Chapter 13
Dean
I’m a fucking animal . Seeing Grace struggle to stand makes my stomach twist. I need to do better by her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Dean, stop asking.”
“Maybe you should lay down. I could draw you a bath or…”
“Hey.” She cups my face, her gorgeous eyes boring into mine. “I’m perfect.”
That’s so true. She’s more perfect than I could ever dream a woman of being. “I need to change how I do this… maybe learn how to start slower or something.”
“I wouldn’t change a damned thing about you.”
You don’t know a damned thing about me .
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I sigh heavily and try to wrap my head around it really being okay to take Grace so brutally. “I’m going to end up breaking you before Christmas.”
“Oh please.” She sits next to me and laces her boots. “I’m not breakable.”
“Why does that sound like a challenge?”
“Will your dick rise to it if it is?”
“Yes.”
Grace giggles as she straddles my lap. Thank fuck we’re both fully dressed, or I’d be tempted to take her again. It’s too soon for that. My girl needs time to recover. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I say quietly. “I just want to bury myself inside you as much as possible.”
“Oh no.” She dramatically rolls her eyes and holds the back of her hand to her forehead. “I’m so devastated.”
I love how she makes me laugh. I love that I can’t ever anticipate her responses. I love that—
The bed creaks and in the next blink, loud cracking sounds fill the room. Before we can move, the bed pitches slightly and then the entire piece of furniture collapses.
Fucking hell, we broke her bed!
“Well, that’s a first.” Grace laughs from the wreckage. “Well done, us!”
I’m not happy like her. Not only does this serve as a reminder of how rough I am, but now I have another thing to replace. Another expense. Damnit .
“Are you okay?” I ask, helping her off the floor.
“Definitely. You?”
Physically, yes. Financially, I may not recover if we make this a habit. “I’ll get you a new bed today.”
“What’s the point? I’m just going to stay with you anyway.”
True. I guess the replacement could wait until spring. But my work can’t wait that long. “I really need to get back to work. How about you pack your things and then when I’m done, I’ll take you to my house.”
“I’ll help you.”
“No.” I don’t want her working. “You’re supposed to be here on vacation, Grace. At least enjoy my land for a few days. I’ll come back for you later this afternoon.” Without another word, I head out of her bedroom and straight to the front door.
Grace follows me just like Oscar.
“Damnit, woman.”
“I’m not going to hold you back,” she says quickly. “But I really do want to learn.”
She’s got her hammer in her hand. Something tells me that if I push back too much, or snap at her, she’ll smack me upside the head with it.
“I swear I’m a quick learner. I won’t waste your time, Dean.”
My heart drops. “Honey, you would never be a waste of my time.” And I’ve lost my drive to grout and install cabinetry. Call it post orgasm bliss, exhaustion, or the Grace effect, but I just want to be with her. Nothing else seems to matter.
This is bad news.
“Put your coat on.”
Grace obeys. While she zippers up, I hear her voice in my head say, Everything I touch turns to gold . That’s what she told me earlier. Seeing her in just a cheap flannel shirt has her looking like a million dollars. Even when she touches me, I feel like a god. The fact that she’s even willing to attempt to help me lay grout or hang drywall has planted a little seed of hope in my heart. If someone like Grace is willing to put in the work to make my place a little better… then maybe Bear Creek Cabins has a chance to be saved.
“Come on.” I take her hand and go outside to the porch. “I want to show you something.”
Flurries fall as we head to my truck. Oscar hops in the bed, already anticipating the ride.
We set off down the dirt drive and I turn onto a lane that has tall grass and narrow tire tracks. “See that over there?” Grace looks out the window at what’s left of a treehouse I used to hunt in. “I got my first buck in that treehouse. Had my first kiss there too.”
“I’ve never been hunting.”
“Do you want to get into that?”
“I mean, I’ll shoot anything if the circumstances are right.”
Man, I love her responses. “Maybe I’ll take you next season.”
She flashes me a big smile. “Okay.”
It dawns on me a little too late that next season will be long after she’s gone from this place . Stop, Dean. Just pretend it can happen. Don’t piss all over this fantasy . “You’ll have to field dress the deer yourself though. That’s the rule.”
“You mean gut it?”
“Mmm hmm.”
Grace shrugs. “Okay.”
Imagining this pristine, posh creature getting bloody makes my dick hard.
I think I’ve got issues.
“See that bridge over there?” I point ahead of us. “My great grandfather built it and after he died, my grandpa made the roof.”
She grins. “It’s beautiful.”
“Every five years, we would pick a new color to paint it.” My smile hurts a little thinking about that being another project I have on my plate this spring. I don’t want to paint over his color, but I also don’t want to break tradition.
“What color do you think you’ll do next? ”
“No idea.” Right now, the red reminds me of his favorite shirt that had a black lab embroidered on the pocket. “Maybe blue.”
“That would be lovely. Blue’s my favorite color.”
Then I’m definitely going with blue. Probably the shade of Grace’s eyes, if I’m willing to torture myself.
She turns to me, that sunshine smile of hers still blazing. “I’ll help you paint it.”
No, she won’t, but I’m not going to say that. “Not afraid of heights, are you?”
“No. I live in a penthouse just for the bird's-eye view. I’m used to heights.”
She says it so matter-of-factly, like anyone can have a home like that if they’re in the mood. I’m happy she has that luxury. “Bet your place is bright and sunny like you, isn’t it?”
“It’s boring, really. And messy since I let my maid go.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“It was time to start living like a boss bitch.”
I don’t get it. “Wouldn’t a boss bitch have a maid?”
“One she pays for herself, not one her mother hired for her.” The disdain is thick in her tone. “And definitely not one who spies on me and feeds my arrogant mother all my personal business.” Grace crosses her arms and slumps back in her seat. “I’m just a show pony for her. Always have been. Only now, I use my exhibition skills to make money for myself. That’s what my brother, Mason, taught me.”
“Exhibition like sex in front of people? ”
“No. I mean… I wouldn’t be opposed to trying that, but I’m not sure I’d like it. I’m a private person with my body and sex. I just mean showing off in front of people, like I do with my outfits and stuff. My trust fund is tied to the family, and I can’t even access the majority of it until after I marry a man of my mother’s choosing.”
I strangle the steering wheel.
“I’m not trying to live a loveless marriage like her. My brother Mason got out of it by making his own fortune. I’m doing the same, albeit on a smaller scale. But I’ve got a five-year plan that’ll make me super happy if I can pull it off.”
It takes me a minute to gather my thoughts. We pull off in the grass and I hop out of the truck. Grace follows my lead. “What’s your five-year plan?”
She slips her hand in mine, like we’ve been on walks for a decade together. “I want a tiny house that I can keep up with all by myself. I’ll take cooking classes, so I don’t burn every meal. I’ll network and continue being an influencer and live well below my means. I want to be secretly rich.”
“Secretly rich, huh?”
“Yup. Doesn’t that sound amazing?”
“Yeah.” I veer her to the right, onto an old path. “I think I could do that. I wouldn’t tell a soul if I won the lottery, but there would be signs.”
“What kind?”
I hold a branch up so she can walk under it. “I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to see for yourself.” There I go again, talking about a future with her.
“I look forward to it.”
We stop at the stream. There’s a pavilion set back far enough to not be swept away during flooding season. “When the snow melts, this stream turns into white water rapids and the level rises about ten feet.” Taking her over to the pavilion, I sit in one of the wooden chairs and pull her onto my lap. “This is my favorite place to be.”
Whether it’s the steady whoosh of the stream, or the louder white noise the rapids make after a big melt or rain, this is my happy place.
“She loves it here too,” Grace says, noticing my dog dashing through the tall grass. “Why did you name her Oscar?”
“Some asshole dropped her in a dumpster I had set up down by the main road when I started renovations.”
“What a fucking dick.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it was a good thing they decided to discard her. When I heard a sad little whiny sound in the dumpster, I jumped in and pulled out this scrawny flea bag with mud packed into her ears. It was love at first sight.” Grace relaxes against me, listening. “She’s saved my life more than once. Either by getting me through heartache when my grandfather died or alerting me of a dangerous animal approaching, Oscar’s my hero.”
“She’s such a good girl.”
“Only you would think she’s a good girl,” I tease, laughing. “Neither one of you listen very well.”
“That makes us the best girls.”
I can’t argue with that.
We sit in silence, and I truly hope Grace feels the peace I do in this space. After a while, she sits up and twists to meet my gaze. “When did your grandfather die? ”
My gut wrenches any time I think of him. “Two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing to be sorry for. He had a good life.”
“You two must have been really close.”
“He raised me since I was eight.” She’s waiting for more, but not asking or prying. That little bit of patience makes my big mouth open and spill shit out. “My parents didn’t want me. Said I was too bad and never listened.” I hate that she looks hurt hearing that. “I think it was because they had me so young… and they weren’t happy with each other, and I just made it worse. They dumped me off at his doorstep with one suitcase and said that they didn’t want to deal with me anymore.”
I hate that I’m sharing this. She’s going to look at me differently now.
“That’s awful.”
“It was for the best,” I say, acting like it doesn’t hurt. “They didn’t want to put time into raising their kid. My grandfather did. He taught me how to build things, hunt, and take care of the land. When my teachers discovered I was an extremely slow learner, he paid for tutors, even though he had to sell stuff around his house to get the money.” My throat tightens at the reminder of all he sacrificed for me. I was such a burden to my parents, and even though I know damn well I was one to him too, my grandfather never once made me feel that way. “He was my everything when I had absolutely nothing.”
“And Bear Creek Cabins is a reflection of that.”
“Yeah.” I clear the frog in my throat. “The cabins were already old and beat down, but they went downhill faster once he got sick just after my twenty- third birthday. I couldn’t take care of him and the property in the ways they both needed me. The few employees we had were let go, because I couldn’t afford to keep them. I spent every waking minute either by his side or struggling to keep the cabins and property maintained. Something was always breaking. Then there’s the regular upkeep of our home to add to it. And hunting for meat during winter, collecting firewood for our heat, clearing the paths to the stream so we have more than one way out of here in an emergency. It was… a lot.”
When Grace doesn’t say anything, I look at her again. Unshed tears in her eyes make them glassy. She blinks, unleashing them down her face but swipes them away as if she didn’t want me catching her crying.
“I wouldn’t have traded one bit of my life for another, though,” I say, hoping that’ll make her feel better. “This place is heaven on earth. It’s worth the pain.”
A shaky exhale rattles out of her, and she settles back against me again. “What if you did win the lottery?” Her question is a soft, low, careful one. “Would you stay here?”
“I plan to die here one day. Hopefully when I’m an old, cranky, toothless man, just like my grandpa. And I’ll have someone spread my ashes into this stream just like I did his.”
Oscar proudly trots towards us with a ten-foot tree branch in her mouth, the end of it dragging across the ground. “Oscar, girl, you’re a menace.” Grace stands so I can get up and help Oscar when she gets her big stick stuck in a thorn bush. “You went the wrong way, goofball! ”
Once I fix her problem, she prances to Grace, showing off her new toy. Only she spits out the branch and jumps up, knocking my girl to the ground. Grace cackle laughs while Oscar licks her face and literally gets on top of her, wagging her tail.
“No, Oscar!” I pull her back, but she doesn’t get the message. My dumb dog just pushes into me, and I stumble, tripping over her big stick and land hard on my ass.
Laughter fills my ears. Grace gets up and makes a run for it, calling for my dog to come get her. Oscar takes off. I get right again and run after them.
We chase each other up and down the stream bank, into the tall grass, and through the woods. When I finally toss a pinecone at Oscar’s butt, she gets distracted and runs in the opposite direction of us. Growling like a bear, I creep up behind Grace and wrap my arms around her waist, spinning her in the air. She squeals in delight, laughing again, which makes my heart feel like it has wings.
She turns and grabs me by the collar, smashing her mouth to mine and I walk us backwards until we’re up against a tree. Snow flurries land in her hair and long, black lashes, making her look like a snow princess.
“You’re stunning,” I whisper against her cheek.
Oscar barks in the background and I freeze. That’s not her happy bark.
Shit .
I turn around just in time to see a black bear approaching.