Chapter 12
Twenty minutes later, Noah was back at Katie’s house, trying to find a corner of the house to claim as his own. He desperately needed a few minutes alone with his thoughts, but this was the problem with his family, he was never left alone, with his thoughts or otherwise.
Joey had fallen asleep on Noah’s bed, Katie was visiting Joe, his mom would be coming back in a bit with dinner, Holmes and Pepper had claimed the porch swing and were also napping, and the house seemed to be overcome by clothes in what was probably-most-definitely a passive-aggressive love note from his sister that she wanted someone to do her and Joey’s laundry.
It should probably be his mom, not him. Years and years ago, when they’d been in high school, he’d been grounded for something, probably for being a dick, and his punishment had been laundry. He’d thrown everything into one load, including his red jersey with everyone’s whites. Then he’d compounded his error by drying everything on high.
His dad had bitched for a week about his tighty-whities being pink and how his pants had shrunk. When Noah had suggested maybe it wasn’t that the pants had shrunk, but that his dad had been eating too much pizza, he’d been grounded again.
Good mems . . .
Thinking maybe the kitchen might be empty, he made his way there via the living room, and nearly stepped on Olive. Sitting on the floor, her back to him, she was folding Clean Clothes Mountain.
He opened his mouth to tell her that Katie wouldn’t expect her to do laundry, wouldn’t expect her to do any of the extremely thoughtful things she’d taken on, like ordering dinner in so no one would have to cook, taking care of Joey—something she did with surprising ease—or just in general doing whatever had to be done, but before he could speak, he realized her breathing sounded off. Each inhale was a wheeze, then a rough, strained cough.
Hoping he was wrong, he quickly moved around the couch to see her face. She was indeed struggling to drag air into her lungs. “You okay?”
She nodded, but it took her several agonizing seconds to get a word out. “Yep.”
Bullshit. Her throat was beet red, and as he watched, she reached up and scratched at it. “Oli.”
He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Do you need the hospital?”
“No. This just . . . happens sometimes. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. It was the peanuts.”
“I only had a few.”
“Your ice cream was covered in them. What do we do?”
“There is no we. I’m a me. A me, myself, and I.”
“Oh good, you’re not going to be stubborn about accepting help at all, then.”
“I . . . don’t . . . need . . . help.”
He took the shirt she was folding from her hands and tossed it aside. “Has no one ever taken care of you?”
“Yeah.”
She looked away. “You and your family.”
Damn, now his throat felt tight. “Where’s your EpiPen?”
“Don’t need it. Benadryl would work if I’d packed it. But it knocks me out while also giving me weird nightmares that I can’t wake myself up from.”
“Is it better than being dead?”
She rolled her eyes. “Dramatic much?”
Apparently air wasn’t required for sarcasm. He accessed the camera app on his phone and held it up so she could see her face and neck.
“Oh crap,”
she breathed-slash-wheezed.
He had more descriptive words but kept them to himself as he pulled her upright and led her into the kitchen. Katie was allergic to many different foods and always kept Benadryl on hand. He pulled a bottle from an upper cabinet, but Olive was shaking her head, even as she continued to scratch and wheeze and cough. “I’m okay.”
“You will be.”
He shook out two pills and filled a glass with water.
With a sigh, she downed the Benadryl. “I hate you a little bit.”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Bed.”
Somehow she managed to choke out a laugh, even as he tugged her down the hall. “Interesting,”
she said. “But to recap, you turned me down.”
“That was a lifetime ago. We should be able to laugh it off by now.”
One would think . . . In her bedroom, he yanked down the bedding and gestured for her to get in.
She was sucking some serious wind now and bent over at the waist, hands on her knees. “Hold . . . on.”
She had sixty seconds to start breathing easier or he’d search her purse for her EpiPen himself, stab her with it, then haul her ass to the hospital—
“Are you going to help me or stand there?”
That’s when he realized she wasn’t bent over trying to breathe, she was trying to get her boots off. He stared at the sexy-as-hell knee-high boots.
“There’s a zipper—”
“I see it,”
he said. The problem was that the hem of her dress fell over the top of the boots. This meant sticking his hands under her dress. Trying to be impassive, he quickly unzipped and pulled off the boots, then went from hot and bothered to amused because her socks were Hello Kitty.
“They have to go too,”
she said. “I can’t sleep in socks.”
Of course not. This time his fingers brushed bare, warm skin as he slid the socks down. He was sweating by the time he rose to his feet again. “Can you pull a deep breath yet?”
She tried and yawned wide. “Anyone ever tell you that you need to get a grip?”
“Yes. You, many times.”
He gestured to the bed. “Get in.”
“I can’t sleep in this dress,”
she said. “It’s new.”
He had no idea what it being new had to do with anything, and it wasn’t often that he needed his mom or sister, but he wished like hell one of them was home. “Okay, I’ll just . . .”
He gestured vaguely to the door.
Before he could turn away, she grabbed his arm. “Just unzip me. Jeez, it’s not like you’ve never undressed a woman before.”
“Not this woman.”
“Well whose fault is that?”
Turning her back to him, she lifted her hair.
The zipper went from the nape of her neck to . . . God help him . . . an inch past a strip of black silk very, very, very low on her back. So low he could see twin dimples on either side of the teasing glimpse of her sweet ass. Her bra was a matching thin black silk across her back, with crisscrossing straps that had him swallowing hard.
“You okay back there?”
she asked.
He had to clear his throat to talk, like a damn rookie. “Yeah.”
Stepping out of her dress, she kicked it aside. Then she nearly killed him dead when she climbed onto the bed on her hands and knees in those sexy undies—
“Noah?”
He realized he’d lost a little chunk of time because she was lying down. Drawing a deep breath, he yanked the covers up to her chin.
She snorted.
Ignoring that, he pointed at her. “Stay.”
She yawned again. “Like I have a choice. You’ve just sentenced me to a very shitty twelve hours . . .”
Why did she have the power to bring him to his knees with just a few words? “If you need anything, call out. You won’t be alone.”
He flipped off the light and started to close the door.
“Don’t”
came her soft, disembodied voice in the dark. “Please don’t shut it all the way . . .”
Something in the plea stopped him cold. Olive never showed her fear. Or at least the Olive he’d known. Slowly, he turned back, but the room was too dark to see. He opened the bathroom door to let the nightlight’s glow beat back some of the darkness. “Better?”
he asked quietly.
No answer, just the sound of her soft breathing, which was much easier now than it had been a few minutes ago. This allowed him to take a deep breath of his own.
Leaving the bedroom, he was surprised to find Joey waiting in the hallway. “What’s wrong?”
the kid asked.
“Olive’s taking a nap.”
“Oh.”
Man and boy stared at each other. Noah wasn’t often alone with him and he had to search his brain for something for them to do. “Want to watch TV?”
“Mom said only an hour a day, and I already had my hour. I wanna play a game.”
Which was how Noah found himself playing Go Fish. At first, he’d been worried. Was he supposed to let the kid win, or teach him about competition? In the end, it hadn’t mattered. Joey had just handily trounced him when Noah’s mom came in with a casserole. She kissed Joey.
“Kiss Noah too!”
Joey demanded.
His mom smiled and Noah sighed, because she grabbed his face, and to Joey’s delight, kissed it all over.
“Seriously?”
he asked her.
She just laughed. “If you’d go out with . . . well, anyone, I wouldn’t have to kiss you. You’d have a girlfriend to do it for you.”
“Noah needs a girlfriend!”
Joey yelled.
Noah pointed at his mom, but she was too busy laughing to be any help at all. “I’ve got some computer work to catch up on.”
He was halfway down the hall when he heard it.
A whimper.
Shit. He stepped into Olive’s bedroom, where he found her fighting a war with the blanket and losing. “Hey,”
he said quietly. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Blood . . . too much blood.”
His heart stopped. “Oli.”
“Don’t you dare die on me.”
Those had been her words to him that night in the woods beneath a hellish storm after his leg had been crushed beneath the ATV. Hitting the switch on the lamp by her bed, he sat on the edge of the mattress and put a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it up and down her arm. “I’m too stubborn to die. Wake up, Olive, and see for yourself.”
“Noah?”
Her voice sounded tortured, devastated, and shame hit him like a one-two punch. What did it say about him that he’d never imagined what that long ago night had looked like from her point of view? It said he was still an asshole. “I’m right here with you, and I promise I’m okay. Open your eyes, Oli.”
Her eyes flew open and she blinked, then launched herself at him.
Catching her saved both of them from tumbling to the floor but didn’t help his heart any because she wrapped herself around him and held on tight, trembling. He ran a hand up and down her back before attempting to disentangle himself. “It was just a dream.”
Giving a vehement head shake, she burrowed in, her voice thin, shaky. “No, it all really happened. You and me on the ATV when that crazy storm hit, knocking a huge branch down right in front of us, blocking the trail. Me climbing into the driver’s seat while you got out to try and drag the branch aside, my foot slipping off the brake—”
A strangled sound escaped her throat. “I rolled down the hill right at you. You tried to help me stop before I got hurt, but you got caught under the wheel—”
“Ancient history. I’m okay, Olive.”
Lifting her head from where she’d had her face pressed in the crook of his neck, she stared at him from wet eyes. “Are you really?”
“Yes,”
he said firmly, still holding on to her because . . . well, he didn’t have a good reason for that other than she was in his lap, straddling him, and felt so good, so damn good, that he couldn’t make himself let go. “It’s you I’m worried about at the moment. Are you okay?”
“No.”
Her face was once again pressed against him. “I can’t keep kissing men and pretending they’re you.”
He froze. “What?”
Now she froze too. “Nothing. I’m still dreaming. Ignore me.”
“You pretend they’re me?”
“This is your fault. I told you I didn’t want to take the stupid pink pills.”
“Without them, you’d be in the hospital.”
She drew a deep breath, reminding him they were plastered together as they both looked down to see if her rash was gone.
It was. Her smooth skin taunted him. As did her lack of clothing. His hand still made slow sweeps up and down her back, his fingers itching to slip beneath that silk. “You pretend they’re me?”
he repeated softly.
“Maybe I used to.”
She sighed, her lips brushing his throat. “But luckily, time heals all wounds. I’m hungry.”
Pushing away from him, she pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, covering up those delicious curves.
When they got downstairs, the lights were off. His mom had put Joey to bed and apparently had gone to bed as well.
He and Olive went in search of sustenance and found Pepper sitting in the middle of the kitchen table looking quite at home.
Noah shook his head at her. “Off the table, cat. You know the rules.”
Pepper looked offended.
Olive laughed. “Doesn’t listen very well, does she.”
Noah snorted. “Currently, none of the women in my life listen worth a damn.”
“Are you comparing me to your cat?”
“She’s not mine, but she does remind me of you.”
“Because I don’t listen?”
He met her gaze. “Because you have the same arresting eyes that show me only enough to know I’m in trouble.”
He stroked a hand down the kitten’s back and she arched into his fingers, purring, eyes closed in ecstasy. After a moment, he scooped her up, saying “go find your dog,”
and nudged her out of the kitchen. He turned to the other female in the room. “What would you like to eat?”
“Anything.”
Most women didn’t mean that, which he’d learned the hard way. But Olive wasn’t like most women. Which he’d also learned the hard way. “Nachos?”
“Mmm, yes!”
So he made them a plate of nachos to go along with the brandy they’d pilfered from the pantry.
Olive sat on the countertop watching him watch her. “Let’s play a game.”
His mind tried to veer into the gutter, but he reined it in. “Like Trivial Pursuit or something?”
“Or something.”
He leaned against the opposite counter and tried to interpret her mysterious smile.
“Two truths and a lie,” she said.
Yep, he should have run when he had the chance. Clearly there was something she wanted to know, but didn’t want to come right out and ask. Fine with him, he had things he wanted to know too. “Rules?”
Her smile deepened, maybe pleased he was going along with this, or, more likely, he’d just stepped into her web.
“Whoever’s first gives their two truths and a lie,”
she said. “Then they take a shot while the other has to guess the lie.”
She held out the bottle of brandy.
“Ladies first.”
“One,”
she said, without missing a beat, “my ex is dating a former close friend of mine. Two, my former close friend told me this in a voicemail. And three . . . my boyfriend Matt is a really great guy.”
She chased that with a healthy pull from the bottle.
Pushing away from the counter, he stepped forward until he bumped into her knees. When she shifted so that her thighs cradled him, he nearly groaned out loud. “If number one is true,”
he murmured, “I’m available to rearrange your ex’s face if you’d like.”
That got him an almost smile, until he realized her eyes held more than a hint of sadness.
“Let me confess something,”
he said softly, his hands going to her waist, “I’ve been hoping that Matt doesn’t exist, that he’s a fake boyfriend.”
“Like you once were?”
He gave a wry laugh, even though it wasn’t funny. It’d never been funny.
She was quiet for a moment, and during the space of several slow breaths, her gaze dragged over him from head to toe. It felt like a physical caress.
“The first one is true,”
she said. “So is the second.”
He felt outraged on her behalf, and knew that he’d finally gotten the answer to the shadows in her eyes. But he also knew that if he expressed sympathy, she might slug him. So he went for levity. “So. Matt is pretend.”
As he hoped, she relaxed her shoulders from where they’d been up at her ears and let out a rough laugh. “Yes, he’s one hundred percent made up, from his great smile to his eight-pack abs to his not-hairy toes.”
He shook his head. “Why?”
“Because hairy toes wig me out.”
He gave her a can-we-get-real look.
She blew out a breath. “Look, Matt might not be real, but my ex—Ian—is. When he cheated on me, I felt . . .”
She waved the brandy as she searched for the right word. “Betrayed. It took me a long time to get over it, but I did. I’ve even dated since then, but nothing serious. When I knew I was coming here, I made up a boyfriend because, believe it or not, coming back, knowing you’d be here, that you’d all be here, felt . . . intimidating.”
“Oli,”
he said, pained that she’d feel that way.
She looked away. “The first time I showed up in Sunrise Cove, I had the clothes on my back and not much else, with absolutely zero idea who Olive Porter even was. I didn’t want to do that again. This time I wanted to be someone successful, both personally and professionally.”
She’d tucked her hair behind her ears, tamed for the moment, though a tendril of hair had fallen across her cheekbone. Her arresting eyes set off the forest green of her sweater, which barely met the waistband of her jeans. He wanted to touch her. Hell, who was he kidding? He wanted a lot more than that.
“Your turn,”
she said, handing him the brandy. “And no cheaping out either, I want good stuff. Deep stuff.”
He rarely had a case of nerves, but they jangled around in his gut now. “Okay . . . deep stuff . . .”
Shit. Why had he agreed to this again? “One, I tease my mom, but I really don’t mind getting set up on blind dates. Two, I got dumped by my ex via voicemail, same as you. And three . . . once, a long time ago, the girl of my dreams left me a Dear John letter and then ghosted me.”
He took his shot and felt it burn going down, but at least the alcohol killed his nerves.
“You got dumped by voicemail too?”
she asked.
He shrugged. “She didn’t like that my lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to relationships.”
Her eyes flared with anger. For him, he realized.
“And the girl of your dreams?”
she whispered. “That was . . . me?”
He just looked at her.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. His body reacted predictably, which, given his position standing between her thighs, she couldn’t possibly miss.
“It was,”
she breathed, sliding her hands into his hair, pulling him even closer. “It was me.”
And then she kissed him.
In a million years, he couldn’t have described what it felt like to hold her, to have her mouth on his, to feel her hands tighten in his hair, holding him where she wanted him.
As if he’d move away. Hell, he was afraid to breathe for fear this would turn out to be a dream. When their tongues touched, she let out a low, barely audible moan and tried to get even closer. One of her hands left his hair to slide inside the back of his shirt at the small of his back to hold him close as she slowly rocked against him, nearly driving him right out of his mind.
When he pulled back, her eyes slowly opened. “You don’t want this?”
In spite of his brain being scrambled, he found a smile. “I’m pretty sure you know exactly how much I want this.”
Holding him prisoner with those eyes, she slowly, purposefully, rocked her hips to his again, yanking a rough groan from deep in his throat. “Mean,”
he managed.
She laughed and pressed her forehead to his. “I want another kiss, Noah.”
The way she said his name . . . “Take whatever you want.”
My body, my life . . .
She kissed him again, melting against him in a way that tore another groan from deep in his throat. One of his hands slid down the back of her jeans and beneath the silk, cupping a bare cheek, squeezing—
“Whatcha guys doing?”
Joey asked.
Shit. Turning, pulling his hand from Olive’s jeans, Noah came up with a smile. Well, it might’ve been more a grimace, but he couldn’t help it, he didn’t have any blood left in his brain. “Just making sure Olive’s okay.”
Olive nodded like a bobblehead. “Yep. And I am. I’m one hundred percent okay.”
“What was wrong?”
Joey asked.
“Um . . .”
Olive blinked. “Cramp. A really bad cramp.”
“On your bottom?”
Olive covered her horrified laugh by coughing.
In a stroke of great luck, Noah’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
“Joe’s awake!”
Katie yelled in his ear. “He’s watching me with a smile. He hasn’t spoken, but the doctor says he’s going to be okay. Get down here. And bring Mom and Joey!”
Some sisters cried when they were feeling too many emotions. His sister, the master of the monotone, spoke at a high decibel when she felt too much. But none of that mattered once the meaning of her words sank in. “Joe’s awake?”
he asked, afraid to believe.
“Yes!”
Noah disconnected and picked up Joey, hugging him close and spinning them around. “Your dad’s awake!”
“Finally,”
Joey said. “That was the longest nap ever!”
Noah set him down. “Go get your backpack and put a few snacks and whatever toys you want in it. You can stay in your pj’s. I’ll be ready to go in a minute.”
Joey whooped and raced out of the room.
Noah stood there for a few seconds, eyes closed, taking his first deep breath since the accident.
“Joe’s awake?”
Olive asked softly.
She was staring up at him with painful hope. Unable to form words, he nodded.
“Oh,”
she breathed, and stepped into him. “Oh, what a relief!”
Chest tight, he wrapped her up in his arms, an inch from losing it. But losing it would have to wait. “I’m going to take Joey and my mom to the hospital to see him.”
“They might only let two of you in there with him at a time. I’ll go with and help keep an eye on Joey.”
Grateful, he nodded. “That was a close call.”
She looked up. “For Joe? Well, yeah.”
He gave a slow head shake. “For us.”
“For us,”
she repeated, as if trying to get the words to compute. “You mean . . . because of Joey?”
“That too.”
She paused. “You regret the kiss.”
“I try very hard not to do things I regret.”
Turning away, she stuck her feet into a pair of battered sneakers. “Nice nonanswer.”
“I actually don’t regret a thing when it comes to you.”
She twisted to look at him. “What then?”
“We said the past is best left in the past.”
The sound she made said he was an idiot, and for the record, he agreed.
She pulled her hair up and knotted it on top of her head, exposing her neck and collarbone. He was always so unprepared for his visceral reaction to her. Nowhere was safe to look, every part of her soft and tempting. And with the memory of their hot-as-hell kiss on his brain, he was having a hard time recalling why he’d tried so hard to resist her in the first place. All his hard-won self-control, every single drop, had taken leave. “Oli—”
She started out of the room. “This is Joe’s moment, not yours, not mine. Let’s just move on.”
And with that, she headed into the living room. He could hear her talking to Joey, sounding perfectly normal.
But nothing was normal. He was feeling things he didn’t want to feel. And for the first time in his life, his hard-learned logic and reasoning seemed to escape him at every turn when it came to one sexy, sweet Olive Porter.
And he had no idea what to do about it.