Calling It (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Every day of the next week and a half was like Christmas. Dorie got to know the local UPS and FedEx deliverymen so well that she was trading marathon training tips with one and helping choose between engagement ring choices for the other. Mrs. Grimes had been processing the books as fast as they could come in, and Mr. Grimes—with help from Wash, Deke and Jason—had assembled the new shelves. Even Mayor Gin had gotten involved, heading down to Des Moines with Dorie and Fitz to buy new furniture for the children’s area.

Plus, even though the library wasn’t open yet, it felt like half the town had dropped by to welcome her. She’d apparently made quite a name for herself at trivia night—that tended to be what they opened with—but they also wanted to meet “Nate’s New Girl.” Awesome. Because that was going to be so freaking fun the first time he showed up in the press with another woman on his arm.

Though she felt a little like the main attraction of a road show, it gave her a chance to show off the library. And she kind of loved making up batches of biscotti every night for the hordes. She was getting into this whole small-town-life thing.

And then there were the photographs. They’d been delivered yesterday, huge panels with frames that fit the trim on the library’s windows. It took a whole day to hang them throughout the building. They were beyond beautiful. With the exception of some trivial prettying-up, they were actually ready for next week’s reopening. So, workwise, things were just fine.

It was Nate that had her in free fall.

Dorie frowned as the butterflies took one of their increasingly frequent rolls through her stomach. Although she’d tried to convince herself it was about the ceremony, she knew full well her nerves had nothing to do with that. No, they were all because Nate had not let up his attention one bit. And because she was falling for it.

After showing up at her door the night she’d had everyone over, he’d been back five times. And despite swearing to herself after every single one of those times that she was not letting him in again no matter what she’d said about February thirteenth—that she was fully capable of keeping her heart tightly encased in a protective titanium box—she hadn’t once been able to turn him away.

And now she was stealing glances at her watch because she’d agreed to go away with him for
another
weekend. It was yet another in a long line of mistakes—she clearly hadn’t gotten the
How To Manage a Proper Fling
handbook. But she simply hadn’t been able to bear the thought of a last time with him.

She was just finishing up an email when she heard him beep. Snapping her laptop shut, she put it in her tote and slung it over her shoulder. She was going with him on the condition that he’d let her do work on the plane. His condition was that she do it naked. They were still working out the details. She grabbed her suitcase on the way out of her office and detoured into the reading room to see if Mr. or Mrs. Grimes needed anything before she left. “I can tell Nate he has to—”

Mrs. Grimes held up her hand before Dorie finished her sentence. Then she held up her phone and, without a word, showed Dorie the text from Nate.

Don’t even try it, D. I will carry you out if I have to.

“Okay,” she laughed. She said her goodbyes and headed outside.

He was leaning against the car, waiting for her, when she came out the door. “You’re terrible,” she said.

That amazing grin flashed over his face as he came toward her. “Just covering all the bases.” He took her bag and then bent down to kiss her. “I love the way you taste.” Pulling her closer, he said, “So if I handcuff you to the armrests, does that still count as holding up the plane?”

Her head jerked back as her cheeks flushed. “
What?
”

Guiding her to the car, he laughed. “Just say the word.”

The frightening thing was that she was tempted, even as they got to the plane and the pilots, two almost-as-pretty-as-Nate flyboys, greeted them.

“You weren’t serious about the naked thing,” she whispered to Nate as they sat down across from each other. Was he?

Fastening his seat belt, the corner of Nate’s mouth twitched up.

Well, alrighty then.

She waited until they were in the air to ask him—again—where they were going. All he’d told her was that it would be totally casual.

“This is okay?” she asked now, gesturing down at her jeans and sweater.

He frowned a little at the V-neck, although that wasn’t generally his reaction when there was cleavage involved, but just shrugged and looked down at his phone. “It’s fine.”

“
Fine?
” She kicked him. “That’s the best you can do?”

Putting the phone on the table next to him—because Gulfstream jets had actual side tables rather than tables of the tray kind—he finally looked up at her. The look in his eyes made her throat go dry as he answered, “I’m trying really hard not to be thinking about what you look like in that sweater so, yes, unless you’re reconsidering the sex-on-the-plane thing, then that’s the best I can do.”

“Oh,” she said. Okay, more like gasped. “Is it...is it, uh, warm in here?”

He smiled. Not nicely. “Very.”

“Um...” She fanned her face with her hand. “I’m not really holding up the plane, am I?”

The smile grew wider. “Not at all.”

Her eyes drifted to his mouth. His amazingly kissable mouth. Email could wait. “And those guys are probably pretty busy...” Her gaze slipped down to his chest.

He waited a beat before he rasped, “They are.”

She was out of her seat and in his lap two seconds later. They were well on their way to being naked when he pulled away from her, a string of curses on his breath. “Dorie. Damn it. I didn’t think...”

She kissed him at the base of his throat. It was a thing for him. “Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want this.”

His hands went to her wrists. “I do want this.
Hell
, I can’t tell you how much I want this.”

She pulled back. “But?”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. After a few steadying breaths, he opened his eyes again and looked straight into hers. “But in about an hour and a half, we’ll be in Boston and although I’m not afraid of your brothers, it’s probably not the best idea for me to meet them quite that soon after being inside of you.”

The flush at his words came as fast as the tears to her eyes. “What?” she whispered.

Letting go of her wrists, his hands fell to her hips. “I know how much you miss your family. And I know you don’t like to fly, but here you are. So I thought that maybe...” His voice trailed away. Leaning forward, his lips brushed her cheek. “But I also know that we’re not exactly at the meet-the-brothers stage.”

Which she’d had no intention of being at, as he well knew.

“So,” he was saying, “we have reservations in Quebec and Miami, too. I even have tickets to the Super Bowl if that’s where you want to go. We have another forty minutes before you had to choose.”

Her hands flew up to her mouth in a steeple. She was, literally, speechless. Her lungs had nearly deflated and her heart was Energizer Bunnying its way out of her chest. “Why?” she finally managed to ask.

His eyes met hers head-on and she could see his intentions plain and clear. Not that he’d ever tried to hide them. No, unlike her, he’d taken his heart and handed her his sleeve. “You know why.”

And, God help her, she wanted desperately to believe that this could work. That he could go off and live his baseball life during the day, and then come home to her castle at night. But that truly was a fairy tale. And no matter how pure his intentions were, the reality was still that she’d be the one off to the side while he was living out his dream. His work would always be more important—he’d given Robbie back his life, for heaven’s sake—and she’d always be the one trailing behind him, scrambling to get her work done on the plane.

Waiting until she could speak without breaking down, she said with as much conviction as she could, “We are a short-term thing.”

He turned to look out the window and swallowed hard. It took him a minute, but when his eyes came back to hers, they were clear and unwavering. “We’re whatever we want us to be.”

Of course she
wanted
this to be. But arguing with him was a lost cause. She bit her lip as her eyes filled. “You’re not playing fair.”

“I’m not
playing
,” he snapped, his hand clenching the armrest. Then he leaned forward, his arm wrapping around her waist as he looked up at her. “But if I were, then I would definitely be operating under the Everything’s Fair principle.”

As in love and war, she was assuming. Of course he would manage to get that in there. With a great deal of effort, she looked out the window. “I don’t want to fight about this.”

He gave a little laugh—not a happy one—as he let go of her and sat back. “Neither do I. It would be nice if we could actually have a conversation about it, however.”

Ugh!
The man was infuriating! “I don’t want to
talk
about it, either!”

“No,” he snapped angrily. “Because to you it’s only about sex!”

Before she could respond to that, he let his head thunk back against his seat. Scrubbed his hand over his face as he muttered, “Christ. I can’t believe I just said that.”

When she shifted forward—reached out for him, honestly not knowing what she could do to get him to just
stop
insisting that this could be something, her heart actually hurt because of how much she wanted it to be true—he just looked her in the eye for a moment. She could see the second he relented.

“So,” he finally said, his fingers inching up her thigh, demonstrating exactly why she had, as of yet, been entirely unable to tell him no, “if this happened to be one of those times you decided to try to distract me with that mouth of yours, I probably wouldn’t complain.”

Oh, thank goodness. She gave a grateful grin. And then that mouth of hers got down to business.

* * *

Boston was a gamble. Dangling a trip home to her family in front of her could go either way. But the stakes were high and his time was short. And when you were in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and the bases loaded, hell, yes, you did what you had to do. Especially when she was smart enough to see right through it. Straight-out manipulation wasn’t his thing. But the closer they got to Boston, the happier she became, and he was glad he could at least give her that. Even if this did go bad.

“Do they know we’re coming?” she asked as they started their descent.

Nate shook his head. “Not from me.”

“Awesome!” When they landed, she borrowed one of the pilot’s phones and proceeded to place an incredibly complicated food order, ending the call before she gave her name.

The mother ship, as she called it, was in an area that managed to be highly upscale and neighborhoody at the same time. There was a knot of people at the entrance despite the winter chill. Goddamn media.

It didn’t seem to bother Dorie, though. When he sat back in the seat and turned to look at her, she was just staring at him. “What?” he asked. Was it too much to hope that she’d finally come to her freaking senses and was about to tell him that, yes, she loved him, too?

Yes, apparently. She shook her head as she put her hand to the back of his neck and drew him down into a kiss.

And he didn’t want it to end; he never wanted it to end.

When she pulled away, he reached for her, cupping her face with his hands.
Don’t leave.
He heard the words in his head; wasn’t sure he’d managed to keep them there until he saw the question in her eyes.

Now it was his turn to shake his head. Though he didn’t think of himself as a man who begged, if he’d truly believed it would make her stay, he’d do it in a second. He wasn’t kidding himself. Dorie wasn’t wrong. The odds of this working were low to begin with. Subterranean. If she wasn’t one hundred percent there with him, then, well, just call him Frosty and send him to hell. But his entire life had been a one-in-a-million shot. And no matter how much she was trying to talk herself out of it, there was a future for them. He believed that with everything he had.

He pulled back. Only then did he realize that the crowd of people wasn’t the press, it was her family. “That order you called in...?”

Confusion flashed through her eyes as she lagged a little bit behind him in switching gears. Then she glanced outside the car and smiled. “It’s been my order for years.” That glint came into her eye and she shrugged. “This is so much better than calling them and saying I was coming.”

Though the car pulled up to the curb, no one came close—although they were doing a horrible job at pretending they weren’t trying to figure out who was behind the tinted windows. Knowing that he probably wouldn’t have another chance to hold her the way he wanted to for a while, Nate pulled her up to his lap, smiled as she, clearly thinking the same thing, leaned in for the kiss and let her hands wander.

They were interrupted by a sharp rapping at the window. He looked, and the hand was attached to a very big, very surly-looking, impatient guy. “Lucinda Dorinda! If you don’t open up this door we’re coming in to get you—and if his hands are anywhere near your ass it’s not gonna be pretty!”

“Sean?” Nate asked, tempted to yell back that it wasn’t
his
hands that were the issue but deciding that probably wouldn’t get them off to the greatest of starts. Especially since he had, in fact, come inside her and although they’d cleaned up on the plane, he had no doubt every single one of her brothers would be able to tell.

With a grin, she shook her head. “That one’s Seamus.”

Refusing to remove his hands from her hips right away, Nate said, “Probably shouldn’t make them wait any longer.”

Cocking her head, she looked at him, curiosity still lingering in her eyes. But then she gave him a quick final kiss, shifted across him to the other side of the car and pushed open the door and let out a whoop of joy.

Getting out and closing the car door behind him, Nate watched as the mob absorbed her, more people pouring out of the restaurant as it became clear that, yes, it really was Dorie coming home. Other than a few curious glances, not a single one of them could have cared who he was. And that was perfectly fine with him.