Getting His Way: Sapphire Falls Book Seven (17 page)

He frowned.

“I’ve got an entire festival to organize. I have a kitchen remodel to finish in the next couple of weeks. I have yoga classes to teach.” She swallowed and finished with, “And I sent an email last night that’s been on my mind. So I’m sorry I haven’t been mooning over you since last night, but I have a lot going on—an entire life actually—that isn’t about you.”

Before he could respond to that, she stood from her chair. “Girls?” she called. “I gotta get going. But you all look marvelous, and Bryan is going to stay and make sure everything is organized and ready to go.”

Bryan sat forward in his chair. “What are you doing?”

She looked down at him. “Thought you wanted to help me. You finishing this up would be
very
helpful.”

Damn. She had him. How could he say no? But if he said yes, she was hightailing her pretty little ass out of here, and God knew when he’d see her. “Go out with me tonight.”

“I can’t.” She bent and picked up the bag she’d brought in with her. “I have other plans tonight.”

“Tess—”

“Bryan, in third grade, when you asked me to babysit your dog’s new puppies while you and your family went to that all-weekend baseball tournament, I did it. And in seventh grade, when you called me up and asked me to come listen to your band practice and then had me putting stickers on CD cases for four hours, I did it. And in tenth grade, when you came over at midnight and asked if I would say that Heather Vilson was spending the night with me so her parents wouldn’t know you two were camping out at the river, I said sure. Because I didn’t have anything else to do because my world revolved around you. And that’s totally on me. I could have said no, but I never did. You have no reason
not
to think that I would always be at your beck and call. But I’ve got a few other things on my plate now. I’m sorry.”

Then she turned and walked out.

Bryan sat staring after her. Damn, that little bit of temper made him hot. All of these new sides of Tess made him hot. She was perfect for him. She could turn him on while putting him in his place. Perfect. Even though she no longer thought he was the center of her universe. That was going to take some getting used to.

A long, low whistle caught his attention, and he turned to find all of the women in the fashion show lining the front edge of the stage.

“She told you,” Stella commented.

He sighed and sat back in the chair. He regarded the women watching him. These women had been in Sapphire Falls most, if not all, of their lives. So had Tess. Tess hadn’t even gone away to college. So he would bet these women knew things about Tess that he needed to know.

“She sure did,” he agreed with Stella. “I guess I probably deserved that. I thought she’d wait around for me.”

“Oh, she waited around for you,” Dottie said with a laugh. “All Tessa’s been doing is waiting.”

Bryan decided to play this cool. But he really wanted to know how much these women knew. And how much they would tell him. “She doesn’t seem so happy to have me now that I’m here.”

“That’s because you’re
here
,” Stella said. “She’s been waiting for you to come and take her away.”

Bryan sat forward in his chair. “Go on.”

Ruth nodded. “She was in love with you growing up, but she
really
fell for you after you left.”

“She liked me more after I was gone? That doesn’t sound so good.”

Ruth chuckled. “Apparently, being a world traveler is very sexy to Tess.”

Bryan frowned. “But I’ve been waiting until I was ready to come home and settle down to be with her.”

“We know, darlin’,” Dottie said. “It’s been frustrating as heck to watch her pining for you, and seeing you coming and going but never taking her along.”

They’d talked about all of this yesterday—her wanting to go to Denver, her wanting to see the world, her planning to
move
to Denver. Bryan understood her wanting to travel and see places she’d never been, but now that he was
here
, why was she so intent on Denver?

“I’m trying to romance her now,” he admitted to the nine older women.

“Ever heard the term ‘too little, too late’?” Stella asked him. “She’s got her plans, and I don’t see flowery words and chocolates changing them.”

“She can get her own chocolates,” Ruby added. “And she doesn’t go for flowery words.”

“In regard to your advice, ever heard the term ‘too little, too late’?” Bryan asked drily.

The women just laughed.

“So I should leave her alone?” he asked. No way in hell was he going to leave her alone. “Or do you have
useful
advice?”

None of them seemed to take offense at that.

“My advice would be to do something no one else has,” Dottie said. “Give her something she can’t get in Denver, or anywhere else.”

Bryan’s brain went immediately to a few things that no one else had done for Tess. And they all involved her being very naked. He wasn’t sure Dottie meant her advice quite that way, but he couldn’t shake it.

He was the first guy to have her heart, even if he didn’t have it as fully now. And he was the first guy to give her an orgasm. He’d been her first kiss. He’d danced with her at homecoming when he’d seen her in the corner. She’d planned the entire party, of course, but didn’t have a date and was off by herself. That had struck him as really wrong. So he’d pulled her onto the dance floor in spite of her protests that she was on her way home.

She’d stayed for the rest of the dance with him, pissing off
his
date completely, and told him afterward it had been the best night ever.

He needed to do that again. Convince her to stay and dance with him. So to speak.

He was the guy she’d been saving herself for and waiting on.

That was something she couldn’t get anywhere else.

“Has she dated a lot?” he asked the women. Hell, he could probably get more gossip from these ladies than the people at the Come Again.

“She’s dated
some
,” Cora said. “But no one serious.”

“What have the guys been like?” he asked.

“Like you, I guess,” Dottie said, studying him. “Local boys. Farm boys. But nice guys. Sweet and romantic.”

Ah.

There it was again. Sweet and romantic. So that wasn’t Tessa’s style.

The damnedest thing was he
wanted
it to be Tessa’s style. Because he wanted to be that way for her.

“I’ve never been all that romantic with the other women I’ve been with,” he confessed to the older ladies who had also known
him
all his life. “I was kind of thinking it’d be nice to be different with Tess.”

“Well, there’s your damned problem right there,” Stella said. “She’s been in love with
you
—the naughty you—all this time.”

Bryan raised an eyebrow at the
naughty
comment.

Stella scoffed at his surprise. “Everyone knows all about you, Mr. Murray,” she said. “We all know that sweet and romantic isn’t your thing, and if she’s wanted you all this time, as you were, then it’s clearly not Tessa’s thing either.”

Bryan shook his head. He had to admit that discovering Tessa was a virgin had been a surprise…but a hot one. Discovering that she liked the idea of naughty too? Yeah. He had been trying
not
to like that, but he did.

“Tess reads a lot of romance novels,” he said, hoping he wasn’t giving anything away.

“We know,” Stella said.

Something about the way she said that made Bryan wonder. “Do you?”

“Sure, she’s in the club.”

“The
club
?” There was only one kind of club that Bryan put together with the word
sex
. There were a few of those types in Denver. He’d only been a couple of times. He wasn’t big into watching other people. But if
that
was Tess’s flavor…

“Our romance book club,” Cora said.

Ah. Right.
Book
club. He supposed that made more sense. “There’s a romance book club in Sapphire Falls?”

“Of course.” Dottie laughed. “And we all love when it’s Tessa’s turn to pick.”

“She picks good stories?” Bryan asked, already suspecting where this was going.

“She picks
hot
stories,” Stella said. “You know—”

“I should read a couple,” Bryan said, before she could.

“Definitely,” Stella agreed.

“Oh, here.” Cora moved surprisingly quickly with her walker when she was inspired.

The older woman headed for her purse off stage. She brought it back out with her and rummaged inside. Finally, she pulled a small paperback book from the depths. “You can start with this one.”

“Don’t you need it?” he asked, getting to his feet and approaching cautiously. Not because of his leg, but because he wasn’t sure he was ready for this.

He wanted to know what Tessa found hot.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Cora, or Stella, or Dottie, or any of the others found hot.

“I have it on my iPad,” Cora said with a wave of her hand. “I downloaded it so I could increase the font size after trying to read this damned thing for two days.”

Bryan blinked at the cover of the book. It was dark blue with a bare-chested man kissing the hell out of a girl in only her underwear. The title was
Wilder than Love.

Seriously?

“Tess picked this one out?” he asked.

“No,” Cora said. “That one’s Kathy Bennett’s. But Tessa’s already finished it. Said she loved it.”

Bryan groaned. Now he had to think about Kathy, Ty’s mom and Bryan’s second mother, reading this stuff? “Maybe I should pick one you all haven’t read.”

“Why is that?” Stella asked. “Chicken?”

“Because I love going to Kathy’s for Thanksgiving dinner,” Bryan said. “And I love eating at the diner, and I love saying hello to you ladies on the streets, and I’m enjoying being emcee for this fashion show, and now I’m going to have to think of all you dirty girls in a whole new light.”

They all grinned, unabashedly.

“Here’s something you need to realize, Mr. Murray,” Stella said. “People have been having hot sex in this town far longer than you’ve even been alive. Hell, longer than
Cora’s
been alive. So you just need to deal with it.”

“And think about this,” Dottie added “If you
don’t
read that book—and take some notes—the next time I see
you
in the diner, I’m going to be thinking how sad it is that you’ve been deprived of it.”

“And we’re going to be helping Tessa pack up and move out of here,” Cora added.

Bryan sighed and looked down at the book again. Could he do it?

Did he really have a choice?

* * *

Six hours later, Bryan pounded on Ty’s front door.

His friend answered a minute later. “Hey, Bry—”

“I need to talk to you.”

Ty frowned. “Okay, come on in. Everyone’s here though. You okay?”

He was not okay. There were just some things that couldn’t be erased once they were in a guy’s head. And since he couldn’t forget what he’d read, he intended to share it with his best friend.

“Everyone?” Bryan asked and pushed his wheelchair up the small ramp Ty had built over the threshold of his front door and into the foyer of Ty and Hailey’s house. It was simply easier to move fast, as was required when feeling riled up and indignant, in his chair versus his crutch.

Fortunately, Ty’s house happened to be next door to the house Bryan was now living in. It was the house that Ty had bought when he’d first come back to Sapphire Falls, because it was next door to Hailey’s. Bryan had bought it from him and then Ty had turned half of it into a boarding house for the high-level athletes who came to town for intensive triathlon training sessions with Ty and rented it from Bryan.

Bryan had no problem living with the athletes. He’d been around athletes in training almost constantly since leaving Sapphire Falls with Ty. He’d even agreed to be the on-site athletic trainer, nutritionist and psychologist. He’d gotten his degree in athletic training and nutrition at the University of Colorado Denver and then his masters in sports and performance psychology from Denver University, and had worked with athletes at various levels over the past few years.

“TJ, Travis and Tucker,” Ty said, naming his three older brothers.

“Good.” They needed to know about this. “Are the girls here?” Bryan asked, starting for the living room. If the guys’ wives were here, Bryan wanted to talk to them too. They had to have known about the book club.

“Yeah,” Ty said, following him. “What’s going on?”

Bryan rolled to the middle of the living room where Hailey and Ty, Tucker and Delaney, TJ and Hope, and Travis and Lauren were gathered.

“I have something to tell you all,” he informed them. “This won’t be easy to hear.”

“What’s wrong?” TJ asked immediately, shifting from where he’d been lounging with his arm around his wife to sitting forward on the couch cushion.

Bryan held up
Wilder than Love.
“Your mother is part of a romance book club. And this was
her
pick for the club recently.”