“Our exes.”
“Oh, no. No exes here tonight.”
“But I’m not really bringing them here. I’m actually talking about us. How to make us better. Like was there something we did, or didn’t do, to make the relationships crash?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it in a long time.”
She pressed closer, resting her head on my shoulder. “A relationship isn’t one person; it’s a couple. The failure couldn’t have been all their fault.”
“Sure as hell is easier to blame them. But there are two sides to every story.”
She nodded against me. “With the truth somewhere in the middle.”
Intrigued that we could talk about our experiences with our exes in an analytical way after such incredible sex and be calm about it, I nudged my knee against hers. “You’ve given a lot of thought to this?”
“No. Only in the last few days. If I made mistakes in my only other serious relationship, I don’t want to repeat them with you.”
I stared up at the tent roof, thinking. “I suppose with mine, I coasted too much. Once we were together, I let the relationship run on autopilot. If there was a lesson I learned from the whole disaster, that would be it. With you, I want to be better. Invest time into us. Never take us for granted.”
She tightened her hold on my hand. “Me too. The investing in us part.” She paused, then her voice lowered. “Before, I think I didn’t invest enough in myself outside of the relationship. Too much revolved around him. But now, things are different. I have my bakery, new friends. The more I have in my life, the more I bring to our relationship.”
I pulled her hand up and kissed her forearm. “You’re perfect. You bring plenty to our relationship.”
She squeezed my hand, then our arms settled back onto my chest. We grew quiet, listening to the chirps of crickets outside. We’d banned talk of our exes on our camping trip, but traveling forward sometimes meant looking back. I hoped we both learned enough from the failure of our previous relationships to make ours succeed.
After a few minutes, she took a deep breath, then let out a long sigh. “I have to pee.”
I huffed out a laugh as she broke away, stood, and rummaged through our discarded clothing. “There’s a whole forest of ‘pee’ spots to choose from.” I reached over to the corner of the tent, grabbed the new roll of toilet paper we’d brought, and handed it to her. “Want me to stand guard?”
She scowled before tugging my black T-shirt over her head. “While I pee?”
“What if a bear decides your pert little ass looks tasty? He wouldn’t be wrong. It is.” I snapped my teeth.
“Pffft. What makes you think it’s not a girl bear wanting to take a bite?”
I sat up, grabbed my jeans, and pulled them on. “Oh, do you swing that way too?”
She shoved my shoulder, knocking me back down to the sleeping bag.
“Hey, just checking, little miss wild one. I need to learn your boundaries.”
Shirtless but ecstatic about it, since my T-shirt was the only clothing she wore besides her socks and tennis shoes, I stood and grabbed the flashlight before following her out. She went downhill a few paces from our tent, heading toward an old-growth pine as I shined the beam of light at her legs.
I sighed, happy as fuck. A man could get spoiled with a woman like Hannah. Best friend turned lover, and becoming so much more. Who would’ve thought the woman I’d originally labeled an Ice Queen was sexually adventurous? I never would’ve guessed in a million years.
She faced me, squatted, and stuck her ass out in the opposite direction, pointing downhill. Smart.
A faint splattering sound followed seconds later. She sighed. “I can’t believe I’m letting you watch me pee.”
I crossed my arms, holding the light just away from directly blinding her. “Hey, I’ve watched you do all kinds of things. Peeing is a fact of life. I’m only here to protect you.”
She lifted her brows. “From bears.”
“Exactly.” I scanned the darkness but saw no movement and heard no unusual noises.
“Only
male
bears, by the way,” she said, her tone absolute. “I
don’t
swing the other way.”
I glanced back at her and nodded, unsurprised. As time went by, the more I realized we had core beliefs in common. When having sex, we didn’t like to share, or get distracted. “Got it. No marshmallow Peeps, and no mama bears.”
“I am, however, willing to try honey, caramel, and chocolate sauce…”
I grinned. I’d been teasing her for months about the creative use of condiments. It was good to know she still had them on her mind.
“Of course you are.” My lips twisted into a smirk.
“Hey, Daniel.”
I nodded my chin toward Hannah’s employee before taking a seat on the couch in Sweet Dreams, Hannah’s cake and cupcake shop. It’d been two days since we’d returned from camping, and I hadn’t seen her since.
She’d been slammed at her bakery, and I respected that she had a life outside of me, but texts and phone calls hadn’t cut it. I missed the fuck out of her. Which was why I’d offered to pick her up for the meeting with my sisters.
Daniel gave me a chin up back. “Cade. Good to see you. I’ll let Hannah know you’re here.”
I smirked.
She already knows.
I’d sent her a teasing text the moment I’d parked my motorcycle.
To calm the nervous energy I felt, I fired up my tablet. I was about ten minutes early, which was my OCD norm. And I hadn’t checked emails since yesterday. Today I’d finally sketched out a finished backyard with Mase while Ava, our German Shepherd pup (“our” being Hannah’s and mine, although Mase was essentially Ava’s master and keeper), ran back and forth with a ball, demonstrating a need for grass and better fencing.
There were fourteen emails. Most were standard communications from Invitation Only’s vendors, but three were from Kristen. With urgent subject lines, shouted in all caps.
I frowned and pulled out my phone. Had I missed texts from her? I clicked the thing on and then off, verifying I hadn’t.
With limited time, and since Hannah and I were heading to Kristen’s place anyway, I opened the most recent one entitled “NEVER MIND” to be sure she still didn’t need me to call or text right away.
All the email said was:
Never mind. Crisis averted.
Feeling an acute hit of déjà vu, I checked the other emails from Kristen.
The first was a rant about how our florist had screwed up an order for an upcoming wedding vow renewal that Invitation Only had been planning for months. She was pissed as hell to have to deal with the client’s disappointment.
The second outlined how she had argued with the florist for over an hour. They insisted Kristen had called and substituted the flowers. She swore to them it never happened—and by swore, she meant she politely but vehemently asserted. But by the time her anger reached my email, she colored it with every four-letter variety known to man, along with a few patented Michaelson creations.
On a scowl, I scanned my brain for who could be messing with us, and it stopped at the same name it had before: Madison. But “reformed” Madison didn’t fit the mold. She’d been right—if she wanted to make amends, it made no sense to screw with me. I pulled up and read again the text she sent a few hours after we met for coffee:
Thank you for meeting me. It was great to see you again.
Yep. Nothing adversarial about that.
Searching further, I remembered Carmen’s anger when she’d stormed out of my house months ago. She’d been happy to be one of my many fuck buddies—until she hadn’t been.
My thoughts came up with a big fat zero as to another culprit. Then they gravitated back toward Madison. How vulnerable she’d seemed at the coffeehouse. And how very incongruent that was to everything I’d ever known about her. Of her.
“Sorry I’m late. You okay?”
I glanced up.
Hannah stood in front of me, looking incredible. Dark hair loose around her shoulders. Hazel eyes shining bright green in the late morning light.
I exhaled a slow breath. “Yeah, sorry.” I turned my tablet off, shoved it into my messenger bag, and stood. “Trying the figure out what the hell is happening. Kristen emailed about another bizarre screw-up by an Invitation Only vendor.”
Concern darkened her expression as she stepped toward me.
I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face into her hair, inhaling her calming scent. “Damn, I’ve missed you.”
When I made no move to let her go, she squeezed me tighter and lifted her face, pressing a kiss to my neck. “Missed you too. Bad. Sorry things have been so busy here.”
On a sigh, I bent down and kissed her hard. Then I slowed the pace, savoring her soft sweetness, licking and sucking. With my lips, I nipped her lower one, tugging it as I pulled away. I rested my forehead on hers as I caught my breath. “No. Don’t ever apologize for your business being successful. We’ll work around the schedule.”
She nodded. “Anything I can do to help with the Invitation Only issues?”
“Yeah. Let’s get over to Kristen’s. It’s time for a family meeting at our business meeting.”
By the time we stepped into Kristen’s living room almost twenty minutes later, I’d pulled apart the puzzle and pieced it together a dozen different ways, but still, nothing fit. Kristen already sat on the far end of the couch, beer in hand with a backup on the table beside her.
Kendall, who was older than me by two years, yet the youngest of my three sisters, shut the fridge. On her way back to her usual spot on the floor, she gave Hannah and me each a chilled Fat Tire. “Tread carefully.” She jerked a nod toward Kristen. “She’s in rare form tonight.”
Kiki popped up from my favorite worn spot on the couch and tugged Hannah away from me, pulling her into a big hug. “Hannah! I’ve missed you. We need to hang. Get some girl time in again.”
I ruffled the top of Kiki’s head. “Gee, thanks, sis. Missed you too.”
“Pffft. You know I always miss you, Cade. That’s a given. There’s no one worthy to harass when you’re not around.” She kissed my cheek, then gave a pointed look toward Kristen, who seemed to be taking a deep breath in between every healthy swallow of beer.
I blinked. Kiki and Kendall not giving me shit? The carefully orchestrated calmness by those two underscored Kendall’s warning. Kristen really
was
pissed the fuck off.
Clearly, we were in need of some strategic analysis.
“Okay.” I took a seat on my corner of the couch while Kiki dragged Hannah over to a couple of throw pillows on the floor. “The wedding-vow-renewal thing. Tell me what happened with this florist.”
Kristen huffed out a breath. “They said I called to replace the same rare orchids Natalie Richards had
on her original wedding day
with white roses. Natalie called me in a meltdown panic when the florist delivered her a beyond-wrong sample bouquet.”
“And John, the tent and furniture vendor, said you’d called to outright cancel his order.”
“Utter fucking bullshit.” She growled in frustration.
“I know, sis. Just bear with me. I’ve been trying to figure this out. Is there anyone angry with you?”
Kristen polished off her beer and put it on the table before grabbing her backup bottle. “Not that I know of.”
“What about the rest of you? It could be anyone trying to hurt any of us. Maybe Kristen seemed easiest to impersonate.”
They all shook their heads.
I took a couple swallows of beer as I mulled over the cleanest way to express my suspicion without tainting theirs. “Madison called me out of the blue. The same day the fiasco with John happened.”
Kristen’s jaw dropped, her expression darkening.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure it’s her. It’s a long story, but the nuts and bolts of it are that she’s back in town, works for a country club, and wants to make amends with those she’s hurt. Be a better person, or some shit.”
Kiki glanced at Hannah with a concerned expression. But when Hannah didn’t even flinch, only watched and nodded to my explanation, Kiki turned toward me. “And you believe her?”
I blew out a hard breath. “Madison’s reasoning would negate any motive she’d have to hurt me. But honestly, I’m not sure what to believe.”
Kristen gave me a hard look. “What about any other women you’ve pissed off?”
“Maybe. There’s only one I can think of but no obvious connectors yet.” I wasn’t about to drag my sexual past out into Kristen’s living room with my sisters. And definitely not with Hannah. “I’m not excluding any suspects at this point. Neither should any of you. It could be anyone.”
Kendall leaned over the coffee table from her spot on the floor and pulled the bowl of tortilla chips closer to her before grabbing a handful. “Might even be competition. What better way to steal our clients than by making us look incompetent?”
Hannah narrowed her eyes. “But how would they do it? I’m sure Kristen doesn’t broadcast our plans.” Kristen raised her brows and shook her head as Hannah continued. “No one, besides us and our clients, knows which events are scheduled and which vendors we’re using.”