CHAPTER 12
Sara’s eyes watered as another yawn claimed her. She shook her head slightly, scrunched up and then stretched out her face, hoping it would help wake her up.
It didn’t.
Squinting, she tried to read the fuzzy numbers in the spreadsheet on her computer screen. Her vision was blurry thanks to lack of sleep, and the task was made even more difficult since she’d dimmed the light so it wouldn’t disturb the munchkins, who were sound asleep beside her in the king-size bed. All she could make out were blurry little black lines.
She had at least another solid hour of work before she could call it a night and, at the rate she was going, it was going to take her three times that long to finish.
“This is ridiculous,” she mumbled under her breath as she shut her computer.
Closing her eyes, Sara let her head fall back against the padded headboard as exhaustion pulled her under like quicksand. Today had been a marathon, and she was so close to the finish line. After her hormonal explosion at the mere sight of a sweat-covered Austin at breakfast, she’d made the executive decision that she needed to avoid contact with him at all costs. Her hope was that some time away from his pheromones—which were pretty much the equivalent of a lust magnet to her hormone metal—would give her the chance to clear her head. Get back on track. Regain some footing on ground that was not built on Austin Stone.
It hadn’t worked.
The entire day, her brain had been on a constant rotation, replaying every single look, touch, and moment they’d shared in the very brief, but arousal-filled, time that they’d known each other.
Sara had always prided herself on being very self-aware. She knew her strengths and weaknesses. She freely admitted that she was a control freak, and that was definitely in the weakness category. But she also had an uncanny ability to compartmentalize things, which she placed firmly in the strengths column.
If she didn’t have time to feel sad or upset about something, she could easily place it in a mental folder, file it away, and go on with her life. If she was scared about something but had to face it, she’d tell herself fear was not an option. And, like magic, the trepidation would vanish.
So the fact that no matter what she did, she couldn’t stop herself from obsessing about a certain tattooed former Marine who had somehow managed to hijack her mind, body, and soul was beyond disconcerting. It was terrifying.
And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t given it the old college try. She had.
She’d stayed away from the B&B all day. Whisper Lake was a small town, and if she and the kids stayed in the city limits, they were liable to run into him anywhere. It was a proven fact.
So after the day camp they made a trip to the nearest Walmart, which was about thirty minutes away, to pick up a few things that Sara had forgotten to pack, then they’d had dinner at a Cracker Barrel. They’d taken the scenic route and even got out to walk on a few lovely trails, including one next to a gorgeous river.
When the sun had set, they’d headed back into town. They’d come back to the B&B to find it quiet and, from what she could tell, Marine-free. She’d given Charlotte a bath, Trevor had taken a shower and, after PJs and a book, they’d both fallen fast asleep.
The good news was that meant Sara could get some much-needed work done. The bad news was she was falling asleep and not being at all productive.
Forcing her lids open, she pushed off the bed and grabbed the monitor, which was one thing she had remembered to pack. Whenever she traveled alone with the kids, she always brought a baby monitor. That way she could keep an ear on things when she was in the bathroom showering.
On tiptoe, she made it across the room with moves she was sure even ninjas would be impressed by, avoiding dolls, Legos, cars, and suitcases. At home, she’d never have let the kids go to bed without cleaning up, but they were on vacation, and Sara was trying to tip her scales toward go-with-the-flow.
The door squeaked as she opened it, but thankfully, it didn’t wake her sleeping angels. She held the doorknob turned all the way open and then slowly released it after the door was shut again. When she heard the click of the latch and the monitor was still quiet, she knew she was home free.
She briefly debated whether she should head into the dining room or kitchen. The dining room had more space, but the kitchen was closer and it held a coffee maker that Karen had said she was free to use. Decision made, she started down the hall toward the room that held the promise of caffeine.
As she walked past the room Austin was staying in, her mouth watered and a shiver ran down her spine. She rolled her eyes at her traitorous body’s reaction. First of all, she didn’t even know if Austin was behind door number one. Secondly, it didn’t matter if he was. She had no plans on having a mid-life-crisis fling with the hot, B&B-owning Marine.
Or at least, she wasn’t going to act on that plan.
The corner of Sara’s lips turned up in amusement at the ridiculousness of even entertaining the idea of going all Stella and trying to get her groove back as she pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen. When she stepped inside, her smile dropped. Or more accurately, her jaw dropped. If it could’ve hit the floor, it would have.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one with the bright idea to do a little late night work in the kitchen. Austin Stone sat at the wooden table with papers spread out in front of him. Shirtless.
Yep. No shirt.
Instead of Stella, she turned into Elsa and froze in place.
Austin appeared equally as shocked to see her.
“I’m sorry…I was…just going to…I’ll just…” Sara stumbled over her words and her feet as she tried to back out of the room.
That grin that could only be classified as bad boy spread on Austin’s face as his gaze ran up and down Sara from head to toe. “You look adorable.”
Him calling her adorable hit a chord on her emotional strings that she’d never heard before him and wanted him to play again and again. Growing up, people had told her she was pretty. In fact, she’d been told she looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor more times than she could count. She’d never really paid them much attention because her appearance had been the last thing she’d had time to worry about. She’d been too busy taking care of Matt and Shelby.
Then, the moment that phase of her life had ended, she’d gotten pregnant with Trevor. She’d still had people telling her she was pretty or beautiful, but she’d only seen herself as a mom. Also, those two words had always felt hollow and empty to her. Impersonal. Unlike Brynn, she was no psychologist, but if she had to take a wild guess, she’d say the reason for that particular word association stemmed from hearing so many people describe her mother, who she was the spitting image of, the same way.
Instead of beautiful or pretty, Sara had always wanted to be the cute or adorable girl. Those were personal to her. The closest she’d gotten to it had been Grandma Betty, who’d called Sara her cutie pie.
Sara hoped the fact he’d struck a deep emotional nerve with what she was sure he’d meant as an offhanded remark wasn’t evident as she cleared her throat and lifted her computer. “I was just going to, ah, work.”
“Great minds.” Austin motioned down to his paperwork. “There’s plenty of room.”
Well, great.
Looked like all of her avoiding today was for naught. Her only options were to make up some stupid excuse as to why she had to leave, or to be a mature adult and stay.
She mentally stared at her fork in the road. She could take Stupid Excuse Lane and leave. Or Mature Adult Way and stay.
Austin lifted the mug in front of him. “I made coffee.”
Mature Adult Way and stay it was. “Okay. If you’re sure I won’t be bothering you.”
“You could never bother me,” he said with the grin she was sure made more females swoon than Sinatra’s eyes and voice combined.
Intellectually, Sara knew what he’d said was a common response. Her brain was very clear on that point. But the rest of her was reading it as a very intimate, very personal statement. Like he’d actually meant it was about her. And that was making her weaker in the knees than the girl’s in SWV.
Rolling her shoulders back, she hurried across the room to set down her computer, hoping her noodle-knees would hold her up long enough to make it to the table. She was in such a rush she didn’t notice Austin had stood, and she ran right smack into him.
At the impact of slamming into the brick wall that was Austin’s chest, her computer and the baby monitor flew from her hands. She let out a small squeal as she reached out, grabbing onto whatever she could to steady herself. Her eyes squeezed shut out of instinct, as she tried to prepare herself for the shock of pain she was sure to experience when she landed flat on her backside.
When that didn’t happen, and she realized her feet were solidly beneath her, she opened her eyes and the reality of her surroundings rushed through her like a raging river. Her hands were gripping what she could only describe as satin-covered steel—Austin’s shoulders. Her face was pressed up against a very naked, very muscular chest. Her pulse raced, and it was not alone. She could feel the fast thudding of Austin’s heartbeat beneath her cheek.
There were so many competing thoughts and emotions flooding through her from her current predicament, but the one that was louder and stronger than all the others was…home. For the first time in Sara’s life, she felt all of the things she’d never had but always associated with that word. Safety. Belonging. Security.
As much as she’d have loved to stay just like that for as long as humanly possible, a thought struck her: Her computer must’ve crashed to the floor. Pulling away, Sara looked down, expecting to find her MacBook and baby monitor. When she didn’t, she glanced up and saw Austin held both in his right hand.
“Holy shit,” she heard herself whisper. “You caught those?”
“Good reflexes.” He shrugged as he set her things on the table.
Yeah.
Good reflexes. Good body. Good smile. Good eyes. Good Lord in heaven.
* * *
Austin knew if he spent one more second standing this close to Sara looking up at him like he’d just saved her children from a burning building, he was going to do something he shouldn’t. Especially now that he knew how amazing she felt in his arms, like it was where she belonged.
“Sit. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.” He hadn’t meant for his instruction to sound so harsh, but he was on the edge of a steep cliff. And Sara in cutoff sweats, a gray tank-top—that was thin enough he could see she was definitely not wearing a bra—and her hair pulled off her face in a ponytail was about to push him right over that edge.
Stepping away from her before he lost his footing and fell, he made himself busy pouring her a cup of coffee. He’d seen the look in her eyes when he’d sweetened the deal and told her he’d made a pot, that and the dark circles beneath her baby blues told him she needed the caffeine.
“How do you take it?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.
“Black is fine,” her voice was a little breathy, and Austin wanted to believe he was to blame for it.
When he turned back, he found her sitting at the table staring at her computer screen. She looked a hell of a lot more composed than he felt. He set the mug down, and before it even hit the table, she was reaching for it. As he stood, he watched her take the first sip. Closing her eyes, she moaned in a way that instantly caused his shorts to grow snug.
He quickly sat down so his body’s reaction wasn’t staring her in the face when she opened her eyes. Even as a pre-teen and teen, Austin had never had an issue with popping wood at inappropriate times. He had a friend who’d fallen asleep one time in class and woken up with a woody. And he had another friend who’d been walking down the hallway and saw a girl bending over in front of him, causing his basketball shorts to tent right there in front of all the kids heading from one class to the next.
At the time, Austin had thought it was hilarious. He’d even given his friends a hard time about it back then. Now, after experiencing his own body going rogue, he felt bad he’d done that.
Basically, anytime Sara was around, or that he even thought about her, he was half hard. And all it took was a smile, a look, or a brush of her skin and his soldier stood at attention.
“Thank you.” She set the mug on the table and sighed in satisfaction. “I needed that.”
“No problem.” Austin turned his attention back to his paperwork before he told her exactly what he needed.
“Oh, sorry,” she apologized as she moved her cup off one of the many papers he had strewn over the table.
“It’s fine.” Reaching across the table, Austin tried to clean up a little and put things in piles. “I’ve been trying to make sense of all these and my organizational skills are about as good as my accounting skills.”
“Oh, if you need help, I’m an accountant. And organization isn’t my middle name, but it’s been suggested to me by more than one person that I should legally change it. My brother even got me the paperwork as a gag gift.”
“I thought you ran a blog.”
“I do, but that’s not my real job. I have a financial consulting firm.”
“This is a lot.” Austin ran his hands through his hair as he looked down at the mess that the financials were in.
A spark lit in Sara’s eyes. “You see paperwork, I see Disneyland.” Sara chuckled.
Austin couldn’t help the smile that lifted his lips. She was just so damn cute.
Sara licked her lips, and Austin inwardly moaned. “And I know about this kind of business. I do the books for my sister and her husband’s B&B.”
“Your sister owns a bed and breakfast?”
“Yeah, in California.” Sara nodded. “It was just voted one of the top ten B&B’s in North America.”
“Wait…” Austin picked up his phone. He’d been trying to keep himself busy when Sara didn’t come home after the kid’s camp and had done some research on what it takes to run a successful B&B. He’d read that top-ten list and he was pretty sure there was only one in California. He pulled up the picture and showed it to her. “That’s your sister’s place?”
“Yep, that’s it. Mountain Meadow B&B.” You could see the pride shining in her eyes as she pointed to the couple on the porch of the cabin. “That’s Shelby and her husband, Levi. They’re amazing, and I know they’ve learned a lot in their first year being open, so if you have any questions, I’m sure they’d be happy to help.”
“Wow. I might just take you up on that. And your help, if you were serious.” Austin started gathering the financials.
“Yeah, sure. I have payroll for a few clients that I have to finish tonight, but I can start on it tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“That’s great.” Austin was happy for the help, but more than that, if Sara was his accountant, he’d have a reason to stay in contact with her after she left in a week. “Oh, and I almost forgot. Did Brynn talk to you?”
“About what?” Sara shook her head.
“She invited us to go out to the tracks tomorrow night.”
“Us?”
“Yeah. Me, you, and the kids. Us.” It was odd to Austin how easily that had rolled off his tongue. Like, “Me, you, and the kids. Us,” was something he said all the time. It was also strange how much he liked the sound of it.
“Oh…um…us…yeah…okay,” Sara stammered as she brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Yeah…I mean…I’ll ask the kids. We were supposed to go check out the festival, and maybe go out on the paddle boats. But, yeah. Maybe.”
“I think we could fit it all in.”
Was he inviting himself? Yes. Why? Because spending another day trying to distract himself while Sara and the kids were gone sounded about as much fun as a root canal.
“We?” Her eyes widened.
“Yeah. Me, you, and the kids. We.” He grinned.
“You want to spend the day with us?” she clarified.
Hell yes!
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, scrunching her face in that sexy-cute way he loved.
He nodded.
“Why?” she asked with genuine disbelief.
Austin never played games. If he wanted something, he worked until he got it. But this situation was so different than any he’d ever found himself in. He knew he wanted Sara. He wanted to spend time with her. Get to know her, Trevor, and Charlotte better. But he wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted.
One way to find out. If this didn’t have a shot of going anywhere, it would be better to know now.
“I missed you today.”
“You did?” Her eyebrows rose.
“I did.” His smile grew wider at her shock. “The truth is I can’t stop thinking about you. I know we don’t know each other, and that you’re only here for a week. But I’d like to get to know you better. Spend time with you, and Trevor and Charlotte.”
“You do?”
This time, he laughed as he said, “I do.”
“But you’re…” She waved her hand toward him. “You. Why would you want to spend time with a mom and her kids?”
“I don’t want to spend time with a mom and her kids. I want to spend time with you, Trevor, and Charlotte.” Austin hated that she didn’t see what he did when she looked in the mirror. “Sara, not only are you smart, funny, beautiful, and fucking adorable, you’re also a great mom. And Trevor and Charlotte are great kids. Any man would be lucky to spend time with you and your kids. But if you don’t think this is a good idea, just say the word.”
Austin knew he could persuade Sara if he wanted to, they had crazy chemistry he was sure was not one-sided. It would be easy to use it to his advantage. But he didn’t want to do that. This had to be something she was ready for, and only she could answer that.
“What exactly is this?” she asked cautiously.
“I’d like to get to know you better and I thought you might want that too—”
“I do,” she blurted out.
“Okay.” His heart, and other parts of his body, swelled at her enthusiasm. “So tomorrow, we’ll go to the festival, and then head out to the tracks. I’ll drive.” The first time he’d said that phrase at the rental shop, he’d seen her visceral reaction. Her pupils dilated and the pulse on her throat quickened. He wasn’t sure why she’d responded that way, but any time he got the chance he repeated it again, loving her reaction.
“Okay,” she agreed.
Deciding to quit while he was ahead, he stood and grabbed his things. “I’ll let you work, then. Oh and I made these earlier, if you want some.”
When Axel had been measuring the cabinets Austin had run across his grandma’s recipe book. Seeing it made him miss her even more, so he figured he’d make one of the recipes, hoping to feel closer to her. It worked. As he baked, he could hear her telling him not to be stingy with the butter, and that using an electric mixer was for sissies.
“They’re my Grandma Alma’s blue ribbon brownies. She won five state fairs back to back with this recipe. They’re not as good as if she’d made them, but they’re not bad.”
“Brownies,” Sara whispered in awe as if he was handing her the Hope Diamond.
“Yep.” He set the plate down and told himself to get the hell out before she ate one, because he had a feeling she was going to moan when she did, and he wasn’t sure he could control himself if he heard one more moan. “Goodnight, Sara.”
“Goodnight, Austin.”
He saw the disappointment that flashed in her eyes as he headed out of the kitchen, leaving her alone. Normally, disappointing someone didn’t make him feel like he’d just won the lottery. But in this case, it did. Like he’d won the Mega Millions.