“You’re avoiding the original question.”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone. Do I need to go get a non-disclosure agreement?”
“You can. Or I can pinky swear not to tell a soul.”
I gasp dramatically. “That’s the most sacred of swears, you know.”
“I know.”
When she links her pinkie with mine, a twinge of arousal rushes through me and I consider yanking her against me and finishing what I started earlier. Instead, I sigh loudly. “Fine. Come with me.”
19
Grace
Noah opens the deck door to his bedroom, and my heart skips a beat. “Is this your way of getting me into your bedroom? This isn’t very subtle.”
“I've never been good at subtle.”
I look around his bedroom – “bedroom” doesn’t accurately describe it, though. It’s a huge master suite with light grey walls and log beams that run across the ceiling and match the rest of the house. It’s understated and masculine, with a sitting area on the other side of the room outfitted with several leather chairs and a television. When my eyes flicker toward his bed, I have to force them away.
Do not think about Noah and his bed. Or what you might want him to do to you on that bed.
Or on the floor.
Or the chairs.
Heat rushes through me at the prospect of Noah doing me anywhere in here, but I swallow hard and clear my throat as he walks to the far side of the suite near the sitting area where a set of closet doors lines the wall. I notice the keypad on the doors before he even touches it. “Wait,” I say, stopping him. “Are you about to show me something completely weird? Ohhh… were the blow up dolls really yours and not Aiden’s?”
“Okay, I’m not showing you. Forget we talked about it,” Noah grumbles.
“So they were yours.”
“No, they were not mine.”
“Okay, show me.”
“Nope, you’re going to think it’s weird.”
“I promise I won’t.” I cross my fingers behind my back. Okay, I might. Especially if he has a bizarre fetish. What if he collects locks of women’s hair or something?
Noah grumbles under his breath again as he unlocks the closet and slides open the door, revealing a set of cabinets topped with shelves that reach the ceiling. The shelves are filled to the bursting point with yarn. Skeins and skeins of yard in a million different colors and textures. He looks at me silently.
“Um… is this some kind of BSDM thing? You tie women up with yarn?”
Noah sighs exaggeratedly. “It’s exactly what it looks like, all right? There you go. You’ve seen my dirty secret.”
When he moves to close one of the doors, I stop him. “Wait. I don’t get it.”
“I knit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me the first time. I knit. In my spare time, I knit things. Socks, scarves, blankets. Christmas stockings.”
“You knit.”
“No one knows. Including Aiden. Shit, especially not Aiden. Or anyone on my team.”
A giggle builds up in my chest, and I cover my mouth to prevent it from coming out. It doesn’t work, and now Noah is looking at me with a dark expression.
“Okay, see, I wasn’t going to tell you,” he growls, closing one of the doors.
“I’m not laughing at you,” I promise, suppressing a giggle. “It’s just that… you knit? That’s your dirty secret? The way you acted, I was afraid this was going to be filled with body parts.”
“Body parts, really? Shit, if the guys on the team found out about the knitting, I’d never hear the end of it. It would be worse than a closet full of body parts.”
I mock-button my lips. “Mum’s the word.”
“You promised not to laugh.”
“Nervous habit,” I say, rapidly changing the subject. “Show me something you’ve knitted.”
“Are you done laughing?”
“I swear.”
He sighs. “Fine. But don’t make me regret showing you.” He slides open a drawer in the cabinet and pulls out a long grey scarf. “This is one I just made. It’s angora.”
“Wow. This is…”
He sighs. “Yeah, I know. Lame.”
“That’s not what I was going to say at all. I was going to say, it’s… not what I expected from you.”
“Look, I love football. It’s my whole life. But a couple of years ago, I was having a hard time getting my mind off the game at night, which gave me problems falling asleep. The team has this life coach that players sometime see – I’m not crazy, though.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Doc sent me to her to fix my sleep, and…” He laughs under his breath. “She was pregnant and she was knitting when she talked to me. I thought it was the dumbest fucking thing I’d ever seen. She said I should try it because it might help me clear my head.”
“Does it?”
He shrugs. “I started doing it at night and stopped having sleep problems.”
“Whatever keeps you in the game, right?”
Noah gives me a funny look as he takes the scarf out of my hands and slides the closet doors closed.
“You must have knitted a million things by now. What do you do with them?”
“I donate them to charities. Anonymously,” he adds, emphasizing the last word.
“Okay, I have one more question.”
He crosses his arms. “Go ahead.”
“Can you do ugly Christmas sweaters?”
Later, when I snuggle under the covers, thinking about big gruff Noah and his knitting makes me smile.
The next morning, we’re up at dawn to work with the horses. When the kids find out what they have to do, they all groan.
“We have to clean poop?” Niall asks, making a gagging sound. He’s echoed by the moans of several of the kids and a chorus of barfing noises.
“That’s right.” Bryson, one of the seasoned counselors, crosses his arms. “Before you get on a horse, you need to learn how to take care of them. That means learning how to brush them after you ride, and put on a saddle, and check the horses’ hooves and… muck the stalls.”
“You mean shovel poop,” one of the other kids says flatly.
“Yep. Do you know why we have you muck the stalls first? Because you have to learn the not-fun stuff before you learn the fun stuff,” Bryson says brightly.
Noah’s standing a few feet behind me and I hear him speak softly. “It’s really because kids are free labor. But also because sometimes in life, you'll have to deal with shit. So you should get used to shoveling it."
I spin around and give Noah a wide-eyed glare at the use of his profanity, but the kid beside him nods knowingly. “And you can’t let shit get you down,” the kid says.
Noah fist-bumps the kid. “Good philosophy, Louis.”
I glare at Noah, who seems oblivious. “No profanity.”
“What?” the kid protests. “That’s what my mom says.”
“Your mom is a wise woman,” Noah adds.
“Yeah. I know. Are you going to help muck the stalls?”
“Are you crazy?” Noah blurts.
“So you’re going to just watch us do it?”
“That’s right. I’m going to stand here and enjoy my cup of coffee, because that’s exactly the way my dad taught me. Circle of life, man. I’ve done my time mucking stalls. Now it's your turn."
“Huh. I thought you were supposed to be a regular guy, not a stuck-up athlete,” Louis grumbles. “But I guess once you get rich, you’re too good for this kind of thing.”
Noah groans and rolls his eyes dramatically. “Fine. Go get two pitchforks. Make that three – find your co-conspirator, Spencer. But you know you’re a pain in the ass, Louis.”
“Noah!” I exclaim, my eyes big.
Louis grins. "Yes! I knew you would cave.”
“Did you just guilt me into shoveling crap with you?” Noah asks.
Louis’ grin gets even broa
der. “Deal with it, bro. You got played.”
Noah tries to keep from laughing. “Get out of here.” When Louis runs off to grab shovels, Noah shakes his head. “He’s a total manipulator.”
“You can’t call him a pain in the ass,” I tell him.
“Why not?” Noah asks, looking at me blankly. “I called him a pain in the ass because I like him. And because he’s a pain in the ass.”
“Number one, it’s profanity and we don’t use profanity at camp. Number two, you can’t just go around calling the kids names.”
“He called me an ass yesterday when we met,” Noah protests. “I’m pretty sure I’m not hurting his delicate feelings or exposing him to any profanity he doesn’t already know.”
“Well, at least he seems to have an accurate assessment of you.”
“See? You agreed that I’m an ass right there, and you like me.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I like you?”
“Oh, please. Don’t pretend like you don’t.” Noah grins.
I step closer to him, dropping my voice to a whisper as I lean in. “Yeah. There’s nothing that gets me hotter than a man who knits me socks.”
“Ohhh….” Noah steps back, shaking his head as he laughs and puts his hands over his chest. “Going right for the jugular. I thought we said we’d never speak of that again.”
“I said I wouldn’t tell anyone else. But I made no promise to never speak of it.”
Louis and Spencer interrupt, arriving with pitchforks in hand. “Let’s get this over with,” Louis says, rolling his eyes.
Noah shoos the kids toward a stall, pausing for a second to whisper in my ear before he passes me. “If knitting you socks gets you wet, sweetheart, I’ll knit you a whole damn wardrobe.”
20
Aiden
“I hope you don’t mind if I use the kitchen,” says Grace, looking up from the counter where she’s chopping vegetables. “The kids are cooking over the campfire and I just couldn’t stomach the prospect of hotdogs for dinner.”
“It’s Noah’s place, so you absolutely have my permission to use whatever you want.”
She laughs as she slides vegetables off the cutting board into the bowl. “Where is your roommate, anyway?”
“Gym.” I’m irritated that she cares where Noah is. Not to be completely arrogant or anything, but I’m not used to girls not falling all over me. I’m rich, stacked, and a football player; I don’t have trouble getting women. But Grace isn’t like the girls who usually throw themselves at me.
She seems oblivious to my annoyance, and it’s hard to stay irritated as she dices up another pepper and slides it from the cutting board into the bowl, looking fucking adorable in a navy skirt and white t-shirt, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail.
I have to look away from her because if I keep ogling her, I’m going to start thinking about throwing her right up on this counter and putting my face up under that skirt. And if I start thinking about that…
Shit. My dick is hard now. I cover by sliding into one of the high-top seats at the granite countertop.
“I looked up West Bend,” Grace says.
“I thought you weren’t in the habit of internet searching.”
She grins. “I didn’t look for you guys,” she protests. “Just photos of West Bend. I was curious whether I’d been there with my dad. I have, by the way. I recognized the Main Street.”
“It’s pretty much exactly like the Main Streets in a hundred other towns across the U.S.”
“True.” She turns, going to the refrigerator and pulling out more veggies. “But I remember the general store because they sold dresses. I spilled ice cream on my shirt before this lunch at some diner, I think? My mother was really upset about it. She brought me in there to get a new dress and the thing was like something straight out of Little House on the Prairie.”
“That sounds about right for West Bend.”
“It must have been fun growing up there.”
I laugh. “Fun isn’t the word for it. West Bend is… small.”
“Like homey and quaint?”
“Yeah, and also boring and uptight.”
She chops more vegetables and then looks up. “Are you and Noah hungry?”
Fuck, yes.
“I’m definitely hungry.” I don’t add the part about what exactly I’m hungry for, but when her eyes meet mine, the expression on her face tells me she understood exactly what I meant.
“I - ” She blushes and stammers. “I picked up some stuff at a little grocery store I saw on the way out here.” She looks down at her phone. “The recipe says it makes four servings. Should I double that?”
“We’re football players.”
“Point taken. So I should quadruple it?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly small.” I pause for a beat. “Anywhere.”
“Thanks for the clarification.” Grace is silent as she picks up a cucumber. Then she pauses midair, cucumber in hand, and her eyes meet mine. Yep, she’s definitely thinking about cock. Her face turns bright pink and she sets the cucumber back on the counter.
She clears her throat again. “So, what position do you play?”
“Whatever you want.” I give her another grin and she tosses me a dirty look. “Fine, fine. I’m a cornerback.”
“Quarterback?”
I sigh loudly. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Grace laughs. “Not a bit.”
“You really don’t know anything about football?”
“I told you I didn’t!”
“Well, I’d be glad to teach you some plays.”
She bites her lower lip. “I know you would.”
“In fact, there’s this one play I have…” I stop talking as I get down from the high-top chair and walk around the island to where she’s standing. I’m so close that I can smell her perfume –