Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Not Heartland Channel Appropriate
April
The hallway was quieter. Not silent—more like a silent night, where it's not actually quiet but it's pretending to be while you can feel all the little mice scuttling in the background making Christmas miracles happen, except the miracles were probably just rich people networking and the mice were interns fetching champagne.
Caleb’s hand stayed at her back as he steered her to the door and pushed it open like he owned it.
This was the part in the movie where the charming stranger leads the overwhelmed girl somewhere private and she realizes she’s been falling for him all along, except she’d known Caleb for four hours and was still deciding if this was a meet-cute or a heist.
The library was exactly what she should've expected: floor-to-ceiling shelves, leather-bound everything, a chandelier both smaller and more obscene than the one in the ballroom. The kind of room that whispered old money so loudly it might as well have been screaming.
The door clicked shut behind them.
The sound from the ballroom dropped to almost nothing.
Caleb pulled out his phone, held it up—
—and then set it down on the nearest table.
The screen stayed black. No footage. No audition. A prop he was done pretending to need.
This was the scene where the love interest reveals he orchestrated the whole thing just to get her alone, except in Heartland movies the orchestration usually involved Christmas lights and a town square, not lies about audition footage and a mouth that, based on the way he was looking at her right now, could violate broadcast standards.
"This was a setup!?" April said.
Caleb's smile turned sharp and he took a step closer.
"I'm not a nice man," he said, voice dropping into something more honest. "I just play one on TV."
She could walk out. She could be offended. She could call him on the lie and leave him standing here with his fake video excuse and his perfect TV smile.
But I don't want to.
It was the kind of reckless, ridiculous choice you'd laugh about with friends later.
I had sex with Mr. Christmas in a library at the Sterling Gala.
The others came with instruction manuals she hadn't asked for.
Histories. Expectations. The weight of years spent watching her.
Caleb didn't come with any of that. After three years of Chad’s mediocre everything, April wanted that.
Wanted something that was hers to choose.
To take. To walk away from without apology.
She stayed.
“Is that a line?"
"The only thing unscripted is my dirty mouth."
And then he kissed her.
It wasn't a Heartland kiss. No slow lean. No soft swell of violins. No careful tilt of the chin for cameras.
It was a collision.
His mouth crashed into hers without hesitation, without testing. Just heat and a kiss that came with a parental advisory. His hand cupped the back of her neck, fingers threading through her hair and tightening just enough to tilt her head exactly where he wanted it.
When she gasped, he took the opening. Her hands found his chest, fisting in his shirt, and she wasn't sure if she was pulling him closer or trying to anchor herself.
Caleb's other hand gripped her waist, dragging her flush against him, and April felt the hard line of him through too many layers of expensive fabric. He groaned, low in his throat and the unfiltered want in it made her knees threaten to file a formal complaint.
When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing hard. His pupils were blown, his perfect hair disheveled where her fingers had mussed it.
In every rom-com he'd ever starred in, this was where the camera would cut away. Pan to the fireplace. Fade to the morning after with tasteful blankets and implied satisfaction, literal tape on the floor telling him where PG ended and the credits began.
"But this?" His fingers found the edge of her dress, the slit Liam had probably chosen specifically for its structural vulnerability. "This gets to be real."
April's body froze but relaxed into it as his hand slipped under the fabric, warm and calloused against her skin. Her nipples tightened, suddenly oversensitive against the silk.
This was Caleb Hart, unscripted.
Caleb’s hands found the hem of her dress and began to lift. Slowly.
"You have any idea how good you look?" His palms slid up her thighs, taking the silk with them. "How hard I am right now?"
The silk slid upward with expensive obedience, gliding over her thighs like it knew it had a reputation to maintain.
This was the part where the camera would pan to the fireplace, the director would call cut, and America's favorite Christmas bachelor would reset to his mark and wait for notes.
But there was no camera. No director. Just Caleb's hands gathering emerald silk inch by careful inch, his eyes never leaving hers.
“God, look at you,” Caleb murmured, his voice rough, his wholesome persona abandoned somewhere near the ballroom. “This dress has been killing me all night.”
April let out a shaky breath, her hands gripping his shoulders. “You’ve only been looking at it for fifteen minutes.”
He walked her backward until the bookshelf met her spine.
“They were a very long fifteen minutes, April.”
April’s brain tried to narrate it like a Heartland scene, the handsome rancher’s hands trembling as he reached for her, overwhelmed by feelings he didn’t have words for.
Except Caleb's hands weren't trembling and he had plenty of words, most of them explicit and none of them suitable for family programming.
Caleb's thumb traced the edge of her underwear, his thumb dipping just enough to confirm her reaction. "Already dripping for me. You want this bad, don't you?"
His mouth against her ear, words she felt more than heard.
"You've been thinking dirty thoughts about me too." His thumb pressed down, sliding against the wet lace.
His other hand fisted in her hair, tilting her head back so she had to look at him. His charm completely gone, replaced by something raw and wanting that probably violated his contract clause about "maintaining family-friendly appeal in public settings."
She should’ve felt shame. Should’ve felt exposed.
But all she felt was wanted.
"You know how hard I've been?" His thumb circled, pressing the lace against her in a way that made her breath catch. "Thinking about bending you over. Making you take it.”
April couldn't answer. Her brain put up an “Out to Lunch” sign and didn’t specify a return date.
Caleb's mouth found her ear, his breath scorching. "I've been thinking about this since the second I saw you. Wondering if you'd feel this good. If you'd be this wet for me."
His fingers hooked into the lace and pulled it aside. Then slid lower, teasing her entrance.
His hands on her bare skin. Cool library air against her thighs.
The bookshelf hard against her spine. The absolutely insane reality that this was happening.
That she was letting it happen, that her body was responding like it had been waiting for permission to stop performing wholesomeness and start being honest.
Caleb’s mouth found hers again, kissing her like he meant to remember it. His fingers kept moving, maddening circles that kept her right on the edge without pushing her over.
"God, you feel incredible," he murmured against her lips, then moved to her jaw. "So needy." His teeth grazed her earlobe. Her hands tightened on his shoulders.
"I'm going to fuck you against these shelves until you can't remember anyone's name but mine," he said, his voice rough. "Make you forget every mediocre fuck you've ever had. Until the only thing you can think about is how deep I am inside you."
His thumb found her clit again, pressing just right, and April made a sound that probably echoed through the entire library.
"That's it, let me hear you. “You're absolutely dripping for it, aren't you?" April's thighs were shaking. Then he slid two fingers through her folds, nice and slow, and circled her clit with he exact amount of pressure to make stars burst behind her eyelids.
The door opened.
They jumped apart.
The silk slithered down her thighs like it had never been raised at all—a magic trick in reverse, modesty restored by expensive fabric engineering. A cheap dress would’ve betrayed her—stayed bunched, damning. Only silk this expensive got to pretend it had manners.
But she couldn’t retreat.
April managed maybe four inches before her back hit the bookshelf again. Caleb froze mid-movement, the two of them caught in a tableau with absolutely zero room for plausible deniability, even with her dress back in place.
April's head snapped toward the door.
Arthur stood in the doorway, perfectly still. Perfectly composed. Assessing the scene the way someone might assess a structural flaw that required correction.
This was not how the protective-father-catches-girl-with-boy scene was supposed to go. In the movies, the father showed up before anything happened, cleared his throat meaningfully, and the boy stammered and apologized and promised to have her home by ten.
But Arthur wasn’t her father. He wasn’t even close. And he wasn’t looking at them with parental disappointment.
And this wasn’t a movie where tension reset once the lights came on. This was a seduction in a library, interrupted at the exact moment the wholesome script had been shredded and left on the floor.
His gaze flicked to Caleb first. Then to April, her flushed face, the hastily rearranged silk. Then back to Caleb. The man whose hands had just been somewhere that would get him blacklisted from every Heartland production in existence.
She expected fury. Shame. Moral outrage. Only Arthur didn’t move like a man scandalized. He moved like a man evaluating.
She waited for him to leave. To close the door. To do literally anything that wasn’t standing there, watching the oxygen thin.