Chapter 5
chapter
five
Gracie
A few hours later, I pull onto the gravel drive slowly, as if I’m still deciding whether or not to go through with this.
Admittedly, I took a long time packing. Some, because I wasn’t sure what to bring.
What do you pack when you’re moving into your temporary husband’s house to play pretend for six months?
But also because I wanted to use up a chunk of the evening, so we wouldn’t have too much one-on-one time. So yeah, I wasted time.
My headlights sweep across the front of the house, catching the big window that I know sits in his living room, and I kill the engine before I can change my mind.
But I make no move to get out of my car. I hate lying to people. Frankly, I’m not very good at it either. And having to lie to both Kelsie and Caroline will likely give me hives. Thankfully, I avoided seeing them when I went and grabbed my car from behind our bakery.
Not that they’re avoiding me. No, they’re both blowing up my phone. In our group chat and individually. I responded once. Telling them I’d explain everything later. Since then, I’ve left them both on read.
The entire drive out here, I’ve been having a conversation with myself that would have concerned any licensed mental health professional.
It’s not so much the reality of being married to Henry that’s causing my stomach to knot.
No, for reasons I opt not to analyze, that feels fine. No, it is the lying.
To my friends, but also everyone else. The entire town. I grew up here, and I might not have family around anymore, but there are plenty of people in Saddle Creek who have known me from birth. Lying to them feels wrong.
The front door to Henry’s ranch-style home opens and he steps out looking like every Texas girl’s dream. Dark Wrangler jeans encase his thick thighs, his white t-shirt molds to his shoulders and biceps and I swear that my mouth waters. This is why I try not to be in the same place as this man.
He is my greatest temptation. And my biggest heartache. I blow out a breath.
“You planning on coming inside, Firefly, or you gonna sleep in your car?” he asks from the porch.
Oh that damned nickname. Always makes my belly go all gooey. Insufferable man.
I swing open my door, and he’s there to help me out like I’m a ninety-year-old lady.
“I can open my own door, Henry,” I say.
His lips quirk. “I’m well aware. Just trying to be a good husband.”
“Well, there’s no need for that right now—”
But then he’s crowding me up against my car. He leans down and puts his mouth right by my ear. I shiver and I hate how my body reacts to his nearness.
“We’re not exactly alone just yet,” he says. His warm breath flutters against my sensitive skin.
I do my very best not to angle my head to give him better access. “Who?” is all I can manage.
“Oliver. He asked for a night to get his stuff together.” One of his hands comes to rest on my hip and he gives that squishy love-handle a squeeze. “You will have to sleep in my room tonight.”
I suck in a breath and it’s the very worst thing I could have done. Because I’ve just inhaled a mouthful of Henry’s scent. That woodsy, manly, leathery goodness that is uniquely him. I close my eyes and lean my head forward so it rests on his chest.
“Whatever,” I say with confidence I don’t actually feel. “I am so exhausted, I just want a bed.” Then I tilt my head back to look at him. “But you could’ve called me, I could’ve stayed at my house another night.”
“Exactly why I didn’t call.” He pushes off the car and puts distance between our bodies. “Let me grab your stuff. You can go ahead and go inside.”
I ignore him and go to my trunk to grab a couple of bags.
“Stubborn,” he mutters as he passes by me, his arms loaded.
I stick my tongue out at his back because I am nothing if not mature.
I stomp after him, trying to decide if he’d notice if I made a pillow fort between us in his bed.
My first step inside is met with resistance against my shins.
I stop moving so I don’t fall over and look down to find a dog roughly the size of a small pony.
“Bayou, sit,” Henry says in a commanding tone. The dog plops down on its butt, but its ridiculously furry tail swishes back and forth on the wood floor as if sweeping.
“You have a dog?” I ask.
Henry takes the bags out of my arms, and I immediately fall to the floor to give Bayou some love.
“I have a dog.”
“She looks like a super-sized Golden Retriever.”
“She’s a mix between a Golden Retriever and a Great Pyrenees.” He chuckles. “But yeah, she looks like an enormous retriever. She’s sweet as pie, aren’t you, baby girl?” he asks in a cooing voice.
That should not have been sexy. He’s talking to his dog.
“Where’s Oliver?”
“In his room.” He nods to the hallway to our left. “Probably pouting. He’ll live.” He walks in the opposite direction. “Our room is over here.
I follow behind him and Bayou walks next to me. Her nails click-clicking on the hardwood floors.
He opens the bedroom door and I follow him inside. I see he’s already piled my stuff on a window seat on the right side of the room.
“I bet the view from that bay window is beautiful in the morning,” I say.
“It is.”
One bed. Of course, there’s only one bed. Why would he have more than one when it’s just him?
King-sized. White sheets—clean ones, I can tell; they have that crisp, just-changed look, which means he changed them for me, which means he thought about this. Knowing we would be sharing a bed. At least for tonight.
Two pillows on each side. A quilt at the foot of the bed—handmade, blue and gray, tumbling blocks pattern.
His grandmother's. I know this the same way I know it matters, the same way I know everything about him that I've spent years collecting without intention.
Henry just has a way of burrowing into parts of me.
I stare at the bed.
“I can sleep on the floor,” he says.
“Don't be ridiculous.”
“I can sleep on the couch.”
“Oliver will see you on the couch. He'll know something's off.” I go to the window seat and unzip the bag I know holds my sleep clothes and toiletries.
I keep digging in the bag, not looking at Henry, but also not really looking at my belongings. “We're adults. We can share a bed.”
“Absolutely,” he says.
“It's not a big deal.”
“Not at all.”
Oh my God, stop talking. “People share beds all the time.”
“Constantly.”
I look at him. “You're being very agreeable.”
“I'm a very agreeable person.”
I snort. “You are the least agreeable person I have ever met in my life.” I pull out my sleep shirt—oversized, soft, old enough that the cotton's gone thin at the collar.
I see his eyes drop to it and then snap away like he's been caught looking at something classified.
My stomach flips. I ignore it. “Which side do you sleep on?”
“Left.”
“Fine. I'll take the right.” I gather my toiletry bag and the sleep shirt and head for the bathroom. Pause in the doorway. Turn back. “Henry.”
“Yeah.”
“If you make this weird, I will smother you with the quilt.”
He grins. “Noted.”
I close the bathroom door.
I turn on the water.
I brush my teeth. I wash my face. I shower and wash my hair. I go through every step of my nighttime routine with the kind of careful focus usually reserved for piping delicate lace work on a cake.
I just know that if I stop doing, I'm going to think about the fact that he changed the sheets.
That he's out there right now, on the other side of this door, in this house that smells like him, probably sitting on the edge of the bed being calm and steady and so very Henry about this while I'm in here pressing a cold washcloth to my face and trying to get my heart rate below triple digits.
I pull on the sleep shirt. It hits mid-thigh.
The collar slips off one shoulder. My face in the mirror is scrubbed clean—no makeup, not that I wear very much of it.
Still my freckles seem to stand out more than usual.
Probably that flush coloring my cheeks an unflattering blotchy red.
It could be from the hot water, but it is almost certainly from existential panic.
I open the bathroom door.
He's on the bed. Sitting on the edge of the left side, changed into a pair of loose athletic shorts. And nothing else. It’s not like I haven’t seen him without a shirt before. I grew up in his backyard, swimming in his family’s pool.
So this is no big deal to be seeing the muscled lines of his back and the tan lines at his neck and biceps, revealing how much he works outside in the hot Texas sun.
“You should wear sunscreen,” I find myself saying. But I don’t overanalyze it. I’m just a safety girl.
He glances at me over his shoulder. His gaze drops from my face to travel down my body, then slowly back up.
My nipples tighten under his heated stare. Inside my head, I’m having an ALL CAPS freak out.
I’M IN HENRY’S BEDROOM.
I’M GOING TO SLEEP IN HENRY’S BED. WITH HENRY.
Finally, he looks away from me, which allows my brain a moment to stop panicking.
“You know I keep baker’s hours. You don’t have to go to bed as early as I do. You can do whatever it is you normally do at night when I’m not here.”
“Baker’s hours aren’t much different from rancher’s hours,” he says.
“Right.”
I’m doing my very best not to stare at all the naked skin he’s showing.
His broad chest and thickly muscled torso, and those impossibly thick thighs sprinkled with light brown hair.
I’ve got half a mind to tell him to cover himself up and stop being such a thirst trap, but I don’t want to give him that kind of leverage.
“Do you need anything before I go lock up?” he asks.
I shake my head, not trusting my voice to answer.
What is wrong with me? He’s just a man.
But he’s not. Not really. Henry has always been more.
Don’t wait for me, Gracie Lynn. We don’t belong together.
His words from so many years ago flash through me as they have hundreds of times before. Funny how the pain from that rejection hasn’t faded even a little. I know what that means. The reason why his gentle refusal still causes pain to stab at my heart.
I still love him.
As much as I wish I didn’t, that is my reality.