Hideaway Heart (Cherry Tree Harbor Book 2)
Hideaway Heart: Chapter 20

THE RIDE HOME seemed longer than usual. Unnecessarily long. Cruelly long. Something wrong with the time-space continuum long.

I think it was Kelly’s hand on my cock.

The entire drive back, she kept stroking me through my pants, until I was so hard I thought my dick might bust right through the zipper.

I barely got the SUV parked before we were jumping out, racing for the cabin, and rushing for the bedroom. We no longer risked messing around in the living room, with no way to cover the windows. I loosened my necktie as I followed her down the hall like a predator.

As soon as I shut the bedroom door, I grabbed her from behind, hiked up her dress, fastened my mouth to her neck and slipped my hand between her thighs. “Fuck,” I rasped. “You’re not wearing anything under this dress.”

“No.”

“And you’re already wet.”

“Yes.”

Normally, I prided myself on my patience and attentiveness during foreplay, but tonight I didn’t have it in me to wait. I needed to get inside her. I needed to have her that close. I needed to feel like she was mine.

I spun her around, putting her back against the door, then quickly unbuckled my belt, undid my pants, and shoved them down just enough. After hoisting her up, I lowered her onto my cock, my hands gripping her ass. She was warm and soft and snug and clinging to me, crying out with every thrust, her back thumping loudly against the wood.

Perilously close to coming, I changed the angle so the base of my cock rubbed her clit the way she liked. It ratcheted me up even higher to realize I knew the way she liked to be touched. The way she liked to be kissed. The way she liked to be fucked.

Her little noises grew louder and more frantic. Her pussy grew wetter, slick with heat and friction. Then thank fuck, she cried out as her climax crashed through her and I let go of mine, my legs going stiff, sweat dripping down my spine beneath my suit, my cock surging inside her.

When I could control my muscles again, I gently set her on her feet and extracted myself. Leaning forward, my forearms on either side of her head against the door, I pressed my mouth to her forehead, her cheek, her jaw. She lifted her face and I kissed her lips.

“I’ll be right back,” she said quietly.

I nodded, giving her space to open the door. My heart was having a hard time slowing down.

While she was gone, I shed my jacket, slipped the tie from my collar, and peeled off my damp dress shirt. After hanging up the components of my suit, I stripped off the rest of my clothes.

She entered the room again, switched on the light, and shut the door. “Help me get this dress off?” Turning around, she lifted her thick red hair, and I worked the knot from the halter ties. Then I pressed my nose to the back of her neck and inhaled her scent. She must have washed her makeup off, because I could smell her facial cleanser and fancy moisturizer too.

“Can you bottle this please?” I asked, sliding my hands around her waist and holding her close.

She giggled. “Bottle what?”

“You.” Us, I almost said, but caught myself. There wasn’t an us, not an us that could be bottled. Kept. Saved. The thought caused a strange ache in my chest and I let her go. “Is there a zipper or anything?”

“I’ve got it. It’s on the side.”

I watched her undress, red hair swinging loose around her sun-kissed shoulders, breasts pale, nipples pink and tempting, tan line from her bikini bottom crossing her abdomen. I wanted to trace it with my tongue.

After hanging up her dress, she climbed onto the mattress, slipped beneath the sheets, and gave me an expectant look. “Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute.” I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and when I was done, I surveyed all the girly shit on the sink. Potions and lotions and jars and tubes and compacts and brushes. It looked like five girls lived here, not just one. Would this be what it was like to live with a wife? And what if you had daughters? Would your bathroom look like the cosmetics aisle of the drugstore exploded inside it all the time?

Spotting her perfume, I picked it up and sniffed it. My pulse quickened, like my body thought she was near. I set the bottle back on the vanity and went to replace the real thing.

The next day, I woke up first and used the bathroom. When I returned to the bedroom, it struck me how beautiful Kelly looked, lying there on her back, one arm arcing gracefully over her head, white sheet twisted at her waist, her copper hair flowing over the pillow.

The Sunday morning light was soft and pink, filtered through the thin shade covering the window above our heads. Her skin glowed gently. A few determined sunbeams snuck beneath the bottom of the shade, illuminating the freckles on her nose, and her lashes fanned like feathers over her cheeks.

She breathed in, her lungs expanding, and my eyes traveled down her body, over the feminine curves of her breasts, the softness of her middle. A breeze moved the shade, causing it to click against the sill.

She opened her eyes and saw me standing there. Her lips curved into a smile. Her voice was lazy. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking about how beautiful you look. I wish I could photograph you.”

“So do it. You’ve got your camera.”

I swallowed. “You want me to?”

“Sure.” Her eyes closed again.

My bag was lying in the corner of the bedroom—Kelly had moved it in there earlier in the week. I pulled my camera from it and switched it on. But rather than focus the lens on her, I went and sat down at her side. Brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “Hey.”

She opened her sea glass green eyes. “Hey.”

I braced my arm on the other side of her. “I want you to know I don’t take this lightly.”

“Me neither. And if these pictures pop up online without any Photoshopping, I’m going to be really mad.”

“I’m serious, Kelly. I understand the level of trust this takes. And I know you’re in a no-trust zone right now.”

“You sort of exist outside the zone for me.”

I half-smiled. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “It’s like you’re part of this other world, where there’s just the two of us. And I’m safe in this world. I can’t really describe it, but that’s how I feel. Nothing that happens here can hurt me.”

“It’s the truth,” I said, and I meant it. “You are safe in this world.”

She smiled seductively. “Then take my picture, Xander Buckley. I want to know how you see me.”

“I’m not sure any photograph I take will do you justice.” I stood up and switched the camera on. “But I’ve never been one to back away from a challenge.”

“Just tell me where you want me.”

“Like that. Just like that.” I snapped her lying there on her back with one arm curved overhead, the other at her hip, that sunset hair framing her face. I worked quickly, so I wouldn’t lose that gossamer light.

Kelly was a gifted model—knowing intuitively how to angle her head, lift a shoulder, tilt her chin. She had graceful, supple limbs and beautiful lines. She revealed different sides of herself—wide-eyed and playful one moment, then heavy-lidded and provocative the next. Unabashed, she let the sheet fall away as she turned onto her stomach and looked over her shoulder, as she rolled to one side and lay her cheek on an arm stretched overhead, as she tipped onto her back and arched up off the mattress.

She was day and night. Light and dark. An angel and a temptress. As I clicked again and again, somewhere it registered that this was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen, but it didn’t feel salacious or tawdry. It felt like the greatest gift I’d ever been given.

Eventually though, my body did respond to all her inviting poses and suggestive expressions, especially when she touched her bottom lip with a fingertip and rubbed gently.

“You’re very good at this,” I told her, setting my camera back in my bag.

“I’ve had some practice.” She laughed. “Not that I’ve ever been photographed completely naked.”

“Never?” I crawled into bed with her.

She shook her head. “What about you? Have you ever taken anyone’s picture like you just took mine?”

“Nope.” Stretching out beside her, I pulled her close to me, and she flung a leg over my hips and an arm over my chest. “I never even thought about it.”

“Seriously? Why not?”

I had to think about the question for a minute. It’s not like I didn’t have an appreciation for female bodies before her. “Well, first of all, I’ve never seen anyone look as beautiful as you did in that light. I’m not really a stick-around-until-morning kind of guy. Not that I’ve been a jerk about it,” I said quickly, “but I don’t really stay the night.”

“How come?”

“Gives the wrong idea.”

“Ah.” She ran her fingertip along my collarbone. “So I guess I was just lucky then, that you had no choice but to spend nights with me.”

I laughed. “Pretty sure I’m the lucky one.”

“You could have taken the photos at night. Before me, I mean.”

“I guess I could have, but I’m telling you the truth when I say the idea never occurred to me. I’ve never wanted to capture someone like that before.”

“Will you ever look at the pictures you took of me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you do with them.”

“What I do with them? They don’t belong to me.”

“Yes, they do.” I rolled over and moved on top of her so she could see my face. “You let me photograph you—that took a lot of trust. To prove I’m worthy of that trust, I want to give you all the pictures.”

“But the whole point is that I trust you to have them and never share them. Never betray me.”

“I would die first.”

She smiled, her eyes narrowing. “Or my brother would kill you.”

“I’d deserve it. He should torture me before offing me. Make me listen to Duke Pruitt songs for hours on end.”

That made her laugh. “Anyway, I don’t want the pictures, Xander. You keep them. So you never forget me.”

I buried my face in her neck and inhaled. “I could never forget you.”

Actually, I was starting to think it might be a problem.

When I checked my messages that day, I had a voicemail from my friend with a contact at the DMV. She apologized for the delay—she’d been on vacation and was still catching up—but said she had an answer for me. The beige Honda was registered to a rental agency at the Traverse City airport.

Later that afternoon, I went out onto the porch while Kelly was in the shower and called up another friend of mine, a guy named Zach Barrett. He was also a former SEAL who worked for Cole Security. He’d worked out of the San Diego office and I’d been mostly east coast, but our paths had crossed every now and again, and I liked him a lot. Solid, trustworthy, and skilled. Plus, he could be a scary motherfucker.

Last I’d heard, he’d married a girl who lived not far from here, and he worked only part-time.

“Barrett here,” he answered gruffly.

“Hey, Zach. It’s Xander Buckley.”

“Hey, Xander. It’s been a while.” His tone lost its hard edge. “How are you?”

We caught up for a few minutes, and I learned he lived about two hours from me, was married to a woman named Millie, and they had two kids.

“You’ve been busy,” I said with a laugh. “Are you still working for Cole?”

“Here and there. I cut way back on travel because Millie—that’s my wife—owns a business and with the two kids, it was hard being gone all the time. Plus, I don’t want to be gone. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“I get it.”

“What about you? Did I hear you’re opening a sports bar?”

“Yeah. Hopefully, I’ll be up and running soon. Just waiting on a few last-minute things.”

“I’ll have to drive up and check it out.”

“I’d like that. So listen, I have a favor to ask.” I explained what I was doing and why. “I’ve got no proof the car is connected to the asshole who was on the property taking photos or whoever snapped the shots at the bar, but I had a bad feeling when I saw it.”

“I’d trust my gut on it too.”

“Any way you can get the name of the guy who rented it?”

“Let me see what I can do.”

After we hung up, I glanced at my screen and noticed today’s date—it rang a bell in my head, like it was significant for some reason. Devlin’s birthday—that was it. I decided to give him a quick call.

“Hello?”

“Hey, brother. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks. How’s everything going with the bar?”

“Okay. Still on track to open next Friday night.”

“Can’t wait to see it. I might be back next month.”

“How did the lunch with Granny go? I never got a chance to ask, you left town so fast. You sweet talk her into accepting your millions?”

“Ah, not exactly.”

I had to grin. “What? I thought this was a done deal.”

“It should have been a done deal. But there was a complication in the shape of a granddaughter who joined us for lunch.”

“Granddaughter?” I pictured a child. “How old?”

“Late twenties, maybe. She grew up there and works there, and she’s totally against selling. She’s got some ridiculous notion she can get investors who will help turn the business around. My offer was much higher than anything else she’d get, but she refuses to listen to reason.”

“You mean there are actually humans alive you can’t sell to?”

“There’s one,” he clarified. “And it’s only because she has the wrong idea about me.”

“Maybe she noticed you were trying to bamboozle her granny over French onion soup.”

“No, she arrived at the table with preconceived notions about my character. She was prejudicial and biased against me from the start.”

“Why?”

Devlin exhaled loudly. “Because we’d met before.”

“Where?”

“Remember that gorgeous brunette I left with the night we all went to The Broken Spoke?”

I started to laugh. “That was the granddaughter?”

“I didn’t know it at the time, okay? We didn’t get into a lot of personal details, we just had a good time. But no matter what I say, she doesn’t believe me. She’s convinced I sought her out and slept with her for nefarious purposes.”

“So now what?”

“Now I have to figure out how to make this deal happen even though she’s working against me at every turn. My boss won’t accept anything less.”

“You’ll be fired if you can’t make it happen?”

“I might not be fired, but instead of the promotion I want, I’d probably be relegated to sales manager in Bumfuck, Nowhere.”

“Well, hang in there. I’m sure you’ll replace a way.”

“I better. So how’s everything going with you and Kelly?”

“Fine.”

“Still strictly professional?”

“Uh, it’s slightly less than professional.”

Devlin laughed. “That didn’t take long.”

“But she’s heading back to Nashville at the end of the week.” I hoped I sounded more neutral than I felt.

“Will you see her again?”

“I doubt it,” I said, again trying to come off like I didn’t really care while a pit opened up in my gut.

“Why not? It’s not like Nashville is that far. A couple hours on a plane.”

“She’s going on another tour soon, and I’ve got a business to open. We’re just too busy. Our lives are too separate.” The pit was starting to fill with an uncomfortable longing for something I didn’t want to think about. And I was good at locking uncomfortable feelings away into boxes. “Anyway, I hope you have a great day. Enjoy the last year of your twenties.”

“I’d enjoy it more if it ended with me getting that promotion. I can’t believe how bad I fucked this up without even knowing it. I mean, what are the chances? Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you know?”

“I know. But hey, was it worth it?”

“You know what?” He was silent a moment, like he was into the memory. “It was.”

Later that afternoon, I pinned Kelly to the ground, knees on either side of her hips, hands locked around her wrists, pushing them into the ground. “What do you do if someone gets you like this?”

“Bridge high, throw low.”

“Do it.”

She bucked her hips up hard, causing me to pitch forward—a guy would face plant above her head if he didn’t release her wrists to catch himself. As soon as her arms were free, she swept them down to her sides along the grass snow-angel style, then immediately wrapped them around my torso, turning her face to the side to avoid my chest smashing her face.

“Tighter,” I commanded. “You can’t leave any space in between when you hug the tree, or he’ll get an arm back in between you.”

She squeezed harder, her cheek against my chest. “Like that?”

“Yes. Now what?”

“Climb the tree. Wrap the arm.” She scooted up, hooked her left arm around my right bicep, and rolled me onto my back. “And from here . . .” Her elbow came slicing toward my face from the right, and after I blocked it, she jabbed the same elbow straight down, stopping just short of my gut. Then she jumped up and ran.

“Good job,” I said, getting to my knees. “Now come back and let’s do it again.”

She hurried back to me and lay on the grass again, letting me pin her down. I didn’t love being outside like this—I imagined photos were being taken of us right this second, and without the context of self-defense lessons, they’d look like something else was going on—but I did like knowing that the asshole with the camera would see she could protect herself. And fuck what anyone else thought. As long as she was safe, I didn’t care.

“You sure you want me to escape this time?” she teased.

“Yes,” I said seriously. “I want you to escape every time.”

“Okay, but kiss me first.”

“Kelly, I’m not playing. I want you to learn this stuff. I hope you never have to use it, but if you do, I want there to be no hesitation whatsoever.”

“I am learning! And if anyone but you was pinning me like this, I would not hesitate. I promise.” She smiled. “One kiss?”

“Earn it first. Go.”

She thrust up explosively, forcing me to break my fall. She repeated the tree climb and the arm wrap, successfully getting me beneath her before fake-delivering the elbow jabs. But she didn’t run this time.

“Now can I have my kiss?”

“Inside.”

She looked around. “You really think someone is still out there?”

“I think we have to assume so.”

“And would you be embarrassed to be seen kissing Pixie Hart?”

“Of course not. It’s just nobody’s fucking business. You don’t have to give them that piece of you.” I want all of you to myself.

“You’re right. I don’t.” She smiled. “Let’s go inside.”

That night, we were invited for dinner over at Austin’s. On the ride over, Kelly seemed distracted. Her hands were in her lap, and she kept scrunching up the material of her dress—this one was white with blue flowers on it, and it had ties on each shoulder and a flirty little skirt. Worried she was having second thoughts about those photographs, I asked her what was on her mind.

“I got a text from my manager while you were in the shower,” she said. “The performance at the Music City Awards is a sure thing. One of the producers got in touch.”

“That’s great news, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but Duke must be in everyone’s ears, because now even my manager wants me to get back to Nashville immediately to start rehearsals.”

“Like when?”

“Like tomorrow.”

“Fuck that,” I said, reluctant to end our private days and nights together. “They want you, they get you when they get you.”

She laughed ruefully. “It doesn’t really work that way if you’re me. I don’t have tons of leverage. And the thing is, it’s not so much about going home three days sooner as it is about not wanting Duke to think he calls the shots for me.”

I thought for a minute. “Have they approved your request to sing as Kelly Jo Sullivan?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, so maybe you offer a deal. You’ll come back to Nashville tomorrow if they approve that request.”

“I could try that.” She pulled her phone from her purse and stared at it. “It feels kind of scary though, to make a demand. They could replace a dozen singers to replace me in an instant.” She snapped her fingers, and I grabbed her hand in the air.

“Don’t think like that. Be brave. Stand up for yourself.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll send the text.”

“Good girl.” I kissed her fingers and gave her hand back, and she typed a message.

A minute later, she dropped her phone into her bag. “Done. I sent one message to Wags, Duke, and the producer. Now I need a glass of wine.”

“That can be arranged.”

She looked over at me. “So would you be able to come back to Nashville with me tomorrow? I don’t expect you to.”

“I’ll make it work. I’m going to talk to Veronica tonight about the interviews she conducted this week. I’m hoping to have the hiring done in the next couple days. And Austin found an electrician for me—retired guy, a friend of our dad’s—who said he could finish the work this week. Barstools are scheduled to arrive on Thursday, and I think my brother or dad could handle that. Beer and liquor deliveries are complete. Point of sale system in. A/V is finished. If all goes well, I can still open next Friday night.”

“All will go well,” she said confidently. Her phone lit up, and she looked down. “Fuck. It’s Duke. He’s calling me.”

“Take the call,” I told her, even though my gut told me to grab her phone and throw it out the window. “He can’t hurt you.”

“You’re right. He can’t.” She sat up a little taller and tapped the screen. “Hello?”