Love on a Spring Morning (23 page)

— —
 

After dinner, Gloria asked if she could help the kids with their bath and bed routine. Ryan waved her on upstairs, fully expecting at least Maya to want him there at the end, but for now, they all looked happy with Grandma being in charge.

“You got any scotch, my boy?” Mike asked once they were alone. Ryan nodded and went to the cupboard.

“You got me my first bottle of this stuff,” he said as he slid the finger-and-a-generous-half across the table.

Mike just nodded, then tipped his head to the porch. “Let’s go outside. I want to smoke a cigar with this.”

Shit. That meant he wanted to talk. But Ryan couldn’t very well dodge a conversation his father-in-law deserved to ask him for. “Sounds good.”

It didn’t take long. “So Hope Creswell’s quite pretty.”

“She’s kind and thoughtful, too.” If he was going to be taken to task, it wasn’t for being a randy teenager.

“I can see that.” His father-in-law lit up, dragging a few deep breaths through the cigar before continuing. “The kids seem like they’ve spent a lot of time with her.”

“Some. They’ll be sad when she leaves.”

“Few more weeks, eh?”

Ryan nodded, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest. That was the price he had to pay.

“You going to keep in touch with her?”

“I don’t know.” He honestly didn’t know if he could—or if he could not. “Probably not.”

It was the more likely outcome. At first they might exchange emails, but over time…And when she started dating someone else, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. He knew that without a doubt.

“I gotta say, it was a surprise to see you cozy up to her on the deck like that.”

Ryan clamped his jaw shut, biting back the none-of-your-fucking-business response that almost spilled out. They’d been completely appropriate today. As they always had. “Do you have a problem with something I did today, Mike?”

His father-in-law shook his head slowly. “Don’t put words in my mouth. We’re more concerned about what you have to say about it than anything else.”

“To you? Or to her?” Ryan clenched his fists at his sides, then relaxed his fingers, wiggling out the tension. “First of all, to my family her name is Holly. She knows about Lynn. She knows how much I loved your daughter, about the life we built here. How private I am about how Lynn died, and how I’d never do anything to expose my children—”

“Okay.” But the harsh tone didn’t match the agreeable response. “It’s just hard to see.”

“I can appreciate that.” That hurt to say. He hadn’t asked to lose his wife. Hadn’t asked to be alone. Hadn’t asked to meet someone else, someone famous, someone incompatible with life in his sleepy little town. “You’re not going to see anything else.”

“You sure about that?”

“With all due respect, Mike, I’m not sure what you’re asking me.” That was a lie, and they both knew it.

“You look like you’re falling head over heels in lust with the woman, Ryan.” As Mike talked, his words pulled tighter and tighter, revealing just how angry he was. “It’s embarrassing. And if it’s obvious to me, then it’s obvious to the kids.”

“No!” Ryan snapped. “You see something because you’ve come back after being gone for three months, and when you left I was a sad sack of shit and now I’m happy again. Barely happy, I might point out. How about you ask me a different question? Ask me if I still miss Lynn. Because I do, every minute of every day. Even when I’m with Holly,
talking at a party
. You didn’t see anything inappropriate today. And the kids have seen me pull out of my shell because of a friend. They’ve done the same. Our fleeting acquaintance with her will end. It has to, because we exist in different worlds. But we’ll forever be better for knowing her, and I’m not going to apologize to you or anyone else for being
happy
about that.” He’d probably gone too far, said too much, but it didn’t matter. It was done. Without looking at his father-in-law, he nodded at the dark. “I’m going to go in and check on the kids.”

— NINETEEN —

H
OLLY was reaching for her phone, to text Ryan that the coast was clear for a late night visit if he could get away, when he knocked quietly at the sliding door.

She hopped up and let him in, giving him a quick hug. “I was just going to invite you over. Is everything okay?”

“I had a fight with my father-in-law,” he said with a groan as she led him to the couch where she curled up next to him. “Before the kids went to bed, although they were inside and we were outside…Then we made nice for a bit, but once my mother-in-law went to bed, I told him I was going for a walk. Pretty sure he knew I meant I was coming here since walking into town would be stupid.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees. She wanted to wrap them around him, hold him tight and tell him it was okay, but she wasn’t sure it was. “Did you tell him…”

Ryan shook his head. “Yes and no. He guessed.” His gaze was pinned to the floor. “I told him it was none of his business.”

“It’s not.” She gently bumped the back of her hand into his arm. “What we’re doing is just between us. If he saw it, he had to have been looking pretty hard.”

“I’m sorry that I’m keeping this a secret.”

“It’s okay.” It really was. She didn’t have any right to ask for more, knowing it would hurt him. “Do you want to come up to bed for a bit?”

“No.” But he pulled her in close, his lips playing against hers, lightly at first, then harder, more insistent. When his tongue hit hers, and she could taste his need, she pulled back and grabbed his hand.

“Come on.”

“Holly, I don’t want—” She stopped and looked at him, and he flushed. “I don’t want to use you for sex.”

She was speechless. Ryan using her for sex would be awesome. Lips parted, she just gaped at him for a moment, then laughed. “Come on, my lumberjack.”

“Where’s your friend?”

“Liana’s gone over to Joshua’s cabin for drinks. I’m sure she’s going to violate him in ways I don’t want to think about.” She laughed as she led him up the stairs. Emmett’s light was already out, but the master bedroom was at the end of the hall, around a bend. It was pretty private.

As they entered the room, she realized he knew this house better than she did, although the furniture was all rented—a rider demand her agent insisted on when they rented accommodations for her. It had always felt silly in the past, but she was insanely grateful at the moment that this was, for all intents and purposes,
her
room she was welcoming him into. On the walls were generic rented art, and a picture of her and Liana she took everywhere with her. Nothing to remind Ryan of his wife or his in-laws or anything other than losing himself for an hour or two.

“So,” she said, spinning in his arms as he tried to kiss her neck. “You want to use me for sex, huh?”

“That’s not what I said,” he murmured, brushing her jaw with his lips. “Get back here.”

“Nope.” She planted her hands in his chest and shoved him away with a smile. “Go sit on the bed.”

He laughed and stepped right back into her personal space with a single stride. “Not a chance. I want my hands on you. I want to make you scream.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She wanted that, too. But they needed to be quiet. “Someone might hear me.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“You do.” Sighing as he wrapped his arms around her, she melted into him. He held her in place as he loved her neck, then took her mouth again. This time she gave in to the passion between them, sliding her fingers through his hair as they clung to each other, hungrily kissing while moving in the general direction of the bed.

He tugged her t-shirt up, and her sports bra down, kneading her breast, each roll of his palm over her nipple making her insides tug in a filthy way. She reached for him, too, getting his belt open and his fly down, his jeans slipping low on his hips as she fished his erection out of his boxers. His hand splayed wide in the small of her back, his fingers tucked into the waistband of her yoga shorts, he pulled her against him, her fist caught between their bodies.

With each slow pump of her hand, he squeezed them tighter, until she couldn’t move at all, but she still pulsed her grip around his swollen length.
 

“I can think of a way to keep me nice and quiet,” she whispered, teasing the tip of her tongue along his lips. “Stuff my mouth with something. Maybe something big and hard.”

Laughing, Ryan released her. “Be my guest.”

She stripped off her t-shirt first, then dropped to her knees on the plush rug beside her bed. Ryan’s erection bobbed in the air in front of her, and she immediately ran her nose down the shaft, pressing a kiss to the taut skin of his lower abdomen, right above his dark curls. Licking her way back up to the wide crown, she kissed him again there, a tiny peck that made him flex.

“Lick it again,” he groaned.
 

She did. Over and over again, until he was throbbing in her hand, pre-come leaking from the tip, and his hand had snaked into her hair.

When he growled for her to suck on him, she did that, too, but not before issuing an invitation for him to finish in her mouth.

He did.

She pressed her face to his thigh, waiting for him to catch his breath. He smoothed his hand over her hair and she leaned into him, and as soon as his thighs stopped shaking, he hauled her up and tossed her onto the bed.

Crawling over her, he kissed away her laughter, consuming her mouth until they were both breathing hard all over again. Then he traced the outline of her bra, his finger dragging along her skin, raising a line of goosebumps in his wake. “I’m going to forever get a hard-on when I see a running magazine now, you realize that, don’t you?”

She arched into his touch as he peeled down her shorts. “You know…I was on the cover of
Runner’s World
last year.”

“I’m going to need a copy of that.” He sucked on the soft spot just inside her hip bone.

“Pretty sure the pictures are online.”

He shook his head, his breath now nearly where she wanted him the most. “I can’t…”

“What?” She reached down and touched his cheek, stilling his progress. “You can’t what?”

He glanced up, and the look on his face—sweet, slightly embarrassed, totally honest—blew her away. “I can’t Google you. I don’t want that part of you. Not when I’ve had this.”

“But a magazine would be okay?” She grinned. “I’m not complaining, that’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly, biting his lower lip in thought. “It’s different somehow. At least if I have a copy of the magazine, I’ve got you in my hands. And that’s you, on your own terms, I guess. I don’t know what people put on the Internet. I might see something you don’t want.”

“You’ve already seen all of me,” she whispered. “You might be the only person who ever has.”

He smoothed his hands down the back of her thighs, lifting her knees and spreading her wide as he glanced back to her face one more time, his gaze dark and intense. “Good.”

That heavy, possessive stare stayed with her long after he lowered his head, after he parted her sex and used the tip of his tongue to stroke around her clit. As she closed her own eyes and threw her head back, that feeling of being Ryan’s made every lick and suck that much more intense.

 
She had no secrets from this man. He knew what made her tick, what made her scream. Even what made her feel sad and small.
I think I love you,
she wanted to say. So maybe she had one secret, after all, because she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t, and the cruel irony was enough to make her cry, but Ryan was making love to her with his mouth and she needed to cling to that instead.

Feel what he’s doing to you
, her inner voice of reason promised.
That’s love, too
.

He was stoking her fires, that’s what he was doing. Not teasing, exactly, because it was damn satisfying, but he wasn’t in any hurry for her to come either. He was taking his time, alternating between long, lazy strokes of his tongue and wiggly little twists with just the tip, exploring her most private places until she was panting and blushing and out of her mind with desire for him.

And then he slid his fingers inside her. First one, then two, and when she started begging for more, three thick digits squeezed inside her, making her burn.

Inside, he stroked his fingertips against her hungry walls, and his mouth kept working hard, too, as he lapped at her clit and the lips stretched wide around his fingers.

She panted his name as her hips started jerking of their own accord, rocking against him as she started climbing the ramp toward a climax. “Sooo close,” she moaned, ending on a squeak as he closed his mouth around her swollen clit and sucked.

She didn’t scream, because she’d twisted her face into the pillow, but inside she was throwing a ticker tape parade for Ryan and his talented mouth. Aftershocks ricocheted throughout her body, nerve endings firing at random as he slowly slid his fingers from her body, squeezing her entire pussy gently as he moved back up her body, pulling her tight against him.

She burrowed deep into his side, and they lay there, just holding each other, for quite some time.

But it couldn’t last…she knew that. They probably had less time than when she walked up the dark lane to his place. “You have to go, don’t you?”

He nodded in answer to her quiet question, then kissed her forehead. “Soon.”

They hadn’t even gotten all the way naked. Her heart squeezed. “Okay.”

“But not yet,” he promised, his voice rough, rasping in the quiet. She didn’t look up at his face. She didn’t want to cry. “I’m not done with you.”

She wanted to read so much into that statement. Too much.
I’m not done with you, either
. But she couldn’t say it, because she meant it in a way that Ryan couldn’t.

— TWENTY —

W
HEN Ryan saw Dani and Matt Foster climbing out of their ambulance at Mac’s on Tuesday, he knew it was a sign. His in-laws were heading out of town on Thursday, Holly’s guest was gone…life was back to the weird new normal, and he wanted to take her out on a date.