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Direct hit.
She’s drenched in no time, and I level it to her face, nailing her so swiftly the cool stream nearly tumbles her back.
Willow lets out a yipping squeal worthy of a scared coyote and flings herself around the side of the house. The girls are breathless with laughter by now.
They get sprayed for good measure while I take my turn laughing it up.
The sweet surprise ends a second later when a blast of water hits my back.
What the? I pivot around, spraying Willow again, who’d snuck off and found another hose from the other side of the house.
We’ve got ourselves an old-fashioned water war in no time.
The girls try their best to join in when they’re not doubled over. Sawyer and I on one team, Willow and Avery on the other.
We chase each other around the house, retreating only when we run out of hose, and then fly back in the other direction. When I notice Sawyer’s leg caught on the hose, I twist to pull it away so she won’t trip—
Only to slip on the wet grass and go down myself.
Timber. Bang. Ouch.
So maybe I’m not as spry as I used to be on a battlefield in Babylon, okay?
Avery, in charge of their hose, sees her chance and pounces, dousing me in the face so hard I’m shaking my head like a dog.
“Hey, hey!” Willow says, reaching for Avery’s hose. “No waterboarding your dad allowed. It’s part of the rules to keep it fun.”
I’m too fucking soaked to call out a warning as she moves, heading toward me.
Willow slips on the same slick grass and goes down hard—right on top of me.
A cheesy romantic comedy couldn’t have written the script any better.
Though there’s nothing funny about feeling the last tether of my sanity snap as I’m down on the ground with a mess of country girl heartbreaker on top of me.
My entire being leaps to life the second I make contact with her wet, slick body, suddenly pressed dangerously close to mine.
Shit.
The girls can’t help taking advantage, drowning us in endless sprays of cold water shooting from both hoses.
Laughing, shrieking, and breathless, Willow buries her small face in my wet shirt as I bellow, “White flag, ladies! We give up. Mercy!”
The water stops and Willow rolls off me, still laughing so hard she might break.
She lets out another squeal after realizing she’s rolled into a big mud puddle.
Then there’s a sound like Thor dropping thunder down on our heads. A miniature explosion that takes me a second to figure out it’s not some huge machine breaking down, but something alive.
Bruce.
Our good vibes and ham laughter come to a screeching halt.
His raging growl—no, his roar—rips our world in half, leaving behind dread silence.
My eyes go to the kids first.
Sawyer and Avery are pale and boneless.
“Oh, crap.” Willow leaps to her feet, hands up, shouting, “It’s all right! It’s all right, big dude.”
A wicked chill lashes my spine. My eyes flick from her to the barn and back again, a reminder of just how deadly serious this situation is.
“He...he just heard me scream. It’s instinct. He thought I was in trouble,” she says quietly, forcing a grin for the girls.
Then Willow takes off running for the barn.
“Stay here! Run for the house at the first sign of trouble,” I call behind me to the girls, leaping to my feet in hot pursuit, half expecting Bruce to come blasting through one of the barn doors like a wrecking ball wrapped in orange and black stripes.
She’s working the locks by the time I find my footing on the wet grass and catch up. My heart’s fit to pound right out of me, worried as hell at the thought of her facing him alone.
“Willow,” I growl, clasping her shoulder.
She puts a hand on my chest, her touch soft and sure.
“Stay out here. He won’t hurt me. He’ll calm down as soon as he sees I’m okay.”
She looks like something from another world, a place that’s pure beauty, somewhere without demonic men and women who enjoy butchering innocent creatures.
Water drips off her hair like a mythic siren who’s just emerged from the depths. Between the smear of mud and water mingled with sweat, her shirt is plastered against her like a second skin.
“I’ll be fine,” she insists again, her voice hitching. “He just needs to see me, Grady. Be right back.”
Snarling, I let go.
Whatever, I’ll trust her, and hope to every god that ever existed this isn’t a fatal mistake.
A second later, she slips inside the barn while I’m holding my breath.
I grab the door, ready to rip it open at the slightest provocation, the tiniest hint this could go wrong.
Yeah, she knows more than I ever will about tigers.
Yeah, she’s all soft curves, taunting hips, laughter and eyes like gems and bubblegum-pink lips I want to bite. She’s every fragile sweetness a man knows he’ll die to protect, and hopefully I’m not about to have Bengal fucking tiger on my death certificate.
