It’s just … I had been Evie with him.
That had been nice.
The silence swells between us until it feels like there’s a weight pressing on my shoulders. Beckett doesn’t look like he’s in any hurry to fill it. He tugs his hat from his head with a grumbled curse, and drags his palm back and forth over the back of his neck. Into his hair until half of it is sticking up.
“Listen, I didn’t—“ he tilts his head and looks at the ceiling, twisting his neck to the side in a tense stretch. He sighs and straightens, leveling me with a look that somehow channels both irritation and exasperation at the same time. I have no idea what to do with it. I have no idea what to do with any of it. This version of him is so very different from the man with the soft words and careful touches—his laugh a quiet, husky thing in the dark.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t why I came here.” He clenches his jaw so tight it’s a wonder he’s able to say anything at all. “I came here because—because I want to ask you to stay.”
I can’t quite stop the sound that trips out of my mouth. If that’s him trying to convince me to stay, I’d hate to see what it looks like when he wants me to go. “Your pitch could use some work.”
“Evelyn.”
“I’m serious.”
His frown deepens. “This contest means a lot to Stella. It means a lot to me, too. Our farm needs your help and I’d like for you to give us a fair shot at it.”
Another painful pluck at my chest.
“You think I wouldn’t?”
“You did run from me earlier,” he points out, the barest hint of a smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. I hate that it sends a lick of heat straight down my spine. “I mean, you literally ran from the bakery when you saw me.”
I look down at my feet. Not my finest moment. But I didn’t know what else to do. “I know.”
A different kind of silence settles in the space between us.
“I’d like some reassurance,” he says, voice quiet. I watch his feet as he shifts his weight. “That you’ll stay.”
“And what would that be?” I ask in his general direction. When he doesn’t say anything in return, I release a breath and look up at him. He’s still frowning, that little line between his eyebrows deepening with it. “For you to be reassured?”
I could write him a haiku. Bake him a cake and sign it in buttercream frosting. I know he’s hesitant because of the way I left things, but it was a one-night—okay, a two-night—stand. A single weekend together.
I don’t owe him anything.
His eyes flash a shade darker. For the first time since he’s entered the room, he fixes his gaze intently on mine. Something twists and pulls between us. I feel it as sure as a touch against my arm. The small of my back.
“A promise,” he says.
“Would you like me to make a blood oath?”
He makes an unamused sound. I roll my eyes. “I’m here to do a job, Beckett. I wouldn't let anything get in the way of that. Stella deserves my best. I have no intentions of phoning it in.”
I’ve never done anything but my best. He might think my job is ridiculous, but I know what my influence can do for people. I can bring business to this farm—customers, attention, a cannonball of social activity.
“So you promise?”
I nod, suddenly tired down to my very bones. I want the rest of that cookie tray and the bed, in that order.
I want my ghost of one-night stands past to find the nearest exit.
“I promise. I’ll be there tomorrow. We can start over.”
“You won’t leave?” he asks and I’m reminded of a hazy gray morning, a storm rolling in off the coast. His arm stretched out beneath the pillows, the bare skin of his back and the dip of his spine. The gentle snick of the door as it closed behind me, my suitcase at my feet.
I take a deep breath in through my nose and push it out just as slow. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t believe me. Apparently, Beckett is the type to hold onto a grudge.
I grab another cookie from the tray. “I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER ONE
BECKETT
MARCH
“Do you plan on coming back to bed?”
Her voice is raspy with sleep and she has a hickey at the base of her throat, a deep purple bruise that I can’t stop staring at. She stretches her arms above her head and the sheet slips half an inch, the swell of her breasts rising from beneath. I want to catch that sheet in my teeth and drag it down until she’s bare beneath me. I want a hundred other things, too.
I shake my head from where I’m perched on the desk in the corner of the room, taking another sip of coffee instead.
Restraint, I tell myself. Have some god damned restraint.
She smirks at me.
“Oh, I get it.” She drops her hands back down, one twisting through her hair, the other slipping beneath the sheets. One eyebrow arches high in invitation. “You like to watch.”
I’m pretty sure I’d like just about anything with Evie. I want all that black, silky hair wrapped around my fist, that smiling mouth at my neck. Last night she spent twenty-two minutes tracing the tattoo across my bicep with her mouth and I want that, too. I want to return the favor with the freckles on the inside of her wrist and the marks at her hips.
I push off the desk and set my cup to the side. I step towards the bed and watch the movement of her hand. She swipes it low across her stomach, a wicked smile on her pretty face. I plant my knee on the bed and find her ankle, her bare foot dangling off the edge.
“I love to watch,” I tell her as I grip her thigh and make room for my body between her long legs. I drop a kiss to the inside of her knee and her whole body shivers. I drop another kiss just above it. “But I like to touch more.”
A finger digs into my ribcage as I’m violently yanked from my favorite daydream.
“Are you paying attention?”
My knee jolts and my boot catches on the chair in front of me, sending Becky Gardener rocking precariously to the side. She curls her hands around the edges with a white-knuckled grip and shoots me a look over her shoulder. I fix my attention on my boots and mumble an apology.
“I’m paying attention,” I tell Stella, and swat her hand away.
Kind of. Not really. There are too many people in this room. All of the business owners in town are sandwiched together in the conference space at the rec hall, an old room that I’m pretty sure is used to store Easter decorations if the slightly terrifying six-foot bunny in the back corner is any indication. It smells like stale coffee and hairspray and the ladies from the salon haven’t stopped cackling since they stepped through the door. It’s like sitting cross-legged in the middle of a parade while the drumline marches around me. All of the sound pulls my shoulders tight, an itch of discomfort pricking at my neck.
And I keep making eye contact with that bunny.
I don’t usually come to these types of things, but Stella had insisted. You wanted to be a partner, she said. This is what partners do.
I thought being a partner meant I could buy the fancy fertilizer without checking in with anyone, not attend meetings that serve absolutely no purpose. There’s a reason I chose a job where I spend seventy-five percent of my day outside.