“Liam, it’s gorgeous. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s… I can’t believe you’re gifting this to them. It must have cost a fortune to make,” Jordan says, finally finding words to go with her astonishment.
I chuckle, rubbing my jaw with my hand. “It wasn’t bad. The guy at the lumber yard knows me. He gave me a good deal on the wood. And the epoxy isn’t bad. Really, it’s the time and effort that goes into it.”
Her eyes rise to meet mine, and the smile that she gives me sets my heart to racing. It touches her eyes in a way I’ve only seen twice. Once on the dance floor the night of Nate and Savanna’s wedding, and later in her hotel room that same night. It’s a look that makes me want to wrap her in my arms and never let her go but also makes me want to run out of my skin to hightail it as far away as possible. It both excites and scares me.
“They’re going to love and appreciate this so much. It’s straight from your heart.” Her lip catches between her teeth as she peers down at it again, her fingertip running along the line of the breaking surf in the waves. “The wood… the water… you know them so perfectly.”
There’s suddenly too much distance between us. We feel it at the same time because we both start coming around the side of the table to meet in the middle.
When we reach each other, my hands are at her hips while hers loop around my neck, and I’m turning her towards a work bench that has a clear space right behind her. Lifting her up on it, she’s pulling me down so our lips meet in a kiss I thought was going to be hard and all-consuming, like so many are, but it’s actually full of affection and warmth. The sweet to so much spice between us.
My hand slides up her body, stopping to caress the side of her breast before wandering up to her neck. She tilts her head, knowingthat I want more access to the long column of her throat, and in the process, her lips part for me. I’m tasting her more intimately the next moment, my tongue running along her bottom lip before slipping into the warm crevice of her mouth.
The moan it elicits has my free hand snaking around her waist to pull her to the edge of the bench. My cock throbs in my jeans. I’m not a tall guy. Five-ten—eleven on a good day. There’s no way I’m fucking Jordan while she’s sitting on the bench and I’m standing between her legs. But I’ll be damned if I can’t feel every inch of her heat just above the waistline of my jeans. Her dress has ridden up, and my hand drags back over her hip to her thigh, pushing the material up even further.
“What in the fucking hell is going on?” Nate’s voice roars from the doorway of the garage.
I fly backwards. Jordan yelps in surprise, jumping down from her spot on the bench. I bump into Nate’s soon-to-be table, grabbing the end to keep it from crashing to the ground before I realize that it isn’t going anywhere. The thing is solid and in zero danger of moving.
Unless Nate puts me through it.
Judging by the look on his face, I’d say he’s considering it. Unless he got severely sunburned in Hawaii on their honeymoon, his blood pressure is through the roof and he’s rip-roaring mad. He’s as red as the fire engines at work. Maybe redder.
“Nate!” Jordan exclaims, a hand clutching her chest. “We can explain!”
I think the words come out of her mouth automatically. We can explain, it’s true, but the words are so cliché they have Nate turning a shade of red I’ve never witnessed before.
“You can explain?” he explodes, the blue of his eyes a stark contrast to the color of his face as they dance between the two ofus. “How the fuck do you explain his tongue down your throat?”
“Dude,” I start in the most relaxed and chilled tone I can find. It’s in complete contrast to the way my heart is pounding in my chest.
Nate is quick to turn on me, shoving a finger in my direction. “You! I fucking trusted you. I ask you to look after and help my baby sister and this is what you fucking do? Get in her fucking pants?” His head shakes in disgust. “This is so fucking typical. I knew I should have asked Brody.”
My stomach sinks. It isn’t the part about Brody. I can live with that. I know where he’s coming from, and I know he’s pissed. The part that gets me is his automatic assumption that we started this when he had us fake dating.
Jordan must be thinking the same thing because she shifts in her spot, her eyes darting in my direction.
Nate picks up the movement, and for one long, awful moment that seems to stretch into eternity, the garage is silent as he pieces it all together. He reads our guilt. He knows the truth. This started before he ever gave us the idea.
His eyes land solely on me, and he snarls, “I warned you she was off limits. How long have you been fucking my sister? How long have you been sneaking around behind my back?”
“Nate,” Jordan says, stepping towards her brother.
He doesn’t even spare her a glance, but he does snap at her. “I’ll get to you in a fucking second.”
“Dude, c’mon, let’s just take a breather and we can talk this all out,” I tell him, moving forward and ahead of Jordan. I know she’s in no actual danger when it comes to Nate, but I don’t like the way he’s talking to her.
“Talk? Now you want to talk?” Nate laughs humorlessly. “That’s fucking rich. Maybe you should have thought about thatbefore you went and fucked my sister, huh?” His hands open and close at his sides, and he shakes his head as his eyes narrow at me. “You’re a selfish fucking prick, you know that? You always have to think with your fucking dick. You don’t give a fuck about anyone else as long as it’s wet, ain’t that right?”
“Nate,” Jordan interjects.
“Don’t even start with me!” he seethes. “You promised me. You promised me that nothing would ever happen between you and one of my friends.”
Jordan tosses her hands up in exasperation. “That was over ten years ago!”
“What is your fucking point, Jordan?” Nate yells at her and I take a step forward, ready to jump in. “Does a promise have a fucking end date? Is that how promises work? Does that mean in ten years I can just throw away every vow and promise I made to Savanna and go out and cheat on her, and it’s okay?”
“No!” she shouts back, but I can hear the wobble in her voice. The threat of tears.
