Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Gideon
You’re part of this family now.
Mae’s frank statement echoed through my head all the way back to Autumn’s house. Our house? Fuck, I didn’t know. This day had been confusing, and I wanted it to be over.
I stopped inside the door from the garage and frowned at the dark little box of a house. The day was over. It was time for bed. She didn’t remember me lying next to her last night.
A pressure wound itself around my shins. The cat.
“It’s been a long day.” Autumn flipped on the light. “It’ll be so nice to sleep in my own—” Those expressive amber eyes shot toward me. Her pink lips parted.
“Our bed,” I said more to see how she reacted. I was not disappointed. The ripe mouth, the way she blushed when she thought of me and the bed at the same time .
She pursed her lips and a worry line formed across her forehead.
Heat coiled in my gut, but I needed a clear head to figure out how to stop the sale. I couldn’t get wrapped up in this lust I felt around Autumn, but we also had a deal and I hadn’t done my part yet. I didn’t want to consider the consequences of having a baby.
The main problem was that getting between Autumn’s legs could be detrimental to my clear head. I wasn’t sure what the hell to think about kids yet, and I didn’t need her soft-in-all-the-right-places body wreaking havoc with my thinking.
But I wanted to fuck her. Badly.
She’d been a rock all day. Facing her family, telling her mama, and cleaning up after dinner. The only time she’d wavered was when she’d realized I was supposed to meet Taya at the club.
I’d meant what I’d told her. Last night had been fun—sitting with a sexy woman who wasn’t afraid of what she liked and was proud to share it with others had been refreshing. It was the first night in a long time I hadn’t talked solely about my job.
“I have a futon in the office.” She took off down the hall. The cat pranced behind her.
No fucking way. I hadn’t slept on a floor, futon, pullout, or in my car since college, and I wasn’t doing it now. “We need to get used to sleeping together.”
She stopped, frozen.
“Not like that, firecracker.” Not yet. As soon as my lawyer expedited my early morning request, I’d retroactively fix the target I’d drawn on myself when I’d married her with no prenup. And we’d have divorce papers just as quickly. I wasn’t ready to wade into the mess that was parental rights and custody arrangements. But I also wasn’t sleeping on a goddamn futon after slumbering next to her last night. “We’ll sleep in the same bed and get used to each other for another night. Without alcohol.”
The bloom was back on her cheeks. Would she blush like that after she orgasmed? How far would it spread over her body?
The heat coiled tighter in my gut. I’d sleep with a raging erection all night if I kept those thoughts up.
“It was easier when I didn’t know you were in bed with me.”
Not for me. I’d caught myself watching her twice. What was it like to sleep with that much abandon? To be sprawled in a near stranger’s bed and snooze like it was the safest, most comfortable spot in the world? I paid for an excellent mattress. I had room-darkening shades for the wall of windows if needed. I was regimented about when I had caffeine and how much. Nothing fucked with my sleep, and yet, at best, I could get a few hours of actual rest. Otherwise, a mouse could cough and wake me up.
“I can wait until you’re asleep.”
She lifted her chin, rallying at the idea of going to bed with me. A guy with a lesser ego might be insulted. Instead, I was amused.
“No,” she said, “otherwise Sprinkles will take your spot.”
“The cat sleeps in the bed?” I wasn’t used to sharing, and I wasn’t used to cats.
“Every night,” she said, like she was challenging me to cut the cat off. “Didn’t you ever have a house pet? ”
“No. The dog worked more than I did.” Sawyer had passed shortly after I left for college. I suspected Dad had forgotten to feed him. One more strike against the man. “Mom didn’t like cats.”
She smothered her surprise. Was it unheard of not to like cats? “If I lock her out, she’ll yowl at the door.”
“She’s welcome to stay.” Part of me was curious how the tiny feline thought she could rule the bed against two adults.
Autumn jerked her thumb over her shoulder and cocked her head. “I’ll use the bathroom first and then...”
I punched down my brewing laughter. She was uncomfortable. I was... interested. Intrigued.
I never overnighted with a woman. If we ended up in the same bed, that meant we had gone to that bed for one specific reason. I didn’t witness bedtime routines. I saw no pajama choices. By morning, I was alone again. Just how I preferred it.
Autumn’s butt swayed against the long sweater she had on over her leggings. I’d seen her in all of two outfits, but she’d hidden her ass with each of them.
I ground my molars together. An ass like that shouldn’t be hidden. I could quickly become obsessed with the globes of her butt bouncing under the fabric.
Heat circled under my collar. She’d disappeared into the bedroom. I wandered through her kitchen, peeking into cupboards and being nosy in a way I hadn’t been willing to do while she watched me.
She had one box of cereal that had collected dust on the top of her fridge. Her eggs looked farm fresh and my damn mouth watered. It’d been decades since I’d had those. The chickens had gone shortly after Mom’s death. In the freezer, I had to pause to check out her assortment of ice cream. Rocky road. Tin roof sundae. Chocolate. Mint chip.
My wife didn’t just like salty food, she also liked chocolate. I filed that knowledge away like a good husband who might need it to prove her brothers wrong.
They weren’t wrong about anything.
I brushed the thought away and went to the hallway closet. It caught me off guard as much as the lineup of ice cream. Tubs of—I leaned into the small, lightless space. Decorations and art supplies. Another bin was marked Lessons .
Wasn’t there room in her classroom for this stuff?
A door squeaked open and I stepped away from the closet. I gently pushed the door shut, resisting the urge to slam it in a rush to see Autumn emerging fresh-faced from the bathroom.
She was sitting up in bed by the time I entered. Her sweet smell hung in the air. The cat was circling at the base of her feet. Autumn’s freshly washed hair was loose around her face and my gut clenched. The rusty halo around her head looked like the most expensive crown a guy could buy, and I’d seen a few expensive ones in my time in Vegas.
She smoothed what had to be a handmade quilt over her lap. “Help yourself to whatever.”
There was one thing I wanted to help myself to, but there was a cat in the way. Beyond the cat was a woman who was about to fidget out of her skin. Her fingers worked a loose string on the quilt.
“You’re going to unravel that thing. ”
She looked down and let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, yeah. Wouldn’t be the first time. Mama’s had to fix a lot of holes I made pulling strings. She finally made me learn how to sew up a patch myself.”
A fine scar ran down the side of her arm, just above her elbow. Instant concern propelled me forward. Without thinking, I ran my finger down the uneven white line. On each side of the line were smaller pucker marks. “What’s this from?”
Her wide, unblinking eyes were staring at me.
I was tracing her skin. I yanked my hand away. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I almost forget it’s there. It’s from the accident when I was a kid. With my birth parents.” She screwed up her face. “It’s always weird to call them that, but it’s just as odd to say my first set of parents, you know?”
I didn’t. I’d lost my mom, but I’d forgotten that Autumn and her sisters had lost a mom and a dad in one fell swoop. “My mom used to talk about you guys.” I got lost in the memory. Mom making dinner and bustling around the kitchen while I worked on homework at the table. “She’d tell me everything she heard about the Kerrigan girls.”
“Really? I mean, I know people followed our story, but it’s weird, isn’t it? How we were strangers before yesterday, yet you probably know more of my story than a lot of my coworkers.”
“Coworkers like Mark?” The fond memories of my mom evaporated as I envisioned pummeling the unknown man’s face.
“No.” She frowned, her gaze getting a faraway look. “ I don’t think he knows any of it. I’m so used to people knowing that I don’t really talk about it.” She gasped. “I have to tell him I’m married. I’ll have to tell my friends, but I should get to him first. Since we...”
“Since you were seeing each other?” My teeth ached from clenching so hard.
“It was barely that. The first date was more of a random meeting in the coffee shop. Then it was like a work picnic before school started, where we kept talking after. The third was official, and then... Well, you don’t want to hear about that.”
“I assure you, Mrs. James, I very much do.”
She lifted a doubtful reddish brow. “He asked me to go to Spokane with him to meet his parents.”
The fuck he had. I kept my temper reined in. “Spokane is over a six-hour drive away.”
“Right?” She puffed out a breath. “An overnight trip at least. He’s easy to talk to, but I didn’t think we connected that hard. We didn’t even...” She flicked her gaze away.
“He planned to on the Spokane trip,” I said, irritated. My heart rate jumped. What if I’d missed her at the elevator? She’d have returned to Bourbon Canyon and might’ve taken Mark up on his offer.
“And he probably doesn’t even know Mama isn’t my birth mom.” She shook her head, the damp strands of hair dancing over her breasts.
The knowledge eased the burgeoning rage inside me. “You didn’t tell him?” As if I mentioned my parents, living or dead, to anyone.
She shook her head and dropped her gaze.
I sat at the foot of the bed. “It’s hard talking about losing a parent. And you lost two. You were also injured.”
Her fingers found the loose thread. I put my hand over where her feet were tucked under the blankets. The cat was passed out.
“Summer and I are the oldest, so we were in the middle row. Mom and Dad took the worst of the impact from rolling, but she and I also got hurt. Summer almost died.” A line pinched between her brows. She gestured to her chest. “Internal bleeding.”
She’d been through a nightmare and was more concerned about her sister. “This scar isn’t from something minor.”
“No.” She pulled and tugged at the quilt.
Now that I was closer, I could see several patch jobs and areas where seams had been reinforced. Maybe they should’ve sewn in threads that were tuggable and wouldn’t unravel everything.
“My arms and legs got really beat up,” she continued. “All the flying around when the car rolled.” She spoke like she was trying to be detached but also like speaking about it brought her back. “I was lucky though.”
“Is that what everyone told you to make you feel better?”
Her expression wavered before she nodded. “I didn’t feel lucky.”
“Neither did I when Mom died. It fucking sucked, and it’s okay to say it all fucking sucked and that the last thing you felt that day was motherfucking luck.”
“Who told you that you were lucky?”
I clenched my jaw. “Everyone. I was lucky I wasn’t snowmobiling with her. I was lucky I still had Hank. I was lucky to have her as long as I did. It’s all bullshit. ”
I stood and went to her side. She pondered her quilt like my words were sinking in and she was finally giving herself permission to spin the accident the way it had happened in her head. A horrific event that had nothing to do with luck.
I leaned down to drop a kiss in her hair. Just like when I’d touched her scar, I didn’t realize I was doing it until her cool strands tickled my lips. I hadn’t planned to lay a finger on her at all, much less my mouth. “Get comfortable, Autumn. I’ll only take a minute.”
I took my toiletry kit to the small bathroom. I didn’t unpack the whole thing. Just like she wasn’t ready to have sex, whether she admitted it or not, I wasn’t ready to submerse myself into a fake marriage. I couldn’t risk forgetting that in a month, this would all be over. I wasn’t ready to ask myself if I was okay returning to visit because I had a goddamn kid.
I brushed my teeth and changed into a white shirt and gray sweatpants. Autumn was curled on her side with her eyes closed. I doubted she was asleep, but she was pretending she was.
When I crawled in next to her and was surrounded by her sweet scent, I drifted off. Not even the cat commandeering an entire bed around two adults bothered my slumber.
Autumn
I woke up snuggled into a wall of heat. A warm iron band was around my back and my nose was buried in a hard chest. The comforting scent of cedar citrus filled my nose.
I was cozy as hell. I kept my eyes closed and wiggled closer.
The chest under my face rose. My eyelids flew open. Gideon!
I tried to shove away, but that band around my back kept me in place.
“You need to be getting more comfortable with me, rusty.”
The new nickname gave me pause. It also gave me floozy butterflies. “Rusty?”
“Seems more fitting for the morning. Actually, since we haven’t had sex, I don’t know which nickname fits you better.”
I swatted his chest. My cheeks were probably as bright as my hair.
He laughed, a pleasing, deep sound that made me smile.
“I’m not rusty,” I muttered.
The laugh turned into a growl but cut off right away. “How not rusty are you?”
I left my hand on his abdomen. Was he hard everywhere? The blanket was pushed down to his waist, so I could answer the question. I stayed where I was. In this position, I couldn’t see his face, and I wasn’t breathing on him. “Want me to ask the same thing?”
His stomach tightened. “Fair enough. Six months, I think.”
I popped my head up, forgetting about the morning breath. “That long?”
His expression was softer, and his hair was tousled. Suddenly, he was approachable. I was married to the guy, but seeing him like this was more dangerous to my resolve than anything else. He was out of my league on a good day. In the soft light of the morning, in my bed, he was intimidating.
I laid my head back down before he answered. I was still cuddled into his side, and I was content to stay there. I was soaking up a handsome guy in my bed while I could. Living the dream while I could.
“At least six months,” he reiterated. “I only remember because that matches up with the end of Q1 and I was working more with...”
“Yeah.” As distasteful as it was hearing about his sex life, I liked hearing that Taya was only when time and opportunity matched up. “No Q2 nookie?”
Another deep chuckle reverberated under my cheek. “The land sale didn’t make me the best guy to hang around.”
“How kind you are doesn’t strike me as a deal breaker when it comes to you.”
“You keep mentioning my looks, rusty.”
I snorted. “They’re that good.”
“You also haven’t answered me.”
Crap. It was my turn. “Um... right after the New Year. I tried another dating app last fall, and I thought I’d found someone who was a contender.”
“A contender for what?”
“For being a partner. He had a job and his family was nice. He seemed respectful and treated me decent.”
“He was a creep?”
I traced my finger over an ab ridge. Was I going to admit this? I hadn’t even told my sisters. Hello, embarrassment. “I caught him stroking off to a picture of Junie. It was her magazine interview in Music Today. ”
He went taut under me. “What a fucking bastard.”
“Can you imagine how awkward family dinner would be after I knew that?”
“Don’t tell me you entertained staying with him?”
“He was trying to defend it, so I told him to print out a picture of his brother and I’d rub one off.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from telling the rest of the story.
“Don’t tell me he called your bluff?”
There went the rest of my pride. “Are you a mind reader?”
“No, I’ve just seen a lot living and working in a casino for so long.”
“People can suck sometimes.”
“A lot of times.”
We fell quiet, but it was a comfortable silence. Then Sprinkles jumped on the bed and meowed. She marched across the covers and caterwauled in my face.
“Is there a fire somewhere?” Gideon asked. Sprinkles marched up his chest, smothering my face with her kitty pooch as she went. She wailed in his face.
“It’s time for her to eat. And we have a party to get ready for.” I rolled away and he let me go. Sprinkles sprinted for the kitchen. I scooted out of bed and made sure my loose green pajama pants and my sleepy-cat nightshirt were covering everything.
“Autumn.”
I turned before going into the bathroom.
“We’re going to have to be intimate soon.”
“I know.” I did. And the more I thought about it, the more timid I got. The first night with him, I would’ve spread myself out like one of the buffets Vegas used to be known for. Now, I wasn’t sure I could survive going back to my quiet life when he deemed me of no use to him.
Would the sex be worth it? Would that be better or worse? “Thanks for, you know, giving me time.”
The look he pinned me with was dark and promising. “The clock is ticking.”