Where We Go From Here (Phoenix Falls Series Book 3)

“You got any big weekend plans, boss?”

I pull off my gloves and look over at my latest recruit, Jared. He’s been finishing up an en suite re-tile and appliance affixation in the cabin that some of the crew members and I are currently standing in.

My son Tate glances over to me as he ditches his own gloves, vague curiosity momentarily crossing his features.

“Uh…” I clear my throat as we head into the living area space and then I pull open the front door to get some air into the room. Is it just me or is it suddenly hot as hell in here? Hail pellets hit the deck outside the entrance in quick little smacks, and my eyes follow the peaks up the valley until I’m looking up at Harper’s bungalow.

After date number one I decided to implement a kind of strategy, partially so that I could stay somewhat focused on finishing up the huge project that her mom hired me to do, and partially so that I could subtly persuade her to go steady with me instead of jumping straight into the haystack. Not that I don’t want to jump straight into the haystack – I’ve been ready for that since the moment I laid my eyes on her. The reason why we’re waiting is because I’m giving her the chance to end this before it gets serious.

So we’ve been doing the traditional thing. One date a week, every Saturday night for the past three weeks, meaning that we’ve had four official dates, including the one that was at the country bar. I tug at the collar of my shirt when I think about the fact that tomorrow is date number five – the number that I plucked out of thin air in the bar that night when I told her how long we should wait at a minimum before we got closer.

I run a hand down my jaw and I take a deep steadying inhalation.

“Yeah,” I say at last, eyes still zoned in on Harper’s bungalow. “I have some pretty big plans.”

The second that the guys follow my gaze up the valley Harper appears at her door, shutting it quickly behind herself, and then holding an arm over her head as she begins to leg it down the hillside. She’s wearing her statement flip-flops-and-short-shorts combination, but it’s even better this time because my jacket is slung around her body, protecting her from the impaling impact of the hailstones. Warm pride spreads through my chest and I almost smile at the sight of her wearing it.

Jared lets out a low whistle when he takes in what I’m looking at, putting two-and-two together, and my attention is briefly drawn over to him.

He instantly raises his hands in a kind of surrender, as if he’s committed a misdemeanour.

“Sorry, that was inappropriate. My bad, man,” he says quickly.

I shake my head in understanding. Harper’s so beautiful it’s crazy, so I’m not surprised that he’s impressed.

“All’s good,” I tell him, giving him a brief nod when he starts heading for his truck at the edge of our make-shift lot. “Have a good weekend.”

When Harper’s about twenty feet away from us Tate jerks his thumb over his shoulder to the inside of the cabin that we’ve just about completed and he says quietly, “I’m gonna grab my stuff and head out.”

I nod at him before he re-enters the cabin and then I turn and walk the final few paces to close the gap between Harper and myself.

Her jog stumbles to an abrupt stop as she hits into my chest, and I look down at her with my heart going double-time as I wrap my arms around her back. But the second that she looks up at me I can tell that something’s wrong.

The sound of Tate trudging out of the cabin has my head snapping to the side and he pauses briefly, as if he’s seeing something that he shouldn’t. He blinks at me for a moment and I release Harper from one of my arms, torn between not wanting my kid to see me cosying up to a woman that isn’t his mother, and not wanting to let go of Harper when her face has blanched of all colour.

She misreads my movement, thinking back to when I told her that I like things to be private, and she quickly covers for me, making my heart clench painfully in my chest.

“I just, uh,” she begins, taking a step away from me, much to my absolute dismay. “I just thought I’d come and see how the cabins are coming along. Almost all done,” she adds, followed by a quick swallow.

I look down at her and ask teasingly, “Are they up to my supervisor’s standards?”

She gives me a little glower and some colour flares back into her cheeks. That gives me a moment of relief. Maybe whatever’s happened isn’t too bad.

She lifts up on her tiptoes to try and scope out the interior through the open door, and Tate moves out of the doorframe so that his body doesn’t totally block the view. Tate and I share a wordless look, both of us not sure about what to think of this moment.

“Did you make that?” Harper asks suddenly, pointing over to the newly installed kitchen cabinets.

“Yes,” I say.

“And that?” she asks, now gesturing to the smooth wooden table sat in prized position at the centre of the room.

“Yes.”

“What about that?” she continues, and I breathe out a laugh, not even bothering to look at what she’s pointing at this time.

“Let’s just assume that I made everything you’re currently looking at. Including him,” I add on, jerking my chin at Tate. I guess I’d be introducing him to her at some point, so it might as well be now.

Harper’s eyes fly up to mine, her lips popping open, and then she looks quickly back over to Tate, giving him a stunned once-over. She lingers for a few extra seconds on the large cross tattooed around his bicep, the name etched across his knuckles. Then she gives him a quick nervous smile and moves closer to me again, making warmth spread through my chest as she lets me circle her shoulders with both of my arms.

I slide my gaze over to Tate and he’s squinting back at me, his lips pressed together as if he’s trying to stop himself from laughing. We share a father-son look. Mine says, so this is the woman I’ve been seeing. His says, please dear God leave me out of it.

I half-laugh and he shakes his head, an almost-smile playing around the deep-cut dimples of his cheeks. I think that Harper’s gone into shock, so this is probably the extent of their introduction for now.

Tate gives me a quick shoulder nudge, spares Harper a 0.2 second glance, and then he jogs easily over to his truck, head tilted slightly to shield himself from the pelting rain.

I bring my attention back to Harper and my eyebrows raise a little when I take in her flushed expression.

I think she’s turned on. She likes the fact that I made a kid – a solid six-four kid – and she’s finding it impossible to hide it.

“That’s your son?” she asks, looking up at me through her lashes. I lift one of my hands above her forehead to shield her face from the harsh weather.

“Yeah,” I say back to her, dropping my other hand to her ass and giving her a gentle squeeze.

Her breathing catches in her throat.

“He’s so… big,” she says finally. “I didn’t think that he’d be, like, a whole adult man.”

I nod as I start walking us onto the cabin porch, under the new wooden roof that Jace fitted a few months back. “Yeah, he’s a big guy.”

“Like his daddy,” she says quietly, dropping her eyes to my pecs.

I laugh a little as I move my other hand away from her face, so that I can firmly caress her lower back. “Like his daddy,” I concur.

I can feel Harper’s energy waning. I glance up and watch as Tate’s truck disappears from view, saying absentmindedly, “He’s heading out for the weekend to see his girl.”

Then I look back down at Harper and say, “What were you running over here for? You know that I always come to see you after I finish up.”

The soft pink glow dims down a watt in her cheeks. I narrow my eyes, not liking that reaction.

“Speaking of this weekend,” she begins, and my stomach drops like a load of lumber. I swallow hard, already not liking where this is going.

We had plans this weekend. Date number five. The date. The date where she tells me how she actually feels and she can decide whether we end this here or we make it official. Whether or not I get to claim her as my own.

I steel my jaw, preparing for the worst.

“I got a call from my mom,” she says, looking up at me again. Now I’m a little less worried but a lot more confused. When she drops her eyes I look out across the valley and my gaze lands upon the portacabin less than thirty feet away from us. Warm and protected from the cold lashings of the hail.

I tuck two fingers under her chin, lifting her face to mine, and I finally give her a long, slow kiss. Her nails grip into my pecs as I slide my tongue inside and I give her slow unending strokes until she’s moaning and trying to climb me.

“Let’s go to my office,” I say to her, and she nods up at me.

I lock up the cabin and then hitch Harper around the side of my body, tug up her hood, and run the distance over to the cub, quickly mounting the steps and pushing us inside. I drop her gently to the floor and close the door behind us.

When I turn around I’m met with her reaching her arms around my neck, standing on her tiptoes so that she can get another kiss.

I give it to her, a little harder, a little faster, walking her backwards until her ass is up against the side of my desk, and then shoving my jacket from her shoulders to reveal a skimpy tank top beneath. I pull away to get a look at her. Under the little top I see her push-up bra, her soft perky tits all but spilling out of it.

I stumble backwards and grunt, running one hand through my hair and using the other to grip the thickening happening at the front of my cargos.

“Jesus,” I curse, breathing heavy and turning around. “If we need to talk, maybe you should put the jacket back on for now.”

I’m not so arrogant as to think that I can actually multitask. Maybe some men can concentrate on a conversation whilst they’ve got a pair of perfect tits a couple inches away from their mouth, but I am one-hundred percent not that kind of man. My brain is already turning into a pile of smoking ash. If I get one more look at what Harper’s got for me, our five date rule is about to get annihilated, repeatedly, over a desk full of paperwork.

I hear the scrape of the jacket zipper, give her an extra second just in case, and then I turn back around, my head spinning from my sudden tumult of testosterone.

“Sorry,” I rasp.

She shakes her head as if to say that it’s okay and I move around the desk so that I can heave myself down into my seat. I run both of my hands through my hair, giving it a rough tug to try and refocus on our conversation. I briefly consider jamming a pen lid into the side of my quad again.

“Sit wherever you want,” I say to her when I realise that she still hasn’t moved from her position at the side of the desk. I gesture vaguely to the chair facing mine on the opposite side of the desk, then to the tabletop, and then, after a moment, I spread my thighs wider and give her a look that tells her, if she wants to, she can sit in my lap.

She takes a step towards me and I swipe my tongue over my bottom lip. Christ. She’s actually going to sit on my lap. May as well have kept the jacket off, because I’m pretty certain where this is going to go.

But instead of putting a bookmark in our conversation and straddling me until I can’t take it anymore she turns around and lightly perches her beautiful behind between my thighs, steepling her fingers on her knees and dropping her head down as if she’s feeling shy. I shift forwards so that my front’s up against her back and I tug at the neckline of her jacket so that there’s just enough room for me to rest my chin above her collarbone. She shudders when my stubble stabs into her skin and I entwine our fingers in her lap, waiting for her to tell me what’s on her mind.

“So my mom rang me,” she begins, a slight tremble in her voice.

I’m not liking that at all. The only times that I’ve ever seen her acting like this was when she was talking about a certain piece of shit that I haven’t yet gotten around to finding the home address of.

I hold my tongue, waiting for her to continue.

“At first we were talking about the upcoming press release week, the promo tour we’re doing, and I told her that I didn’t feel comfortable going because of the Evan thing. And then, because I’d already mentioned him, she used that as her cue to tell me some news from home, and she told me that… that…”

I lean around her and watch as a big warm teardrop trickles over the curve of her cheek. It plops right down onto her bare thigh. Horrified, I keep both of her hands in one of my palms and I move the other so that I’m caressing her exposed leg, rubbing my thumb over the tear until all traces of it have disappeared.

Her voice drops to a whisper, her eyes scrunched shut and tears running silently down her cheeks. “She told me that Evan and my sister Holly broke up. Which means that it wasn’t even a real relationship in the first place. Which means that my fiancé broke up with me for literally just a fling. But then, on top of that, because only my family and the crew knew about the break up in the first place, because it hadn’t reached the press yet, apparently he’s still wearing his engagement ring. As if we’re still together or something, which then puts this weird pressure on me, especially with the movie coming out, to act as if everything’s fine. My mom made me check my emails and there were literally hundreds from the crew, and super urgent ones from the board at the production house. They don’t want their leading hero looking like an asshole ahead of the release, so they want me to–”

I keep my voice deadly calm. “If you tell me that they want you to get back together with him, or even to pretend to be with him, I’m going to lose my mind.”

She turns around to face me, her eyes the brightest that they’ve ever been, flushed with her tears.

“I’m obviously not going to do that – but I do have to go to the final stop of the press tour. I’m going to have to see him again if I want to save face, to stay in the company’s good books.”

I try to unclench the steel screws in my jaw. “I’m going with you,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “I’d never ask you to do that for me.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I say. “Which is exactly why I’m saying it. I’m saying it for you, so you don’t have to.”

She leans up to me and I instantly swoop down to take her lips with mine. She moans the second that my mouth presses against hers and I kiss her in a wild frenzy – pissed off at her colleagues, fucking furious with her ex, and most of all damn determined to remind her that I’m here for her, I’m right for her, and I’ll pledge to take care of her for as long as she’ll let me.

I move my hands to unzip the jacket and she arches back against me as soon as I have her uncovered. My hands move immediately to her tits, kneading them in fast frantic circles.

“Mitch,” she whispers, and I start kissing at her cheeks. She tastes like salt from her tears. Her tears about her ex fiancé. And that makes me so damn angry that I have to remove my hands from her for a moment and sit back in my chair, staring unseeingly at the wall to my left and counting slowly to ten.

Then she decides to punch in another blow.

“There’s more,” she says quietly.

My eyes snap right back on her. Is she fucking with me right now?

“What more is there?” I ask. My tone is level, as if I’m not fantasising about going out into that forest and digging a nice big Evan-sized ditch.

Hell, she said that she used to like pretty boys, so it probably doesn’t even need to be a big one.

“My mom said that Holly is devastated and really angry – angry at me. But apparently she got a role in some series that’s shooting somewhere past Colorado so she’ll be passing by here when she travels to set this weekend. So my mom told me that she talked Holly into stopping by, here, so that we could talk about what happened and maybe clear the air.”

I can feel the hot red anger burning all the way up my neck. I give Harper a long look and say, “She’s not stepping foot on this site.”

Her bottom lip wobbles dangerously. “She’s my sister.”

“She’s disloyal. Family doesn’t do that to family.”

We maintain eye contact for ten long seconds, Harper threatening another cascade of tears whilst I try to mentally persuade her to cancel her sister’s visit.

No such luck.

“Fine,” I submit, bowing my head against her shoulder. I don’t want her crying again and if she wants to maybe make amends with her sister then so be it. Doesn’t mean that I’m going to be happy about it, but I’m not going to make this any harder for her than it already is. “When’s she coming?”

“Tomorrow. I’m to set up, like, a dinner for her tomorrow evening.”

Tomorrow evening. Our date night.

She’s cooking dinner for the woman who fucked her fiancé behind her back on our date night.

I nod my head, a numb anger coursing through my veins.

“Okay,” I say quietly, my voice void of emotion.

“Mitch,” she says, twisting so that we can look at each other. “Don’t be mad at me,” she begs.

I shake my head and then brush my palms over her cheeks, wiping away the remnants of her tear stains. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at everyone else.”

I lean down so that she can reach my mouth and this time when we kiss it’s gentle. It’s me saying that I know we didn’t agree on this one but I still want to comfort her in any way that a partner can.

Which reminds me.

“You don’t have any furniture in your kitchen,” I murmur, pulling away from her.

She pulls me right back down and parts her lips, making it damn well impossible for me to not slip my tongue right inside and rub her up in the way I know she needs.

So much for gentle.

“No table, no chairs,” I say hoarsely as she tugs at the neckline of my work shirt to try and get a look down at my pecs.

“Make me some?” she asks breathlessly, and it’s so sweet, so Harper, that I can’t help but laugh, nodding my head and dipping back down for another kiss.

“I’ll get them to you first thing, baby,” I murmur against her.

“And maybe… maybe stop by? Tomorrow evening?” she asks. “She’ll probably be here from six ’til eight, that time-frame roughly. So maybe just before she leaves you could… come round? For a bit of moral support. Unless that’s stupid, in which case–”

“I’ll be there,” I rasp, and then I give her our last kiss of the evening.

I’ve got some work to do.