The One Real Thing (Hart's Boardwalk) (17 page)

He needed to be inside her.

The soft skin of her throat called to him and, as she gyrated against him, he tasted her, pressing kisses down her neck and across her collarbones. He moved his other hand down her back as his mouth reached the rise of her breasts. He brushed his thumb over the thin shirt and bra that hid them from him and groaned as her nipple visibly pebbled through the material.

If they didn’t stop soon he was going to take her right there.

“Fuck.” He pulled away from her abruptly and she stumbled back against the wall, looking as dazed as he felt.

All he’d wanted was a taste of her.

Now he knew for certain that just a taste would never be enough
with this woman. “Tell me,” he said, a little breathless, “tell me you’ve got this back in Wilmington, Doc.”

He watched the muscle in her jaw twitch as she clenched her teeth.

She couldn’t tell him.

He knew that. Because what they had between them didn’t come around very often.

“Doc?” he persisted, and he learned in that moment that Jessica Huntington was not only smart and sassy but stubborn as hell.

“I can’t do this”—she gestured between them—“not with you.”

And she walked away.

Gutting him.

He was just asking her to think about making room in her life for him. The fact that she wouldn’t even contemplate it for a second, when his blood was on fire with need for her and his mind was on her most hours of the day, was like a gaping wound.

Strangely, the pain fired his determination. Jessica Huntington was lying to herself. Cooper didn’t know why, but he was going to find out.

By then the doc would be in his bed.

Right where they both knew she belonged.

“Are . . . are you okay, Jessica?”

I glanced up from staring at the unlit hearth in Emery’s bookstore to find Emery standing over me, staring down at me with concern in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

She looked away, seeming uncertain, and then she drew in a huge breath and turned back to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I smiled at her generous offer. “It’s about a man.”

Her eyes lit up with curiosity. “A love affair?”

“Maybe.”

Emery sat down across from me, looking more eager than I’d ever seen her. “Unrequited love?”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “I walked away from a man last night who wants to explore the chemistry between us.”

“Is he a not good man?”

“He appears to be a very good man.”
Too good for me
.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, there is the fact that I don’t live here and he does. But the biggest problem is that he doesn’t know me like I think he thinks he does. There is this possibility that he has built me up in his head as something I’m just not and if he ever found out who I really am”—my chest hurt at the thought—“I’d lose him.” I immediately braced myself. I hadn’t meant to say so much and I didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions.

Yet, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Emery just nodded. “You think that if you leave now before things between you get more intense, then it won’t hurt as much as it would if he left you down the line.”

I relaxed at her complete understanding of the situation. “Exactly.”

She gave me a sad smile. “I wish I could give you a huge dose of encouragement, but I think it would make me too much of a hypocrite. I’d probably do exactly what you’re doing.”

In that moment I temporarily forgot my own problems as it occurred to me this was the most I’d ever gotten out of Emery. My curiosity, as always, was piqued. What was it that she was hiding? I felt a kinship with her I couldn’t explain and my fear for her was that our kinship came from a similarly dark place in our pasts.

God, I hoped not. Emery Saunders seemed like such a sweet soul.

“When do you leave?” she suddenly asked.

I felt a pang in my chest again, this one at the thought of putting Hartwell behind me. “In a few days.”

“You like it here,” she observed.

“Very much.”

“What do you like about it?”

That was something I found difficult to put into words. Finally I said softly, “I feel at peace here.”

Emery gave me a slow, sad smile. “That’s why I like it, too.”

The poignant moment between us was broken when the bell over her door jingled and Bailey was suddenly there, hurrying up the steps to the reading area. Her eyes widened a little at the sight of Emery sitting with me. Emery immediately popped up from her seat.

“Emery,” Bailey said with a soft smile. “How are you?”

Emery returned her smile with a shy one of her own. “Good, thank you. And you?”

Bailey tried to hide her surprise. “I’m good, too. It’s nice to see you.”

“Oh. You, too.”

Bailey threw herself down on the sofa beside me as Emery hurried off, busying herself down in the bookstore. “Wow. She actually responded to me.”

I smiled as if to say,
I told you so.

She scowled at me suddenly. “What happened last night between you and Cooper?”

What the hell? How did she even know something had happened? I sighed heavily. “I had the most intense make-out session of my life.”

“Well . . .” She made a face. “Isn’t that a good thing? The ‘most intense make-out session’ thing . . . that’s good, right?”

“No. That’s not good. I’m going back to Wilmington in a few days.”

Bailey narrowed her eyes on my face. “Do you realize you never call it ‘home’?”

“What?”

“You never say, ‘I’m going home.’ You never call Wilmington
home
.”

When I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure what I could say, Bailey continued. “I don’t think you’re happy there, Jess.”

Not this again!

Was I wearing a neon sign that said, “I’m Jessica Huntington and I’m incredibly unhappy!”?

“I’m not moving to Hartwell for a guy I barely know,” I said defensively and as a diversion tactic.

It didn’t work.

She glowered at me. “This isn’t about Cooper. If Hartwell is a big old cake you want to eat but are denying yourself, Cooper is just the cherry on the cake.”

“What?”

She sighed dramatically. “I’m not saying this because I found a good friend I really don’t want to lose. I’m saying this because in the short time that we’ve gotten really close you hardly ever talk
about Wilmington or about your job there. Most people I know talk about their job nearly all the time or about where they live. Not you, Jess. It’s like it makes you sad to even think about it. So my questions are: Are you happy there? And are you happy being a doctor?”

Fear made my chest tight and I felt my breathing come short and fast. I lay back against the sofa and started breathing slow and easy.

“Jess, are you okay?”

I waved her off. “I’m fine. I’ll be okay.”

Bailey waited patiently by my side. When I finally felt like I’d gotten over my minor panic attack, I looked at her and gave her the same honesty I’d given Cooper. “I don’t know if I’m happy. But I’m good at my job. Plus I made a commitment there. I need to go back.”

She looked suddenly outraged. “Even if you’re not happy?”

“Bailey, we aren’t kids anymore. Sometimes we have to do things that we don’t like. That’s life.”

“No, that’s being a martyr,” she argued. “We all have to do things we don’t like, you’re right. And a lot of people don’t have a choice. They work crappy jobs and live in crappy homes because that’s all they’ll ever have and they don’t have the strength or the opportunity to reach for more. But you’re not one of those people, Jessica. You’re educated. You’re strong. You have friends here. You have options. You don’t have to work in a prison infirmary if you don’t want to. You don’t have to live in a town you don’t like if you don’t want to. So tell me this: why do you feel like you don’t deserve to be happy?”

I sucked in a breath, shocked as hell at her perceptiveness.

I swallowed hard because now that Bailey knew I had a secret, it was game over in Hartwell for me. I would never be able to withstand interrogations about my personal life.

I shook my head, trying to keep the pain out of my eyes.

Whatever Bailey saw there made her expression soften. “It is never too late to change the road that you’re on. I have never believed that you need a fancy-ass career and a fancy-ass house to be happy.
In fact, if Vaughn Tremaine is an example of that, then I’m right. Good people, Jess, good people are what makes somewhere a home. I don’t know your story and frankly I really don’t need to because I know
you
. I also know you don’t have a home and there is absolutely no shame in wanting that more than anything else. No matter what age you are.”

I fought the tears burning in the back of my eyes at her kind words.

They confused the hell out of me. More than that, they put me at war with myself.

“Your fuck buddy is currently sitting in my reception area,” Bailey said abruptly.

Confused, it took me a moment to make sense of what she’d said. Then a jolt of surprise, and not pleasant surprise, had me on my feet. “Andrew is here?”

“Yup.” She stood up to follow me out. “By the way, what do you see in that guy?”

“Emery, I’ve got to go,” I said, ignoring Bailey as we passed the bookstore counter.

Emery frowned and asked, “Will I see you before you leave?”

Warmth supplanted some of the unpleasant surprise from its hold on my chest. “Definitely. I promise.”

We shared a smile and said good-bye. Two seconds later I was hurrying up the boardwalk.

“Wow, she really does talk to you. And likes you. See! That there is a sign, Jessica Huntington. Emery Saunders has owned that place for seven years and has never befriended any of the locals. But you . . . you she befriends. That’s a sign!”

I found myself chuckling because as confused as I was about my life, I couldn’t complain about the fact that Bailey and Emery liked me enough to want me to stick around.

“Back to my earlier question: what on earth do you see in that Andrew guy?”

“It’s as simple as his hot body.”

“I’m not sure even that’s worth having to deal with him.”

“We understand each other.” That was partly true. The bigger truth, I realized, was that Andrew kept me tied to something safe and cold.

I felt comfortable in my unemotional relationship with him. Whereas true contentment was never something I had allowed myself to strive for. It all came down to protecting myself—and not allowing anything else to throw my world into chaos.

A few hours later I found myself walking down Main Street with Andrew at my side. When I’d gotten to the inn I wanted to stomp my foot like a small child and demand to know why he was infiltrating my vacation. I didn’t do that, but I wasn’t exactly offering a warm welcome.

Instead I was shocked by the way he hugged me and said, “I was worried when you didn’t answer my text. I have no surgeries today or tomorrow so I thought I’d come check on you.”

In other words he wanted to get laid.

But the simple idea of having sex with him left me uncomfortable.

And I couldn’t shake that feeling.

Plus the more time we spent together in Hartwell that day, the more annoying he became.

“I can’t believe you came here for a vacation.” He made a face as we walked down Main Street. “Seriously, Jessica . . . if you wanted a real vacation I would have taken you to Bora-Bora.”

In order not to have a public fight, I kept silent as he suggested we walk back to the inn. Obviously he was done seeing the sights of Hartwell.

And that was when things went from bad to worse.

As we were walking by the park my eyes swung past the shirtless guy who appeared to be replacing the steps up to the bandstand. And then they swung back because I recognized his profile.

Shit.

Cooper.

He stood up, grabbing a bottle of water, and my throat went thirsty just watching him drink it. Holy crap.

Shirtless Cooper with his impressive abs was a sight to behold. And then there was the way the tool belt around his hips dragged a little on his jeans, but not quite enough to give me a glimpse of his ass. That was a shame. A crying shame.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he drank the water and I became mesmerized by a bead of sweat that rolled down his neck and over his chest. I had the sudden urge to run my hands all over him.

I hadn’t thought it was possible to get that turned on just looking at a man.

“Do you know him?” Andrew’s curt voice yanked me out of my lust fog.

“Oh . . . Well—”

“Doc?”

I froze at Cooper’s voice and nodded at Andrew. “Yup,” I said before looking back over at Cooper. He stood with a hand above his eyes, shading them from the sun so he could see me.

Caught, I had no recourse but to walk over to him with Andrew at my side.

Cooper’s gaze flicked to Andrew and as we came to a stop in front of him he dropped his hand. His eyes remained narrowed on my companion.

“What are you doing?” I gestured to the bandstand steps.

He continued to stare at Andrew, who was eyeing him with suspicion. “Last time the bandstand was used they dropped a piano they were trying to remove. Piano was busted and so were a few of the stairs. I said I’d fix it. So I’m fixing it.”

Bartender, mechanic, carpenter . . . was there anything this man couldn’t do with his hands?

Stop thinking about his hands.

I cleared the lust out of my throat before I said, “You’re very handy, aren’t you?”

What?

Why would you mention his hands?

I flushed immediately when Cooper looked at me, eyes bright with amusement and not a little bit of flirtation. “You have no idea.”

And . . .
mini orgasm.

Andrew cleared his throat in an attempt to break the staring match between me and Cooper. It worked. I turned to him, shamefaced.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” he said.

No.

“Cooper Lawson.” Cooper held out his hand to him.

Andrew stared at it a moment and I swore right then I’d slap him across the head if he didn’t take Coop’s hand. I sighed inwardly when he did. “Dr. Andrew Livingston.”

I saw Cooper visibly tense before he shot me a now very
not
amused look out of the corner of his eye. I felt guilty even though I hadn’t invited Andrew to Hartwell.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Andrew said, sliding his arm around my shoulders. “But Jessica and I really need to be going.”

I allowed him to lead me away, guilt churning in my stomach. That feeling only worsened when I looked back to find Cooper staring after us. And he was definitely not a happy handyman.

As Andrew and I strolled back to the inn I had to fight the urge to run back to Cooper, to explain, even though I knew it was for the best if he started to hate me.