“Seriously, I’m okay,” Mackenzie said into the phone for what felt like the hundredth time, as they pulled into Hunter’s garage. “Muttley’s okay, and the house can be fixed.”
Her relationship with Hunter? That was still up in the air.
He’d swooped in like some kind of superhero for hire, held her until she stopped shaking, bandaged her wounds, then packed her and Muttley safely into his truck and driven them to his place.
He’d been warm and caring and gentle—so incredibly gentle she’d nearly wept. But whenever she’d broached the topic of them, he’d squeezed her hand and said, “We’ll get there.”
Only now they were at his place and they were no closer to there than they’d been last week at the symphony.
“You sure, darlin’?” Arthur’s concern came over the phone line loud and clear. “You sound like maybe you could use a strong shoulder, some tissues, and maybe some of my chili. Maybe I should come home. My chili always makes you feel better. Plus, there’s going to be contractors to call, crews to orchestrate, and you’ll need a place to sleep. You can’t sleep with all that racket and chaos going on.”
“Well, there’s nothing to be done tonight, and I’m already staying at a friend’s,” she assured him. For how long she didn’t know, but for tonight she had everything that mattered: her safety, her dog, and her man.
Without warning, the passenger-side door opened, and Hunter leaned in, slipping the phone from her hand.
“Hey, Arthur, this is Hunter. The friend,” he said, and she didn’t miss the humor in his voice. “Mackenzie is a little battered but holding strong. All she needs now is to get warmed up and a good night’s sleep.”
“And where will you be sleeping?” Arthur asked Hunter, and had Mackenzie not been so tired, she would have laughed at the parental tone.
“That’s up to the lady,” Hunter assured him.
“Don’t say that.” Mackenzie pressed her palm over the mouthpiece. “Now he’ll think that we’re—”
“What did you say, darlin’?” Arthur’s voice was muffled but audible. Which meant he’d heard her.
She uncovered the phone. “That he’s sleeping on the couch.”
“Good girl. Now if you need anything before I get home or something changes and you need a place to stay, you have the spare key.”
The wind howled, and a shiver swept through her body with some pretty serious force.
“Thanks for checking in, Arthur, but we’ve got to go,” Hunter said, sliding the phone from her fingers and ending the call. Then he leaned all the way into the truck, one hand on her knee and the other on her shoulder, until all she could smell was the rain on his skin. “The shower is on the second floor. Do you want to hobble up there all by your lonesome, or can I carry you?”
Her answer was to wrap her arms around his neck.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he mused, then whistled. Muttley jumped out of the back seat, and his claws tapped against the floor as he followed them inside the house and up the stairs.
She knew when they’d reached the living area because the air was warmer, the space cozier. The clanking of Muttley’s tags was muffled, as if the room was filled with furniture and fabrics—things that made up Hunter’s world.
When he finally set her down, it was on a bathroom counter. “I want to double-check your feet for glass shards.”
He disappeared for a moment, and she heard the shower start. Within seconds a cloud of warm steam engulfed her, warming her skin as his thoughtfulness warmed her heart.
Then he was back.
His big hands settled around one ankle as he lifted her foot to inspect it. His fingers moved gently across the sole and around the heel before giving her a gentle squeeze and doing the same to the other foot. When he was satisfied, those nimble fingers settled on the zipper of her jacket and slowly tugged down.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Checking the rest of you.” Without further explanation, he slipped the jacket off and then went for the hem of her nightshirt.
Ever so slowly, he slid her shirt up and over her head, leaving her in nothing but her bra and panties.
She heard him suck in a breath, but when he touched her, it was to trace the scrapes and scratches on her arms, then her neck, and finally her cheek.
“After you shower, you’ll want to put a Band-Aid on a few of these, but most are pretty shallow.” He cupped her cheek in his palm. “Do you need help?”
“No.” She needed to talk about what had happened between them, but she knew he’d say later. And for right now, she was okay with later. So when he went to step back, she caught his hand in hers. “But I don’t want to do it alone.”
“God, me either,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
Mackenzie wasn’t sure if he meant he didn’t want to leave her alone or if he didn’t want to leave her side. Either way he helped her off the counter and led her to his shower. She removed her bra and panties and stepped into the hot spray.
Hunter came in behind her, running his soapy hands down her body in a gesture that was more tender than sexual in nature. He took his time, making sure there was no glass left in her hair, no scratch left untouched. And when she was finally warm, he shut off the water and wrapped her in a fluffy towel before tugging one of his T-shirts over her head.
“I’m never going to get this shirt back again, am I?” he asked, placing her on the bed and pulling the covers up around her.
She sniffed the soft and worn cotton and shook her head. “Nope. Sorry.”
“Glad I didn’t pull out my vintage Johnny Cash one, then.”
She laughed, but the emotion quickly changed to something closer to an unbearable ache. “Hunter, about before—”
“Shhh,” he said, feathering the lightest of kisses across her lips. “After you get some rest, we’ll have plenty of time to talk. I promise.”
She nodded, not because she was okay with waiting. She wasn’t. But she nodded because she was close to losing it. Tears were already lining her lashes, just waiting for one more gentle touch or word to spill free.
“Muttley,” Hunter said and gave a pat on the mattress.
Muttley wasted no time hopping up and sprawling himself across the width of the bed.
“Move over, you bed hog.” She pushed, but Muttley went limp. “I know you’re awake, now move.”
A snoring sound came from the boulder of fur in the middle of the bed. “Seriously, just shove him over so you have room.”
“I’m sleeping on the couch, remember?” She opened her mouth to argue, and he kissed her again. “Plus, if I don’t call Brody and check in, my entire house will be flooded with family, and then no one gets any sleep,” he said. “I put your phone on the nightstand in case you need to call me.” He took her hand to show her. “And I kept Muttley’s harness on in case you wanted to explore without me.”
He was giving her the independence she’d asked for while reassuring her that he was there if she needed him. And for the first time, Mackenzie wondered if maybe she had it all wrong. She’d always associated love with sacrifice—with limits and boundaries. And to be happy, she thought she had to be self-sufficient.
But Hunter’s love didn’t feel like a burden. It felt a whole lot like freedom.
“I get that there is no going back and that once we do it, it’s done,” Hunter said to Brody, who was sitting across the coffee table on the couch, his hand kneading small circles over his chest.
“Savannah’s right. You’re going to give me a heart attack. I’m going to die before Caroline graduates from Mommy and Me, and then my wife will hate me for leaving her, and it’ll be all your fault.” A small smile tugged at Brody’s mouth. “But my brothers would have to step in for Savannah and deal with the teen years. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”
Hunter sat back on the couch and laughed. And to be honest, after the night he’d had, it felt good.
He’d been with Brody for the past hour, trying to figure out the best way to change the band’s tour without getting sued by everyone in Nashville. He didn’t care if he lost everything as long as he had Mackenzie, but ending this amicably with his sponsors and label would make it easier to pick back up if that’s what they decided to do.
“Garth Brooks took a ten-year hiatus, all I’m asking for is some time for Mackenzie and me to get settled, then figure out together how we want to move forward.”
“I agree,” Brody said, stifling a yawn. “And I would have agreed with you tomorrow morning after the sun came up.”
“Yeah, well, tomorrow I’ll be busy asking Mackenzie to forgive my dumb ass, and you’ll be talking with the band. The guys need to decide who among them is willing to man up and take over some of the heavy lifting. If they want a world tour and all the stuff that comes with it, then they need to start making room for the interviews and meet and greets and all the rest of the BS I handle.”
“There’s going to be some major pushback,” Brody warned.
Hunter shrugged. He didn’t care. Most guys never got a second chance with the right woman. He was lucky enough to get a third, and he didn’t care what he had to give up, as long as it wasn’t her.
“Convince the label you haven’t lost your mind, renegotiate a hundred-million-dollar contract, and force a bunch of bros to man up.” Brody stood, and that’s when Hunter realized his cousin was in a raincoat, flannel pajama bottoms, and rain boots. “Got it, now can I go back to bed with my wife?”
“Thanks, Brody,” Hunter said, and he meant it.
Hunter stood to show his cousin out when they heard dog paws at the end of the hallway.
“Hunter?” The soft and sleep-roughened voice also came from the end of the hallway.
He was about to tell her Brody was just leaving when she walked into the room and both men froze.
“Oh shit,” Brody mouthed.
Oh shit, indeed. Because before either of them could move, Mackenzie padded in with her hair hanging loose down her back, his T-shirt flirting with her thighs, and a very pink, very lacy, and very small pair of panties playing a game of peekaboo every time she stepped.
“Go,” Hunter mouthed back, waving his hand at Brody to get out.
To which Brody gave a How the fuck do you expect me to do that? look, because between him and the door was a half-naked woman who would be mortified if she knew he was there.
Hunter held a finger to his lips, and Brody gave him a no-shit roll of the eyes.
“At least look away, man” was followed by the universal hand gesture for “cover your damn eyes.”
“Hunter?” she said again, and both men looked back at her. Because this time the uncertainty was creeping in. Not to mention Muttley had taken one look at Brody and was going in for a doggy high five.
“Right here, Trouble.”
She smiled at his voice and changed direction. Muttley was by her side, pressing against her leg, navigating her away from Brody and toward the couch.
“Did I wake you?” And, damn, that Georgian accent was even thicker when she was half-asleep.
“Nope, I was just finishing up and was going to come check on you.”
“Funny, I was doing the same thing.” She paused and wrinkled her nose. “Did you let Muttley out earlier?”
“No. Why?”
“I don’t know, it smells like wet dog”—she sniffed again—“or wet hair or something.”
Brody glared at Hunter. Hunter grinned.
“Nope, he was with you the whole time. But it looks like someone forgot their pants again?”
“Again?” mouthed the third wheel in flannel bottoms. “What happened to taking it slow?”
“What happened to leaving?” Hunter punctuated this with the finger, and Brody quietly headed down the stairs and to the door, presumably to let himself out.
“I didn’t bring any.” She reached her hand out, and he met her halfway. Taking her by the hand, he wove her around the coffee table and into his arms.
“Isn’t that a damn shame,” he said, brushing her hair behind her ear, noticing that her eyelids were still heavy with exhaustion. Her vulnerability hit him like a hard punch to the chest, powered by the guilt and the memories from a night he could never erase. “You didn’t sleep very long.”
“Too much going on in my head to sleep.” She stepped into him and held his face in both hands. Her gentle touch, combined with the raw vulnerability in her voice, was his undoing. “I couldn’t sleep until I told you how sorry I am for the other night. I was scared, and instead of facing it, I pushed you away.”
“You’re not the one who needs to apologize. That’s all on me. You pushed because I didn’t give you much of an option.” He wanted to haul her in and kiss her breathless. But that would lead to touching and eventually amazing sex—and right now she needed support. So he pressed her hands to his lips. “But seeing you tonight, sitting there in that dog bed, knowing what you went through and how brave you were. How brave you had to be . . .” He swallowed hard. “I am so damn proud of you.”
“I’m not.”
“Nothing about the past few weeks has been on your terms. Nothing.” A situation, sadly, that he’d played a huge role in. “But you never gave up. Not even tonight, when most people would have crumbled.”
She lifted one slim shoulder and let it fall. “Sure, I figured it out by myself, but when the storm had passed, I was all by myself. I didn’t have anyone to share the victory with.”
“And that’s my fault,” he said, curling his hands even further around hers, loving the way she tightened her clasp. “I was so stuck on proving to you that we could work, I never slowed down enough to ask you what you needed to move forward. And what you pictured us looking like in the future.”
“I would never want you to slow down,” she said apologetically, and her words made him still. “Just like I would never want to be the person to hold you back. I’m not sure how to keep up, or if I even can, but I want to.”
“That’s where you got it wrong,” he whispered against her fingers. “You don’t slow me down, you remind me to live full in every moment. Experience things as if it was the first time. You are my reason, Mackenzie.” His head listed forward, resting against hers. “I love you, Trouble. All of you.”
Tears flooded her eyes and spilled over her lashes. “I loved you the first time I saw you. You were my best friend, and then my lover, and now you’re my everything. I want all of you.” Which worked for him, since every single cell in his body was overflowing with love for her.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and met his gaze, and—holy Christ—there it was. Shining on her beautiful face for the world to see. The one thing he’d spent his entire life looking for. Right there. His for the taking.
Love.
The pure, unconditional, no-strings-attached variety that he’d written about, dreamed about, and chased with abandon but feared he’d never find for himself.
“You’ve had me from the moment I saw you in my uncle’s bar,” he said, realizing it was true.
“I know I can take care of myself,” she said, and the way her soft pink lips quivered nearly brought him to his knees. “But it doesn’t mean anything if I don’t have you to share my life with.”
For the first time, Hunter felt as if he’d found his place. And it was right beside the woman who saw beneath the hype to the guy he’d kept hidden.
Hunter tipped his head to hers. “I love you today, tomorrow, and forever.” Then he captured her lips in a kiss so raw it was what songs were written about.