Unstoppable (A Country Roads Novel) (22 page)

“Mmm. True.”

“And we can spend an entire day in each other’s arms.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose.

Mel put Teddy on the ground before she stood up. Bennett was on his feet a second later, and the three of them walked inside. Mel headed toward the shower while Bennett put Teddy away in the laundry room. Just as she was lathering up her hair under the steady stream of hot water, Bennett entered the shower behind her. He pressed his naked body to hers as he pulled her hands away and finished washing her hair.

Bennett’s commanding officer, Danny Provo, and his family were coming down to Mirabelle on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. They were spending the holiday with Bennett, Mel, and their families. Danny lived in Georgia with his wife and three kids, and on Friday they were continuing their journey south to Disney World.

Danny was the only other survivor of the helicopter crash that claimed the lives of the other eight soldiers. He’d left the air force at the same time Bennett had. After the crash, neither of them could go back, not after everything they’d seen, and especially not after everything they’d lost. But Danny’s outlook on life was a lot different than Bennett’s. Bennett just wanted to escape. Danny, on the other hand, wanted to get back to his life, to his wife and two sons.

Alex and Blake had been seven and four years old when Danny had gone home for good. He wanted his sons to know who he was, wanted to watch them grow up for more than a few months out of the year. For Danny it just wasn’t good enough, and almost losing his life made him see his priorities differently. He’d been home exactly one month when his wife, Cindy, told them that they were going to have another child.

June Provo was now a happy and healthy two-year-old with a set of lungs on her that could rival an air horn when she got worked up. But she was incredibly sweet, and she had the tendency to curl up in whichever adult’s lap was free and fall asleep, her head on their shoulder. She had soft blonde curls and the biggest blue eyes framed by blonde lashes. Everyone was putty in her hands.

It took June about three seconds to become entirely fascinated with Mel. Bennett wasn’t at all surprised; Mel was pretty damn fascinating, if he did say so himself.

“You got hair like mine,” June said to Mel. June was currently in Cindy’s arms, but she was squirming to get to Mel.

“I do,” Mel laughed.

“Wanna play,” June said excitedly.

“Careful, Peachtree,” Cindy said as she passed June to Mel.

Cindy was from Georgia, and she had a thick Southern accent that made her fit right into Mirabelle. She had blonde hair and blue eyes just like her daughter, but June’s curls hadn’t come from either of her parents. Not that anyone would be able to tell what Danny’s hair looked like, as he kept his shaved short just like Bennett. Another thing that Danny hadn’t passed off to this daughter was his thick, muscular frame.

No, sweet little June was tiny like her mother, and June was pretty much destined to be short, since Cindy was five foot three and Danny was about five foot nine. Even though Danny had been smaller than all the soldiers he’d commanded, no one had ever messed with him. When he talked, everybody listened. It was because of Danny that Bennett had survived that crash. Bennett owed the man his life.

“Pweeeeetty,” June said as she bunched Mel’s curls up in her teeny-tiny fists.

“Yours are very pretty, too.” Mel smiled.

“What’s your name?”

“Mel.”

“I’m Juuuune.” She looked over her shoulder at her mother. “Mommy, I like Mel. Can she stay and play?”

“I see she’s just as shy as ever.” Bennett laughed as he watched Mel bouncing and talking to the little ball of energy.

“Yup,” Danny said, looking over his shoulder where Alex and Blake were currently playing with Teddy on Bennett’s tiny front porch. The boys were Danny in miniature form, except they had their mother’s blonde hair.

As Bennett was sharing a bed with Mel every night, they were going to stay at her house, and the Provo family was going to have free rein of Bennett’s house for the next two nights.

It had been a couple of months since Bennett had seen Danny. Danny had come down to Mirabelle last May to go fishing. Bennett normally went up to Georgia at the beginning of hunting season to spend a few days up in a tree, but this year he’d passed on the trip. He hadn’t been able to pull himself away from Mel for even a day.

“Well, Miss June, are you hungry?” Mel asked the toddler in her arms.

“Yes, ma’am.” She nodded vigorously and her curls bounced up and down around her temples.

“Lunch is ready,” Bennett said, waving toward the house. “We can unload everything after we eat.”

“Sounds good to me. Lead the way,” Danny said.

On Thanksgiving morning, Bennett woke up wrapped around Mel. Her perfect little butt was pressed against a very critical part of his anatomy. And said part was
very
up and ready to go.

The curtains on the window were closed, but he could see just a hint of light around the edges. He peeked over Mel’s shoulder to get a look at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was just before eight. The Provos weren’t coming over until ten. So they had plenty of time.

Bennett almost always woke up before Mel, like 99 percent of the time, so he knew when her stirring got to the point where she was on the brink of consciousness. He moved his hand from where it was wrapped around her waist and slid it up her side to her back, and then to her shoulder. He brushed her hair away and kissed her neck.

She hummed as her body rubbed against his. “I see you’re up,” she said groggily. “Or should I say I
feel
that you’re up.” She moved against him some more and made him groan.

“You having fun?” he asked through his kisses.

“You have no idea.”

Oh, he had a pretty good idea, and two could play at this game.

Bennett brought his hand back down to her waist and he slid it between her legs. He slipped two fingers past the elastic of her panties. She was arching against him as he slid his fingers inside of her and started moving them in and out. Maybe he hadn’t thought this plan out very well, because he was just making her body rub up against his more. Yeah, there was no way he was going to be able to hold out very long with the way her body was moving against his.

He pulled his hand from between her thighs. “Don’t move,” he whispered in her ear. “Stay like that. Just. Like. That.”

He rolled over and grabbed a condom from the nightstand, kicking his boxers down his legs while he did so. He opened the wrapper and was rolling it down his erection in seconds.

“Well, aren’t you fast?” she asked as he started to work down her panties.

“Let’s just hope you don’t say that about what’s next.”

Mel laughed but it was cut off in the middle as he reached under her shirt and grabbed her breast, running his thumb across her nipple. He pulled her shirt over her head before he kissed her shoulder and neck. He moved against her and she pushed her little bottom back, grinding it against him.

“Baby,” she said breathlessly as one of her hands came up to the back of his head.

He dropped his hand from her breast and guided himself inside her. He moved slowly, taking his time. When he started nibbling on her ear she turned her head, her mouth found his, and their tongues met somewhere in the middle.

Bennett wound his arm around her waist to the apex of her thighs, and he touched her as he moved inside her. She moaned into his mouth, and her body started to writhe against his. They stayed like that for a little while, rocking against each other.

“Bennett, please,” she begged, pulling her mouth from his.

He picked up the pace, pressing his face into her neck as he really started to move. And then Mel was saying his name as she burst. He got in only a couple more thrusts before he followed her over.

They lay there for a minute or two, basking in the afterglow of another spectacular orgasm.

“Morning,” she said, looking over her shoulder and smiling at him.

“Morning,” he laughed, kissing her. He brought his hand to her thigh and moved it up to her hip and then back down. Up to her hip and then back down.

“God, I love your wake-up calls,” she said dreamily.

Bennett’s hand stilled and everything inside him froze. Those last couple of words had come out of Mel’s mouth slowly, so slowly that for a fraction of a second he thought she said something else.

He thought she said she loved him.

He wasn’t ready for that. Was he? Was he ready for her to love him? Did he love her? He loved waking up next to her, loved coming home to her at the end of the day, loved
being
with her. But that wasn’t the same thing.

He’d never been in love before, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. He knew it was something entirely different from what he’d ever felt before. He just didn’t know what that
something
was, and the thought of figuring it out was terrifying.

He just wasn’t ready for it. Not yet.

Mel’s eyes slowly opened wide as she looked up at him. “What?”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

“Bennett?” She tried to turn more to see his face, but as he was still inside her it made things difficult.

“It’s nothing, Mel. Just still waking up. I’m going to go make some coffee to speed up the process.”

“Okay,” Mel said, her eyes still searching Bennett’s face for something.

She wasn’t going to find it, though. He had no idea what was going through his own head, so she wasn’t going to find an answer, either.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, kissing her on the mouth on last time before he pulled out of her. He grabbed a pair of sweats from his dresser before he went into the bathroom.

After he was cleaned up and dressed, he splashed his face with water. He looked at his reflection in the mirror for a second, water dripping off the end of his nose. Nope, he wasn’t finding any answers there, either.

S
omething was up with Bennett. Mel couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew. She’d seen something in his eyes after they’d made love that morning, something that scared her more than a little.

Not scared in the sense that he’d hurt her. Well, not physically at least. No, that thought had never entered her mind. But that look in Bennett’s eyes said he might be running for the hills, which would ultimately destroy Mel.

She replayed everything from that morning over and over again, and the only thing she could come up with was that the word
love
had come out of her mouth. But she hadn’t said she loved him.

She
did
love him, so much so that it was beyond ridiculous, but she hadn’t told him yet. She wasn’t exactly sure
why
she hadn’t told him. Maybe that was something she needed to really evaluate later, but right now all she could think about was that look of fear that had been there plain as day in his eyes.

As Bennett’s parents had the biggest space and the most accommodating kitchen to cook for so many people, they’d all gone over there on Thanksgiving Day. Dinner had already been eaten and put away, and everyone was waiting for their food to digest before they moved on to dessert.

All the guys were in the living room, watching the football game on the big-screen TV. Alex and Blake were again playing with a very hyper Teddy, and continually asking their father for a puppy of their own during commercials. The women were talking and playing cards at the dining room table. And as she had for the last two days, June was in Mel’s lap, alternating between helping Mel play cards and coloring a picture in front of her.

Whenever Bennett and Mel had been with the Provos, June refused to leave Mel’s side. The little rug rat was Mel’s shadow, and something about seeing the two of them together both fascinated Bennett and added to the unease that was growing in his mind.

Not that Bennett had a problem with kids. He didn’t. Not at all. He just wasn’t ready to start having them yet. And it wasn’t like he thought Mel was ready, either. But multiple times Bennett had to do a double take when June was in Mel’s lap, either playing patty-cake, reading a book, or doing whatever else the little girl wanted.

Bennett could see Mel doing the exact same thing with a daughter of
their
own, and it scared the ever-living shit out of him. The idea of the two of them creating someone to raise was way more than Bennett was ready for. Yeah, they had Teddy at the moment, and Bennett was just as attached to him as Mel was. He couldn’t imagine a custody battle over the dog, couldn’t imagine walking away from Mel.

The thought of not being with her at all anymore was painful.

Shit.

Bennett rubbed his face a couple of times, like he could clear the image of not being with Mel, but it was there front and center in his brain, and he couldn’t make it go away. He didn’t know what to do with it.

He stood up and headed for the kitchen, but veered off and quietly slipped out the back door to the porch. He needed some fresh air, and the chilly afternoon provided it. He went over to the fridge stocked with beer and pulled one out.

“You can get me one of those, too.” Bennett turned as Danny stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

Bennett reached in for another and handed it to his friend.

“What’s eating you?” Danny asked before he brought the bottle to his mouth.

“Nothing,” Bennett said.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the first time you’ve ever lied to me.”

Bennett turned away from his friend and looked out at his parents’ backyard. They stood there for a minute in silence before Danny finally said something else.

“You were fine yesterday. So something had to have happened between now and then that flipped the switch.”

“Did you know? Did you know with Cindy from the beginning that you were going to marry her?”

Danny chuckled and shook his head. “No. I was an idiot. A complete and total idiot when it came to women, and when it came to Cindy I was so far out of my league that I was on fucking Pluto. I told you we were high school sweethearts. Right?”

Bennett nodded.

“She was a year younger than me. So her senior year was my first year enlisted. She wrote me all the damn time, and every time I called she picked up. But then that second year rolled around and I told myself I didn’t want the long-distance thing. That I wanted to see what other options I had. She went off to college to get her degree.”

Danny took a sip of his beer before he continued. “I came crawling back to her three years later. It was the summer after her junior year, and I went home to Georgia for my leave. All I knew was I had to get her back. And do you know what she said to me?”

“What?”

“She said she knew. She knew I was the one. Had always known that I was the one. And those three years we were apart? She didn’t once test the waters with anybody else. Didn’t date anybody. Didn’t even kiss a random stranger. She knew. She knew I would come back and she didn’t want anybody else but me. Do you have any idea what it was like to hear her say that?”

“Humbling?”

Danny chuckled again. “Understatement of my life. That woman never once stopped being loyal to me, and I was this piece of shit that didn’t deserve her. I still don’t deserve her. She’s given me a love greater than anything I’ve ever known, she’s given me my kids, she’s given me my life.”

Bennett didn’t know what to say, so he just sipped his beer. Really how did someone respond to that?

“You want a word of advice?” Danny asked. And before Bennett even had time to say yes Danny was giving it. “Don’t fuck this up with her. I’ve only been here for two days, but it took me about a minute to realize that girl in there is someone you need to hold on to.”

Bennett knew that for a fact, too, he just wasn’t sure how to do it or if he was even remotely ready.

Bennett tried like hell to push his concerns about his and Mel’s relationship to the back of his mind. Things were going well, and there was no need to tip the apple cart. Their relationship was working the way it was. There was absolutely no need to worry.

So why was he questioning it? Why was he worrying?

He had no fucking clue, so he chose to ignore the nagging feeling. And distraction was the best policy.

As promised, Bennett and Mel spent the entire Saturday after Thanksgiving, and a good part of Sunday, in bed. Sex with Mel was a pretty freaking fantastic distraction. A lot of sex with Mel blew the questions of their relationship completely out of Bennett’s mind.

And there’d been
a lot
of sex.

But by Monday they were back to the real world. The bookshelf project was pretty much finished that first week in December. They just had a few final touches, and after Wednesday all of the wood was stained and ready to go. Even though the shelves were finished, they weren’t going to be put in the library until that last Thursday before Christmas break, which wasn’t for another two weeks. There was going to be a big reveal at the awards ceremony that happened at the end of every semester and the math classes were going to be recognized then.

Since the bookshelves were finished, Bennett was able to start focusing more time on his projects again. He needed something to occupy himself. Idle hands meant an idle mind, and that wasn’t good for his distraction method.

Bennett had bought a beautiful old barn door years ago that he wanted to turn into a dining room table for himself, but he’d envisioned the table to be bigger than just the one door. He’d been looking for another barn door to use as the other half for a while now. He hadn’t expected to find one that would match perfectly, nor had he wanted to. He had an idea that was going to require two fairly different doors, but he wanted to make them meld in the middle. He’d have them transition smoothly from one design to the other.

Jax was still looking for random pieces here and there for his and Grace’s new house, so he was going to auctions with Bennett. They took a day trip up to Tuscaloosa on the first Saturday in December, and there Bennett finally found the perfect counterpiece for the table project he’d had in mind.

The concept wasn’t something he’d done before, but he was pretty excited about it. So excited that over the next week he spent hours out in his garage without taking a break. He threw himself completely into the project, and his distraction method was successful. Bennett tried not to think too much about the fact that he was spending less time with Mel. He still saw her every day. Still woke up next to her every morning and went to bed next to her at night.

Time was cut down a little bit, but once the table was finished they’d pick up their routine again…that was until he found another project.

Whatever. It wasn’t anything.

Their relationship was fine. Perfectly fine.

Bennett had been staying over at Mel’s house every night ever since Teddy had been in the picture. But with the late nights he was now spending working on the table, Mel and Teddy had taken to staying at his house more often than hers. Teddy was almost completely potty trained, and he’d moved out of the crate a few weeks ago. He still had to stay in the laundry room during the day, but at night he was allowed to sleep on an oversized pillow on the floor in the bedroom.

Mel believed Bennett had pretty much invested stock in the dog accessories market with the amount of things he’d bought for Teddy. They’d just done an even split of everything and both his and Mel’s houses had been good to go. It made things a whole hell of a lot easier, too, because depending on where they were staying, all they had to do was pick Teddy up.

The Saturday night of Grace’s bachelorette party, Bennett was on puppy duty. Which meant that Teddy was probably going to stay curled up in the corner of the garage on a pillow while Bennett worked on the table.

Bennett’s new obsession hadn’t failed to escape Mel’s notice. He was definitely less present physically. Their time together had taken a drastic cut. She might’ve been in the same house with him, but for the most part they weren’t even in the same room. And then when they were in the same room he wasn’t always present then either. He was…distracted.

Mel wasn’t used to Bennett being like this. Their relationship had moved pretty fast in the beginning, but it had stabilized pretty soon after that. Now she didn’t know what was going on.

Even though they’d had a lot of sex that weekend of the holidays, Mel wasn’t oblivious to the fact that something was up with Bennett. The sex had been good—fantastic, really—but it had been like he was searching for something. Searching for answers that Mel just couldn’t give him, and at the end of it all, she’d felt more than a little out of sorts. She didn’t know what was going on, and it scared her.

And things had continued to change over the next couple of weeks. She really didn’t want to be that girl that whined about her boyfriend not spending every waking moment with her. He was so excited about what he was doing, and she knew it, but she missed him. She didn’t quite understand
why
she missed him, but that was how it was right now.

She didn’t see him at school anymore. And that was how it was going to be, because the project was done and there was no need for him to be there. But he usually picked up lunch once or twice a week and they’d eat together, and that wasn’t happening anymore, either. There was also a significant drop in time they spent cuddling on the couch.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, it was something else that she missed the most, something that was more than kind of killing her. There was no more pillow talk at night. Bennett tended to pass out pretty quickly, and though he still held her close, she missed those conversations so much it was painful.

What she didn’t get was that they were seeing each other less than normal, so shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t they have more to talk about? Not less?

Mel didn’t really know what to do. She prayed it was just a phase, a little blip in the relationship. It wasn’t like everything was always going to be perfect, that was a completely unrealistic expectation. Maybe once the table was done things would go back to normal.

Maybe.

Mel got ready for the bachelorette party at her house. She just had so many more clothes options there, and it took a couple of tries to find the right outfit. The winner was a little black dress that pretty much hugged every single curve she had.

She had plans for this dress when she got back to Bennett’s, thus the matching red lace bra and panties she was planning on him peeling off of her.

Yup,
big
plans.

Mel had never been all that good at seduction, but she was going to try tonight. She’d continued to add stuff to her “I Didn’t Kick the Bucket” list over the last couple of months, and so had Bennett. His additions were: “Make out in a movie theater,” something that shockingly enough neither of them had done; “Go to the shooting range,” which had actually helped alleviate some of her new fear of guns; and “Dance a striptease for him.”

Maybe a little spice was what they needed. A little pick-me-up. Not that their sex had become all that less frequent or any less exciting. But that didn’t mean Mel couldn’t try to keep things a little interesting.

Mel picked up her carload of woman before she headed over to the first destination of the night. Paige was driving a carful, too, with Grace included. Everybody was carpooling to have as few vehicles out as possible. First, they went to Caliente’s for dinner, where the margaritas were free-flowing. After that they headed over to Café Lula, where Grace had a good and proper lingerie shower. Paige had been in charge of decorating. She’d forgone the penis motif in favor of lots of feathers and glitter, all of it pink, black, and silver.

Grace got enough naughty undergarments to keep Jax well and busy for weeks. She wasn’t going to be the only one enjoying those gifts, either. If anything, the shower had been more for Jax’s benefit.