14. Boone
BOONE
The next night, Rhett is on the back porch talking on the phone with another postponed client, and Cade is out in the garage doing some sort of repair work. Wren and I are inside with a deck of cards at the dining table, and there’s a restless energy in the air.
The lights are low in the cabin, casting a golden glow on her skin. That’s all good, except for the especially enticing triangle of cleavage exposed by the V-neck of her snug white shirt.
She beat me the first three hands, and that distracting bit of flesh might be the reason.
She folds on the fourth hand, and on the next one, she bluffs. Badly.
Her face loses all emotion, and her fingers tap once against the edge of her cards before she catches herself. She keeps her shoulders relaxed, but her pulse flutters at the base of her throat.
Instead of matching her bet, I lean slowly across the table.
Her eyes narrow as I come close enough to count the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Close enough to smell her shampoo and see the way her breath catches and how determined she is not to show it.
“You have a terrible poker face,” I say.
Her eyes stay fixed on mine, and the air gets hotter between us. “I’m not the one who’s obvious.”
Every thought in my head dissolves.
An owl hoots somewhere nearby, and the cabin settles with a creak, but Wren doesn’t move away, and neither do I.
Her lips are right there. Dusky pink, bare, slightly parted.
I’ve been careful with her. We all have. But there’s only so much careful a man can be when the woman he wants looks at him like she sees his hunger and doesn’t intend to run from it. Like she has a hunger of her own.
I shift closer, and her fingers curl around her cards.
“Boone,” she whispers.
Her saying my name like that crumbles my resistance.
Then Cade comes into the kitchen from the back door, and Wren jerks back.
I close my eyes as Cade fills a glass of water and drinks half of it, saying nothing. Wren stares down at her cards like they contain the world’s deepest secrets.
I turn in my seat and fully stare at my brother, and he stares back.
“You need something?” I ask.
“Water.”
“Got it?”
He lifts his glass, then drinks the rest, sets it in the sink, and comes our way. “Deal me in next hand.”
The moment is dead, but the temptation to crawl across the table and finish what Cade interrupted takes longer to fade.
The next couple of days follow a familiar pattern. Mornings start with coffee and Wren continuing to wear my shirt like a short robe, knocking the air out of me every time I see her curves in flannel.
She checks in with her supervisor, but nothing much changes on their end. Wren fills the daylight hours working on her laptop, her body angled toward the mountains like she’s straining on a leash.
She’s anxious and frustrated, and I try to ease the mood by cooking good food. Wren insists on helping me clean up every night after dinner.
Her shoulder presses against my arm at the sink as steam rises from the hot water. I wash, and she rinses and dries, and the domesticity of it gets under my skin worse than the flirting.
I understand flirting. A look held too long, laughter, touching. It’s simple and easy.
Wren drying dishes in our kitchen like she belongs here is something else, though, and it makes me ache.
She takes a plate from my hand, our fingers touching briefly. “You’re different from your brothers.”
I give her a grin. “Better looking?”
She smiles back at me. “You all have the same face.”
“Yet you were able to tell us apart right away. I have more charm.”
“That must be it.”
“Definitely.”
She sets the plate in the cabinet after she dries it. She already knows where most things go, and that adds to the ache, which is centered in my chest.
“You’re more talkative, for sure,” she says. “More friendly.”
“More likable.”
She nudges against my arm. “Surely the most modest, too.”
“It’s one of my best qualities.”
She looks at me then, really looks. “I don’t think that’s all it is.”
I keep washing, but I move more slowly as I consider ways to deflect. I could tell her Cade used up the silence, Rhett hogged all the brooding, and someone had to be the handsome one. I could smile, or wink, or make her laugh and distract her from wherever she’s heading.
“We were deployed when our parents died,” I say. “They were in a car accident. Black ice, and a semi that couldn’t stop fast enough. By the time command got us home, all that was here was paperwork and casseroles and people looking at us like we were boys again.”
Wren doesn’t say anything, and I’m glad.
“Rhett handled the arrangements. He knew who to call, what forms to sign, what needed to be paid and what could wait. He stood in the center of it all in his dress uniform, making everyone believe he was in charge.”
“He was,” she says quietly.
“Yeah, he was.” I keep rinsing a bowl even though the suds have already been rinsed away. “Cade disappeared after the funeral. He walked off into the mountains and didn’t come back for three days.”
“Were you worried?”
“Out of my mind.” I’m surprised when I admit it. “Rhett was furious, which is how I knew he was worried, too.”
“But he was okay?”
“He knows the woods better than most people. He came back in one piece. Can’t quite say he was okay.”
Wren’s fingers are tense when she takes the bowl from me. “And you?”
I smile automatically. It’s what I do. It’s as easy as shaking hands, cracking jokes, and making sure everyone eats even when they’ve lost their appetite.
Wren’s gaze cuts to my mouth, and it's like she knows the smile isn’t the whole truth.
The smile fades. “I handled the people.”
“What does that mean?”
“All the neighbors bringing casseroles, aunts crying, old family friends wanting to tell us stories or hug us because they didn’t know what else to do.” I swallow. “Rhett handled the paperwork, Cade went off into the wilderness, and I stood in the living room and smiled at everyone.”
Wren’s face changes, but there’s no pity there, and that’s probably why I keep going.
“I took coats, shook everyone’s hand, and hugged everyone who needed it. I told them we appreciated them coming and said Mom would have loved the flowers. I told them Dad always spoke highly of them, even when I had no idea who the hell they were.”
I look out into the darkness through the window over the sink, and my reflection looks back at me. “I smiled so long I forgot I was doing it.”
Wren stays close by my side.
“After a while, it became useful. In the Army. With townspeople, with clients. Somebody has to be easy, to make people feel safe. The smile became a mask, and I’ve worn it so long, sometimes I forget there’s a face underneath.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret them, but I also feel relieved. I’ve never said that out loud, not to Rhett, Cade, or anyone.
Wren dries the baking pan I handed her, then folds the towel once, lays it on the counter, and turns to me.
There’s no sympathy in her eyes, no little sound of pity. She doesn’t reach for me like I’m something wounded that might bolt for the door.
She just stands there, clear-eyed, seeing more than I meant to show. “I see the face,” she says.
My chest locks down around the words like I’m trying to keep them out and hold them forever at the same time.
She keeps looking into my eyes, and the air in the room changes, but it’s not like poker night. There’s no heat or even a spark, but what passes between us is deeper and more dangerous.
I’ve wanted women before. I’ve flirted and kissed and touched and taken pleasure when it was offered, but I’ve never felt like someone put a hand directly on the hidden part of me.
“Wren.” Her name comes out low, and I don’t know if it’s a warning or a plea.
Whatever it is, she steps closer, and I’m sorely tempted to wrap my arms around her, when there’s a creak of boots on the back porch.
No one comes in, but the sound is enough to jolt me into the present reality. There’s a threat out there in the mountains, and I live here under the same roof as my brothers.
If I touch Wren now, I won’t be able to pretend it’s casual.
She seems to read it in my eyes. Her expression changes, her gaze drops to my mouth, then she takes a step back, saving us both.
“Thank you for dinner,” she says.
I huff a quiet laugh because my heart is hammering, and my hands are still aching to touch her. “You’re welcome.”
She picks up her mug of tea and starts toward the hallway. At the corner, she pauses and looks back, and even though she’s in pants and a sweater, I’m imagining her bare legs and how she looks in the mornings, wearing my shirt.
She’s across the room, but I can still smell the scent of her shampoo in my mind.
“Boone?”
“Yeah?”
She tilts her head and her hair slides over her shoulder. “I don’t think friendly is bad.”
I swallow. “No?”
“No.” She gives me a small smile, then continues around the corner, and I stand in the kitchen long after she’s gone, hands braced on the counter and head bowed.
When Cade comes in from outside, he takes one look at me and stops. Rhett comes in a few seconds later, and his gaze moves from my face to where Wren disappeared.
Neither of them speaks. They don’t have to.
Cade’s expression tightens with something like understanding, and Rhett’s jaw shifts once.
I straighten. “I’m fine.”
Cade looks at Rhett, and Rhett looks back at him. Then both of them look at me with identical expressions of disbelief.
I almost laugh. “Shut up,” I mutter.
“Nobody said anything,” Cade says.
I shake my head, grab my jacket from the hook by the back door, and step outside to clear my head.
Beyond the clearing, the trees are black and silver in the moonlight. All the shadows are familiar, and so are all the sounds coming from the forest.
Our land. Our cabin.
Our woman inside it.
Maybe I should correct that thought, but I don’t.