Merry and Bright (18 page)

“Yeah.” He needed to. Hope was a big girl, she’d made that clear. She didn’t need nor want his help. And though she couldn’t possibly deny the fact that she’d enjoyed their little outside tussle, he knew she was also over it.

Over him.

She’d be okay. She knew what she had to do to keep this place out of the clutches of her brother. He looked out the windows again. He told himself he was tired of wide open skies and no skyline. Tired of the lack of Starbucks and no New York pizzeria.

But the truth was, the place had grown on him.

And so had Hope.

“Roads might be icy,” Lori said gently. “And it’s going to snow some more. We’re awfully short-handed. . . .”

“Well,” he heard himself say. “If you’re short-handed . . .”

When Hope needed to avoid thinking about something, she’d found that nothing beat manual labor. To that end, she stood on the roof of the shed as the sun sank behind the mountains, shoveling the thick snow off the flat roof so it wouldn’t collapse. She had the back floodlights on to see, and brain blessedly blank, was happy in her own little world, where there were no sexy nerds, no evil stepbrothers. . . .

Someone climbed up the ladder. A knit cap-covered head popped up.

Danny.

He tossed up a second shovel. “I know, you don’t want my help. Too bad.” With that, he climbed the rest of the way up, straightening with slow caution as he looked down at the ground. “Huh.”

She raised a brow as he lost some of his color. “Afraid of heights?”

“No, of course not.”

“Of course not,” she repeated wryly when he sank to his knees and closed his eyes. “Okay, big guy. You just stay there, I’m nearly done here anyway.”

“No. I’m going to help.” Resolutely, he used the shovel to pull himself back upright.

Hope stared at him, feeling some more of those unwanted emotions clogging her throat. He was so different from any man she’d ever known. Loyal, intellectual, sharp-witted . . . and strong. So damn strong, from the inside out; strong of mind and character, strong of heart and soul, and that . . .

That was new for her.

He didn’t care what people thought, didn’t care about anything except doing the right thing, and damn if that wasn’t the sexiest thing about him.

It was also more than just a little terrifying given what had happened the last few times she’d opened up and let someone in.

And in any case, she was strong, too. She reminded herself of this very fact as she resumed shoveling snow off the roof. She ran this place on her own and she’d find her own answers, without spending every single breathing moment thinking about what she’d done with Danny in this very shed.

But oh, good sweet Jesus.
What they’d done in this shed
. She couldn’t help but think about it. Relive it. And think some more. Because . . .

Wow.

Genius Boy really had had the moves.

She tried to shake it off, tried to go back to the blessedly blank state, but she couldn’t. The truth was, she’d managed to avoid thinking too much about her financial situation. She’d avoided thinking about the possibility of something happening to her perfect world out here in the Colorado boonies she loved so much.

But she couldn’t keep that up. Things had to change.

Danny had gotten to his feet and was back to back with her, shoveling snow as steadily as she.

He was a rock.

A solid rock.

And if she followed his business ideas as well as her own, she knew she could make it. “Danny?”

Turning his head, he looked at her. Smiled. “Yeah?”

“You were right.”

A slow smile curved his mouth. “Much as I like hearing that . . .” He straightened, stretched his back, then leaned on his shovel. “What am I right about—” He broke off when the shovel slid out from beneath him.

“Danny!” she cried as he slipped and the ice layered beneath the snow on the roof propelled him toward the edge of the roof.

“No!” Her heart leaped into her throat as she jumped forward to catch him, but the ice caught her, too.

And she went over with him.

9

F
or the second time that day, Danny braced for his life to flash across his eyes.

It didn’t.

That’s because thanks to the sheer amount of snow they’d shoveled off the sides of the shed, he had a nice, cushy fall.

When he hit the huge berm of snow, he slowly sank in up to his nose. He spit out a mouthful of snow and was trying to figure out how to actually swim out when he was hit in the chest by . . .

Hope. He stared down at the bundle that had landed on him, his amusement at himself vanishing instantly. Heart in his throat, he pulled her in. “Are you—”

“Did I hurt you?” she demanded, getting herself out of the snow pile much faster and surer that he did. She ran her hands up his neck to cup his face. “Danny?”

Maybe it was evil of him but the sheer concern and worry in her eyes alleviated his fear, and in fact warmed him to his very frozen toes. As did the way they kept trying to rescue each other. He had no idea why that struck him so funny, but he loved it.

He’d never in a million years imagined getting stuck in Colorado. Or liking it. But there was real life out here, adventure in every single moment. Not the drudge of an office, or any office politics, but warmth and affection from the people he was coming to know, and an easy, simple joy in the chores to run the place, which were anything but simple—

“Danny,” Hope said tightly, running her hands down his body, clearly checking him for broken bones.

It seemed certain things were becoming habit with him—a habit he could get used to.

“Talk to me,” she demanded.

“If I told you where it hurt, would you—”

“Oh, God. Can you make it inside?” Without waiting for an answer, she slipped her arm around his waist and tried to take all his weight as she led him to the back door. “Almost there—”

“Hope, I was only kidding—”

She took him through the kitchen, down the hallway into her bedroom. She pulled him past her bed and into her bathroom. “You’re icing up. Gotta get you out of those clothes.”

“Hope—”

“Hold on.” She cranked on the hot water and then turning back to him, tugged off his jacket, knit cap, gloves. But it wasn’t until she dropped to her knees in front of him that his breath backed up in his throat.

“Lift up,” she said, and he realized she’d untied his boots. Before he could say a word, she leaned past him to check the water temp. “Good,” she said to herself.

Shaking his head on a low laugh, he reached down and pulled her up.

She immediately went to work on unbuttoning his shirt, but because the feel of her hands on him set him back about thirty IQ points, it took him a minute to say her name again.

By then she had his shirt off and her hands were at the zipper of his pants, except if she got them off, she wasn’t going to find an injured man, but a hot, aroused one—

She shoved down his pants, then stared at his erection. “Well, hello there.”

“Yeah. I’m not hurt, Hope.”

“I’m beginning to get that,” she murmured, still looking at the part of him that was the happiest to be naked, which pretty much waved hello at her. “Did you fall off that roof so I’d sleep with you again?”

“Ha—
Jesus,
” he managed when she wrapped her hand around him and slowly stroked. “I—”

“Get in the shower, Danny.” Letting go of him, Hope put a hand to his chest and pushed him toward the steaming shower. Then she pulled off her shirt.

Never one to argue with a woman who was stripping, he took a step back into the water, not taking his eyes off her as she discarded her boots, unzipped her jeans, and shimmied out of them.

Gaze locked on his, she unhooked her bra, wriggled out of her panties, and then stepped into the shower.

“Look at you,” he whispered against her mouth, pleasure suffusing him as their now wet bodies slid up against each other. “You’re so beautiful, Hope.”

“So are you. Who’d have thought it, but I can’t keep my hands off you, Genius Boy.”

With the hot water raining over them, Hope moved her hands to his face, so close he could feel her gentle breath on his skin. “This is nice,” she whispered.

Nice. It was, but he hoped to hell he could do better than
nice
. Hope’s breasts were against his chest, her belly and thighs flush to his, pressing her back against the wall to free up his hands, which he skimmed up her body.

Her breath came out in a whoosh, and she melted against him. “I like it when you take charge,” she murmured.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Then turn around.”

“Um . . . what?”

Hands on her hips, he twisted her around so that she was now facing the wall.

“Danny—”

“Shh.” He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck, loving how she shivered as he took his mouth on a cruise downward, over the slim arch of her spine, to the sweetest ass known to man. He kissed the backs of her thighs, and then in between, urging her legs open so he could take her over the edge, which she let him do with ego-stroking ease. God.
God,
he thought as she came for him with some more of those sexy helpless little whimpers she made in the throes. He didn’t want this to be just a hot weekend affair.

Not when for him it was already so,
so
much more.

Still breathing heavily, she turned around to face him again, pulling him up to kiss his jaw, his throat, whatever she could reach, her mouth telling him that he was the best thing to happen to her since sliced bread, and he could have told her that it was the same for him. This, with her, was the rightest thing in his life. Her arms were wrapped tightly around him, so tightly he could scarcely breathe, and he didn’t care. Closing his eyes, he bent closer and tried to breathe her in as he lost himself in her. “Hope . . .”

“This is crazy, right? How much we want each other.”

“I know something even crazier.” He cupped her face. “How I feel about you. Hope, I—”

She yanked his mouth back to hers, kissing him deaf, blind, and dumb. Waaaay back in some dim recess of his mind he understood that she wasn’t ready to hear his feelings, but then she wrapped her legs around his waist so that he could enter her. “I have three condoms left,” she whispered in his ear just before she lightly sank her teeth into his earlobe.

Jesus. Three condoms sounded about right, but damn if he’d rush through this, even for her. Gripping her hips, he pressed her hard to the wall as he kissed his way down her body. The under curve of a breast. A rib. Her belly. A thigh.

Between.

“Again?” she murmured shakily, trembling with excitement.

Oh, yeah, again. “Open for me,” he murmured against her, and when she spread her legs, he stroked his thumb over her. With a soft cry, she slid her fingers into his hair to hold on, so gorgeous standing there on quivering legs, the steaming water running down her tight, toned curves. Her nipples were hard, her chest rising and falling with her quickened breathing. She shifted restlessly, opening her legs even more, and he took her in, all pink and glistening for him. He nearly came from that alone as he leaned in—

“Danny,” she choked out, tightening her fingers in his hair as his tongue made a slow, torturous pass over her flesh.
“Please.”

Yeah. He’d most definitely please. He’d please her, and then himself, and then hopefully start all over again until neither of them could move. Opening her a little more, he gently sucked her into his mouth and kept sucking in tune to her breathy sighs, the sounds of which drove him a little crazy as he slid a finger into her and drove her to the very edge, then straight off it.

The sight of her coming again was one he knew would highlight his fantasies for the rest of his life, and as her knees gave out, he caught her against him. Reaching out the shower for her jeans, he found the condoms, then using the wall as leverage, thrust into her.

She revved up fast to join him, which was a good thing because with her mouth racing over his face, his jaw, with his name tumbling from her lips in that sexy breathless little pant of hers, with her fingers embedded into his ass cheeks trying to urge him on faster, harder, more, more, more, he wasn’t going to last. “Hope—”

She burst again. Or still. He didn’t know, but it catapulted him right into an orgasm so intense his toes curled. He completely lost himself as he spent into her, slapping a hand to the wall behind her so that they wouldn’t fall. Instead they sank together in a slow, tangled heap right there on the shower floor, with the now tepid water raining down on them.

“Wow.” That was all she said, in a dazed, dreamy voice that made him smile. “Wow . . .”

They toweled off. Hope bent for the pile of clothes, and several folded up papers fell out of his jacket pocket, papers he’d meant to show her after they shoveled off the roof. She gathered them up for him, going still as her eyes took in his research and the tentative offer he’d drawn up. He’d hoped to try to buy the lot from her, but that hadn’t felt right. This place was hers. So instead he’d planned to lend her the money she needed to pay off Edward.

“What’s this?” she asked, a veil coming down over her face.

“A way out of your problem.”

“I’ve already told you I can handle this.”

“You’re going to lose the B&B, Hope. And it’s wrong. You don’t need to—”

“Did you have this planned all along?” she asked in a very quiet voice. “You and Edward?”

“Of course not.”

“I think you did.” She slapped the papers to his chest. “I think you planned this all along. Maybe you didn’t really quit.”

He stared at her as what she said sank in. “I did quit, Hope. Do you really think I’d—”

“Yes! God, I’m so stupid!” She slapped her own forehead. “Of course you didn’t really give up what must have been a solid six-figure salary to start over.”

“Careful,” he said softly. “You’re sounding a lot like that rat bastard you hate so much.”

“Is that right? And how exactly does Edward sound?”

“Honestly? A bit pig-headed.”