“I went to my mother’s grave today for the
first time.”
She shrugged when the silence stretched out
between them. Hale’s eyes were unblinking as he studied her; the
moment lasted so long that she shifted uncomfortably. Finally, she
had to look away from him, her eyes going back to the floor and her
shoulders slumping. She needed to sleep, to fall away, or to find
the blade in her medicine cabinet. She went to leave when Hale
caught her chin in his gentle grip. His hands were rough against
her skin as he turned her face toward him.
“What’s wrong, Kyra?” he whispered
again.
“I miss my mom,” she said instantly.
“I can tell, and I’m sorry.” He leaned in
until his mouth was inches from hers. Their chests touched, and
Kyra’s nipples hardened at the contact of his muscles. “Thank you
for telling me.”
His mouth lowered to hers, and Kyra gave in
to him. Her knees sagged beneath her, but Hale held her tight
against his chest with one hand. His other twined through the hair
at the back of her neck and pressed her closer against him.
Their kiss was softer this time, more
intimate. He seemed to pull the sorrow from Kyra like he was wiping
her clean. She opened herself to him and let him kiss her and hold
her and console her. Though the thicker stubble along his chin
rasped against her, his lips were smooth and coaxing. She relaxed
into his hold and echoed the stroke of his tongue with hers.
They kissed until every inch of her was
electric and a trembling started in her bones. The flutter in her
stomach sank low until she squeezed her legs together to relieve
the ache building there. Only then did Hale pull away. Her lips
were still parted as she let out a small whoosh of air.
“Sorry for being so harsh with you,” he
said. “But I couldn’t figure out any other way to get through to
you.”
Kyra pushed her hair out of her face with a
trembling hand. Her smile at Hale was tentative at best. His hand
left the back of her neck and traced a tingling path down the
length of her collarbone. “I like that you do. Most people let me
get by with it.”
“I’ll keep being mean to you, then.” He
released her and stepped away to go back to his tile work. Before
he could reach for one, she bent and picked up a tile for him.
“Can you show me how to do this?” she asked,
gesturing toward the wall he was repairing.
Hale smiled. It wasn’t halfway or sarcastic.
It was his true smile, and Kyra couldn’t stop herself from grinning
back. “Sure,” Hale said. “But it’s your bathroom if you mess it
up.”
fourteen
S
o instead of
uploading the video I meant to, I accidently used the one of me
singing a Lady Gaga song at the top of my lungs. I didn’t even know
I was recording when I did it. I was just blasting my jams while I
did some editing. It was hours later before I realized what I’d
done. By then, it was too funny to take down. So I left it up.”
Kyra finished with a shrug.
Hale and Cade both laughed. Stevie just
rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you left that up. Didn’t people
make fun of you?”
“Yeah,” Kyra said after she swallowed a bit
of her salad. “But that happens with a lot of my videos. It doesn’t
bother me.”
“Why did you start making videos?” Hale
asked from where he sat beside her. Every now and then, when he
reached for the salt or the wine bottle on the table, he would lean
over and his shoulder would brush against Kyra’s. It felt as though
she’d closed her hand around a thread of electric fencing.
“Yeah, what made you want to submit yourself
to ridicule?” Cade chimed in, laughing from across the table.
“Blah, blah, blah. Hand me the salt,” Stevie
commanded. Cade immediately reached for it before anyone else
could.
“I started in college,” Kyra said, ignoring
Stevie. “We had to make a Youtube channel in one of my marketing
classes and upload some videos. I really enjoyed it, so I kept it
up after the class was over. Slowly, more and more people started
watching them at my school. Then it grew wider and eventually it
just took off.”
“I bet it was your singing talent that
really hooked them,” Stevie said around a mouthful of chicken. Cade
laughed like she’d just said the funniest thing in the world; she
rolled her eyes at him.
“So why do you keep doing it?” Hale asked
quietly, once Cade and Stevie had launched into a fierce debate
about free-range chicken meat.
Kyra offered him a shy smile, which he
returned. They’d spent a couple hours last night finishing the tile
work in her bathroom, and then she’d helped him grout it this
morning. It had been a great evening for her, and she’d wanted
another one, so once again, she’d forced Stevie to invite everyone
over. She’d pretended to bluster about how annoying Cade was, but
Kyra knew she was excited about having everyone over again.
“Sometimes it’s tough, because there are a
lot of mean people out there. It’ll get me down from time to time
and make me doubt why I’m doing it. The money I make from blogging
and advertising isn’t that great. But then I’ll get a message from
some young girl saying that because of my videos, she had the
confidence to try something new. That’s all I need.”
“I think that’s pretty cool,” Hale said. His
eyes lingered on hers for a long beat, stretching the silence at
the table until Kyra had to look away.
“Well, it’s certainly not destroying walls
and playing in mud all day, but it’s something,” she said.
“It’s called grout,” he corrected.
“I know. I still have it stuck under my
nails.” She raised her hand to show him where her nail beds were
stained dark.
He took her hand and pulled it back under
the table. “You’re fine,” he said, but he didn’t let go of her for
a long minute.
She looked up just in time to see Stevie
grinning at her from across the table, which caused her to flush
even redder. Quickly, she looked up at Cade and asked the first
question that popped into her head. “So why did you two start
restoring old houses?”
Hale snorted, but Cade answered. “We only
get to restore a few old homes. Most of what we do is new
construction. Restoration work is more of a passion than a fruitful
income—especially when Hale is involved.”
Cade’s pointed look didn’t miss his target.
Hale threw up his hands in defense. “Hey. I like to do things
right.”
“At the expense of the company,” Cade said,
ribbing his brother. They joked good-naturedly with each other.
It surprised Kyra how different Hale was
when he was with his brother. When she’d first met Cade, she’d
assumed he took care of his brother, and maybe he did in his own
way. But Hale took care of his brother too. He was like the fist
around Cade that battered into anything in their path. He took the
brunt of the impact for Cade, and it showed. Cade was the bright,
youthful one of the two. Hale was more experienced and rougher
around the edges for it. She figured that was the reason for his
tough exterior, especially if Cade had been bullied when they were
little.
“How’s your mom doing?” Stevie asked when
the brothers were done with their banter. Her words were like
pouring ice water over the conversation. She blinked. “Oh, sorry.
If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“No, it’s okay,” Hale said before Cade could
speak up. Once again, Kyra noticed, he was trying to protect his
brother, even if it was only from talking about their mom. “She’s
doing okay. The cancer isn’t spreading, which is good, but the
chemo didn’t really have much effect.”
“Besides making her sicker,” Cade said under
his breath. His eyes were on his plate in front of him.
“We were hoping it might eliminate the
cancer, but it only temporarily stopped its growth. She gets tired
and winded easily, but the pain is manageable, and she can garden
some days, which makes her happy.”
“That’s good,” Kyra offered. Hale only
nodded, but he leaned his leg over to brush against her knee under
the table.
“How about dessert?” Stevie chimed up. The
brightness in her voice didn’t match her personality at all, and
everyone knew she was just trying to cover up the sad
conversation.
Kyra laughed. “Did you turn on the oven this
time?” she asked, making Stevie scowl.
“Did she not turn on the oven last time?”
Cade looked delighted.
“No!” Kyra’s laughter bubbled inside her
mouth. She turned to Hale to explain, but he was already watching
her, his eyes on her mouth. The words died away.
“Well,” Cade said, coughing. “I will go with
Stevie to make sure there are no other problems.”
“I don’t need your help,” Stevie retorted,
but Cade was already following her.
When they were gone, Hale said, “You look
pretty tonight.”
Kyra blushed again. “Thanks. So do you.”
“I look pretty?” he asked, cocking an
eyebrow in question.
She groaned and covered her eyes. “I meant
you look handsome.”
He reached up and pulled her hand down. It
was the wrist with the tattoo. His thumb lightly traced the ink,
which felt wonderful because it had been itching her like crazy. “I
like you like this,” he said quietly.
Her eyes darted back to the house where Cade
and Stevie had disappeared. The lights from the lanterns hanging
from the pergola sent glittering shadows dancing across the deck.
Behind them, the ocean was making its turns against the beach, the
rhythm so natural and normal to her now that she barely noticed the
music. The salt in the air made her hair extra wild tonight. She
tucked a piece behind her ear and looked up at Hale through her
lashes.
“Like wh—” she started to ask, but that was
wrong. She knew what he meant. She was being real with him, and
asking a question like that was stupid. “I like being this way with
you,” she said instead.
His hand skimming up her bare thigh, he
leaned in and kissed her as his hand trailed farther up her skin.
She dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his bicep as his
tongue stroked along hers, his teeth finding the flesh of her lip.
She shifted in her seat, squirming to get closer to him. Her legs
fell open, and Hale stroked his finger along the middle seam of her
blue-jean shorts. She groaned as everything beneath his hand
tightened and flooded with pulsing heat.
“I want you, Kyra,” he growled against her
lips before he cupped her. It was all she needed. Her body clenched
and her head fell back against his shoulder as he turned his lips
to her neck. He nibbled on her as she came, gasping and clinging to
him.
“Holy cow,” she muttered when her body had
released its convulsing hold on her.
Hale’s crooked grin was smug. “That was
easy.”
“It’s been a while,” Kyra breathed.
“How long?”
She wanted to tell him she’d never had sex,
but her nerves got the best of her. She didn’t know what he would
think if she told him she was a virgin. He seemed like the type of
guy who liked experienced women, and she wasn’t by any
measure—clearly, since he’d just made her come by stroking the
outside of her shorts, which seemed incredibly pathetic. But Hale’s
eyes were dark and hooded when he looked at her, waiting for an
answer. His hand was on the inner part of her thigh.
“A while.”
Just then a crash came from inside the
house. Kyra looked up as Hale swiveled around. “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” She jerked up and started
toward the house with Hale right behind her. They crossed the deck
quickly, and she slid open the doors leading into the dining room,
looking around for signs of Stevie and Cade but saw none. Another
crash came from the direction of the kitchen.
Hale swore and took off across the room.
Kyra rushed behind him, worried that something bad had happened.
Stevie had a lot to drink tonight, she realized. She could’ve burnt
herself or passed out and hit her head.
Hale threw on the brakes, which she wasn’t
expecting. She crashed into his back. His arm swung out to catch
her, but it was too late. Kyra tumbled backward onto the floor,
landing with a smack to her tailbone that made her bite her tongue.
Blood pooled in her mouth as the pain radiated out from her ass.
She groaned, but Hale didn’t help her up.
“And we were worried something was wrong,”
he said with a snicker.
She peered between his legs to see what was
going on. Stevie was sprawled across the kitchen counter with her
legs wrapped around Cade, whose pants were down and exposing his
bare ass. He jumped back and swung around to cover himself, leaving
Stevie to fall back onto the counter with a screech. Her head
landed right in the middle of the chocolate cake she’d actually
baked for dessert.
It was a train wreck, but Kyra couldn’t look
away. Stevie sat up, her hands reaching for the back of her head.
When she pulled her fingers away, they were coated in sticky
chocolate frosting and cake. She stuck them in her mouth. “Um…it’s
good at least.”
“Oh my god, Stevie!” Kyra screamed once
she’d recovered from the shock. Hale was bent over double with
laughter, while Cade turned a million shades of scarlet. Stevie
continued tasting the cake from the back of her tousled red hair.
She shrugged.
“What?”
“Put your panties on!”
“Oh.” She reached down to where her lacy
thong was hooked around her ankle. She shimmied off the counter,
which thankfully blocked Kyra’s view as her best friend pulled her
underwear back up. Cade caught the full view though, and his eyes
fell downward as Stevie adjusted herself.
“Cade Cooper!” Kyra admonished, making
Cade’s eyes fly back up. Hale was still too busy gasping for air as
he laughed to help her up.
“Thanks for the ride, cowboy,” Stevie said
in a purr, patting Cade’s cheek as she passed. She sashayed through
the kitchen, dripping mashed cake from her hair. A glob fell on her
shoulder. “I’m going to take a shower. Y’all can leave
whenever.”