Chapter 2
“Hiya, Holly,” he said in that deep baritone that sent shivers down her spine.
Lachlan had always been a man of few words, and she used to spend hours listening to him speak in that Scottish accent.
Holly blushed, her body devolving into that fascinated teenager again at his greeting. “I’m going to murder Dev,” she muttered, anxiety sneaking in behind the unwise flutters in her belly. “Then I’ll have to move in with Ethan and help him raise baby Maya.”
“That’s bloodthirsty of you,” he added drily.
She frowned as he moved in the tub, making the water slosh around. For a second, she considered covering her eyes, but it would only make him laugh at her.
She’d always had the sense that Lachlan was in on some joke about her that she didn’t know. As his best friend’s little sister, she’d accepted that he probably viewed her as an annoying pest. When her teenage crush had morphed into an unending fascination with an underpinning of lust, she’d cut herself off. While she’d dated in high school and college, she’d never had the guts to ask him out. Especially knowing how awkward it could become with him in Dev’s life, if he said no.
Josh’s arrival in her life had extinguished any imagined romantic connection she’d pictured with Lachlan. She’d fallen for Josh so fast and, as a couple, they had barely seen Lachlan. Only later, when Josh’s cheating had come to light, had she realized why Lachlan had avoided them.
Clearly, he had known that his friend was cheating on Holly from the beginning and didn’t want to give it up.
With that betrayal suddenly fresh again, anger washed out the sneaky excitement. Something else clicked. “You’re not surprised I’m here.”
One smooth, muscled shoulder rose in an elegant shrug. Holly had never understood how such a big man could make every movement so…elegant. “Dev told me you were coming.”
And he hadn’t run screaming to the hills? “So?”
“So what?” he said, running his fingers over his mustache and beard.
With his thick hair plastered to his scalp, the sharp jut of his cheekbones was even more pronounced. Then there were those lips. For a man who had not an ounce of fat in his body, Lachlan had the lushest, shapeliest lips she had ever seen in a man.
“ So why are you still here, Lachlan?” Saying his name was another stupid thing she needed to stop. It wove a strange intimacy around them, one pulsing with undercurrents.
No, it was the cozy setting and the remote cabin, and the world kept at bay by the blizzard that made her skin prickle and buzz. It had to be. She refused to be attracted to the man who had cut her out of his life so easily.
“What is it you think I should have done, HollyPop?” he said, making her name pop with his lips.
“Don’t call me that. You lost that right when you…” she pulled in a deep breath, shocked to find the anger vibrating through her, even after all these months.
Even in the haze of confused grief after Josh’s death—and earlier, when she’d learned of his affairs—she had never understood why she had felt so much anger toward Lachlan. Sometimes, more than anything she had felt toward Josh himself.
Lachlan sat up in the tub, gaze suddenly alert. “When I did what?” For a man who spoke little, his gaze gleamed with curiosity and hunger for…confrontation.
Holly shook her head, stuffing all the confusion back inside. If she let it out, she would turn into a sobbing mess on the wet wooden floor. Instead, she folded her arms at her midriff and leveled what she hoped was a steady gaze at him. “I don’t understand why you’re okay with being here at the same time as I am.”
“Why would I have a problem with it? We aren’t enemies, are we, Hol?”
The tone of his question made her skin prickle. What was he playing at? But asking him to clarify would make this all personal and messy. “Of course not. But you’re a man who likes his privacy, and the cabin’s hardly big enough for us to share, is it? And if you were thinking of kicking me out, it’s terrible out there.”
“You really think I would let you come here and then kick you out?”
Holly shrugged. “Like I said, I’m going to kill Dev for making me deal with you.”
“I only texted him I was back here like an hour ago, right as the storm began.” Again, that all too casual shrug. “It’s possible he didn’t even see the text.”
“Why didn’t you text me then?”
His chin rose in pure challenge. “And discover that you blocked me?”
Holly blushed and hoped he couldn’t see it in the steamy interior of the bathroom. Because she had considered it once. When she looked up, she saw the knowledge of it in his gaze.
He looked…hurt. Which wasn’t possible. He had gone months without texting her or calling her, even avoiding her parents’ home when she was around. “You could have stopped me from coming here, Lachlan.”
“Dev told me how much you were looking forward to getting out here, that you had been planning for weeks. I didn’t want to ruin your staycation.”
“And you being here doesn’t actively ruin it?”
Holly regretted the words the moment she said it. She was usually the gentlest, cheeriest person in a room. But something had changed in her in the last two years. And she wasn’t sure if she liked her older self, who had been a na?ve, sweet fool or this newer, more assertive self with rough edges. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t…” She sighed and looked away from his captivating gaze. “I’m tired and really have to pee. Can I have the bathroom for a minute, please? Then I’ll figure out how I can get out of here.”
“Fine,” he said, and before Holly could blink or draw a breath, he stood up.
A naked six-foot three-inch retired hockey player in all his glory. That hum of awareness turned into floodlights buzzing through her.
Water sloshed down his body—lean pectorals and thick ridges of abdomen and tree-trunk thighs and shapely calves—as if it was eager to touch all of him.
Her gaze went up and down, and then up again and got stuck on his…half-mast erection. Wetness pooled between her thighs. Nothing to do with the melting snowflakes in her hair and all to do with the…
Two tiny silver barbells glinted from the broad head of his cock.
As if it wasn’t enough that he was more than well-endowed, the man had to have piercings too?
Holly licked her lips as her pussy pulsed, actively imagining how it would feel to have him move inside her with those things rubbing up against her inner walls. Would the tiny scrape of pain from those piercings heighten the intensity of her pleasure? Did Lachlan fuck roughly? Had he gotten them with someone in mind?
Unlike her ex and some of his other teammates, Lachlan had always been very private about his love life. Or sex life, for that matter. No stories of puck bunnies and partying had ever reached the media. She knew because she’d looked for them before he had introduced her to Josh.
“Eyes up here, HollyPop.”
A muffled laugh accompanied the quip, reminding her whose cock she was staring at, like a panting puppy waiting for its treat.
Earth, swallow whole, please, Holly chanted, fighting the prickly heat of embarrassment. Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that she’d stared at him, she reminded herself.
The man had the body of a Greek God, or was it a Highlander in his case? After two years of celibacy, he was a feast to her deprived senses. Any woman with a healthy libido would have stared. But the reassurance wasn’t enough to wipe the flush of embarrassment from drenching her.
“I…” she could barely make eye contact with him. Reaching down, she grabbed a thick towel, upended the stack onto the floor, and threw it at him.
He caught it with one of those serrated laughs that had always felt like it was made for her. Because, quiet, brooding Lachlan had always laughed a lot around her.
Hadn’t he?
The memory poked at her like a tight-fitting dress from the back of the closet.
“What the hell are you doing?” she said, turning around, and somehow mustering patently false indignation.
“Sorry,” he said, sounding anything but. If it weren’t for the fact that he had never paid her that kind of attention before, Holly would have said he’d done it on purpose. To unsettle her, yes, but also to… tempt her. To make her see him as an object of desire.
No, no, God, that wasn’t possible. Was it?
“Although,” he said, the whistle of his towel through the air making the small hairs on her nape stand up. “I wasn’t the one staring with my eyes bugging out.”
Her heart thudded in her ears. He was definitely teasing her, skating a foot over flirting even.
She held herself still, aware of the creak of the wood under his feet as he stood behind her. And the sudden warmth from his body and the scent of Irish Spring on his skin.
Water drops from his hair landed on the bare skin of her shoulders. She wouldn’t be surprised if she sizzled like butter on a cast iron pan.
And then she felt him, leaning down, his damp, thick beard scraping against her shoulder for how sensitized her skin felt around him. Another inch forward and his cheek was against hers in a barely-there graze. It took every inch of her dwindling willpower to keep her spine erect and not sink into his hard body. To just…let go.
“I’m sure there’s a good reason you’re mad at me, sweetheart. But you’re lying to yourself if you think I feel the same about you. Being trapped here over the next couple of days means I can find out why you’re so angry with me. I want to make amends, HollyPop. I’ll even go down to my knees if that’s what you need.”
With that soft declaration, he was gone. But the warmth and scent he left behind taunted her.
Wrapping her arms around her waist, Holly stared at the closed door. A tingling shiver went down her spine, pooling between her thighs.
Trapped with Lachlan in a remote cabin for a couple of days was bad enough. But being trapped with a Lachlan that was determined to fix their relationship was…dangerous to her on so many levels.
Clearly, she was no better than her teenage self when it came to him.