t have a practice anymore.”
Sophie laughed and sat up straight.
“Oh, there’s so much more to catch you up on, Connors.”
“It’s only been a week, how much could have changed since then?” he asked, and she giggled at his admittedly weak attempt at a joke to lighten the moment.
“So, Drew made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Sophie told him.
She filled in the details of Drew’s amazingly generous partner offer and compensation package, as well as how she’d be given a budget each quarter to help fund projects she had a vested interest in, starting with a legitimate women’s shelter that could include continuing education courses, childcare, on-the-job training, and more. So much more.
Brad hung on each syllable like he had the night they’d danced at the wedding, talking about all kinds of seemingly unconnected topics that all somehow wove together.
Now, she did the same thing, diving back and forth between her past work with battered women, the optimistic future she was making for herself, and how she’d called gleefully giving notice with the boutique office earlier this morning.
She felt the tiniest bit guilty that she’d left the message with an answering service, but after their unprofessional behavior, she reasoned to Brad that it wasn’t the worst thing she could have done.
Every last word out of her mouth had him captivated, and he was torn between wanting to hear more from her and wanting to do more with her.