She got him. Again. There was no way to back out of it now without admitting weakness—a definite not-gonna-happen if there had ever been one. He’d concede this battle to her, but she’d better enjoy this victory while she could, because it was going to be her last one.
And that determination made it all the way through dinner, toasts to the bride-to-be, and Adalyn’s favorite dessert—s’mores over the firepit. However, as soon as they got back to the cabin and he saw Hadley’s shoulders slump at the sight of the chair she’d napped in, he gave in—for strategic purposes, of course. It was smart to keep your competition off-kilter by throwing some no-strings-attached free will every once in a while.
“You can have the pull-out.”
Now, this was where she’d feign protest for politeness’s sake—that fake generosity would be the smart move for someone trying to slyly move in on his brother for all the dollars in his bank account.
Hadley didn’t even hesitate before grabbing ahold of her suitcase and rolling it behind her as she walked down the short hall toward the bathroom. “We’ll take turns. Me tonight, you tomorrow when we get back from driving PawPaw home.”
With her, it was always what he didn’t expect. Just like how she’d managed to get him to agree to another gut-wrenching drive. “You set me up with that.”
“I did,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and winking at him.
Will was in a pair of sleep pants and brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink when Hadley sauntered back into the living room in a silky red tank top and matching shorts trimmed in lace. Most of his blood went south before the realization settled in that she’d packed those pajamas thinking it would be his brother who’d see them.
A good man would have pulled himself back from the edge and remembered a gold digger played the long con. He recalled that last bit all right, but he was still balancing right there on the edge of lust and loathing without a clue which side to fall on, while he watched her set up the fold-out bed and slip between the sheets already on it and promptly closing her eyes without ever looking his way or uttering a single good night. He would have thought he would have gotten his ability to breathe back again, but no.
“You gonna turn out the light?” she asked in a bored tone, “or are you just standing there in the kitchen with a mouth full of toothpaste and staring at me while I’m sleeping—because that’s not creepy at all.”
Face hot at getting caught, he swallowed the toothpaste without thinking. It tasted like mint-flavored poor choices. “I’ll be done in a second.”
She didn’t answer, just rolled over and tucked the sheet up high under her chin. By the time he kicked his boots under the pull-out mattress so he didn’t trip over them in the middle of the night and sat down in the chair, Hadley’s breathing had already evened out as she slept. Without the usual annoyed expression she wore when she saw him, she looked softer, sweeter, somehow even sexier than usual. Hell, she looked every bit like she was the kindhearted person she presented around Web. But she wasn’t. And Will couldn’t—Web couldn’t—afford to forget that.
Chapter Eight
Will’s neck was never going to be the same.
As he sat up, he rolled his neck and shoulders, working out the aches from sleeping mostly upright in a chair that was about as comfortable as the middle of the back seat of a subcompact car. Sunshine cut through the blinds in the cabin’s big front window, landing in a bright puddle in the middle of the empty pull-out bed. The sheet was still a twisted, rumpled mess, as if she’d slept about as well as he had—but there was no Hadley in sight.
That probably wasn’t a bad thing, considering he’d seen plenty of her in his dreams—correction, his nightmares last night. And in every single one of them, she’d been wearing those silky little pajamas, and the strap holding her top in place kept slipping off her shoulder. It was just enough to give him a perma-hard-on while he slept, but that was it. Thank God.
“So are you sure everything is going okay in Harbor City?” Hadley’s mom’s voice filtered in from the porch through the half-opened front door. “I worry about you being out there all alone.”
“I’m not alone,” Hadley said softly. “I have friends and a job I love doing, if not the people I do it with.”
“And now you have Will,” Stephanie said.
Feeling like some kind of cartoon villain, Will tiptoed over to the window, getting almost there before his little toe got snagged on the foot of the pul
l-out bed. He kept moving forward but his toe went backward and the stupid iron bar stayed in place. Pain shot up his leg and he clamped his jaw shut to keep from yelling out, reflexively lifting his leg and spinning around.
That’s when he saw it. Immediately, he froze with his injured foot in the air and fear clamping down on his balls.
Snuggled inside the tangled sheets bathed in a pool of sunshine was a fox or a coyote or a baby wolf or an alien animal that only lived on this ranch. Hell, this could be the snipe Knox and Weston had been talking about last night at dinner, even though he knew, like the rest of the world with internet, that they weren’t real. This thing, though, was very real, even if he had no clue what it was. All he knew was it was an animal he’d never seen in any of the Harbor City parks. About the size of a cat, it was gray with orange on its sides. It flicked its bushy tail, the black tip landing right up against its snout. It had one yellow eye cracked open and was staring right at Will. Its lips curled back, revealing pointy little teeth, and let out a low growl.
Cold panic slid down Will’s spine. “It’s okay, boy,” he said, holding up his hands while still balanced on one foot. “I’m allowed to be here.”
The low growl turned into a medium one.
“Hadley,” he hollered, not sure if this was a pet or a rabid animal ready to rip his face off. “I think I might have found the snipe your brothers were going hunting to find.”
The front door opened and Hadley walked in. She was still in her pajamas, her long brown hair pulled into a high ponytail that bounced as she moved. She took one look at him frozen in place with his hands out, his right foot off the ground, and what he was pretty damn sure was a very manly look of pure fucking what-the-hell on his face before breaking out into giggles.
“That’s not a snipe,” she said, her arms wrapped around her belly. “It’s Lightning.”
“What is a lightning?”
“He’s a greedy old swift fox who would steal the hard-boiled egg off your breakfast dish and poop on whatever he claims is his, but he wouldn’t bite you,” she said, coming closer and scratching the fox behind the ears. “Gabe found him as a tod years ago after he’d been injured protecting his sister, who’d gotten cornered by a coyote. She made it. Lightning lost a leg, but thanks to Gabe’s quick thinking, he survived. He’s been coming and going of his own free will since then.”