“I was young,” Will said, flashing an it’s-no-big-deal smile at the table even while his hands were curled into fists in his lap. “Live and learn.”
Gabe nodded and looked over at his wife, his gaze softening. “There’s something to be said for life experience.”
Stephanie chuckled, the hard-ass Will had met this afternoon transforming into…still a hard-ass but one with the edges rounded a bit. “And a willingness not to run for the hills when the woman you asked for coffee blurts out that she has four kids at home.”
“Any man who’d do that is an idiot,” Gabe said, looking at Stephanie as if she were the only other person in the world. “And I’m grateful for each and every one of their dumb asses.”
“Language,” she said, but there wasn’t any heat in the objection.
Gabe shrugged. “Guess how much I love you just gets the best of me sometimes.”
Knox let out a melodramatic groan that would have marked him as the youngest even if he didn’t have a baby face. “We are sitting right here, you know.”
Gabe didn’t even bother to look over at his youngest stepson. “So you should look away, because I’m gonna kiss your mom now.”
And he did, a quick kiss that left Stephanie hazy-eyed. Will tried to remember a time before his parents died when they’d ever held hands, let alone kissed. He couldn’t. They weren’t physically affectionate people when it came to each other or their kids. No doubt they would have seen the kiss between Hadley’s parents as gauche.
Cutting a look to the side, he tried to gauge Hadley’s reaction. Like the rest of her family, she was rolling her eyes at the PDA, but the upward curl of her lips gave away her true feelings. The only person who wasn’t watching the interaction between Stephanie and Gabe without an indulgent smile was Adalyn, who’d finished her call and joined them at the table.
She let out a sigh. “Looks like Derek won’t be able to make it down for a few more days. His boss has him practically chained to the desk,” Adalyn said. “So what did I miss?”
“The usual old-people PDA with Mom and Dad,” Weston said.
Knox sat up straighter and leaned forward. “And Will here wants to learn how to be a cowboy.”
Adalyn looked at him and shook her head. “I’m sure Knox and Weston can help you out there. I’d do it, but the wedding stuff has me out of the saddle until after the honeymoon.”
“Hadley couldn’t show me the ropes?” It really would be the perfect revenge for pawning him off on her brothers.
Everyone at the table—including Hadley—laughed at that.
“Hadley is pretty much a town-only kind of person,” Weston said. “But I’m sure Knox and I could teach you a thing or two. You’re not afraid of a little hard work, are you?”
The smug, raised-eyebrow, hey-city-slicker look Hadley’s oldest brother gave him telegraphed all too clearly exactly how much work the brothers thought he did. If they only knew. His days may not be as physical as theirs, but he was still up at four, in the office by six, and after that it was in back-to-back meetings until dinner, schmoozing potential investment partners until he got home and fell asleep reading emails in bed at around midnight.
“Hard work has never scared me,” Will said.
“Great,” Weston said with a curt nod. “We’ll start in the morning. Be ready by dawn, and we’ll take you out on snipe patrol.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Hadley glaring at her brothers. Of course she didn’t want him to win their sorta bet that her family would fall in love with him. Well, she was going to have to get used to losing on that front, too, because Will always won—no matter what.
Stephanie cleared her throat, silencing everyone at the table. “Not tomorrow, I’m going to need Hadley and Will to go on down and get PawPaw for the wedding festivities.”
Was that a dog? A peg-legged possum? He was about to ask a follow-up question when he noticed Hadley’s glare had transformed into a shit-eating grin that would look perfectly in place on a lottery winner’s face.
“You don’t mind coming with me to get my granddad, right?” she asked. “For some fun family togetherness?”
The sweetness in her tone should have warned him about the trouble ahead, but the always-needs-to-know-the-answer part of his brain had just taken a hit of that’s-the-answer dopamine. “No problem—anything for you.”
“So sweet,” Hadley said, resting her head on his shoulder and really playing up the fake-girlfriend role. “It’s only a three-hour drive down there, so we should be fine to leave in the morning and be back home by dinner.”
Fuck me.
She got him. Again. There was no way to back out of it now without admitting weakness—a definite not-gonna-happen if there had ever been one. He’d concede this battle to her, but she’d better enjoy this victory while she could, because it was going to be her last one.
And that determination made it all the way through dinner, toasts to the bride-to-be, and Adalyn’s favorite dessert—s’mores over the firepit. However, as soon as they got back to the cabin and he saw Hadley’s shoulders slump at the sight of the chair she’d napped in, he gave in—for strategic purposes, of course. It was smart to keep your competition off-kilter by throwing some no-strings-attached free will every once in a while.
“You can have the pull-out.”
Now, this was where she’d feign protest for politeness’s sake—that fake generosity would be the smart move for someone trying to slyly move in on his brother for all the dollars in his bank account.
Hadley didn’t even hesitate before grabbing ahold of her suitcase and rolling it behind her as she walked down the short hall toward the bathroom. “We’ll take turns. Me tonight, you tomorrow when we get back from driving PawPaw home.”
With her, it was always what he didn’t expect. Just like how she’d managed to get him to agree to another gut-wrenching drive. “You set me up with that.”
“I did,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and winking at him.
Will was in a pair of sleep pants and brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink when Hadley sauntered back into the living room in a silky red tank top and matching shorts trimmed in lace. Most of his blood went south before the realization settled in that she’d packed those pajamas thinking it would be his brother who’d see them.
A good man would have pulled himself back from the edge and remembered a gold digger played the long con. He recalled that last bit all right, but he was still balancing right there on the edge of lust and loathing without a clue which side to fall on, while he watched her set up the fold-out bed and slip between the sheets already on it and promptly closing her eyes without ever looking his way or uttering a single good night. He would have thought he would have gotten his ability to breathe back again, but no.
“You gonna turn out the light?” she asked in a bored tone, “or are you just standing there in the kitchen with a mouth full of toothpaste and staring at me while I’m sleeping—because that’s not creepy at all.”
Face hot at getting caught, he swallowed the toothpaste without thinking. It tasted like mint-flavored poor choices. “I’ll be done in a second.”
She didn’t answer, just rolled over and tucked the sheet up high under her chin. By the time he kicked his boots under the pull-out mattress so he didn’t trip over them in the middle of the night and sat down in the chair, Hadley’s breathing had already evened out as she slept. Without the usual annoyed expression she wore when she saw him, she looked softer, sweeter, somehow even sexier than usual. Hell, she looked every bit like she was the kindhearted person she presented around Web. But she wasn’t. And Will couldn’t—Web couldn’t—afford to forget that.
Chapter Eight
Will’s neck was never going to be the same.
As he sat up, he rolled his neck and shoulders, working out the aches from sleeping mostly upright in a chair that was about as comfortable as the middle of the back seat of a subcompact car. Sunshine cut through the blinds in the cabin’s big front window, landing in a bright puddle in the middle of the empty pull-out bed. The sheet was still a twisted, rumpled mess, as if she’d slept about as well as he had—but there was no Hadley in sight.
That probably wasn’t a bad thing, considering he’d seen plenty of her in his dreams—correction, his nightmares last night. And in every single one of them, she’d been wearing those silky little pajamas, and the strap holding her top in place kept slipping off her shoulder. It was just enough to give him a perma-hard-on while he slept, but that was it. Thank God.
“So are you sure everything is going okay in Harbor City?” Hadley’s mom’s voice filtered in from the porch through the half-opened front door. “I worry about you being out there all alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Hadley said softly. “I have friends and a job I love doing, if not the people I do it with.”
“And now you have Will,” Stephanie said.
Feeling like some kind of cartoon villain, Will tiptoed over to the window, getting almost there before his little toe got snagged on the foot of the pull-out bed. He kept moving forward but his toe went backward and the stupid iron bar stayed in place. Pain shot up his leg and he clamped his jaw shut to keep from yelling out, reflexively lifting his leg and spinning around.