Chapter 2

 

Flynn barely resisted an eye roll. Parked on the couch in his living room with Gabby’s bare feet in his lap and the cheesiest rom-com playing on his TV, he counted down the last five minutes of ridiculousness. The only saving grace from the movie had been Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm. Funny shit.

He didn’t even need to glance at Gabby reclined beside him to know her eyes would be red-rimmed with “happy” tears. Women and their romance. At least it got her mind off her non-date tonight. He’d love to pummel Tom’s face for putting that dejected look on Gabby’s.

She tapped his chest with her foot to get his attention. “Am I unattractive?”

His hand stilled in the process of massaging her arches. No matter how he answered this question, he was screwed. To lie and tell her she was not beautiful would put her deeper in some kind of female depression. To speak honestly would hint at something he’d long buried, even from himself.

Truth was, he always kinda had a little crush on her. Nothing serious or monumental. No pining involved. Just…there. At the edge of consciousness. An awareness of her.

It had started the first day of kindergarten and had gone into hiatus in high school when he’d forced himself to ignore it. What made him first descend had been a five-year-old blond sprite with compassion in her eyes who’d marched home after school to insist her parents take her to the rec center to learn sign language because there was a deaf kid in her class. That was Gabby, forever thinking of others. He’d dug his heels in to quash his crush for the same reason. She’d do anything for him and had slowly stopped noticing other males. Such blips would ruin what they had as friends.

Pulling her feet from his lap, she sat up, her expression telling him she was forming her own conclusions during his lack of response. Hell.

He went for humor. “You’re hideous. I can barely look at you without gagging.”

Her pretty pink mouth twisted. Her baby blues narrowed in unamusement. “I’m serious.”

“Me, too. I might need to run to the toilet to retch.”

She sighed. He couldn’t hear it, of course, but he could feel it like a warm caress on his cheek. What in the hell was wrong with Tom, anyway? Gabby was ten times the woman her sister was. He had perfection right in front of him tonight and he’d walked.

Flynn tugged on the ponytail she’d put in when they’d arrived at his cabin. She’d changed out of her dress and into an old pair of his sweats that she’d had to roll three times at the waist before they stopped falling.

“You’re adorable.” Safe answer, but she was. Adorable.

“That’s the problem.” She waved her hands as if trying to conjure a cyclone. “Cute little Gabby. She’s so adorable.”

He didn’t see the negative in that comment, so he kept mum.

“No one wants to get it on with cute. I’m never going to get laid again, am I?”

He wasn’t touching that one with an eight-inch…pole. He lifted his hands to sign a placating answer, like she’d find the right guy one day or something, but she wasn’t done venting.

“I mean, I want a man to look at me how Cade looks at Avery.” Her face relaxed into a whimsical kind of serenity as if picturing Flynn’s brother and fiancée in her la-la land. “Like she’s his everything.” Her gaze drifted back to him, sad and gutting. “I’ve never been anyone’s everything.”

First thought? Romance movies were bad for her psyche.

He had to force his hands not to respond with she was his everything. A gut-punch reaction, but true nonetheless. She was his best friend, his link to sanity, his vet assistant who kept the business end of his life in order. None of which were romantic, and he knew exactly what she meant, though. Things hadn’t been very active in his bedroom either, never mind proclamations of love.

“I’m sorry on behalf of my species.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re not exactly a bad catch. I’m sorry about my species, too.”

Yeah. Thing about Gabby? She understood, even when he never once voiced a complaint. He swore she could read his mind most days. He shrugged like he couldn’t give a good goddamn.

“Why don’t you have women climbing all over you?”

Her question was rhetorical and not necessarily directed at him. And she knew the answer. He might be as attractive as his two brothers, but no woman wanted a long-term thing with someone who couldn’t listen. “People tend to pay attention to the guy who shouts and ignore the one who whispers.”

Her shoulders rose and fell with an exhalation. The understanding in her eyes had him backtracking for a topic change. He glanced at the TV, noting the movie had ended. It was nearly midnight, but neither of them were working tomorrow. He wondered if he should start another chick flick or if she was feeling better and would head out.

Fletch, his golden retriever, unwound himself from the floor by the fireplace and made his way over to drop his head in Gabby’s lap.

Her round cheeks lifted in a grin that split her face. She rubbed the dog’s ears, her mouth moving to speak to him, but Flynn couldn’t make out the words. Wisps of her caramel hair broke free from her ponytail and brushed her neck.

She wasn’t sultry or hot by any stretch of the word, but she had some kind of illumination from within. A warmth most took for granted and overlooked. She was so damn beautiful inside that it mattered not what she looked like outside. But unattractive? Gabby? Not one iota.

He may be deaf, but the men in this town were blind.

“Your dog has agreed to marry me.”

As usual, she pulled a laugh from him. “You bribed him with bacon. Admit it.”

“He agreed based on my merits.”

There was no arguing with that. She had merit in spades. “We’ve had this discussion. You marry my dog, I’m part of the package.” What a ridiculous conversation, but he sensed she needed a little nonsense tonight.

Her gaze swept over his body as if considering…him. After a moment, she looked away, him being no wiser on her conclusion. “Who are you bringing as a date to Cade’s wedding?”

His brother and Avery were set to tie the knot late next month. Because it was Avery’s second marriage and she didn’t like a ton of attention, they’d wanted a small ceremony out at Mom’s cabin just down the road. Drake’s and Cade’s places were on Flynn’s wooded private drive, too. But the Battleaxes—as Cade referred to their mother and two aunts—caught wind of the wedding plans and had turned an intimate gathering into a circus. The venue was now set for the botanical gardens with all of Redwood Ridge in attendance.

He hadn’t given much thought to a date. If he and Gabby weren’t seeing anyone, they were typically each other’s fall-back crutch for such events. Come to think of it, he’d spent more time as her plus one than anyone else. “If some other Neanderthal hasn’t plucked you by then, you want to be my date?”

“We’re paired in the wedding party together, anyway. Why not?”

Which brought up another minor anxiety. Okay, a big one.

“What’s wrong?” She stopped petting Fletch, much to the dog’s discontent, and focused those blue eyes on him. They tripped him up every time. A cross between cornflower and sapphire, he could never resist spilling his guts when she looked at him like that.

He sighed. “The wedding party is expected to do a first dance, right?”

Her brows furrowed. “Yeah.” She studied him closely. “We’ve danced hundreds of times together. Prom, town events.”

Emasculated, he stared at her until she caught up. Didn’t take her long.

She nodded gradually. “But never a slow song with everyone watching us.”

Yep. It was one thing to observe the crowd and mimic what they were doing, and another to be expected to perform some complicated steps to a tune he couldn’t hear.

Gabby had her phone out and was texting in the next blink. Once her message was sent, she watched the screen for a reply.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Brent. He’ll know what song Avery picked for our dance.”

Brent being Cade’s vet tech at their clinic who’d helped Avery with a lot of the wedding plans. But what difference did it make what song they’d chosen?

Gabby’s thumbs flew over the keypad in response, then she swiped the screen to pull up YouTube. She scooted closer to him, bringing her light scent of honey with her. “We’re dancing to Ed Shereen’s ‘Thinking Out Loud.’ This video has the lyrics typed.”

Because if he understood the lyrics, he would feel the mood of the music. He stared at her and, for the umpteenth time in his life, wondered what in the hell he’d do without her. To avoid doing something stupid, like kiss her in gratitude, he focused on her phone.

As he read the lines of the song, he couldn’t help but think how it kinda nailed his feelings toward Gabby. From a friendship standpoint, of course. There was no crossing the line in the sand with her. Everything that made his life run smoothly, everything that made a lick of sense, was because they were a solid unit just like this. He was certain his world would implode if anything jeopardized what they had.

When the video ended, she set her phone aside and stood. The sweats he’d loaned her hung from her hourglass hips and threatened to fall. His old tee hid all her willowy curves. She held out her hand expectantly.

“What?”

“Practice, that’s what.” She grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet, or rather, he let her. He had a good foot and ninety pounds on her. Glancing around the space, she pursed her lips in thought as if trying to calculate the best spot to “practice.”

After Flynn and his brothers had graduated from veterinarian school, they each had built a house on unused family land deep in the woods at the edge of town. Flynn’s was modest compared to his brothers’. A ranch with only three bedrooms and a kitchen half the size of Cade’s. Drake had gone grand scale because he and his wife Heather had wanted a litter of kids. Until she’d died from cancer a few years ago. Even though their tastes were different and the layouts unique, all three cabins had naturalistic and masculine elements. Huge stone fireplaces, bare wood floors, rafter beams cut from birch, floor-to-ceiling windows, and clean edges to the designs.

Gabby grabbed the phone and guided him around the couch to the open area between the living room and kitchen where the rug wouldn’t trip them up, he assumed. The hardwood planks beneath his feet were cool, despite the temperatures outside finally warming with spring.

She fiddled with the phone and took his hand. “Do you feel the vibrations?”

Barely. It was easier to feel bass from a speaker. He shook his head.

She did something in the settings and looked at him. “Now?”

It was stronger, yeah. The thready pulse pressed a rhythm against his hand. He nodded.

She put the phone in the breast pocket of his tee where the bass thumped against his chest. Maneuvering his right arm around her waist, she took his left hand in hers. The position thrust them closer than he’d anticipated as her soft, sweet honey scent wrapped around him. The warmth from her body drifted near, inviting.

He stilled as his neck heated. He didn’t think it was possible to get embarrassed with Gabby, but being this close to her was awkward and…

Hell. He focused on breathing instead.

“I put the song on repeat, so we have time.” She smiled reassuringly and his heart flipped over in his goddamn chest. When he made no motion to start, she tilted her head. “We really don’t have to do much more than sway back and forth. If you want to learn a basic box step, use your left foot to go that direction and follow my lead.”

He was having a hard time reading her lips with the blood roaring through his veins and his vision hazy. Any second now, he’d break out in a cold sweat.

Christ, it was just Gabby.

She gingerly set them in motion, a slight shift to his left. He caught up and went with it. But instead of moving backward according to her pattern, he went forward at the same time she did and they collided. He stepped on her foot. Hard.

He pinched his eyes closed. This was stupid. No one would be paying attention to them at the wedding with Avery in the room all decked out. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t dance or not.

Gabby’s laugh rumbled his chest. She squeezed his fingers and he dutifully opened his eyes. “Relax.”

It wasn’t as if he wasn’t trying. Sorry, he mouthed.

She shook her head as if to say, poor, poor man, and set her free hand on the back of his neck. The heat from her fingers slid down his spine to a part that best not awaken. Before he could process he was in danger of thinking with his lower head, she carefully placed her tiny feet on top of his, thrusting her breasts snug against him and aligning their bodies. Like how a little girl might dance with her dad, except…he was definitely not her father.

The room vacuumed of air.

It had been way too long since he’d had sex.

Tilting her head back to look up at him, she grinned in good fun, unaware of where his devious thoughts had plummeted. “Now you can’t step on my feet. Where you move, I go.”

He’d never noticed the tiny, round scar above her eyebrow before. Most likely from the bout of chicken pox they’d had in second grade. All these years, though, and he’d just detected it. Shades lighter than her milky skin, the spot was barely noticeable.

They were close enough to share air. Her warm breath skimmed his jaw. He’d bet his right nut her skin would taste as good as it smelled. Summer and honey and sweet…

Shit. Double shit.

He was not getting turned-on. The situation had nothing to do with the woman and everything to do with biology. She was molded to him like second skin. It was a natural response to contact. Nothing more.

By sheer will—and thinking about his great aunt in a bikini—he roped in the reaction before Gabby became aware. He set them in motion with no rhyme or reason other than to move.

Weaving them around the room, she stayed rooted to him by keeping her feet on his. He kept his arms around her back lest she lose balance. He spun and tracked the open space until they were both dizzy and he no longer felt like a cad for impure thoughts.

When he stopped, struggling for air, she threw her head back and laughed. Her ponytail dislodged, causing a riot with her hair. He pushed the strands away from her face and resisted rubbing his thumb over her jaw. Right now, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes lit, she wasn’t so adorable after all. Other adjectives came to mind, but he shoved them deep in the recesses of his mind. He hoped to hell his expression was as blank as he was trying to force it to be.

Her smile slipped a degree and something close to awareness filled her eyes. The fingers on the back of his neck dug in deep. She froze on impact and, after two heartbeats too long, she eased out of his arms. She took great care adjusting the too large shirt she’d borrowed, looking everywhere but at him.

With a rapid flash, as if he might burn her with contact, she took her phone out of his pocket. “Shooters tomorrow with the gang?”

They’d made those plans earlier today, thus no need to remind him. He nodded, not liking the strange rift. “I’ll be there.”

“I’m going to…” She jerked her thumb at the door. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

He almost signed thanks for the dance lesson, but thought better of it.