Chapter 27 Gunner
Gunner
This can’t be right.
I sigh, clear the numbers out of my phone, check that the spreadsheet is the one from this month, and start adding again.
This time, the numbers are worse.
“Shit,” I breathe. I push my chair away from the desk in the small home office I use when I can’t get into town and stare at the papers on the surface, my stomach churning.
True, this isn’t my main office and most of the paperwork I need is at the shop in town, but that doesn’t alter my access to the accounting software.
It also doesn’t alter the fact that the numbers are worse this month than they were last. And though December is sometimes a down month—people have already bought Christmas presents and are now spending time with their family rather than ordering—it shouldn’t be down by this much.
The business is failing more quickly than I realized.
Or it’s failing at the rate I expected, and I haven’t allowed myself to actually think about it until right now, when I’m fucking snowed into the house and having nothing to do but think.
I groan and reach for a cup of coffee, only to find that the coffee has gone cold. I slam the cup back down on the desk, achieving nothing but splashing coffee all over the papers.
“Fuck,” I groan.
That’s the end of that planning session, then, because I’m not going to print those out again It’s a waste of paper and ink, only to tell me what I already know.
The business my grandfather built, the one my father expanded again and again, is failing.
We’re so close to bankrupt I can hardly believe it.
True, we save some money on supplies as we cut the wood ourselves, but we don’t have any projects going on and orders have slowed to a halt.
There’s no reason to build anything for the showroom because no one actually comes in to view it, and without custom orders, we’re done.
Hawke’s Wood isn’t exactly a tourist attraction but we get enough tourists up here during the summer months that we generally do all right.
During the winter, that’s not the case. We depend on people finding our website and ordering new pieces, or return customers staying loyal. But this year…
This year, there’s almost nothing new, and I don’t know what to do about it. My salary at the university isn’t going to maintain us on its own and I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to watch my grandfather’s business die.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the shame.
And I’ll never hear the end of it from Gabe, who has been convinced for years that he knows how to save the business.
I think he’s wrong. He hasn’t watched the business grow and change over the years, and he sure as hell doesn’t know what my grandfather’s original vision was for the thing.
He doesn’t even remember his grandfather.
It’s a lie, and an unfair one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t Gabe’s business to run. It’s mine.
And I’m failing.
I get up, finished with looking at the problem, and open the door.
And I’m hit in the face with the smell of coffee and cookies.
Confused, I glance at the window. It’s still dark out and can’t be later than 5 in the morning.
Who the fuck is up making coffee and baking?
Three steps take me into the kitchen, and the scent is so strong out here, the heat coming out of the kitchen in waves of sugar, cinnamon, and coffee, that I stop dead in my tracks.
Because I recognize that scent, and I haven’t smelled it in four years.
It’s the scent of home and safety. Family and happy mornings spent in front of the fireplace when it’s snowing outside. Laughter and joy and company. Things I haven’t seen since—
“Morning,” Taryn says, bustling into the kitchen from the pantry like she fucking owns the place.
I give her a long, slow look, taking in the tousled blond hair and flushed face. She’s got flour on her nose and what looks like coffee grounds on one arm, and she’s moving slowly, like she just woke up. Still in her sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt, with socks on her feet to keep them warm.
She’s never looked more beautiful.
“What the fuck are you doing? Baking at 5 in the morning?”
She returns my pointed look. “What are you doing? Business at 5 in the morning?”
My anger immediately rises up, like a tide I can’t stop. “I couldn’t sleep. Had some things on my mind.”
“I couldn’t sleep either. Things on my mind. And baking has always made me feel calmer.”
I remember that about her—she’s been that way since she was a kid—but instead of taking the peace offering, and perhaps a cookie, I let my anger take over. Because right now I’m terrified of what’s happening to the company, but I can’t control it. Shouting at someone, though…
That’s something I can control.
“You’re twenty,” I grouse. “What the fuck can you possibly have to think about it in the middle of the night? You don’t have any problems.”
She gives me a long look full of secrets, then shakes her head and turns back toward the pantry. “Being twenty doesn’t mean I don’t have any problems, Gunner. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And just like that she’s gone, the frank sleepiness of her vanishing into the cookie-scented air around us. She moves quickly back into the pantry like she doesn’t want anything else to do with me, and I follow her without thinking, my soul reaching for the essence of her.
I want to know what she’s hiding from me. Why she called me in the middle of the night when she could have called her mother. What drove her up onto the mountain, and why she won’t tell me when she’s leaving again. I want to know how I can save her from whatever’s got her so scared.
I want to be the one to make her safe again.
I get into the doorway of the pantry to find her looking quickly through the things on the shelf, shuffling them out of the way and then rearranging them, and for a moment I don’t know if she’s actually looking for anything or just searching for a way to avoid me.
She clicks her tongue, though, and starts searching on another shelf, and I realize that she actually is looking for something.
“What are you doing?” I ask quietly, not meaning just with the food on the shelves.
She freezes like she knows exactly what I’m asking and has gone into fight or flight, every muscle tensed with the need to get out of there before I force her to tell me what she’s hiding. When she answers, her voice is small, like a child’s. “I’m looking for something.”
I move up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders, too intoxicated by her to keep from touching her. “What are you looking for, Taryn?”
A pause, and I wonder if she’s actually going to tell me. I wonder if the way to get her secrets is just to ask—and if that was always true and I was too stupid to see it.
“I was wondering if you have any toffee chips,” she almost whispers. “I mean, you probably don’t. Just because I want them doesn’t mean you have them. But I was hoping...”
God-all-fucking-mighty, I can’t do this.
The tone of her voice, the helpless way she says it, the vulnerability and fucking honesty of the statement, all go straight to my dick, and I grow hard as steel, my length suddenly straining against the zipper of my jeans.
My hips rock in response and I have to fight to keep from grabbing her and turning her around to face me.
Lifting her up, spreading her legs, and taking her right here against the shelves of the fucking pantry.
I groan deeply, fighting my lust for control of my body, and in that moment, I realize what she’s just asked.
Toffee chips. She’s baking cookies and is looking for toffee chips. She’s already made cinnamon cookies, which are Gabe’s favorite. And now she’s looking for toffee chips.
She’s going to make my favorite cookies next.
If I have the ingredients.
And as fate would have it, I think I do.
I lean into her now, my chest against her back and my hips grinding against her ass as I reach up over her head.
I feel around on the top shelf, knowing exactly what’s up here because I catalogued our supplies at the start of winter to see what else we might need.
The bracelet I never take off slips to my forearm, and I watch it, noting the one charm attached. I wonder if Taryn sees it.
I wonder if she remembers what it means.
When I find the right bag, I bring it down.
“Actually, I do. They’re left from when you lived here before.”
I place them gently on the shelf in front of her, within reach, and then turn and leave the pantry, my heart too full to allow me to stay, the emotions far too big to be safe in such a small space.
And as I walk out, my dick shifting in my pants, I realize she probably felt me against her, hard and wanting and almost desperate with my need.
And I don’t hate the idea that she felt me.
I don’t hate the idea that she knows.