Fall to Pieces (24 page)

"We'll get it done," Dylan said.

Before she could ask him exactly how—even if
he worked from sun up to sundown, there was no way he could bale
that much hay in such a short time—Dylan abruptly left the
table.

He was back five minutes later. "We're all
set. JT is lending us the extra equipment we'll need and Damon will
be out tomorrow to help us finish up."

Sadie flashed him a grateful smile as he gave
her knee a secret squeeze under the table.

"Thanks, son," Jim said gruffly.

"I'm happy to help out," Dylan replied.

"You've done more than help out," Pete joined
in. "You're saving our bacon. We couldn't have done this without
you."

"Let's not forget Sadie," Dylan said. "She's
been pulling more than her weight, covering the bills out of her
own pocket," as he said this, his gaze narrowed first on Pete, then
June.

"And they say young people these days don't
know how to work hard," June said, her round face creasing in a
smile. "You two make a wonderful team."

Stupid, but the words made a lump form in
Sadie's throat. June was right, they made an excellent team. But
not for much longer

###

The next morning, two hands from the Lazy
Creek guest ranch delivered the extra baler as promised, and Damon
showed up just after breakfast.

After a quick tutorial on how to operate the
baler, Dylan and his brother headed out to the fields. They worked
for several hours before breaking for a quick lunch.

Damon climbed stiffly out of the cab and
walked over to join Dylan in the meager shade offered by his truck.
"Christ, who knew driving around could be so damn hard," he said,
swiping his hand across his sweat-soaked face.

"Tell me about it. After the first day of
mowing, I could barely walk." Though in theory it seemed like it
should be easy—if tedious—work, between the hot sun baking the
interior of the cab no matter how high he turned the AC, and hours
bouncing around uneven terrain on the squishy suspension, he felt
almost as wrecked as if he'd hiked twenty miles wearing an eighty
pound pack.

He grabbed two bottles of Gatorade and handed
one to Damon, who downed it in seconds.

"So what's up with you and Sadie?"

"What makes you think there's anything up?"
Dylan said, avoiding his brother's gaze under the guise of
retrieving their sandwiches from the cooler.

"Don't bullshit me, I know there's something
going on. Mom told me you brought her to dinner the other
night."

"We're friends."

"Uh huh. Friends who fuck," Damon said. He
unwrapped his sandwich and took a huge bite.

Dylan dug into his own lunch, grateful that
his brother's mouth was too full to talk for the moment.

"Girls tell each other everything, you know."
Damon said as he finished off the last bite.

"So?"

"So, Sadie and Molly are best friends. Molly
and Ellie are sisters..."

Dylan sighed. He'd never been great at
algebra but in this case he understood the transitive property. He
got an uneasy feeling in his stomach, wondering exactly what was
being said. "So if you already know everything, why not say
so?"

"I was waiting for you to tell me
yourself."

"Not like you to be so passive aggressive,"
Dylan said as he crumpled up his sandwich wrapper and stuffed it
back in the cooler.

"Not like you to be so secretive, especially
with me," Damon replied, a hard edge creeping into his voice.

"What's wrong with keeping my sex life
private? It's not like I'm asking you for details about you and
Ellie."

"I'm not asking for details about your sex
life, I'm asking about your life. Ever since you've been back,
you've been distant. Not just with me, with all of us."

"Mom put you up to this, didn't she? She told
you about my fight with Dad?"

"She's worried about you," Damon said. "We
all are. Ever since you moved out here, we barely see you. We
barely talk to you. I swear, I talked to you more when you were
deployed than I have since you've been home."

"I've been busy," Dylan snapped. "Busting my
ass, helping Sadie make sure this place doesn't go under." He took
a deep breath. "I'm sorry if it seems like I'm avoiding you. You
don't need to worry about me. I'm fine, just ready to get back to
work."

"Yeah, well you might want to make sure no
one gets hurt when you do go back."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Damon took off his ball cap and scrubbed a
big hand through his hair. "Sadie's not like the other girls you've
hooked up with."

"I don't need you to tell me that." No, he
was well aware that Sadie was different in so many ways, not the
least of which how she made him feel. "But you don't have to worry.
We're both grown ups. She knows what she's doing." Unfortunately he
wasn't quite sure he did anymore.

Damon gave him a wry grin and shook his head.
"You're probably right. Ellie and Molly keep clucking away,
worrying Sadie's going to get her heart broken when you leave, but
I told them she's way too smart for that. Like you said, she's
having a rough time. She can use the distraction."

Dylan offered up his own feeble smile and
climbed back into the cab of his truck. A distraction. Is that how
she'd described him to Molly?

The word echoed in his head, making his
stomach tighten up around the turkey and swiss he'd just
devoured.

Sadie watched anxiously as gunmetal gray
clouds settled over the mountains. Off in the distance lightning
streaked across the sky. She counted to ten before the rumble of
thunder followed. The storm was still a ways off, but she knew from
experience that it could blow right over them in a matter of
minutes.

More lightning crackled, and as anxious as
she was about Dylan and Damon getting the last of the haying
finished, she was even more worried about the men getting caught in
an open field during a thunderstorm.

She'd texted Dylan half an hour ago, when
she'd seen the thunderheads gathering in the distance.
Come back
in.

Either he hadn't seen it or had chosen to
ignore it, because she hadn't gotten a reply.

"They should come in." Her father echoed her
thoughts as he sidled up beside her.

A bolt of lightning streaked from the sky as
if to drive the point home. This time she only got to five before
the boom of thunder.

The wind kicked up suddenly, sending her hair
whipping around her face, and she knew the storm would be directly
overhead within minutes.

Moments later, a bolt streaked down, directly
over the hay meadow. The sky opened up, rain falling in sheets so
heavy she and her father were soaked before they could duck into
the barn.

Sadie lingered by the door, peering through
the rain for Dylan's truck. She almost wept in relief when she saw
it coming up the drive.

She waved, and he pulled the truck up in
front of the barn. He and Damon got out and mad a dash for
shelter.

"How much did we lose?" Jim asked.

"None. We got the last of it baled just
before it started dumping on us." Water dripped down Dylan’s
grinning face. He and Damon were both soaked, their shirts clinging
like a second skin.

"So we did it?" Sadie asked, almost afraid to
believe.

"We did it," Dylan said.

Without thinking, Sadie threw herself into
his arms and pulled his head down for a kiss.

It took a few moments of her father's
uncomfortable throat clearing for her to remember they weren't
alone.

Cheeks flaming, she stepped out of Dylan's
embrace. Her father's eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his
hat. Damon just shook his head with a knowing grin.

Dylan coughed. "I, uh, sir," he
stuttered.

"Nice work," Jim said, and gave Dylan a
clumsy pat on the shoulder.

To Sadie's shock, he pulled her in for a hug.
She froze for a moment, then awkwardly wrapped her ams around his
broad back.

"I'm proud of you, Sadie," he said, his voice
rough. "I always knew I could count on you."

He let her go, leaving her off balance.
Before she could process the unexpected praise, her father said
abruptly, "I have some phone calls to make."

"Stay for a beer?" Dylan asked Damon.

His brother shook his head. "I need to get
back to town. Ellie woke up feeling sick this morning and she
couldn't get the sitter to come, so I promised I'd get back as soon
as I could to help."

"I hope she feels better soon," Sadie said
with a pang of guilt that Damon had left his sick fiancée to
help.

"Nothing that won't eventually pass," Damon
said.

"I can't thank you enough for helping," she
said and gave him a quick, fierce hug. "You saved us."

"Hey, don't give him all the credit just
because he swooped in at the last minute," Dylan said and gave his
brother a friendly punch on the shoulder, followed by a slap on the
back.

"You know we couldn't have done it without
you."

Damon said goodbye, but first elicited a
promise from Dylan to join him and Ellie for dinner soon.

As soon as his truck pulled away, Dylan
settled his hands on Sadie's hips and drew her close. He bent his
head, his mouth settling on hers. She tasted rain, the salt of
sweat, and Dylan's unique, earthy taste that never failed to make
her heart beat double time and send heat pooling between her
legs.

"How about we go back to my cabin so you can
thank me properly?" he said when he lifted his head several moments
later.

They ran across the yard, rain pelting their
skin. The temperature had dropped several degrees and by the time
they made it the short distance Sadie was shivering.

"Shower," he said. He shut the front door and
slid the bolt lock in place. He reached back and hooked the collar
of his shirt in his hand to tug it over his head.

The sight of him, half naked, rivulets of
water running down his chest, was enough to make her forget her
discomfort.

"Get moving," he said as he bent to unlace
his boots. "Your lips are turning blue."

Sadie used the bootjack to remove her own
boots, barely slipping her foot out before he grabbed her arm and
tugged her toward the bathroom.

He turned on the shower, quickly filling the
small space with steam as his fingers plucked at the buttons on her
wet shirt. Together they managed to peel the wet cloth from her
body and then her bra joined her shirt on the floor.

He pulled her against him, her cold,
goose-bumped skin flushing with heat as her breasts met his
hair-roughened chest. He threaded his hands in her wet hair,
tipping her head back to meet his hot, hungry kiss.

The last of her shivers fled as his tongue
plunged eagerly into her mouth, stroking, tasting, as his hands
slid over her back and hips. Her own hands spread against his back,
luxuriating in the feel of all that smooth, hot, skin stretched
tight over muscles.

She felt a tug at her waist and then he was
shoving her wet jeans down her legs along with her underwear before
tugging off his own jeans.

He grabbed a condom from the vanity drawer,
stepped into the stall shower and tugged her in after. The space
was barely big enough for one person, forget about a six foot four
soldier with shoulders a mile wide.

Not that she was complaining. Not when it
meant that she was pressed up against his slick, hard body, his
jutting cock brushing against her belly as he reached past her to
place the foil packet in the soap dish mounted on the wall.

Not when every move sent her nipples brushing
against the coarse hair on his chest, sensitizing them so much that
when he reached up and cupped her with his big, soapy hands, she
felt an electric shock go straight to her sex.

He covered her mouth with his as he slid his
hands down her back, over curve of her hips, down to cup and cover
her ass.

Though his touch was urgent, hungry as
always, there was something else there. Almost like he was savoring
her, memorizing each patch of skin.

One hand dipped between her thighs, his
fingers brushing against the slick folds in a gentle, almost
teasing caress. Her sound of pleasure was muffled by his lips as
she shifted her hips, trying to encourage his fingers to go right
were she needed it.

Instead, he drew his hand away, slipping down
to caress the inner curves of her thighs as his other hand slid up
to her breast. The rough pad of his thumb circled the outer edges
of her nipple, almost, but not quite touching the sensitive peak in
the center.

He wanted to tease? Two could play at that
game.

Sadie reached back for  the soap and
worked the lather between her hands. Reaching around, she slid her
hands up and down his back, down the tight muscles of his ass
before moving to his chest. She soaped him up, her fingers tracing
every ridge of muscle as they followed the arrow of hair bisecting
his abs down past his navel.

She could feel his cock flex against her
stomach, almost like it was begging for her touch.

She could relate, as his own torment had her
pulse pounding between her legs, the knot of desire tightening
almost to the point of pain.

But she wasn't about to give in, no matter
how her fingers itched to wrap around the thick, hard column, feel
him pulsing in her hand as she pumped him with her fist.

She sucked his tongue into her mouth and slid
her hand between his legs. He shifted, widened his stance so she
could stroke the rigid muscles of his inner thighs. She moved her
hand a millimeter higher so her knuckles just brushed against his
sac, and felt his chest jump with his sharp inhale.

As much as she loved feeling his hands on her
skin, she loved the power she seemed to hold over him. The way she
could make every muscle in his body pull tight, his hands shaking a
little now as his touch became firmer, hungrier.