Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Wade
“What happens if he doesn’t wake up?”
That was what Mom said to me when I left her at Blaze’s hospital room door. I didn’t know what to say, wouldn’t have known what to say if it wasn’t for Lou, if she hadn’t shared with me about her own family’s trauma.
“You can’t think like that, Mom. You just have to be here for when he does,” I’d told her, and then she’d hugged me, but not in her normal embrace for me, the one that was quick and efficient, but the kind of embrace she usually reserved for Blaze. The one that held on. That gave as much support as it took.
In that embrace—in that moment—I realized how easily Lou could’ve changed Blaze’s life because it was with that same kind of ease that she’d changed mine.
I drove back to the Lamplight Inn consumed with thoughts of her. The way she so easily gave of herself to others. The way she sat and talked to an unconscious man like conversation could keep him alive. It couldn’t, but it definitely did keep my mother from going off the edge of sanity.
The way she never asked anyone for anything—not even a ride home when she had no car—as though her greatest fear in life was to impose on someone. Even the way she dressed and did her hair, always folding herself into this nice, neat little package that remained tucked into the background.
As the streetlights became sparse in the stretch between Stonebar and Friendship, so did the lightness of my thoughts. Mom kept calling Lou an angel, which only served to remind me just how sinful the rest of my thoughts about her were.
I dreamed about unraveling her thick braids and combing my fingers through her honey-brown hair. I fantasized about her full lower lip and the sounds she’d make if it were caught between my teeth. And I imagined the color her cheeks would be when I praised her for taking my cock.
And then, invariably, I’d remember that all those fantasies were my brother’s reality, and the cold slap of envy would jar me back to the moment.
I pulled my car into the spot out front and parked. It was late—almost ten thirty. Lou locked the front door at nine, so I used the keypad to let myself inside. The light above the reception desk was on and would stay that way until Lou turned it off in the morning when she came down. I breathed in deep, grateful that the only distraction I’d have to face tonight was the woman in my dreams.
I headed to the staircase, my foot on the first tread, when a flicker of light caught my eye. A candle.
I frowned. It was too late for any of them to be lit. It was dangerous. I strode toward the living room and stopped short when I saw her. Lou.
The candles all along the mantle of the fireplace were lit, streaming an unsteady bath of light over the far end of the room and the woman who’d dozed off on the couch. I took a few steps into the room and paused, seeing if she would wake, but she stayed just as soundly sleeping as Blaze was in the hospital .
What was she…
I looked closer, then noted all of the papers that covered the coffee table in front of the couch, arranged in various stacks. There was also a pile of magazines and a small arrangement of business cards, and Lou’s laptop rested precariously on the edge of her lap.
My nostrils flared. She shouldn’t be working this late. One of the many things I’d learned about Lou over the last week was that the woman stuck to her schedule. Not that she had much choice. The inn was her business—her baby. She was the only one responsible for making sure things stayed on track. And that meant a nine thirty bedtime and a five a.m. wake-up.
So why was she down here working at ten thirty?
Moving quietly through the room, I stopped just in front of the coffee table and let my eyes roam over her. Her fitted, short-sleeve tee shaped to the slope of her shoulder and the full swells of her breasts. The loose blazer that would normally hide every curve from her neck to her hips was draped over the pillow on the other side of the couch. Her chest moved in a soft rhythm of sleep.
It would be so easy to just pick her up and carry her to her room, to lay her on her bed and kiss her like my very own Sleeping Beauty.
But she’s not yours, the surly, sexually frustrated voice inside my head reminded me.
“Lou,” I said with a low rumble before I did something I’d regret.
She exhaled with a soft noise and then turned her head away from me. Dammit. One more go, and if she didn’t wake up, I’d carry her.
“Lou, it’s time for bed.” I bent and gently placed my hand on her arm.
Instantly, her eyes sprung open and it took her a second to focus on me—to realize this wasn’t a dream, and when she did, she gasped and jolted upright .
“Oh, no.” She pressed the backs of her knuckles to her cheeks, feeling the color in them. “What time is it? Was I sleeping?” she asked like she couldn’t believe it, her gold eyes sparkling back to life.
“You were.” I turned my attention to the array of papers and images on the table. “What are you doing down here?” My eyes narrowed. Floral arrangements. Furniture and tent rentals. Musicians. Catering. “Are you planning a wedding?”
Cold spread through my chest like a shard of ice had been stabbed in the center. Was she planning her wedding with…
“Yes.” She sat taller and then instantly went stiff, her head snapping up with a look of horror on her face. “No. I mean, no. Not for me. I’m—” She broke off at the turn of my frown, already hearing the echo of the apology forming in her throat. “Max’s former business partner wants to have his wedding at the inn. I’ve always thought about offering event services here, but it just hasn’t been at the front of my plate until now. I told him I’d put together options and vendors and?—”
Lou set her laptop on the table and bumped a stack of papers off the edge.
“On no!” She tried to catch the pages as they tumbled into disarray, her dismay quickly turning into a whimper of pain as one of them sliced her finger. “Crap,” she muttered and stuck the wound between her lips.
Desire sucker-punched my gut as her full mouth closed around the tip of her finger. Her wide, innocent eyes looked at me behind her square glasses. Her hair was still braided back, but some of the strands had started to loosen from their hold. My hand curled at my side. I wanted to loosen the whole of her. Her hair in my fingers. Her innocence in my praise. And her mouth with mine.
Fuck .
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this before. That first morning at breakfast, I’d watched, tortured, as she sucked jam off her fingers. This shouldn’t have felt any worse than that. Except it did. It felt so much fucking worse.
The way I wanted her had buried like a seed deep within my gut, growing and spreading in the shadows where I thought I could ignore it until I couldn’t. But I had to. It was like I was drowning. Needing to breathe, though it was impossible.
Wanting her, but knowing I could never have her because she belonged to Blaze.
“I’ll get it,” I offered roughly and dropped to my knees, carefully retrieving the papers from every corner of the carpet.
“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “I’ve just been behind… and I really want to get something together for Max’s friend and his fiancée. They want to have their wedding here in September…”
I shuffled the papers together and then tapped them on the coffee table to straighten them out. My gaze found hers over the edges. “So, you’re going to add wedding planner to your job title as well as innkeeper?”
“No,” Lou said with a small smile as I handed her the stack. “I just want to have all of the options ready for… whoever wants to get married.” As she took the papers, one last sheet caught my eye where it hid underneath the couch.
“One more,” I grunted and reached for it, not realizing just how far it had slid until my face was precariously close to her legs in order for my arm to reach. “What do we have here?”
I fished out the sheet, realizing it wasn’t like the rest.
The others had been printer paper, but this was a torn-out page from a magazine with a full-page image of a bride and groom kissing at the head of a dining table that was covered in white roses and candles while their family lifted champagne glasses in celebration. Across the top, the title read Intimate Vintage.
“Nothing.” She plucked it from my fingers and quickly balled it up as garbage as though it was something I shouldn’t have seen.
As though it was a secret. Her secret .
I rested one hand on the coffee table and the other on the edge of the couch, almost intentionally boxing her into her seat.
“Is that what you want?” I demanded low.
“What?” Lou looked at me with wide, doe-eyes, the flickering candles highlighting the gold flecks tucked along the perimeter of her irises. “No,” she said, though the pink dusting her cheeks confessed otherwise . “Just ideas. Inspiration. For guests.”
She was a terrible liar. So terrible it was fucking adorable. And attractive. And… my chest went tight. If it wasn’t inspiration for guests, then I was right, and if I was right, then…
I picked up the crumbled magazine page and peeled it back open, only this time when I looked at the image, it was Lou in the simple white wedding dress.
“Do you ever let yourself want something, Lou?”
She stilled at my question and then jerked her gaze to the papers on her lap. “What? Of course,” she stammered and pretended to arrange them again.
Liar. I watched her pulse tick and tumble along the slender column of her throat. I wanted the truth. I needed this truth.
A gravelly sound emerged from my chest, followed by my husked demand, “When was the last time you did something you wanted?”
Lou shivered and slowly lifted her head. Her cheeks were a sultry shade of red—a guilty shade of red. A hungry shade of red. The same hunger had colored her skin when she’d looked at me earlier tonight. I’d tried to convince myself I’d imagined it. Fantasized it. But I hadn’t.
Lou wanted me, too.
My cock grew harder. Ached harder. Pained harder. I tried like hell not to be attracted to my brother’s girlfriend, but goddamn, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Some women were beautiful in an explosive kind of way, like a firework in the night sky or a rainbow after a storm, forcing you to stop in your tracks and take notice. But Lou… Lou was gorgeous in the way the trees change in autumn or the sun sets on th e horizon. An exquisite kind of beauty that existed only for those who would take the time to stop and savor it.
“Why does that matter?” she murmured, her eyes fluttering.
“It matters to me.” Because I wanted to savor it.
Because I wanted to savor her.
I grunted and shifted my weight. It would’ve been a good time to stand and get some distance, except there was no way to do that without putting her eye-level with my throbbing hard cock. Then I would be the one under scrutiny.
“I… bought my inn,” Lou said firmly, the pink tip of her tongue sliding along the curve of her lips. And I wanted to chase it with mine. To taste her mouth. Her skin. To feel the warm velvet of her tongue knotted with mine.
“And before that?”
Now, she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying the flesh for a second. “I ran my brother’s art gallery.”
“And you wanted to do that for you or for him?”
“I wanted to do it,” she answered.
“For you or for him?”
A tremor of irritation went through her. “He was going to throw away all his paintings…”
She’d done it for him, and we both knew it.
“And before that?”
Her chin notched higher, but all that did was give me a better view of the unsteady clamor of her pulse. “I worked at The Maine Squeeze as a barista.”
“For you?”
Again, her lip rolled through her teeth. “I wanted to save money.”
“For you, Lou?”
“They were short-staffed and needed someone,” she said with a small huff and tried to grab the magazine image again. I tugged it back in time, but not before she lost her balance and started to topple forward.
Her hands landed on my shoulders, and my free hand bracketed her waist, stopping her from crashing into me with hardly an inch separating her mouth from mine.
My jaw locked. Our eyes collided, and our breaths crashed together, one hot wave into another. A storm brewing, sweeping away all boundaries and safeties of the shore.
I should push her away, sit her straight, but instead my fingers only held the soft dip of her waist tighter, hungry for the feel of her bare skin under my fingertips. My gaze roamed up her torso. I could see the tight tips of her breasts pressing through the fabric of her top. I wondered if her nipples were red like her cheeks or if they would be once my mouth got ahold of them.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because what you want matters, Lou,” I said, my voice hoarse.
Her eyes dropped to my mouth, and mine sank in tandem. I felt her swift inhale, the need for oxygen just a cover for the way she wanted me closer.
“What you want should be everything, Lou…” I was so close the tip of my nose brushed hers.
Her lashes dusted the tops of her cheeks, and when I went to reach for the side of her face, I forgot I held the magazine, and the edge of the paper caught the table and made a tearing sound.
Lou started, her eyes fluttering and then going wide, realizing what had almost happened. She quickly recoiled to the safety of the couch, her hands running along her braided hair as she stammered, “I’ll… take it under consideration.”
I looked back at the torn image, seeing Lou still as the bride, only this time, my brother’s face replaced the groom’s. Him and Lou… I dropped the ripped magazine page like it was fire between my fingertips.
Thinking of the two of them when I’d just been a breath away from kissing her—knowing he was the only one who had that right—it opened up a pit inside my chest. A green, gnawing pit.
“Is this what you imagined with Blaze?” I couldn’t help the envious drop in my voice .
“No!” She exclaimed instantly and shook her head. “No, of course not.”
I knew how the saying went—that a lady doth protest too much—but in this instance, it was wrong. There was no hesitation. No uncertainty. My head cocked. She’d been lying when she said the photograph wasn’t inspiration for her own wedding, but she wasn’t lying now.
“Why not?” I probed, feeling instinct and exhaustion take over. “Because you were with a movie star, so you imagined something bigger? Grander?” I growled before I could think better of it.
Everything about Lou Kinkade screamed subtle intoxication, not the kind of outlandish extravaganza Blaze created everywhere he went. They were opposites. Their personalities. Their lives. Their families. Sure, opposites attracted, but not like this. I knew that fact like it was written in my blood and carved in my bones. I knew it because Blaze and I had always been opposites, had always liked opposing things. I knew it because Blaze was never attracted to the kind of woman who attracted me… and Lou Kinkade had wholly, unsettlingly attracted me.
And now I was desperate to find something wrong with this beautiful, kind, and smart woman, so I would stop wanting her the way that I did.
It was driving me insane… and turning me into an asshole.
She looked at me, her wide brown eyes pierced with pain. Shit. And then her jaw locked tight, and she forced herself to swallow.
“No. Definitely not,” she clipped and returned her focus to the piles of papers, reorganizing them into their original stacks.
Before I could think better of it, my hand slid forward on the table until it rested over hers. She stilled, and the candles flickered at the swift catch of her breath.
“Then what did you picture with him, Lou?” I demanded, my voice cracking. Maybe if I could picture it, too—the two of them married—I’d stop picturing her with me. Pressed against me. Moaning underneath me.
Her throat bobbed, and for a second, I swore she was going to yank her hand away and run. But then her chin dipped in a kind of deep resignation I didn’t fully understand.
“I didn’t picture anything with your brother,” she admitted softly. “I never imagined myself marrying him.”
It was a damn shitty thing to feel pure joy that my brother’s girlfriend never considered marrying him. Unadulterated relief that this shy, independent woman knew she was better off not hitching her bright future to Blaze’s falling star. But that relief was short-lived.
Lou thought of everything—had everything planned, everything on a schedule. I didn’t care who the man was. There was no way she’d date someone and not think about where it was leading…
“Why not?”
Now, she pulled her hand back, reaching up and tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“Why, Lou?” I pressed, feeling myself inch closer because I had to know.
All week, I watched this woman cater to everyone else’s needs—her guests, her family, my brother, my mother, and even my own—and never did I see anyone ask about her. Even when I tried, she buried her own needs like they didn’t exist. Like she was created only to fill the needs of others. And I hated the thought that Blaze had had that—and that he’d taken advantage of it.
Lou pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying the full flesh before she slowly turned to me and lifted her eyes to mine.
“Because he is who he is, and I’m me,” she said and let out a soft, strangled laugh. “You know this. You saw it from the start. We’re from different worlds. We don’t belong together. Not like that.”
“Is that what you really think? ”
Her head dipped, and I growled, the sound bringing her eyes back to mine.
“Please, Wade, it doesn’t matter,” she begged, her breath escaping in a soft rush. “What I want… doesn’t matter?—”
Her words felt like a hot knife twisting between my ribs. I hated the resignation in her voice. I hated more that Blaze was the reason it was there.
“Bullshit. Of course, it matters,” I bit out, my voice deepening as something uncontrollable awakened inside me. “Is that what he told you? That what you want doesn’t matter? Because he’s a selfish idiot if that’s?—”
“No!” Her protest erupted like something exploded inside her chest, sending her rocketing off the couch with its force. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted because we weren’t together.”
Her hand slapped over her mouth, her pupils blowing wide.
I stood slowly, swearing that I couldn’t have heard her right. “What did you just say?”
Lou drew a tremulous breath, her fingers sliding to hold her throat as she repeated unsteadily, “We weren’t together.”
Air fled from my chest like a prisoner freed from the war inside me. They aren’t together. The knowledge snapped my restraint—shackles I hadn’t known were so strong until they were gone.
She wasn’t his.
In three words, the gravity of her relationship with Blaze—the rules, the boundaries—was eliminated from the atmosphere, no longer pulling her toward him… and out of my reach.
“Because of this? Because you wanted a future, and he didn’t?” I demanded with a low voice, knowing that was exactly like something my brother would do.
Blaze was selfish and self-centered, not in a cruel way but a careless one. Then again, he was usually at least smart enough to make clear from the beginning that any kind of future with him was off the table.
“Is that why you argued that night? Why you broke up?”
She made a strangled sound. “No?—”
I stepped closer, my face lowering as I growled, “What did he want, Lou?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured huskily, her breath catching as her gaze lowered to my mouth. “I don’t know what he wanted… but it wasn’t me.”
A kind of fury I couldn’t explain came over me. To see this beautiful, kind woman who spent her whole life catering to the needs of those around her feel unwanted was… criminal .
It was fucking criminal.
“Then he’s an even bigger fool than I thought,” I rasped and reached up to cup her face, forbidding her eyes from looking away.
“W-What?” The sincerity in her voice killed me. She truly didn’t fucking understand how lucky Blaze should’ve felt to have her— to have had her.
“He didn’t deserve you, Lou. Not even fucking close.”
For Lou Kinkade, not wanting anything more for herself was a habit. A habit my brother had fostered. A habit I wanted to break.
I groaned and dipped my head lower. “If you were mine, you would never question what I wanted.”
Her eyes grew hooded. “And what is that?”
A deep rumble hummed from the center of my chest. “To give you everything you want.”
Her breath hitched. “Wade…”
My cock swelled at the sound of my name on her lips. It was a plea she didn’t know how to make. And I could’ve simply answered it—could’ve lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her. But I wanted to hear it— no, I wanted her to hear herself say it.
“What do you want, Lou?” I asked, my thumb stroking along the edge of her bottom lip.
When I kissed her, I wanted it to be because she’d asked—because she’d wanted it. And I wanted her to know it was me, not Blaze, who gave her what she needed .
“Tell me what you want, angel.” My gravelly encouragement purring from deep in my chest.
I felt the warm release of her breath, a forbidden filament about to be set on fire.
“I want you to kiss me.” The words—her want—felt like the most precious gift, and I was damn sure going to make sure she knew it.
“Good girl,” I praised and then crushed my mouth to hers.