I made my way through the groups of well-dressed guests, peering into rooms, and checking twice at the bar. Just as I was turning away from one of the small balconies, I spotted a lone figure, leaning against the stone wall of a patio on the floor below. My heart gave a jolt. Anger of course. I turned abruptly, racing down the stairs and moving through the house, out a back door and along the patio, turning the corner to where he stood. He turned, a drink in his hand, a look on his face I couldn’t read—something glum. Almost sulky. He should be glum and sulky. I was about to kill him.
“You double-crossing rat!”
He leaned back casually against the stone, assessing me as I approached. “You look . . . upset, Haven.”
I stepped closer, socking him on his arm. It felt like I’d struck the wall behind him. He didn’t even blink. “You lied so I’d look like a fool.”
“Lied about what?”
“Oh quit the innocent act. You made up some ridiculous story about Gage’s soft spot for possums of all things.” I socked him again with the same result as the first time. “I went on and on about ticks, for the love of God! In front of Gage! Ticks! I sounded like a screwball!” I placed my hands on my hips. “I concede that I said a few other things that didn’t put myself in the best possible light, but the possum thing! The possum thing! There was absolutely no coming back from that.” My breath came short, chest rising and falling.
“It does sound ridiculous. I’m surprised you believed me.”
My mouth dropped open and I stepped closer, toe to toe. “Do you like to humiliate people, Travis? Is that it? Do you like to set people up? Is that what you do?”
He flinched slightly. “It was meant as a joke. I didn’t think you’d run with it.”
“Well I did, you ass. I made a fool of myself in front of my crush. Why did you do it? What is wrong with you?”
He stood straight, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You’re right. I am an ass. You should know that. It’s a good thing to know about me.”
I started to agree with him, my mouth opening and then closing, my chest still rising and falling with the emotion I’d exerted as I’d searched this monstrosity of a house looking for him and then subsequently railed and socked him on his immovable arm made of rock.
He was watching me, his own quickened breath mingling with my own, despite that, from what I assumed, he’d been standing nearly motionless on this patio for at least a little while. He looked so damned wounded, when I was the one who’d been tricked into talking ridiculously about tick-eating-possums with a man I’d wanted to impress. Which . . . did sound . . . well, ridiculous. My lip trembled and then I laughed, a sudden hiccup-sounding guffaw.
Travis regarded me warily, offering a tense, concerned smile.
I clapped my hand over my mouth, laughing again. Oh my God, it was all so ridiculous. Being at this house. The way Travis Hale was looking at me as though simultaneously hopeful my anger had faded and he was off the hook, and also like he was considering making a call to have me committed. This road trip I was on was ridiculous. This dress that I couldn’t afford yet had bought anyway to impress some man who’d likely only ever see me as ridiculous and rightly so, was totally ridiculous.
Hell, my whole life had been one ridiculous link in a ridiculous chain of events. I was laughing so hard that tears pricked my eyes.
And there was a billiards room upstairs. A billiards room! The apartment we’d lived in the longest had had a homeless prostitute named two-toothed Trina who had slept in our building’s doorway. I’d made her sandwiches when we had enough food to spare and sat with her as she’d gummed them.
I laughed and laughed.
And some absurd part of me missed Trina and worried that there was no one to make her sandwiches anymore, because I was here in Maine lying about my love for possums to a man whose family home included a billiards room.
“Haven,” Travis said, and there was something in his tone, something so incredibly gentle as if, though I didn’t understand what was happening to me and perhaps he didn’t either, he recognized the feelings behind it.
How could that be true? It couldn’t. Not from Chief Hale, who’d grown up in a virtual Mayberry by the lake with love and family, and history, and freaking blueberries, ripe for the picking, all around him.
“Haven,” he said again in that same gentle way, stepping even closer, taking my hands from my mouth and holding them down by my sides.
My laughter dwindled, my shoulders dropped.
“I’m an ass,” he said.
“I know,” I answered breathlessly.
He nodded, something like sadness in his eyes. “Everyone knows,” he said. “There’s a consensus about it.”
My heart squeezed. My laughter became air. In. Out. In. Out. He was an ass. But he also wasn’t.
“Polls have been conducted,” he went on. “Graphs have been charted. There are debates about the magnitude of—”
“Shut up,” I said, pressing my mouth to his.
For a moment, we both froze, our eyes open as we stared at one another in shock, as if we’d suddenly and joltingly found ourselves standing on a different planet. And then, like lightning, he groaned, pulling me close, and fitting his mouth perfectly over mine. I met his groan with one of my own, a feeling I could only call relief spiraling through me. The kiss deepened. Every part of the strange, alarming anger and sadness and confusion from moments before vanished as his heat enveloped me, his scent adding to the intoxication of the moment. Our tongues met, testing, and then tangled together as though our bodies already knew one another and were celebrating this long-awaited reunion.
He feathered his fingers down my back, tracing the laces of my dress, causing me to shiver, sensation flowing over every part of my body. Pull them, I wanted to say. Bare my body. Then cover it with yours.
What was happening to me?
He stroked my tongue with his, fire leaping through my veins, every cell alive. This is what drugs feel like, I thought. This is why people go back and back and back, doing whatever they must—whatever they shouldn’t—to make this feeling last. I squeezed my legs together and Travis let out a growl, low in his throat. I felt the vibration of it and it made my excitement soar higher, on some plane where gravity no longer existed.
I held on to him more tightly so I wouldn’t float away. He was hard everywhere—his arms, his chest, his cock that had swollen and was now pressing against my hip. I leaned closer into him.
“Haven. God.” He pulled away slightly and I sagged against him, feeling breathless and needy, both out of my body and deeply aware of every part of myself, most especially the parts that were tingling and throbbing and begging for relief.
I’d never been kissed like that.
“We shouldn’t . . .” he said, his voice hoarse, desperate. He stepped back farther, glancing around. I met his eyes. My God, I’d forgotten where I was. I’d forgotten who I was.
And my God, what a relief that had been.
I blinked. We shouldn’t. Those words were a bucket of water on the flames still licking at my bones. “No, I know. Of course. That was . . . sorry.” I took a trembling breath, wiping the wetness from my mouth and smoothing my hands over my dress. No, of course we shouldn’t. I’d just been . . . angry and . . . why had I kissed Travis?
He gave a short, pained laugh. “I meant, we shouldn’t here,” he said, his muscles held tight, his expression searching and slightly drugged. Had the kiss affected him too? He’d certainly participated.
Here. The Buchanan mansion. I closed my eyes momentarily, taking a few beats to get hold of myself. I glanced upward to where one of the balcony windows had a view of the place where we stood. When I looked back at Travis, he had a small frown on his face.
“No,” I agreed. “No. We shouldn’t anywhere.” He had a broken heart, and I’d just practically attacked him. Plus, I was interested in someone else. And the someone else’s family owned the house we were currently standing in.
Travis opened his mouth, then closed it, nodded.
I took a deep breath. “I think I need champagne.”
“I could use some too.”
**********
We arrived back at our B&B an hour later, both of us slightly stiff and awkward. We’d mingled for a little while, each having a glass of champagne. Travis had bid on a couple of items for the charity, and then we’d agreed to call it a night.
Gage had been gracious and kind when we’d sought him out to say goodbye, his eyes twinkling when he smiled at me with some form of affection. “I look forward to seeing you at the club, Haven.”
I’d smiled brightly at him, hope soaring that I hadn’t humiliated myself to the level I’d thought. Maybe he even thought I was . . . quirky in an attractive way. One could only hope. And another one of my mottos—one I wouldn’t share with Gage because I’d already done enough damage for one night—was that hope springs eternal.
I’d turned and caught Travis looking at us, that same glum expression on his face that had been there when I’d found him on the patio, and I’d wondered if it could be interpreted as jealousy.
And a different hope soared, one I was too tired and confused to look at in that moment.
We stood awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs. Neither of us smiled.
I wanted to ask him if he regretted kissing me. I wondered if he’d compared it to kissing his girlfriend, the one who’d broken his heart, the one the gossips thought he’d cheated on when it was actually the other way around. I wondered if kissing me had made him long for her. Sometimes kissing someone else too soon after a breakup did more to amplify your sadness than to distract or heal. I wasn’t the foremost expert on relationships, but I knew that to be true.
“Thank you for—”
“I really am—”
Travis cleared his throat, inclining his head toward me, saying wordlessly that I should continue. “Thank you for taking me to Gage’s party, even if you did sabotage my efforts at coming off as a normal person.”
He gave me a half grimace, half smile, lowering his eyes. “I really am sorry about that.”
I waved my hand. “It’s okay. Maybe it ended up setting me apart.” As a freak.
Were we going to pretend we hadn’t kissed?
We stared at each other for a moment longer.
“Okay, then, goodnight, Travis.”
He paused, but then gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Goodnight, Haven.”
We shouldn’t.
I walked slowly up the stairs. I could feel his eyes on me as I ascended, and once I almost turned back just to see the look on his face, to see if it might tell me anything at all, but in the end, I didn’t. I whispered a quiet word of encouragement to the plant I’d first found limp and root-bound at the back of the nursery, that now resided at the top of the stairs, my hand trailing over its lush, green leaves. It’d grown twice the size it was when I first brought it here, and a small burst of pride lit inside. I’d done that. I’d saved it.
Even if I hadn’t saved her.
I headed to my room, closing the door behind me and leaning against it, my palms flat against the wood. Outside, I heard Travis’s footsteps, heard them pause at the top of the stairs, and then head to his own room in the opposite direction.
I pushed off the door when I heard the quiet click of his closing, wondering how on earth I was supposed to come back from . . . whatever tonight was.
