Page 58 of Restored By You

She leans down, kisses me hard, and breathes against my lips, “Inside. I want to feel it. All of you.”

That’s all it takes. I grip her hips and drive up into her once, twice, and then I’m coming with a growl torn out of my chest. Buried deep, my whole body goes tight beneath her as I empty into her and she holds my cock through every last shudder.

For a long moment neither of us moves. She’s collapsed against my chest, both of us breathing hard, my arms wrapped around her.

She lifts her head, chin propped on my sternum, and smiles down at me and my chest goes so full I can barely stand it. There’s a whole speech sitting behind my teeth. Stay. Marry me. Let me keep you. Three words, even. But I bite them back, because it’s too soon and I don’t want to spook her.

“What?” she asks, catching me staring.

“Nothing.” I tuck a curl behind her ear. “Just admiring the view.”

She smiles, kisses my chest, and settles back down against me, and I let myself believe, just for a minute, that we’ve got all the time in the world.

Shea’s in my passenger seat with her coffee in hand, wearing my flannel over her own clothes because she ‘got cold’ and I didn’t argue because I like the sight of her in it too much. The heater’s going, the morning’s cold and bright, the maple trees that line the street have long since gone bare. We take the drive over to the Hargrove place in no particular hurry to be anywhere but next to each other.

“Okay, walk me through today,” I say. “What’s left?”

“Mm.” She sips her coffee, ticking it off on her fingers the way she does. “Fireplace is done. Floors are refinished and cured. Kitchen’s in, the ensuite’s plumbed and tiled, Levi hung the last of the cabinet doors Thursday.” She’s grinning now, that excited-hands-flying energy building. “Honestly, babe, it’s finishing touches time. Trim paint. Fixtures. The light over the island. A few staging pieces I’ve got coming from Bozeman.”

I grin at her giddiness. “We’ll shoot the final walkthrough footage this week, then. Get you your pilot episode.”

She goes quiet for a second. “I couldn’t have done it without you. You know that, right? Any of it.”

“You’d have figured it out.”

“I mean it, Rhett.” Her hand covers mine on her knee. “You didn’t just save my house. You…” She stops, the same way she did this morning. “You gave me a lot more than a restoration project.”

Say it, I think, I’m right here, baby.

But she just laces her fingers through mine and looks back out the window, and I let her have it, because we’ve got time. We’ve got weeks. And after this morning, I’ve stopped believing she’s really going to get on that plane at all.

Which is exactly the kind of thought a man has right before the rug is ripped out from under him.

Because as I approach the Hargrove place, there’s a car in the driveway that doesn’t belong. Long, black, rental-lot clean, parked crooked across the gravel like whoever drove it didn’t care much for the surrounding yardwork.

Shea goes rigid beside me.

“That’s—” she starts, all the warmth drained clean out of her. “Rhett, that’s a rental.” She’s already fumbling for the door handle before I’ve fully stopped the truck. “That’s my father’s preferred rental.”

The front door of the house we’ve been renovating for the past two months swings open and I catch my first glimpse of who I can only assume is Daniel Winton. He steps out onto the porch like he owns it. Crisp grey suit that I’d venture to say costs more than the very truck I’m driving with shoes that shine cleaner than this same truck.

I kill the engine. Shea’s already out of the truck, coffee abandoned in the cupholder, moving toward the porch like she’s being pulled on a wire.

I get out slower. Take stock.

Daniel Winton is not a big man—shorter than me by a head, lean, expensive—but he stands like he’s never once in his life been told no. Silver at the temples, an expensive coat over his shoulders, a gold watch throwing light off his wrist. And behind him, hovering in the doorway of the house Shea put her heart into, is a woman with kind eyes and an anxious mouth who has to be the stepmother.

And beside her. Tyler.

Ah, hell.

The kid’s got his hood up. Earbuds in. Shoulders curled, phone out, eyes down—every inch of the sullen teen I first met. The armor’s back on, bolted down tight. Shea did a lot of work cracking that kid open. And it took his mother and Daniel minutes to weld him shut.

I don’t like the guy already, and he hasn’t said a word.

“Dad.” Shea’s voice is overly bright, and my brow furrows. It sounds a lot like the one I heard on the jobsite weeks ago. “You’re back early. We weren’t expecting you until—”

“Clearly.” Daniel’s gaze slides off her and lands on me. Up, down, taking in my work-worn boots, the truck with my logo on the door, and I get the feeling he’s dismissed me all in the same breath. “And you must be the contractor.”