15. Quade
Turns out I’m a snuggler.
I’d never felt the urge to cuddle with the other women I’ve dated or had sex with in the past.
But being with Hadley is a revelation. I can’t keep my hands off her. Find myself pulling her in for a hug every chance I get.
I might have thought I had no interest in finding a woman to spend the rest of my life with but the last few days have proven that thought to be a lie. Except before her it was true.
It’s Hadley.
It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with her.
She’s the catalyst that has opened my mind and heart to what my family has been talking about for years. It’s not that they’ve been pushing me to find a wife and have children. They’ve been pushing for me to open my eyes—my heart—for the right woman. The children, of course, would naturally follow.
“What has you looking so pensive?” Gram moves in beside me where I’m leaning on the wall watching the woman I’m thinking about.
“I’m not pensive.”
“Okay, maybe thoughtful is a better word to use.” She smiles up at me with a knowing glint in her eyes.
“You see it.” I don’t elaborate further. There’s no need. My grandmother is one of the sharpest women I know. Hell, I’m pretty sure she outdoes most men I know too, and I know some extremely intelligent ones.
Nodding she says, “I do. But even a blind person can see it.”
“I didn’t expect it.”
“Oh, and what did you expect? You brought her here.” The frown she gives me reminds me no one but Hadley and I know she’s my fake girlfriend, not my real one.
Then again. Are we fake? We’ve been sharing a bed for days and we aren’t building pillow walls or sticking to our own sides. The second she worked out we should be okay, that there probably wouldn’t be any ramifications from our careless actions that first night, we’d gotten creative until I could find the time to drive to the next town and purchase two of the largest boxes of condoms they had.
“Quade?”
“Sorry, Gram.” I rub a hand over my chin, my mind racing to come up with what I should tell her. “It wasn’t real. Still isn’t.”
“I don’t know about what it was before now but here, in this moment it’s as real as the walls surrounding us.”
“Yes, but?—”
“Quade, I love you, but I’m going to slap you upside the head and give this house to cousin Ralph if you don’t get your shit together and tell that woman how you feel about her before she gets away.”
“I have a cousin Ralph?”
“No, but I’ll find one if you continue to play around.”
“I’m not playing.”
“Aren’t you? You kept your relationship a secret from your sister, Hadley’s best friend, for months before you turned up here with Hadley in tow.”
“Oh. Littlest told you about that?”
“She did. She also told me she thinks this isn’t what you want us to believe and she’d know, wouldn’t she?”
“Maybe.” Hadley had assured me her friendship with my sister wouldn’t be a problem but the more I thought about it, the more I could see it was a big red flag to the people who know me the best. “She?—”
Hadley’s laughter rings out through the room drawing my gaze back to where she stands next to my cousin Fred. My dead cousin Fred if the man doesn’t take a step back from my woman right now.
I’m taking my own step before my grandmother’s hand on my arm stops me. Glancing back I see a big grin on her face. “Don’t kill him inside, Quade, blood is so hard to get out of carpet.”
With those words she turns and leaves me to ponder how she could possibly know I was imagining the many ways I could kill a man I’ve never had a beef with before.
And why do I have one now?
It isn’t like Fred is making moves on Hadley. Hell, the man has a wife and two kids. All of them barely feet away from where Fred and Hadley are standing.
Plus it isn’t like anyone here thinks she’s available. Even the single men in the room, not that there are many of those; still, as far as everyone knows, Hadley is my girlfriend. The first one I’ve ever brought to the estate for the summer. The only one I’ve brought around the family for anything.
Not once in my thirty-five years have I been accompanied by a woman at a family event. Not even when a plus-one was required. I always turned up stag. Which led to numerous set-ups and women being paraded in front of me.
Before I can dive deeper into my past or what the situation with Hadley means, I see something that sucks the breath from my body and has my chest squeezing in a way that would concern me if I hadn’t had a full physical and received a clean bill of health only months ago.
Fred’s wife has placed their youngest, a little girl barely two months old, into Hadley’s arms and the look on her face as she gazes down at the sleeping baby has more than my chest aching. It has my groin throbbing and my gut clenching.
It’s one moment in time.
Less than a second.
And every thought that has been rolling around my head for days, since the minute Hadley replied to my want ad, collides to form one inescapable fact.
I’ve fallen in love with Hadley Calla Knowles.
In less than a week, I’ve found the woman my family has wished on me for a decade.
And she’s far more than I ever expected.
Far more than I deserve.
Deserve or not, she will be mine. Before the summer ends, before this ridiculous three-month job ends, I’ll find a way to convince her there’s nothing fake about us.