Chapter 18
Alec gritted his teeth as his back slammed against the cold pavement.
Of course, they’d not had the luxury to fall on the acres of padded snow around them. A fiery ache shot up his spine, pinging the precise spot at the back of his head with the echo of his earlier injury.
Thankfully, Marisa had tumbled down with him, landing on his chest with a comfortable weight that eased the pain hammering him from behind.
Dark disordered coils of her hair fanned over his eyes, getting in every sort of way, while his brother’s beast of a dog nearly pulled Alec’s meat from his bones.
With one arm still banded tightly around Marisa, he flexed and pulled, his biceps straining with the effort of holding back two hundred and thirty pounds of motivated muscle.
“Hugh, you fucking bastard! Stop your pulling and get your arse back over here now!” But the threat lacked the true weight of Alec’s ire as every other word was broken up by him spitting out strands of Marisa’s hair, and dear lord, was she giggling into his chest? Was she for real?
“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit!” Marisa shrieked with glee and burrowed closer into his chest, which Hugh had already kicked a fair amount of snow on.
Bloody hell. Didn’t the woman have the good sense to sound properly terrified, instead of like a thirteen-year-old going on their first upside-down roller coaster and spewing every curse word they could get away with saying?
“Are you hurt?” Alec ducked his chin down and tried to holler around Hugh’s ear-ringing barks, but all that got him was more hair in his face, this time with some snow tossed in for variety.
“No,” she mumbled between his pecs, her shoulders bouncing. “Just, you know, horizontal when I wasn’t a moment ago.”
His stomach tightened with the one amused chuckle he had to spare, likely a result of Marisa’s infectiously humorous fierceness and complete lack of good sense. Then he asked in earnest, “Can you stand?”
“Probably.”
“Good.” Alec dumped her in the snow and quickly rolled to his knees, which brought him face to face with the dog’s back end. “I’ve about had it with you and your snarling, lapping—” Alec went to adjust his grip on the lead, and the slight jostle was the opening the beast needed.
Hugh leapt forward, wrenching the lead out of Alec’s hands, and bolted into the woods, funneling a spray of snow behind him and coating the few remaining parts of Alec that had managed to stay dry.
Alec stumbled to his feet and ran after the dog, holding back a curse as a second chunk of snow slid beneath his trousers and down his backside.
Once he picked his way through the wooded area, he cornered Hugh, who had his snout down to the ground in front of a small den, with his arse in the air, his tail swaying from side to side as though he were waiting to collect his prize.
Alec snatched up the lead, squatted down, and brought his face right fucking close to the bastard, grabbing fistfuls of whatever scruff he could hold.
“Do I need to call your father? Hmm? Or I’ll do you one better,” he said, adopting his best dad voice.
“Do I need to cut back on your treats? Were the two whole pretzels the size of hubcaps that you demolished earlier not enough? Oh, I know. I think I’ll fancy switching to a vegan lifestyle for a bit.
See how happy you’ll be once I replace your rib eyes with those genetically engineered plant-based meat crumble things. ”
The threat earned him a drool-laced harumph that flung sticky strands all over Alec’s coat collar.
“That’s what I thought. Next time, you’ll think better about chasing after a bit of foxy skirt.”
“How do you know the fox was female?” Marisa ascended the shallow embankment and leaned her hip against the only patch on a nearby boulder that had managed to stay clear of snow and Hugh’s havoc.
Upon seeing Marisa join them, Hugh perked up again, and that tail became a speedy metronome of excitement against Alec’s sodden leg.
Exhausted, he groaned as he got upright, rolled his sore shoulder out a time or two, and gestured grandly toward the canine and the dog’s unavoidable erection, both of which were cheerfully engaged in lusty adoration upon seeing Marisa.
“No male like him runs that hard after a creature unless he’s sure she’s a woman. It’s not worth the energy, otherwise.”
Marisa leaned down where Hugh was sitting and cocked her head, squinting in the general direction between his legs. Alec smothered a laugh, then waited for it as, sure enough, she jolted upright and immediately looked skyward, a heated flush creeping up her cheeks.
Yup. She definitely saw it.
Any other time, he would have enjoyed stretching out their bit of banter.
It had become something he looked forward to with more regularity.
Her teasing and him feigning tolerance for it.
But there was an uncertainty sparking in her eyes that he didn’t like, and he was reminded of where they were and how much time he had left to be the one responsible for her care. Per their arrangement, at least.
“Are you all right?”
She rubbed her shoulders. “I’m fine. A bit shaken up, but I’ll survive.”
I’ll survive. He liked those words about as much as he liked the prospect of playing for Argentina. By all the beer in Scotland, there had to be so much more to the human condition than just fucking survival, right?
“Wait here a moment. Let me tie him up, and I’ll check you over.”
This time, Hugh obligingly meandered toward the tree Alec selected, which had a nice flat patch of undisturbed snow perfect for a mastiff-sized crater to be carved out in.
As expected, the dog got to work immediately scooping out his own sort of den, then circled the space twice before finally settling down for a bit.
It wasn’t until all the noises had fallen away that Alec noticed where they were.
Hugh had pulled them off one of the park’s paved walkways into the woods but not so far that they couldn’t still see and hear the people and dogs over at the tents.
The sounds were there but muffled, like the quiet hum of tenants in an apartment building behind closed doors as they moved through the hallways.
Tree trunks of various sizes cordoned off most of the view across the fields but didn’t shield them away from the world entirely.
At the edge of their wooded haven, nature had been kind enough to grant them a little snowy cocoon of seclusion.
And if there was one thing Alec knew as a figure in the public eye, it was that privacy rarely stuck around as long as he needed it to.
He returned to the boulder where Marisa had situated herself, but now both of her mittens had been removed. Her hat, on the other hand, still sat sturdily on her head, framing her lovely face. “How on earth did that hat stay on through all that mess?”
She grabbed a fistful of hair that poked out and hung over her shoulder, along with one of the pom-pom tassels, and shook it for effect.
“Behold the power of frizz. Able to adhere to woolen fabrics with a single touch. Once the molecular bond is fully activated, no known substance can ever remove its—”
Alec leaned forward, swiped his hand through some snow, and slid his slick palm beneath the wool, freeing the hat neatly from her head.
“Hey!”
“Water dissipates static electricity.” He held up the garment for emphasis, then shoved it into the pocket of his coat. “Besides, you’re quite bonny without it.”
The admission was a happy thing, he found, allowing some of the tightness in his chest to alleviate whenever he was caught off guard by how enticing she was.
Marisa shifted on her feet, seemingly uncertain where to look.
“I think that’s the adrenaline talking. You’re still probably hyped up on all those fight-or-flight hormones.
Your judgment’s compromised. You can’t be trusted.
” As soon as the words were out, Marisa paled at what they’d seemingly implied and fluttered her hands in front of his face as words of apology slipped from her lips.
“I didn’t mean that. Shit. I’m so sorry.
There’s nothing wrong with your brain. You can absolutely be trusted.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked you to kiss me in front of hundreds of people, or asked you to pretend to be my boyfriend, or wondered whether all those times you put your arm around me was part of the ground rules.
You know, we really never did hammer those out.
But regardless, they have nothing to do with your injury, and I was a complete asshole for cracking a judgment-based joke at your expense. ”
“Oh, hush, woman. My mind is fine. I took no offense.” He swept forward in a smooth rush and caught her up against him, holding her beneath his chin and rubbing her back until he could somehow convince her central nervous system that it didn’t need to be in survival mode all the damn time. At least not with him.
“Are you sure? Because I am really good at saying stupid shit when . . .”
If he hadn’t become so finely attuned to her, he would have missed it, the way her heart kicked up just a bit higher against his, hammering him with a fine flutter he could feel even through their coats.
He held her away from him and lifted a brow. “Are you nervous?”
She twisted her lips, which had turned pouty and pink from the cold. “Maybe.”
“Don’t be. Besides,” he said, grinning, “as you carefully pointed out, we haven’t yet defined any ground rules. We’ve not broken anything because there’s nothing in place to break.”
“This all just feels so messy at times.”
Hmm. Messy. Not sure he liked that word, at least in the context she meant it. “How so?”
“Well, today has been a flurry of ups and downs that would put anyone out of their right mind. The supply of extract I was relying on for my treat boxes isn’t available, but then I met Hugh, and thanks to his charm—”
“And mine.”
“Of course.” She patted his bicep in reassurance. “But thanks to that, we got all this wonderful exposure from the animal rescue event. Then Hugh ran off, and I tripped all over you—”
“I grabbed you so you’d land on me and not the other way round.”
“I guess,” she mumbled, and he did not like the shift in her tone, the one that was filled with indecisiveness and her ever-present worry. “But then you and he were okay, and we both don’t exactly seem in a hurry to more solidly structure the framework of whatever the hell we’re doing.”
“Ah. I understand.”
She glanced up at him, her big eyes searching for something he worried he’d let shine through without meaning to. “Really? You do?”
“I do. It’s all just . . . nice.”
She stilled and stared blankly at him. Then smiled and echoed, “Nice?”
“Yeah, nice. Like after we first kissed. You were the one who said it was nice, if I recall.”
“Oh, yeah. I did say that.”
“See? You were right from the start. You’re not the least bit messy.
” Then she snorted and buried her forehead against his chest, pulling at his coat lapels for support, or a shield, if he had to guess, but before she could start spewing whatever counterargument her mind was surely working through, he tacked on, “That’s how I know you’re human.
Muddling through all this is part of what makes the journey so beautiful, even if you can’t see quite where you’ll end up or how you’ll get there just yet. ”
He hadn’t expected to be hit so hard by his statement, but he couldn’t very well ignore the truth that he’d just dangled above them like bloody mistletoe.
Marisa’s slim arms squeezed him tighter around his middle, pushing warmth into his core and clearing away the haze that had threatened to take over. “When all this is over, would it really be so bad for you to join Argentina if you got to keep on playing and doing what you love?”
Oh, sweet, beautiful woman. How on earth was he supposed to make sure she was keeping her head above the fray when she went and robbed his thoughts from where they’d rather be? On her. Around her. Just about her.
“I haven’t decided yet. But there’s no need to worry. Brennan has it all in hand, and the awareness I’m drumming up is doing exactly what it needs to do,” he lied. “It’ll all work out in the end.”
“That sounds messy.”
Messy. The damn word was quickly becoming the bloody tagline of their whole affair.
He poked her side, tickling her a bit and making her squirm. “Quiet, you. We’ve got more important things to discuss, like those ground rules.”
“Ground rules,” she repeated as she came down from a laugh that was also thick with an alluring sigh.
And then his own fucking ground rules changed right quick.
She huddled closer against him, and his body thrilled at how perfectly she fit in the cage of his arms. How her scent seemed to meld with the fragrances of the forest, pulling up primal urges and making him wonder just how nice other things would be, things that definitely had no place in the sort of agreement they had.
Alec dipped his head lower, testing the space between them. When she didn’t pull away, he brushed her hair to the side, enjoying the wee patch of her neck still visible. She was quite bundled up, as she should be, but that didn’t stop him from imagining further.
Tasting her. Kissing her there, right at the tiny hollow behind her ear.
“Marisa,” he breathed against her neck. “Regarding ground rules . . .”
“Yes?” The word was more of a sigh than a question.
“Are there any objections to—”
“Oh, shit! I forgot!” She slapped her hand over her forehead and fumbled around in her pocket for her phone.
“What?”
She opened up her calendar and groaned. “My last catering gig is tonight, but I told someone I’d cover their earlier shift, which is right before mine. They’d done a favor for me a few weeks ago, and it totally slipped my mind that I was pulling a double tonight.”
He tried to conceal his disappointment. “Oh.”
“I won’t get home until around eleven. It’s the last one I’m taking before Christmas, though. After that, I’m free to work on the treats for the Ball.”
He took out her hat and adjusted it on her head, trying to ignore the flutters of frustration knocking around his stomach. “Text me when you get home tonight.”
“But it’ll be late.”
“Just promise me.”
She blinked. “All right. I promise. I’ll text you the moment I walk in the door.”
He nodded, then stole a quick, searing kiss before he winked at her, grabbed Hugh, and led them out of the woods, where they could still pretend to be a proper couple for both their sakes.
And so no one could blame him if he picked up where he left off: regarding her with a bit more affection than was strictly necessary.
For the benefit of the bit.