Southern Seducer (North Carolina Highlands 1)

“Right. So four boys and just one girl.”

“Yep. She’s the only girl, poor thing. Although she sure as hell knows how to hold her own.”

Mom scoffs. “You’d have to, growing up in a family of five kids. And four of them being boys? Mercy.”

“I can’t fathom it.” As an only child, I mean that.

We pass several other buildings along the way as I follow the signs to Sugarhill Cottage. I glimpse numbered signs on each of them, leading me to believe they’re guest accommodations. More porches, more people on rocking chairs.

I put the car in park in front of the sign we’re looking for. I gape at the view outside my window.

“This can’t be it,” Mom blurts. “That is no cottage.”

I scoff, feeling the prick of tears again, but this time for a different reason.

“Goddamn it, Beau,” I say under my breath. I shut off the ignition.

The “cottage” is really a gigantic, gorgeous two-story modern farmhouse. It looks brand new, and it must be at least five thousand square feet. Rocking chair front porch, big steel windows, and views of the Great Smoky Mountains for days. It’s surrounded by a wide lawn and beds of lush greenery.

It’s so lovely that for a full heartbeat I can’t breathe.

“Wow,” Mom says. “Is this all ours?”

I know. I just know. “Yes.”

“Wow,” she repeats. “I knew Beau would put us up in a nice room. But this…”

“Is way too much.”

Maisie starts to fuss. I get out of the car and unlatch the car seat, squeezing her tiny socked feet. Then I grab the top handle and begin to swing the car seat. An old trick the pediatrician taught me.

Maisie goes quiet.

Hank materializes at my elbow and holds out his hand. “Want me to take that? Looks heavy.”

Maisie only weighs twelve pounds, but for some reason, she feels twice as heavy in the car seat.

“Thank you,” I say, handing it off to him. He coos at the baby, smiling, and she smiles back.

I blink hard, a tear slipping out of my eye, but I quickly wipe it away. Disbelief, relief, gratitude, the pressing, almost painful need for a nap—

Jesus, when am I going to stop being such a mess?

When am I going to feel like myself again?

Taking a deep breath, I follow Hank to the house. I’m vaguely aware that a small army of guys is unloading my car behind us. But my gaze catches on the front door of the house as it opens.

Beau steps out onto the front porch. His piercing blue eyes find mine from beneath the bill of his baseball hat. I may have seen two other sets of the Beauregard eyes in the past few minutes, but nothing really prepares you for the magnetic pull of Beau’s.

I’m hit in the backs of my knees by that thing.

The happy, achy, homey thing I feel whenever I’m around him.

He’s wearing dark jeans with a crisp button-up. Boots, grown-out scruff that’s turned into a beard, and biceps for days and days and days. He’s got an athlete’s build, tall and broad—six three and, at the height of his pro football career, two hundred fifty-five pounds—and even though we’re just friends, I’d have to be dead not to be aware of just how handsome he is.

Today, though, that handsomeness hits me like a force field. There’s a hunger in his eyes as they search my face. As if he’s needed me as much as I need him. As if he’s been starving for something only I can give.

For a split second, I feel a confidence rise inside me. Like I’m capable of giving that something, whatever it may be. Like I’m capable, period. And wanted. And just right, just as I am.

Heady stuff for someone who feels like she keeps falling short.

He smiles. “Hey, Bel.”

He’s big, and he’s familiar, and he’s here.

I can’t help it.

I launch myself into his arms with an anguished laugh and let out the sob I’ve been holding in for a hundred miles.

A hundred long, dark days.

Chapter Three

Beau

I don’t realize I’ve dropped my clipboard until I hear it clatter to the floor.

Curling my arms around Bel, I can’t help but drop my face into the crook of her neck and inhale the smell of her skin. She smells like girl. No perfume, just shampoo and soap.

She smells like Annabel.

My own skin wakes with a new awareness. My heart making itself known inside my chest.

My body comes alive the way it always does around Bel.

This sexual tension, the physical chemistry we’ve always had, is nothing new, but it’s usually easy to control. Today, though, I’m struggling to keep it in check. It’s all I can do not to let my hips melt into hers and give in to the need to run my fingers through her hair.

Nothing and everything has changed since she got pregnant. Now that my world’s been turned upside down, maybe what I want has been turned right side up, too.