The Wedding Date Disaster (Harbor City 4)

“Okay, I’m realizing now that I should have shut the window,” he said, each word coming out as rusty as a person would expect, considering he rarely, if ever, admitted to fucking up or apologizing. “I’m sorry.”

She looked so shocked at his admission of being wrong that for a second she just stared at him wide-eyed before coming back to herself. “Out here, if you leave the windows open, something will come wandering in.”

He nodded. “Duly noted.”

Some kind of weird truce being silently agreed to, they went back into the living room—all the more spacious now that the chair, also known as the extra bed, was gone. Shit. What in the hell were they going to do now? Sleeping in the bed with her was not an option. Last night had nearly killed him. A man wasn’t supposed to have a hard-on for as long as he had, trying to fall asleep next to her. At one point she’d rolled over and snuggled up next to him, twisting one leg around his. He’d almost come in his underwear. Going through that again would be agony.

“I’ll take the floor,” he said, glancing down at the hardwood that looked like it might put him in traction.

She shook her head. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Are you sure?” Did that sound hopeful? It shouldn’t. It couldn’t. Aw fuck, he was so screwed.

“If you don’t get any sleep and we end up losing Monopoly tomorrow night, PawPaw will kill me, so this is a better alternative.” She took off one of the couch cushions and set it down on the floor where the chair had been as she began to make up their bed. Their bed. “I’ll try my best not to disturb you with my snoring.”

Yeah. Snoring. That was pretty much the least of his worries when it came to sharing a bed with Hadley.

…

Hadley stared up at the ceiling, more awake than she’d been before she’d crawled under the blanket and then tossed it off before she melted. Lying down next to Will was like cuddling with a space heater set on inferno, even though he was wearing only a pair of low-hanging basketball shorts. She would have thought that it would help when he flung off the covers almost as soon as he’d gotten into bed, making a little blanket mountain between them.

It hadn’t.

And the fact that there was just enough light from the full moon coming in through the window to give her a good view of almost every part of him she hadn’t gotten to look her fill of last night—which was pretty much all of him—wasn’t helping. Thank God her sense of self-preservatio

n saved her from staring.

Instead, she pulled the blanket back over her and just baked under it with one foot uncovered and the rest of her roasting as she noticed everything about Will, from the steady cadence of his deep breaths to the way he was only inches from her, temptingly close. Not that she was thinking about it. “Obsessing” would be more correct, which was why she hadn’t been able to close her eyes for longer than a few seconds.

If being ultra-aware of him while staring at the ceiling was bad, having her dirty mind fill in the blanks when she closed her eyes was even worse.

“Do you think that crack on the ceiling means it’s going to fall in on us?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in the dark.

Her pulse picked up as her body, already way too attuned to him, buzzed with anticipation, and she took in a shaky breath. Okay, nothing to do now that she’d been busted but play it out. “Probably not but, if it did, we’d have a great view of the stars.”

“They really are something.” He rolled over—the move making the middle of the bed dip toward him—and propped his head up on his hand. “Don’t you miss seeing them in Harbor City?”

Even if she wasn’t doing everything she could at the moment to fight gravity and roll into him, she wouldn’t have been sure how to answer that. When it came to home and family, things were always mixed-up and messy.

“Looking up at all those stars used to make me so frustrated,” she said, turning to face him, mirroring his pose. “It was like I could see there was so much more than just this ranch, but it was so far away that I couldn’t ever be a part of it.”

That always-on-the-outside feeling lingered even all these years later, like a cold that she just couldn’t quit. That’s why she fought so hard to make her place in Harbor City, to prove she belonged there.

For the most part, it worked, but there were always exceptions, people who pointed out every single thing about her that still screamed country despite her attempts to hide them—one of whom was lying next to her in the dark.

“That’s why I was so determined to move to Harbor City, but even there I’m still someone who’s an outsider, different, other…and people aren’t afraid to let me know.”

Wow. She would not have put “confessing her biggest insecurities to her nemesis” on her bingo card for weird things that would happen during her sister’s wedding week.

“I’m guessing I’m on that list,” he said, giving her an apologetic smile that in this light looked genuine. “I admit it, I can be an asshole, but I have my reasons.”

“Because of Mia.” It wasn’t a question. He’d covered it up well enough at dinner the other night, but an ex-fiancée would sting even for someone like Will Holt. “What happened?” The question popped out before she realized it was bubbling up inside her. “Wait!” She reached out, her hand brushing his chest before she pulled it away, fingers tingling. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s not like we’re friends.”

“Just two people in the foxhole together,” he said with a wry chuckle.

“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”

Something like a whole lot of losing my mind.