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CHAPTER5
Gabe
It was a mild spring morning. Birds were chirping, bees were buzzing, at least I’m sure they were. I couldn’t really give a fuck about literal birds and bees, to be honest. I was sitting in my truck in Zara and Matt’s driveway, staring at the guest house, knowing she was in there. Allegra.
How the fuck do you go from a night like that to pretending there’s nothing between you? I had no clue, so all I could do was hope that Ally did. Although in hindsight I had a nagging suspicion that I shouldn’t have agreed to fuck her, I wouldn’t have denied myself the experience for anything in the world. It was just that it was going to be so goddam complicated now, because now I knew what it was like to be with her. One night, one spectacular night, and now I would never be able to get enough of her. Not if I kissed her for a thousand years. So I had to find a way to deal with the fact that one night was all I was ever going to get, because that was clearly all she wanted.
I was the first to arrive for the post-wedding clean-up and I didn’t quite know what to do. Ally had seemed a bit off before she’d left my place last night and I wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced when I’d asked her if she was okay and she’d said yes. The last thing either of us needed was even more tension between us because she was regretting the hook-up.
Maybe I should go knock on her door, check that she really was okay. It wasn’t like it was the crack of dawn, right? She was probably awake. Crap. That made me imagine her still in bed, all sleepy and relaxed, maybe naked. I shifted uncomfortably as my dick stirred. Fuck, Allegra, what are you doing to me?
I heard car tires crunching slowly down the gravel drive and looked in the side mirror to see Bruce and Ellen Cooper arriving. Thank god, my buffers had turned up. Yeah, I knew it was pathetic that it had come to that, to needing other people around to keep me from obsessing about a pint-sized, curvy wildcat. But here we were.
I got out of the truck and shook Bruce’s hand. “Morning.”
“Hey, son. You just get here?”
No, actually, I’ve been sitting in the truck like a loser, staring at the guest house and trying not to imagine Ally in bed.“Yeah, no one else is here yet.”
“Is Ally okay?” Ellen asked, frowning at the guest house with its curtains still closed.
“I’m sure she is. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Just that I thought she’d up by now.”
“It’s not even eleven o’clock, sweetheart. I’m sure she’s just having a sleep in after yesterday.”
“But she was here overnight by herself.”
Not all night, she wasn’t.
“Maybe I should check on her.”
As if she’d heard us discussing her, Ally chose that moment to open the guest house door and step into the spring sunshine. She wore black jeans and a black, slim-fitting t-shirt which hugged her curves to perfection. I was completely unprepared for the sucker punch to the gut at the sight of her and had to take a few deep breaths to calm my suddenly spiking pulse.
“Morning, darling,” Ellen called out.
“Hi! I didn’t realize anyone was here already.” She had her hair down, the curls all wild and out of control, like she’d just finished a marathon sex session. I remembered exactly what it felt like to run my fingers through that hair, the silky texture, the scent… My fingers itched to do it again.
Pulling an elastic from her jeans pocket, she twisted her hair up into a messy knot on top of her head. Okay, that was worse, because now I could see her neck. The memory of running my lips along her skin just there did nothing to settle my heart rate.
“Should we get started? Try to get as much done as we can before the newlyweds get here?”
“Sounds like a plan, Bruce.” Ally didn’t look at me once as she headed off into the garden and to the clearing where the marquee had been set up. So that’s how we were going to play it – just pretend we didn’t exist to each other.
Bruce, Ellen and I followed her. “First up, let’s take care of the chairs. Maybe we can load as many as we can fit into your truck, Gabe? To take back to the rental place?”
“Sure, Bruce, that’s fine.”
“Great, let’s go.” No one paid attention to the slight hostility in Ally’s tone when she spoke to me. They were used to it, I guess.
The Coopers were a well-known, popular family in Esperance and there was no way Matt Cooper was going to marry the love of his life without a ton of people being there to witness it, especially after what had happened with his first marriage. Consequently, there were two hundred chairs to fold up and carry to my truck.
I followed Ally’s lead, paying zero attention to her while we took care of the chairs, or later while we cleaned and packed up the glassware and dishes, ready to be picked up by her parents. I figured it was what she wanted, for us just to play it cool. But then more than once I caught her looking my way, her brows slightly furrowed. Okay, so she was pissed off, nothing new there. But then I started thinking, maybe she’d had regrets about last night… Maybe I’d upset her, somehow? That ate at me until I just had to talk to her. I waited until Bruce and Ellen were far enough away that they were out of earshot before approaching her. “Allegra.”
“What?”
“You okay?”
