Chapter 31
Catherine
“Mmmm.” I hummed and smiled to myself as a trail of warm kisses snaked up my neck. “Good morning to you too.”
Soft light filtered in through the cracks in the drapes that covered the windows in Hayes’s bedroom.
“Today’s the day.” His sleepy timbre was delightfully arousing.
I stretched like a cat until my muscles strained, then I coiled into his chest. “I’m surprised I slept at all.”
His hands were gentle but firm as he rubbed soothing circles up and down my back. “You’re welcome for wearing you out.”
I snickered into his bare chest. “We probably need to get the blankets and pillows out of the loft before someone finds our little sex nest.”
“Our sex nest, huh?”
“Whatever you want to call it. We need to go clean it up before Mason gets the wrong idea.”
Hayes’s replying laugh was dark and devious as he peppered my shoulder with kisses. “What if I like having a sex nest?” He nuzzled deeper, grazing my skin with his teeth. “You’re such a good girl. Sometimes I like seeing how bad you can be.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Think about it,” Hayes said as he licked around the shell of my ear, sending delightful showers of arousal dancing down my spine. “Having spots all over the estate for a quick fuck whenever you need it.”
“Yes,” I panted as I arched into him.
Hayes pushed up the shirt I had stolen from him to sleep in and cupped my breast. “We haven’t christened nearly enough of the house.” His thumb rolled over my nipple. “So many rooms to make love to you in…not enough time.” He gave it a sharp pinch.
I nodded blearily as he palmed my breasts. “Need…more.”
A rich rumble reverberated through his chest. “More what?”
I squeezed my legs together, trying to ease the ache. “Time.”
His touch softened. “Blank check, sweetheart. You can have it all.”
The ache didn’t dissipate. It simply migrated to my heart, then my head. Hayes and I had tumbled down the rabbit hole into something neither of us had anticipated.
This shouldn’t have worked. We shouldn’t have worked.
“I should get up,” I whispered remorsefully against his lips. “I have a lot to do before this afternoon.”
“Everything is ready,” Hayes said as he rolled away from me and sat up. He opened the prescription bottles on his nightstand, dropped two pills into his palm, and rinsed them down with a bottle of water he kept beside them.
I stared at the ceiling and ran through my mental to-do list. It should have been strange sleeping in Hayes’s room. Usually, we slept in mine. But lately the house had started to feel like home. There wasn’t my space, his space, or the estate’s space. It was ours.
Even though I hadn’t legally changed my last name, I had grown accustomed to responding to “Mrs. Wilder.”
“Enjoy it,” Hayes said. “You’ve worked hard for this.”
I caught his hand before he got out of bed. “Thank you.”
“For what?” He flashed a cheeky grin. “You’re waking up without an orgasm.”
“For doing this with me.”
Those heart-stopping eyes that were constantly assessing and evaluating began to soften. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did.” I squeezed his hand. “I wouldn’t have had the land for the program. New connections to donors to really make it worthwhile. Somewhere to go after my mom passed…”
“A luxury SUV to move a cow in,” Hayes teased.
I threw a pillow at him.
Hayes caught it and laughed. “Up and at ’em, pretty girl.”
—
From the moment my feet hit the floor, nothing went right.
The caterer called out sick. The bartender had double-booked.
Hayes got an emergency call from one of the partners he worked with, forcing him to hunker down in the study for most of the day.
The rental company that was supposed to deliver the tent, a bar, tables, and chairs had gotten the deliveries mixed up and brought couches and lounge seating instead.
One of the team managers who boarded their horses at the estate took the turn into the gates too sharp and got his horse trailer stuck in the ditch.
Thankfully, the trailer had been empty, but he had blocked the gates until Mason and a very cranky tow truck driver had gotten him out.
Unfortunately, the minor accident had kept Jeremiah and Mike from being able to bring the Moo Brew trailer through the gates to set up for coffee service.
“Okay,” Hallie said as she, Savannah, and I hunched over the kitchen island like it was a wartime briefing in the Situation Room. “New plan. No bartender means we DIY the drinks.”
“What options do we have on hand? It’ll take too long to drive a county over to get to an ABC store,” I said.
“I can bartend if you’ve got liquor,” Savannah offered.
Hallie raised an eyebrow. “You know how to bartend?”
“I’m a great bartender,” she said defensively, propping her hands on her hips, making the stacks of gold bracelets jingle. “I know how to pour whiskey, whiskey on the rocks, whiskey straight up, whiskey neat—”
“So, whiskey and ice,” I said drolly as I rubbed my temples.
“Or without ice. Or shaken with ice and then poured,” she said.
Hallie shoved her pen in her mess of copper hair. “I mean, we do have Walt’s stash of moonshine down in the wine cellar. And a lot of wine.”
“Using the wine wouldn’t be a big deal,” I said.
There were some rare bottles stored down in the cellar, but the rest was regularly used for events.
We had used some of the nicer bottles for the wedding and the owners’ luncheon.
“The liquor is a different story. It’s part of the history of the mountains.
I’d feel bad serving it.” I let out a deep breath.
“And honestly, I’m not sure if we should be serving that moonshine at all.
Just because it’s local and handcrafted doesn’t mean that it doesn’t taste like jet fuel. ”
Hallie thought for a moment. “We could make it a tasting rather than serving full drinks. There’s a journal in Walt’s study that has all the years and the names of who made it. It’s like a history book.”
“So, we’ve got liquor and no food,” Savannah said. “Even I know that’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Ye of little faith,” Hallie said as she yanked open the massive double-door freezer.
“I’ve got damn near a hundred biscuits prepped and ready to bake.
Homemade soups that are frozen and just need to be thawed and warmed.
If someone can run into town and empty the produce section, that’ll give us fruits and veggies. ”
I grimaced. “That sounds like a lot of work. And for a hundred people? Is that going to be enough?”
“A hundred rich people,” Hallie clarified. “I barely have enough food in this whole house to feed Mason, Levi, and Zach. But the beautiful thing about rich people is that the smaller the portion, the fancier they think it is. Leave it to me.”
“Okay. Savannah’s bartending. Hallie is cooking. Jeremiah and Mike just got here to set up the Moo Brew trailer—”
A door slammed, sending anxiety lancing down my spine.
“And Lewis is present and accounted for,” I hissed under my breath.
Savannah cracked her knuckles. “I know how to operate a backhoe.”
Hallie snickered.
My phone chimed as a text from Mason appeared, confirming that the rental company had removed the soft seating and delivered the actual items we needed. I let out an exasperated breath. “This might work.” I blinked back tears. “I don’t know what I would do without y’all.”
“You wouldn’t have looked nearly as good as you did on your wedding day without me,” Savannah said with confidence.
“You wouldn’t have had a wedding day without me,” Hallie said. “Scratch that. You wouldn’t have been having good sex without me.”
My cheeks turned cherry red. I started to argue, but Hallie cut me off.
“Oh, please. We all know you two are sleeping together. And honestly, I don’t blame you. Hayes is one fine, tall drink of water. Besides, at least one person should be getting laid in this house, and we all know it’s not going to be me.”
Mason walked past the glass doors that led out to the rose garden. Hallie’s gaze lingered long after he had disappeared from view.
Savannah snorted. “Go get laid by the hunky bull rider. They do a decent job of using their hips.”
“Savannah!” Hallie gasped, patting the redness on her cheeks that now matched my own.
“He’s not a bull rider,” I said. “He was a steer wrestler.”
Hallie let out a flustered breath. “Thank you.”
“And I agree,” I added. “Hallie and Mason should bang.”
“Catherine!” Hallie shrieked. “Hush your mouth. Someone could hear, and that someone could be my son.”
Savannah cupped her hands around her mouth to make her voice carry. “Hallie and Mason sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S—”
“Will you stop it!” Hallie hissed. “Zach is right upstairs.”
“Probably with the door shut, playing video games with his headphones on,” I said. “We’re just teasing you.”
Hallie’s sharp gaze landed on me. “Fine. If we’re teasing each other, then let’s talk about the little love nest Mason found in the loft this morning.”
Savannah’s jaw dropped as she turned to me. “Spill.”
“Oh my god,” I grumbled as I covered my face with my hands. “I knew leaving the pillows and blankets there overnight was a bad idea.”
Hallie snickered. “Just don’t get hay in my washing machine.”
I clapped my hands together. “And with that, I’m gonna go ask Hayes if we can serve Walt’s moonshine.”
Hallie nodded. “I’m stealing Sav. We’re going to the store for reinforcements. Holler if you think of anything you need from town.”
I grabbed my purse from the coat hook by the kitchen door. “Take my card.”
Hallie snatched it from my hand and left the kitchen in a hurry with Savannah on her heels.
As soon as they disappeared, I opened the banking app on my phone to make sure there was money to cover whatever they needed.
The next $5,000 deposit that Hayes sent me each month wouldn’t hit my account for another week and a half.
I had paid off a chunk of my debt at the beginning of the month.
Even though I had used Hayes’s credit card for most of the grand opening expenses, I had still been covering a lot out of my personal accounts.
Huh.
That couldn’t be right.
The payment that should have gone to chipping away at my debt hadn’t processed, and the money was still there. It was supposed to have been automatically deducted a week ago.
“Everything alright?”
I looked up and found Hayes slipping out of the study with worry etched on his face.
“Yes? No?” I huffed. “Everything is falling apart. I just sent Hallie and Savannah to the store with my card since the caterer fell through. I checked my bank balance to make sure it wasn’t going to overdraft and saw that a payment that was supposed to autopay never did.
So I’m probably past due on that because of some computer error.
And we don’t have a bartender, so now I need to ask you for a huge favor and hope you’ll say yes to letting us serve some of your granddad’s moonshine and wine collection, so we have drinks and—”
Hayes kissed me, shutting me up.
I went stiff as a board. Even though he looked absolutely sinful in his boots, jeans, and button-up, I was too flustered for sex.
“Yes,” he said as he cupped my cheeks.
“We can serve the moonshine and wine?”
Hayes chuckled. “Granddad wouldn’t have wanted it to sit down there forever. Just make sure the pour isn’t heavy-handed. It’ll burn your esophagus.”
“I’ll tell Savannah.” I sighed as I looked down at my phone. “I don’t have time to deal with a bank error right now, but if I don’t call them before five, I’ll have to wait until Monday, and then—”
“Cath, there’s no error.”
“I know for a fact that I made the payment, but it didn’t—”
“I paid it.”
I rubbed my temples. “I know you paid me. It’s why I get five grand every month. It’s why I married you. So that I could pay off—”
“I paid it all,” Hayes said slowly and calmly, as if he wasn’t sure I was able to comprehend it.
I blinked. “But…You did…But how?”
His smile was adorably crooked, curving down on one side and curling up on the other. “I have my ways.”
“You…paid all of my debt?”
He nodded.
“But that wasn’t our deal.”
Hayes cupped my cheeks. “Neither was falling for you, but here I am.”
If he let me go, I was fairly certain I was going to pass out.
“Hayes,” I croaked as my eyes welled up with tears. “Why did you do that?”
He pressed his lips to my forehead, then pecked the tip of my nose. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about what the officiant asked us during the ceremony. I wanted you to be here of your own free will.”
“When did you do it?” I pressed.
He swallowed. “The morning after we went on that ride along the foothills. When we were…intimate.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or melt in a puddle. “I’ll pay you back,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around him and held on desperately. I never wanted to let him go.
“We’re even, Cath,” he said as he tipped my chin up and kissed me. “But right now we have a grand opening to put on. So please put me to work.”
I straightened to wipe my tears when my phone chimed. I glanced at the screen to make sure it wasn’t Hallie or Savannah with another problem, but it was an email.
“What’s the matter?”
My stomach shouldn’t have sunk the way it did at seeing the message notification, but it plummeted like a cartoon anvil.
I stammered for a moment before finally putting the words together. “I got the job.”
Silence blanketed the house.
I should have been celebrating. I should have been ecstatic.
I tapped my phone to open the email and skimmed the message. Pleased to offer you the position as our new director of marketing and outreach…Employment contract to come at the beginning of the week…
I wanted to throw up at the sight of the high five-figure salary.
Was it nerves, or…
“You did it.” Hayes’s congratulations was sincere, but it wasn’t celebratory. It was resigned, matching the mix of disbelief and unease I felt.
I swallowed as I read over the details again. “I’ll get the contract next week and will have two weeks to review it and accept the offer.”
“Have my attorneys look it over,” he said as he wrapped me up in his arms as if he could shield us from reality. He kissed the top of my head. “Make sure they’re worthy of you.”