Chapter 20

ChapterTwenty

Sadie

Trevor and Allie arrive with another man. He stands behind the couple, wisps of golden blonde hair peeking out from beneath a chocolate brown hat pulled low over his ears. Stubble, a slightly darker shade than his hair, grows thick on a square jaw. The man is as tall as Nick, and since Trevor is a few inches shorter, and the man is standing between and behind the couple, I can see that his eyes are an interesting shade of blue-gray, like a storm cloud. They’re also friendly and open, like you could talk to him about anything, and he’d never cast a single stone of judgement. He can’t be older than thirty-five, but he already has laugh lines around those friendly eyes, so I know he likes humor and probably finds something to laugh about in most any situation. And the tip of his head as he regards me, the flash of something mischievous in those blue-gray eyes says he’s playful in a way that Nick isn’t.

I also know that this man isn’t Trevor, because Trevor is holding the hand of a stunning woman with jet black hair that is straight as a needle and long enough to reach the waistband of her jeans. Like the two men, she’s sporting a toque, but it’s not a boring flat color. Hers is patterned red, black, brown and white with tiny pops of green, and when she smiles, her teeth are white and straight. Her dark eyes take me in as her smile widens, and I can’t help but notice she’s striking. Really striking.

My eyes slide to the man I suspect is Trevor, and I find that he’s also attractive. His toque hides his hair—all of his hair—so I figure that if he has any it’s cut short. And since he’s clean shaven, I can see that he also has a striking jawline, and a full mouth. Although he’s not as tall as Nick and the other man, he’s still tall—and he towers over me and his wife. His eyes are also friendly, but not as open as the other man’s.

My eyes slide over Trevor to the man I hadn’t been expecting, to find that his eyes are fixed on me. A nervous twitch attacks my heart, and I feel my cheeks redden. The man sees it and his confident grin stretches even wider.

I can’t help but compare this golden man to the dark, scarred one beside me. They’re both tall, both built wide and thick, and they’re both incredibly handsome. But I feel nothing for the golden man. The first time I set eyes on Nick, I’d felt breathless and affected. I’d excused the feeling to the insanity of the situation and dismissed it as that. But as the days go on, the pull I feel towards Nick only grows stronger. For this golden man, I feel nothing.

Katie says Nick isn’t special, but what if he is? What if he’s the special I’ve been waiting for my entire life?

I shake the thought from my head as the third man moves around Trevor to give Nick a manly clap on the back. His tone is light. His smile wide as he greets, “Hey, man. Long time.”

“Not that long,” Nick grunts. “Saw you just last week.”

The man’s smile doesn’t waver. “Like I said, long time.”

“What are you doing here, Will?” Nick asks. His tone is rather unfriendly, and my eyes are big as they sweep to him because rude!

Will shakes off Nick’s brutal rudeness with an ease that says he does it a lot. “I was getting myself a pizza, going to have a lazy night, kick up my feet, maybe throw on a movie. But I ran into Trevor, here. I figured I’d add my pizza to yours and join in the fun.”

“Figured you join us, did you?” Nick shakes his head. He doesn’t look pleased by this new addition, even though I can sense that these two men are friends.

I don’t figure Nick allows just anyone pat him on the back the way Will did. And I don’t figure just anyone feels comfortable stepping into Nick’s home as Will had, like he’s been here a lot. Like he’s welcome here.

Will throws his arms wide as he tosses his weight back a step. “Well, when Allie said that you have a cat—and a woman—” Will’s eyes slide to me and linger, moving up and then down and back up again. “I had to see it all for myself.” He slides his tongue over his bottom lip and Nick stiffens beside me. “Pretty little thing, aren’t you?”

I open my mouth to reply, but Nick shifts and I feel his arm move around me, his fingers curling around the small of my waist to tug me firmly, possessively, into his side.

My heart jolts in my chest as Will continues poking the bear. “I thought Allie was shitting me but when she insisted and Trevor collaborated her story, well,” he gives his arms another toss. “I just had to see for myself the woman you had trapped up on this mountain with you.”

“Trapped?” I blink. “I’m not trapped.”

“No?” Will cocks his head, brow raised. “Then how’d he get you up here?”

“He—”

Nick cuts me off with a rough, “Enough.”

“I’m just making conversation,” Will defends with a devilish wink that tells me he knows exactly how he’s stirring the pot. “We’re all wondering.”

“He’s right, we are all wondering.” Allie steps inside the house, followed quickly by Trevor.

“Yeah. It’s been years since you’ve had a woman here.” Trevor nods his head toward Allie. “Apart from Allie.”

“I just figured you’d finally cracked and were holding this one up here in your mountain fortress,” Will teases. “Though, seeing her now, I can’t say I’d blame you.” He tosses me another suggestive wink and adds, “I’d hold her captive too.”

“Knock it off,” Nick barks, and his grip on my waist becomes more intense. “She’s no one’s captive.”

I nod, but I’m too stunned by the conversation to speak. What in the actual insane-land have I fallen into?

I’m alarmed, and a little off balance by everything—but Will, for all his insanity, looks absolutely delighted by this turn of events. As though his friend going all alpha caveman possessive on me is a good thing. Like teasing Nick is fun. Like poking the sleeping bear is a good, safe, sane idea. That this steady poking isn’t going to result in his death, if not a very swift and painful ass-kicking.

I, however, don’t feel so confident. My heart is pounding in my chest, and by the big eyes that Allie is giving me, I know there’s good reason for it.

I clear my throat and give a little wave towards the couple. “You must be Allie and Trevor,” I laugh nervously, and then I continue, “I’m starving!”

“Girl, me too.” Allie is already tugging off her winter gear. Again, I note that she’s a very beautiful woman, but her husband isn’t looking at her. He’s eyes are snapping between Nick’s hand on my waist, Nick, and then me.

There’s shock in the warm brown, like he doesn’t know what to make of me or Nick. Or maybe it’s Nick with me that he can’t seem to understand. Like he never expected to see Nick with a woman.

Is that because of his scars? Is it reactions like these that make Nick believe himself a monster because he’s not perfect and smooth? Because he’s clearly been through a trauma, and he’s not the man he once was?

On the thought, something tightens around my heart. Frustration, maybe. A little hurt and a dash of irritation, most definitely.

How can a man think he’s not a monster when even his friends look at him like he’s a beast? On the thought, I feel my head tipping back, my gaze tearing from Trevor’s to slide to Nick. He has me tucked into his right side, so I’m not looking directly up into his scarred skin, but I see it all the same. Under his jaw, the scars are there. And still, when I look at him, I don’t see a monster. I don’t see a damaged man.

I just see a man.

My man.

The thought stuns me stiff in his hold, and I feel confusion knit my brow as I continue to study Nick while the room studies me. Nick is holding me so closely to his side that I can feel the slow but sure way his body grows stiff and hard. He can feel my eyes on him, but unlike the others, he doesn’t look at me.

Instead, he grinds his jaw hard, like he’s waiting for a terrible rejection. For me to finally come to my senses and run from him—to flee this mountain house his mother manipulated me into coming to in the first place.

He thinks I’m tense at the idea of him stamping me with a territorial hand on my waist, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m tense because I’ve just caught myself thinking of this man as mine.

Still, I know his friends are watching and waiting. Like Nick, I think they’re waiting for me to turn and run. A hot wave of heat moves through my body as I decide to surprise them all, rising onto my tiptoes and pressing my lips to the underside of Nick’s jaw.

Nick is really tall and I’m not, so my lips just barely graze his skin. Still, I’ve made my point, and the room has taken note. I swear, I feel the air shift, but I don’t give it any attention as I say chirpily, “It’s been a really long day and I wasn’t kidding. I’m starving.”

Will is the first to get his bearings as he tosses a smirk Nick’s way. “Starving her too? No wonder she thinks she’s into you. Woman’s delirious.”

I don’t reply as I slip from Nick’s hold, reaching out to grab the boxes of pizza from Trevor’s arm. He still looks stunned, but I don’t mind. I think it’s cute, even. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel just a little smug about shocking them into a moment of silence.

Allie follows close as I make it into the kitchen. “Um, so that was interesting.”

I give her big innocent eyes. “Hmm?”

She smirks. “Girl, don’t act innocent. You made a statement, and I support your statement. But I’m coming in late, and I want all the deets, because that man,” she thumbs over her shoulder in the direction of Nick as she leans in to whisper, “is not an easy man to seduce. He’s all dark and mysterious and grumpy and—”

My face flames and I ask quietly, “You think I seduced him?”

She sets a bag on the counter, eyeing me curiously as her hand dives in and appears with a bottle of wine. She does this three more times before pulling out a twelve pack of beer. My eyes are massive as I take in the collection of alcohol on the counter.

“You didn’t?” She flicks me a curiously surprised look. “Seduce him, I mean?”

“N—no.” I point at the counter. “That’s a lot of alcohol.”

“My parents have my kids. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, we take advantage.” She grins big. “If you didn’t seduce him that means—”

We’re having two different entirely conversations at once, but because the men have entered the kitchen, I reply to only one. “Okay, so you brought Will to drive you home. Smart.”

“Noooo,” Will denies, already reaching out to nab one of the beers, cracking the top and taking a hefty tug on the bottle. “I’m here for the party, baby.”

A muscle in Nick’s jaw jumps at the endearment, and I feel something buttery and warm in my belly. I never thought I’d care for a man to be hot and possessive over me—but with Nick, I kind of like it. Just a little.

“Then you’re calling a taxi.” Nick moves to pull plates from the cupboard.

“A taxi? When you’ve got a perfectly good guest bedroom and a couch? Don’t think so.”

Nick glares. “Sadie is in the guest bedroom and your ass isn’t sleeping on my couch.”

“We can call a cab.” Trevor shrugs like it’s no big deal.

“I’ll be planting my ass on that couch right there.” Will points, his future for the next twelve hours decided. “Besides, Sadie,” he says my name super pronounced. “Can sleep in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs.”

Nick looks like he’s about to burst a vein, so I step in. “That’s fine by me.”

Nick’s eyes cut from Will to me. “It is?”

I shrug. “Sure. It doesn’t matter to me where I sleep. A bed is a bed.” I flash a smile to Allie and Trevor. “They have no kids—and a night without four kids has got to be made fun—so let’s make it fun.” I reach for one of Allie’s bottles of wine, spin to pull two glasses from the cupboard and then frown at the fact that it’s corked and I’m so not good at freeing the cork without massacring it, little bits of cork wreckage left behind in the wine.

Nick sees and takes note of the frown I give the bottle, because without saying anything at all, he tugs open a drawer, nabs the wine opener, and gets to work opening the bottle. He also says nothing when he pours the wine into two glasses, handing me one as I scoop the other to hand it to Allie, who is watching us with a curious, super-wide, kind of freaky, grin.

She lifts her glass and toasts, “To getting wasted.”

I clink her glass with mine and take a too-big sip that has me struggling to cover a cough. Then I wheeze, “To having fun.”

Allie nudges Trevor with her elbow. “See, I knew packing my overnight bag was a good idea.”

“If you’re sleeping in my bed tonight, I should probably change the sheets.”

“Oh,” Allie bobs her head eagerly. “I’ll help.”

I can see by the sparkle in her eyes that she just wants to get me alone so she can press me for more ‘Nick’ information. Katie would love her. I miss Katie.