Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

GABE

The dim light of the bar catches the pink hues that glow on Callie’s cheeks as she sips her beer and pretends not to feel the attraction, but she’s not fooling me at all. “I have some other guys who came with me, and we can use the SUVs to haul some stuff if it helps.”

She stands, peels off her long apron, and crooks her finger. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

My gaze shifts over her breasts, nicely pronounced in the tight-fitting plain green shirt and then down the long curvature of her slim waist. I follow the beating pulse on the side of her creamy throat, watching as the heat crawls up her neck and she swallows daintily. I definitely won’t say no.

Blake’s eyebrows raise and he tucks away a discreet smile. “Don’t be long you two, there’s work to be done. We need to get all the stuff loaded and over to the fishing tournament in time. Those boats will be out early.”

She rolls her eyes, ignoring Blake.

I’m far more interested in what she wants me to see than the damn ice right now. “Show me,” I tell her, following her through the bar, giving my security team a shake of the head, letting them know in no uncertain circumstances not to follow us.

I play by the rules when we’re in the city, let them come along, but there’s no danger of my cousins’ rivals coming out of the woodwork, or after me, in Doon’s Creek, North Carolina.

Callie opens the storage room. I take in the sight before us. “Wow, that’s a lot of boxes. Here I thought you were going to show me something else?”

Her creamy skin flushes with heat, and her smoke-filled eyes go hazy. She swallows and I follow the motion down the length of her neck, imagining making her shiver with desire.

She sucks in a deep breath. “These boxes need to go tomorrow too. I didn’t mention it to the other guys yet.”

“No?”

Callie shakes her head slightly, a slight piece of hair falling over her eye. I reach out and brush it away from her skin. “Is that the reason you asked me to follow you back to the storeroom or did you feel the heat of my eyes all over your skin?”

She blushes and her cheeks pinken but she doesn’t answer my question. “Can you help? We could use an extra pair of hands. Glenn was going to help with a bunch of stuff tomorrow but one of our cooks is out sick, so he’ll stay here and take care of things.”

“No problem at all. Consider it taken care of.” I pound out a text to Chet and the security team with a heads up.

I look down at my text.

Message:

If you’re going tomorrow, we’re going too.”

I glance up as Chet joins us from the hall, grinning at his scowl. The big burly security guard who’s traded his suit for a black t-shirt to blend in, but still looks as ruthless as he is. “Fine,” I mouth at the pain in my ass.

He grins and starts typing a message which no doubt goes right back to my overprotective brother who sits at the top of the family business and still wants to run my life.

Well, he’s not here and I’m not him. I roll up my sleeves. “Time to get to work.”

She gives me a grin, and we start hefting boxes, working side by side, to get all the supplies from the bar out to the SUVs.

The customers from the bar trickle out while we’re working until there’s only one car left, and the two SUVs that belong to me. Callie walks toward me with one more box. “This is the last of it.”

She wipes the fog from the glass on the window of one of the SUVs. “How much room did we leave for people? Think we have room for this?”

My chest tightens with something unfamiliar. She’s different than the women who adorn my arm at charity events, but in a very good way. Solid, tough, but with a heart of gold. “Let’s check. We can find the space.”

She hands me the box and crawls into the back seat while I’m standing by the door. “There’s a little more room in this back corner,” she says, stretching down to see just what will fit while I try my damndest without success to keep my eyes off her ass.

I gauge the width of the box. “We can take it with us, but you might have to sit on my lap on the way over tomorrow.”

She slides out and turns up her face to me, the pulse on the side of her neck beating erratically as those smoky eyes fill with lust. “To answer your question, I felt your eyes on me in the bar earlier, felt them again just now, and sitting on your lap probably wouldn’t be a hardship at all, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome.”

I reach up and pull the ponytail carefully from her hair, fingering the long blonde silky pieces, letting them thread through my fingers before sliding a section from her face and leaning down to whisper in her ear. “That’s good, Callie, because that’s exactly where you’re going to be when I make you scream my name.”