Instant Gratification

“So you’re not? Happy?”

“Oh, I am. I get to work with my brothers, when they’re around. I’m my own boss, which actually isn’t quite as fun as it should be. I get to do the outdoor stuff I love to do, but…” He breathed out heavily and leaned forward to crank the heater up. “Sometimes I’d like to also do something else as well, not for Cam or TJ, but for me.”

“Like?”

“Come on. Do you really want to know this?”

“Actually, yes. Maybe I like knowing I’m not the only one who wishes things were different. Misery and company and all that.”

He arched a brow. “I almost thought you cared there for a minute.”

“Maybe I do care.”

“You have a lot of maybes going on.” His eyes were steady on hers. “I used to do some renovating and I want to get back to it. I want to restore one of the historical buildings in town, top to bottom.”

“Yourself?”

“I like the work, like using my hands to fix things up.”

Besides the fact that she had firsthand knowledge that he was excellent with his hands, she worked with her hands and she got it. “I can understand the appeal of that.”

His smile was small, but warmed her nevertheless. “Thought you might.”

She thrust the truck into drive, took a deep breath, which tweaked her ribs and gave her a jolt of pain as she eased back onto the road. The rain was still coming down in droves. Every bump was agony on her ribs, not that she’d admit it to the man sitting next to her.

For his part, Stone didn’t say a word, just sat there filling up the passenger seat of the cab with his big, tough, rangy body, until about a mile down the road when she hit another bump and just about died.

“Okay, stop.”

Instincts had her doing just that. “What?” She whipped her head from one side of the road to the other, looking for trouble. “Another deer?”

“Scoot over, toward me.” Before she could move, he shifted closer on the bench seat, his hands going to her hips, lifting her as he slid beneath her to switch positions without getting out into the rain. There was one breathless heartbeat at the halfway point, with him under her and her straining above him, when her bottom ground into his crotch.

She didn’t mean for it to happen, she sincerely doubted he meant for it to happen, but it did, and the two of them went utterly still.

She had no idea what he was thinking in the moment, but she knew what she was thinking.

Sweet Jesus.

The small, inarticulate sound that escaped her seemed to galvanize him into action and he lifted her over to the passenger seat, as he landed in the driver’s seat. For a minute, he stared straight ahead, hands on the wheel. The inside of the cab was warm and humid from their wet bodies. The windows were closed and a little fogged up.

It felt close. Intimate.

With fingers that weren’t quite steady, Stone shoved his wet hair out of his face and let out a very long, low breath. “That keeps happening.”

She didn’t ask what. She knew exactly what. The bolt of sexual awareness between them that packed a punch of, oh about a million watts. She let out a shaky breath of her own. “I thought we’d be over it after last night.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “No.”

“Maybe…maybe it’s just the altitude.”

He let out a mirthless laugh and drove the rough roads with a smooth ease that didn’t escape her. She was good at being a doctor, she’d made sure of that. But as she kept noticing, he was good at all the life stuff. The important stuff.

She could admit that when she’d first come to Wishful, she might have imagined herself just a little above it all. Above them. But both the town and the people in it had proven her wrong.

On every score.

“You can stop blaming yourself,” he said quietly without looking at her. “This road is really hard to handle in the heavy rain or snow.”

She turned to face him, watching as a lone drop of rain slid down his temple. “You read minds?”

“I read yours easily enough, apparently. You’re mad at yourself.”

“And you. Let’s not forget that.”

“Why me?”

“Because you make the drive look easy.”

“I’ve been driving it since I was fourteen.”

That effectively took her mind off being cold, wet and hurting like hell. “You’re not supposed to drive until you’re sixteen.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t have a lot of supervision in those days.”

She’d left Wishful far too young to remember him or his brothers, or to even know their story. “Where was your mother?”

“Gone.” Keeping his eyes on the road, he lifted a shoulder. “She had three little boys, then decided life was too hard out here.” He glanced over, his eyes reflecting the knowledge that they had that in common.

But her mother had at least taken Emma with her.

His mother had walked away from him and his brothers. She couldn’t even imagine how incredibly devastating that must have been. “That’s just so wrong.”

“Agreed.”

“What about your father?”

“He was a mean drunk who only paid attention to us when we were bad—which we were a lot. We were as wild as they came.”

“Which explains how it is that you were driving so young.”

He flashed a short smile. “Yeah. So do you drive in New York?”