Chapter Eight
Chet
“I owe you an apology.”
Grady shuts the door behind him, bathed in the glow from a skylight just above him in the spacious foyer. I know I’m just some intern for the Publicity Department at Wild West Studios, but I can’t imagine anyone there could have lit him any better than he looks right now.
“Yeah,” he reminds me, nudging me with his hip to keep going. “We covered that over breakfast, remember?”
“No,” I insist as we drift deeper inside the cabin. “I mean, I thought you’d be just some dumb bumpkin in overalls and a ballcap, driving me around all week between stopping at every gas station in town to stock up on chewing tobacco, but ... this is some next-level style right here.”
He watches me as I admire the blond wood walls, rich and sumptuous and sparsely covered by black and white nature prints in thick wooden frames: abandoned barns, deserted water pumps, lonely fences, and dancing tumbleweeds.
A sunken living room features rich leather furniture and brass-topped tables, all facing floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a veritable forest of towering pines that make me feel like an honest-to-goodness pioneer.
“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” he muses as we stand at the threshold of the stylish living room.
“Are all the cabins like this?” I marvel, ignoring him as I fiddle with the handle of a sliding glass door.
“Here,” he says gently, our hands brushing lightly as he takes over and undoes the latch with ease. The slightest touch makes me shiver in a way I haven’t in years, if ever. “Let me help you.”
He slides the door open, but neither of us ventures through just yet, standing in the doorway as fresh, cool air and nature sounds surround us in their primal soup. “You ... you already have,” I insist dopily. “In ... in more ways than one.”
He smiles, big and broad, no more artifice or bullshit. I marvel at his smooth, ruddy complexion, so flawless and tan, and making me wonder if he has tan lines or not.
“Yeah?” he asks, nodding at me to follow him onto the V-shaped deck that extends out into the forest beyond like the bow of a ship. “How’s that, City Boy?”
I blush at the nickname, so earnest and well-earned. Fresh wood stretches underfoot as he goes straight to the edge, the porch railing giving way to a long stretch of grass and, in the midst of a towering strand of ancient trees, a lake glistening in the afternoon sun just beyond.
He sees me admiring it, jaw agape at the natural splendor. “Lake Cottonwood,” he explains in that slow, southern twang of his. “Which reminds me—you did pack swim trunks in that bag of rocks you carried onto the plane with you this morning, didn’t you?”
“Why the hell would I?” I sputter. “The last thing I thought I’d find when I got to Pistol Creek is ... water.”
His rich, rugged guffaw echoes across the small canyon beyond the deck railing, seeming to ripple across Lake Cottonwood itself. “Stay with me here, Chet ... Pistol Creek. Creek, yeah? As in ... a body of water?”
“Sure, fine, I just ... I guess I thought it was just a fancy name that didn’t really mean what it says. Like the way my crappy apartment complex is called Shady Elms, you know? It’s never shady and surrounded by scruffy, half-dead palms, so...”
He leans against the railing, all long limbs and lean angles, and every inch of him sexier than the last. He looks perfectly at home here, peaceful, natural, raw boned and rugged, as if maybe he had a hand in chopping, hauling, and then placing the logs that make up the rustic little cabin he’s so generously offered to let me stay in for the rest of the week.
“I suppose.” He sighs, as if content to just stand there like a Greek statue all day, drowning in my drool collecting at his feet. Then he turns to me with a lurid smile. “So, Chet, waddya think?”
I blink bashfully, suddenly intimidated by the surroundings. And the man who introduced me to them. And his towering physique and dirty brown curls and cute little dimples and thick, red lips. “It’s amazing, Grady. Honestly, I ... I can’t thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he insists, turning gently to face me.
I mirror his posture, cocking one hip against the thick wooden railing as the forest sounds engulf us, lowering my blood pressure with every chirping bird and rustling branch.
“You just have to promise me one thing while you’re here. ”
I chuckle, nodding toward the sprawling wooden deck, already kitted out with patio furniture and, if I’m not mistaken, a grill hiding under an evergreen colored tarp.
“While I’m here at the cabin?” I tease, struggling to breathe as I catch a whiff of his sandalwood cologne and overpoweringly masculine pheromones. “Or here in Pistol Creek?”
“Both,” he insists. Firmly. So firmly, making me wonder what he’d be like in bed: demanding? Rough? Bossy? Or meek, gentle, caring, and tender? And why can’t I decide which one is hotter?
“Which is?” I ask aloud, hoping against hope the sexy fucker can’t read minds in addition to everything else he does so well.
“That you’ll ... try to see us as more than hicks, okay?”
“Us?” I tease. “Or ... you?”
Our eyes meet once more, the tension ripe and thick and hard between us. Oh wait, that’s just my dick, leaping at the sudden intimacy of this very quiet, very natural, very erotic, and most unexpected moment. “I guess I did mean me.”
I meet his eyes calmly and insist evenly, “I don’t think you’re a hick, Grady.”
I can’t tell if he’s surprised or disappointed. “You don’t?”
“Not at all,” I insist, glancing ever up into his wide, hazel eyes. “And even if I did, would that be so bad?”
A wooden plank creaks beneath his feet as he inches gently closer. I stiffen, then relax. “That depends,” he insists, hand sliding out along the railing to rest just shy of mine. “Do you ... like hicks?”
I swallow and answer his challenge. Why the hell not, right? He’s the one asking, and after all, dude’s just gifted me with a sprawling sex cabin for the week. “Hmmm,” I murmur, feeling it all the way down to my blue, aching balls. “I’m starting to like one in particular.”
He blushes, beams, and nods, removing his hand as quickly as he’d (almost) offered it. “Then I suppose that’s enough for me, Chet.”
I watch him inching gently back toward the cabin. “Wait, where are you going?” I sputter. “I thought...” I wave at the railing, as if his handprint might actually be seared into the rich blond wood from the heat of our obvious connection. “I thought we were having a moment here.”
“We are.” He chuckles, tucking two fingers against his brow and offering me a vaguely awkward, if totally charming, little salute. “That’s why I’m going to go back to town, grab a few things for dinner, and ... come back.”
I stand at the edge of the deck, gawking at him like some tourist on a studio tour. “You ... you are?”
“Yeah.” He chuckles breezily, as if this is how he treats all his out-of-town guests. “That going to be okay, City Boy?”
I lean back, taking him all in and settling on that rich, heady smile of his. “More than okay, Cowboy. But ... can you do me one small favor?”
He beams like a puppy with a new bone. “Sure, what’s that?”
I give him a good once-over before winking. “Wear something a little more ... country when you come back.”