A Place with Briar (Harlequin Superromance) (12 page)

Her lips parted and something shot to life inside her, a rocket of flame that sailed from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. His tongue stroked hers ever so lightly and she quivered, breath quickening in surprise.

He shifted back on his heels. Mindless, she gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him flush against her again. “Don’t stop.” She kissed him deep, praying the fluttering, unsteady, heating sensation in her joints would never fade. Praying she would always feel just like this.

With a groan, his arms banded around her tight. He dipped into her, not to taste this time but to take—until he chased all semblance of Briar’s thought and reason away. How had she ever gone through one day of her life without knowing the shape of his mouth, the taste of it and the desire that spilled free now that she was with him, uninhibited?

He lifted his mouth from hers, seeming to wrench himself away. “Briar, I want you.”

She sucked in a shocked breath, faltering. “You...you want me.”

“I want you.” He said it more vehemently this time, seeming to damn himself for doing so.

She sighed. “This is so fast. But for once, I don’t care.”

He stopped her from kissing him again with his hands on her shoulders. Eyeing her mouth, he said, “We should take this slow.”

Letting out a laugh, she shook her head to clear it. “I’m sorry. You’re right—I don’t know where my head’s gone.”

“I lose mine too often around you, Briar. I lose everything when I’m around you.”

The words were like a caress, spoken in such a sweet, reverent whisper that she turned her face into his shoulder, letting the warmth of him sweep clean through her. “I want to be with you, Cole.”

“I know.” His arms wrapped around her, held tight. “Me, too.”

She shook her head. “You’re leaving this weekend.”

His hand stilled in her hair. “I can stay. If you want me...”

Even as her heart lifted, she rejected the possibility. “But you have somewhere to go. Plans...”

His lips touched her brow in a tender motion that melted her. “Nothing that can’t be postponed.”

As he held her in the gathering shade of dusk, she breathed him in, memorizing the feel of him, the feel of them together here in this moment. Another one of those moments she wanted to encapsulate forever.

* * *

C
OLE
STARED
at the small device in the palm of his hand. It was the size of a pen head. So small, yet so intrusive.

Just one more layer of deception.

He listened to the inn around him. The two floors above were as quiet as could be—Briar and the Josefstines were tucked in bed. No lights illuminated the ground floor where he crept about on silent feet. No headlights flashed through the windows to reveal him as he knelt behind the check-in podium and inspected the main phone line.

The one in the office was simpler than this one, but this was where she answered the bulk of her calls. It was a two-line system, but old enough not to have caller ID. Clearly, most of the inn’s technology hadn’t been replaced in fifteen years, which made it easier to manipulate and his job ten times quicker.

Quick,
he thought, studying the bug in his hand. Just another quick, hidden betrayal. He couldn’t think about that, though—he couldn’t afford to dwell on the lasting, dire effect this might have on Briar. After last night...

No. Last night was another thing he refused to think about. He focused on the task at hand. With this, he was one step closer to getting Tiffany off his back. Cursing under his breath, he unplugged the line from the back of the phone and got to work.

On the way back from his day with Gavin, Cole had thought of nothing else but the fact that he would be betraying Briar. And though he’d come to her with dark, underlying motives, as soon as she kissed him, he’d lost himself. He’d almost felt the snap of all those walls inside him break. Using the small laptop Tiffany had “donated” to his cause, he selected the software program that had come with the recording device. He switched the device on and cleaned up the area so it would look to Briar as if no one had been there but her.

Cole closed the small computer and stuffed it underneath the waistband of his jeans at the base of his spine, covering it with his leather jacket. Now whenever she made a call from either of the two lines, the computer would automatically record it and he could send the content to Tiffany’s smartphone.

He glanced at the grandfather clock that ticked away the seconds. Tapping Briar’s phone lines had taken less than five minutes. Quick. As he moved through the dark back up the stairs to his suite, his feet didn’t feel nearly as heavy as his heart.

CHAPTER TEN

“A
ND
THEN
?” Olivia demanded the next morning over breakfast.

Briar filled the mug in front of her with black coffee and couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so smug. Lifting a shoulder, she grinned. “He helped me make dinner.”

“Uh-huh,” Olivia said with a knowing smirk. “Did you two get tangled up in the bed linens afterward?”

Briar rolled her eyes, heaved a short sigh but couldn’t fight the smile. “No.”

“And by no, of course, you mean
not yet.
”

“But he kissed you again, right?” Roxie asked as she reached for another cinnamon roll.

“No.” Briar beamed. “I kissed him. I can do that, you know.”

“Hell, yeah, she can!” Olivia slapped a hand on the table. “Praise God! My girl’s becoming a woman.”

Adrian peered at her over the rim of her mug. “Don’t tease her, Liv. She’s been with guys before.”

“Yeah, like one, maybe two.”

“I’d really rather not dwell on the numbers,” Briar warned. “I kiss a man and you assume I’m going to sleep with him. Do you really think I’m that much of a hussy?”

“No,” Adrian put in. “She’s just projecting her own hussylike tendencies onto you.”

Olivia snorted. “Why so judgmental? Weren’t you once a proud member of Hussies United?”

“I think the question should be,” Roxie intervened as Adrian’s brow sailed onto her forehead in a whiplike motion, “whether or not Briar asks him to stay.”

Briar’s heart pounded. She wanted to have Cole to herself for one more week, but still...even the thought of what could happen between them made her nervous. It was true; she had only been with two other men and the most recent relationship had turned out to be a fiasco of epic proportions. “I haven’t really decided yet.”

“Where’s the man of the hour?” Olivia asked, spreading cream cheese on a poppy-seed bagel. “Usually he’s the first one here for breakfast.”

“He left early,” she said. “I heard the bike about half an hour before I came down.”

“He left without saying goodbye?”

Briar remembered the leaf of inn stationery she had found in front of the coffeemaker. “He left a note.”

“Oh. My. Word. He wrote you a love note?” Roxie’s eyes turned to dough as Briar took the paper from her apron pocket. “Forget you. I’m a goner.”

“She saw him first. Dibs.” Olivia yanked the paper from Briar’s fingers. She spread it on the tabletop, wiped her hands, chewed, swallowed then cleared her throat.
“‘Dear Briar—’”

“Aw,” Roxie cooed. “He called you
dear.
”

Briar pried the note from Olivia’s fingers before she could read the rest of Cole’s message aloud. “We should keep it down. We might wake the Josefstines.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Killjoy.” She glanced at Adrian. “What’s with you?”

Briar looked at Adrian whose tension throughout the conversation couldn’t be masked. “Is something wrong?”

Adrian looked thoughtful for a moment then set her coffee down. “I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time, Briar. I just don’t want you to rush into anything.”

“Well, aren’t we Miss The-Glass-Is-Half-Empty?” Olivia muttered.

“I just want you to be careful,” Adrian said, ignoring Olivia. “He’s a good guy. Promise me you’ll take it slow, though? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“None of us wants to see her get hurt,” Roxie asserted.

Briar tucked Cole’s note back in her apron. “I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not going to rush anything.” Setting her coffee aside, she cleared her throat. “As much as I’ve enjoyed having breakfast with you ladies, I really should get to work.”

Roxie rose, licking a small drop of icing from her thumb. “Right you are about that. I’m off to the home improvement store to buy paint.”

Olivia shook her head as Roxie exited through the screen door into the dewy morning air. “She’s as giddy about home improvement shopping as she is about dressing mannequins in lace and chiffon. I swear she spends her free time skipping through meadows and chasing rainbows.” She patted Briar’s shoulder and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “In all seriousness, I’m happy for you, cuz.”

In response, Briar simply touched a brief hand to the one Olivia had lain on her shoulder and smiled. “Come by for lunch.”

“I’ll try.” Olivia eyed Adrian sternly. “If Debby Downer here doesn’t conjure up a midsummer’s storm in the meantime.”

Briar waited until Olivia followed Roxie out before shifting her gaze back to Adrian’s face. “She’s neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I don’t think she rightly knows how to appreciate one or the other.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Adrian said, eyeing the last bit of food on her breakfast plate.

When neither of them said a word, Briar rose from the table and began to clear it. She didn’t like this unsettled feeling between her and Adrian. She didn’t know how to handle it, either. Confronting tension head-on hadn’t served her well with her father, had it?

“Can I help?” Adrian asked when Briar turned on the tap to rinse dishes.

“No, thanks, I’ve got it,” she assured her.

Adrian shifted from one foot to the other, walked to the counter’s edge and gripped it uncertainly. “Briar...I hope you know that I want nothing more than to see you happy.”

Briar looked over and caught Adrian’s earnest stare. She offered a small smile. “I know. And I hope you know that your opinion means a great deal. You’re always honest with me, and I’d take brutal honesty over hearing only what I want to hear any day.”

Crossing her arms across her chest, Adrian turned and settled back against the counter. The frown still pulled at her mouth as she fixed her gaze to the floor. “Twice I’ve gotten caught up in the idea of something—the idea of someone. Both times it brought me nothing but disaster. The only good thing that came out of either relationship was Kyle. And while he was well worth everything I had to fight through to have him in my life, the pain’s still there. And so is the regret.”

She pressed her lips together as she turned back to face Briar. “I’m a pessimist, it’s true. But I used to be much more like you. I don’t want you to go through the pain that I went through.”

Briar’s brows drew together as her attention strayed to the first golden fingers of light poking through the dense daybreak fog. “Thank you for caring that much, Adrian. But if life’s taught me anything, it’s that happiness doesn’t wait in the wings.”

Adrian’s mouth slowly softened into a grin. “Maybe it’s you who should be giving me the advice.”

Briar let out a small laugh and shook her head. “No, because at the very end of all this you might be the one saying ‘I told you so.’”

Adrian patted her on the back. “Trust me. Whatever happens, you’ll never hear me say that.”

* * *

N
IGHT
HAD
FALLEN
and the inn was already glowing with warm, homey light from within by the time Cole rolled back in on his motorcycle. Though he hadn’t been able to explain everything to Briar in the note he wrote her, he’d left Hanna’s at the crack of dawn so he wouldn’t miss Tiffany and Gavin’s departure from Ono Island.

He’d needed to say goodbye—to look into his son’s eyes one more time and know that what he was doing here at Hanna’s was worth it in the end. Saying goodbye to the kid had hurt just as much as returning here, realizing once again that he could never have the semblance of home the inn had come to represent for him. As much as he wanted to think that homey light within was reserved for him alone, it was an illusion, one he had to ignore as much as the hand inside him that reached for it.

As quietly as possible, he crossed the threshold, walked through the dim entryway and toward the canned noise of the television down the hall. He stopped short of entering the sitting room where the Josefstines sat on the couch watching a late-night sitcom, their daughter curled up in a chair. In the shadow of the banister, he looked beyond them to the windows that faced the bay on the sun porch beyond.

The dock where he’d kissed Briar—where she’d kissed him—was somewhere out there.

It would be another sleepless night. The war he waged with himself over what he wanted and what he had to do to get it, was growing more costly and damning with each day. He had a very real sense that even if he did get Gavin in the end, he would lose his soul in the process. Allowing Briar to look at him as the kind of man who deserved to be in her life would destroy him, sooner rather than later.

“You missed a fine meal,” Mr. Josefstine commented, catching Cole’s stealth movements in the corner of his eye.

“I’m sorry for that,” he said, finally facing them and letting that homey light spill over him. “Meeting ran late.”

Mrs. Josefstine turned her head to smile at him. “She left a plate for you in the oven.”

He blinked at the thoughtfulness of it then wondered how he could be surprised. The gesture was classic Briar. “Did she go up already?”

“Preparing one of the suites for tomorrow’s arrival,” she told him. “I think we’re about to tuck in.”

“Me, too. Have a good night.”

“Sleep well, dear,” Mrs. Josefstine called after him as he climbed the stairs.

He was worn out, but he bypassed the bay-view suite, drawn toward the lighted door of the honeymoon suite across the hall. Pushing it open, he saw the stripped bed, gleaming floors and clean drapes over the long, narrow windows. Furniture had been polished and the metal of the wall sconces shined like new.

She’d been working hard. The scent of lemon tickled his nostrils as did the subtle tinge of fresh-cut grass. On closer inspection, he saw she’d cracked the windows to let the cool night breeze filter through the screens. It was yet another nice room with buttercream walls and light blue accents.

He heard the sound of scrubbing from the adjoining bathroom. Peering in, he found her on the floor, cleaning the tiles with a vigor some would’ve deemed compulsive. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid and her face was flushed with progress. A thin line of sweat rolled unnoticed down her temple. She bit her lip as she worked briskly over the small expanse, her hand moving fast on the handle of the brush. Her T-shirt rose and fell, offering teasing glimpses of pale skin underneath.

He’d never seen her in a pair of shorts. They fell to midthigh. Come to think of it, he’d never quite realized just how long her legs were.

He rapped his knuckles on the door and watched her jerk, snapping out of her frenzied reverie. When her head lifted, he saw slight embarrassment creep into her eyes. “I didn’t know I had an audience.”

“Only for a moment.”
More than a moment.
He shifted his feet. They felt oddly heavy.

She blew out a breath, running a hand over her damp brow before dropping the brush and standing. She winced at the quick motion, falling against the counter as her hand went to her back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, crossing to her.

“Mmm.” She braced a hand against the sink and hunched her shoulders. “Wow, that hurt.”

He steered her from the bathroom and ushered her carefully to the bed. “What hurts?”

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut tight. “Nothing. It’s nothing—”

“Don’t give me that, Briar. Tell me what hurts.”

She hefted a weary sigh. “It’s just my back.”

“Here?” he asked, rubbing a hand over the base where her hand had automatically gone. Muscles knotted under his touch. He massaged them with his knuckles.

“It happens every so often,” she said, biting her lip.

“How often?”

She closed her eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about, Cole.”

He rubbed his hand up the length of her spine. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“No. Everybody has back pain.”

He frowned at the grimace that still gripped her features as his knuckles continued to massage. Any thought of hitting the sheets early had vanished as soon as he’d seen the ache flash across her face. He could think of nothing now but salving it. “What kind of pain is it?”

“Sharp,” she admitted. “Pretty acute. Sometimes it goes all the way up my spine, into my neck....”

“You need to see a chiropractor,” he said. His hand moved to her neck. He watched her head lull forward as he kneaded the muscles there.

“Mmm, that’s nice.”

“Lie down,” he said. When she frowned at him, he nudged her back onto the naked mattress. “Roll.” After a short pause, she flipped to her stomach.

He positioned himself beside her, lifting her shirt until the fastening of her bra showed. Before he could do anything more than admire the glow of her skin, he placed his fingertips on the small of her back and rubbed.

A rolling purr answered his kneading. “That’s...that’s very nice,” she said as his fingers worked up her back, inch by inch. Slowly, she relaxed and seemed to sink into the mattress. “Where’d you learn to do this?”

Her skin was hot under his fingertips as he directed them on a strict path over the pooling muscles. “I had a good doctor. He taught me a few at-home tricks to help relax. You’re tense. You need to learn to let go.”

The little sounds she made tormented him. He fought to construct those walls around his heart again. They were ill-made, as most quickly constructed things were, wobbly and unsure, but he did his damnedest to make sure they held.

Once he’d worked his way to her shoulders and back down, her breathing had deepened. Her face looked lax in repose and a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “I’d hire you.”

He laughed. A real laugh. Clearing his throat, he pulled her T-shirt back down. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re stopping,” she said, peering at him over her shoulder and pinning him with that soft, incandescent stare. The wobbly walls inside him buckled. “I thought we went through this yesterday.”

He tried not to let his fingers dig into her shoulder as he leaned down slowly and touched his lips to her brow. There’d been a crease there when he came in. It was gone now, but he lingered, wanting to banish it for good. “You work too hard.”

“So I’ve heard.” Her voice lowered, vanishing into a hum as his fingers spread through her hair, unable to stop from losing themselves in her tresses.