Hitched (16 page)

But the new Gavin knew how it felt to just stop, to enjoy a moment, to not rush and push and work all the time. Being with Allie, helping her through those times when she just needed to let go and feel free had been great. They’d had some amazing experiences. Fun, over-the-top experiences. But he wanted more now. He wanted to sit back, to know he could make her happy with less, without all the craziness, by just being him.

How could he keep up that exciting, spontaneous, take-her-breath-away pace forever? And forever was what he wanted.

“Allie—”

“When you kiss me, it all makes sense. I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I feel like I’m spinning out of control, but when you kiss me, the spinning stops.” She put her hand against his cheek. “Please.”

Well, fuck. Like he had any hope of resisting
that
.

He pulled her in and she met his lips hungrily. She held his head still, her lips moving against his as if she couldn’t get enough. Her tongue slid along his and she turned to straddle him. Somehow his hands ended up under her shirt.

Just feeling the skin of her back wasn’t a problem though, he reasoned. But the moan when he ran his palms up and down the length of her spine
was
going to be a problem. Because he wanted more of that. A lot more. He moved his hands to cup her breasts, his thumbs stroking over the tips, eliciting an even better, deeper moan. She pressed down against him and
he
moaned.

“Yes, like that,” she panted against his mouth. “More.”

Another truck drove by, the rumbling on the road pulling Gavin out of his lust-filled daze. “Al.” He glanced into the rearview mirror as, predictably, the truck’s brake lights lit up. No one drove past without stopping to be sure all was fine.

“Al.” He squeezed her hips and shifted her back off of his erection.

“More,” she whispered, staring at his mouth.

“Later.”

She pushed her hair back from her face and said, “I couldn’t even bring myself to pick out my bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“Wh—”

“Hey, Gavin. Everything okay?”

Jeff Pinkett, the local mechanic, grinned through the truck’s open window. He leaned on the door, clearly enjoying what he’d stumbled upon.

“Well, Jeff, I have a gorgeous woman on my lap. Yeah, I’d say things are okay.”

Jeff grinned at Allie. “So, everything’s working the way it should here?”

She chuckled instead of blushing, and Gavin looked at her in surprise. She was usually all about not causing a scene or embarrassing herself—or anyone else.

“We haven’t checked
everything
out yet but I have no concerns at this point.”

Jeff hooted with laughter and Gavin found himself grinning at her.

“’Kay, I’ll leave you to it then,” Jeff said. He gave them a wink and sauntered off.

Gavin was sure The Hub—and therefore all of Bend—would hear all about it later. Truthfully everyone would love some gossip about him. He was straitlaced here. No one knew his family, his past. He had nothing to live down or prove. He could just be whoever and however he wanted to be.

As Jeff drove off, Allie started to laugh. At first it was just a giggle, but it quickly built and the next thing Gavin knew she was laughing so hard she had to wipe her eyes.

God, he loved seeing and hearing that. And with the way she wiggled in his lap, he
felt
it too.

She quieted after a moment and drew a deep breath. “
That
was awesome.”

She slid off his lap and onto the passenger seat, still breathing in deeply and smiling. He told himself it was for the best and put the truck in gear. But he knew if she wanted to climb back up, he wouldn’t fight her off.

“Welcome to Alaska.” Gavin adjusted his fly for a more comfortable fit.

“He didn’t seem a bit fazed,” she said, tipping the mirror on the back of the visor down to check her makeup. “Has he seen you like that before?”

“Nah. But it’s not uncommon to see moose and stuff getting frisky along the side of the road. He’s an outdoorsman.”

That sent her into another gale of giggles. “I’ve never been compared to a moose before.”

He snorted, his smile refusing to fade.

They drove without speaking for another few miles. Then she said, “See, kissing you always makes me feel better.”

“Kissing you makes me feel a lot of things,” he muttered.

She laughed at that too. “See? Win-win. We should do it a lot more.”

He had a feeling it was going to happen whether it
should
or not.

“You mentioned bridesmaids’ dresses,” he said, hoping to divert further talk about their physical relationship. His cock was still wondering what had happened to all the hot and happy feelings from just a few moments ago.

“Ah, damn, you heard that.”

“It was a little out of context,” he said. “It caught my attention.”

“I only told you so you’d keep going,” she said. “I thought you stopped because you’d remembered your rules about no sex until we talk about…things.”

“Glad to know you’ve been listening.”

“To your stipulations? Yes.”

“I prefer the term
compromise
. We both get something we want out of it.”

“You get two things you want,” she pointed out. “Sex and me spilling my guts.”

“You get two things you want too,” he said reasonably. “Sex and proof that I’m good husband material.”

There was a beat of silence, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her tuck her hair behind her ear.

“There’s that term again,” she finally said quietly.

He glanced at her. She was sitting facing him, with one foot tucked up under her.

“It’s not going away,” he told her. They were going to talk about what had been going on her life in the past year, but they were also going to have plenty of conversation about her life moving forward. With him.

“Where did it come from? We’ve never used that word before.”

“Husband?” Gavin had to relax his grip on the steering wheel. “You’ve used it with Josh.”

“Ah.”

She was watching him when he glanced at her again.

“Ah what?” he asked.

“That bothers you.”

“That you were about to marry another man? Yes. Does that surprise you?”

“No, not really. But I think it’s more about rescuing me than it is about wanting to take Josh’s place.”

He breathed deeply, trying to keep his cool. “If I thought you were happy with him I…” Would he have let it happen? The question slammed into him. If it had been some other guy he didn’t know? If it hadn’t happened right after her mom’s death? If he thought it was what Allie really wanted and needed? Was there a circumstance where he would have left her alone?

With her here now, he couldn’t imagine it.

“My dad cheated on my mom,” he said instead of answering any of those impossible questions. Hell, if he wanted her deepest secrets, maybe he should give up a few of his.

“What?”

“More than once. At first, I only knew about the one time I’d walked in on him in his office. I told him that if he didn’t tell Mom, I would. He believed me. The next day he told her about that woman…and all the others.” Even now, years later, his gut churned remembering the day he’d caught his dad with his pants down—literally—and the day he’d watched his dad break his mom’s heart.

Allie said nothing but he could tell he’d stunned her.

“And he made me stand there and listen while he explained it all to her,” he went on before Allie could interrupt him. “That was how he punished
me
for finding out about his cheating and forcing him to confess—he made me watch him devastate my mother,”

Gavin gripped the steering wheel and breathed, thankful Allie didn’t say anything.

When he relaxed his jaw enough to speak again, he said, “Apparently he was very sexually…proficient. And he knew that women held a lot of power. He not only slept with powerful women—like the middle school principal and the chair of city council—but he slept with women who could influence powerful men. He had an affair with the mayor’s daughter—thank god, she was twenty-one at the time. He slept with the superintendent’s wife and several councilmen’s wives, and even the mother of the high school football coach—he was a first-year coach and didn’t have a wife to tell him what to do.”

Gavin took a deep breath. It was amazing how good it felt to dump all of this out there. He had never talked about it to anyone. Hayley knew some of it, but not all the gritty details.

“None of the affairs were ever love affairs. It was all about sex. He was, apparently, that good. He was a simple, blue-collar guy who couldn’t
buy
everything he wanted to give us, so he found another way to provide for us. The women just wanted some great sex with a guy who wouldn’t expect them to wash his socks or cook him dinner. And in return, they pressured the men in their lives to do Dad favors—not that the men knew why. Women can be very manipulative that way, I guess.”

He sighed. “So, everything important my brothers or I ever had—a starting place on the football team, a spot on the honor roll, recognition by the local paper, a scholarship from the Promise Harbor women’s group—came to us because Dad was a boy toy for the powerful women in town.”

“I, um…wow,” Allie said.

He knew it was a shock. Allie had grown up in Promise Harbor and knew every single person he’d just mentioned.

“Yeah.”

“And he
told
you all of this?”

He nodded. That had always amazed him too. “I was sixteen.” He glanced over to find Allie’s mouth hanging open. “That’s why I didn’t get along with my dad the whole time I was in high school and why I left home right after graduation.”

“He didn’t stop?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gavin said with disgust. “He sure as hell was never apologetic about it—not to me and definitely not to my mom. When she started crying, he told her to think about the life he’d given her and whether she would really trade all of it in. And he reminded her that it wasn’t like he never had sex with
her
. He said he loved her and the other women were just about taking care of his family.”

Allie wrinkled her nose. “Yuck.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet for several seconds.

“It was hard for me to know what to think and feel about my mom after that too,” he confessed. “She didn’t yell at him—at least not in front of me. She didn’t kick him out, she didn’t leave. After that night it seemed that everything just went back to how it had always been.”

Then she said softly, “That’s why you’ve always been so good about taking care of me.”

“Yes.” God, absolutely. That also bugged the shit out of him. There was no way his father could have truly loved his mother. If he felt for her how Gavin felt for Allie, he wouldn’t have even been able to look at another woman.

“And that’s why you work your ass off at everything.”

He gave a jerky nod. “I had to prove that I could succeed without people doing me favors. Then I came here to Bend. No one knew me or my dad. No one owed my dad anything. I just came and did my work honestly and very well, and when they were happy to see me or appreciated me or trusted me, I knew it was because of
me
.”

Silence. Not a sound. Nothing.

But he was on a roll. “That’s why it’s finally time for me to be serious about you. I’m settled in every other aspect. I’m ready for this now too. For you.”

“You’ve proven that you don’t need your dad and that you can make a life without following in his footsteps. You’re a better man than he is,” she assured him.

“Yes.” And it was such a relief. There had been moments over the years when he wondered if the whole world worked the way his dad’s world did and Gavin had been naive to think any differently.

But his dad’s way wasn’t the only way to get ahead. And Gavin had proved it.

“And now you want to prove that you can be a better husband than he is too.”

He finally looked over at her. “Yes,” he said honestly. “That’s not the only reason I want to be with you, but I’m determined to be a good husband. Nothing like my dad.”

“It’s why you’ve always been so determined to make me happy, to make me feel special.”

“Yes.” He had to look back to the road, and he wished he could look into her eyes as he said, “When you love someone, you take care of them. You protect them from getting hurt. And you definitely don’t become the thing that hurts them most.”

She didn’t say anything, and when he glanced over she was crying. Again.

Argh. He hated that. “I’ve never seen you cry and now it’s like it’s a constant.”

She sniffed and wiped her cheeks. “I know. Sorry.”

“What are these tears for?”

“You just…” She sniffed again. “You couldn’t really protect me, or fix the stuff that was making me crazy with my family when we were dating—it’s not like any of that was going to go away—but you worked your butt off, as usual, to keep me from being sad or angry or frustrated. That was…” another sniff, “…really amazing. And it must have been hard on you not to be able to make it all better.”