Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
BECK
How?
How is it possible that she keeps surprising me?
Every time I think I know what to expect from her, that I am learning her inside and out, she does something new to blow my mind.
Because I sure as hell didn’t expect the dancing.
Hattie hates running. But she probably covers five miles just in the corner of the dance floor we claim. “Shut Up and Dance,” “Mr. Brightside,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.”
My girl. Does. Not. Stop.
By the time they cut the cake, I’ve ditched the suit jacket and yanked open the tie, and the pins in Hattie’s hair I loosened have rocked their way out. Her hair has gone from garden to jungle, and I fucking love it.
Her mom, on the other hand—
“Hattie! Your hair looks a fright—” Hattie’s mom practically lunges for her as the wedding party positions itself around the three-tiered cake.
“Mom!” Hattie bats her hands away and ducks behind two other bridesmaids. I’m glad no one else hears the crunch of plastic from the water bottle in my hand.
“But you look—”
“Mom, it’s no big deal,” Margaret intervenes, waving her mom away. “It’s a party. We all look like we’ve been dancing the night away.”
“Which we have,” Hattie’s new brother-in-law says, pulling Margaret tighter against him before kissing her cheek.
“How about we just—” the photographer lowers his camera, steps in, and plucks a dangling rosebud from Hattie’s hair.
“Ow!”
My jaw sets, but before I can garrote the guy with his camera strap, Hattie glares at him with murder in her eyes.
“Touch me one more time, Pooparazzi, and mine’ll be the last button you push—”
Hattie’s mom squawks her name in horror, but the shrieks of laughter and deep-voiced Ohs! of the rest of the bridal party nearly drown her out.
Even the photographer is laughing, which is a good thing. His sense of humor might just save his life.
Because I’m laughing too. Damn, my girl is funny.
At the wedding ceremony—and when we first arrived at this freakin’ estate for the reception—all I could think about was how I do not fit in here. Not with this crowd. Not with their money.
But the next thing I knew, all I had time and space for was Hattie. How crazy beautiful she looks tonight. How dancing with her was the most fun I’ve had in years.
How every time I’m with her is the best damn time.
How crazy I am about her.
Lucky for him, the photographer is quick with the cake-cutting pictures, and Hattie heads back to me with two plates.
“Mom tried to skimp on mine, but Margaret wouldn’t have it,” she says, handing me a plate with an impressive wedge of cake on it. “Here. It’s maple hazelnut.”
One bite and my knees go weak. “Oh, man—”
“Mmm hmm,” Hattie hums around a bite. “When we went to the cake tasting, Mom wanted Margaret to pick the cardamom vanilla, but Merrick and I talked her out of it.”
“Good call,” I mutter around a mouthful. This may be the best cake I’ve ever tasted.
Hattie looks over her shoulder to her mom who is passing the cake knife to a server. Then she clamps a hand around my wrist.
“C'mon. While she’s distracted,” she hiss whispers, and then we’re escaping to the big Victorian house.
Inside, a buffet lines the wall of the long dining room.
Hattie thrusts her cake plate at me. “Hold this. We need provisions.”
Then she picks up a dinner plate and piles it with fresh fruit, bacon-wrapped shrimp, meatball kabobs, cubed cheeses and crackers, and two slabs of grilled zucchini. She leads me into the kitchen and grabs two potato rolls from a basket.
“This way,” she says, guiding me through waist-coated staffers to a door that opens onto a quiet back porch. But she doesn’t stop there.
The porch spills onto a lantern-it pool area, the pool flanked by lounge chairs and a standalone hot tub.
But we don’t stop here either.
Hattie marches past the pool, onto the lawn, and heads for a softly lit, low-roofed little hut that’s a good hundred yards from the main house.
When we reach the door, Hattie carefully sets the two dinner rolls on top of her loaded plate and punches in a four-digit code on the door’s keypad lock. A beep and a creak, and we’re inside a one-room cottage.
A one-room cottage with an exposed copper tub in one corner, a water closet on the other and two bathrobes hanging from hooks on the wall between them. On the opposite side of the cottage is a tiny kitchenette with a bar sink, a mini fridge, a Keurig, and a microwave in the corner.
And right in the middle of the room is a plush, queen-sized bed.
Hattie closes the door behind us and engages the lock.
“This is my room for the night,” she announces, slightly out of breath, color high on her cheeks. “I mean—o-our room.”
I like the sound of it so much, I have to repeat it. “Our room.” My chest swells, my smile too. “That has a nice ring to it.”
Hattie visibly swallows and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “I-It does?”
My girl—who just danced like she was spring-loaded, threatened the life of a photographer, charged into a fancy reception and raided the buffet—is suddenly nervous that she’s brought me to her room.
Our room.
Hell, no, we can’t have that.
I set our cake plates down on a padded bench at the foot of the bed before relieving Hattie of her buffet score. I set that down too.
When I turn back to her, Hattie’s eyes are wide and her bottom lip is clamped tight between her teeth.
No time to waste.
My arms band around her, and I crush her against me before I kiss her hard. A startled, approving whimper wobbles from her throat before she softens in my arms.
I kiss her and kiss her like I’ve wanted to for hours. Stroking her tongue, suckling her bottom lip, soaking in the heat that blooms between our bodies.
When I slowly pull back, a heavy-lidded gaze has replaced her look of uncertainty, and a flush spans from the V-neck of her gown to the apples of her cheeks.
“Thank you.” My voice comes out lust-roughened.
She blinks. “What for?”
One side of my mouth hitches. “For bringing me here. It’s been a while since I’ve been alone with you.”
Now she triple blinks. “We were alone in your truck on Thursday.”
When she did another delivery run with me. When we made out in the alley behind The French Press where we met a month ago.
I nod. “An eternity.”
Her giggle is my oxygen.
But then she glances to the bed like someone playing Freeze Tag. As if it’s moved closer since she last looked.
“Hattie.”
I wait for her to look back at me. When she does, hazel eyes alert again, I reach down and squeeze her hand tight. “Talk to me.”
Her nostrils flare as she inhales. “I want—” Her eyes dart again to the bed, but not with a look of longing.
She’s nervous.
“Whoa.” I clasp her chin and guide her focus back to me. “There’s a bed in here and we can totally ignore it for the rest of the night.”
Her brows pleat. “And sleep on the floor?”
I glance down at the restored cypress planks beneath our feet. “Admittedly, it doesn’t look very comfortable.” I shake my head. “I mean nothing is going to happen in that bed unless you want it to.”
“But that’s just it. I do want it to. I want to do it, but I don’t—I don’t know if—” She shakes her head. “I get a lot of things wrong. What if I do it wrong?”
I nearly choke. Now is no time to laugh, but I can’t help my grin. “H-Hattie—honey—” Now I shake my head. “As long as we’re doing what feels good, it can’t be wrong. And we’re not doing anything—not anything—until we’re ready.”
She looks unconvinced. “But—”
I let my hand fall from her face. “I’m not ready.”
“You’re not?” Her eyes fill with dismay.
Technically, I got hard the moment she said our room, but no one could fault me for that.
A rough chuckle leaves me. “Honeysuckle, I want you like butter wants to melt on biscuits. No stopping it.” I shake my head. “But it’s got to feel right, and it won’t feel right until we’re both dying for it.”
She stares at me, her mouth half-open like she’s ready to argue. I don’t let her.
“Let’s eat.”
She blinks like she’s waking from a trance. “W-what?”
I tip my head toward the spoils of her buffet raid. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you? Let’s have a picnic on that bed.”
The way her body slumps in relief almost makes me feel guilty. Should I have reassured her sooner?
She nods but then gives me her back. “But first, can you unzip me? I need to get out of this dress. It was uncomfortable before I started sweating.”
For the second time tonight, I unzip her dress, but this time, I have longer to appreciate the experience.
And I’m not wielding a knife.
Hattie sighs as the back of her dress falls open. “I’ll change in the bathroom. There’s bottled water in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
Then she tugs one of the bathrobes off its hook and ducks into the bathroom.
I grab two waters and then make quick work of shedding what’s left of my suit and grab the remaining bathrobe. And like everything else here, it’s like being swathed in cozy luxury. I like it.
But it’s nothing compared to how I feel when Hattie steps out of the bathroom, wrapped up in her own robe, her bare, shapely calves and dainty feet a tease of flesh. I don’t want to stop staring until my gaze climbs and I find the deep V of cleavage at the close of the robe.
Je-sus.
“That’s so much better.” She sighs in relief. “If we had a fireplace in here, I’d burn those Spanx.”
Wait.
Is she naked under there?
My mind rewinds the last few minutes.
The robe was the only thing she took with her.
Yeah. Chances are good that the only thing standing between me and a deliciously naked Hattie is a flimsy knot of luxury terry cloth.
I swallow hard and rein in my focus. She’s not ready for that. We need to go slow.
Get it together, Olivier.
Pulling my gaze away from her, I scan the room, trying to remember what we were supposed to do before changing.
Oh, right. Food.
Who needs food?
Still, I concentrate on moving the plates to the bed. And concentration is needed.
Because the sight of Hattie climbing onto the bed is torture.